Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [90]
The guy said nothing. Just drove.
Reacher asked, “How much do the Duncans pay you?”
“More than I could get back in Kentucky.”
“In exchange for what, precisely?”
“Just being around, mostly.”
Reacher asked, “Who are those Italian guys in the overcoats?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do they want?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are they now?”
“I don’t know.”
They were in the blue Impala, already ten miles north of the Marriott, Roberto Cassano at the wheel, Angelo Mancini sitting right beside him. Cassano was working hard to stay behind Safir’s boys in their red Ford, and both drivers were working hard to keep Mahmeini’s guys in sight. The big black Cadillac was really hustling. It was doing more than eighty miles an hour. It was way far outside of its comfort zone. It was bouncing and wallowing and floating. It was quite a sight. Angelo Mancini was staring ahead at it. He was obsessed with it.
He asked, “Is it a rental?”
Cassano was much quieter. Occupied by driving, certainly, concentrating on the crazy high-speed dash up the road, definitely, but thinking, too. Thinking hard.
He said, “I don’t think it’s a rental.”
“So what is it? I mean, what? Those guys have their own cars standing by in every state? Just in case? How is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” Cassano said.
“I thought at first maybe it’s a limo. You know, like a car service. But it isn’t. I saw the little squirt driving it himself. Not a car service driver. Just a glimpse, but it was him. The one who mouthed off at you.”
Cassano said, “I didn’t like him.”
“Me either. And even less now. They’re way bigger than we are. Way bigger than we thought. I mean, they have their own cars on standby in every state? They fly in on the casino plane, and there’s a car there for them, wherever? What’s that about?”
“I don’t know,” Cassano said again.
“Is it a funeral car? Do the Iranians run funeral parlors now? That could work, right? Mahmeini could call the nearest parlor and say, send us one of your cars.”
“I don’t think the Iranians took over the funeral business.”
“So what else? I mean, how many states are there? Fifty, right? That’s at least fifty cars standing by.”
“Not even Mahmeini can be active in all fifty states.”
“Maybe not Alaska and Hawaii. But he’s got cars in Nebraska, apparently. How far up the list is Nebraska likely to be?”
“I don’t know,” Cassano said again.
“OK,” Mancini said. “You’re right. It has to be a rental.”
“I told you it’s not a rental,” Cassano said. “It can’t be. It’s not a current model.”
“Times are tough. Maybe they rent older cars now.”
“It’s not even last year’s model. Or the year before. That’s practically an antique. That’s an old-guy car. That’s your neighbor’s granddad’s Cadillac.”
“Maybe they have rent-a-wreck here.”
“Why would Mahmeini need that?”
“So what is it?”
“It doesn’t really matter what it is. You’re not looking at the big picture. You’re missing the point.”
“Which is what?”
“That car was already at the hotel. We parked right next to it, remember? Late afternoon, when we got back. Those guys were there before us. And you know what that means? It means they got there before Rossi even asked Mahmeini to send them. Something really weird is going on here.”
The metallic gold GMC Yukon turned left off the north-south two-lane and headed west toward Wyoming on another two-lane that was just as straight and featureless as the first. Reacher pictured planners and engineers a century before, hard at work, leaning over parchment maps and charts with long rulers and sharp pencils, drawing roads, dispatching crews, opening up the interior. He asked, “How far now, John?”
The kid said, “We’re real close,” which as always turned out to be a relative statement. Real close in some places meant fifty yards, or a hundred. In Nebraska it meant ten miles and fifteen minutes. Then Reacher saw a group of dim lights, off to the right, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The truck slowed and turned, another precise ninety-degree angle, and headed north on a blacktop strip engineered