The Sentinel (Jack Reacher #25)(74)

Reacher moved one unit to the left. Its lock was also slender and unobtrusive but it must have been made with some kind of specially hardened steel. Reacher had to put some serious effort into breaking it. He wrestled with the cutter for maybe half a minute before the stem finally gave way. Then he flipped the body aside. Pulled it clear. Dropped it into his pocket with the other two defeated locks. Took hold of the door handle. And froze. A sound reached him. They were too far from the gate to have heard it open but there was no mistaking the purr of a large motor. The thrum of tyres on concrete. It was a vehicle. Coming their way.

Reacher nodded towards the minivan. Sands and Rutherford jumped inside. Reacher heaved the door to the furniture unit back into place and followed them. A pickup appeared from around the corner of the building. A Toyota. Some kind of metallic bronze colour. Very shiny. No light bar on the roof. No security company logo. No wannabe gangsters with guns. Just the driver. He looked to be in his fifties. And he was in no hurry. He trundled by, gave a friendly wave, and continued towards the far end of the block. Stopped at the last but one door. E18. Climbed out, unlocked the unit, took a box from his load bed, and carried it inside. He was back in his truck within a minute. He waved again. Then fired up the engine and continued around the far corner.

‘Come on,’ Sands said. ‘I have a bad feeling about this. Let’s get it over with before anyone else shows up.’

They climbed out together and Reacher hauled up the door to E6. Only it didn’t open on to a space the size they’d seen before. This time four units had been knocked together. Two on the even side. Two on the odd side.

Rutherford hit a switch on the wall which caused a dozen fluorescent tubes to flicker into life. ‘Holy mother of God.’

Shelves had been installed throughout in rows about two yards apart. They held pretty much every kind of electronic gadget Reacher had ever heard of. Domestic. Commercial. Industrial. Even some low-grade military. But whether the servers were part of the cache, he had no idea.

‘I could live here for the rest of my life.’ Rutherford stepped inside and made his way slowly along the first shelf, scanning each item and muttering quietly to himself. Then something caught his eye a little further ahead. He raced forward six feet, dropped to his knees, and threw his arms around a stack of black boxes on the lowest level. ‘I don’t believe it. They’re here. We’ve found them.’

‘Do they work?’ Reacher said. ‘Have they been wiped? Can we test them?’

‘Not here,’ Rutherford said. ‘They’re not like laptops. You can’t just turn them on and see. You have to connect them to a network. Then you can use a computer to check what’s on them. Think of them as giant external hard drives.’

‘We’ll show you how, later,’ Sands said. ‘Networking them’s easy. Right now we need to get them in the van. Take them somewhere safe. Work on them there.’

Rutherford and Sands carried two servers each. Reacher carried four. They loaded them into the narrow cargo area behind the rear bench seat. Sands took another minute to make sure they were secure. Then she made for the driver’s seat.

‘Hold on,’ Reacher said. ‘If you want to copy what’s on a server, what do you need? Another server?’

Rutherford nodded. ‘And a network and some software. But basically, yes.’

‘Are there any other servers here? That would be the right kind?’

‘Sure. There’s a whole bunch.’

‘You used eight servers altogether. But only one from the archive project?’

‘Correct. The rest I scrounged from other places.’

‘OK. Let’s grab a couple we could copy on to. No. Let’s make it four.’

‘Why? What are we going to copy?’

‘Maybe nothing. I’ll explain once we’re out of here.’





TWENTY-TWO





There were five words on Reacher’s mind as they headed back to town.

Need to know. And Forty hours.

Five words rather than six. Because eight hours were gone. But the same two concepts remained. Along with a single question. Which begged a one-word answer. Had the servers been wiped? Yes, or no? Either way Reacher would have two things to do. If the data was intact he would have to persuade Rutherford to duplicate it, and get a copy to the FBI. If the data was gone, he would have to break the news to Agent Fisher and persuade Rutherford to leave town. He knew which was preferable. But he had no idea which would be easier.

Reacher looked at Sands and Rutherford in the front seats. They were different people from the ones who had entered the storage unit. Their fatigue was gone. And their worry. He could feel their excitement now. Their enthusiasm. Their certainty that with the servers successfully recovered, everything else was bound to fall into place. Reacher himself was feeling less confident. He was the only one who knew what was at stake. And he was the only one who had no experience with computers. He had no idea how to extract their secrets. Or how to find out if they even held any secrets. He would rather be dealing with humans, any day of the week.

Their first port of call was the apartment building so that Rutherford and Sands could pick up some clothes and toiletries and grab their laptops and all the cables and connectors they would need to hook the servers together. Next they collected Marty’s car, which Reacher drove. Then they headed north again, in tandem, back to the truck stop. Not for fuel or supplies this time. But because of its two motels. One in particular had caught Reacher’s eye. He figured it was the oldest part of the whole complex. The design was very traditional. He had seen similar places all across the country. It had a blue and red neon sign out front depicting some kind of mythical bird. The building was a single storey high. It was clad with strips of dark wood. It started at its south-west corner with an office, which had a covered entryway and machines outside for soft drinks and ice. Then it continued around three sides of a square with a regular pattern of window and door, window and door. Thirty-six pairs altogether. Each with a parking space outside. Leaving no distance to walk from your vehicle to your room. Making it easy to carry your luggage inside. And reducing the chances of anyone seeing what you had brought. However unusual it might be. Or incongruous. Such as three mismatched suitcases and a dozen sleek black boxes.