Lee Child: The Affair

I stepped out of the trees and faced east and saw tiny red tail lights disappearing into the darkness. The noise faded behind them and the exhaust smoke drifted and cleared. I turned the other way and far in the distance and right on cue I saw a lone pair of headlights click on. I saw their beams bounce and swing, side to side, up and down, and I saw them lead the way north, out through the lot, and then I saw them swing toward me and bounce twice more as the wheels behind them climbed up off the dirt and onto the blacktop.

The clock in my head showed one minute to eleven.

I walked west, back over the railroad crossing, ten yards toward the town, and then I stopped and stepped out to the crown of the road and raised my hand high, palm out, like a traffic cop.

The headlight beams picked me up maybe a hundredyards out. I felt the hot light on my face and on my palm and I knew Reed Riley could see me. I heard him lift off the gas and slow down. Pure habit. Infantrymen spend a lot of time riding in vehicles, and many of their journeys are enabled or directed or otherwise interrupted by guys in BDUs waving them through or pointing them left or pointing them right or bringing them to a temporary standstill.

I stayed right where I was, my hand still raised, and the flat green staff car came to a stop with its front bumper a yard from my knees. By then my eye line was high above the headlights, and I could see Riley and his father side by side behind the windshield glass. Neither one looked surprised or impatient. Both looked prepared to waste a minute on a matter of routine. Riley looked exactly like his photograph, and his father was an older version, a little thinner, a little larger in the ears and the nose, a little more powdered and presentable. He was dressed like a jerk, like every other visiting politician I had ever seen. He was wearing a khaki canvas Ike jacket over a formal shirt with no tie. The jacket had a United States Senate roundel on it, as if that safe and insulated branch of the legislature was a combat unit.

I stepped around to Reed Riley’s door, and he wound his window down. His face started out one way, and then it changed when he saw the oak leaves on my collar. He said, “Sir?”

I didn’t answer. I took one more step and opened the rear door and got in the back seat behind him. I closed the door after me and shuffled over to the center of the bench and both men craned around to look at me.

“Sir?” Riley said again.

“What’s going on here?” his father asked.

“Change of plan,” I said.

I could smell beer on their breath and smoke and sweat in their clothing.

“I have a plane to catch,” the senator said.

“At midnight,” I said. “No one will look for you before then.”

“What the hell does that mean? Do you know who I am?”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

“What do you want?”

“Instant obedience,” I said. I took out the Beretta for the second time that evening, fast, swift, like a magician. One minute my hand was empty, and the next it was full of dull steel. I clicked the safety to fire, a small sound, but ominous in the silence.

The senator said, “You’re making a very serious mistake, young man. As of right now your military career is over. Whether it gets any worse than that is entirely up to you.”

“Be quiet,” I said. I leaned forward and bunched Reed Riley’s collar in my hand, the same way I had with the sergeant from Benning. But this time I put the muzzle of the gun in the hollow behind his right ear. Soft flesh, no bone. Just the right size.

“Drive on,” I said. “Very slowly. Turn left on the crossing. Head up the railroad line.”

Riley said, “What?”

“You heard me.”

“But the train is coming.”

“At midnight,” I said. “Now hop to it, soldier.”

It was a difficult task. Instinctively he wanted to lean forward over the wheel for a better view out the front. But I wouldn’t let him. I had him hauled back hard against the seat, pulled and pushed. But even so, he did OK. He rolled forward and spun the wheel hard and crabbed diagonally up onto the rise. He lined it up and felt his right front tire hit the groove in the pavement. He eased forward, dead straight, and the edge of the blacktop fell away under us. His right-hand tires stayed up on the rail. His left-hand wheels were down on the ties. A fine job. As good as Deveraux.

“You’ve done this before,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

We rolled on, less than walking pace, radically tilted, the right side of the car up and running smooth, the left side down and rising and falling over the ties like a boat on a swell. We rolled past the old water tower, then ten more yards, and then I said, “Stop.”

“Here?”

“It’s a good spot,” I said.

He braked gently and the car stopped, right on the line, still tilted over. I kept hold of his collar and kept the gun in place. Ahead of me through the windshield the rails ran straight north to a vanishing point far in the distance, like slim silver streaks in the moonlight.

I said, “Captain, use your left hand and open all the windows.”

“Why?”

“Because you guys already stink. And it’s only going to get worse, believe me.”

Riley scrabbled blindly with his fingers and first his father’s window came down, then mine, then the one opposite me.

Fresh night air came in on the breeze.

I said, “Senator, lean over and turn the lights off.”

It took him a second to find the switch, but he did it.

I said, “Now turn the engine off and give me the key.”

He said, “But we’re parked on the railroad track.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“You asked me that before. And I answered. Now do what you’re told. Or do I have to make a campaign contribution first? In which case please consider my contribution to be not shooting your son through the knee.”

The old guy made a small sound in his throat, the kind of thing I had heard once or twice before, when jokes turned out not to be jokes, when dire situations turned from bad to worse, when nightmares were revealed to be waking realities. He leaned sideways and twisted the key and pulled it and held it out to me.

“Toss it on the back seat,” I said.

He did so, and it landed next to me and skittered down the slope in the cushion made by the tilt of the car.

I said, “Now both of you put your hands on your head.”

The senator went first, and I pulled the Beretta back to let his son follow suit. I let go of his collar and sat back in my seat and said, “What’s the muzzle velocity on a Beretta M9?”

The senator said, “I have no idea.”

“But your boy should. We spent a lot of time and money training him.”

“I don’t remember,” Riley said.

“Close to thirteen hundred feet per second,” I said. “And your spinal cords are about three feet from me. Therefore about two-thousandths of a second after either one of you moves a single muscle, you’re either dead or crippled. Get it?”

No response.

I said, “I need an answer.”

“We get it,” Riley said.

His father said, “What do you want?”

“Confirmation,” I said. “I want to be sure I have this thing straight.”

I picked up the car key and put it in my pocket. I spread myleft leg wide and braced my foot and got comfortable on the tilted bench. I said, “Captain, you lied to your men about dating Sheriff Deveraux, am I right?”

Riley’s father said, “What possible basis do you have for interrogating us?”

“Forty-nine minutes,” I said. “Then the train gets here.”