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“Mostly we deal with cases we know won’t go as far as a court martial.”

“Why won’t they?”

“Mostly we deal with cases where the potential defendant has predeceased the beginning of legal proceedings.”

Reacher paused a beat.

“You’re the clean-up crew,” he said. “You were at the general’s house the other night.”

“Outside her house.”

“There was an MP5 submachine gun involved.”

“It’s in a storeroom downstairs.”

“Where are the car and the dead guy?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Outstanding,” Reacher said. “Good work, sergeant.”

“Is it true you worked in this building?” she said. “With the original 110th?”

“I was its CO for a spell.”

“Different purpose now.”

“Not so very different,” Reacher said.

“Let’s go shopping.”

They went back downstairs to the first-floor corridor. More memories. Offices to the left, offices to the right. All of them storerooms now, numbered one to ten. All of them locked. Kennedy took out a jailer’s hoop of keys and unlocked number six. She stood back. Reacher went in. The window was painted over. Whatever desks and chairs and file cabinets had been in there were gone. They had been replaced by head-high shelf units made of black steel. Every shelf was loaded with submachine guns. Various makes, various models, one after the other.

“I guess a lot of cases never make it to trial,” he said.

“Often easier that way,” Kennedy said, behind him.

“And none of these are logged or recorded?”

“Easier that way,” Kennedy said again. “We’re not even hooked into the G-99 computer system. We’re invisible. All this stuff is invisible. It simply ceased to exist.”

The nearest item was an H&K MP5SD. Painted black, integrated suppressor, retractable stock, old and worn but well maintained and in good order. A vintage Delta Force weapon, no question.

“Our latest acquisition,” Kennedy said. “From outside the general’s house, the other night.”

The rest were a mixture of older H&Ks, newer SIG Sauer MPXs, and rarer B&T APC9s. All used regular nine-millimeter handgun ammunition.

Kennedy said, “The general advised me you would make a selection, and then we’re to check them over and bag them up and have them ready for collection by the start of business tomorrow.”

“Sounds good,” Reacher said. “We’ll be three personnel, and I like at least thirty-three percent redundancy, in case of loss or failure. So I’ll take four regular MPXs and four with suppressors, plus as many magazines and as much ammunition as you can find. Cannibalize the rest of the stock if you need to.”

“Understood,” she said. “You want pistols too?”

“Can’t hurt,” he said.

They backed out of room six and she locked it up again. She crossed the corridor and opened room seven. Same painted-over window, same metal shelves, this time full of handguns. Mostly SIG M17s, the new standard issue. Considered better than the old Beretta M9s, by lots of different people, Reacher included. He said, “Four of them, please, plus all the spare magazines you can find.”

“Understood,” Kennedy said again.