Lee Child - Never Go Back

The guy from the half-ton said, ‘No.’

‘I’ll ask again,’ Reacher said. ‘But I won’t ask three times.’

The guy said, ‘No.’

‘Then bring it, my friend. Show me the good stuff. You got good stuff, right? Or is driving around in circles all you can do?’

Reacher knew what was coming. The guy was obviously right-handed. So it would be an inswinging right, starting low and never really getting high enough, like a sidearm pitcher, like a boxing glove fixed to a door, and the door slamming, with you in the doorway. That’s what it was going to be like. When it came. The guy was still shuffling around, still trying to find a launch pad.

And then he found one, and then it came. Like a glove on a door. What are you going to do? Most people are going to duck out the way. But one six-year-old at the sci-fi movie isn’t. He’s going to turn sideways, and push forward hard, off bent knees, and he’s going to meet the door with his shoulder, nearer the hinge, about halfway across its width, maybe a little more, a solid aggressive shove where the momentum is lower, well inside the arc of the glove.

Which is what Reacher did with the guy from the half-ton. He twisted, and pushed off, and slammed the guy with his shoulder, right in the centre of his chest, and the guy’s fist flailed all the way around Reacher’s back and came at him from the far side, limp, like the guy was trying to cop a feel in the picture house. After which the guy wobbled backward a long pace and got his balance by jabbing his hands out from his body, which left him stock still and wide open, like a starfish, which he seemed to realize immediately, because he glanced down in horror at Reacher’s moving feet.

Newsflash, my friend.

It’s not the feet.

It’s the head.

The feet were moving in a boxer’s shuffle, creating aim and momentum, and then the upper body was whipping forward, and the neck was snapping down, and the forehead was crunching into the bridge of the guy’s nose, and then snapping back up, job done, Reacher jerking upright, the guy from the half-ton staggering on rubber knees, half a step, and then the other half, and then a vertical collapse, weak and helpless, like a Victorian lady fainting into a crinoline.

Reacher looked up at Turner on the walkway.

He said, ‘Which truck do you think is the best?’

THIRTY-EIGHT

THE CLAUGHTON CODE of honour was a wonderful thing. That was clear. None of the six spectators interfered or intervened in any way. Either that, or they were worried about what Reacher might do to them, now that his hands were out of his pockets.

In the end Turner liked the fat guy’s truck the best. It was a V-8, but not the one with the leaky muffler. It had the second-fullest tank of gas. It had good tyres. It looked comfortable. She drove it up next to the hidden Corvette, and they transferred Billy Bob’s money from the Corvette’s load space to the truck’s glove compartment, which two receptacles were about the same size, and then they rumbled back past the sullen crowd, and Reacher tossed the Corvette key out his window. Then Turner hit the gas and made the left on 220, past the state troopers, past the café with the griddle, and onward to the crossroads in the centre of town.

Thirty minutes later Petersburg was twenty miles behind them. They were heading west, on a small road on the edge of a national forest. The truck had turned out to be a Toyota, not new, but it ran well. It was as quiet as a library, and it had satellite navigation. It was so heavy it smoothed out the bumps in the road. It had pillowy leather seats and plenty of space inside. Turner looked tiny in it. But happy. She had something to work with. She had a whole scenario laid out.

She said, ‘I can see why these guys are worried. An A.M. number changes everything. The guy is known to us for a reason. Either his activities, or his opinions. And either thing is going to lead us somewhere.’

Reacher asked, ‘How do we access the database?’

‘Change of plan. We’re going to Pittsburgh.’

‘Is the database in Pittsburgh?’

‘No, but there’s a big airport in Pittsburgh.’

‘I was just in Pittsburgh.’

‘At the airport?’

‘On the road.’

‘Variety is the spice of life,’ she said.

Getting to Pittsburgh meant cutting northwest across the state, and hitting I-79 somewhere between Clarksburg and Morgan-town. Then it was a straight shot, basically north. Safe enough, Reacher thought. The Toyota was as big as a house and weighed three tons, but it was effectively camouflaged. What’s the best place to hide a grain of sand? On a beach. And if the Toyota was a grain of sand, then West Virginia’s roads were a beach. Practically every vehicle in sight was a full-size pick-up truck. And Western Pennsylvania would be no different. A visitor from outer space would assume the viability of the United States depended entirely on the ability of the citizenry to carry eight-by-four sheets of board, safely and in vast quantities.

The late start to the day turned out to be a good thing. Or a feature, not a bug, as Turner might have put it. It meant they would be driving the highway in the dark. Better than driving it in the light. On the one hand highways got the heaviest policing, but on the other hand cops can’t see what they can’t see, and there was nothing less visible than a pair of headlights doing the legal limit on an Interstate highway at night.

Reacher said, ‘How are we going to get the exact A.M. number?’

Turner said, ‘We’re going to take a deep breath and go way out on a limb. We’re going to ask someone to get all snarled up in a criminal conspiracy, aiding and abetting.’

‘Who?’

‘Sergeant Leach, I hope. She’s pretty solid, and her heart is in the right place.’

‘I agree,’ Reacher said. ‘I liked her.’

‘We have records and transcripts in the file room. All she has to do is go take a look at them.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then it gets harder. We’ll have a reference number, but not a name or a biography. And a sergeant can’t access that database. I’m the only one at Rock Creek who can. Morgan now, I suppose, but we can hardly ask him.’

Reacher said, ‘Leave that part to me.’

‘You don’t have access.’

‘But I know someone who does.’

‘Who?’

‘The Judge Advocate General.’

‘You know him?’

‘Not personally. But I know his place in the process. He’s forcing me to defend a bullshit charge. I’m entitled to cast the net wide in my own defence. I can ask for pretty much anything I want. Major Sullivan can handle it for me.’

‘No, in that case my lawyer should. It’s much more relevant to my bullshit charge than yours.’

‘Too dangerous for the guy. Moorcroft got beaten half to death for trying to get you out of jail. They’re never going to let your counsel get near that information.’

‘Then it’s dangerous for Sullivan, too.’

‘I don’t think they’ll be watching her yet. They’ll find out afterwards for sure, but by then it’s too late. There’s no point closing the barn door after the horse is out.’

‘Will she do it for you?’

‘She’ll have to. She has a legal obligation.’

They drove on, quiet and comfortable, staying in West Virginia, tracking around the jagged dip where the end of Maryland’s panhandle juts south, then setting course for a town called Grafton. From there the Toyota’s electronics showed a road running northwest, which joined I-79 just south of Fairmont.

Turner said, ‘Were you worried?’

Reacher said, ‘About what?’

‘Those eight guys.’

‘Not very.’

‘Then I guess that study from when you were six was right on the money.’