Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  Eleanor Duncan, presumably, right on time.

  Reacher waited.

  Two minutes later she was two miles closer, and the high hemispherical glow was bigger, and stronger, still bouncing, still trembling, but now it had a strange asynchronous pulse inside it, the bouncing now going two ways at once, the strengthening and the weakening now random and out of phase.

  There were two cars on the road, not one.

  Reacher smiled. The sentry. The football player, posted to the south. A college graduate. Not a dumb guy. He knew his five buddies had been sent home to bed because absolutely nothing was going to happen. He knew he had been posted as a precaution only, just for the sake of it. He knew he was facing a long night of boredom, staring into the dark, no chance of glory. So what’s a guy going to do, when Eleanor Duncan suddenly blasts past him from behind, in her little red sports car? He’s going to see major brownie points on the table, that’s what. He’s going to give up on the blank hours ahead, and he’s going to pull out and follow her, and he’s going to dream of a promotion to the inner circle, and he’s going to imagine a scene and he’s going to rehearse a speech, because he’s going to pull Seth Duncan aside tomorrow, first thing in the morning, very discreetly, like an old friend or a trusted aide, and he’s going to whisper, Yes, sir, I followed her all the way and I can show you exactly where she went. Then he’s going to add, No, sir, I told no one else, but I thought you should know. Then he’s going to hop and shuffle in a modest and self-deprecating way and he’s going to say, Well yes, sir, I thought it was much more important than sentry duty, and I’m glad you agree I did the right thing.

  Reacher smiled again.

  Human nature.

  Reacher waited.

  Two more minutes, and the travelling bubble of light was another two miles closer, now much flatter and more elongated. Two cars, with some little distance between them. Predator and prey, some hundreds of yards apart. There was no red glow in the bubble. The football player’s headlights were falling short of the Mazda’s paint. The guy was maybe a quarter of a mile back, following the Mazda’s tail lights, no doubt thinking he was doing a hell of a job of staying inconspicuous. Maybe not such a smart guy. The Mazda had a mirror, and halogen headlights on a Nebraska winter night were probably visible from outer space.

  Reacher moved.

  He pushed off the corner of the building and looped around the Malibu’s hood and got in the driver’s seat. He locked the selector in first gear and put his left foot hard on the brake and his right foot on the gas. He goosed the pedal until the transmission was straining against the brake and the whole car was wound up tight and ready to launch. He kept one hand on the wheel and the other on the headlight switch.

  He waited.

  Sixty seconds.

  Ninety seconds.

  Then the Mazda flashed past, right to left, instantaneously, a tiny dark shape chasing a huge pool of bright light, its top down, a woman in a headscarf at the wheel, all chased in turn by tyre roar and engine noise and the red flare of tail lights. Then it was gone. Reacher counted one and flicked his headlights on and took his foot off the brake and stamped on the gas and shot forward and braked hard and stopped again sideways across the crown of the road. He wrenched open the door and spilled out and danced back towards the Malibu’s trunk, towards the shoulder he had just left. Two hundred yards to his right a big SUV was starting a panic stop. Its headlights flared yellow against the Malibu’s paint and then they nosedived into the blacktop as the truck’s front suspension crushed under the force of violent braking. Huge tyres howled and the truck lost its line and slewed to its right and went into a four-wheel slide and its nearside wheels tucked under and its high centre of gravity tipped over and its offside wheels came up in the air. Then they crashed back to earth and the rear end fishtailed violently a full ninety degrees and the truck snapped around and came to rest parallel with the Malibu, less than ten feet away, stalled out and silent, the scream of stressed rubber dying away, thin drifts of moving blue smoke following it and catching it and stopping and rising all around it and billowing away into the cold night air.

  Reacher pulled the Iranian’s Glock from his pocket and stormed the driver’s door and wrenched it open and danced back and pointed the gun. In general he was not a big fan of dramatic arrests, but he knew from long experience what worked and what didn’t with shocked and unpredictable subjects, so he screamed GET OUT OF THE CAR GET OUT OF THE CAR GET OUT OF THE CAR as loud as he could, which was plenty loud, and the guy behind the wheel more or less tumbled out, and then Reacher was on him, forcing him down, flipping him, jamming him face down into the blacktop, his knee in the small of the guy’s back, the Glock’s muzzle hard in the back of the guy’s neck, all the time screaming STAY DOWN STAY DOWN STAY DOWN, all the while watching the sky over his shoulder for more lights.

  There were no more lights. No one else was coming. No backup. The guy hadn’t called it in. He was planning a solo enterprise. All the glory for himself. As expected.

  Reacher smiled.

  Human nature.

  The scene went quiet. Nothing to hear, except the Malibu’s patient idle. Nothing to see, except four high beams stabbing the far shoulder. The air was full of the smell of burned rubber and hot brakes, and gas, and oil. The Cornhusker lay completely still. Hard not to, with 250 pounds on his back, and a gun to his head, and television images of SWAT arrests in his mind. Maybe real images. Country boys get arrested from time to time, the same as anyone else. And things had happened fast, all dark and noise and blur and panic, enough that maybe the guy hadn’t really seen Reacher’s face yet, or recognized his description from the Duncans’ warnings. Maybe the guy hadn’t put two and two together. Maybe he was waiting it out like a civilian, waiting to explain to a cop that he was innocent, like people do. Which gave Reacher a minor problem. He was about to transition away from what the guy might have taken to be a legitimate law enforcement takedown, straight to what the guy was going to know for sure was a wholly illegitimate kidnap attempt. And the guy was big. Six-six or a little more, two-ninety or a little more. He had on a large red football jacket and baggy jeans. His feet were the size of boats.

  Reacher said, ‘Tell me your name.’

  The guy’s chin and his lips and his nose were all jammed hard down on the blacktop. He said, ‘John,’ like a gasp, like a grunt, just a soft expulsion of breath, quiet and indistinct.

  ‘Not Brett?’ Reacher asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Reacher shifted his weight, turned the guy’s head, jammed the Glock in his ear, saw the whites of his eyes. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  The guy on the ground said, ‘I do now.’

  ‘You know the two things you really need to understand?’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Whoever you think you are, I’m tougher than you, and I’m more ruthless than you. You have absolutely no idea. I’m worse than your worst nightmare. Do you believe that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really believe it? Like you believe in mom and apple pie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know what I did to your buddies?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did I do?’

  ‘You finished them.’

  ‘Correct. But here’s the thing, John. I’m prepared to work with you, to save your life. We can do this, if we try. But if you step half an inch out of line, I’ll kill you and walk away and I’ll never think about you again and I’ll sleep like a baby the whole rest of my life. We clear on that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you want to try?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you thinking about some stupid move? Are you quarter-backing it right now? You planning to wait until my attention wanders?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good answer, John. Because my attention never wanders. You ever seen someone get shot?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s not like the movies, John. B
ig chunks of disgusting stuff come flying out. Even a flesh wound, you never really recover. Not a hundred per cent. You get infections. You’re weak and hurting, for ever.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So stand up now.’ Reacher got up out of his crouch and moved away, pointing the gun, aiming it two-handed at arm’s length for theatrical effect, tracking the guy’s head, a big pale target. First the guy went foetal for a second, and then he gathered himself and got his hands under him and jacked himself to his knees. Reacher said, ‘See the yellow car? You’re going to go stand next to the driver’s door.’

  The guy said, ‘OK,’ and got to his feet, a little unsteady at first, then firmer, taller, squarer. Reacher said, ‘Feeling good now, John? Feeling brave? Getting ready? Going to rush over and get me?’

  The guy said, ‘No.’

  ‘Good answer, John. I’ll put a double tap in you before you move the first muscle. Believe me, I’ve done it before. I used to get paid to do it. I’m very good at it. So move over to the yellow car and stand next to the driver’s door.’ Reacher tracked him all the way around the Malibu’s hood. The driver’s door was still open. Reacher had left it that way, for the sake of a speedy exit. The guy stood in its angle. Reacher aimed the gun across the roof of the car and opened the passenger door. The two men stood there, one on each side, both doors open like little wings.

  Reacher said, ‘Now get in.’

  The guy ducked and bent and slid into the seat. Reacher backed off a step and aimed the gun down inside the car, a low trajectory, straight at the guy’s hips and thighs. He said, ‘Don’t touch the wheel. Don’t touch the pedals. Don’t put your seat belt on.’

  The guy sat still, with his hands in his lap.

  Reacher said, ‘Now close your door.’

  The guy closed his door.

  Reacher asked, ‘Feeling heroic yet, John?’

  The guy said, ‘No.’

  ‘Good answer, my friend. We can do this. Just remember, the Chevrolet Malibu is an OK mid-range product, especially for Detroit, but it doesn’t accelerate for shit. Not like a bullet, anyway. This gun of mine is full of nine-millimetre Parabellums. They come out of the barrel doing nine hundred miles an hour. Think a four-cylinder GM motor can outrun that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good, John,’ Reacher said. ‘I’m glad to see all that education didn’t go to waste.’

  Then he looked up across the roof of the car, and he saw light in the mist to the south. A high hemispherical glow, trembling a little, bouncing, weakening and strengthening and weakening again. Very white. Almost blue.

  A car, coming north towards him, pretty fast.

  THIRTY-SIX

  THE ONCOMING CAR WAS ABOUT TWO MILES AWAY. DOING ABOUT sixty, Reacher figured. Sixty was about all the road was good for. Two minutes. He said, ‘Sit tight, John. Stop thinking. This is your time of maximum danger. I’m going to play it very safe. I’ll shoot first and ask questions later. Don’t think I won’t.’

  The guy sat still behind the Malibu’s wheel. Reacher watched across the roof of the car. The bubble of light in the south was still moving, still bouncing and trembling and strengthening and weakening, but coherently this time, naturally, in phase. Just one car. Now about a mile away. One minute.

  Reacher waited. The glow resolved itself to a fierce source low down above the blacktop, then twin fierce sources spaced feet apart, both of them oval in shape, both of them low to the ground, both of them blue-white and intense. They kept on coming, flickering and floating and jittering ahead of a firm front suspension and fast go-kart steering, at first small because of the distance, and then small because they were small, because they were mounted low down on a small low car, because the car was a Mazda Miata, tiny, red in colour, slowing now, coming to a stop, its headlights unbearably bright against the Malibu’s yellow paint.

  Then Eleanor Duncan killed her lights and manoeuvred around the Malibu’s trunk, half on the road and half on the shoulder, and came to a stop with her elbow on the door and her head turned towards Reacher. She asked, ‘Did I do it right?’

  Reacher said, ‘You did it perfectly. The headscarf was a great touch.’

  ‘I decided against sunglasses. Too much of a risk at night.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘But you took a risk. That’s for sure. You could have gotten creamed here.’

  ‘He’s an athlete. And young. Good eyesight, good hand-eye coordination, lots of fast-twitch muscles. I figured I’d have time to jump clear.’

  ‘Even so. He could have wrecked both vehicles. Then what would you have done?’

  ‘Plan B was shoot him and ride back with you.’

  She was quiet for a second. Then she said, ‘Need anything else?’

  ‘No, thanks. Go on home now.’

  ‘This guy will tell Seth, you know. About what I did.’

  ‘He won’t,’ Reacher said. ‘He and I are going to work something out.’

  Eleanor Duncan said nothing more. She just put her lights back on and her car in gear and drove away, fast and crisp, the sound of her exhaust ripping the night air behind her. Reacher glanced back twice, once when she was half a mile away and again when she was gone altogether. Then he slid into the Malibu’s passenger seat, alongside the guy called John, and closed his door. He held the Glock right-handed across his body. He said, ‘Now you’re going to park this car around the back of this old roadhouse. If the speedo gets above five miles an hour, I’m going to shoot you in the side. Without immediate medical attention you’ll live about twenty minutes. Then you’ll die, in hideous agony. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen. Truth is, John, I’ve made it happen, more than once. We clear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Say it, John. Say we’re clear.’

  ‘We’re clear.’

  ‘How clear are we?’

  ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’

  ‘I want you to say we’re crystal clear.’

  ‘You got it. Crystal.’

  ‘OK, so let’s do it.’

  The guy fumbled the lever into gear and turned the wheel and drove a wide circle, painfully slow, bumping up on the far shoulder, coming around to the near shoulder, bumping down on to the beaten earth of the old lot, passing the south gable wall, turning sharply behind the building. Reacher said, ‘Pull ahead and then back in, between the two bump-outs, like parallel parking. Do they ask for that in the Nebraska test?’

  The guy said, ‘I passed in Kentucky. In high school.’

  ‘Does that mean you need me to explain it to you?’

  ‘I know how to do it.’

  ‘OK, show me.’

  The guy pulled ahead of the second square bump-out and lined up and backed into the shallow U-shaped bay. Reacher said, ‘All the way, now. I want the back bumper hard against the wood and I want your side of the car hard against the building. I want you to trash your door mirror, John. Totally trash it. Can you do that for me?’

  The guy paused and then turned the wheel harder. He did pretty well. He got the rear bumper hard against the bump-out and he trashed his door mirror good, but he left about an inch between his flank of the car and the back of the building. He checked behind him, checked left, and then looked at Reacher like he was expecting praise.

  ‘Close enough,’ Reacher said. ‘Now shut it down.’

  The guy killed the lights and turned off the motor.

  Reacher said, ‘Leave the key.’

  The guy said, ‘I can’t get out. I can’t open my door.’

  Reacher said, ‘Crawl out after me.’ He opened his own door and slid out and backed off and stood tall and aimed the gun two-handed. The guy came out after him, hands and knees, huge and awkward, feet first, butt high up in the air. He got straight and turned around and said, ‘Want me to close the door?’

  Reacher said, ‘You’re thinking again, aren’t you, John? You’re thinking it’s dark out here, now the lights are off, and maybe I can’t see too well. You’re figuring maybe this
would be a good time. But it isn’t. I can see just fine. An owl has got nothing on me in the eyesight department, John. An owl with night-vision goggles sees worse. Believe it, kid. Just hang in there. You can get through this.’

  ‘I’m not thinking anything,’ the guy said.

  ‘So close the door.’

  The guy closed the door.

  ‘Now step away from the car.’

  The guy stepped away. The car was crammed tight in the back southwest quarter of the shallow bay, occupying a fifteen-by-six footprint within the total thirty-by-twelve space. It would be invisible from the road, either north or south, and no one was going to be in the fields to the east until spring ploughing. Safe enough.

  Reacher said, ‘Now move to your right.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘So when I aim the gun at you I’m aiming parallel with the road.’

  The guy moved, two steps, three, and then he stopped and turned and faced front, with his back to the forty empty miles between him and the Cell Block bar.

  Reacher asked him, ‘How close is the nearest house?’

  He said, ‘Miles away.’

  ‘Close enough to hear a gunshot in the night?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What would they think if they did?’

  ‘Varmint. This is farm country.’

  Reacher said, ‘I’d be happier if you heard the gun go off, John. At least once. I’d be happier if you knew what it was like to have a bullet coming your way. It might help you with all that thinking. It might help you reach sensible conclusions.’

  ‘I won’t try anything.’

  ‘Do I have your word on that?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘So we’re bonded now, John. I’m trusting you. Am I wise to do that?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘OK, turn around and walk back to your truck.’ Reacher kept ten feet behind the guy all the way, around the back corner of the building, along the face of the south gable wall, across the old lot, back to the two-lane. Reacher said, ‘Now get in the truck the same way you got out of the car.’

  The guy closed the driver’s door and tracked around the hood and opened the passenger door. Reacher watched him all the way. The guy climbed into the passenger seat and lifted his feet one at a time into the driver’s foot well, and then he jacked himself up and over the console between the seats, on the heels of his hands, squirming, scraping, ducking his head. Reacher watched him all the way. When he was settled Reacher climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door. He swapped the gun into his left hand for a second and put his seat belt on. Then he swapped the gun back to his right and said, ‘I’ve got my seat belt on, John, but you’re not going to put yours on, OK? Just in case you’re getting ideas. Just in case you’re thinking about driving into a telephone pole. See the point? You do that, and I’ll be fine, but you’ll be hurt bad, and then I’ll shoot you anyway. We clear on that?’