Lee Child - Worth Dying For

Jacob raised his glass and said, ‘Here’s to us,’ because life was good.

Reacher found a paring knife in a kitchen drawer and cut the decapitated remains of the flashlight off the shotgun barrel. Laymen misunderstood gunpowder. A charge powerful enough to propel a heavy projectile through the air at hundreds of miles an hour did so by creating a shaped bubble of exploding gas energetic enough to destroy anything it met on its way out of the barrel. Which was why military flashlights were made of metal and mounted with the lens behind the muzzle, not in front of it. He tossed the shattered plastic in the trash, and then he looked around the kitchen and asked, ‘Where’s my coat?’

The doctor’s wife said, ‘In the closet. When we came back in I took all the coats and hung them up. I kind of scooped yours up along the way. I thought I should hide it. I thought you might have useful stuff in it.’

Reacher glanced into the hallway. ‘Those guys didn’t search my pockets?’

‘No.’

‘I should kick them in the head again. It might raise their IQ.’

The doctor’s wife told him to sit down in a chair. He did, and she examined him carefully, and said, ‘Your nose looks really terrible.’

‘I know,’ Reacher said. He could see it between his eyes, purple and swollen, out of focus, an unexpected presence. He had never seen his own nose before, except in a mirror.

‘My husband should take a look at it.’

‘Nothing he can do.’

‘It needs to be set.’

‘I already did that.’

‘No, seriously.’

‘Believe me, it’s as set as it’s ever going to get. But you could clean the cuts, if you like. With that stuff you used before.’

Dorothy Coe helped her. They started with warm water, to sponge the crusted blood off his face. Then they got to work with the cotton balls and the thin astringent liquid. The skin had split in big U-shaped gashes. The open edges stung like crazy. The doctor’s wife was thorough. It was not a fun five minutes. But finally the job was done, and Dorothy Coe rinsed his face with more water, and then patted it dry with a paper towel.

The doctor’s wife asked, ‘Do you have a headache?’

‘A little bit,’ Reacher said.

‘Do you know what day it is?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who’s the president?’

‘Of what?’

‘The Nebraska Corn Growers.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘I should bandage your face.’

‘No need,’ Reacher said. ‘Just lend me a pair of scissors.’

‘What for?’

‘You’ll see.’

She found scissors and he found the roll of duct tape. He cut a neat eight-inch length and laid it glue-side up on the table. Then he cut a two-inch length and trimmed it to the shape of a triangle. He stuck the triangle glue-side to glue-side in the centre of the eight-inch length, and then he picked the whole thing up and smoothed it into place across his face, hard and tight, a broad silver slash that ran from one cheekbone to the other, right under his eyes. He said, ‘This is the finest field dressing in the world. The Marines once flew me from the Lebanon to Germany with nothing but duct tape keeping my lower intestine in.’

‘It’s not sterile.’

‘It’s close enough.’

‘It can’t be very comfortable.’

‘But I can see past it. That’s the main thing.’

Dorothy Coe said, ‘It looks like war paint.’

‘That’s another point in its favour.’

The doctor came in and stared for a second. But he didn’t comment. Instead he asked, ‘What happens next?’

THEY WENT BACK TO THE DINING ROOM AND SAT IN THE DARK, SO they could watch the road. There were three more Cornhuskers out there somewhere, and it was possible they would come in and out on rotation, swapping duties, spelling each other. Like shift work. Reacher hoped they all showed up sooner or later. He kept the duct tape and the Remington close by.

The doctor said, ‘We haven’t heard any news.’

Reacher nodded. ‘Because you weren’t allowed to use the phone. But it rang, and so you think something new has happened.’

‘We think three new things have happened. Because it rang three times.’

‘Best guess?’

‘The gang war. Three men left, three phone calls. Maybe they’re all dead now.’

‘They can’t all be dead. The winner must still be alive, at least. Murder-suicide isn’t normally a feature of gang fights.’

‘OK, then maybe it’s two dead. Maybe the man in the Cadillac got the Italians.’

Reacher shook his head. ‘More likely the other way around. The man in the Cadillac will get picked off very easily. Because he’s alone, and because he’s new up here. This terrain is very weird. It takes some getting used to. The Italians have been here longer than him. In fact they’ve been here longer than me, and I feel like I’ve been here for ever.’

The doctor’s wife said, ‘I don’t see how this is a gang war at all. Why would a criminal in Las Vegas or wherever just step aside because two of his men got hurt in Nebraska?’

Reacher said, ‘The two at the motel got more than hurt.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Think about it,’ Reacher said. ‘Suppose the big guy is at home in Vegas, taking it easy by the pool, smoking a cigar, and his supplier calls him up and says he’s cutting him out of the chain. What does the big guy do? He sends his boys over, that’s what. But his boys just got beat. So he’s bankrupt now. He’s fresh out of threats. He’s powerless. It’s over for him.’

‘He must have more boys.’

‘They all have more boys. They can choose to fight two on two, or ten on ten, or twenty on twenty, and there’s always a winner and there’s always a loser. They accept the referee’s decision and they move on. They’re like rutting stags. It’s in their DNA.’

‘So what kind of gangs are they?’

‘The usual kind. The kind that makes big money out of something illegal.’

‘What kind of something?’

‘I don’t know. But it’s not gambling debts. It’s not something theoretical on paper. It’s something real. Something physical. With weight, and dimensions. It has to be. That’s what the Duncans do. They run a transportation company. So they’re trucking something in, and it’s getting passed along from A to B to C to D.’

‘Drugs?’

‘I don’t think so. You don’t need to truck drugs south to Vegas. You can get them direct from Mexico or South America. Or California.’

‘Drug money, then. To be laundered in the casinos. From the big cities in the East, maybe coming through Chicago.’

‘Possible,’ Reacher said. ‘Certainly it’s something very valuable, which is why they’re all in such an uproar. It has to be the kind of thing where you smile and rub your hands when you see it rolling in through the gate. And it’s late now, possibly, which is why there are so many boots on the ground up here. They’re all anxious. They all want to see it arrive, because it’s physical, and valuable. They all want to put their hands on it and babysit their share. But first of all, they want to help bust up the logjam.’

‘Which is what?’

‘Me, I think. Either the Duncans are late for some other reason and they’re using me as an excuse, or this is something a stranger absolutely can’t be allowed to see. Maybe the area has to be sanitized before it can come in. Have you ever been told to stay away from anywhere for periods of time?’

‘Not really.’

‘Have you ever seen any weird stuff arrive? Any big unexplained vehicles?’

‘We see Duncan trucks all the time. Not so much in the winter.’

‘I heard the harvest trucks are all in Ohio.’

‘They are. Nothing more than vans here now.’