Lee Child: Deep Down

The guy in black weighed maybe one-ninety, and he was doing about two miles an hour. Reacher weighed two-fifty, and he was doing about three miles an hour. Therefore closing speed was five miles an hour, and impact, should it happen, would involve some multiple of four hundred forty pounds a square inch.

Impact did happen.

But not at five miles an hour. Closing speed was dramatically increased by a sudden drive off Reacher’s back foot and the vicious clubbing swing of his elbow. Which therefore connected with a real big multiple of their combined body weights. Reacher caught the guy on the perfect cheekbone-nose-cheekbone line and the cracking and splintering was clearly audible over the wooden thud of feet on the floor. The guy went down like a motorcycle rider hitting a clothes line. Reacher walked on by and stepped out the back door.

Nobody or somebody?

That was the only question. And there is no bigger difference than nothing or something. Had they posted all of the main force at the front? Or had they left a lone guy as back-up?

They had left a guy. Dark hair, dark eyes, thicker coat than his pal. Smart as a whip, probably, but any human given instructions is at a disadvantage. Your target is a big guy, very tall, grey suit . And however smart you are, however quick, that lethal one, two, three question-and-answer drumbeat occupies precious mental milliseconds, at least big guy check, very tall check, grey suit check , like that, and the problem comes when the big guy in the grey suit occupies those same precious milliseconds by walking straight towards you and breaking your skull with his elbow.

Reacher walked on, to where an arch led from the yard to the alley.

The alley was wide enough for two horses and a beer cart axle. At the right hand end was an arch to another private yard. At the left hand end was the street. Reacher’s shoes were quiet. Class A uniform shoes. Therefore man-made soles. No one wanted leather welts. More to polish. Reacher stopped short of the street and put his back against the left hand wall. In a movie there would be a busted shard of mirror at his feet. He could edge it out and check the view. But he wasn’t in a movie. So he inched around, and peered out, one eye.

Thirty feet away. Four guys. Therefore a total of six dispatched. Six wet boys in a foreign embassy. Permanently. For her. Like no one has ever been protected before . A woman like this could be President of the United States . They had two cars parked on the far side of the street. Diplomatic plates. Probably never paid their parking fines. The guys were in a rough arc near the bar’s door, their backs to Reacher, just standing there semi-animated, like guys sometimes do for a spell, outside a bar.

There was no busted shard of mirror, but there was a broken quarter brick, about the size of a baseball. In no way reflective, but the need for a mirror was past. Reacher picked it up, and stepped out to the street, and turned left.

Thirty feet was ten paces, and Reacher kept a steady speed through the first five of them, and then he wound up and threw the brick fragment at the nearer car and accelerated hard so that the brick shattered the rear windshield and the four heads snapped towards the sound and Reacher’s elbow hit the first of those heads all in a tight little one-two-three sequence, less than a second beginning to end.

The first guy went down, obviously, vertically beneath Reacher’s scything follow through, and then Reacher spun back off the bounce and drove the same elbow backward into the next guy’s head. Which left two guys still on their feet, one close, one inconveniently distant, so Reacher feinted towards the farther one and then pivoted back and head-butted the nearer one, like he was trying to drive a fence post into dry baked earth with his head. Which left one still on his feet, which the guy put to good use by running for it.

Reacher let him go. There were things Reacher didn’t like to do. Running was one of them.

Twenty-four hours later Reacher was back in Frankfurt, where he stayed for a week, before moving on to Korea for a regular tour. Neither he nor anyone in the world heard anything more about Alice Vaz. He had no idea whether his analysis had been right or wrong, close or wildly inaccurate. But a month after his arrival in Seoul he heard he was being considered for a medal. The Legion of Merit, to be specific, and for no discernible reason, other than what might be gleaned from the notes in the manual: Awarded for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services to the United States .

Name:

Jack Reacher (no middle name)

Born:

29 October

Height:

6 foot 5 inches/1.95 metres

Weight:

220-250 lbs/100-113 kg

Size:

50-inch/127cm chest, 3XLT coat, 37-inch/95cm inside leg

Eyes:

Blue

Distinguishing marks:

Scar on corner of left eye, scar on upper lip

Education:

US Army base schools in Europe and the Far East; West Point Military Academy

Service:

US Military Police, thirteen years; first CO of the 110th Division; demoted from Major to Captain after six years, mustered out with rank of Major after seven

Service awards:

Top row: Silver Star, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit

Middle row: Soldier’s Medal, Bronze Star, Purple Heart

Bottom row: ‘Junk awards’

Last known address:

Unknown

Family:

Mother, Josephine Moutier Reacher, French national; Father, Career US Marine, served in Korea and Vietnam; Brother, Joe, five years in US Military Intelligence, Treasury Dept.

Special skills:

Small arms expert, outstanding on all man-portable weaponry and hand-to-hand combat

Languages:

Fluent English and French, passable Spanish

What he doesn’t have:

Driver’s licence; credit cards; Federal benefits; tax returns; dependents

Lee Child is one of the world’s leading thriller writers. His novels consistently achieve the number one slot in hardback and paperback on bestsellers lists on both sides of the Atlantic, and are translated into over forty languages. Born in Coventry, he now lives in America.

Visit www.leechild.com