Lee Child - Never Go Back

‘How far up the chain of command would you have to go before you found someone with unfettered 24/7 access to every national security system this country has?’

‘I assume everything changed after 9/11. I was gone four years before that. But I would guess an O8 in Intelligence might have that capability. Although not unfettered. They’re a paranoid bunch. They have all kinds of checks and balances. To do a little private snooping on an airline’s passenger manifest at five o’clock in the morning would be something else entirely.’

‘So who?’

‘Think about it the other way around. How far down the chain of command would you have to go? The president could do it. Or the National Security Adviser. Or anyone who gets in the Situation Room on a regular basis. The Chiefs of Staff, in other words. Except this is a round-the-clock responsibility, and it’s been running for more than a dozen years now. So there must be a separate desk. A Deputy Chief of Staff. Some kind of a go-to guy, tasked to be on top of everything, all the time. He could dip in and out any old time he wanted to. No checks and balances for him, because he’s the guy the checks and balances get reported to.’

‘So we’re dealing with a Deputy Chief of Staff?’

‘The bigger they are, the harder they fall.’

‘Conspiring with someone in Afghanistan?’

‘Those guys all know each other. They’re very social. Probably classmates.’

‘So who are these guys on the plane? They don’t look like Pentagon staffers.’

Reacher didn’t answer. He just watched and waited.

And then ten minutes later his patience was rewarded.

The woman in the fancy business suit got up and headed for the bathroom.

FORTY-FIVE

REACHER WAITED FOR the woman in the suit to pass by, and then he unclipped his belt and got up and headed forward, one row, two, three, four. He dropped into the woman’s vacated seat, and the makeweight from the second day reared back against the white-haired old guy with the cane, who was fast asleep with his head against the window.

Reacher said, ‘Let me see your ID.’

Which the guy didn’t. He just sat there, completely disconcerted, pressed up against his quarry like a sardine in a can. He was wearing some kind of nylon cargo pants, and a black sweatshirt under a black pea coat. He had a Hamilton watch on his left wrist, which meant he was probably right-handed. How long do women take in the bathroom? In Reacher’s experience they were not lightning fast. Four minutes, possibly.

Which was about three more than he needed.

He leaned forward, like he was going to head-butt the seat in front of him, and he rocked to his right, and he leaned back again, all one continuous fluid motion, so the guy ended up half trapped behind his right shoulder and his upper arm, and he reached over with his right hand and grabbed the guy’s right wrist, and he dragged the guy’s hand over towards him, twisting the wrist so the knuckles came first, with the palm facing away, and with his left hand he grabbed the guy’s right index finger, and he said, ‘Now you’ve got a choice. You can take it like a man, or you can scream like a little girl.’

And he broke the guy’s finger, by wrenching it down ninety degrees and snapping the first knuckle, and then he popped the second knuckle with the ball of his thumb. The guy jumped and squirmed and gasped in shock and pain, but he didn’t scream. Not like a little girl. Not with a hundred other people there.

Next Reacher broke his middle finger, in the same way, in the same two places, and then the guy started trying to get his trapped left arm free, which Reacher allowed, but only so he could swap hands and attend to the same two fingers on the other side.

Then he said, ‘ID?’

The guy didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was too busy whimpering and grimacing and staring down at his ruined hands. His fingers were all over the place, sticking out at odd angles, bent into L shapes. Reacher patted him down, at close quarters, pushing him and pulling him to get at all his pockets. Nothing exciting in most of them, but he felt a characteristic lump in the right hip pocket. A tri-fold wallet, for sure. He pulled it out and stood up. Across the aisle and one row back the other guy was half on his feet. The woman in the suit was out of the bathroom and coming towards him. She hung back to let him sit, and then she continued on her way.

Reacher dumped the wallet in Turner’s lap and re-clipped his belt. She said, ‘What did you do to him?’

‘He won’t be pulling any triggers for a week or two. Or hitting anything. Or driving. Or buttoning his pants. He’s off the table. Prevention is better than cure. Get your retaliation in first.’

Turner didn’t answer.

‘I know,’ Reacher said. ‘Feral. What you see is what you get.’

‘No, it was good work.’

‘How did it look?’

‘He was hopping around a bit. I knew something was happening.’

‘What’s in the wallet?’

Turner opened it up. It was a fat old item, made of decent leather that had moulded itself around its contents. Which were numerous. The back part had cash in two sections, a healthy quarter-inch wad of twenties, but nothing larger, and then a thinner selection of ones and tens and fives. The front part had three pockets sized to carry credit cards. On the top of the deck in the centre was a North Carolina driver’s licence, with the guy’s face in the picture, and the name Peter Paul Lozano. Behind the DL was a stack of credit cards, Visa and MasterCard and Discover and American Express, with more in the slots on the left and the right, all of them current, in-date and unexpired, all of them in the name of Peter P. Lozano.

There was no military ID.

‘Is he a civilian?’ Turner said. ‘Or sanitized?’

‘I’m guessing sanitized,’ Reacher said. ‘But Captain Edmonds can tell us. I’ll give her the name. She’s working with HRC.’

‘Are you going to get the other guy’s name?’

‘Two would triangulate better than one.’

‘How are you going to do it?’

‘I’ll think of something.’

Four rows ahead the guy named Lozano was hunched over and rocking back and forth in his seat, as if he had his hands clamped up under his arms to manage the pain. A stewardess came by, and he glanced at her, as if he wanted to speak, but then he looked away again. Because what was he going to say? A bad man came by and hurt me? Like a little girl? Like a snitch in the principal’s office? Clearly not his style. Not in front of a hundred other people.

‘Military,’ Reacher said. ‘Don’t you think? Boot camp taught him to keep his mouth shut.’

Then the other guy squeezed out past the old lady next to him. The guy from the first night, with all the verbal chit-chat. He stepped forward a row and bent down to talk to his buddy. It turned into a regular little conference. There was discussion, there was exhibition of injuries, there were hostile glances over the shoulder. The woman in the business suit looked away, her face blank and frozen.

Turner said, ‘It won’t work twice. Forewarned is forearmed. The guy is getting a damn play by play.’

‘And hoping his seatmate has a strong bladder.’

‘Do you really think Edmonds will get us the file on 3435?’

‘She either will or she won’t. It’s about fifty-fifty. Like the toss of a coin.’

‘And either way is OK with you, right?’

‘I’d prefer to have the file.’

‘But you’re not going to be heartbroken if you don’t get it. Because just asking for it was enough. Asking for it was like telling them we’re one step away. Like our breath on their necks.’

‘I’d prefer to have the file,’ Reacher said again.