or obsolete electronic equipment was separated from the regular trash. Then it was sent for recycling at a facility eleven miles west of town. She and Rutherford were on the verge of leaving to investigate the place when Reacher arrived at the door.
Reacher didn’t like the sound of a recycling plant. It conjured visions of equipment being dismantled and harvested for parts. Or melted down. Or crushed. Or pulped. Or otherwise rendered useless. He sensed the prospect of retrieving the server in serviceable condition receding into the distance, which at least made his second decision easier. He figured there was no need to mention what he had learned about its contents, or who needed to see it. Not at this stage. Not until they found out for sure whether the thing still existed.
‘There’s dirt on your shoes,’ Sands said when Reacher joined her and Rutherford in the elevator. ‘And on your pants legs. So you must have showed up at the factory. But it’s not noon yet. So you didn’t wait. What happened? What brought you to your senses?’
‘Nothing happened,’ Reacher said. ‘I got there early, as planned. The opposition showed up, as expected. But only one of them this time. And she didn’t hang around very long.’
‘Why only one of them?’ Sands said. ‘And why didn’t she wait? At least until the appointed time, to see if you even took the bait. It makes no sense.’
‘Maybe she got a message calling her away,’ Rutherford said. ‘Like yesterday. Maybe the doorman thought he saw me leaving and texted in a wrong report.’
‘Sounds plausible,’ Reacher said. ‘But who really knows why anything happens?’
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. That was a mantra Reacher was familiar with. The first two parts he was personally acquainted with. Because of his mother. She was a kid during World War II and grew up in France during the occupation. Food was in short supply. All kinds of essentials were. Clothes. Shoes. Fuel. If something ran out or wore out or was lost or broken or stolen it may never have gotten replaced. Recycling was a different story, though. There hadn’t been much of a role for it at the military bases that Reacher grew up on all around the world. As far as he knew. It may have gone on behind the scenes at West Point during his four years there, but if so he hadn’t been aware of it. He’d had other things on his mind. So his concept of it was very much a product of his imagination. He pictured it as something new and high tech, involving shiny modern plants with advanced equipment and lots of automation. Maybe even robots.
The reality was very different. At least at the facility the town used. It was surrounded by a ten-foot-high fence made of metal strips, divided and sharpened at the top, and draped in razor wire. Very old school. Inside the gate the operation was ingenious rather than advanced. The blacktop gave over to compacted dirt, rising and turning to form a broad, elevated half doughnut before dropping back down towards the exit. Within the semicircle there were six dumpsters, extra large, with no lids. They were arranged end-on, meeting in the centre like the spokes of a wheel. Each one was dedicated to a different material. Giant signs specified which kinds. Paper and cardboard went in the first. Then glass. Ferrous metal. Non-ferrous metal. Plastic. And finally a catch-all for any other kinds of trash that had been brought there by mistake. Reacher assumed the recycling trucks would drive up, swing around to the appropriate dumpster, and unload. The height and width and incline and turn radius had probably been calculated specially. There was only one snag that he could see. There was no place designated for electronic equipment.
Sands stopped the minivan between the third and fourth dumpsters and Reacher climbed out to investigate. He discounted paper and glass and was wondering whether computers could be classed as plastic due to their outer cases, or metal due to their inner workings, when he heard a voice. A man’s. Yelling at him.
‘Hey!’ the guy said. ‘The hell are you doing? You can’t be here. Where’s your permit?’
The guy had emerged from a Portakabin that was hidden from the entrance to the site by the earth mound. It was presumably some kind of an office. Or a place to hide from the sun. He looked to be in his mid-sixties. His face was burned and wrinkled like a