When he was back in the car Reacher took all the remaining cash out of the wallets in the pillowcase. He rolled it up, secured it with the elastic band he had taken, and put it in his pocket. He emptied everything out of the pillowcase except for the tools and the SIG. Slung the lanyard with the ID on it around his neck. And drove to the prison.
* * *
—
The little crowd had disappeared. So had the security guards and the camera operators. The only people left outside the prison were the contractors, who were strolling around, shifting the chairs, and stacking the dismantled pieces of fence. The tent was still obscuring the entrance, though it was less rigid than it had been. Its roof was sagging and its sides were billowing in the breeze. The surface of the stage had been removed. It was piled up in the back of a truck that was sitting next to the exposed framework. Reacher parked next to the truck. He climbed out of the BMW and started to march around and stare at the contractors like a boss. The contractors looked away and pretended they hadn’t seen him.
Reacher made his way to the entrance, leaned down like he was inspecting something, and gently set the roll of money on its side, next to the fence. Then he strolled back toward the BMW. When he was close he turned to the nearest trio of contractors.
“Hey,” Reacher yelled. “You three. Stop loafing around. Get that tent taken down. We’ve got visitors coming soon. How are they supposed to get to the entrance?”
The contractors grumbled and muttered and drifted away to do as they’d been told. Reacher took the pillowcase from the car and carried it to the truck by the stage. He opened the door and put it on the passenger seat. Then he stood back and watched the contractors. He waited. After a couple of minutes one of them noticed the wad of cash. He stepped closer to it. He leaned down to pick it up. But his greed and surprise had overridden his memory. He’d gotten too close to the fence. The sensors under the ground detected his footsteps. They fired off instant signals to the security computers in the control room. A klaxon sounded. Red lights flashed. All the floodlights in the complex came on at once. And all the nearby cameras rotated on their posts to give the operators the clearest possible view of the cause of the problem.
* * *
—
Reacher jumped in behind the wheel of the truck, fired it up, and backed across to a spot near the fence at the foot of the closest watchtower. He grabbed the pillowcase. Gripped it in his teeth. Scrambled onto the truck’s roof. Stretched up and took hold of the railing at the top of the tower’s half wall. He pushed with his legs. Pulled with his arms. Poured himself headfirst over the railing. And was met by no one. There was no guard in the tower. No one with a gun or a uniform was in sight.
Reacher peered over the tower wall on the prison side of the fence. The grass triangle was below him, ahead around sixty degrees. It looked as green and lush as it had from the outside. From the higher elevation he could see the bricks surrounding it were painted red. A sign for people to keep away from it. Because of its purpose. It was a pit for guards to fire warning shots into. Its ground was soft. It was absorbent. It posed no danger of ricochets. There had been at least one riot recently. Hannah had told him about it. But there was no bullet damage in the neatly manicured grass. Therefore the towers were no longer used, except as window dressing when Hix was staging a publicity stunt. The heavy lifting in the world of surveillance was done by electronics now. Cameras and sensors. Reacher smiled to himself. It was like they used to say in the army. Sometimes there’s no substitute for the Eyeball, Human, Mark One.
Chapter 43
The watchtowers were no longer regularly used, but they were still connected to the meshed-in walkways that crisscrossed the prison site. Reacher climbed down the ladder and started toward the building that housed the control center. He knew where it was because he had made Hix draw a diagram.
Reacher passed through five doors along the way. They were all secured. Hix’s ID card opened all of them. The final one was the control center itself. Beyond that point the doors were designated operational, not administrative. That meant they could only be operated remotely. Which was the whole point of Reacher’s visit.
There were two people on duty when Reacher entered the control room. Both men. Both in their late fifties. Both with enough miles on the clock to make sound decisions in times of stress. That was the theory. A hypothesis based more on the likelihood of escape attempts and riots than a one-man incursion. Even an incursion by one man who could do as much damage on his own as a medium-sized riot. But either way the theory held water. Reacher gave the guys instructions. They followed to the letter without argument. They didn’t even balk when Reacher locked them in the storage cupboard and broke the key in the outside of the lock.