Page 118 of Chain Reaction

“If it has four wheel drive and big tires we won’t need to use the road at all. We can come in across open country, on their blind side.”

“So could they, if we get there first,” Elwood said. “Either way it won’t be easy.”

“If I wanted easy, I would have joined the Marines.”

“Why do you like gravel?”

“I don’t like gravel,” Reacher said. “I don’t dislike it either. I guess I’m entirely indifferent to gravel. If I never saw another pea-size pebble for the rest of my life, it wouldn’t rank high on my list of regrets. My theory happens to be an integrated suite of three complementary ideas, and gravel happens to be one of them. That’s all.”

Turner smiled at him.

Elwood said, “What are the other two ideas?”

“You’ve already witnessed one of them. Whether it means anything depends on what Julia tells me.”

By then the plane was lower and the tawny plains were closer. They rocked and buffeted on the fast thermals coming up off the baking ground. The plane felt small and stiff, like a dart. It passed low over Buckley’s fence and touched down on a runway that looked to be about two miles long. Like a kid’s toy on a highway. It taxied fast and turned off onto a remote concrete apron far from anywhere else. Waiting there was a blue crew cab pickup truck, parked and empty.

“Dodge Ram,” Elwood said.

“Big tires,” Turner said. “And four wheel drive. I can see the badge.”

“Perfect,” Reacher said. It looked factory spec, not all gussied up like the thing the Denver brothers had arrived in. But it was high and wide and looked capable of anything they needed it to do. It looked well looked after. An army vehicle. Maybe the DoD had gotten a quantity discount on blue Dodges.

The pilot backed out of the cockpit and dropped the stairs. Reacher took two bags and Elwood took the other two. They followed Turner down the stairs and out into the heat. They walked over to the truck and hoisted the bags into the load bed. Plus Turner’s travel case and an old canvas tote Elwood had brought. There was a vinyl roll-back cover to conceal them all. They secured it in place.

The key fob was in the cupholder. Elwood set his phone for Aurora Stone and Gravel and got in the driver’s seat. Turner sat next to him in the front. Reacher sprawled across the back. The seat was burning hot. It felt like the truck had been sitting in the sun all morning. Elwood started it up and turned the air to max and dropped all four windows. He shoved the lever into gear and took off slowly, like the airman at Andrews, looping gingerly around the parked plane, heading cautiously for the perimeter road. A mile later they came to the base’s main gate. They got in the exit lane and stopped at the barrier. A guy in the hut looked down at his scratch pad, which must have said blue Dodge Ram, mystery passengers, let them through, don’t ask questions, because the barrier came up and let them drive away.

Elwood took it slow through the vastness. The far horizon looked impossibly distant. Colorado was a very spacious state, Reacher thought. That was for damn sure. Elwood’s phone turned him west on Route 30, and then north on a dead-straight street that led them under I-70 directly to Aurora Stone and Gravel.

Reacher recognized the place from the newspaper ad he had seen. The house-high piles of rock and stone, the yellow bucket loaders and bulldozers. No longer carefully posed for a photograph, but moving from pile to pile, working hard. The place was huge. Many acres. The office building was a long low construction inside the main gate. It had customer parking out front. Elwood pulled into a bay. He shut the motor down and dipped in his inside pocket and came out with three ID cards. He handed them around. They said United States Army Counterintelligence Command over two lines at the top. Reacher’s had his photograph on it, but his name was shown as John Richard. The photograph was very recent. Within the last few days, judging by the collar of his shirt.

“I snapped you with my phone,” Elwood said. “Then John for Jack, Richard for Reacher, so you wouldn’t get yourself confused.”

“Who made these?”

“A guy I got to know when I worked there.”

“Outstanding.”

Turner’s had her file photo on it, with the name Sarah Page.

“I get Sarah for Susan,” she said. “But why Page?”

“Page-turner,” Elwood said. “You like reading books.”

“Outstanding,” she said.

They climbed down from the truck and headed inside. There was a waist-high counter with a bustle of busy women behind it, shuffling stacks of orders, tapping at keyboards, talking on phones. One broke off and came to the counter with a helpful look on her face. She said, “What can I get for you folks?”

“Your boss,” Turner said.

“Excuse me?”

Turner showed her ID. Sarah Page, Counterintelligence Command. She said, “We have some urgent questions. We need some fast responses. Please show us to her office without delay.”

“Their office,” the woman said. “There are two of them.”

“Please lead the way.”