Lee Child - A Wanted Man

So all in all it would be better to settle for a light tap, not a heavy blow, which meant the exact choice of target would be important, which meant the larynx would come top of the list. An open hand held horizontally, like a karate chop, and a light smack in the throat. That would get the job done. Disabling, but not fatal. Except that Alan King was asleep, with his face turned away and his chin tucked down to his chest. His throat was concealed. He would have to be woken up first. Maybe a poke in the shoulder. He would straighten up, he would face forward, he would blink and yawn and stare.

Easy enough. Poke, scratch, swing, pop . Technically challenging, but entirely possible. Alan King could be handled.

But Don McQueen couldn’t. Science had never found a way to take out a guy sitting directly behind a driver. Not while that driver was doing eighty miles an hour. No way. Just not feasible. No kind of four-dimensional planning could achieve it.

Reacher drove on, at eighty miles an hour. He checked the mirror. No traffic behind him. McQueen was asleep. He checked again a minute later. Delfuenso was staring at him. He learned the road a mile ahead and looked back in the mirror. He nodded, as if to say: Go ahead. Begin transmission .

She began.

Forward nine.

I.

Forward eight, forward one, back five, forward five.

H-A-V-E, have .

Forward one.

A.

Forward three, forward eight, forward nine, forward twelve, forward four.

C-H-I-L-D, child .

I have a child .

Reacher nodded, and lifted the small stuffed animal out of the centre console, as if to say: I understand . The toy’s fur was stiff with dried saliva. Its shape was distorted by the clamp of a tiny jaw. He put it back. Delfuenso’s eyes filled with tears and she turned her head away.

Reacher leaned over and poked Alan King in the shoulder.

King stirred, and woke up, and straightened, and faced forward, and blinked and yawned and stared.

He said, ‘What?’

Reacher said, ‘The gas gauge is through the first little bit. I need you to tell me when to stop.’

The deputy came back from the convenience store and told Goodman there were no bloody coats or knives in the trash cans. Sorenson called the head technician back from the Mazda again and said, ‘I need to know about the victim.’

‘Can’t help you there,’ the guy said. ‘There was no ID and the autopsy won’t be until tomorrow.’

‘I need your impressions.’

‘I’m a scientist. I was out sick the day they taught Clairvoyance 101.’

‘You could make some educated guesses.’

‘What’s the hurry?’

‘I’m getting hassle through two separate back channels.’

‘Who?’

‘First the State Department, and now the CIA.’

‘They’re not separate. The State Department is the political wing of the CIA.’

‘And we’re the FBI, and we’re the good guys here, and we can’t afford to look slow or incompetent. Or unimaginative. So I’d like some impressions from you. Or informed opinion, or whatever else they taught you to call it in Cover Your Ass 101.’

‘What kind of informed opinion?’

‘Age?’

‘Forty-something, possibly,’ the guy said.

‘Nationality?’

‘He was American, probably,’ the guy said.

‘Because?’

‘His dentistry looks American. His clothing is mostly American.’

‘Mostly?’

‘I think his shirt is foreign. But his underwear is American. And most people stick to underwear from their country of origin.’

‘Do they?’

‘As a general rule. It’s a comfort issue, literally and metaphorically. And an intimacy issue. It’s a big step, putting on foreign underwear. Like betrayal, or emigration.’

‘That’s science?’

‘Psychology is a science.’

‘Where is the shirt from?’

‘Hard to say. There’s no label in it.’

‘But it looks foreign?’

‘Well, basically all cotton clothing is foreign now. Almost all of it comes from somewhere in Asia. But quality and cut and colour and pattern all tend to be market-specific.’

‘Which market?’

‘The fabric is thin, the colour is cream rather than white, the collar points are long and narrow, the design of the checks is purely graphic rather than imitative of a traditional weave. I would say the shirt was bought in Pakistan, or possibly the Middle East.’

ALAN KING JACKED himself upright and craned to his left. He took a good long look at the fuel gauge. He said, ‘I think we’ll be OK for a spell more. Let me know when it hits the three-quarter mark.’

‘Won’t be long,’ Reacher said. ‘It seems to be going down awful fast.’

‘That’s because you’re driving awful fast.’

‘No faster than Mr McQueen was.’

‘Then maybe the fault has corrected itself. Maybe it was only intermittent.’

‘We don’t want to run out of gas. Not out here. It’s pretty lonely. Can’t count on getting help. The cops are all back at that roadblock.’

‘Give it another thirty minutes,’ King said. ‘Then perhaps we’ll start to think about it.’

‘OK,’ Reacher said.

‘Tell me about that thing with the letter A.’

‘Later.’

‘No, now.’

‘I said later. What part of that is hard to understand?’

‘You don’t like to be pushed around, do you, Mr Reacher?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never been pushed around. If it ever happens, you’ll be the first to find out whether I like it or not.’

King turned his head away and gazed forward into the darkness for a full minute more, completely silent, and then he slid down in his seat and tucked his chin back down and closed his eyes again. Reacher checked the mirror. McQueen was still out cold. Delfuenso was still awake.

And she was blinking again.

Backward seven, forward eight, forward five, backward two.

T-H-E-Y, they .

Forward eight, forward one, backward five, forward five.

H-A-V-E, have .

Forward seven, backward six, backward thirteen, backward eight.

G-U-N-S, guns .

They have guns .

Reacher nodded in the mirror, and drove on.

The scene behind the cocktail lounge stayed quiet for five more minutes. The lab guys took a long sequence of close-up photographs inside the Mazda, using strobes. The car’s misty glass lit up from within with irregular flashes, like a thunderstorm viewed from a great distance, or a battle on the other side of a hill. Goodman’s deputies searched the ground and found nothing of significance. Sorenson interrogated federal and state databases by phone, looking for large men with recent facial injuries. She came up empty.

Then came the sounds of a whispering V-8 engine and tyres on crushed stone, and the dip and bounce of headlight beams in the mist, and a dark sedan nosed its way north towards them. It was a navy blue Crown Vic, identical to Sorenson’s own, same specification, same needle antennas on the back deck, but with Missouri plates. It came to a stop at a respectful distance and two men got out. They were wearing dark suits. They stood in the lee of their open doors and struggled into heavy down parkas. Then they closed their doors and moved closer, scanning the scene as they walked, noticing and dismissing the county deputies, noticing and dismissing Sheriff Goodman, noticing and dismissing the crime scene technicians, before settling their attention on Sorenson. They stopped six feet from her and pulled IDs from their pockets.

The same IDs as hers.

FBI.

The agent on the right said, ‘We’re from Counterterrorism, central region, out of Kansas City.’