Lee Child - The Midnight Line

Stackley was huffing and puffing in the dirt, and squirming a little, which Reacher thought was excessive for a guy barely hurt. He checked the pick-up’s cab. Nothing in the glove compartment. But under the lip of the driver’s seat there was a mounting clip, where a fire extinguisher might have been, except in this case the clip had been modified, and was currently full of another elderly nine-millimeter with wooden grips, in this case an old Springfield P9. Apart from that there was nothing but drifts of old gas receipts and sandwich wrappers.

Reacher stepped back to where Stackley was lying, and he held the old Smith out at arm’s length. He clicked the button and dropped the mag from five feet up. It hit Stackley in the head. Stackley yelped. Reacher dropped the gun itself. Stackley yelped again. Reacher did the same thing with the Ruger, mag and frame, and then the Springfield, mag and frame. A total of six separate yelps.

Reacher said, “Get up now, Stackley.”

Stackley forced himself upright, a little bent over, a little pale in the face. All shook up. Rubbing his painful head. Facing the same kind of animal issues the two cowboys had, the night before. You fail to kill a man, and then you look up and see him right there. Does he own you now?

Reacher said, “Open up the back of the truck.”

The doors were flimsy plastic. Stackley got them propped wide. Then he stood back. Reacher pulled a blanket aside. One forlorn box, mostly empty. It had just three patches left in it, each one individually wrapped, all of them sliding around in a space made for more.

Not much .

Reacher stepped away.

“Stocks seem to be running low,” he said. “What do you do about that, in the normal course of business?”

“I’m sorry, man,” Stackley said. “About the other thing. I had no choice. I was told to do it. It wasn’t personal.”

“We’ll discuss it later,” Reacher said.

“There’s a guy. I have to do what he says. He told me to. It wasn’t like I wanted to. You have to believe that.”

“Later.”

“I really didn’t think these guys would do it. I thought I was going through the motions, that’s all. So at least I could say I tried. It’s their fault really.”

“I asked you a question.”

“I don’t remember what it was.”

“Your stock is low,” Reacher said. “What happens next?”

Stackley got a look in his eye, like some kind of a thought process was taking place back there. He looked up, and then down. A junction, Reacher thought, or a transition. A change from one thing to another. From winning to losing, from hope to despair.

To surrender.

Stackley breathed out, like a sigh of defeat.

He said, “When I run out I go get more.”

“Where from?”

“It’s a kind of warehouse, where you drive in and line up. You wait until midnight.”

“Where is the warehouse?”

Stackley paused a beat.

“We have a special burner phone,” he said. “We get a text message.”

“Where is your special burner phone?”

Stackley pointed at the camper shell.

He said, “In a locker in back.”

Reacher said, “Get it for me.”

Stackley stepped up and leaned inside. Reacher heard the snap of a catch. Afterward he recalled a split second of fast chaotic thought, like his whole life was flashing in front of his eyes, except it wasn’t his whole life, merely his mistakes of the last thirty seconds, explained and analyzed and ridiculed and exaggerated to a ludicrous degree. To the point where in his mind he saw his name as a footnote in a psychology textbook about bias confirmation, in a famous case where a guy saw a movement in another guy’s eyes, and took it to mean exactly what he wanted it to mean all along.

Stackley hadn’t surrendered. Instead he had thought hard and fast and seen a way out. A lifeline. The guy was no dummy. The change in his eyes had been a movement away from losing and back to winning. From despair back to hope. Reacher had read it completely wrong. Completely ass-backward. Too optimistic. Too willing to look on the bright side of life. Which also screwed up his conclusion about the weapons. He had instinctively assumed once you had taken a Springfield, and a Smith, and a Ruger .22 from a guy, then you were pretty much done with finding more firearms. Which had made it fun to take them apart and drop them on the guy’s head.

Whereas the psychology textbooks would say a guy with three could have four, dead easy. Especially a dope dealer, who took things in trade.

Dumb.

Stackley straightened up and turned around.

He had a gun in his hand.

From the locker in the camper shell.

The gun was an old Colt .45, worn steel, rock steady. Maybe nine feet away. Eight, if Stackley braced forward for the shot. Hard to miss from there. The downside of being a big guy. A sudden evolutionary disadvantage. Too much center mass.

Reacher watched Stackley’s eyes. The guy was still thinking hard. Cost, benefit, advantages, disadvantages. All the reels were coming up cherries. In the short term he could solve his immediate this-minute problem. In the long term he could impress Arthur Scorpio as a reliable guy who got things done. All by pulling the trigger. Right there, right then. Just once. The only negative was location. Couldn’t leave a corpse in the mouth of the driveway. It would need to be moved a mile into the woods. But he had the cowboys for that. They would trade labor for a free patch. For two, they would carry a corpse to Nebraska.

Reacher said, “Don’t point the gun at me.”

Stackley said, “Why the hell not?”

“It would be a serious mistake.”

“How would it, man?”

Stackley raised the Colt.

Two-handed.

He pointed it at the center of Reacher’s chest.

Like aiming at a barn door.

He said, “How exactly is this a mistake?”

“Wait and see,” Reacher said. “Nothing personal.”

Stackley’s head exploded.

There was a wet thump like a watermelon rolling off a table, and then immediately the flat crack of a supersonic NATO round in the air, and the antique bark of an M14 firing. Stackley’s head came apart in an instant cloud of red mist, and fragments of it followed his body down, vertically, like a disappearing trick, into a puddle of clothes and limbs and lifeless flesh. Reacher looked back at the house, and saw Rose Sanderson at her window, checking downrange, assessing her aim. Which was pretty damn good, he thought. From a hundred yards out she had put a round through the gap between himself and the cowboys, and she had hit Stackley right above the ear. All with a rifle dumped by the army twenty years before she was born.

Impressive.

She came out of the house and walked down toward them, hood forward, carrying the rifle one-handed. From the right Bramall came hurrying in, and from the left came Mackenzie, who had the most trouble with what she found. Theoretically she might have been happy with what turned out, in pragmatic terms, and maybe even moral terms, but a human head shattered by a high-velocity rifle bullet was far from theoretical. It was a purple mess, steaming slightly in the cold mountain air. She turned and looked at her sister. She was prepared to kill people, and I wasn’t . One thing to talk about it. A whole different thing to watch it happen.

Reacher said, “Thank you, major.”

Rose said, “How much did he have?”

The thing that mattered most.

“Not much,” he said.

“Shit.”

She stepped around Stackley and looked in the back of the truck. She twitched the blanket aside and poked around. Her shoulders slumped. Not exactly surprise, but certainly disappointment. No plan survives first contact with the enemy . She looked back at Reacher, as if to say, This one went south pretty damn quick, didn’t it?