Ли Чайлд - The Midnight Line

Three seconds was plenty. The lone guy thought he was ready, but he wasn’t. He was thinking all wrong. His subconscious mind was telling him his best play was to hang back a little. Human nature. Millions of years of evolution. Then the front part of his brain was telling him no, if a confrontation was inevitable, then logically his interests would be best served by staging it as close to reinforcements as he could get. Therefore he should move towards the other two. Not away from them.

The stop-start impulses in the guy’s head produced a sudden forward lurch, which brought him too close too soon. His mental bandwidth was all taken up with locomotion issues. Time and space. He wasn’t thinking about how to defend himself. Until too late. And even then he showed no imagination. He had seen elbows and feet, and he improvised a kind of all-purpose defensive posture against either, but Reacher ignored both and took the last unexpected stride at full speed, and seamlessly head-butted the guy full on the bridge of the nose. Moving mass and momentum. You bet your ass. Game over, right there. A second and a half.

Reacher turned fast and found the last two guys already around behind the line of motorcycles, twelve feet away, coming on at a medium speed, somewhere between eager and obligated. Reacher stepped backward over his head-butted victim and looped back around to the street side of the bikes. He watched the last two follow. Watched them realize. They were on an oval racetrack. They could go around and around all night long.

They split up, one and one. They glanced and paused and coordinated. They waited, one behind the last bike on the left, one behind the last bike on the right. The survivors. The pick of the litter. The smartest, certainly. Always better to go fifth and sixth than first or second.

Then on a silent count of three they stepped forward. Not the worst Reacher had ever seen. Their speed was right, and their angles were right. The textbooks would say it was very likely Reacher would get hit. From one direction or another. It was almost unavoidable. They would arrive together. He would be the turkey in the sandwich.

Probably Chang was sitting down and eating by that point. Whatever she had made. At her kitchen table. With a glass of wine. A small celebration, maybe. Home safe.

Getting hit was a rare event for Reacher. And he intended to keep it rare. Not just vanity. Getting hit was inefficient. It degraded future performance.

He stepped forward, just as the two guys were rounding the ends of the line of bikes. Now the angle was flatter. More of a straight line than a triangle. He took a breath. The two guys got closer. One from his left, and one from his right. They were mincing along, pace for pace, always glancing ahead at the relative distances. Aiming to arrive together.

Human nature. Millions of years of evolution.

Reacher darted left, and two things happened. The left-hand guy reared up backward, because he was surprised, and the right-hand guy speeded up forward, to close the gap, because he was in full-on hunting mode, and his prey was getting away.

So Reacher spun back instantly, and the right-hand guy ran full speed straight into his scything elbow, whereupon Reacher turned once more, and found he had half a second to spare, because the left-hand guy was taking some major amount of time to get his rearing-up-backward momentum converted into forward motion again. Which gave Reacher space to pick his spot. He kicked the guy in the knee, which dropped him face down on the gravel, bang , and then Reacher kicked him in the head, but left-footed, which was his weaker side. Normal for right-handed people. And appropriate. No need to go too far. Being dumb wasn’t a capital crime. Wasn’t a crime at all, in fact. Merely a handicap.

He breathed out.

Undefeated.

From the sidewalk Jimmy Rat said, ‘Feel better now?’

Reacher said, ‘A little.’

‘You could work for me, if you want.’

‘I don’t want.’

‘Is it woman trouble?’

Reacher didn’t answer. Instead he squeezed between adjacent handlebars, and he swung his leg over, and he sat down on Jimmy Rat’s bike. He pushed back in the saddle and got comfortable and put his foot up on a peg.

‘Hey,’ Jimmy Rat said. ‘You can’t do that. You can’t sit on another rider’s motorcycle. It’s disrespectful. It’s a thing, man.’

‘How big of a thing?’

‘It’s rule one.’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

Jimmy Rat said nothing.

Reacher said, ‘Answer my question and I’m out of here.’

‘What question?’

‘I want a place and a name in South Dakota, where you got that ring.’

No answer.

Reacher said, ‘I’m happy to sit here all night. Right now there are no witnesses. But sooner or later someone will come along. They’ll see me sitting on your bike. With you doing nothing about it. Like a pussy, not a rat. You’ll be finished.’

Jimmy Rat glanced all around.

He said, ‘This is not a guy you want to meet.’

‘Neither were you,’ Reacher said. ‘But here I am anyway.’

There was the sound of traffic, one block over. Maybe a pick-up truck, rolling slow. Jimmy Rat watched the corner. Would it turn in? It didn’t. It hissed away into the distance, and silence came back.

Reacher waited.

There was the sound of another car, a block the other way.

Jimmy Rat said, ‘He operates out of a laundromat in Rapid City. His name is Arthur Scorpio.’

The car on the parallel block was slowing. Preparing to turn towards them. It was thirty seconds from the corner. Reacher got off the bike, and squeezed back between the handlebars again, to the sidewalk. Jimmy Rat went the other way, around the bikes, into the shadows behind the building. Maybe in through the rear door.

The car showed up at the corner, right on time. It was the county cop. Back again.

THE COP PAUSED a beat, with his foot on the brake, and then he hauled on the wheel and stopped on the same kerb he had used before. He buzzed his window down and surveyed the scene. Six men, all horizontal, some of them moving. Plus Reacher on the sidewalk, standing straight.

The cop said, ‘Sir, please approach the vehicle.’

Reacher stepped over.

The cop said, ‘Congratulations.’

‘On what?’

‘What you did here.’

‘No, this was all self-inflicted. I was just a spectator. They had some kind of a big falling out. I think someone sat on the wrong motorcycle.’

‘That’s your story?’

‘You don’t believe it?’

‘Just theoretically, would I be expected to?’

‘The pawnbroker’s lawyer says it would be better for us all if you did.’

‘I want you out of the county.’

‘Works for me. I’m planning on the first bus.’

‘Not fast enough.’

‘Want me to steal a motorbike?’

‘I’ll drive you.’

‘You want me gone that bad?’

‘It would save a lot of paperwork. For both of us.’

‘Where would you drive me?’

‘I’m guessing they answered your question. So now you’re headed west. The county line out there is a straight shot to the I-90 on-ramp. Plenty of friendly folks. You’ll get a ride.’

So Reacher climbed in, and forty uneventful minutes later he climbed out again, in the middle of nowhere, on a dark two-lane road, next to a sign that said he was leaving one county and entering the next. He waved goodbye to the cop, and walked forward, a hundred yards, two hundred, and then he stopped and looked back. The cop flashed his lights and backed up and turned and drove away. Reacher watched his tail lights disappear, and then he moved on, to a spot where the shoulder widened a little. He waited there. Ahead of him was about sixty miles of two-lane, and then I-90. Which led west through Minnesota, into South Dakota, through Sioux Falls, and all the way to Rapid City.