by Lee Child
“He folded his pants and his shirt very carefully and put them flat under the mattress. That was as close as he ever got to ironing.”
THINGS YOU’LL NEVER SEE REACHER DO
Take a suit to the dry cleaner’s
“A good coat is like a good lawyer. It covers your ass.”
5. CHANGING YOUR UNDERWEAR
Always buy the cheapest white underpants.
Remember that khaki socks will give you away if you’re going undercover.
Most people stick to underwear from their country of origin. It’s a big step putting on foreign underwear, like betrayal or emigration.
If caught short, go commando.
>>THE LONGEST TIME A TRAVELING MAN CAN GO WITHOUT …. A shower 4 days Changing his clothes 9 days Changing his underwear 9 days
THINGS YOU’LL NEVER HEAR REACHER SAY
My wife doesn’t understand me.
THE PENTAGON
WHAT
Headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense. Completed in January 1943, it covers 600,000 square meters of floor area—the world’s largest office building. About 31,000 military and civilian employees work there. It has five rings of corridor per floor on five floors—covering seventeen miles. There is a fiveacre pentagonal courtyard in the middle.
WHERE
Arlington County, Virginia, on the Potomac River flood plain
HOW
Departments within the DOD control the Army, Navy, Air Force, military technology, budget, and policy.
HOW FAST
There are ten radial hallways between the rings; traveling at Army marching pace of 4 mph, a person can make it between any two random points inside in a maximum of seven minutes.
“To escape into the Pentagon was no kind of a good idea.”
“I’m that guy … The only guy in the world who doesn’t have a cellphone.”
Remember that if the satellite can show you the way on your GPS, it can also pinpoint your exact location.
The guy who relies on his head clock has no use for a fancy watch.
“He came from a world where a sudden dive for a pocket was more likely to mean a gun than a phone.”
Put your brain first—electronic devices can affect your ability to process information, your concentration, and your sleep.
Why would you want to allow the world and his wife to track you down by phone?
If you’re constantly looking down at your phone, you’re not looking at the world around you.
“Text messaging.”
“What’s that?”
“You can send written messages by phone.”
“When did that start?”
THINGS YOU’LL NEVER HEAR REACHER SAY
Call me on my cell.
POTENTIAL ALIASES FOR USE WHEN BOOKING A MOTEL
“It helps if you can use a list of names embedded in your memory. Like the U.S. Presidents.”
George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William H. Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover
“If in doubt, use the names of obscure baseball players or dead musicians.”
“I like aliases. I like anonymity.”
“I don’t need to go hunting them. I already know I’m smarter than an armadillo.”
The basis of any scam is telling people what they want to hear. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
A classic confidence trick is where you drip, drip, drip the unimportant stuff but then hold back on the final installment.
Assess and evaluate.
Paranoia prefers triple bluffs to double bluffs.
Killers don’t stop at two murders. If they do more than one, they do more than two.
“People don’t look for complications. You hear hoofbeats, you look for horses, not zebras.”
“Something for nothing, that’s a foreign language.”
All good scam artists stick as close to the truth as possible.
There’s always something out of context, even before you know what the context ought to be.
Force yourself to think like they think.
“The whole of life is a gamble, from the very beginning to the very end.”
MIRANDA
The Miranda warning is used by U.S. police when questioning criminal suspects, to protect the individual from compelled self-incrimination, and to preserve the admissibility of the criminal’s statement in court. It originated in 1966 after Miranda vs. Arizona, when an Ernesto Arturo Miranda was deemed to have had his rights violated during his arrest.
• You have the right to remain silent.
• Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in a court of law.
• You have the right to speak to an attorney.
• If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.
• Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?
“Ernesto A. Miranda was a moron, you know that?” Deerfield said. “A couple of smokes short of a pack. He was a subnormal guy. He needed the protection. You subnormal? You a moron, Reacher?”
“Probably, to be putting up with this shit.”
THE SCIENCE OF … BURNING DOWN A BUILDING
Place books of matches under furniture in the center of the room.
Pile as much paper as you can find on top; lean a burning cigarette against the matches.
Retire, leaving the door open for a draft.
Brick buildings always burn well. The contents go up first, then the floors, ceiling, and roof, with the outer walls holding up and forming a tall chimney to enhance the air flow. When the walls finally collapse, the blast of sparks and embers will spread the fire farther.
Sometimes a whole city block can be taken out with one cigarette and one book of matches.
“I’m sleeping well … but I think that’s mostly because of the tranquilizers.”
Sleep when you can, because you never know when you’re going to sleep again.
Accept that you’ll never find a bed that will accommodate your feet as well as your head.
Careful, sleep can be a symptom of caffeine deprivation.
Sleep as much as you can, because tiredness causes more foul-ups than carelessness and stupidity put together.
If you go to sleep fully dressed, you’ll be ready for action when you wake.
You’ll feel safer sleeping with a handgun under your pillow.
“A medical man would say I passed out. I prefer to think I just went to sleep.”
“He set the clock in his head for two hours, and he breathed in once, and he breathed out once, and then he fell asleep, almost instantly.”
Tune in to your circadian rhythms to set your personal internal alarm clock.
Four o’clock in the morning is the best time to attack. In the Army they call it KGB time.
“Clocks in prisons are bizarre. Why measure hours and minutes when people think in years and decades?”
THINGS YOU’LL NEVER HEAR REACHER SAY
Any idea what the time is?
“He knew what time it was to within about twenty seconds. It was an old skill, born of many long wakeful nights on active service.
When you’re waiting for something to happen, you close your body down like a beach house in winter and you let your mind lock on to the steady pace of the passing seconds. It’s like suspended animation. It saves energy and it lifts the responsibility for your heartbeat away from your unconscious brain and passes it on to some kind of a hidden clock. Makes a huge black space for thinking in.
But it keeps you just awake enough to be ready for whatever you need to be ready for.
>
And it means you always know what time it is.”
“I’ve got no use for possessions. Travel light, travel far.”
Never carry a spare shirt.
Be on as few pieces of paper as it is possible for a human being to be.
“To fill a small bag means selecting, and choosing, and evaluating. Pretty soon I’d have a big bag, and then two or three. A month later I’d be like the rest of you.”
Never have a credit card, real estate, a driver’s license, a car, a wife, children, or an address.
Take one day at a time.
“I’m not a vagrant … I’m a hobo. Big difference.”
Always travel by road—you don’t need ID and can pay with cash.
“Carry a spare shirt and pretty soon you’re carrying spare pants. Then you need a suitcase. Next thing you know, you’ve got a house and a car and a savings plan and you’re filling out all kinds of forms.”
THINGS YOU’LL NEVER SEE REACHER DO
Buy a business-class airline ticket
WHAT TO DO IN THE FACE OF:
STUPIDITY
MISUNDERSTANDING
IMPERTINENT PERSONAL QUESTIONS
EMPTY THREATS
BAD GUYS WHO WON’T TAKE THE HINT AND BACK OFF
Shrug.
“Reacher said nothing.”
If in doubt, say nothing.
Keeping your mouth shut is a devastating weapon.
Your silence will make your opponent want to babble.
Say nothing, do nothing.
You need a reason for speech, but you need more for silence.
“Reacher made no reply. It was a technique he had perfected half a lifetime ago. Just stand absolutely still, don’t blink, say nothing. Wait for them to run through the possibilities. Wait for them to start worrying.”
BLIND BLAKE
This is the only known photograph of Blind Blake, whose life—and death—remain something of a mystery.
Born Arthur Blake in 1896 in (probably) Jacksonville, Florida, Blind Blake’s distinctive guitar playing sounded like a ragtime piano. Blind from birth, he is still regarded as the unrivaled master of ragtime blues finger-picking, who could play a complete band arrangement by himself. Between 1926 and 1932 he recorded more than eighty tracks for Paramount, which were big sellers in their day. After Paramount’s bankruptcy Blake became a heavy drinker and died, by accident or disease, at the age of thirty-eight. But there is also a story that he was murdered in Margrave, Georgia.
“You know that old expression ‘He could play the guitar just like ringing a bell’? That’s what I used to say about Blake. He would pick up that old instrument of his and the notes would just come tumbling out, faster than you could sing them. But each note was just a perfect little silver bell, floating off into the air.”
“For the infantry it all came down to simple arithmetic. If you could inflict two casualties for every one you took, you were ahead.”
“To fail to take the battle to the enemy when your back is to the wall is to perish.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Think like the enemy; be the enemy.
When contemplating the offensive, the first thing you must plan is your inevitable retreat.
If your attack is going too well, you have walked into an ambush.
Combat will occur on the ground between two adjoining maps.
Never leave enemy ordnance usable.
“All plans fall apart as soon as the first shot is fired.”
Friendly fire isn’t that friendly.
If you can’t attack at one end, you have to defend at the other.
Incoming fire has the right of way.
Double back to positions the enemy thinks are abandoned.
If you’re surrounded, that simplifies your problems.
“A good battle plan that you act on today can be better than a perfect one tomorrow.”
Gen. George S. Patton
“Sooner or later, you’ve got to engage the enemy’s main force. You don’t win the war unless you do that. You take it on and you destroy it.”
In order to win, you must be prepared to lose.
Don’t worry about why it went wrong. Just damn well put it right.
Know how to deceive the enemy, and that sooner or later they have to be fought head-on.
If you attack you have to keep on and on attacking until the enemy is run off its feet and the war is won.
Everything in war is improvisation.
Try to look unimportant. They may be low on ammo.
Never retreat, just advance in the opposite direction.
“While coolness in disaster is the supreme proof of a commander’s courage, energy in pursuit is the surest test of his strength of will.”
Field Marshal Viscount Wavell
“They mess with me, they answer to me.”
“War isn’t about dying for your country. It’s about making the enemy die for his.”
Gen. George S. Patton
“Cocked and locked.”
1 Beretta M9 Over two decades of distinguished service in the U.S. Army
2 Glock 17 Extremely simple and extremely reliable
3 Heckler & Koch MP5K A submachine gun for law enforcement
4 M16 assault rifle For a long time the U.S. Army’s weapon of choice
5 SIG-Sauer P226 Swiss excellence
6 Smith & Wesson Military and Police revolver Old-fashioned excellence
“If you really want to know, one at a time is usually enough for me.”
A brave woman is one who stands up when she hears gunshots. She doesn’t dive under the desk.
Show a woman respect, and she’s yours.
Undressing a woman is one of life’s greatest perks. Especially Lycra—can’t beat it.
He smiled. “I was thinking about your dress.”
“You like it?”
“I think it’s great,” he said. “But it could look better. You know, maybe thrown in a heap on the floor.”
“I like women in uniform, possibly because I’ve known very few of the other kind.”
There’s nothing shameful about taking orders from a woman of superior rank.
Only have one affair at a time—that’s complicated enough.
“I don’t do permanent.”
Older women … are worth it.
Female police officers carry handcuffs, which can be handy in bed.
Accept no as an answer, if she’s crazy enough to turn you down.
“She was more than flawless. She was spectacular. She had a revolver in a holster on her right hip, and next to it was a shotgun stuffed muzzle-down in a scabbard mounted between the seats.”
“You like undressing women?”
“More than anything in the world,” I said. “And I’ve been staring at that particular button since a quarter past nine.”
If you can stand to watch her eat, that has to mean something.
Never hit a woman unless she’s trying to kill you.
Never make love in a car—they’re not usually wide enough.
If you’re guessing a woman’s age, always err on the side of caution and knock off a couple of years.
Only very experienced men should try to guess a woman’s bra size by her voice.
Love them and leave them.
“Your ass deserves nothing but the best. It’s a national treasure. Or a regional attraction at the very least.”
THINGS YOU’LL NEVER HEAR REACHER SAY
Hey, babe, your place or mine?
HOW TO SLEEP IN A $350-A-NIGHT HOTEL ROOM FOR $50
*****
Start late, around midnight
Ask the night clerk for an available room
Tell him you need to check it out
Get him to come with you
Once you’re in it, offer him two twenties
And ten for the maid
He’s happy
You’ve got a cheap room for the night
FIND
the
road out of town, stand by the side of it, and stick out your thumb.
or:
FIND
the bus station and get on the first bus out.
DON’T
look back.
For details of Jack Reacher’s adventures and books by Lee Child, go to www.leechild.com.
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Lee Child
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