The Essential Jack Reacher 12-Book Bundle

by Lee Child

  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 center 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 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 favor.”

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

  Chapter 49

  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 forever.”

  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.”

  Reacher nodded. “One of which was missing from the depot. Three spaces, two vans. So what kin
d of a thing is valuable and fits in a van?”

  Jacob Duncan saw that Roberto Cassano’s mind had been changed once and for all by the dead man in the Cadillac’s trunk. Mancini’s, too. Now they both accepted that Reacher was a genuine threat. How else could they react? The dead man had no marks on him. None at all. So what had Reacher done to him? Frightened him to death? Jacob could see both Cassano and Mancini thinking about it. So he waited patiently and eventually Cassano looked across the table at him and said, “I apologize, most sincerely.”

  Jacob looked back and said, “For what, sir?”

  “For before. For not taking you seriously about Reacher.”

  “Your apology is accepted.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But the situation remains the same,” Jacob said. “Reacher is still a problem. He’s still on the loose. And nothing can happen until he’s accounted for. We have three men looking for him. They’ll work all night and all day if necessary. Just as long as it takes. Because we don’t want Mr. Rossi to feel we’re in any way the junior partner in this new relationship. That’s very important to us.”

  Cassano said, “We should go out too.”

  “All of us?”

  “I meant me and Mancini.”

  “Indeed,” Jacob Duncan said. “Perhaps you should. Perhaps we should turn the whole thing into a competition. Perhaps the prize should be to speak first when we sit down to renegotiate the profit share.”

  “There are more of you than us.”

  “But you are professionals.”

  “You know the neighborhood.”

  “You want a fairer fight? Very well. We’ll send our three boys home to bed, and I’ll send my son out in their place. Alone. That’s one against two. As long as it takes. May the best man win. To the victor, the spoils, and so on, and so forth. Shall I do that?”

  “I don’t care,” Cassano said. “Do whatever you want. We’ll beat all of you, however many you put out there.” He drained his glass and set it back on the table and stood up with Mancini. They walked out together, through the back door, to their car, which was still parked in the field, on the other side of the fence. Jacob Duncan watched them go, and then he sat back in his chair and relaxed. They would waste some long and fruitless hours, and then all in good time Reacher would be revealed, and Rossi would take the small subliminal hit, and the playing field would tilt, just a little, but enough. Jacob smiled. Success, triumph, and vindication. Subtlety, and finesse.

  The road outside the dining room window stayed dark. Nothing moved on it. The two Cornhusker vehicles were still parked on the shoulder beyond the fence. One was an SUV and one was a pick-up truck. Both looked cold and inert. Overhead the moon came and went, first shining faintly through thin clouds, and then disappearing completely behind thicker layers.

  The doctor said, “I don’t like just sitting here.”

  “So don’t,” Reacher said. “Go to bed. Take a nap.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. I’m waiting for daylight.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t have streetlights here.”

  “You’re going out?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Why?”

  “Places to go, things to see.”

  “One of us should stay awake. To keep an eye on things.”

  “I’ll do that,” Reacher said.

  “You must be tired.”

  “I’ll be OK. You guys go get some rest.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  They didn’t need much more persuading. The doctor looked at his wife and they headed off together, and then Dorothy Coe followed them, presumably to a spare room somewhere. Doors opened and closed and water ran and toilets flushed, and then the house went quiet. The heating system whirred and the taped-up football players muttered and grunted and snored on the hallway floor, but apart from that Reacher heard nothing at all. He sat upright on the hard chair and kept his eyes open and stared out into the dark. The duct tape bandage itched his face. He did OK for ten or twenty minutes, and then he slipped a little, like he knew he would, like he often had before, into a kind of trance, like suspended animation, half-awake and half-asleep, half-effective and half-useless. He was a less-than-perfect sentry, and he knew it. But then, practically all sentries were less than perfect. It was any army’s most persistent problem.

  Half-awake and half-asleep. Half-effective and half-useless. He heard the car and he saw its lights, but it was a whole stubborn second before he understood he wasn’t dreaming.

  Chapter 50

  The car came in from the right, from the east, preceded by headlight beams and road noise. It slowed to a walk and passed behind the parked Cornhusker pick-up, and then it rolled on and passed behind the parked SUV. Then it turned and nosed into the driveway, with a crunch and a squelch from its wheels on the gravel, and then it stopped.

  And then Reacher saw it.

  There was enough light scatter and enough reflection to identify it. It was the dark blue Chevrolet. The Italians. Reacher picked up the Remington. The car stayed where it was. No one got out. It was sixty yards away, half in and half out of the driveway mouth. Just sitting there, lights on, idling. A tactical problem. Reacher had three innocent noncombatants in a wood-frame house. There were two parked cars in the driveway and two on the road, for cover. There were two opponents and the house had windows and a door both front and back.

  Not ideal conditions for a gun battle.

  Best hope would be for the Italians to approach the front door on foot. Game over, right there. Reacher could swing the door open and fire point-blank. But the Italians weren’t approaching on foot. They were just sitting in the car. Doing nothing. Talking, maybe. And scouting around. Reacher could see dim flashes of white as necks craned and heads turned. They were discussing something.

  Angelo Mancini was saying, “This is a waste of time. He ain’t in there. He can’t be. Not unless he’s hanging out with three of their football players.”

  Roberto Cassano nodded. He glanced over his shoulder at the pickup truck and the SUV on the shoulder, and then he glanced ahead at the gold GMC Yukon on the driveway. It was parked in front of an older truck. He said, “That’s the old woman’s ride, from the farm.”

  Mancini said, “Sleepover time.”

  “I guess Mahmeini’s boy was right about something. They know the doctor is the weak link. They’ve got him staked out.”

  “Not much of a trap, all things considered. Not with their cars parked out front. No one is going to walk into that.”

  “Which is good for us, in a way. They’re wasting their resources. Which gives us a better chance somewhere else.”

  “Do you want to check here? Just in case?”

  “What’s the point? If he’s in there, he’s already their prisoner.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. But then I thought, not necessarily. They could be his prisoner.”

  “One against three?”

  “You saw what he did to the guy in the Cadillac’s trunk.”

  “I don’t know. I kind of want to check, I guess. And maybe we should. But you heard the man. This is a competition now. We can’t waste time.”

  “Wouldn’t take much time.”

  “I know. But we’ll look like idiots if he’s not in there. The football players will be straight on the phone to the Duncans, all yukking it up about how we came looking in a place he couldn’t possibly be.”

  “No one said there are style points involved.”

  “But there are. There are always style points involved. This is a long game. There’s a lot of money involved. If we lose face, we’ll never get it back.”

  “So where?”

  Cassano looked again at the old woman’s truck. “If she’s here, then her house is empty tonight. And people looking for places to hide love empty houses.”

  Reacher saw them back out and drive away again. At first he didn’
t understand why. Then he concluded they were looking for Seth Duncan. They had pulled up, they had eyeballed the parked cars, they had seen that the Mazda wasn’t among them, and they had gone away again. Logical. He put the Remington back on the floor, and planted his feet, and straightened his back, and stared out into the darkness.

  Nothing else happened for ninety long minutes. No one came, no one stirred. Then pale streaks of dawn started showing in the sky to Reacher’s right. They came in low and silver and purple, and the land slowly lightened from black to gray, and the world once again took solid shape, all the way to the far horizon. Rags of tattered cloud lit up bright overhead, and a knee-high mist rose up off the dirt. A new day. But not a good one, Reacher thought. It was going to be a day full of pain, both for those who deserved it, and for those who didn’t.

  He waited.

  He couldn’t get his Yukon out, because he had no key for Dorothy Coe’s pick-up truck. It was possibly in her coat, but he wasn’t inclined to go look for it. He was in no hurry. It was wintertime. Full daylight was still an hour away.

  Five hundred miles due north, up in Canada, just above the 49th Parallel, because of the latitude, dawn came a little later. The first of the morning light filtered down through the needles of the towering pine and touched the white van in its summer picnic spot at the end of the rough grassy track. The driver woke in his seat, and blinked, and stretched. He had heard nothing all night long. He had seen nothing. No bears, no coyotes, no red foxes, no moose, no elk, no wolves. No people. He had been warm, because he had a sleeping bag filled with down, but he had been very uncomfortable, because panel vans had small cabs, and he had spent the night folded into a seat that didn’t recline very far. It was always on his mind that the cargo in the back was treated better than he was. It rode more comfortably. But then, it was expensive and hard to get, and he wasn’t. He was a realistic man. He knew how things worked.