About The Reacher Code: Timestream 1

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1

Tubes.

They were the first things he noticed when he opened his eyes. There was an IV line attached to his forearm, and a urinary catheter strapped to his thigh, and some kind of fat blue conduit that seemed to have been shoved down his throat.

It felt like he�d swallowed a garden hose.

He reached up and patted the area around his mouth with his fingertips, felt a narrower and stiffer length of tubing, and some adhesive tape, and an elastic strap. He tried to ease the apparatus away from his face gently, and when that didn�t work out he grabbed it and gave it a good yank and tossed the whole shebang over the bedrail.

He gagged and coughed and a high-pitched alarm started wailing and a woman with a stethoscope draped around her neck hurried into the room. She wore blue scrubs and a white lab coat and white sneakers. Mid-twenties, short blonde hair, blue eyes. She stopped in her tracks at the foot of the bed and stood there with her mouth open for a few seconds, as if she couldn�t quite process what she was looking at.

�You�re awake,� she said.

�Who are you?� he asked.

She moved around to the side of the bed.

�My name�s Jessie,� she said, stepping over to the machine that the fat blue conduit was attached to and silencing the alarm. �I�m your nurse.�

�Can I have some water?�

His voice was hoarse. His tongue felt like a strip of sandpaper. He needed a drink, but Jessie seemed to be focused on other things at the moment. She pressed a button on the bedrail, raising the head of the bed from an angle that was approximately thirty degrees to one that was approximately forty-five.

�Quiet for a minute,� she said. �I need to listen to your lungs.�

She lifted the stethoscope and slid the ear tips into her ears and pressed the cold bell against his chest and told him to take a deep breath. She repeated the process at several different locations along his ribcage, and then she draped the stethoscope back around her neck.

�Everything sounds good,� she said.

�I need water.�

�I�ll have to call the doctor for an order.�

�For a drink of water?�

�You were intubated,� Jessie said. �Do you know what that means?�

�No.�

�A tube was inserted into your trachea. The machine I just turned off was doing your breathing for you. So naturally you were NPO. That means nothing by mouth.�

�Why am I here? What happened to me?�

�You were in an accident,� Jessie said, pulling a pen and a notepad out of her pocket. �I need to check your level of consciousness. To see how oriented you are.�

�Okay.�

�Can you tell me your name?�

�No.�

�Do you know where you are?�

�No.�

�Can you tell me what year it is?�

�I�ll have to think about it.�

Jessie nodded. She jotted something down on the pad.

�That�s fine,� she said. �I�m going to go grab your chart and call the doctor, and I�ll be back in a few minutes.�

�Can you at least tell me my name?�

�Sure. According to the driver�s license we found in your wallet, your first name is Rock, and your last name is Wahlman. We didn�t find a passport, but there must be one somewhere. It might have gotten lost out on the highway.�

Wahlman. It didn�t ring a bell. But then nothing was ringing a bell at the moment. If his license said that he was Wahlman, then Wahlman he would be.

�Why would I need a passport?� he asked.

�Your license was issued in the United States,� Jessie said. �In Kentucky. You would have needed a passport to board an airplane or an ocean liner. Probably an airplane, right? Nobody travels by ship anymore.�

�Where exactly am I?�

�Sorry,� Jessie said. �You�re in Germany. Ramstein Air Base.�

�So I�m in the military?�

�Based on your age, and your haircut, and the fact that you didn�t have a military ID in your wallet, I�m going to say no. Although I guess it�s possible.�

�If I�m not in the military, what am I doing here?�

�This was the closest facility with a trauma center,� Jessie said. �Once the doctor determines that you�re stable, you�ll probably be transferred to Frankfurt. That�s where most of our civilian patients end up going.�

�How far is Frankfurt from here?� Wahlman asked.

�A hundred and thirty clicks. About an hour and a half by ground ambulance.�

Clicks. He somehow knew that it meant kilometers.

�What else can you tell me about myself?� he said.

�What do you want to know?�

�Everything.�

�Let�s see,� Jessie said. �Just off the top of my head, I can tell you that you�re six feet four inches tall, and that you weigh two hundred and forty pounds, and that you�re forty-four years old. And that�s about it. Of course we�ll want to get a thorough history, once your memory starts coming back.�

�What if it doesn�t come back?�

�I think it will.�

�What kind of accident was I in?�

�You were on a motorcycle. Apparently a car ran a stop sign and your front tire rammed into the driver side door. You went airborne for about fifty feet and landed face-first on a soccer field.�

�No wonder my head hurts so bad,� Wahlman said.

�You were fortunate. If you�d hit the pavement, you probably wouldn�t have a head right now. And if you hadn�t been wearing a helmet, you probably wouldn�t have a face, regardless of where you landed.�

�Anyone else get hurt?�

�We�re not sure. As it turned out, the car was stolen. Whoever was in it fled the scene before the police arrived.�

�I want my things,� Wahlman said.

�Pardon me?�

�My wallet. My clothes. My motorcycle. I want to get out of here.�

�You�re in the ICU. With a brain injury. You were on life support five minutes ago. You can�t just��

�I feel fine now.�

�You were in a coma for three days. It�s going to take some time to recover. Just relax while I go call the doctor. I�m pretty sure he�s going to want to come and see you right away. If everything looks all right, he might send you down to one of the wards while you�re waiting to be transferred to Frankfurt.�

Jessie used her wristwatch to adjust the rate on the intravenous infusion, and then she exited the room.

Wahlman had no interest in being sent down to one of the wards, or in being transferred to Frankfort. He was starting to remember some things. Like what year it was.

2101.

He knew that for sure. But he couldn�t remember anything about his life in the United States, or how he�d gotten to Germany, or how long he�d been there, or why he�d gone there in the first place. He had no recollection of getting on an airplane, or of owning a motorcycle. It was all a big blank right now, but he figured it would start coming back to him eventually.

And he didn�t want to be stuck in a hospital in Frankfurt when it did.

He figured there must have been a reason he�d been near the base when the event that caused the amnesia occurred. Which meant that he needed to be near the base when he snapped out of it. Not an hour and a half away.

He was about to pull the IV line out of his arm when a man walked into the room.

Lab coat, shirt and tie, dark hair, mustache.

�You woke up,� the man said.

�I did,� Wahlman said.

�I�m Doctor Fredericks. How are you feeling?�

�Like a million bucks.�

Doctor Fredericks laughed.

�Probably not that good yet,� he said. �But I�m certainly glad to see that you�re awake and alert. These kinds of brain injuries can go either way sometimes.�

�I�m fine,� Wahlman said. �Just having some memory issues.�

�The nurse told me that you were. Can you tell me your name?�

�Rock Wahlman. But I only know that because Jessie told me. I don�t really remember anything about myself. I don�t remember living in the United States, and I don�t remember coming to Germany. But I do know what year it is. That came to me a while ago. So that�s a good sign, right?�

�Yes,� Dr. Fredericks said. �That is a good sign. Can you just go ahead and state that for me, so I can add it to my notes.�

�It�s twenty-one oh one,� Wahlman said. �October, I think. I�m not sure of the exact day.�

A concerned expression washed over the doctor�s face.

�Well, you got the month right,� he said. �But you�re way off on the year.�

�I am?�

�It�s the twenty-seventh of October,� Dr. Fredericks said. �Nineteen eighty-three.�

2

Wahlman felt dizzy for a few seconds. Lightheaded. As if he might be slipping back into a coma.

It passed.

Dr. Fredericks poked and prodded and shined his little flashlight in Wahlman�s eyes. He listened to his heart and his lungs and his bowel sounds, and he looked at his ears and his throat. He said that everything was fine but that he wanted to keep Wahlman in the ICU for at least one more night, in case of a relapse. Then he would sign off on Wahlman�s chart and send him down to a regular bed, where the staff would work on getting him transferred to Frankfurt as soon as possible. If everything went well, Wahlman could expect to be discharged home in a week to ten days.

Wahlman had no intention of remaining hospitalized for a week. Or ten days. Or even for the rest of the night. Not going to happen.

But he decided to play along for now.

�I have no idea where home is,� he said.

�You will know by then,� Dr. Fredericks said. �And if you don�t, you won�t be discharged. But I think you will know.�

�Can you ask someone to bring me some water?�

�Of course. I�ll be back to check on you in the morning. Be sure to call your nurse if you start experiencing any dizziness or changes in vision.�

�I will. Thank you.�

Dr. Fredericks exited the room. Jessie came a few minutes later with a plastic pitcher and a plastic drinking cup and a flexible straw.

�Just some small sips at first,� she said. �If you tolerate the water okay, I�ll bring you some broth in a little while.�

�Where�s my motorcycle?� Wahlman asked.

�Security Forces has it.�

�Security Forces?�

�That�s what the Air Force calls their military police. There should be an ownership chit in the vault downstairs, along with your clothes and your other personal belongings.�

�I want to see all that stuff,� Wahlman said.

�Don�t worry. It�s all there.�

�I�m thinking it might help me to remember some things.�

Jessie nodded.

�That might actually be a good idea,� she said. �I�ll call down and get someone to bring everything up to the room for you. How�s your headache?�

�Still pretty bad.�

�I�ll bring some medicine for you.�

�Thanks.�

Jessie brought some acetaminophen tablets and some broth, which tasted like salty dishwater. She told Wahlman to give her a call if he needed anything. Otherwise, she would be back to check on him before the end of the shift.

There was a big round clock on the wall. Wahlman watched the seconds tick by. There was nothing else to do. No television, no radio, nothing to read. He guessed that ICU patients didn�t generally require a lot of entertainment.

Jessie came in and checked on him at 10:30. He told her that his headache was better. At 10:37 a guy wearing camouflaged fatigues and a semi-automatic pistol walked into the room carrying a garment bag and a zippered pouch. The pouch was beige. There was a stamp on it that said 86^th Security Forces Squadron. The guy inventoried everything inside of it and everything inside the garment bag, checked it all off on a slightly blurry photocopied list he�d brought with him, handed the list to Wahlman and asked him to sign it.

�Just tell your nurse to give me a call when you�re finished looking at everything,� the guy said. �I�ll take it back down to the vault for you.�

�Okay. Thanks.�

Wahlman looked at the stuff in the garment bag first. There was a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt and a black leather jacket. Black leather boots and a pair of heavy cotton socks. The clothes appeared to be brand new. They didn�t look like they�d been in a motorcycle accident. Except for the socks. They looked like they might have been used in a baseball game, to brush the dirt off of home plate.

Wahlman wondered about the helmet Jessie had mentioned. He figured Security Forces had probably kept it with the bike. Wherever that was.

He unzipped the pouch and dumped the contents onto the bedside table. There was a wallet and a wristwatch and a keyring with one key on it, and some cash held together with a gold money clip. He strapped the wristwatch onto his left wrist. It was a diver�s watch. Water resistant up to 150 meters. Automatic. Which meant that it used the motion of the person wearing it to wind itself. Which meant that it had stopped. There was a tiny rectangular calendar display where the dot for the three would have been. It said Oct 25. Wahlman fiddled with the stem, moved the date forward two days and set the time to match the clock on the wall. There was some kind of button on the stainless steel housing next to the stem, but Wahlman didn�t know what it did so he left it alone.

He figured the key was for the motorcycle.

He thumbed through the cash. Deutsche Marks. Several hundreds, and a twenty, and a ten, and some ones. Which was meaningless to Wahlman. He had no idea how much the money was worth.

He opened the wallet. The ownership chit for the motorcycle was in the money slot, along with one for the helmet. The bike was a 1951 Triumph Trophy. No apparent damage. Full tank of gas. The chit for the helmet only said that it was full-face and black.

There was a foil envelope stuffed down into one of the credit card slots. It looked like one of those packets you get with a wet wipe in it when you go out for barbecue or fried chicken. It was white and the letters RTL had been stamped on it with red ink. Wahlman had no idea what the letters stood for. He massaged the packet between his thumb and forefinger, trying to assess the contents. It felt like pills. Two round tablets and a capsule. One of the tablets was bigger than the other.

He slid the packet and the receipts back into the wallet, pulled out the driver�s license and looked it over.

Wahlman, Rock.

DOB 14 October 1939.

Which meant that he�d just recently turned forty-four.

Happy birthday to me, he thought.

The license had been issued in 1982. Kentucky. Jefferson County. There was an address on the back that you were supposed to mail it to if you found it in a parking lot or next to a gas pump or whatever.

It was almost eleven o�clock. Jessie would be going home soon, and another nurse would be coming in for the nightshift. Wahlman figured that Security Forces would be changing shifts as well. Fresh patrol officers and gate sentries and vault attendants. Everyone busy for the next thirty minutes or so, either giving shift report or taking it.

Which made it a good time to sneak out quietly.

The urinary catheter wasn�t the kind that they jammed into your bladder. It was the kind that they slid on like a condom. Wahlman sat on the edge of the bed and pulled it off and let it drop to the floor. He closed the little thumb clamp on the IV line so that the fluid wouldn�t drip out and make a mess, and then he peeled off the transparent dressing and the surgical tape that had been used to secure the line to his forearm. He gently eased the plastic needle out of his vein, left the tubing and the needle dangling from the pole attached to the bed.

Dark red blood oozed from the puncture site on his arm. He grabbed one of the paper napkins Jessie had delivered with the broth and applied pressure until the bleeding stopped, and then he put the jeans and the t-shirt and the jacket and the filthy socks on and slid the cash and the wallet and the motorcycle key into some pockets. He tried to remove the plastic ID band from his right wrist, but it wouldn�t unsnap and it wouldn�t tear.

He was still dizzy, but it wasn�t bad. He practiced walking a straight line from one end of the room to the other, felt nauseated and sat back down for a minute and got up and tried again. Satisfied that he wouldn�t be pegged as a drunk if one of the security guys saw him walking along the side of the road, he opened the door and looked both ways and followed a sign with an arrow on it to the elevator.

3

18 October 2101.

The date was significant.

Ray McDaniels had been working for the FCYYC�the Federal Commission on Yesteryears and Years to Come�for exactly five years.

1825 days.

The first 1823 without a hiccup.

Now this.

And it just kept getting worse.

Happy anniversary to me, McDaniels thought.

He still remembered his first day on the job. Tim Parker, his supervisor at the time, had met him outside the dilapidated discount superstore that served as a cover for the FCYYC. Located near downtown Louisville and situated on acreage that was within walking distance of the river, the store was supposed to appear as though it had gone out of business. The surrounding neighborhood was supposed to appear as though it had been leveled, and the magnificent new houses pictured on the fading billboards were supposed to appear as though they were part of a huge development deal�one that didn�t pan out.

Of course it was all phony. Like the set of a Hollywood movie. The sheet of plywood bolted over one of the superstore doors actually opened into an anteroom, and from there you took an elevator to an area that would ultimately lead to the enormous underground complex commonly referred to as The Lab. It was like a small city down there, complete with roadways that you could travel around on in taxis that resembled souped-up golf carts, landing pads for magnetic turbine helicopters that could outrun conventional fighter jets, and a commissary where you could buy everything from a toothbrush to a personal chef�a robot, but still a very good cook. There were even apartments, small but comfortable units for assignments that required around-the-clock commitments for certain lengths of time. Kind of like being deployed on a submarine, except that your personal living space included more than a bunk and a locker. Most of the units had kitchenettes, and some even had balconies where you could sit and watch fake sunsets.

The FCYYC had been around for decades. Almost forty years. Along with examples of human technology that dated back to the Stone Age, the agency housed and maintained a remarkable number of twenty-first century marvels that eventually had been banned worldwide, innovations that included driverless cars and teleportation devices and electronic brain implants. Too much too soon, the world�s leaders had decided. Time to dial everything back a notch. Which was why the technology available to the general public in 2101 wasn�t much different than the technology available to the general public back in 2001. People knew that all that stuff had existed. They knew that flying robots, for example, had once been part of the culture. Some were old enough to remember them. Others could read about them in history books, and they could also read about the large number of problems they�d caused. Ordinary glitches that sent the robots to wrong addresses, or out into forests or cornfields, sophisticated breaches that sent them crashing into large crowds of people. It was no wonder that they�d been banned, and it was no wonder that hardly anyone seemed interested in bringing them back. Not at the moment, anyway. But the FCYYC was committed to keeping the technology alive for future generations, if and when the time came to start releasing the innovations widely again. It was part of the reason the FCYYC existed.

With a PhD in chemistry and master�s degrees in physics and mechanical engineering, and with ten years of supervisory experience in the research and development of electroneural pharmaceuticals�including extensive human trials on a somewhat controversial superconducting hypnotic�McDaniels had been hired by the FCYYC as the lead technician for their budding new top-secret time travel program. Technician was something of a misnomer, a title used as a misdirecting and time-wasting smokescreen for certain agencies in the private sector, unethical contractors that sometimes tried to hack into the government�s records and recruit their top personnel. McDaniels was actually a mathematical genius, and a master engineer, and a Level One FCYYC supervisor with the highest security clearance attainable, but he didn�t mind being called a technician. Not if it meant keeping the job he loved. After his first six months in the time travel program, he couldn�t imagine doing anything else. He was on board with the FCYYC, a hundred percent. They could call him a janitor if they wanted to.

Nobody working there seemed to know if Victor was The Director�s first name or his last name, and nobody seemed to care. Victor was what he wanted to be called, and he was the boss, and that was that.

McDaniels already knew what he was going to say about this latest bit of news. He knew before he made the call. But he had to make it anyway. He had to go through the motions.

He punched in the number to the Priority One phone line.

Victor answered on the first ring.

�Yes?� he said.

�Stahler just got back from another recon spin,� McDaniels said. �We have a firm location on Rock Wahlman�s whereabouts.�

Spin was the word Victor had come up with for traveling into a different time period, back during the early days of the program. McDaniels didn�t really care for the term, felt it was a little too casual to describe such a monumental scientific breakthrough, but he supposed it was appropriate enough. All of the human beings that the FCYYC had sent on missions so far�all three of them�had compared the actual traveling part to being sucked into a whirlwind.

�Where is Wahlman?� Victor asked.

�On the base. In the hospital. ICU. He�s been in a coma for��

�Does it look like he�s going to make it?�

�Hard to say. Stahler talked to one of the nurses on the phone, but she wouldn�t tell him much. Just that he was stable.�

McDaniels heard some papers being shuffled around.

�Let me make sure my intelligence notes are up to date,� Victor said. �Jack Reacher is in the same hospital, on Ward B, on the third floor.�

�Correct.�

�The surveillance cameras we installed are up and running.�

�Yes, sir. Around the clock.�

�The blood from Reacher that was eventually used to produce Rock Wahlman and Darrel Renfro and the younger clones is scheduled to be drawn at four o�clock tomorrow morning.�

�Correct,� McDaniels said. �Of course it could be a little earlier than that, or a little later.�

�The hit on Reacher is scheduled to take place at two o�clock tomorrow morning, and Wahlman had been scheduled to spin in there and stop it.�

�We�ll be sending Nilke instead,� McDaniels said.

�Do you think Nilke�s up to it?�

�He�s a good man.�

�But not as good as Wahlman.�

�He�s the best we have right now.�

Silence for a beat.

�We�re going to have to deal with Wahlman sooner or later,� Victor said. �It might as well be tonight.�

�I think we should wait,� McDaniels said. �See if he wakes up. Try to bring him back.�

�The time limit for that timestream is fifty-seven minutes and twenty-eight seconds.�

�I know that, sir. But I still think we could��

�He�s been gone for three days. It�s an unfortunate situation, but I really don�t think we can afford to let it go on any longer. There�s just too much at stake.�

�I could try going in there myself,� McDaniels said. �I could try tweaking the bike. I might be able to hack the time limit and bring him back. If he ever wakes up, that is.�

There was a long pause. Which wasn�t good. It meant that The Director had made up his mind.

McDaniels could feel his pulse in his eyeballs. Knowing what was coming next didn�t make it any easier to hear. He loved his job, and he knew that tough decisions had to be made sometimes, and he�d dutifully followed every written and verbal command The Director had given him for the past five years, but this was the first time he�d ever been required to relay an order of this magnitude.

An order to assassinate an operative.

�Tonight,� Victor said. �Do it tonight.�

And then he hung up.

4

When Wahlman stepped up to the elevator bank, he saw that he was on the sixth floor. Which was the top floor. He pressed the DOWN button and waited.

A drinking fountain and an ashtray occupied the space between the two stainless steel elevator doors. Someone had recently crushed a cigarette into the ashtray. It was still smoldering. Which was astonishing. Not that the butt was smoldering, but that the ashtray was there in the first place. Wahlman still couldn�t remember anything about himself, but it didn�t seem right that people were allowed to smoke indoors. Especially in a hospital.

Dr. Fredericks had said that it was 1983. Which didn�t seem right either. Nothing seemed right. Wahlman felt as though he�d been yanked out of one world and slung into another. Maybe that was it. Maybe he was from another planet. Mars or somewhere.

A bell dinged, and the door on the left receded into its pocket. Wahlman stepped into the carriage and pressed the button with a G on it. The door closed and the elevator started descending. Wahlman hoped it would be a nonstop trip, but it wasn�t. The elevator stopped on the third floor, and a woman wearing a white dress and a white nurse�s hat stepped aboard. Early thirties, dark brown hair, dark complexion. Her nametag said Diane, RN, Med-Surg Services.

The door closed and the elevator started descending again.

�Did you mean to get off on three, Mr. Reacher?� Diane asked.

�You must have me confused with someone else,� Wahlman said. �My name�s not Reacher.�

She seemed shocked to hear that.

�You wouldn�t believe how much you look like one of the patients on the third floor,� she said. �I thought you were his dad for sure.�

Reacher.

The name did sound familiar, although Wahlman had no idea why.

�Is he in the military?� he asked.

�Yes. He was injured in the attack the other day.�

The attack. She spoke about it as though it was common knowledge. Wahlman didn�t ask. He didn�t want to appear to be as clueless as he was. He doubted that any of it had anything to do with his situation anyway.

�Is there some kind of impound lot here on the base where they keep vehicles that were involved in accidents?� he asked.

�It�s up by the front gate,� Diane said. �Kind of a long walk from here. I could give you a ride if you like.�

�Thanks. That�s very kind of you.�

Amazingly kind, Wahlman thought. She reminded him of someone he knew. There was a picture in his head, but no name to go with it.

She dug her keys out of her purse. The elevator stopped and the door opened and Wahlman followed her outside.

A nurse wearing a uniform similar to Diane�s came trotting up the sidewalk, heading in the opposite direction, toward the building. She almost bumped into Wahlman.

�Hi Diane,� the nurse said, slowing down but not stopping. �Sorry. I�m running late.�

�I left you a written report,� Diane said. �I�ll be up for a while, so just give me a call if you have any questions.�

�Okay. Thanks.�

The nurse hurried on inside.

�That was Linda,� Diane said. �She�s always running late. Gets pretty annoying after a while.�

Diane drove a Ford LTD that was probably about ten years old. Olive green paint that had started to bubble around the trim on the fenders, black vinyl top that had started to fade at the center. The front wheel on the passenger side was missing its hubcap, and there was a hole in the door where the side mirror used to be. The car wasn�t in very good shape, but at least it had plenty of legroom. Diane lit a cigarette with one hand, slid the key into the ignition with the other. One of the fan belts squealed for a couple of seconds as she steered out of the parking lot.

Wahlman could barely breathe. It was stuffy in there and it smelled like fast food and tobacco. He thought about rolling the window down, but it was chilly outside and Diane had the heater going. And he didn�t want to give her the impression that he was complaining. Didn�t want to seem ungrateful. It was good they were just driving across the base, he thought, and not to France or somewhere. The smoke irritated his throat, which was still a little raw from the breathing tube.

Diane eased over to the curb and stopped next to a fenced lot with a building about the size of a convenience store in front of it. Wahlman thanked her again and told her to have a nice night.

�Are you sure your name�s not Reacher?� she said.

�I�m sure,� Wahlman said, although he wasn�t really sure of anything.

�So what is your name?�

�Rock Wahlman.�

�Wahlman. Sounds kind of like Walkman. I got one for Christmas last year.�

Again, Wahlman had no idea what she was talking about.

�Seems like everyone did,� he said, just to be saying something.

She didn�t laugh or make a funny face or anything, so he figured he must not have been too far off the mark.

�I�m Diane Givens,� she said. �Want me to wait for you? In case you�re not able to get your car back?�

�It�s a motorcycle,� Wahlman said. �I�ll get it back. But thanks.�

�Okay. Well, take care.�

�You too.�

Wahlman thought about asking her if she was married, but he didn�t. He climbed out, and she gave the horn a little tap as she drove away.

There was a wooden sign with a pair of floodlights shining up on it in the grassy area in front of the building. The sign said 86^th Security Forces Squadron Vehicle Towing and Impound. Wahlman followed the sidewalk to the entrance, pulled the door open and walked inside. A guy wearing the same kind of uniform the vault attendant had been wearing sat on a stool behind a long wooden counter. He had a haircut that probably only barely passed inspection and a mustache that probably didn�t. He looked like he might have spent some time in a gym at some point, but not recently. His belly had gotten a little too big for his shirt. He had a cigarette going in an ashtray and a snack cake on a napkin and a magazine spread open on his lap. The stitching above his right breast pocket said Breakstone. When he saw Wahlman approaching, he stood and closed the magazine and tossed it on the counter next to the telephone.

�Can I help you?� he said.

�I was told I could find my motorcycle here,� Wahlman said.

�You�re a civilian?�

�Yes.�

�Can I see your pass?�

�Pardon me?�

�Your pass to be on the base,� Breakstone said. �The paper they gave you at the front gate. We�ve been checking everyone since the attack. It�s a pain in the ass, but I guess it�s better than getting blown up.�

There it was again. The attack. Wahlman figured it must have been something significant, since everyone seemed to be talking about it. He figured he should find a newspaper soon and try to educate himself.

�I was a patient over at the hospital,� he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his wallet. �I don�t have a pass, but I have these.�

He handed Breakstone the ownership chits. Breakstone looked them over.

�They should have given you a pass when you were discharged from the hospital,� he said. �It�s probably in with the other papers they gave you. The prescriptions and whatnot.�

�I don�t have anything like that,� Wahlman said. �I have a driver�s license, and I have the receipts for my property. Seems like that should be enough.�

Breakstone looked down at the ID bracelet on Wahlman�s wrist.

�You were discharged, right?�

�Not exactly.�

�What�s that mean?�

�It means nobody told me I could leave,� Wahlman said. �But I left anyway.�

Breakstone took a drag on the cigarette.

�You had a right to do that, I guess,� he said. �You were a patient, not a prisoner. But you should have signed some papers first. Signing out AMA, they call it. Against medical advice. Then they would have given you a pass to be on the base for twenty-four hours. Then I could have given you your stuff.�

�I didn�t feel like waiting around,� Wahlman said. �And I didn�t feel like listening to any lectures.�

�I understand that, but��

�I�m not going to walk all the way back over to the hospital.�

Breakstone shrugged.

�I can call someone to give you a ride,� he said. �Otherwise, I�ll have to call someone to escort you off the base. Sorry, but that�s just the way it is.�

�Why can�t I just walk over to the front gate and get a pass right now?� Wahlman asked.

�Technically, the base closed to civilian visitors at twenty-two hundred. Ten o�clock. That�s the mandate, and we�re under strict orders to enforce it. Again, because of the attack. You can come back at seven-thirty in the morning and��

Wahlman slammed his hands on the counter.

�I want my motorcycle,� he said.

Breakstone seemed nervous. Like maybe he wasn�t accustomed to dealing with situations like this. Like maybe he hadn�t been in law enforcement for very long.

�Sir, I�m going to have to ask you to step back from the counter and put your hands behind your head,� he said, unconvincingly, the quiver in his voice somewhat negating the Security Forces emblem stitched to his pocket.

Wahlman didn�t step back from the counter, and he didn�t put his hands behind his head.

�Just give me the bike,� he said. �Then I�ll be on my way.�

�I don�t have time for this bullshit,� Breakstone said.

He reached for the phone. Wahlman grabbed his wrist before he made it to the handset.

�I don�t have time for this bullshit either,� Wahlman said. �All I want is what�s rightfully mine.�

Breakstone struggled to break the hold. When it became obvious that he wasn�t going to be able to, he pulled the semi-automatic pistol from the holster on his hip and pointed it at Wahlman�s face.

The gun was a Colt M1911 ACP. Wahlman didn�t know how he knew that, only that he did. He also knew that if one of the .45 caliber rounds exploded out of the barrel on its supersonic way toward the front of the building, it would take a good portion of his head with it.

But that wasn�t going to happen. A round wasn�t going to explode out of the barrel. Not right now. Because Breakstone hadn�t clicked the safety off. Which meant that the trigger was locked. Which meant that Wahlman�s next move wasn�t quite as insane as it would have been otherwise. He grabbed the barrel of the pistol and shoved it forward, viciously slamming the rear sight into the middle of Breakstone�s forehead. It was a brutal, say-goodnight-and-lock-the-door strike, the impact probably substantial enough to leave a permanent dimple in Breakstone�s skull.

Bright red blood trickled down the center of his face. He staggered backward and his eyeballs rolled back into his head and he collapsed onto the wooden floor with a heavy thump.

Wahlman walked around to the other side of the counter, picked the pistol up and slid it into his waistband.

Then he started looking around.

He found a logbook that listed all of the vehicles that had been impounded so far for the month of October. He thumbed through and found the page for the twenty-fifth, found an entry that matched the information on his chit.

Breakstone�s keys were on a retractable keychain on his belt. There were probably twenty of them, all shapes and sizes. Wahlman grabbed them and ferreted through some drawers and found a flashlight and walked outside.

A heavy chain and a padlock secured the gate to the impound lot. Wahlman sorted through the keys and slid a few of them off the ring, the ones that looked like they might match the lock. None of them did so he started trying some of the others and finally found the right one. He popped the lock and unwrapped the chain and walked around with the flashlight for a while and found the motorcycle and the helmet under a blue tarpaulin.

The front tire seemed a little low, but otherwise the bike looked okay. Wahlman slid the key into the ignition switch, which appeared to be some kind of aftermarket addition.

The engine started right up.

Wahlman put the helmet on and kicked the bike into gear and slung a respectable amount of dirt and gravel on his way back to the front of the lot. He left the flashlight and the pistol and the keys in a little pile at the edge of the fence, and then he motored on up to the front gate and second-geared it past the guard shack and took a right on the highway.

Nobody tried to stop him.

5

Stahler had been working in shifts, alternating with an operative named Nilke. Twelve hours on, twelve hours off. It was starting to get to him. The human body just wasn�t built for this shit, he thought, for this many spins in such a short amount of time. Not to mention the medications, the pills you had to swallow every time you moved from one time period to another. No telling what those things did to your liver.

The truth was, nobody knew the exact toll that any of it would take. It was all new territory. Cutting edge stuff. Like the early days of the space program, where guys with slide rules and pocket protectors strapped a rocket to your ass and shot you out past the outer reaches of the atmosphere and hoped you made it back in one piece. A lot like that. In fact, Nilke had been suggesting that he and Stahler and future candidates for the program start referring to themselves in a manner that would pay homage to those early space travelers. He�d been batting words like chrononauts and tempronauts around, planning to run a few ideas past McDaniels someday soon and see which one struck a chord.

Stahler didn�t really care what they called themselves. He just hoped that future missions didn�t turn out to be quite as grueling as this one had. This one had been a bitch. At least it was almost over. In fact, if everything went well with Nilke�s next series of spins, it would be over in less than twelve hours. Then Stahler could leave his FCYYC apartment and spend a few days out in town with his girlfriend. A few days in his own time period, which had started to seem more and more like a dream. Like one you wake up from and can barely remember.

Stahler was pulling his socks off, getting ready to stretch out for some much needed sleep when his phone trilled.

The caller ID said McDaniels.

It always said McDaniels.

Stahler clicked on.

�This is Stahler,� he said.

�I need you to come on back to the hangar ASAP,� McDaniels said.

�I just got in. I�m exhausted.�

�The hit on Reacher is scheduled for zero two hundred.�

�Right. It�s on Nilke�s watch. You set it up that way.�

Stahler knew why Nilke�s shift had been scheduled to coincide with the assassination attempt. It was because Nilke was a better combatant than Stahler. He was faster, and stronger, and better with weapons. And he had more experience squaring off against multiple opponents. Nobody had actually said it out loud, but nobody had needed to. It was just a fact. Nilke was a better fighter. And Stahler was okay with that. If he�d been the one doing the scheduling, he would have picked Nilke too.

Stahler was good at the sneaky stuff. Reconnaissance. And espionage. He knew how to get in and get out without being noticed. Stealthy. Like a cat. And he was good at recruiting informants. Ones who willingly accepted assignments in exchange for monetary compensation, and ones who needed a little extra persuasion.

Supposedly, Wahlman was good at everything. Stahler had never met him, so he didn�t really know. It was just what he�d heard. That Wahlman, who�d only been with the FCYYC for a short time but who had a well-documented history in military law enforcement�and as a wrongly-accused fugitive from justice�was the best fighter and the smartest spy McDaniels had ever seen. According to McDaniels, Wahlman had spent several months of his life running from the law and dodging bullets from hired assassins at the same time. He�d been forced into confrontations against multiple opponents on multiple occasions, and had walked away without a scratch almost every time. Just a total badass.

Not that it mattered anymore.

There�s not a lot you can do when you�re in a coma.

�I spoke with Victor,� McDaniels said. �Told him that you located Wahlman. He wants the matter taken care of. He wants it done tonight.�

Stahler had been hoping that something could be worked out, that Wahlman could somehow be brought home.

But apparently not.

Apparently The Director had made up his mind, and had issued the order already.

�Reacher and Wahlman are in the same hospital,� Stahler said. �Nilke�s going to be there. Shouldn�t be that much of a problem.�

�Nilke can�t protect Reacher and take care of the Wahlman situation at the same time,� McDaniels said. �Sorry, but I�m going to have to spin you back in there.�

�I need some rest. Can I at least have a couple of hours?�

�No. I need you to come now.�

There was no point in arguing. An order was an order. Especially when it came down from The Director. Stahler had voiced his opinions on some previous matters, and had been rewarded with reprimands and extra duties. It just wasn�t worth it.

�All right,� he said. �I�ll be there in ten.�

�I�ll be waiting,� McDaniels said.

Stahler pulled a fresh pair of socks out of his sock drawer, realizing that he needed to do some laundry soon. He and Nilke�and Wahlman before them�had been issued ultra-high-tech uniforms called AdaptoSuits. The appearance of the outfits could be changed in a heartbeat, adjusted with a controller that looked like an ordinary wristwatch. You could be wearing a sports coat and tie one second, jeans and a hooded sweatshirt the next. There were dozens of choices, depending on the needs of the mission.

The default setting was a Special Ops kind of deal, all black and heavy and bulletproof, the kind of thing you might want to wear if you were dropped into the middle of a warzone. Definitely handy to have if you needed it, but Stahler preferred a more casual ensemble for most spins.

For this one he selected a set of surgical scrubs.

He called for a driver and made it over to the hangar, climbed up onto the flat-gray circular elevation on the left, the one with his name on it, the one where his trips to other time periods began and ended.

He gave the bike a quick once-over.

The motorcycles�there were three of them now�had been engineered to detect a certain DNA sequence when you wrapped your hands around the handlebar grips. If the machine didn�t detect the correct sequence, it wouldn�t start. So Wahlman�s bike would start for Wahlman, and Nilke�s bike would start for Nilke, and Stahler�s bike would start for Stahler. And nobody else. It prevented some lowlife piece of shit from stealing your machine and taking a joyride�maybe to another century.

McDaniels had explained all of the DNA stuff in detail. He�d taken Stahler and Nilke into one of the classrooms and had geeked out on the subject for nearly two hours, going over everything and writing it all out on a whiteboard. Nucleic acid sequence, alphanumeric code, encrypted password, blah blah blah. Stahler hadn�t really been paying attention. All he cared about was that the machine took him where it was supposed to take him, and that it didn�t turn him into a quivering blob of goo in the process.

Like the suits, the appearance and functional capabilities of the motorcycles could be changed with the wristwatch controllers. Pretty amazing stuff. For his last spin, Stahler had chosen a 1976 Honda CB 500, and he figured he would stick with that for this next one.

A fourth motorcycle was in the works, but it was still a few days from being finished. The names of the next series of trainees hadn�t been announced yet. Rumor had it that there were about a hundred candidates competing for just a handful of slots, but Stahler didn�t know that for sure. Maybe there were only twenty candidates. Or maybe there were two hundred. Regardless of how many there were, Stahler figured that a good number of them would withdraw their applications if they really knew what they were getting into. Time travel sounded glamorous and exciting�and it was in a lot of ways�but Stahler doubted that he or anyone else involved could expect to live very long. Not if the past few days had been any indication.

Stahler climbed down from the pedestal and stepped into the control room. McDaniels was sitting at one of the workstations with a huge mug of coffee and a pile of electronic components and a soldering iron in front of him.

�What are you building now?� Stahler asked. �A portal to an alternate dimension?�

McDaniels laughed.

�We haven�t figured that one out yet,� he said. �But maybe we will someday. You ready to spin?�

�I need a badge to clip onto my shirt. Something that says I�m a doctor.�

McDaniels reached into a drawer.

�I�m way ahead of you,� he said, pulling out a plastic ID card with Stahler�s picture on it. �Gregory Stahler, MD, Neurosurgical Services.�

He handed the badge to Stahler.

�Looks good,� Stahler said. �Sure you don�t want me to try to bring Wahlman back here to The Lab?�

�It doesn�t matter what I want,� McDaniels said. �We have to do what The Director tells us to do. No choice.�

�Did he give you a reason for deciding to handle it this way?�

�He didn�t have to. I already know the reason. Like most of the timestreams we�ve experimented with so far, the time limit for The Reacher Code: Timestream One is fifty-seven minutes and twenty-eight seconds. We round it down to an even fifty-seven minutes, to give us some margin of error. The frequencies on the reverse transmissions start destabilizing after that, and it�s hit or miss as to whether we�re able to bring the traveler back in one piece.�

Sometimes Stahler wondered if McDaniels just enjoyed listening to himself talk. Stahler knew all that stuff. He�d been living it for the past few days. Eight or nine spins per shift.

�So what would be the harm in just leaving him there in a coma?� he asked.

�No harm, unless he wakes up,� McDaniels said. �Then there could be a lot of harm. Then the shit could hit the fan in a big way. Rock Wahlman isn�t supposed to exist in that time period. If he gets stuck there in nineteen eighty-three, stuck there for the rest of his life, there�s no telling what kind of effect his presence will have on the future. Think about it. He could father a child who grows up to start another world war. He could be involved in an automobile accident that kills someone who would have done something great�someone who would have discovered a cure for a disease or something. The possibilities are endless. And scary as shit. That�s one of the reasons we were assigned these missions in the first place. To keep Topple from meddling with the past and potentially altering the future.�

Topple was the name of the organization intent on assassinating Jack Reacher. Nobody seemed to know exactly why they wanted to kill him, just that they did. McDaniels� theory, based on some of the intelligence that had been passed down to him, was that it had something to do with the clones, the genetic duplicates that were eventually produced using blood drawn from Reacher at the Ramstein Air Base in 1983. Topple wanted Reacher dead before that blood was drawn, thereby assuring that the clones would never exist.

Wahlman and a man named Renfro were the first clones produced, both of them born in 2057. Soon after that, the Army abandoned the project. They locked away the files, gave Wahlman and Renfro fake histories and sent them to different orphanages in different states. End of story, until a few years ago when a general named Foss and a colonel named Dorland tried to get their own human cloning project going. Determined that their clones would be the first in history�and certain that their funding would dry up if that wasn�t the case�they decided to eliminate every shred of evidence that the previous experiment had ever taken place.

Which meant that Wahlman and Renfro had to go.

A group of hired assassins got Renfro, and they almost got Wahlman.

That particular threat had been taken care of, thanks to Wahlman�s superior skills and dogged persistence. But now there was Topple. Headed by a former FCYYC scientist named William Top, the rogue group of criminals had at least one working time machine and�according to McDaniels�were busy building more. So the race was on. FCYYC against Topple. And the stakes were enormous.

McDaniels didn�t think that Topple actually cared about what happened to Wahlman. In fact, he wasn�t sure that they even knew about him, that he was even on their radar. McDaniels figured they were interested in the younger Reacher clones, the ones born in 2083, the ones who had recently turned eighteen. Stahler didn�t know all the details, just what McDaniels had told him over some beers and tequila shots one night. Apparently these younger clones were being trained for Special Forces, individually, in different locations. Apparently there were thousands of them. So if Topple�s goal was to get rid of each and every one, getting rid of Reacher was probably the most efficient way to make it happen. Like killing a whole flock of birds with one stone.

Of course if Topple was successful, Wahlman would cease to exist along with the others. And while a deep desire to avoid that particular scenario had been part of his motivation for joining the FCYYC in the first place, his potential demise had probably never been an integral part of Topple�s big picture�whatever that ultimately happened to be. Whatever happened to Wahlman would probably be incidental. He would be collateral damage. That was the theory. But there was no way to predict the effect that erasing him and the other clones from existence would have on the history of the world.

Which meant that Topple had to be stopped.

Which meant that Reacher had to be protected, no matter what.

Of course the theoretically inadvertent threat that Wahlman had personally been facing from Topple was largely irrelevant now that The Director had made his decision. Wahlman would die in the line of duty, but not from anything that the enemy was planning to do. He would die by the hand of his own team. Regrettable, but apparently unavoidable, considering the circumstances.

Stahler clipped the ID to the pocket on his scrub shirt.

�I�ll just go into the room and turn the ventilator off and wait for his heart to stop,� he said. �Wait a few minutes, call a code blue. While everyone�s rushing around to get that going, I�ll slip out to the parking lot and ride away.�

�Sounds like a plan,� McDaniels said.

�Should be a piece of cake. In and out in fifteen minutes. Maybe not that long. And it�s not like Wahlman can do anything to stop it. Poor son of a bitch.�

Stahler exited the control room, climbed the pedestal and mounted the bike.

A few minutes later, he was on his way to 1983.

6

Wahlman stopped at a convenience store about two miles west of the base, parked the bike in the alley behind the store, next to an overflowing trashcan. He figured that Security Forces would be out in town looking for him sooner or later�probably sooner�and he didn�t want to make it too easy for them. Didn�t want them to be able to spot the motorcycle from the highway if they drove by.

He entered the store and found a stack of newspapers that were in English, bought one of the papers and a bottle of apple juice and traded one of his Deutsche Mark notes for extra coins when he got his change back. Walked outside, noticed some of the colorful posters taped to the inside of the plate glass window on his way to the phone booth. One of the posters was for some kind of carpet cleaning machine you could rent. Most of the others were beer and cigarette advertisements. Almost everything in German. He flipped his collar up, kept his back to the road, fed one of the coins into the slot on the top of the phone and punched the zero key to speak to an operator. She clicked on, said something that Wahlman didn�t understand. He asked her if she spoke English. She said that she did, and then she asked how she could help him.

�I need a phone number for a local woman named Diane Givens,� Wahlman said.

There was a brief pause. Static on the line.

�Sorry, but that�s an unlisted number,� the operator said. �Is there anything else I can help you with?�

�Diane and I are old friends. She won�t mind if you give me the number.�

�Sorry, sir, but I can�t do that.�

Wahlman felt like ripping the phone off its mount and heaving it out onto the sidewalk.

It would have been an irrational thing to do. And he knew that. But he couldn�t help it. He�d been feeling overly tense and irritable and aggressive since he�d regained consciousness, back at the hospital. As if someone had injected him with a big fat bolus of adrenaline. Or testosterone. Or whatever it was that made you feel this way. Like a million insects were marching through your nervous system, the kind that bit and stung and chewed away at you one cell at a time until there was nothing left.

Wahlman wondered if he�d always been like this. Maybe so. Maybe he�d always been an asshole who would tear a payphone off a wall when he didn�t get his way.

He�d clouted Breakstone in the head to get the motorcycle back. That had happened. He could have killed the guy. And it wasn�t even necessary. He could have done everything properly. He could have gone back to the hospital and signed out AMA and waited until morning to get his things back. But he hadn�t had the patience for that. He�d wanted the bike, and the helmet, and he�d wanted them immediately, and he�d been willing to take a life to get them.

Which was insane.

Out of control.

And now he was feeling the same way toward the telephone operator. Like he might twist her head off if he could get his hands on her.

Maybe he�d always been this way. But he didn�t think so. There was an image somewhere deep in the back of his mind. An image of a man. He couldn�t quite make it out, but he knew, somehow, that this man standing in the shadowy recesses was Rock Wahlman, and that Rock Wahlman was not a bad man. Not a man who would kill without good reason.

He needed to get to that man and bring him back to the front where he belonged.

In the meantime, he needed to get a grip.

Of course he and Diane Givens weren�t really old friends. They�d just met. But she had a place out in town. And a car. She was the only person Wahlman could think of who might be able to assist him in staying hidden for a while. Maybe she wouldn�t do it. But maybe she would. It was worth a try.

Wahlman needed time to think. Time to figure out who he was and why he was in Germany. He needed Diane�s help. And if the operator wouldn�t give him the number, he would have to figure out another way to get it.

Be nice, he told himself. Be polite. More flies with honey.

�Could you give me the number to the hospital on the base?� he asked.

�Ramstein Air Base?�

�Yes, ma�am.�

�One moment, please.�

There was a long pause again and the operator clicked back on and gave Wahlman the number to the hospital and told him to have a nice night. Wahlman thanked her and punched in the number and listened to it ring for thirty seconds or so. A woman who identified herself as the information operator finally picked up and told him that she couldn�t give him Diane�s number either. A matter of employee privacy, she said.

�I need to talk to her,� Wahlman said. �It�s an emergency.�

�I can call her from here and give her your number,� the woman said. �Then she can call you if she wants to.�

�All right,� Wahlman said. �Let�s do it that way.�

He gave her the number to the payphone, and she promised to pass it along to Diane.

Wahlman stood there and waited. Opened his apple juice and took a sip. A guy on a scooter pulled into the lot, parked and climbed off and stepped up to where Wahlman was standing. The guy was probably eighteen or nineteen years old. Skinny, with long black hair that had been purposefully messed up and plastered into place with gel or hairspray or something. He wore skintight pants printed to look like the skin of some sort of jungle cat and a black leather vest and some necklaces and bracelets. He said something in German. He wanted to use the phone.

Wahlmnan told him nein. It meant no. It was the only German word that Wahlman knew. The guy let loose with a string of phrases that probably weren�t very nice, accompanied by some gestures that definitely weren�t very nice. Wahlman could have driven the guy�s face through the plate glass window. But he didn�t. He just stood there and looked at him. Kept saying nein until the guy got back on his scooter and rode away.

Wahlman waited some more. He was about to give up when the phone started ringing. Loudly. Like a bell at a firehouse or something. He grabbed the receiver and yanked it off the hook, hoping to stop the cacophonous ring before it caught the attention of passersby out on the highway. Especially if one of those passersby happened to be a cop.

�Hello?� he said.

�Mr. Wahlman?�

�Yes.�

�This is Diane Givens. I just got a call from the hospital. They said it was an emergency. What�s going on?�

�I need your help,� Wahlman said. �I need a place to stay tonight.�

�You need a place to stay?�

�I know it�s a lot to ask, but��

�I don�t even know you,� Diane said.

�I have some money. I can pay you.�

�I don�t mean to be rude, but I think I need to go now. Please don�t try to��

�You said something about a patient named Reacher. You thought I was his dad.�

�Yeah. You look just like him. Only older. But what�s that got to do with anything?�

�I think it�s significant that he and I were in the same hospital,� Wahlman said. �I don�t know why, but I think it is. I think I�ve heard that name before. I need some time to figure it out.�

�Like I said, I don�t even know you. Anyway, my place is tiny. And it�s a mess right now. Why don�t you just check into a hotel?�

�I was in a coma,� Wahlman said. �I just woke up a while ago, and I left the hospital without telling anyone, and I�m having memory problems.�

�Maybe you should go back to the hospital.�

�I got into it with one of the officers at the impound lot. It got physical. Security Forces is probably out looking for me right now. I�m going to be in big trouble if they find me. They�re going to put me in jail, and I don�t think I could handle that at the moment.�

�You want me to hide you from the law?� Diane asked. �Do you know how much trouble I could get into for something like that?�

�It�s just for one night,� Wahlman said. �I can sleep on the couch. Or the floor. In fact, I don�t even need to sleep. I�ve been out for three days straight. I probably couldn�t fall asleep right now if I tried. I just need to get off the streets. You won�t even know I�m there.�

There was a long pause.

�One night,� Diane said.

�That�s all. I promise.�

�Where are you right now?�

Wahlman told her the name of the store.

�I�m not sure I�m pronouncing it right,� he said.

�I know where it is,� Diane said. �Do you need me to pick you up?�

�I have my bike. Just tell me how to get to your place.�

She gave him directions. Wahlman thanked her, clicked off with his finger and left the receiver dangling from its cord. Apparently 1983 German payphones had been built to be heard from blocks away. Wahlman didn�t want the phone to start ringing again, for any reason, and he especially didn�t want it to start ringing again if Diane suddenly changed her mind. He chugged the rest of the juice and walked around to the back of the store where his motorcycle was parked.

The guy who�d wanted to use the phone was back there.

Along with three other guys on scooters.

They all had long hair.

And knives.

7

Stahler had produced his driver�s license and his physician�s ID badge at the front gate, and again at the entrance to the hospital. The sentry posted at each location had given the credentials a perfunctory glance, and had waved Stahler on through. He�d been prepared to answer any questions they might have asked, and ready to deliver additional means of identification, including a social security card and a membership card from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, but none of that had been necessary. Amazing what had passed as security back in 1983, he thought. It was a joke. Especially considering the recent terrorist attack, one of the deadliest in history, carried out on an installation that was less than two thousand miles away. Stahler was good at recon and espionage, but he almost felt like his talents were going to waste with this mission. Anyone with a decent fake ID could have driven onto the base, no problem.

At any rate, he was inside the hospital now, and he couldn�t think of anything that might prevent him from performing the grim duty that had been assigned to him. It was pretty much a done deal. In a few minutes, Rock Wahlman would be dead, and Stahler would be spinning back to 2101 for some much needed rest and relaxation.

He took the elevator to the sixth floor, walked onto the intensive care unit as if he owned the place, projecting the poise and confidence of a very important man who was there to do very important things. He made a beeline toward room 614, hurrying past the nurses� station without a wave or a nod, no indication that he appreciated or even acknowledged their existence. Just like a real doctor, Stahler thought. A hotshot surgeon. Nobody said anything to him, or tried to stop him, which told him that his portrayal was probably spot-on.

He swung the door open and stepped into the room. Switched the light on and looked over at the bed.

Which was empty.

The sheets had been stripped, and there were some plastic trash bags on the floor, bulging with items that had been used to care for the patient, who was obviously not there anymore.

Stahler walked back up to the nurses� station. A woman wearing a knit dress and a strand of chunky yellow beads was sitting at a computer monitor that could have doubled as an ottoman, moving the ugly green cursor through some ugly green text with the arrow keys on the keyboard.

Stahler figured she was the unit secretary.

�I�m looking for the patient who was in six fourteen,� he said.

She looked up from her monitor.

�And you are?�

�Greg Stahler, Neurosurgical Services,� Stahler said, pointing toward his badge. �I�m covering for Doctor Krebs tonight.�

�The patient who was in that room left the hospital a while ago,� the secretary said. �During shift change. Just got up and walked out. Didn�t sign an AMA form or anything.�

�So he�s not in a coma anymore?� Stahler asked, realizing how stupid the question was as soon as the words left his mouth.

�No, sir. He woke up earlier in the shift. Extubated himself. His nurse called the attending for new orders.�

�Can I talk to his nurse?�

�I think she�s still in the breakroom,� the secretary said, pointing toward a wooden door marked EMPLOYEE LOUNGE. �Her shift was over at eleven, but she said she had some charting to catch up on. And an incident report to fill out, of course. Her name�s Jessie.�

�Thanks.�

�Yes, sir. Sorry about all the trouble.�

Stahler walked over to the door and pushed it open and stepped into the lounge. An attractive young woman wearing blue scrubs and a white lab coat was sitting alone at a round wooden table. There was a three-ring binder in front of her and some loose papers and a coffee mug. She didn�t look up from her work right away, didn�t seem to notice that Stahler had entered the space.

�Are you Jessie?� he said.

�Huh?�

Her eyes were red. Maybe from fatigue. Or from crying. She glanced at Stahler�s badge, set her pen on the table and raked her fingers through her hair.

�Sorry to bother you,� Stahler said. �I was here to see Mr. Wahlman. The unit secretary said he left AMA.�

�Not officially,� Jessie said. �That�s why I�m still here dealing with all this paperwork.�

�Do you have any idea where he might have gone?�

Stahler tried to keep his tone as casual as possible. Just a concerned physician, curious about the circumstances. Not a time-traveling assassin on a deadline, frantically trying to locate his mark.

�We know that he stopped at the impound lot,� Jessie said. �He assaulted the guy on night watch over there. Then he broke into the lot where they keep the vehicles and found his motorcycle and rode away. I�ve been on the phone with Security Forces about ten times already. They�re pretty sure he left the base.�

Not what Stahler wanted to hear.

�What was his mental status when he came out of the coma?� he asked.

�He was alert, but confused. Didn�t know his name, or where he was, or the date.�

�Combative?�

�Not toward me. But they said he knocked the guy out over at the impound lot.�

�Do you know the guy�s name?�

�Breakstone. He�s being treated down in the ER right now.�

Stahler looked at his watch, switched it to countdown mode. He still had about forty-five minutes to work with. After that, he would be at risk for being stuck in this timestream forever. Which, if the Wahlman situation was any indication, was pretty much a death sentence. He figured he could hurry down to the ER and talk to Breakstone, spin back to 2101 and file his report and start getting ready for another spin to 1983. And maybe another one after that. No telling how many trips it would take to track Wahlman down. The piece-of-cake assignment had turned into a piece of shit. It was going to be a long night.

�Give me a call if Mr. Wahlman happens to come back,� Stahler said, handing Jessie a business card with a pager number on it.

�I�ll probably be finished here and heading home in fifteen minutes or so,� Jessie said. �I�ll leave your card with the charge nurse.�

�That�s fine. Have a nice night.�

As Stahler turned and started to make his exit, the door swung open and another nurse stepped into the lounge. Petite, twenty-something, red hair and freckles. Her badge said Linda, RN, Med-Surg Services.

�Did one of the patients up here leave the hospital a while ago?� she asked.

�It was my patient,� Jessie said. �That�s why I�m still here. I was supposed to go home at eleven.�

�I overheard a couple of orderlies talking about it,� Linda said. �They said the cops are looking for him.�

�Right. Apparently he assaulted an officer over at the impound lot. And of course everyone�s blaming me for not keeping a better eye on him up here. It�s always the nurse�s fault, right? Like I really could have stopped him, even if I�d known he was leaving.�

�Is he a big guy? Like, really big?�

�Six-four, two forty,� Jessie said. �All muscle. Looks like he could break you in half if he wanted to.�

�I think I might have seen him,� Linda said. �I was late getting to work tonight, and he was leaving as I was coming in. I almost bumped into him on the sidewalk. He was walking beside one of the nurses I work with down on the third floor. I don�t know for sure that they were together, but it looked like they were.�

�He was with a nurse?�

�Diane Givens. Works three to eleven. Do you know her?�

�No,� Jessie said. �I don�t know her. But I think we better call Security Forces and let them know.�

�That�s what I was thinking,� Linda said.

Stahler looked at his watch again, exited the lounge without saying anything.

Diane Givens.

He needed to get to her before Security Forces got to her.

If Wahlman was still with her, maybe this wouldn�t be such a long night after all.

8

Wahlman assessed the situation, tried to keep his rage at bay.

�You gentlemen should get back on your scooters and go home,� he said. �While you�re still able.�

One of the guys said something in German, most of it unpronounceable gibberish to Wahlman�s ear. There was one word that he was able to make out, but he didn�t know what it meant. Fonzie. Something like that. The word made all of the other scooter-riding rock stars laugh for some reason.

The guy who�d wanted to use the phone smiled, and then he nonchalantly stepped up to Wahlman�s motorcycle and stabbed the front tire with his knife. Or tried to. He couldn�t get the blade to poke through the rubber. Which was odd. The knife had a sharp point and appeared to be of high quality. It was almost as if the tire was solid rather than inflatable, or as if it had been fortified with some sort of super-duper material. The unexpected rebound caused the guy�s hand to slip, and he ended up slicing into his forefinger.

�Son of a bitch,� he said.

�So you speak English,� Wahlman said. �That�s good. I hope you�re able to understand what I�m going to say now, because it�s very important. I was in a coma for three days. Just woke up a while ago, and I�ve been having some anger management issues ever since. I don�t want to hurt you guys. I really don�t. But you�re making it hard. I�m only going to tell you one more time. Get back on your scooters and get lost.�

The guy who�d wanted to use the phone said something to his friends in German. But it wasn�t the right thing. They didn�t get on their scooters and ride away.

Friend One started walking toward Wahlman.

Friend Two and Friend Three followed.

Wahlman was outnumbered. And the guys had weapons. Knives. Long shiny blades. The only reasonable thing to do was run away. But that�s not what Wahlman did. Something kicked in. Like an instinct. He somehow knew that he could handle these guys. Somehow knew that it wouldn�t be that much of a problem.

He reared back and threw the apple juice bottle at Friend One�s head, threw it like a major league pitcher throws a fastball. Overhand, with follow-through. It was a good pitch. Right down the pike. The bottle didn�t shatter when it made impact. It slammed into the center of Friend One�s forehead with a hollow plunk, bounced off and went spinning through the air and almost hit the guy who�d wanted to use the phone.

Friend One staggered backward. Then he dropped to one knee. Then he fell over sideways and banged his head on the pavement, probably aggravating whatever kind of brain injury he�d already sustained. Wahlman figured he would live. Figured he would have a really bad headache when he woke up.

Friend Two and Friend Three moved forward, holding their knives out in front of them, turning sideways and edging in like combatants in a fencing match�beginners who didn�t really know what they were doing.

Wahlman glanced over at the trashcan. One of the items that had spilled out was a broken pallet. The kind you use to move things from one place to another with a forklift. Splintered planks, rusty nails.

Wahlman had gotten a guy out with a good pitch.

Now he needed to score some runs with a good hit.

He picked up one of the boards and took a homerun swing at Friend Two�s face, driving a two-inch nail through his left cheek, opening a gash as wide as a pinky finger between his cheekbone and his chin. It was a monstrous, fleshy looking thing, with a steady flow of bright red blood bubbling out of it, like some sort of ghastly soup that had just come to a boil. Friend Two dropped his knife and slapped his hand against the wound, shouted something in German and scurried over to his scooter and sped away. Friend Three followed, apparently deciding against the medical treatment he was likely to require otherwise.

Which only left the guy who�d wanted to use the phone.

�I cut my finger,� the guy said. �It�s deep. I�m going to need stitches.�

�You�re going to need more than that if your don�t��

The guy reared back and threw his knife at Wahlman. Threw it with all his might. The blade could have thudded into Wahlman�s gut. Or his chest. Or his throat. But it didn�t. The guy had chosen to throw left-handed. Probably because his right hand was bleeding and painful at the moment. From the cut. He�d decided to give it a try with his non-dominant hand. Bad decision. His aim was off. The knife whistled past Wahlman�s left ear and skittered onto the asphalt about twenty feet behind him.

Wahlman tossed the slat from the pallet back toward the trashcan.

�Well?� he said, planting his feet and opening his palms invitingly.

�You�re bigger than I am,� the guy who�d wanted to use the phone said.

�But you have nicer hair,� Wahlman said. �What�s wrong? Chicken?�

The guy seemed puzzled. Probably not familiar with the idiom. Probably thinking about a live animal scratching around a barnyard. Or a dead one, fried and stuffed into a red and white cardboard bucket.

�What does a chicken have to do with it?� he said.

�It means you�re a cowardly piece of shit,� Wahlman said. �It means you�re going to climb onto your scooter over there and whimper all the way home with your tail between your legs. Which would actually be the smartest thing you could do right now. Maybe the smartest thing you�ve ever done in your life.�

�What about him?� the guy said, gesturing toward Friend One, who was still napping on the pavement.

�A good friend would make sure that he gets the attention he needs,� Wahlman said. �I�m pretty sure the phone around front is available now.�

The guy nodded. He climbed onto his scooter and rode away.

Wahlman looked around for the knife the guy had thrown at him, found it a few inches from a drainage grate. It had almost fallen in. It was a Boker, with stag grips. It was a very nice knife. Wahlman folded the blade into the handle and slid it into his pocket, and then he pushed his motorcycle out into the middle of the alley and mounted it and started the engine and headed for Diane�s place.

9

Stahler didn�t want to blow his cover. He didn�t want anyone to know that he was trying to locate Diane Givens in an effort to locate the missing ICU patient she�d been seen leaving the hospital with. Tracking down a patient who�d subsequently become a fugitive from justice just wasn�t something a neurosurgeon, or any doctor, would have done. Keeping that in mind, and drawing on some of the research he�d done for the mission, Stahler hurried out to the parking lot and started his motorcycle and raced to a certain payphone he�d used on previous occasions, the one outside a convenience store about two miles west of the base. He dropped a coin into the slot, punched in the number for the information desk at the hospital.

�Ramstein Air Base Medical Center. This is Sheryl speaking. May I help you?�

�This is Major Berringer,� Stahler said. �Executive officer of the Eighty-Sixth Security Forces Squadron. I need a phone number and a home address for a nurse named Diane Givens.�

�This is the second time tonight someone has called looking for her,� Sheryl said. �I hope she�s not in some kind of trouble.�

�I don�t need you to worry about what kind of trouble she might or might not be in. I just need you to give me the information I asked for.�

�Yes, sir.�

Sheryl gave him the information he�d asked for.

Stahler figured if he ever got tired of being a secret agent, he could move to Hollywood and make it as an actor. He�d gone from concerned surgeon to ill-tempered executive officer without missing a beat. It was the kind of thing he excelled at, the kind of thing that could make or break a mission like this.

Acting might actually be a lot of fun, he thought. Maybe he would check into doing it part time.

He looked at his watch.

29:34�

29:33�

29:32�

He didn�t bother calling Diane Givens. Didn�t see any point in it. He climbed on his motorcycle and consulted a map of the area and headed toward the address he�d gotten from Sheryl, which was only a few miles from the convenience store. If everything went well, Wahlman would be dead in fifteen minutes, and Stahler would be on his way back home.

He couldn�t wait.

10

William Top had exactly one objective for the night: kill Jack Reacher.

It was nothing personal. Reacher just happened to have been born with certain mental and physical qualities that had been attractive to certain men in power in 1983, and he just happened to have nice robust blood cells that had worked well with the human cloning process�with the experiments that had resulted in the production of two genetic duplicates in 2057 and another five thousand in 2083.

It was the clones that Top needed to get rid of, specifically the ones from 2083, the ones the Army had produced for their super-secret SuperSoldier program. With so many of them, and with them being scattered across the country the way they were, the only feasible way to eliminate them was to eliminate Reacher before the blood used to produce them was drawn.

It was nothing personal against the clones either. It was just that Top was in a position to make more money without them around. A lot more money. Enough to make it worth the potential risks that went along with tampering with the past. Top was aware of these risks, but the opportunity that had presented itself was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing, and he wasn�t about to let it slip through his fingers. Anyway, how much historical damage could you do by killing just one guy? It wasn�t like Reacher had ever accomplished anything of any significance. Not that Top knew of, anyway. Reacher had been an officer in the Army�a career with the 110^th Special Investigations Unit that had been distinguished but by no means perfect, a career that had been snipped short for reasons that weren�t exactly clear.

After the Army, Reacher had become a drifter and a trouble magnet. Maybe he had done some good deeds along the way, but if so they hadn�t been very well documented. The details that Top had been able to come up with were sketchy, to say the least. Which seemed like a good indicator of Reacher�s relative unimportance, historically speaking. Which had ultimately sealed the deal for Top. One way or another, Reacher was going to die before that blood was drawn�tonight, if everything went well. And if everything did not go well, Top had a backup plan, and a backup to the backup. Reacher was a goner, and Top was going to be rich. No doubt about it. End of story. Happily ever after.

Top had decided early on that he would carry out this first crucial mission himself. All of the trial runs had been performed, and all of the intelligence was in, and tonight was definitely the night. Top knew exactly where Reacher was going to be, and he knew exactly how vulnerable he was at the moment, and he knew exactly how easy it was going to be to get to him.

Everything was lining up just right.

Top was getting excited just thinking about it.

Top�s laboratory was in a cinderblock building the size of a two-car garage. Located near a small village about a hundred kilometers south of Bogota, Colombia, the space had once been used to process and package coca leaves. The leaves were treated and tied into bundles and wrapped with butcher paper, and then they were transported to deeper parts of the jungle, where they were used in the production of cocaine. Top had gotten a good deal on the building, and the diesel generators that went along with it, and he�d gotten a good deal on the 1976 Renault Le Car that now housed his first working time travel device.

The guys in the shop affectionately referred to the vehicle as Le Machine.

Top had bought the little car from a guy in Bogata. It had belonged to the guy�s great grandfather. The guy had needed some cash, and Top had needed the car, and after a few minutes of dickering, a price had been agreed on, and that was that. Parked in a garage and covered with a sheet of canvas for about a hundred years, the paint and the glass and the chrome were still in relatively good shape. Top had replaced the tires right away and had towed the vehicle to his place out in the jungle. The original gasoline engine had been replaced with a high-performance solar-magnetic hybrid, and most of the interior had been ripped out to make room for the electronics. There were toggle switches and mechanical dials and gauges and wiring bundles secured with duct tape. It wasn�t pretty, but it worked. It would get Top to where he needed to go, and that was all that mattered right now. There would be time�and money�for nicer machines later, ones that would rival those being built by Top�s former employer, the Federal Commission on Yesteryears and Years to Come.

Abandoning his position with the FCYYC wasn�t something Top had done on a whim. He�d thought about it for a long time. It was the kind of job that most scientists could only dream about. Secure, with flexible work hours and practically unlimited funding. A generous compensation package, full benefits, access to a lab the size of a small city. It was all Top had ever wanted out of life, until suddenly it wasn�t.

Some of the men and women Top had known in graduate school were making big bucks out in the private sector. They were good scientists. They published regularly and were respected among their peers, and a couple of them had even been on the short list for the Nobel Prize one year. They were making a lot of money and getting a lot of publicity, and Top wanted some of that too, and it was hard to come by at the agency, especially since Victor had taken over as Director.

So after giving it a lot of thought and finally coming to the conclusion that it was the only way he was ever going to get the kind of money and recognition he deserved, Top had walked away from the FCYYC one day and had never gone back.

And he�d taken some things with him.

Along with dozens of schematics and blueprints, and about ten thousand pages of research data�all of it classified and heavily encrypted�Top had taken an extensive list of sequencing codes and timestream frequencies. The codes and frequencies were essential. Without them, attempting to travel to a particular place and time would have been like attempting to find a particular grain of sand on the beach. It just wasn�t going to happen.

Top had loaded everything onto a flash drive and had hidden the drive between his butt cheeks, just in case security stopped him for a random pocket check on his way out of the building. It didn�t happen often, but it happened, even among senior personnel. It was more about absentmindedness than thievery, more about stuffing a paper memo into your pocket and forgetting to feed it into the shredder before leaving for the day. Scientists were notorious for that kind of thing. When you�re focused�to the point of absolute absorption�on a mathematical formula that covers an entire wall, it�s easy to forget about the little specialty tool you dropped into your shirt pocket that morning. Or the packet of pharmaceuticals. Or whatever. That kind of stuff was no big deal. It would get you a slap on the wrist at most. Getting caught with Generation Seven classified material was a different story. Only a handful of people had access to it, and there were safeguards in place to prevent it from being erroneously routed or copied. You could be executed right there on the premises if you were found guilty of espionage, so nobody actually ever tried to steal anything from the FCYYC.

Nobody except Top.

But then he didn�t really consider it stealing. He didn�t feel any sort of remorse for taking the things he�d taken. He�d done most of the work on the project, after all, and it was his Neocortex Frequency Adjustment Theory that had led to the breakthrough in the first place. If it wasn�t for Top, time travel never would have happened.

And everyone knew that.

Even Victor, who�d taken a lot of the credit for Top�s work.

Top opened the door and stepped into the lab. He had called in his lead technician to assist with tonight�s launch. Kyle Harrison had been around since the beginning, back when Top had first decided to leave the agency. Twenty-eight years old, smart as a whip. And he knew which side his bread was buttered on, which was as important as anything else.

Le Machine was parked out in the middle of the floor. Harrison was making some final pre-launch adjustments.

�Everything�s looking good,� he said. �Should be able to spin you in there in about an hour, right on schedule. Once you get there, you�re only going to have fifty-seven minutes to work with, so you�ll have to move quickly.�

�I know that,� Top said. �I helped develop most of these codes and frequencies, remember?�

�Yes, sir. Just a reminder. I wouldn�t want you to get stuck in��

�Don�t worry about me. Just focus on the work you�re doing.�

�Yes, sir.�

�If we can complete this first mission successfully, we can pretty much write our own ticket,� Top said. �But we have to get this one right. If we don�t get it right tonight, we�ll have to try a different timestream, which I would prefer to avoid. At any rate, we have to get rid of Reacher, no matter what. Even if it takes a hundred spins into a hundred different timestreams.�

Harrison nodded, leaned in and tightened something with a wrench.

A series of folding tables had been lined up against the wall opposite the door. Harrison walked over there and lifted a garment bag from the top of one of the tables and brought it to where Top was standing.

Top already knew what was in the bag.

His uniform.

Tonight, he was going to be a janitor.

He unzipped the bag. Dark brown pants, light brown shirt. Belt, socks, shoes. He took a closer look at the shirt, examining the buttons and the tag sewn on the inside of the collar. There was a patch above the pocket with the name Ed embroidered on it.

�Are you sure this is exactly like the uniforms the housekeeping staff wears?� Top asked.

�Positive,� Harrison said. �Right down to the color of the thread used to stitch the patch on the shirt. There�s an employee ID card in there too, in case you need it, and a key that fits all the housekeeping closets. You�ll probably want to get a mop bucket to push around, or some rags and a spray bottle or whatever. Reacher�s still on Ward B on the third floor, so you shouldn�t have any problems getting to him.�

�What about the FCYYC?�

�We took care of the operative named Wahlman three days ago, and we took care of the one named Nilke three hours ago. Wahlman�s in a coma, and Nilke is dead.�

�Stahler?�

�They have him out in town right now, for some reason. He�s miles from the hospital, shouldn�t be a threat. You should be able to get in and out, no problem. At this point, I can�t think of a single person who could stop you.�

11

Wahlman had started remembering some things on the way to Diane�s apartment. By the time he parked his bike on the cobblestone street in front of her building and walked up to her stoop and reached for the doorbell, most of it had come back to him.

He�d been recruited by a secret government agency called the Federal Commission on Yesteryears and Years to Come. The FCYYC. He�d been sent back in time on a series of reconnaissance missions in preparation for a bodyguard assignment that had been scheduled for tonight. He�d been slated to protect a man named Jack Reacher from an assassination attempt.

Reacher.

The man Diane had mentioned in the elevator.

You wouldn�t believe how much you look like one of the patients on the third floor.

Wahlman looked like Reacher because he was Reacher�s clone�an exact genetic duplicate, produced in 2057 from a blood specimen that was drawn in 1983.

From a specimen that was drawn tonight.

Which meant that if Reacher was killed before the blood was drawn, Wahlman�along with thousands of eighteen-year-old Special Forces candidates, Reacher clones that were produced in 2083�would cease to exist.

A group called Topple, headed by a former FCYYC senior scientist named William Top, was determined for that to happen. Nobody seemed to know exactly why. Something to do with monetary gain. That was the theory. Top wanted to alter the past in an effort to make the future more profitable for himself and his group.

In this particular timestream, the one Wahlman was in right now, the one where today�s date was 27 October 1983, the one that the Director of the FCYYC had labeled The Reacher Code: Timestream 1, Wahlman was roughly twenty years older than Reacher. Which was why Diane had thought that Wahlman might be Reacher�s dad. In Wahlman�s home timestream�the one where today�s date was 18 October 2101, a hundred and seventeen years and three hundred and fifty-four days from now, the one where Wahlman had grown up in an orphanage and had spent twenty years as a Master-At-Arms in the United States Navy, the one where Wahlman himself had been targeted for assassination three years ago�Wahlman had a wife named Kasey and a stepdaughter named Natalie, and they were the world to him. He couldn�t remember exactly what had happened to them, only that the agency was somehow keeping them safe, in another timestream, an earlier one where the fifty-seven minute rule didn�t apply.

During one of the recon missions, Wahlman had been involved in an accident that had left him in a coma. But as he pressed the button to ring Diane�s doorbell, he started thinking that maybe the accident hadn�t really been an accident. He started thinking that an enemy operative might have intentionally tried to take him out of the picture.

The door swung open. Diane was wearing pink sweat pants and a t-shirt with the logo of a popular soft drink printed on the front. No shoes. Her hair was a mess and her face was a little red on one side and marked with pillow creases.

�Come on in,� she said, yawning. �Is that your motorcycle?�

Wahlman ignored the question. He stepped into the apartment. The television was on. Some kind of western. The cowboys were speaking German. There was a plate on the coffee table with about half a sandwich on it and about half a glass of milk beside it. Apparently Diane had been eating her dinner and had dozed off on the couch. Wahlman had talked to her on the phone just a few minutes ago, so he knew she hadn�t been asleep very long.

�I�m in great danger,� he said, hooking his thumb around the shoulder strap of the M16 he�d taken from the compartment under his motorcycle seat, guiding the rifle into position to check the magazine. �Which means that you�re in great danger. We probably don�t have much time, so I need you to do exactly as I say.�

Diane�s eyes got big.

�What are you talking about?� she said. �Why do you have a machinegun?�

�I don�t have time to explain. Where�s your car parked?�

�In the carport. Around back.�

�Let�s go.�

�Where are we going?�

�To the base. I need to get back to the hospital right away.�

Wahlman would have gone straight back to Ramstein on his motorcycle as soon as his memory started coming back, but he knew that Security Forces was looking for him. He�d clobbered one of their officers and had broken into their impound lot. They probably had standing orders to do whatever it took to take him down. He figured he wouldn�t make it past the sentry posted at the front gate. His motorcycle was fast, but it couldn�t outrun a bullet.

�I thought you were in trouble at the base,� Diane said. �How are you going to��

�I�m going to ride in your trunk.�

�What? You want me to smuggle a guy with a machinegun into a United States Air Force base in the trunk of my car? Are you out of your mind?�

�There�s no other way,� Wahlman said. �Please. We need to hurry.�

Diane�s face had gone pale, even the side that had been a little red. She raked her fingers through her hair, started pacing back and forth, looked like she might be getting ready to blow a gasket.

�I�m sorry,� she said. �But you�re going to have to tell me what�s going on. Otherwise, I�m going to have to ask you to leave.�

�What�s going on is classified,� Wahlman said. �And you wouldn�t believe it anyway. If anything happens, just tell them that I forced you to drive me onto the base. That way you�ll be in the clear.�

�Is that what you�re doing?� Diane asked. �Forcing me?�

�That�s not the way I want it to be,� Wahlman said. �But if you insist.�

He aimed the barrel of the rifle at her chest.

�Looks like I don�t have much of a choice,� she said. �Mind if I put some shoes on real quick?�

�Go ahead.�

Wahlman followed her into the bedroom. He wanted to make sure she didn�t grab some kind of weapon while she was in there.

�I need to put some underwear on too,� she said. �I need some privacy.�

�Just get the shoes. Hurry up. We need to go.�

Diane slipped her feet into a pair of topsiders that had been placed neatly at the edge of the bed. She grabbed her keys and her purse and her employee badge from the top of the dresser, brushed past Wahlman on her way back to the living room.

�We can go out the back,� she said.

Wahlman followed her through the kitchen and out the back door. Down the steps and past a little courtyard to the carport. Diane�s Ford was parked between a Volkswagon Beetle and an old Mercedes station wagon that you could have hauled a football team in.

�Open the trunk,� Wahlman said.

Diane opened the trunk. There was a spare tire in there, along with the missing hubcap and side mirror and a cardboard box about the size of an ice chest.

�Some clothes I�m donating,� Diane said, gesturing toward the box. �I keep forgetting to��

�Get it all out of there.�

Diane set the mirror and the hubcap on top of the box, and then she lifted the box out of the trunk and carried it to the courtyard. While she was doing that, Wahlman pulled the spare tire out and propped it against the rear bumper. When Diane returned, he instructed her to roll it over and leave it with the other stuff. She was out of breath when she finished and her hands were dirty from handling the tire.

�It�s all yours,� she said, gesturing toward the empty trunk.

�I�ll ride up front with you for now,� Wahlman said. �You can pull off onto a side street when we get close to the base. I�ll get in the trunk, and you can let me out in the hospital parking lot. Then you can go home.�

�Unless I get arrested.�

�I�m forcing you to do this, remember? That�s all you need to say.�

�Whatever. Are we ready to go now?�

�I have one question first,� Wahlman said.

�Okay.�

�What does the word Fonzie mean?�

Diane laughed.

�You�re joking, right? Have you been living under a rock for the past decade?�

�Something like that.�

�Aayyy,� Diane said, drawing the nonsensical syllable out gutturally, closing her fists and making an exaggerated gesture with her thumbs. �You know, The Fonz. He�s a character on a television show.�

�A television show?�

�Come to think of it, you�re kind of wearing the same clothes he wears. The black leather jacket and the jeans and the white t-shirt. And your motorcycle even looks kind of like his.�

�That explains it,� Wahlman said.

�Explains what?�

�Never mind. Let�s get out of here.�

12

Stahler second-geared it past Diane�s apartment building, rode around the block and parked his motorcycle on the next street over. He selected the semi-automatic pistol from the weapons compartment under the seat, screwed on the sound suppressor and headed off on foot, cutting through some yards and climbing some fences and ending up in the alley behind Diane�s building. Someone had left a pile of junk in the little courtyard that led to the back doors. An old tire and a cardboard box and some other things. Otherwise, the property appeared to be well kept.

Stahler looked at his watch.

14:27�

14:26�

14:25�

He had enough time to do what he needed to do, but he didn�t have a lot to spare. Still thinking it was a shame that this was even necessary, he took a deep breath and walked to the front of the building, lurking through the shadows, staying low, trying to remain hidden from any night owls who might happen to look out any windows.

Wahlman�s motorcycle was parked on the street.

And there was a light on in Diane�s apartment.

Stahler could have walked up to the stoop and kicked the door in, but that would have made a lot of noise. People would wake up and wonder what all the racket was about. The nearest neighbors might even hear the muffled gunshots. One or more of them might call the police.

Or something worse than that might happen.

Someone might decide to open a drawer on a nightstand and grab a revolver or reach under a bed and grab a shotgun�or a baseball bat or a hockey stick or something�and step outside and try to play hero. Stahler didn�t have time for any of that, and he didn�t want to kill anyone that he didn�t have to.

12:43�

12:42�

12:41�

He decided that he would simply step up to the door and ring the doorbell.

But first he needed a different set of clothes.

He adjusted the settings on his watch. The surgical scrubs he was wearing suddenly changed to formalwear�a black tuxedo with a white shirt and a cummerbund and a bowtie.

I was the best man at my friend�s wedding a while ago and my car broke down and I was wondering if I could use your phone?

Who could say no to a guy in a tux, even at one o�clock in the morning?

Once inside the apartment, Stahler would drill a single round into Wahlman�s forehead, and two more into his chest, and then he would turn and give Diane the same treatment. He didn�t want to kill either of them, but he had no choice. He�d been ordered to assassinate Wahlman, and he couldn�t afford to leave any loose ends. No telling what kinds of secrets had been passed along. It was possible that Wahlman hadn�t told Diane anything, but it was also possible that he�d told her everything. There was no way to know for sure. Which meant that all of the bases needed to be covered. Rock Wahlman and Diane Givens were a package deal now, and there was nothing Stahler could do to change that.

He stepped up to the door and rang the bell.

Waited.

Knocked.

Waited some more.

He tried the knob. The door hadn�t been locked. He eased it open and stepped inside.

Closed it gently.

There was a couch on one side of the living room and a coffee table and a small television on a stand. The television had been left on. Cowboys. Speaking German. Which was somehow amusing and disconcerting at the same time. Several magazines had been stacked neatly on the coffee table, alongside a dinner plate with a partially-eaten sandwich on it and some milk in a glass and an ashtray that needed to be emptied. Stahler stepped through the carpeted space, took a quick glance into the kitchen, checked the bedroom and the bathroom and the closets.

Nobody was home.

Stahler slid the pistol into the back of his waistband and walked into the kitchen. The sink was full of dirty dishes, and a carton of milk had been left out on the counter. Stahler touched the carton. It was still cold. Which meant that it hadn�t been out of the refrigerator for any length of time. Probably just a few minutes.

9:31�

9:30�

9:29�

Stahler had no idea where Wahlman and Diane might have gone, and he didn�t have time to try to track them down. He was already cutting it close. Too close. He�d meant to leave himself at least a ten minute window to make it back to the bike and get it up to speed before the countdown reached zero. Now he was going to have to rush. And he didn�t like to rush. Time travel was kind of like defusing a bomb. Not a lot of margin for error. One little mistake could very well be your last.

Stahler exited through the back door and started jogging toward the alley. He had no intention of stopping, for any reason, had no time for it, but then something caught his eye as he ran past the pile of junk in the courtyard.

Someone had written DG KITCHEN UTENSILS on the side of the cardboard box with a black magic marker.

DG.

Diane Givens.

Stahler walked over to the box. There was an old hubcap and a side view mirror on top of it. Stahler set those items aside and opened the box and saw that it was full of clothes. No kitchen utensils. The writing on the side must have been from when Diane moved into the apartment. She�d kept the box and was now repurposing it, probably taking some things that didn�t fit anymore or that she just didn�t want anymore to one of the charitable organizations in the area. The box and the tire and the hubcap and the mirror had probably been in the trunk of her car. Stahler wondered why she�d taken the items out and had left them in the courtyard. Probably to make room for something else. But what?

Stahler picked up the hubcap, examined the insignia on the plastic insert at the center. Some kind of crown against a red background. It meant nothing to him. But the hubcap was fairly large. And the tire was fairly large. Which meant that the car was fairly large. Which meant that the trunk was fairly large.

Which meant that a fairly large man might be able to fit into it.

Maybe even a very large man.

But why would Wahlman want to hide in the trunk of Diane�s car?

There was only one reason Stahler could think of.

To get back onto the base.

8:23�

8:22�

8:21�

Stahler decided to take the hubcap with him. When he got back to 2101, he could determine exactly what kind of car it came off of. Then he would know which car to look for when he returned to 1983.

And which trunk to shoot full of holes.

13

�Take a right at the next intersection,� Wahlman said.

Diane took a right. Wahlman looked for a good place to get out and climb into the trunk, saw some kind of school off to the right, instructed Diane to pull in there and then instructed her to follow a sign with a picture of a delivery truck on it.

�This secluded enough for you?� she asked, steering up to a loading dock at the back of the building.

Wahlman figured the bay doors behind the dock probably opened to a storage area for the cafeteria. Cases and cases of corn and green beans and macaroni and cheese. Institutional-size cans. And pudding. Chocolate. In little plastic cups. The same stuff they served at schools decades from now when he was a kid.

�This is fine,� he said. �Open the trunk.�

Diane switched off the ignition, climbed out and slid the key into the slot at the edge of the trunk. She had to jiggle it a few times before it finally popped open.

She stepped back and gestured toward the space with her hand.

�Waiting for an invitation?� she asked.

�What�s wrong with the lock?�

�It�s an old car. Sometimes it opens right away, sometimes it doesn�t.�

Wahlman had been having second thoughts about allowing Diane to close him up in the trunk, but he couldn�t think of any other way to get onto the base.

�What are you going to do once I climb in there?� he asked.

�Just what you told me to do,� Diane said. �Get through the front gate, drive to the hospital and let you out in the parking lot.�

�You�re not going to leave me here at the loading dock and run for help, right?�

Diane shrugged.

�I guess I could do that,� she said. �I guess you�re just going to have to trust me, aren�t you?�

Wahlman took his watch off.

�Hold out your arm,� he said.

�Why?�

�Just do it.�

Diane held out her left arm. Wahlman slid the watch onto her wrist. He punched in a special code that caused the band to tighten and lock into place, and then he adjusted the settings and set a countdown timer for one hour.

�Why am I wearing your watch?� Diane asked. �And what was that stuff you did with the buttons.�

�In exactly one hour, the watch will self-destruct,� Wahlman said. �It will destroy itself, along with anything that happens to be near it. Kind of like a hand grenade.�

Diane looked down at the watch.

�Right,� she said. �So we�re in a James Bond movie now? Give me a break.�

�Believe it or don�t believe it. The result will be the same. A while ago I told you that you could go home after dropping me off at the hospital. Now I�m telling you that you can�t. You�re going to have to wait for me there in the parking lot. When I�m finished doing what I need to do, I�ll come back out and disarm the watch and take it off your wrist. Then you can go home.�

�What�s stopping me from��

�There�s no tool on the planet that�s capable of cutting through the band on that watch,� Wahlman said, anticipating her next question. �There will be, but there�s not right now. It�s made from an alloy that�s harder than diamonds. I guess you could try to get one of the doctors over there to amputate your arm for you, but I�m pretty sure a request like that would result in a referral to the psychiatric department.�

Diane swallowed hard.

�What if you don�t make it out to the parking lot in time?� she asked.

�I guess you�re just going to have to trust me, aren�t you?� Wahlman said.

He climbed into the trunk. Diane shut the lid. Thirty seconds later the engine sputtered on and the car started moving.

14

As he was running toward his motorcycle, Stahler reached into his pocket and pulled out the foil envelope marked RTL.

The letters stood for return to lab.

Inside the envelope there were two tablets and a capsule, the medication you needed to take before every spin. To keep yourself from going insane. That was the theory. Because of what had happened to a few of the palmetto bugs during the trials. Before the pharmaceuticals had become a regular part of the routine, some of the insects had become extremely aggressive after returning from a spin. Murderously and cannibalistically aggressive. That was why McDaniels had come up with a similar drug cocktail for humans. As a precaution. Which didn�t make a lot of sense to Stahler. People weren�t cockroaches. It was possible that the drugs weren�t even necessary. Stahler didn�t like taking them. They made him feel groggy. And depressed. He thought about tossing the packet aside and spinning on home with nothing in his bloodstream but blood, but he didn�t. He tore the packet open and swallowed the pills, because that was what he�d been ordered to do.

He looked at his watch.

All zeros.

Flashing and telling him he was out of time.

There was a twenty-eight-second cushion, but Stahler didn�t know how much of that had elapsed already. It was possible that he was going to be stuck here in 1983.

Like Wahlman.

Which would mean that he was finished.

Like Wahlman.

Hoping that was not going to be the case, he slid the hubcap into one of the saddlebags and mounted the bike and started the engine, sped away from the curb and ran two stop signs and finally got the machine up to speed, hit the button to activate the preprogrammed spin and felt the tingle and the pain as the bright blue branches of energy engulfed him and pulled him into the smothering black vortex.

It�s like you�re a gnat in a bathtub full of ink and someone comes along and pulls the plug and you�re whirling and swirling and getting sucked down the drain and there�s no point in fighting it and you finally accept the fact that you�re going to die now but then you don�t. You�re suddenly on the other side and everything�s fine and you can�t believe that you�ve actually done this thing, that you�ve actually traveled into a different time period.

Nilke�s words.

He�d nailed it.

Nilke and Stahler had gone through the training together, but Nilke had been the first to go on an actual spin. He�d escorted Wahlman�s wife and stepdaughter to a timestream in 1959, one that had proven to be stable for at least six months. McDaniels had somehow worked it out so that Kasey and Natalie could live in the same house they�d been living in before the temporal relocation, and Wahlman had been allowed to go for a short visit before his first recon spin to 1983. Stahler wondered what would happen to Kasey and Natalie now that Wahlman had been targeted for elimination. He wondered if he would be required to assassinate them as well.

As those disturbing thoughts swam through his consciousness, the oily black veil suddenly lifted and the bike was suddenly back on its pedestal in the hangar.

There were a total of four pedestals now. One for Stahler, one for Nilke, one for Wahlman, and one that wasn�t in use yet. Nilke�s motorcycle was on its pedestal, which meant that he was between spins right now. Probably resting up to travel back and protect Jack Reacher. Travel back and kick some ass.

Stahler climbed off his bike and pulled the hubcap out of the saddlebag and walked into the control room, found McDaniels sitting at one of the monitor stations typing something into the keyboard.

�I didn�t get him yet,� Stahler said, his head still fuzzy from the meds he�d taken and from the spin itself. �But I�m pretty sure I know where he is. One more spin should do it.�

McDaniels looked up from his work.

�You�re pretty sure you know where he is? Why isn�t he in his room in the ICU?�

�He woke up from the coma, left without telling anyone. But I�m pretty sure he�s back at the hospital now.�

�Why would he go back there?�

�I don�t know. Maybe he realized that tonight�s the night for the hit on Reacher. Maybe he went back there to protect him.�

McDaniels nodded contemplatively.

�To follow up on the original assignment,� he said.

�Right,� Stahler said. �Of course he would have no way of knowing that you�re sending Nilke in there to��

�Nilke�s dead.�

�What?�

�Hit and run. Just like the accident that put Wahlman in a coma. Only it wasn�t an accident. And Nilke�s death wasn�t an accident. That kind of shit just doesn�t happen twice. Someone intentionally pulled out in front of them.�

�Topple?�

�Of course. How they came up with the intelligence is anyone�s guess, but there�s no doubt in my mind that it was them.�

�How do you know Nilke�s dead?� Stahler asked.

�You need to read your email,� McDaniels said. �As of yesterday, we added a program that will automatically return a machine to its pedestal in the event that anything happens to the operator. Once the machine is back here, we can download a complete record of exactly what happened from the onboard computer.�

�I thought he was resting up for the mission,� Stahler said, glancing toward Nilke�s bike through the control room window. He could see now that the gas tank was skinned up. He hadn�t noticed it before.

�We created the program because of the incident with Wahlman,� McDaniels said. �Should have thought of it sooner. Victor wasn�t very happy when he found out that Wahlman�s hundred million dollar motorcycle was going to be rusting away in a nineteen eighty-three impound lot.�

An intense sadness washed over Stahler. Not from the meds. From the heart. He�d genuinely liked Nilke, and had developed a great deal of respect for him. It was hard to believe that he was really gone.

�I was just thinking about him a few minutes ago,� Stahler said. �He was a good man. I probably wouldn�t have made it through the training without him.�

�You�re a good man too,� McDaniels said. �And you�re all we�ve got right now. You�re going to have to spin back in there and protect Reacher. Then you�re going to have to finish up with Wahlman.�

�But��

�We can�t assume that Wahlman is going to follow up on the assignment. And even if he does, it doesn�t change anything. He still has to go. Understand?�

�I understand.�

McDaniels looked down at the hubcap Stahler was holding.

�What�s that for?� he asked.

�I need to find out what kind of car it came off of,� Stahler said. �Then I�ll know what kind of car Wahlman is traveling in.�

McDaniels reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, took a picture of the wheel covering, tapped and scrolled and tapped some more.

�It�s from a Ford LTD,� he said.

He handed the phone to Stahler. The car in the photograph looked brand new, and the color probably wasn�t the same as the one Reacher was traveling in, but it gave Stahler an idea of what to look for.

�Probably not too many of those on the base,� he said. �In fact, it�s probably the only one. Shouldn�t be hard to find once I get back to the hospital parking lot.�

�Just make sure Reacher is taken care of first,� McDaniels said. �Then you can worry about Wahlman. And watch out for a nineteen seventy-six Renault Le Car. That�s what got Nilke.�

15

William Top steered Le Machine into the hospital parking lot, climbed out and walked to the entrance at the rear of the building�the door that an employee on the housekeeping staff would use this time of night, the only one open except the one at the ER.

The sentry at the door asked to see Top�s ID Badge. Top handed it to him. The guy looked it over carefully and then handed it back.

�Have a nice night, Ed,� the guy said.

�I�m going to try,� Top said.

He walked through the quiet, dimly-lit corridor, took the elevator to the third floor. He�d studied the layout, so he knew exactly where the closest housekeeping closet was. He walked there and slid his key into the door and stepped inside. There was a deep sink and some shelves stocked with linens and cleaning supplies and a stainless steel cart and a mop bucket. The cart was about four-and-a-half feet tall with multiple tiers that you could load your supplies onto. Top figured it would help shield him from view as he made his way through the hallways that led to Ward B�which was currently being used as a trauma stepdown unit�providing a little buffer zone in case he happened to pass another employee. He didn�t want to stop and talk to anyone. Not if he could avoid it. He wanted to wipe some dust off a windowsill or something and casually make his way to bed fourteen and casually inject the lethal dose of morphine Harrison had prepared for him into Jack Reacher�s IV line. The effect would be nearly instantaneous. Reacher would slip into a deep sleep, and then he would stop breathing. The nurse taking care of him would be blamed for the overdose, and would probably lose her license, but Top didn�t care about that. His ship was about to come in. Tough shit if some others had to be sunk in the process.

He grabbed several spray bottles and some rags and some sheets and blankets, loaded everything onto the cart and headed out to the hallway.

He looked at his watch.

02:00.

He was right on time. He figured Reacher would be asleep at this hour, along with most of the other trauma victims on the ward. The nurses had made their rounds at midnight, and would make them again at 04:00, but right now they were catching up on their charting and letting the patients rest.

Top made his way to the end of the hallway and turned the corner�and almost bumped into a guy wearing the same kind of uniform he was wearing.

The patch on the guy�s shirt said Gary. Short and pudgy with shaggy blonde hair and a mustache. Top gave him a nod and kept going.

Ward B was straight ahead. Top didn�t want to stop, but one of the wheels on the cart had started squeaking when he rounded the corner. Now the cart was a liability instead of an asset. Top pushed it against the wall and crouched down to check the wheel.

�Sounds like you could use some oil.�

It was Gary. He�d walked up behind Top.

�I�m just going to leave it here for now,� Top said, rising to a standing position. �I don�t want to wake the patients up.�

�I don�t think we�ve met,� Gary said, extending his hand. �Gary Hawthorne.�

�Ed McKay.�

They shook hands.

�New here?� Gary asked.

�Yeah. Just started last week. Anyway, better get back to it. Have a good night.�

Top grabbed a spray bottle and some rags and started toward the ward.

�Hang on a minute,� Gary said. �I�ll go grab some oil and fix your cart for you.�

�I think I can manage without it for now,� Top said. �But thanks anyway.�

�It�ll just take a minute. I�ll be right back.�

�Wait,� top said. �I�ll come with you. That way you won�t have to walk all the way back here.�

Gary shrugged.

�Suit yourself,� he said.

Top walked alongside him, back around the corner and down the hall toward the supply closet.

16

Diane opened the trunk.

Wahlman climbed out.

�I don�t think they�re going to let you in with a machinegun,� Diane said.

�That�s why I brought this too,� Wahlman said, reaching around to the back of his waistband and pulling out the semi-automatic pistol that also had been stowed under his motorcycle seat. He jacked a round into the chamber and clicked off the safety.

�They�re probably not going to let you in anyway,� Diane said. �I�m sure they�ve alerted every guard on the base to look out for a tall muscular guy in a motorcycle jacket.�

Wahlman thought about using the AdaptoSuit function on his watch to change the clothes he was wearing. But the watch wasn�t on his wrist. It was on Diane�s wrist. He didn�t want to take the time to move it back and forth, and he didn�t want Diane to see what the watch was capable of doing. Witnessing that kind of 2101 technology would blow her 1983 mind. It would lead to all kinds of questions, and it would qualify as a severe violation of the FCYYC policy regarding interference with a native of the past. It was a capital offense, and not just for Wahlman. Allowing Diane to see the AdaptoSuit in action could actually put her life in jeopardy as well. She could be executed for knowing too much.

And changing clothes probably wouldn�t be enough anyway. Security Forces had probably distributed detailed descriptions of Wahlman to all their personnel. It was possible that they�d even produced a sketch of his face already. The sentry at the door would probably stop him no matter what he was wearing.

�Is there another way inside?� he asked. �A door that doesn�t have a guard posted on it twenty-four hours a day?�

�There�s a doctor�s entrance around front,� Diane said. �But you have to have a key.�

�What�s the easiest way to get there?�

�Just follow the parking lot to the other side of the building. You�ll see an area by the ER where the ambulances pull in and out. It�s about a hundred feet to the left of that.�

�I want you to get in the car,� Wahlman said. �Lock the doors. I�ll be back in time to disarm the watch.�

Diane looked doubtful.

�What if you�re not back in time?� she said. �I�m supposed to just sit here and watch the seconds tick off until��

�Yeah. That�s pretty much the deal.�

Diane glanced down at the watch. It looked huge on her tiny wrist.

�How are you even going to know when to come back?� she asked.

�I�m good at keeping track of time in my head,� Wahlman said. �I�ll know.�

�Why can�t you just trust me?�

�It�s nothing personal. The mission I�m hoping to complete is crucial. If I�m not successful, the future of the planet could be in jeopardy.�

�The future of the planet? What are you talking about?�

�I can�t tell you what I�m talking about,� Wahlman said. �Anyway, I better go now. Get in the car and stay there.�

Wahlman zipped up his jacket and slid the pistol back into his waistband and headed toward the westernmost corner of the building, the side furthest from the rear entrance. He rounded the corner, stayed close to the side of the building, edged around the next corner and saw the turnaround for the ambulances in front of the emergency room. There didn�t seem to be any activity over there. No ambulances coming or going. It must have been a slow night. He looked to the left and saw the door Diane had told him about, the one the doctors used. Five concrete steps led up to a concrete stoop. Simple railing, steel pipe painted black. The door was made of steel and glass. There was a handle on it rather than a push bar, which told Wahlman that it opened outward. He ran to the staircase and crouched down beside it, pulled the pistol from his waistband and sat in the dirt and scooted in behind a big bush with red berries on it. A few minutes later a man wearing khaki pants and a shirt and tie and a long white lab coat climbed the stairs and slid a key into the deadbolt. Wahlman stood and aimed the pistol at his chest.

�Don�t make a sound,� Wahlman said. �You�re going to walk inside, and I�m going to follow you.�

The doctor nodded. A wet spot bloomed on the crotch of his pants. The sudden jolt of fear had caused him to lose control of his bladder. Wahlman climbed up onto the stoop and followed him inside.

The doctor raised his hands.

�My wallet�s in my back pocket,� he said.

�I don�t want your money,� Wahlman said.

�Then what do you want?�

Wahlman had studied the layout of the hospital for the initial recon mission, but his memory was still foggy and he didn�t quite know his way around anymore. And in the event that he happened to encounter any staff members on his way to Reacher�s bed, he figured it might be advantageous to have a physician as an escort.

�I want you to help me get up to the third floor,� he said.

�Pardon me?�

�Ward B, on the third floor. You know how to get there?�

�Of course. The elevator�s right around the corner.�

�No elevators,� Wahlman said. �We need to take the stairs.�

�We?�

�You�re coming with me. If you shout out or make any sort of attempt to escape, I will shoot you. Understand?�

�Why are you here? What do you want?�

�Don�t worry about what I want. As long as you cooperate, this will all be over soon.�

�My pants are wet,� the doctor said, obviously embarrassed by the fact that he�d pissed himself.

�Button your lab coat,� Wahlman said. �Nobody will see it.�

The doctor buttoned his lab coat.

�Please don�t kill me,� he said.

�The stairs,� Wahlman said. �Take me there. Now.�

17

On the way to the supply closet, Gary went on and on about what an asshole someone named Ron had been lately. Top didn�t know who Ron was, but he figured it would be best to agree that he�d been a total jerk. So that was what he did. He agreed. Adamantly. When they got to the closet, Gary slid his key into the slot and twisted the knob and pushed his way inside. Top followed him and gently pulled the door shut. While Gary was reaching for the oil on one of the upper shelves, Top grabbed a handful of his shaggy blonde hair and shoved his face into the edge of the sink, again and again until his skull cracked open. Top let go of him and he slumped to the floor, his face coated with blood and bone and gooey bits of brain tissue.

�You should have left me alone,� Top said.

He reached up and grabbed the oil can and exited the closet.

Gary had left his key in the door. Top broke it off inside the lock, so that nobody could get into the closet for a while. The lock would have to be drilled out, and that would take time, and Top would be finished with his mission by then. He would be drinking a cold one with Kyle Harrison back in 2101 and thinking about the piles of money he would be rolling around in soon.

He hurried on back to the cart, put a couple of drops of oil on the squeaky wheel, and proceeded down the hallway.

There were a total of fourteen beds on Ward B, each with a curtain along the side that you could pull for privacy, each with a number painted on the wall above the headboard, and each with a metal clipboard hanging from the footboard.

Reacher�s bed was all the way on the end.

Number fourteen.

Top wheeled the cart past the nurses� station, glanced over and saw three women sitting there, each with her nose in a patient�s chart. Crisp white uniforms, traditional hats. An extremely old-fashioned look, even back in 1983. One of them had an open bag of potato chips in front of her, and another one was smoking a cigarette.

Smoking.

In a hospital.

Insane.

The one with the potato chips needed to lose a few pounds, and the one with the cigarette needed to gain a few. Maybe they should swap for a while, Top thought. Or maybe take some advice from the one who wasn�t eating or smoking. Her weight seemed to be just right.

None of them said anything to Top as he passed by. They didn�t even look up from what they were doing.

Top started thinking that this was going to be even easier that he�d thought it would be. He quietly pushed the cart toward the end of the gloomy space, an occasional grunt or moan reminding him of exactly where he was and of how anxious he was to get out of there.

He stopped in front of Reacher�s bed. Only Reacher wasn�t there. The bed was empty.

Top picked up the metal clipboard. Reacher�s name was on the flowsheet. His vital signs had been recorded at midnight. Everything looked fine. Blood pressure, pulse, respirations, temperature, everything. Voicing no complaints, the nurse had written. So where was he?

Top looked at his watch. In thirty-one minutes and twenty-seven seconds, he would need to spin back to 2101, or risk being stuck in 1983 forever. He certainly didn�t want to be stuck, but he didn�t want to leave prematurely either. A lot of time and money and painstaking research had gone into arriving at this precise location at this precise time. He had chosen the Ramstein Air Base Medical Center, Ward B Bed 14, October 28, 1983 between 01:45 and 02:30, because it was a historical fact that Jack Reacher would be there at that time, and because there was a good chance that he would be sleeping. All of that was supposed to have been a given. Yet Reacher wasn�t here. Of course Top could always try a different timestream if this didn�t work out, but he only had fifty-seven minutes per spin to work with, and nailing Reacher�s exact location at any other point in his life�and ensuring that the location could be accessed within the limited timeframe�would be difficult, to say the least. Maybe even impossible. And it wasn�t like you could just go back home and start over. Once you visited a particular time in a particular timestream, you could never go back to that exact same time again. You could go a few hours earlier, or a few hours later, but there was something about the temporal frequency spectrum that rendered repeat visits to a specific chunk of history highly unstable. The TFS was nothing to mess around with. A couple of Top�s guys had been reduced to gelatinous mounds of glop during the initial human trials. So there was definitely no coming back to this place at this time. Which meant that Top needed to finish the mission here and now. It would take months to put another one together, time that could be utilized developing the next phase of the program.

The phase that would make him a very wealthy man.

He left the cart by Reacher�s bed and walked to the nurses� station. The young lady who�d been eating potato chips looked up from the chart she was working on.

�Can I help you?� she said.

Top was about to respond when something caught his eye. He glanced to his left and saw two men approaching from the other end of the corridor. Rounding the corner. Passing the area where Top had parked his cart earlier. Moving steadily toward the ward. One of the men was wearing a long white lab coat buttoned in front, the other jeans and a leather jacket.

The one in the leather jacket said something to the one in the lab coat.

The one in the lab coat turned around and started running in the opposite direction.

Disappeared around the corner.

The one in the leather jacket kept walking toward the nurses� station. Not fast. Not slow. Just a steady pace. When he was about a hundred feet away, Top recognized him. It was Wahlman. Top had seen pictures of him. He was supposed to be in a coma. That was what Harrison had said. But that obviously wasn�t the case.

Wahlman reached into the back of his waistband and produced a pistol.

Aimed it at Top as he continued walking toward the nurses� station.

�On the floor,� Wahlman said. �Hands behind your head. Now!�

Top didn�t get on the floor, and he didn�t put his hands behind his head. He leaned forward and grabbed the nurse who�d been smoking a cigarette by the hair and dragged her over to his side of the counter, and then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the syringe that had been loaded with morphine. He uncapped the needle with his teeth and held it an inch or so away from the nurse�s throat.

�There�s enough morphine in here to kill a horse,� he said. �Drop the gun or I�ll shoot every bit of it into her neck.�

18

Wahlman stopped walking. He recognized the man who�d grabbed the nurse. It was William Top, the leader of the group called Topple. Wahlman had seen pictures of him. Top had obviously decided to carry out the assassination himself. Morphine. So Reacher�s death would look like an accidental overdose. Since Top still had the syringe, it was pretty safe bet that he hadn�t gotten to Reacher yet.

Wahlman was about fifty feet from where Top was standing. Close enough to take some shots with the pistol. Close enough to drill a couple of rounds into his core. Put him out of business. Forever. But Wahlman didn�t take the shots. Because of the nurse Top was holding. And the two other nurses sitting there at the station. And the patients in the beds on the other side of them.

�I�m assuming you�re in a hurry,� Wahlman said. �You need to get back home soon, or you�ll end up being stuck here, like me. Let the nurse go, and I�ll let you go.�

�I told you to drop the gun,� Top said. �I�m not going to tell you again.�

Wahlman didn�t drop the gun.

�Where�s Reacher?� he said. �I need to know that he�s okay.�

�Drop it,� Top shouted.

The nurse started crying.

�Mr. Reacher is fine,� she said. �He had an x-ray ordered. They came and picked him up a little while ago.�

Top pressed the tip of the needle against the nurse�s skin. A drop of blood trickled down the side of her neck.

�Where�s the x-ray department?� Top asked.

�It�s all the way on the other side of the building,� the nurse said. �Next to the ER.�

Wahlman took a step forward, kept the gun aimed at Top�s chest.

�You might as well face it,� Wahlman said. �You�re not going to have time to try to find Reacher. And even if you do find him, he�s not going to be asleep, and he�s not going to be alone. Your plan to sneak up on him and give him an overdose of morphine just isn�t going to work out. So let the nurse go.�

Top growled something incomprehensible, and then�for reasons that weren�t immediately clear to Wahlman�he jabbed the needle into the side of the nurse�s neck and pushed the plunger. The nurse�s eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped to the floor. Top turned and bolted toward the patient beds and made it to the far end of the ward and pushed his way through a door marked EMERGENCY ONLY.

A buzzer sounded and then stopped as the door swung shut.

Wahlman couldn�t tell for sure if the nurse on the floor was breathing or not. It didn�t look like she was. The two other nurses raced around the counter to check on her. One of them reached over and grabbed the phone and punched in some numbers and said something to someone. A few seconds later an overhead speaker crackled to life and a female voice announced that there was a code blue on the third floor trauma unit. Now it was obvious why Top had injected the nurse with the morphine. Everyone would be focused on trying to revive her while he made his escape.

The perfect diversion, Wahlman thought. He slid the pistol back into his waistband. He needed to get out of there. Fast. He�d pulled some shifts in hospitals as a Master-At-Arms in the Navy, so he knew what to expect. A lot of people would be showing up soon. Doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists. And at least one representative from Security Forces. To make sure curious patients or other onlookers or non-essential personnel didn�t get in the way. Wahlman needed to be gone before any of that happened. And he needed to get back to Diane before the watch blew her to smithereens. He turned to head back toward the stairway that he and the doctor who�d pissed his pants had used, but before he took his first step that way, another doctor rounded the corner.

Probably the physician assigned to run the code, Wahlman thought.

He started walking, hoping that the doctor wouldn�t pay any attention to him as they passed each other in the hallway.

But the doctor did pay attention to him. In fact, the doctor stepped over into Wahlman�s path and planted his feet firmly on the tile floor and pointed the fat barrel of a semi-automatic pistol directly at Wahlman�s face.

�You need to come with me,� the doctor said.

Wahlman glanced down at the badge clipped to his shirt. It said Gregory Stahler, MD, Neurosurgical Services.

19

Wahlman had a feeling that Gregory Stahler wasn�t really a doctor. For one thing, doctors don�t usually carry firearms. Even in the military. And it didn�t seem likely that a licensed physician would ignore the code blue that had just been called. Even to apprehend a fugitive. It just wasn�t part of the job description.

And something else wasn�t right.

�You�re from the future, aren�t you?� Wahlman said.

�What makes you��

�The pistol. It�s just like mine. That particular model isn�t going to be produced for another fifty years.�

�It doesn�t matter when it was produced,� Stahler said. �What matters is that it�s going to blow your head off if you don�t turn around and start walking.�

�You�re either with Topple, or with the FCYYC. Which is it?�

�Walk.�

�I�m going to guess that you�re with the FCYYC,� Wahlman said. �Because of the government-issue weapon you�re holding. It�s possible that a Topple operative would have one of those, but not likely. Which means that we�re on the same team. Which means that we should be working together. Which means that you should put the gun away.�

�I have my orders,� Stahler said.

�Let me guess,� Wahlman said. �You were my replacement. You were supposed to make sure that nothing bad happened to a patient named Jack Reacher. You�ve probably been on some recon spins over the past few days, and you�ve probably installed some cameras, and you probably knew that Reacher was transported to the x-ray department a while ago. It�s possible that you even arranged for that to happen. In the meantime, you were probably using the cameras to keep an eye on the trauma unit, just in case, and you probably saw the confrontation between William Top and me, and you probably saw Top make his escape. All of that would make perfect sense, if that�s how it happened. What doesn�t make sense is that you�re standing there aiming a gun at my face and demanding for me to come with you. I know you�re not going to take me home. I�ve been here too long. The frequencies are all scrambled. So what�s going on? Where is it that you want me to go?�

�I didn�t want it to be like this,� Stahler said. �I tried to talk them out of it.�

�Victor ordered you to kill me?�

�Yes. So that�s what I�m going to have to do.�

Wahlman heard footsteps in the distance. Multiple sets. Moving quickly. The code team. They were on the way. They would round the corner in a matter of seconds.

Stahler must have heard the footsteps too. He instinctively glanced toward the sound. It was just for a second, but it was long enough. Wahlman grabbed the barrel of the pistol and twisted it with a quick jerk, kneed Stahler in the gut and shoved him against the wall. Stahler still had the gun, but his right forefinger was bent at a very unnatural angle now and the bone was poking through and it was bleeding all over the place and he wasn�t able to use it to pull the trigger. Wahlman crushed the bridge of his nose with an elbow, which increased the amount of blood leaving his body exponentially and probably resulted in a level of pain that made the mangled finger and every other discomfort he�d ever experienced seem minor by comparison. He slid down the wall and collapsed onto his side and grunted something about a Renault Le Car, and then he passed out. Wahlman picked up the gun and tucked it into his waistband, next to the one that was already there.

Stahler was wearing a chain around his neck with a key on it. Probably the key to his motorcycle, Wahlman thought. He reached down and snapped the chain and slid the key into his pocket. It wasn�t likely that Stahler would wake up in the next few minutes, but it was possible. No point in giving him a chance to follow the LTD off the base.

Wahlman figured it probably wouldn�t be a good idea to try to walk past the code team at this point, so he turned around and ran back toward the ward. The two nurses who weren�t dead were busy performing CPR on the one who was. Wahlman trotted past them and made his way to the emergency exit that William Top had used, stopping briefly to look at the clipboard on bed fourteen.

He flipped the cover back and glanced down at the vital signs.

Jack Reacher�s vital signs.

His blood pressure. And his pulse. Temperature. Respirations. All right there in black and white, verifying that this was 1983 and that Reacher was a living breathing human being.

In a couple of hours, the blood that was used to produce Rock Wahlman and Darrel Renfro seventy-four years from now would be drawn, the same specimen that was used again twenty-four years later to produce thousands of other clones.

The ones who�d recently turned eighteen.

The ones being trained for Special Forces.

Wahlman took a few seconds to process the significance of all that, and of his contribution in ensuring that it was still going to happen, and then he pushed his way through the door and headed down the stairs.

20

Wahlman ran to the LTD, opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. Diane was breathing heavily and sweating profusely.

�Get this thing off of me,� she said.

Wahlman reached over and punched in the codes, pulled the watch off of Diane�s wrist and slid it onto his own.

�What�s wrong?� he said. �You still had two whole minutes.�

�Are we done now? Because I really don�t think I can��

�We�re done,� Wahlman said. �I just need you to give me a ride back to your place so I can get my bike.�

�Then what?�

�Then you�ll never see me again.�

Wahlman had no idea what he was going to do now. He was stuck in 1983, and it was a pretty safe bet that Victor would keep sending assassins until he got the outcome he wanted. Running and hiding was no kind of life. Wahlman had been there, done that. But it looked like he was going to be doing it again. Maybe forever this time.

Diane started the car, backed it out of the space and headed toward the exit.

�What�s all over your hands?� she asked. �Is that blood?�

�I don�t want to talk about it,� Wahlman said.

�I don�t want that shit all over my car. I have some wet wipes in the glovebox if you��

�Wait,� Wahlman said. �Turn your lights off. Drive to the back of the lot. Where it�s dark over there.�

�Why?�

�I need to get in the trunk until we clear the front gate. I almost forgot.�

Wahlman�s memory still wasn�t a hundred percent. He figured it would continue to improve with time. At least he hoped it would.

Diane switched the lights off and steered to the back of the parking lot, into a long and eerie group of shadows thrown by a tall and eerie group of trees on the other side of the fence. It was nice and dark back there, and there weren�t any other cars around.

But there was a motorcycle.

Stahler�s motorcycle.

It had to be.

It was a Honda. Not really, but it looked like one. Mid-seventies, Wahlman guessed. It looked like a Honda because Stahler had adjusted the settings on his watch to make it look like a Honda. The bikes were like the suits. You could control the appearance with the push of a button. It was a nice choice. Not that it was going to do Stahler�or anyone else�any good at this point. Not as a time machine, anyway. Stahler�s fifty-seven minute limit would expire soon, leaving him in the same position that Wahlman was in.

Stuck in 1983.

If he survived the elbow to the nose.

Nobody else could even start the bike, because it had been programmed to scan for Stahler�s DNA. So it was useless now, as far as Wahlman was concerned. Nothing more than a very expensive hunk of scrap metal.

Wahlman opened the glovebox, reached in and grabbed a wet wipe. Started to tear it open, suddenly realized the huge mistake he was about to make.

Because the blood on his hands was Stahler�s blood.

Which contained Stahler�s DNA.

It was a long shot, but Wahlman figured it might be his only chance.

�Want me to open the trunk now?� Diane asked.

�Sit tight for a minute,� Wahlman said.

He climbed out of the car and walked over to Stahler�s motorcycle. Inserted the key and switched the power on. Mounted the seat and wrapped his fingers around the grips and thumbed the start button.

Nothing happened.

He looked down at his hands. The blood had dried in streaks along his fingers and palms. He rubbed his hands together, hoping that the friction would distribute the DNA molecules more evenly.

He tried the start button again.

Still nothing.

He rubbed some more and pushed the button some more. He was about to give up and walk back to the LTD when he glanced over and saw the headlights come on and watched his only other chance of getting off the base squeal away in a cloud of smoke and dust.

Diane had abandoned him. Not that he could blame her. It�s the kind of thing that happens when you threaten to blow someone up.

Wahlman considered trying to leave the base on foot. Then he thought of something. Maybe the electronic ignition was temperamental. Like the one on the bike he�d owned when he was in the Navy.

He tried the kick starter.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

On the fourth try, the engine roared to life.

Which meant that the onboard computer had recognized him as Stahler. Which meant that he had a chance now. A chance to get home. If Stahler�s time hadn�t expired already. If it had, then spinning into a different timestream on this bike would be just as risky as spinning into a different timestream on his own. He had no way of knowing exactly how much time Stahler had left. Maybe he would make it to 2101 in one piece. Maybe not. It didn�t really matter. He had one chance. One roll of the dice. And he was going to take it. The only alternative was to stay in 1983 and try to dodge bullets for the rest of his life.

He put the bike in gear and sped around to the parking lot exit, steered out onto the road that led to the front gate.

That was when he saw the first helicopter.

21

It was an old joke among sailors. When the Air Force was given a budget to construct a new base, they built the clubs and recreation rooms and chow halls first. Movie theaters, swimming pools. Then they would need more money. For things like runways. Maybe there was some truth to it. Wahlman didn�t really know. But he knew they were spending a fortune right now. They hadn�t launched one helicopter to find him. Or two. They�d put a whole company in the air. It seemed like overkill, but maybe they were in a hurry to get back to their cocktails and ping pong games.

Wahlman couldn�t outrun them. There was no way. They would gun him down before he built up enough speed to do what he needed to do. Before he could make an attempt at spinning back to 2101. He couldn�t outrun them, but maybe he could outmaneuver them. Off-road. Through the woods. But not on this motorcycle, and not in these clothes. He pulled in beside the same stand of trees that had provided cover in the parking lot and adjusted the settings on his watch, switching over to a full leather racing suit and a bike built for motocross. He jammed the shifter into gear and spun back out to the road, zigzagging his way toward the forest as the muzzle flashes strobed against the pavement and the bullets rained down from the sky.

The suit Wahlman had chosen was lined with a material that didn�t exist in 1983, a fabric that could stop projectiles designed to pierce the hull of a tank. It was great for emergencies, like the one Wahlman was facing now, but it was hot and it made you sweat and you couldn�t wear it for more than a few minutes without risking severe dehydration. And of course it wouldn�t stop a bullet from puncturing a tire, even a tire that had been fortified to resist road hazards and knife blades.

Wahlman kept those things in mind as he veered off into the woods.

Which were dark.

Too dark to navigate safely.

The motocross bike didn�t have a headlight, but Wahlman wouldn�t have used it anyway. He wanted to be as invisible as possible. But he also didn�t want to slam into a tree. He didn�t know if the FCYYC helmets were equipped with night vision. He couldn�t remember. He figured they probably were, and was about to stop and try to find the setting on his watch when it suddenly became unnecessary. Some of the helicopters started shining spotlights down into the woods.

�You�re surrounded,� a voice from a loudspeaker said. �We are authorized to use deadly force, so it would be in your best interest to surrender now. I repeat: we are authorized to use deadly force.�

No kidding, Wahlman thought. He�d already been pelted by a dozen or so bullets, each of them feeling like a bare-fisted punch from a prizefighter. Maybe they were planning to hit him with something heavier. Like a missile. He�d known that was a possibility. Otherwise he would have taken his chances with the tires and tried to get up to speed out on the road. Which, in hindsight, might have been the best course of action anyway. He thought about that as he weaved through the trees, trying to use the lights from the helicopters to his advantage, trying to stay focused as the sweat poured down his back in streams.

His vision was getting blurry, and he was breathing heavily, and he felt shaky all over. He needed to go ahead and spin. Now. Otherwise, he was going to die. But he couldn�t get the speed up to where it needed to be. Not in the woods. He needed a straightaway. He needed to be back out on the road.

The suit certainly wouldn�t protect him from a missile, but he didn�t feel as though he had much of a choice at this point. Dead is dead, whether it�s from dehydration or from being blown to bits. He dizzily decided to turn back and head for the road, knowing that his odds of survival were getting slimmer by the second, knowing that he probably wouldn�t make it anyway but unable to come up with any sort of viable alternative. He started to make the turn, noticed something straight ahead, some kind of drainage ditch with some kind of clearing on the other side of it.

A clearing that probably ran the length of the ditch, Wahlman thought. To move heavy machinery in and out. Bulldozers and whatnot. For maintenance. All he had to do was get to the other side of the ditch. Then he would have the straightaway he needed.

He motored up to the edge of the channel. It was wide. Thirty feet, maybe. And there was water at the bottom of it. Three or four feet. Too deep to try to ride through.

Wahlman had never done any sort of stunt riding, and he didn�t want to start now. He didn�t want to, but he had to. The only way to get to the other side of the ditch was to jump it.

Slopes had been built up on both sides. Wahlman didn�t know if they were steep enough to serve as ramps, and he didn�t know what kind of speed he would need to make it across even if they were. It was all going to be guesswork. Not exactly ideal for such a crucial situation. If he made it to the other side, there was a good chance that he would make it home. If he didn�t make it to the other side, there was a good chance that he would die.

A very good chance.

In fact, as a missile whistled through the branches and exploded about fifty feet behind him, he figured it was pretty much guaranteed.

He thought about the foil packet in his wallet, suddenly remembering what the capsule and the tablets were for. He pulled the packet out and tore it open and dropped the pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry, nearly choking on the larger of the two tablets. He stuffed the empty envelope back into his wallet and stuffed the wallet into his pocket and backed up and worked the throttle and popped the clutch and shot forward and hit the slope. Suddenly he was airborne, moving in slow motion, the deafening chop of the helicopter rotors abruptly silent now, as if a switch had been thrown. There was a cool breeze blowing and there were stars in the sky and Kasey was on the seat holding him tightly from behind and telling him how much she loved him, and he knew that it was all just in his head but it seemed very real, like dreams do sometimes, and he wondered if he�d died already. Then he knew that he hadn�t when he slammed down on the other side of the ditch, knew from the pain of the impact that he was still very much alive. His heart was pounding and his head was throbbing and his mouth felt like sandpaper and his instincts took over and he skidded around and hit the straightaway and pegged the throttle and heard another missile screaming toward him as he pressed the button to spin back to 2101.

22

McDaniels glanced down at the countdown display for the millionth time, and then he stepped over to the window that looked out into the hangar. Stahler should have been back by now. He still had a little over three minutes left on his fifty-seven minute allotment, but he�d never cut it this close before.

�He�s not going to make it, is he?� Victor said, looking very concerned.

Victor had come to the control room to greet Stahler himself, to congratulate him on a successful double mission�on eliminating Wahlman and protecting Reacher from the current threat.

�There�s still time,� McDaniels said. �But I have to tell you, it�s not looking promising at this point.�

�Which means that Reacher is probably dead by now.�

�That�s certainly a possibility.�

�Which would put the entire SuperSoldier program in jeopardy.�

�Yes, sir. But��

Before McDaniels could finish his thought, the room filled with the high-pitched whine that always preceded the arrival of a returning operative.

�Maybe it�s going to be okay after all,� Victor said, joining McDaniels at the window.

A pulsing globe of light appeared above Stahler�s pedestal, followed by an arcing burst of electrical energy, similar to a lightning strike. As the smoke started to clear, McDaniels could see that Stahler had chosen to switch to a motocross bike and a bulletproof racing suit. He could also see that Stahler was slumped over the handlebars, apparently unconscious.

�He�s probably dehydrated,� McDaniels said. �We need to get him out of that suit.�

�It�s not Stahler,� Victor said.

�Pardon me?�

�The man on the bike is a lot bigger than Stahler. It has to be Wahlman.�

McDaniels took another look. Victor was right. The man on the motorcycle was probably four or five inches taller than Stahler and probably outweighed him by forty or fifty pounds.

�But that�s impossible,� McDaniels said. �The machines are programmed to��

�He must have hacked it somehow,� Victor said.

�Unbelievable,� McDaniels said, lifting the telephone receiver from its cradle. �I�ll call for an ambulance, but we need to go ahead and get him out of the suit. Can you give me a hand out there real quick?�

Victor snatched the receiver and slid it back onto its base.

�Leave him there,� he said. �Let him die. That�s what we wanted to happen anyway.�

�We can�t just��

�Sure we can.�

�We need to find out what happened to Stahler,� McDaniels said. �And we need to find out how Wahlman hacked into the DNA recognition system on that motorcycle. So we can prevent it from happening again. And to be honest, we still need him as an operative. The new candidates aren�t going to be ready to spin for a while, and I don�t think��

�He might know that we sent Stahler to kill him,� Victor said. �And if he does, he�s not going to be anything but trouble for us.�

McDaniels thought about that.

�I can get the information I need,� he said. �Then I can wipe his memory for the past three or four days. It�ll be like it never happened. He�s a good operative, sir. The best. We should do everything we can to keep him around. At least until we can get the new guys trained.�

�The treatment you�re talking about�the one designed to erase specific chunks of time from a person�s memory�is still in the experimental phases, right?�

�Right.�

�Have you even performed any human trials yet?�

�Not yet,� McDaniels said. �But I�m thinking this would be the perfect time to start.�

23

Tubes.

They were the first things he noticed when he opened his eyes. There was a line delivering fluids to his forearm and a line delivering oxygen to his nostrils. He tried to sit up, but his wrists were strapped to the bed frame.

A man wearing a white lab coat stood by the door, thumbing a text into a cell phone.

�Where am I?� Wahlman asked.

The man looked up from the phone. Wahlman blinked him into focus. It was Ray McDaniels.

�You�re in the infirmary,� McDaniels said. �You were dehydrated.�

�How did that happen?�

�I don�t know. I was hoping you could tell me.�

�You were sending me out on a recon mission,� Wahlman said. �I was on the pedestal, ready to spin. That�s the last thing I remember.�

�Are you sure?�

�Positive.�

�We might never know exactly what happened,� McDaniels said. �At least you made it back. That�s the important thing.�

Wahlman glanced down at the leather cuffs buckled around his wrists.

�Why the restraints?� he asked.

�You were combatiQve. You didn�t take your RTL meds before spinning back. We found the unopened packet in your wallet. We had to sedate you.�

�How long have I been out?�

�Four days.�

Wahlman tried to process that.

�What happened with Jack Reacher?� he asked.

�We put Stahler and Nilke on the mission. Unfortunately, neither one of them made it back to the lab.�

�They�re dead?�

�Nilke�s dead. We�re still not sure about Stahler. He�s either dead or stuck there in the timestream we sent him to.�

�Are you going to try to rescue him?� Wahlman asked.

�We�ve been trying to figure out a way,� McDaniels said. �But honestly, I�m not very hopeful that it can be done. The frequencies become dangerously unstable after fifty-seven minutes and twenty-eight seconds. And it just keeps getting worse from there. Trying to bring him back now would probably kill him, and it might kill the rescuer as well.�

�So you�re just going to leave him there?�

�What other choice do we have? Anyway, it�s a good reminder to always be conscious of the countdown. I can never stress that enough.�

Wahlman nodded.

�What about Reacher?� he said.

�He�s okay,� McDaniels said. �For now. But Topple�s already planning another attack in another timestream. We�ll probably need you to do some more recon in a couple of days. After you rest up some more.�

�I�m fine,� Wahlman said. �I just wish I could remember what happened.�

McDaniels walked over to the bed and unbuckled the restraints.

�Are you hungry?� he asked.

�Starving,� Wahlman said.

�I�ll see about getting you something to eat.�

�Thanks.�

McDaniels exited the room.

Wahlman sat up on the side of the bed. He was wearing a hospital gown and nothing else. The muscles in his back and shoulders felt as though someone had gone at them with a hammer. He examined his wrists, expecting them to be red and sore. From the restraints. But they weren�t. Not at all. Which made him question whether or not he�d really been there in the infirmary for four days. Or even one day.

And something else had been bothering him. The nagging lump in the back of his throat. The one he always felt for a few hours after taking the larger tablet in the RTL packet. He�d never been very good at swallowing pills. Especially big ones. He hadn�t been good at it for as long as he could remember. Since he was a little kid. And the lump seemed even worse than usual this time. As if maybe he hadn�t had any water. As if maybe he�d swallowed the medication dry.

It was possible that McDaniels had lied about the length of time he�d been back, and about the reason for the restraints. But it was also possible that he was still experiencing some of the paranoia that supposedly went along with traveling into a different time period without the proper medications.

He sat there and tried to remember what had happened during the reconnaissance spin he�d been sent on. But he couldn�t. It was a total blank. He couldn�t remember one single thing about it.

So he decided to accept what McDaniels had told him as the truth.

For now, anyway.

The food came and he ate it and he tried to relax for a while but couldn�t. He kept thinking about Kasey and Natalie, longing for the day when he could be with them again.

It was the only reason he did any of this.

It was what he lived for.

Before his first recon mission, he�d been allowed to visit the timestream they�d been relocated to, but only for a few minutes. Maybe Victor would let him go back there, maybe sometime soon, maybe for a little longer this time.

He thought about that and smiled.

And then he drifted off to sleep.

Before being recruited as Jack Reacher�s time-traveling bodyguard, Rock Wahlman got chased and shot at and beat some bad guys senseless in The Reacher Experiment series of thrillers. Pulse-pounding action from the first page to the last!

Copyright � 2019 by Jude Hardin