Ли Чайлд - Past Tense

‘I need to open my door,’ Mark said. ‘I need to stretch my legs.’

Peter checked.

‘You have plenty of room,’ he said.

Mark opened his door. But he didn’t get out. Instead he stopped the door as soon as the handle mouldings were clear of the suppressor, and where Peter was still nicely framed in the now-angled window. He shot him once in the chest, once in the throat, and once in the face.

Then he closed his door again, and buzzed his window up, and turned off his hazard flashers, and drove on, down the track, towards the woods.

REACHER GOT THROUGH the next section of forest pretty fast, because of the night vision. He stayed six feet off the track. He made no attempt to be stealthy or quiet. He relied on the mathematical randomness of tree distribution to save him from arrows. A clear shot from distance was always going to be a hundred to one.

At one point way far away he heard four separated pops. Two groups, a one and a three. Tiny hollow pinpricks of sound. Maybe thirty seconds apart. The back of his brain said, those were suppressed nine-millimetre rounds, fired in the open air, about a mile away. The front said, or maybe they were something cooking off, possibly aerosol cans, in the fire. Which was getting brighter again. It had flared up once, when he figured the roof fell in, and then it had faded away a little. But now the glow was back, and wider, as if more than one thing was burning.

He stopped. Up ahead on the left he saw two quad bikes parked side by side, front end in, at an angle, half in and half out of the trees. Like outside a country roadhouse. The night vision showed no riders nearby. Presumably they were up ahead. On foot. Closer to the action. Like the last two. These were the next two. They were operating a multi-layered defence. One pair after another. Which was why Reacher had avoided the infantry. He didn’t enjoy slogging through endless terrain.

He moved on, quieter than before.

He stopped again.

He saw a guy up ahead. On the other side of the track, about thirty feet in the trees. Small in the distance, but lit up evenhandedly, like everything else. Delineated with exquisite care, in fine grey and green lines. Clothes like a scuba diver, a bow, a Cyclops eye.

No sign of his partner. Some signs of anxiety. Mostly about the glow in the sky, Reacher thought. The guy kept looking towards it, and ducking away. Maybe a crude measure of how bright it was getting. How soon he had to flinch away. The guy was tall and substantial, and his head was up, and his shoulders were square. But he wasn’t comfortable. Reacher had seen his type before. Not just in the army. No doubt the guy was a big-deal alpha male at whatever it was he was good at. But right then he was out of his depth. He was twitching with confusion. Or resentment. As if deep down he couldn’t understand why his staff officers or his executive assistants hadn’t taken care of things for him a damn sight better.

Reacher moved up through the trees, on the other side of the track. He moved slowly and quietly. All the way to where he was exactly level with the guy. Reacher was six feet in the trees. Then came the track. The guy was thirty feet in on the other side. A straight line on a plan. But not a clear shot in a forest. The guy was too deep. He had boxed himself in. Too defensive. He had no natural avenue of attack.

Reacher walked across the track, dead on line, a hundred random trees between him and the guy. He stepped back into the woods on the other side, and he worked his way through, now twenty feet from the guy, still dead on line. The glow in the sky was amplified twenty thousand times, and it winked and danced through the leaves, like camera flashes, like a movie star stepping out of a car. Up ahead the guy was looking down. Maybe the sparkle bothered him.

Now he was ten feet away. Reacher eased his speed back to nothing. He took a good look around. A full 360. He studied the picture, section by section. Highly detailed, fine-grained, monochrome, slightly grey, mostly green, a little cool, a little wispy. A little fluid and ghostly. Not quite reality. In some ways better.

No sign of a partner.

Reacher moved on. As always he believed in staying flexible, but as always he also had a plan. Which in this case was to stab the guy in the neck with an arrow. Which would be easy enough. Because arm’s length was game over. But flexibility intervened. Up close, even in glimpsed slivers between trees, it was clear the guy was worried in a particular kind of way. An elemental way. Like a billionaire whose plane crashes on an uninhabited island. Or whose car gets in a fender bender in the wrong neighbourhood. The food chain. Suddenly not as high as he thought. Maybe ready to make a deal.

Reacher rushed him, and the guy reacted by jerking his bow up, probably nothing more than animal instinct, not a considered decision, which was a shame, because just in case Reacher had to scythe his arrow down, like a knife on a stick, to slash all four of the guy’s left-hand knuckles. The guy howled and dropped the bow, and Reacher stepped real close, their optical tubes colliding, and he kicked the guy behind the knees, so that he fell over on his back, whereupon Reacher flipped the guy’s night vision up with his foot, and then jammed the same foot on the guy’s throat, and forced the tip of the arrow between his lips, and tapped it on his teeth.

‘Want to talk?’ he whispered.

The guy couldn’t answer in words, because of the arrow jammed against his teeth, or in gestures either, because of the foot jammed against his throat. Instead he kind of nodded with his eyes. Some kind of desperate plea. Some kind of promise.

Reacher withdrew the arrow.

He asked, ‘Who are you hunting?’

The guy said, ‘This is not what it seems.’

‘How so?’

‘I came here to hunt wild boar.’

‘And what are you hunting instead?’

‘I was deceived.’

‘What are you hunting?’

‘People,’ the guy said. ‘Not what I came for.’

‘How many people?’

‘Two.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Canadians,’ the guy said. ‘A young couple. Their names are Patty Sundstrom and Shorty Fleck. They got stranded here. I was tricked into it. I was told wild boar. They lied to me.’

‘Who lied to you?’

‘A man named Mark. He owns this place.’

‘Mark Reacher?’

‘I don’t know his last name.’

‘Why didn’t you call the cops?’

‘No cell service here. No phones in the room.’

‘Why haven’t you run away?’

The guy didn’t answer.

‘Why didn’t you stay in your room tonight and refuse to participate?’

No response.

‘Why are you nevertheless stalking around in the dark with your bow and arrow?’

No answer.

‘Wait,’ Reacher said.

He heard a car up ahead. He saw bright jagged shards of amplified light coming through the trees. A big vehicle with its headlights on. He flipped up his tube. The world went dark, all except for the track, thirty feet to his right. It was all lit up, like the inside of a long low tunnel. Twin high beams were punching forward. A Mercedes rolled by. It was shiny black, a big SUV, shaped like a fist. Its tail lights showed red for a moment. Then it was gone.

Reacher dropped his tube back in place. The world went green and highly detailed again. He shifted his foot on the guy’s neck. To make room. For the tip of the arrow. He steadied it against the welt of his shoe, and exerted modest downward pressure. The guy tried to scream, but Reacher trod harder and stopped him.

The guy said, ‘I didn’t know what I was getting into. I swear. I’m a banker. I’m not like these other guys. I’m a victim too.’

‘You’re a banker?’