Jack Reacher Novella 04 - Not a Drill by Lee Child & Dick Hill

Author:Lee Child & Dick Hill [Child, Lee & Hill, Dick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, Thrillers & Suspense, Suspense
Amazon: B00OU1FL5E
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

They got refills of coffee, and Helen worried away at the problem in her mind, and eventually she said, “This is very bad indeed.”

Reacher said, “Not really. Henry and Suzanne don’t have much to fear from a piece of inert equipment. It’s not going to jump up and bite them in the ass.”

“But it is. That’s exactly what it’s going to do. Figuratively speaking. They’re in the woods illegally, twenty-four hours behind anyone else. That looks secretive. Like their job is to find the thing and smuggle it out. Suppose it’s a bomb or a missile? That happens, right? Bombs and missiles fall off airplanes. Accidently. Sometimes, right? I read it in a book. But more likely deliberately. Like it’s one big conspiracy. What do we do if Henry and Suzanne are taken to be the designated retrieval party? It wouldn’t take much imagination. They sneak in through the tape, they’re all alone in a deserted twenty-four-hour time window, their job is to grab the missile ahead of your government, and pass it on down the chain, until one day an airliner comes down at JFK and it’s 9/11 all over again.”

“Henry and Suzanne are hikers. Wilderness enthusiasts. It’s the summer vacation. They’re Canadians, for God’s sake.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nicest people in the world. Almost as good as being Swiss.”

“But whatever, they’ll check them out.”

“Names and numbers, in a couple of databases. Nearest thing to doing nothing at all.”

“Suzanne has a history.”

Reacher said, “What kind?”

“She’s a lovely person. You have to understand that. She has sympathy for everybody.”

“Is that a problem?”

Helen said, “Of course it is. Because everybody means everybody. Plain English. Which means if you focus the spotlight one particular way, you can see sympathies going where your country doesn’t want them to go. Out of context and more than balanced by other things elsewhere and not at all fair, but facts are facts.”

Reacher said nothing.

Helen said, “And she’s very passionate politically. And very active.”

“How active is very active?”

“It’s what she does. Like a job. Henry runs the bike shop on his own most of the time.”

“So she’s in more than a couple of databases. A couple hundred, at least.”

“Red-flagged in most of them, probably. I mean, she’s not Che Guevara or Chairman Mao, but computer memory is very cheap these days, and they have to fill it up with something. She’s in the top million, I’m sure. And I’m equally sure they have preprogrammed responses ready. The screens will light up like a Christmas tree and she’ll be hauled off to Egypt or Syria. She’ll be in the system. They might let her come home in a year or so, all weird and slightly off. If she lives through it.”

Reacher said, “It might not be a missile. It might be some boring black box full of coded data. Maybe it fell off a satellite, not an airplane. No possible use to anyone else. Which makes the idea of a retrieval party insane to them. They’re not going to be chasing shadows.

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