Lee Child - Make Me

The front part of his brain said: Step forward .

He stepped forward.

The gun came up, and the guy said, “Don’t move.”

Reacher stepped forward again, all the way to the door.

The guy said, “I’ll shoot.”

You won’t, because you want to shoot me in the room, not in the doorway, because I’m too big to move afterward, and also because in real life suppressors don’t work like they work in the movies, with a polite little spit, but with a hell of a bang, not much quieter than a regular gunshot anyway, which will be audible all over the house, if you fire in the hallway .

So you won’t shoot .

Not yet .

The guy said, “Stay where you are.”

The back of Reacher’s brain said: If he has operational support in Chicago, you should check for reinforcements. Muscle is cheaper than silencers here .

Which was why he had pushed his luck all the way to the door. To get the angle. But there was nothing in the dim shadows beyond the guy’s shoulder. No bulk, no sound, no shifting stance, no breathing.

The guy was alone.

Reacher stood still.

The guy said, “Back inside now.”

From the room Chang said, “What do you want?”

You’re not going to say you want to shoot us, nothing personal, purely business, because that would induce a measure of last-ditch defense on our part .

The guy said, “I want to talk.”

“About what?”

“About what’s happening in Mother’s Rest. I think I can help you.”

And you have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn. I wasn’t born yesterday . Reacher stayed right where he was, filling the doorway, angled slightly, his front toe on the seam between the hallway floor and the room floor, with the guy about a yard in front of him, halfway to the staircase railing, and Chang about two yards behind him, still halfway into the room.

She said, “If you’re here to help us, why did you bring a gun?”

The guy didn’t answer.

Reacher had failed driving, but he had passed everything else. Including unarmed combat. Which sounded like a useful qualification, but wasn’t. The whole point of the military had been to engage with hot weapons at minimum risk to the home side. In other words, to shoot the other guy from a very long way away with a rifle, or failing that to shoot him closer by with a handgun. The unarmed combat courses had been afterthoughts. There had been a whiff of embarrassment. Hand-to-hand implied failure at the hot-weapons stage. Worst of all, the pointy-heads couldn’t find anything to write in the manual. There were no valid theories. Martial arts didn’t work in the real world. Judo and karate were useless without the mats and the referee and the special pajamas. So unarmed combat was brawling, basically. Like a bar fight. Whatever worked.

Chang said, “Put the gun down, and we’ll talk.”

He won’t, because that would give up his only advantage. He would be one-on-one with a giant, which was not appealing, especially because right then the giant was fixing him with the glassy stare of a psychopath .

Whatever worked.

The guy kept the gun where it was.

Reacher leaned forward an inch.

He wants to shoot me in the room, not the doorway. I’m too big to move .

The guy said, “Back up now.”

Reacher said nothing.

I’m too big to move .

And then it shifted. The man with the gun was no longer in charge. No longer in control. He was being pushed back. Inch by inch. Because of relentless pressure. Not physically. The tip of the suppressor didn’t move. But in his mind the man with the gun felt battered by a sudden and unexplained reversal of fortune, and he felt roasted by some kind of death rays coming out of the psychopath’s eyes.

Reacher said, “Don’t worry.”

Brawling. All in the head. Win them before you get in them .

He said, “Let’s see if we can help you out of this mess.”

His standard procedure, such as it was, based on what had worked, for a right-handed person facing a right-handed gunman, was to drive slightly forward but mostly counterclockwise, a savage rotation from the waist, explosive, exaggerated like a dance move, with the right shoulder whipping hard around, therefore the right elbow whipping hard around, and the right hand and the right palm, the palm smacking hard against the inside of the bad guy’s wrist, and then pushing it, pushing it hard, pushing the gun out of orbit, then clamping on like a claw, the other hand meanwhile coming palm-to-palm with the gun hand, the left against his right, like dancing, like fighting over the gun, but it’s not fighting over the gun, it’s pushing the gun hand, pushing the gun hand back, and back, all the time dragging the wrist forward with the claw, until the wrist breaks and the gun drops.

But you can save yourself a lot of effort, because he’s got a suppressor. That gun is twice as long as his muscle memory thinks it is. Which makes it easy. Go the short route .

Which Reacher did, twisting hard from the waist, but short, keeping his palm hooked close to his body, smacking not the guy’s wrist but the suppressor itself, pushing it wide and safe, then grasping it and hauling on it hard.

A standard procedure, so called because it was often used, like a default setting, because ninety-nine times in a hundred it worked. But this was the hundredth guy. He knew what to do. He didn’t allow himself to get hauled around off balance by keeping hold of the gun. He let go of it right away. Instantly. He gave it up, no contest. He just dropped it and spun away. It was his only smart play. It was one in a hundred.

It was a smart play because even though it gave Reacher sole possession of a lethal weapon, it gave him possession of it the wrong way around. He had grabbed it by the suppressor, in his right hand, palm outward, and he was still rotating away from the action, and the dead stop and the right-left-right shuffle to get the gun where it needed to be was going to occupy some finite slice of time, and then turning the barrel toward the target was going to occupy another slice, maybe longer, because it was a long barrel, with the suppressor in place. Not point and shoot. More like lashing the guy with a whip. Which would all take what? A second and a half? Two seconds?

During which time a guy smart enough to start such a play will be hitting you in the side of the head. He’ll be raining down the blows. Maybe four in your two seconds, if he’s any good with the speed bag. Better to let the gun go for the time being. Better to come back to it later. Better to get ready for what you know is coming .

Reacher opened his hand and the Ruger fell away, and he started to unwind his counterclockwise twist, bringing his elbow up backhand, ducking his head down, and the first of the incoming blows bounced off the top of his skull, and then a left hook caught him above the ear, a savage blow, like an iron bar, and then his own elbow arrived in the neighborhood, scything a kind of defensive no-fly-zone through the nearby air, butting aside the next incoming right, and he used its momentum to pull a left hook of his own out of the bag, but the bang above the ear had set back the unwinding process an inch or two, so his blind aim was off, and the punch landed weakly, in that it didn’t knock the guy through the staircase railing, but merely bounced him off it.

At which point the guy showed yet more talent. Naturally Reacher was leaning in, waiting to finish it, waiting for the guy to come flopping back, all loose and raggedy and defenseless, but the guy jerked away sideways, at ninety degrees. A supreme gymnastic effort. Remarkable, for a big man. And a lifesaver. With a bonus. Not only had the guy escaped a colossal impact but now Reacher had his weight on the wrong foot, so the guy took advantage, by stepping in a pace and crashing a short left into Reacher’s kidney. Which Reacher felt would leave a bruise.