Jack and Joe: Hunt for Jack Reacher Series (The Hunt for Jack Reacher Series Book 6) (7 page)

Major Clifton? Details about what? He didn’t know anything about Jack Reacher that I hadn’t already learned. I didn’t need the Boss to micromanage my investigation.

“Anything else?” I stretched my neck and rolled my shoulders. The tension that had lodged there during the drive from Fort Bird was still with me.

“I sent you a file,” he said, after a few more quiet moments. “Read it and contact me on a secure line for instructions.”

Like finding a secure line to use in this place tonight would be possible. “Is that all?”

“Not quite,” he said, with perhaps a bit of annoyance in his tone. “The next time I give you a direct order, follow it.”

When he disconnected, I threw the phone onto the bed so hard it bounced off and landed on the floor and rolled under the mattress. I left it there.

CHAPTER 9

I unscrewed the top off the truck stop Cabernet, poured into one of the two Styrofoam cups, and connected my laptop to the secure satellite.

In my drop box was the new encrypted file, as promised.

The document was an official final court-martial disposition report to the then Army Chief of Staff from the Judge Advocate General’s office. The fifty-page JAG report was dated June 1990.

Whole sections of the report were blacked out—redacted, which usually meant those contents were classified.

Flipping through quickly on the first pass I saw two names I recognized. Lieutenant Eunice Summer and Major Jack Reacher.

Reading what was not blacked out in the report didn’t take long.

Lieutenant Summer had been the star witness in unspecified joint courts-martial of three Army officers, names and ranks redacted. Major Reacher had been her superior officer during the underlying investigation, but not mentioned otherwise. The report didn’t specifically say what involvement Reacher had with the case, only that he was Summer’s supervisor. Which could mean anything.

When the original case terminated with three officer arrests before the courts-martial, Reacher was immediately demoted to Captain and reassigned to Panama.

Summer assisted in the prosecutions. She continued in her role as Military Police Lieutenant through the “successful resolution of the matter,” whatever that was.

Also included in the encrypted file was a short memo, unsigned. It stated that three months after the courts-martial was resolved, Lieutenant Summer was promoted to Captain. She was reassigned to Korea to serve directly under General Leon Garber. From earlier reports, I knew Garber was now deceased.

I unwrapped my dinner and refilled my wine cup and sat on the bed to think. The first bite of the sandwich had me regretting my rash refusal to have dinner with the Boss. There were many things about the nation’s capital that I didn’t care for, but no one could complain about the food. The second sandwich bite was worse than the first. I tossed it into the trash and rooted around in my bag for a protein bar.

The JAG report confirmed my hunch that the big professional changes Summer and Reacher experienced back then were connected. I munched the protein bar while I chewed the situation thoroughly until I knew three things for sure.

First, whatever happened at Fort Bird in early 1990 involved serious criminal activity. Nothing less would have resulted in the successful courts-martial of senior officers. Nor would Reacher have been busted or Summer promoted over a case involving enlisted personnel committing minor criminal infractions.

Second, the criminal activity, if it had become public back then, was clearly serious enough to have been a significant problem for the Army. Which meant that heads higher up the chain of command would have rolled. Maybe even have caused long-range damage to America’s strategic interests abroad.

Third, because of these factors, the courts-martial were handled internally, confidentially, and swiftly. Prosecuting senior officers was never the Army’s first choice. Such cases were devastating to morale. They also crushed the Army’s reputation and, by spillover suspicion, the reputation of all high-level government agencies.

Which meant undisputable evidence of significant crimes must have existed against the officers beyond
all
doubt, not simply beyond a reasonable doubt.

Which could only mean that the officers confessed. After that, they were probably offered lighter sentences in exchange for silence. Otherwise, there would have been appeals and media attention. Neither of which had happened.

I refilled my wine glass and leaned back against the headboard.

How was Reacher involved in all of this? Again, after mulling things over, only three possibilities made any sense: Reacher was involved in committing the crimes, or he’d been the whistleblower, or he’d been a scapegoat. Maybe even all three, depending on the nature of the crimes.

Given the final disposition of Reacher’s reduction in rank and Summer’s promotion after the senior officers were sentenced, any combination of those three options were plausible.

Here was the kicker, though.

The Boss already knew about the 1990 crimes, the prosecutions, and Reacher’s role in them before we were tasked to complete the Reacher file. Any one of the three options should have made Reacher unfit for whatever job the Boss had in mind.

The Boss had the necessary clearances for access to the full version of the JAG report. Which meant he was familiar with all of the facts of the case. He was older than Reacher and he might even have been aware of the courts-martial as those events occurred, back in 1990.

And yet, Reacher had not been immediately disqualified. And here I was. Partnered with Gaspar. Building the Reacher file. Tasked to discover his physical, mental, emotional, and financial fitness for a job with a security clearance so high that neither Gaspar nor I had access to the job’s requirements. Looking for leads that could result in locating Reacher.

What kind of job could that be?

I’d finished the protein bar. A few more mouthfuls of the pathetic excuse for Cabernet and my body finally felt relaxed. My eyelids were heavy. The noise levels across the street at
The Lucky Bar
were still too loud, even though the heavy drapes were closed. Still, I might sleep a few hours and let my subconscious work on the problem.

A moment before I nodded off, I remembered the names of the JAG officers that were visible on the report.

One of them—the junior JAG—was new to me. Thomas O’Connor.

The senior JAG on the report had a name I had heard for the first time earlier today. Matthew Clifton.

Joe Reacher’s West Point classmate.

Tony Clifton’s brother.

CHAPTER 10

Saturday 1:45 AM

Which came first? The screams or the gunshots? Two of each jerked me awake from wine-induced oblivion. I was still dressed and had not removed my shoes or my gun. I dashed to the window, pushed the drapes aside and looked across the street toward the noise.

Absolute bedlam had erupted around
The Lucky Bar
. Men ran from inside and the knotted crowd outside was scattering like a rack of billiard balls.

Two more gunshots blasted out from the bar.

I drew my weapon and picked up my phone and dialed 911 on my way out of the room. When the operator asked, “What is your emergency?” I reported gunshots fired and two or more ambulances required. The operator said she would dispatch teams immediately.

Next, I called Major Clifton. His men were more than likely patrons in
The Lucky Bar
. He’d want to know trouble had started and local law enforcement would need the help. He didn’t pick up his cell and I left a message while I was still on the move.

I entered the stairwell next to the elevator and hopped down the stairs two at a time. At the bottom, the exterior emergency door would have dumped me outside too far from the bar. Instead, I powered through the wall-to-wall crowd in the lobby, which had grown by at least a hundred people in the hours since I’d elbowed my way through in the opposite direction.

Surely there was a limit to how many people could be stuffed into this room. Fire codes, at the very least, were certainly being violated. This group was now frighteningly chaotic, too. The din encouraged my pounding wine headache to ratchet up a few dozen decibels.

Scanning the jammed lobby as I plowed my way to the front entrance, I saw no guns drawn or injured victims inside this building. Which meant all of the shooting, screaming, and damage was happening across the road.

The second I stepped through the Grand Lodge exit into the frigid night, sleet peppered my skin relentlessly. I slid my feet along the icy sidewalk like a novice skater, unable to run or even hustle. Simply staying upright and balanced was challenge enough.

Patrons continued to flood from the exit at
The Lucky Bar
. It seemed like five hundred people had crowded into the place, and now all of them were climbing over each other to get out. Given the ice-sculpture garden the parking lot had become, most of the fleeing patrons were heading for the hotel, with a few members of the hotel crowd fighting the tide on their way to the club to help.

Predictably, the combination of alcohol consumption and icy pavement proved only slightly less treacherous for the panicked strip club refugees than the firefight had. All across the pitilessly rock-hard, ice-glazed sheet gleaming from the bar to the hotel across the highway, arms and legs pin-wheeled madly, bodies were upended, bones broke with sickeningly loud pops and snaps, all to the hellish accompaniment of wailing screams from figures writhing in agony on the ice.

I’d have stopped to help, but the continuing shooting inside was the top priority.

By the time I’d shuffle-weaved my way across the road through the carnage and approached the bar’s entrance, I’d heard at least six more shots from inside. The music got louder the closer I slid. Ten yards away from the entrance, the wall of booze and stale cigarette smoke was still billowing out like an invisible, disgusting force field.

Until the locals arrived, it appeared that I was the only cop on the scene, and I had nothing remotely close to the muscle and firepower the situation required.

A wild-eyed man stood with his back glued to the wall just outside the open door, clearly too petrified to move. As I slid across the gaping doorway to him, the wall of booze-and-cigarette stench nearly knocked me over. Pounding music made quiet talk impossible, so I moved as close to him as I could get and leaned in to be heard.

“What’s going on in there?” I shouted.

“Some crazy dude had a fight with one of the girls. He started shooting. The owner and the bouncer shot back.” He shook his head rapidly from side to side. “It’s chaos, man. People screaming, bleeding. Girls crying. I was in the back and I ran out, but then the ice—”

“The shooter. What’s the shooter’s name, do you know?”

He shook his head rapidly again. “Never saw him before in my life.”

“Who’s in charge here? The owner, the manager—you know his name?”

“Owner’s Alvin. Him and kid, Junior, the bouncer, they been running
The Lucky
for years.” He ran a hand hard over his head, and his feet started to slide out from beneath him on the ice. He slapped his palm onto the wall again as if it might glue him upright. He kept his feet. “They usually take care of things pretty good,” he said, “but this dude’s some kind of whack-job.”

“And the woman? Is she his wife or girlfriend?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Lotta strangers around here tonight on account of the road bein’ closed.” He tilted his chin toward the Interstate instead of peeling one of his hands away from the wall to point.

I looked directly into his eyes. After a moment, he refocused on me. “I’m FBI Special Agent Kim Otto. What’s your name?”

“Racine.”

“Racine.” I patted his arm. “I’ve called the police, but the storm will slow them down. You know this place. Can you help me out?”

“What, go back in there?” He shook his head violently from side to side, which moved his body away from the wall and caused his feet to slide again. When he’d twisted himself back into position, he said, “Are you crazy?”

Right. Crazy. Yes. For sure.

I took a deep breath. “Then can you at least stand here and keep everyone else outside? Don’t let anyone come in until the police arrive. Can I count on you to do that?”

He didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded. There was a fifty-fifty chance that he’d run as soon as my back was turned.

“Any military inside tonight?”

“Most nights some guys are here from Bird. Yeah, that’s likely.” Then he was shaking his head. “Maybe not, though. A night like this, they coulda been confined to base.”

“If they’re here, would they be armed?” Even as I heard the hope in my voice, the answer was obvious. If there were soldiers inside with weapons, this thing would already have been handled.

Racine shook his head. “Alvin don’t allow no guns inside. He says booze and guns are a bad combination.”

Alvin was a smart guy.

“Thanks.” I patted his arm again and nodded. “Remember. Nobody comes in except the police.”

I turned away from him and faced the doorway. The last gunshots had been fired a couple of minutes ago. Maybe the shooting was over. I flashed my head around the doorjamb for a quick look inside.