Lee Child - Bad Luck and Trouble

“Break back a yard and left, Dave,” he said.

O’Donnell was like a blind man. His eyes were tight on the two guys and wouldn’t leave them. He heard Reacher’s voice and tracked backward and left, fast. Reacher pulled the tarot reader’s door and held it open and let O’Donnell loop in around him. The two guys were following. Now twenty yards away. Reacher crowded inside after O’Donnell. The tarot parlor was empty apart from a woman of about nineteen sitting alone at a table. The table was a dining room item about seven feet long, draped to the floor with red cloth. Packs of cards all over it. The woman had long dark hair and was wearing a purple cheesecloth dress that was probably leaking vegetable dye all over her skin.

“Got a back room?” Reacher asked her.

“Just a toilet,” she said.

“Go in there and lie down on the floor, right now.”

“What’s up?”

“You tell me.”

The woman didn’t move until O’Donnell’s hands came out of his pockets. The knuckles were on his right fist like a shark’s smile. The switchblade was in his left hand. It was closed. Then it popped open with a sound like a bone breaking. The woman jumped up and fled. An Angelina, who worked on Vine. She knew the rules of the game.

O’Donnell said, “Who are these guys?”

“They just bought me these shirts.”

“Is this going to be a problem?”

“Possibly.”

“Plan?”

“You like the Hardballer?”

“Better than nothing.”

“OK, then.” Reacher flipped up the edge of the tablecloth and crouched down and backed under the table on his knees. O’Donnell followed him to his left and dragged the cloth back into position. He touched it with his knife, a short gentle sideways stroke, and a slit appeared in front of him. He widened it to the shape of an eye with his fingers. Then he did the same in front of Reacher. Reacher braced the flat of his hands against the underside of the table. O’Donnell swapped the knife into his right hand and braced his left the same way as Reacher’s.

Then they waited.

The guys were at the door within about eight seconds. They paused and peered in through the glass and then they pulled the door and came inside. Paused again, six feet in front of the table, guns pointed straight out with the butts twisted parallel to the floor.

They took a cautious step forward.

Paused again.

O’Donnell’s right hand was wrapped with the knuckles and was gripping the knife but it was the only free hand under the table. He used it to count down. Thumb, index finger, middle finger. One, two, three.

On three Reacher and O’Donnell heaved the table up and out. They powered it through an explosive quarter-circle, three feet in the air, three feet forward. The flat of the top tipped vertical and collected the guns first and then moved on and smacked the two guys full in the chests and faces. It was a heavy table. Solid wood. Maybe oak. It put the guys straight down with no trouble at all. They went over on their backs in a cloud of tarot cards and lay still under the slab in a tangle of red cloth. Reacher got up and stepped onto the upside-down table and rode it like a surfboard. Then he jumped up and down a couple of times. O’Donnell timed it for when Reacher’s weight was off it and kicked the table backward six inches until the two guys were exposed to the waist and their gun hands were accessible. He took the Hardballers and used his switchblade to slice the webs of the two guys’ thumbs. Painful, and a real disincentive against holding pistols again until they healed, which could be a long time, depending on their approach to nutrition and antisepsis. Reacher smiled, briefly. The technique had been a part of his unit’s SOP. Then he stopped smiling, because he recalled that Jorge Sanchez had developed it, and Jorge Sanchez was dead in the desert somewhere.

“Not too much of a problem,” O’Donnell said.

“We’ve still got the good stuff,” Reacher said.

O’Donnell put his ceramic collection back in his pockets and tucked a Hardballer into his waistband under his suit coat. Handed the second gun to Reacher, who shoved it in his pants pocket and draped his T-shirts over it. Then they stepped out to the sunshine and headed north on Vine again and turned west on Hollywood Boulevard.

Karla Dixon was waiting for them in the Chateau Marmont’s lobby.

“Curtis Mauney called,” she said. “He liked that thing you did with Franz’s mail. So he got the Vegas PD to check through the stuff in Sanchez and Orozco’s office. And they found something.”

Mauney showed up in person thirty minutes later. He stepped through the lobby door, still tired, still carrying his battered leather briefcase. He sat down and asked, “Who is Adrian Mount?”

Reacher looked up. Azhari Mahmoud, Adrian Mount, Alan Mason, Andrew MacBride, Anthony Matthews . The Syrian and his four aliases. Information Mauney didn’t know they had.

“No idea,” he said.

“You sure?”

“Pretty much.”

Mauney balanced his briefcase on his knees and opened the lid and took out a sheet of paper. Handed it over. It was blurred and indistinct. It looked like a fax of a copy of a copy of a fax. At the top it said Department of Homeland Security . But not in the style of an official letterhead. It looked more like content hacked out of a computer file. Plain DOS script. It related to an airline booking that a guy called Adrian Mount had made on British Airways, London to New York. The booking had been finalized two weeks ago for a flight three days ago. First class, one way, Heathrow to JFK, seat 2K, last departure of the evening, expensive, paid for with a legitimate credit card. Booked through British Airways’ U.K. website, although it was impossible to say exactly where in the world the mouse had been physically clicked.

“This came in the mail?” Reacher asked.

Mauney said, “It was stored in their fax machine’s memory. It came in two weeks ago. The machine was out of paper. But we know that Sanchez and Orozco weren’t around two weeks ago. Therefore this must be a response to a request they made at least a week earlier. We think they put a bunch of names on an unofficial watch list.”

“A bunch of names?”

“We found what we think is the original request. They had notes circulating in the mail, just like Franz. Four names.” Mauney pulled a second sheet of paper from his case. It was a photocopy of a sheet of blank paper with Manuel Orozco’s spidery handwriting all over it. Adrian Mount, Alan Mason, Andrew MacBride, Anthony Matthews, check w. DHS for arrival . Fast untidy scrawl, written in a hurry, not that Orozco’s penmanship had ever been neat.

Four names. Not five. Azhari Mahmoud’s real name wasn’t there. Reacher figured that Orozco knew that whoever the hell Mahmoud was, he would be traveling under an alias. No point in having aliases if you didn’t use them.

“DHS,” Mauney said. “The Department of Homeland Security. You know how hard it is for a civilian to get cooperation out of Homeland Security? Your pal Orozco must have called in a shitload of favors. Or spent a shitload of bribe money. I need to know why.”

“Casino business, maybe.”

“Possible. Although Vegas security doesn’t necessarily worry if bad guys show up in New York. New York arrivals are more likely headed for Atlantic City. Someone else’s problem.”

“Maybe they share. Maybe there’s a network. Guys can hit Jersey first and Vegas second.”

“Possible,” Mauney said again.

“Did this Adrian Mount guy actually arrive in New York?”

Mauney nodded. “The INS computer has him entering through Terminal Four. Terminal Seven had already closed for the night. The flight was delayed.”