Ли Чайлд - No Middle Name

He had a full colonel’s eagle in his collar. Above his right pocket his tape said: U.S. Army . Above his left pocket his tape said: Reacher .

He said, ‘Forgive me for interrupting your journey, but I can’t push it out the way. Can’t turn the wheel. I think the power steering broke.’

She said, ‘Colonel, I’m sorry.’

He said, ‘I’m guessing your car doesn’t have a trailer hitch.’

‘I could help you push.’

‘That’s kind of you, but it would take ten of us.’

She said, ‘Are you who I think you are?’

‘That depends.’

‘You’re Joe Reacher. You just got a new counterintelligence command.’

‘Correct on both counts,’ Joe Reacher said. ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’ He glanced down at her nameplate. Plastic, white on black, because of the tailored Class As. The nameplate is adjusted to individual figure differences and centred horizontally on the right side between one and two inches above the top button of the coat . He looked at her unit insignia and her badges of rank. He said, ‘You must be Caroline Crawford. Congratulations.’

‘You’ve heard of me?’

‘Part of my job. But it’s not part of yours to know who I am.’

‘Not part of my job, but part of my interest. I like to track the key players.’

‘I’m not a key player.’

‘Sir, bullshit, with respect, sir.’

‘Academic interest, or career interest?’

She half smiled, half shrugged, but didn’t answer.

He said, ‘Both, right?’

She said, ‘I don’t see why it can’t be.’

‘How high do you plan to get?’

‘Three stars,’ she said. ‘In the Joint Chiefs office, maybe. Anything more would be in the lap of the gods.’

Joe Reacher said, ‘Well, good luck with all of that,’ and he put his hand in his battledress pocket, and he came out with a standard army-issue Beretta M9 semi-automatic pistol, and he shot Caroline Crawford with it, twice in the chest and once in the head.

Also with a new posting the same week as Caroline Crawford was a military police major named David Noble. He was detaching from his current command and heading to Fort Benning, Georgia, from where he would oversee criminal investigations throughout the southeastern military districts. A brand-new reorganization. Someone’s baby. Unlikely to last, but temporarily important work. Noble never got to do it. He was in a car wreck on the way. In South Carolina. An adjacent state. Nearly there. Not fatal, but he ended up at Walter Reed. He had a collapsed lung. He couldn’t breathe right. So an emergency substitute was decided on and hunted down and pulled off his current manoeuvres and hustled north to Benning. Just how it always was, for the army. Situation entirely normal. A big job, the second-best guy, a week late. On the bright side people said this new one was a fast study and a hard worker. He might catch up. If he got started right away.

So it was that the same moment Joe Reacher said, ‘I’m not a key player,’ his younger brother Jack Reacher walked into a brand-new office more than a hundred miles away, and then out again, in search of coffee, almost ready to begin overseeing criminal investigations throughout the southeastern military districts.

The Porsche was found early the next morning, by four soldiers in a Humvee, who were trying to find a shortcut back to Smith after a night exercise had gone all kinds of wrong in terms of navigation. They recognized the car from a distance. It was already famous on the base. The new War Plans lady. Hot, smart, and rich. Nothing wrong with any of that. Nothing at all. Maybe she had a flat tyre. Maybe she was in need of assistance.

As they pulled closer they thought the car was empty.

Then they saw it wasn’t.

They rolled by at walking speed and their high seating positions let them look down inside the Porsche, where they saw a woman in Class A uniform flopped over backward across the seats, shot twice in the chest and once in the head.

They parked nearby, and called it in on the radio. Then they sat tight. Crime scenes were not their problem. Within forty minutes an MP crew got there. From Fort Smith. With two JAG lawyers. Also from Fort Smith. They all took a look, and then they all stepped back. There was a question of jurisdiction. The road belonged to the county. Hence the county police had been informed. No choice. They were on their way, for a discussion.

Fort Benning heard about it almost immediately. A brand-new reorganization. Too fresh to be screwed up yet. Reacher had spent until late in the evening studying the new unit manual, and reviewing open cases, and reading files, and talking to people. Then he had grabbed a few hours of sleep, and gotten up again with a plan in his head. He figured he had a lot of work to do. The place was drowning in paper. And the NCOs were badly chosen. In his experience units ran either well or not depending on the quality of their sergeants. He wanted expert bureaucrats, but he didn’t want them to be in love with bureaucracy. There was a difference. He wanted people who treated tasks like an enemy, to be dispatched fast and efficiently and ruthlessly. Or punitively, even. They won’t send me that form again . The new unit didn’t have such people. They were all too comfortable. A little soft. Like the guy who brought the torn-off telex first thing in the morning. A soft, comfortable guy. Hard to put in words, but he didn’t have the spirit Reacher wanted. He didn’t have the edge. He didn’t look dangerous.

The telex said One repeat one (1) active-duty personnel found shot to death ten miles north of Fort Smith. Circumstances unknown .

Reacher pictured a bar fight, a private or maybe a specialist, in some kind of an altercation with a local. Maybe a Harley fell over in the parking lot, or a glass of beer got spilled. Bars near bases were always full of local civilian hotheads with guns in their pockets and points to prove.

He said, ‘Bring me the details as and when they come in.’

The soft sergeant undertook so to do, and left the room.

Reacher picked up the phone and called his new CO. Among other things he said, ‘I need a better sergeant here. I need you to send me Frances Neagley. Before the end of the day, preferably.’

The county sheriff who showed up in the woods knew the value of mud as an evidentiary medium. He parked way short and skirted the scene a yard off the road, pausing often to crouch and study the marks in the fine black tilth, which covered the blacktop more or less side to side, like a scrim, molecules thin in the centre and inches thick on the edges. There were a lot of marks, some of them crisp, some of them oozing black water, some of them overwritten by the four soldiers rolling by in their Humvee.

The county guy made it all the way to the gaggle of Smith guys, and they all introduced themselves and shook hands and then stood around mute, maybe taking the legal temperature, maybe rehearsing their arguments. The county guy spoke first. He said, ‘Was she based at Fort Smith?’

A JAG lawyer said, ‘Yes.’

‘Any indication this was blue on blue?’ Meaning, was there a professional dispute I don’t need to know about? Is this all in the family?

The JAG lawyer said, ‘No.’

‘Therefore she’s mainly mine. Until I know for sure the shooter wasn’t a civilian. I need to pay attention to a thing like this. I could have a crazy person running around in the woods. What was her name?’

‘Crawford.’

‘What did she do at Fort Smith?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.’

‘She was ambushed,’ the county guy said. ‘I can tell you that. The marks are clear. Someone faked a breakdown. She stopped to help. He had big feet.’