Chapter 27
Joe drove north through the kind of darkness that only existed in the Upper Peninsula in winter.
No moon.
No stars. Just the tunnel of his headlights cutting through falling snow and the occasional reflective marker that confirmed the road still existed beneath the accumulation.
Every breath hurt.
The ribs on his left side didn’t feel great, to say the least. He'd taped them as best he could with duct tape he'd found in the truck's toolbox, wrapping it tight around his torso over his shirt, but tape only did so much.
It held things in place.
It didn't stop them from hurting.
His face had seen better days, too. He could feel it without looking. The left side of his jaw was swollen, tender to the touch. His right eyebrow had split open at some point, probably when his head hit the salt pile, and the blood had dried in a crusty line down his temple.
What really bothered him was the note.
I saved you once. This is the second time. There won't be a third.
He had to admit, it sort of sounded like something Kinsman would say. Very matter of fact.
It pissed Joe off, though. As if Kinsman was God and Joe had no say in the matter. It was disrespectful.
Joe wasn’t used to being underestimated and he didn’t like it.
He slowly, even in the dark, perceived the landscape was changing. It was gradual, the way you noticed the air getting thinner as you climbed. The road had been rising for the last twenty miles, the grade gentle but persistent.
The trees were different now. Less hardwood, more pine.
The snow was deeper here, piled high on either side of the highway where the plows had pushed it. The drifts had a sculptural quality, wind-carved and frozen solid.
The bluffs were higher too. He caught glimpses of them when the road curved—dark masses rising against the slightly less dark sky, their tops lost in cloud and snow. It was rugged country, the kind of terrain that had broken loggers and miners and anyone else who thought they could tame it.
And beneath it all, he could feel the presence of something massive.
Lake Superior.
He couldn't see it. Couldn't hear it. But he knew it was there, close now, maybe a mile or two away.
The air had changed. It was colder, yes, but it was more than that.
It was heavier. Denser. The kind of cold that came off deep water.
The lake was the largest body of fresh water on the planet, and it had a gravity all its own.
You could feel it even when you couldn't see it.
He checked the fuel gauge.
Three-quarters full.
Whoever had been driving this truck before him had filled it recently. Lucky. He wouldn't have to gas up.
His ribs flared again as he shifted in the seat, trying to find a position that didn't make breathing feel like swallowing glass.
There wasn't one.
The road narrowed.
Two lanes became one and a half. Frost heaves had turned sections of it into washboard. The truck's suspension wasn't great to begin with, and every bump sent a fresh jolt of pain through his chest.
He didn't slow down.
A sign appeared in his headlights, reflective letters on green: COPPER CITY - 5 MI.
He was close.
The UP was full of towns that had died when the mines closed, places that had boomed for twenty years and then collapsed into nothing when the copper or iron ran out.
Ghost towns, most of them. A few hung on with populations in the dozens, sustained by nothing but stubbornness and nowhere else to go.
Five miles later, he saw the lights.
Not many. Maybe a dozen, scattered across what looked like a valley between two ridges. Most of them were dim, the yellow glow of old incandescent bulbs behind dirty windows.
He slowed as he entered the town.
Copper City.
The name was optimistic. There was no city here. There never had been. Just a mining camp that had grown large enough to pretend and then shrunk back down to the truth.
The main street was two lanes of snow filled with tire tracks. Most of the buildings looked like they'd been abandoned in stages. Some were boarded up, plywood nailed over windows and doors. Others were just empty, their glass broken, their interiors open to the weather.
Snow had drifted into doorways and piled against walls. Roofs sagged under the weight of decades.
He passed what had been a hotel once. Three stories, brick, with a false front that made it look taller. The windows on the upper floors were dark and broken. The ground floor had been a bar, maybe, or a general store.
A church stood on a corner, white clapboard with a small steeple. The cross on top was crooked.
Rusted equipment sat in vacant lots between buildings. An ore cart on rails that went nowhere. A massive iron gear, six feet across, half-buried in snow. A truck from the 1940s, its tires long gone, its bed filled with ice.
And above it all, visible against the sky, were the headframes.
Two of them, maybe three. Skeletal towers of steel and wood rising from the hills above town, their shapes stark and angular. Mine shafts. The reason this place had existed at all. They looked like gallows.
Joe drove slowly down the main street, taking it in.
There were a few signs of life. A house with smoke coming from the chimney. A pickup truck parked in a driveway, snow piled on its hood but not buried. A light in a window.
But mostly, it was dead.
Literally frozen in time.
At the far end of the street, almost like a strange mirage, he saw the convenience store.
It was the brightest thing in town. Fluorescent lights blazed behind plate glass windows, harsh and clinical against the darkness.
The building itself was small, single-story, flat-roofed.
Concrete block painted white. Hand-lettered signs in the windows advertised cigarettes, beer, lottery tickets.
A Coca-Cola logo from the 1970s hung above the door, faded and rusted.
A single gas pump stood out front, old enough that it still had analog dials. It didn't look operational.
Joe pulled the truck into the gravel lot and parked. He sat there for a moment, engine running, letting his breathing settle.
The pay phone was mounted on the outside wall of the store, next to the door.
Old rotary style, enclosed in a metal housing that had been painted blue once.
The paint was mostly gone now, worn away by weather and time.
The phone itself looked intact, though. The handset hung in its cradle.
The coin slot gleamed dully under the fluorescent light.
Joe hoped it was still working. He shut off the engine and climbed out.
The cold hit him immediately and the snow crunched under his boots.
He walked to the store's entrance, pushed the door open and a bell jingled.
The interior was exactly what he'd expected. Narrow aisles lined with wire shelving. Linoleum floor, cracked and yellowed. The smell of old coffee and cleaning solution and something vaguely sweet—air freshener, maybe, or spilled soda that had never been properly cleaned up.
The shelves held the basics. Canned goods. Bread. Milk in a small cooler that rattled loudly. Motor oil. Antifreeze. Cigarettes behind the counter in a locked case. A rotating rack of chips near the register.
Behind the counter sat a woman in her seventies.
She looked up when he entered. She wore a heavy cardigan over a flannel shirt, and her gray hair hung down to her shoulders.
Joe nodded to her.
She nodded back.
He walked to the coffee station—a single pot on a warmer, half-full, probably hours old. He poured a cup into a Styrofoam container. The coffee was black and bitter and exactly what he needed. He grabbed a bottle of aspirin from a shelf and brought both to the counter.
The woman rang them up without comment. Her eyes flicked to his face—the split eyebrow, the swelling—but she didn't ask.
"Four seventy-five," she said.
Her voice was rough, worn smooth by decades of cigarettes or cold air or both.
Joe pulled out a twenty. "And change for the phone."
She made change slowly, counting it out in quarters and dimes. She pushed the coins across the counter along with his bills.
"Phone works," she said. "Mostly."
"Thanks."
He picked up the coffee and aspirin and turned to go.
"Storm's getting worse," the woman said behind him.
He paused, looked back.
She was watching him. "Roads'll be even worse by morning. You got somewhere to be?"
"Yeah."
She nodded slowly, like that confirmed something. "Good luck, then."
Joe pushed back out into the cold.
He stood by the truck for a moment, opened the aspirin bottle, and dry-swallowed four tablets. Then he drank half the coffee in three long pulls. It burned going down.
He walked to the pay phone.
The metal housing was freezing to the touch. He lifted the handset and heard a dial tone. He fed quarters into the slot and dialed the pager number Ivy had given him. Punched in the pay phone's number. Hung up.
Then he waited.
The wind picked up, driving snow across the empty street. Somewhere in the distance, metal creaked—one of the old headframes, maybe, swaying in the wind.
The phone rang.
He grabbed it on the first ring.
"Reacher."
"Joe," Ivy said. "Where are you?"
"Town called Copper City. It’s a happening place."
"Joe, did you know Simmons is dead?”
“What?”
"A sniper at a hotel in Cadillac, this morning. Professional hit. One in the chest, one in the head."
Joe closed his eyes briefly. Simmons. It must have happened right after he left.
Goddamnit, he thought. But how? His mind worked through the logic.
Joe knew Kinsman had spies in this part of the country.
But that didn’t explain everything. Even his own attack, someone could have overheard his conversation in the bar.
But Simmons?
"I think Kinsman has someone on the inside," Joe said.
“On the inside? Where?”
“The task force,” Joe said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Someone is feeding him information.”
"Shit,” Ivy said. “Are you okay?”
"I’m fine, but I was warned."
Silence on the other end. Ivy didn’t press for details.
"What do you have?" he asked.
He heard her take a breath, shifting gears. "I've been in the archives. Treasury records, old Commerce Department files that included Soviet shipping manifests from the late eighties. Volkov was listed as an authorized officer for special munitions handling. Specifically, RA-115 devices."
"What does that mean?"
"RA-115 is a designation. Portable atomic demolition munitions. The 12th Main Directorate had custody—that's the unit that handled nuclear weapons accounting for the Soviet military."
Joe stared out at the dark street. "Portable?” His mind landed on something. “You mean, like, suitcase nukes?"
"Maybe. The records are incomplete. But after the Soviet Union collapsed, they lost track of some of this stuff, if you can believe that.
The accounting broke down. There were rumors for years that some of them went missing.
Sold, stolen, hidden or just plain lost. No one knows for sure as it was complete chaos. "
"So Kinsman was after Volkov, or the lost nukes."
"Or both."
"Two scenarios, then" Joe said. "Either Volkov is building new devices for them, or he knows where the old ones are."
"That's my guess, too."
Joe watched his breath plume in the cold.
"They must have a deployment strategy," he said. "The Soviets loved to plan that kind of stuff.”
There should be intelligence assessments somewhere, war game scenarios. If I can find out what the Soviet plan was maybe we can figure out what Kinsman is planning. It could be totally different or it could be along the same lines."
"Yeah," Joe said.
"What are you–"
"I'm going in."
"In where? And alone?"
"I don't have a choice and we don't have time. If Volkov is with Kinsman, if they're building something or moving something, we need to know now."
"You need backup. Let me call—"
"Who?" Joe's voice was flat. "The task force? Kinsman has been ahead of me every step of the way. He’s smart, but not that smart."
Silence.
"Exactly," Joe said.
"Then let me come up there. I can—"
"No. You're more valuable doing what you're doing. Find out about those devices. Find out what the plan was."
“You got it. I'll find out everything I can and try to get word to you somehow."
Joe hung up the phone and stood there for a moment, his hand still on the cold metal. The wind drove snow across the empty street. Somewhere up in the hills, there might be some answers.
He walked back to the truck, climbed into the driver's seat and pulled the stolen pistol from his waistband, checking it in the dome light. Glock 19. Fifteen rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber.
Joe started the engine and the heater rattled to life, blowing cold air. It had already cooled off in that short amount of time. He put the truck in gear and pulled out of the lot, heading toward the hills.
The road climbed steeply, switchbacking up the ridge. The road was packed hard with ice. The truck's tires spun once, caught, and pushed forward.
Joe drove with both hands on the wheel.
After twenty minutes of driving, he almost missed the mine entrance. It was just a dark mouth in the hillside, timber supports framing it like broken teeth. A brand-new chain-link fence surrounded it, topped with gleaming barbed wire.
Surrounding the entrance were buildings sagging under the weight of snow. It was like a logging and mining camp designed for Halloween.
A sign hung on the fence: DANGER - NO TRESPASSING.
Even the sign was new.
Joe stopped the truck fifty yards away and killed the lights.
He sat in the darkness, watching.
He thought about Simmons and how he’d been killed. Joe scanned the hills above the mine.
Someone was watching, he knew.
Joe checked the Glock one more time, tucked it back into his waistband, opened the door and stepped out into the snow.