Diane Capri - Don't Know Jack

Because too many people had access to FBI files. She had been burned before when confidential reports were acquired by unintended recipients who lived to tell about it. She never made the same mistake twice. In the field, she relied on memory alone. Her formal reports were carefully drafted and filed according to protocol, but her private records remained her own. It was impossible to be too careful.

She copied the Roscoe and Finlay files, too. Straightforward information there, a bit unusual but nothing mysterious. None of it explained why Roscoe and Finlay had been selected as interview subjects, except one point of possible connection: Margrave, Georgia.

Today’s destination.

Fifteen years ago, Roscoe and Finlay had been present in Margrave. Reacher’s honorable discharge from the army was six months fresh back then. Whether Reacher had been in Margrave, and whether they’d all met there, and what had happened between them, were just three of the thousand questions Kim would need to answer. But something happened. The boss wouldn't send her there otherwise.

She glanced at her watch. There was still time before landing. She ran through the Reacher material one more time.

Birth certificate (West Berlin 1960); education record showing attendance on military bases around the world, including one year in Saigon, Viet Nam. Kim read that fact for the tenth time before the taser charge she’d felt the first nine times lessened. Kim’s mother was Vietnamese; her father served in the U.S. Army in Viet Nam. No connection to Reacher back then, right?

No. Reacher was a kid when Kim’s parents left the country; Reacher’s father was a Marine; Army and Marines hadn’t mixed much in Viet Nam. There couldn’t be any connection between them. But was Viet Nam the reason the boss had chosen her to lead this assignment?

She pushed that new worry aside. No time to deal with it now and nothing she could do about it from 35,000 feet anyway.

Reacher had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (1984). Parents deceased (father 1988; mother 1990). One brother, also deceased (1997).

At West Point and afterward, until he was honorably discharged, the file contained the usual batch of military forms crafted in army-speak. Uninitiated readers would need an interpreter to decipher the batch of acronyms. When Kim copied the contents of Reacher’s file into her own private documents, she included the full phrases and definitions, and studied them carefully, testing herself, building her knowledge. She’d labeled the section “Accomplishments,” but the title was far too benign when you knew what each entry meant. Reacher had investigated, arrested, subdued, and otherwise dealt with some of the most highly trained soldiers on earth, all of them capable of extreme violence.

He had done it by matching their violence with his own.

He was a killer.

So what did the FBI want from him now?

He’d been decorated several times, each for some form of extraordinary heroism or outstanding service or extreme military achievement. He had been wounded in combat and been given a Purple Heart. He’d been trained and won awards as a sniper. Summary: Reacher had handled whatever had come his way. He’d faced the enemy and come out alive. More than once. Kim imagined the type. He’d be confident, hard to persuade, manipulate or overpower. In no way like any other candidate she’d investigated before.

No wonder the project was under the radar.

And how the hell would she accomplish it?

The pilot announced the initial descent into Atlanta. Not much time left for electronic devices. She kept on working. Reacher’s file contained no details on the situations he’d handled as a military cop. Those would have been filed separately at the time the investigations took place. Kim made a note to find them. The search wouldn’t be easy, but the years Reacher spent doing his job were the last that would have clear and complete records, and those records would be the only clues to his current activities or location. Understanding how he’d performed back then would teach her the man and his methods. And scare her out of her wits, probably, if she had any wits left by then.

The file ended with Reacher’s army discharge papers, followed by a short memo stating that he’d been off the grid for more than fifteen years. No one knew where he was. FBI files, Homeland Security files, all were empty of references to Major Jack (none) Reacher, U.S. Army, Retired.

No way , she’d typed into her notes. Can’t happen .

Was he dead? In prison? Witness protection? Classified assignment? At a minimum, either Reacher himself or someone else didn’t want him found.

Maybe he was unfindable.

And maybe that was the good news.

Twenty minutes from Atlanta the plane started to bounce around like a steer on cocaine. Clear air turbulence, the pilot called it, but Kim didn’t believe him. More likely a fatal mechanical fault. She pulled her seatbelt as tight as possible. The belt failed to hold her securely in the wide seat. She would have some odd bruises tomorrow. If there was a tomorrow. Not that anyone would see her bruises. The Danish she’d eaten threatened to come back up. She wanted to grab the airsickness bag, but she’d have to crack her fingers away from the armrests to reach for it.

Then the plane’s wheels bounced twice on the tarmac and skidded a long, loud, smoky distance before grabbing the runway hard enough to jerk her head off the seat and slam it back again. She breathed out and felt stupid, as always. Then her embarrassment doubled when she looked down at her lap and realized she’d never finished getting dressed.

Kim waited curbside behind the wheel of a rented Chevy Blazer. She took a look at the airline’s web site flight tracking data on her personal smart phone. “Terrorist.com,” she called it, because constant flight status updates on any commercial flight were quick and easy to find. Agent Gaspar’s flight from Miami had just landed. He’d be with her soon. She ate the last antacid in the roll. When it melted, she washed the chalky taste away with a swig of black coffee.

Then she opened her computer and stared one more time at Jack Reacher’s face, critically analyzing the full photo, committing every pixel to memory. The Army’s black and white regulation head shot suggested but didn’t confirm Reacher’s height, which was recorded at six-five, or his hair color, described elsewhere as fair, or his eye color, which was blue, or his enormous build, listed at two hundred and fifty pounds.

Kim shuddered. On the inside she was one hundred percent lithe, lanky, formidable German, like her father. But on the outside, she was exactly 5’0” tall, like her mother, and she weighed 100 pounds on her fat days. Reacher was more than twice her size; she hoped she was more than twice as smart. Brains, not brawn, would have to be her weapon.

Therefore she needed a better photo. An army photo wouldn’t do the job. People would remember Reacher. He wasn’t just memorable. More like unforgettable. But no doubt patriotism was still alive and well in Margrave, Georgia. Locals would say nothing negative about a man dressed in army green and gold and sporting a chestful of medals. Witnesses might even deny knowing him, even though it was a federal crime to lie to an FBI agent in the course of an investigation.

Kim had been trained to observe witness reactions to photographs. Witnesses found it difficult to deny recognition, and harder still to lie effectively when confronted with a picture. People had trouble remembering names, but faces were imprinted in a different area of the brain, more easily recalled. So she would know if a witness recognized Reacher, even if they lied. She’d be able to tell. But failure was not an option, so she needed a different picture.