Winter Territory_A Get Jack Reacher Novel

by Scott Blade

  All that was about to change in 36 seconds. Reacher turned around the back corner of one of the buildings attached to the general store and walked along the wall until he turned another corner. That was when he witnessed a remarkable scene.

  Three people. Two men and one police officer. Two men wearing street clothes—brown jackets, dark cargo pants, combat boots. One had a white shirt under his jacket with buttons on the top and the other wore a black button-down shirt with a crooked collar. No tie. They both had buzz cuts like jarheads, like himself at the moment. He figured that the odds were good that these guys were ex-military. The way that they stood and crowded up on the officer was military trained into them. No doubt in Reacher’s mind about that.

  The guy in the black shirt was doing all the talking. The guy in the white was shoving a female police officer with one big, gloved hand. Reacher saw the whole thing. The two guys stood around the officer who was literally backed in a corner near the back of the general store.

  The officer was a woman—young, Native American features, and completely beautiful. She had thick, long black hair that was in an updo that Reacher believed was called a fishtail.

  She didn’t speak, but was obviously in distress. Reacher wondered why she wasn’t pulling out her service weapon. He could see the handle of a pristine Glock 22 Gen4. The modular back strap allowed the user to adjust the grip so that the gun could fit smaller and bigger hands alike. The rough design and the hard black color glimmered in the dying sunlight.

  Reacher had helped a woman in distress once, more than once really, but the last time had been back in Black Rock, Mississippi. A cop had been harassing a local woman. Reacher had intervened and disrupted the harassment like a gentleman should, which was something that his mother had instilled in him. She had taught him earlier on that there were gentlemen and there were ladies and then there were other people. These two guys were obviously other people.

  Reacher clenched his fists tight and then rolled his sleeves up to his biceps.

  He looked the two guys up and down and then he noticed that the guy with the black shirt with the crooked collar had a bulge behind his brown jacket. It was something shaped like a gun tucked into his waistband, no doubt about it. Reacher assumed that the other guy must’ve also had a gun on him. Reacher revaluated the approach in his mind. In seconds his brain worked like a tactical computer, evaluating different scenarios and outcomes in different variations trying to figure out the very best approach to take. The way that his brain analyzed the situation was like one of those machines from the Terminator movies—delivering real-time battlefield awareness and feedback so that his mind could quickly assess and plan the right course in order to neutralize the bad guys.

  His brain also took into account the conditions around the guys. The snow. The icicles hanging like stalactites from the corner of the building above them. The dwindling amount of light from the setting sun to the west.

  In the end, Reacher decided it best to use the element of surprise. He had no reason to give up his second biggest advantage to these guys since they were both armed. He thought this was the second advantage since his first advantage was his fighting ability. Reacher had an uncanny fighting ability not due to his size but because he was a natural and experienced brawler. His mother had raised him to try to solve his problems with words, but she had also taught him that sometimes the last resort was the best resort. He had no intention of facing two guys armed with guns that he could only assume they knew how to use.

  So Reacher looked over his shoulder and was pleased to see that the sun was setting directly behind him. The setting light was decreasing, but it was sharp and crisp and shot out across the sky like a laser beam. He crept down low so that the laser beam of sunlight swept over his body and blinded anyone who looked in his direction. Not even the officer could’ve seen him until he was already on them.

  Carefully, Reacher crept past the wall of the closest building and saw his shadow directly out in front of him on the ground. He adjusted his trajectory so that the shadow shrank in size and continued to creep up on them.

  His new shoes were comfortable and silent—two advantages that he appreciated at that moment because they enabled a guy of his size to sneak all the way up behind two ex-military trained men. And Reacher was no kind of graceful or naturally stealthy guy. Something that he was discovering about himself over recent years was that even though he was not what someone would call “graceful,” he still managed to be silent whenever he needed to be. Like some primal switch that was implanted in him long ago, he could automatically be light on his toes.

  From the moment that he had seen the two guys until he was down low only three feet behind them had taken 12 seconds—a record in his mind. He had managed to pull off the perfect amount of stealth, silence, and speed necessary to get the job done. It wasn’t his mistake that got him caught at the last minute. Not entirely.

  As Reacher neared the backs of the two guys, he rose up out of his crouch and he saw an expression of what he could only recognize as sheer horror sweep across the police officer’s majestic face. In a microsecond, her face, a face that only moments ago Reacher had thought was the most statuesque face that he had ever seen, turned into the face of someone who had looked into the depths of evil and was about to scream.

  It was her expression that gave away his presence to the two guys.

  He stood up behind the two guys and rose up so that his hulking bulk towered over them. The Native American cop couldn’t see his face or his skin color or his youth. The only two things that she had seen in that second was his massive size. To her it was only a fraction of a second ago that she had been blinded by the sunlight and distracted by the two guys poking and pushing and picking at her. Now she was faced with some massive being that blocked out the sun.

  From Reacher’s perspective, he could see the backs of the two guys and the front of the police officer perfectly until the moment that he stood up. One thing that he hadn’t calculated or factored into the situation was his shadow. And suddenly he felt stupid for letting something so obvious slip through his tactical planning.

  Reacher’s mind hadn’t identified which of the two guys was the leader or the faster reactor or the more deadly of the two, but in that moment he knew that it was the guy in the crooked collar black shirt because he spun around and went for his gun. Tucking your gun in the rear of your waistband has advantages and drawbacks. One advantage is that it is more comfortable and natural than tucking it into the front. It is also easier to conceal from people who are in your front. It is a lot less deadly to a man’s more vital areas in case the safety backfires and the gun accidentally fires.

  However, one drawback is that it is slower to draw. Especially when there is a guy directly behind you.

  In two moves, Reacher reached out with his left hand, a hand that was more like a bear paw than it was a human hand, and slammed his paw down on the guy’s right elbow, which was bent back because the guy’s entire hand was behind him and pulling his gun out.

  Reacher slammed down on the back of the guy’s elbow and prevented him from executing his draw, which wasn’t hard because the angle that the guy’s arm was bent was an awkward one for the human arm. It was like trying to scratch the middle of your back with one hand bent behind you. Next Reacher reared back and lunged forward in a powerful head-butt that started in the heels of his feet and launched up like a rocket into space. The kinetic force fired up through his bones and muscle tissue. He used his head like a cannonball.

  His head whipped forward and crashed right into the bridge of the guy’s nose. The blow wasn’t Reacher’s most powerful attempt, not like the one that he had delivered six months ago and not because he had gotten weaker, but because he didn’t want to kill this guy. He only wanted him out of commission as fast as possible and a perfectly delivered head-butt would do the job. Which it had, because the guy collapsed forward to his knees and grabbed his nose with his free hand. His nose had broken in
at least two places. The guy had also dropped his gun and it plopped down into the snow making a light thud sound.

  Reacher let go of the guy’s left arm and turned his focus to the other guy. The sunlight still blinded the guy. Reacher could tell because he had stepped aside and saw the guy’s face light up like a spotlight had been shined directly on it. The guy had been quick to react. Faster than Reacher had thought because the guy in the white shirt had already drawn his gun, but he had it pointed downward in a military or police-trained safety move so that he didn’t accidently shoot his friend.

  The guy in the white shirt had naturally leaned on the side of caution as he had been trained to do somewhere at some time, but Reacher didn’t have that same programmed burden. His nature was to act, not to threaten. To most people a drawn gun was enough of a threat to stop them cold even if it was pointed down, but not to Reacher. To him a drawn gun was a problem quickly resolved with quick action.

  The guy in the white shirt squinted his eyes, trying to identify the enormous creature that was attacking them. He never got the chance to confirm any kind of identification because Reacher stepped left, lunged forward, and cracked the guy right in the middle of his chest, the solar plexus. It was a perfect hard blow. It was so fast that even without the sunlight blinding her, the police officer wouldn’t have even seen it. She would’ve only witnessed a quick jerk of Reacher’s right shoulder. A jerk forward. A jerk backward like a shot fired from a captive bolt gun, a cattle gun.

  The captive bolt gun is the gun used by ranchers and in slaughterhouses to instantly ignite unconsciousness in cattle before they are slaughtered. This is called stunning. The gun is loaded with a single retractable bolt with a sharp piercing tip. The bolt fires and propelled by pressurized air or a blank cartridge, the bolt penetrates the skull of the animal, enters the cranium, and calamitously damages the cerebrum. Due to the destruction of vital centers of the brain and an increase in intracranial pressure, the animal loses consciousness—stunned.

  The guy dropped his gun which fell and sank down into the snow. Simultaneously, the guy flew back off his feet like he had been hit in the chest by a shotgun blast. He sank deep into the snow too. His head fell back and didn’t come back up. He was unconscious.

  Reacher stepped forward and checked both guys. He glanced at the guy in the crooked collar. He was still wriggling around on the ground, cupping his nose. Not an immediate danger. Then Reacher walked over to the other guy. He knelt down and lifted the guy’s head up and out of the snow. It was clear that the guy was still alive because little puffs of air came out of his nose like vapors. He was breathing fine.

  Reacher gently laid the guy’s head back down in the snow and stood back up. He hadn’t really thought about how the cop would react to his interfering. He hadn’t expected a grateful police officer or even a thank you for the assist, but what he got was completely unexpected. Standing there in a trained stance, but with a look of fear and confusion on her face, was the cop that he had just helped and in her hands was her Glock 22 Gen4. She had it pointed straight up at Reacher’s head. She had to point up at the two o’clock position because of the height difference.

  She said, “Don’t move or I’ll shoot you.”

  Chapter 7

  Cops are taught to use what’s called the cop voice. Loud, fearful tone. Sharp, precise command and most of all, an authoritative voice. “GET ON THE GROUND!” or “FREEZE! FREEZE!” or “PUT YOUR HANDS UP!”

  Any variation of commands like that will work. The one thing that they are trained not to do is to show fear or hesitation. They are trained to show confidence. They are trained to show power, force, and strength and nothing else. Signs of fear can get you shot. Signs of fear can get you killed.

  The police officer he had just assisted in defending herself was pointing a gun at him and saying the right words, but she trembled. Reacher could see fear in her eyes and hear it in her voice as if it made its own audible signals.

  “GET YOUR HANDS UP!” she shouted. “GET THEM UP! GET THEM UP!”

  This upset Reacher for two reasons. First he had just helped her out of a sticky situation. Clearly she was in need of assistance because she was letting those two guys push her around and assaulting an officer is a crime everywhere that Reacher was aware of. Second he found himself uncontrollably attracted to her. He had noticed how attractive she was from the first moment that he had seen her, but it wasn’t until now that he could see just how incredible she was.

  She had beautiful black hair, big brown eyes, and crisp eyebrows on a smooth forehead. She had a small mouth and thin long lips and high, defined cheek bones. Her nose was thin and bridged her eyes seamlessly with her lips. Her complexion was a natural medium saddle color. The only thing that was unattractive about her was that she pointed a gun at him. Maybe he hadn’t expected her to be grateful for the help, but certainly it insulted him that now she was trying to detain him after all of that. After all, it was the other two guys who had assaulted her and now she knew that they were carrying concealed weapons. Which might’ve been a crime on this reservation. Reacher wasn’t sure.

  “Relax. I’m not a threat,” Reacher said in a firm voice. He tried to hide his annoyance at her reaction.

  Not a very good start, he thought.

  She shouted, “GET YOUR HANDS UP!”

  Reacher slowly raised his hands. Over to his right he noticed that the sunlight was almost gone. If he wanted, he could’ve jumped right and scrambled to her and gotten hold of the Glock. He could’ve pushed it down and to the left and rendered it useless unless she wanted to shoot at the ground, but she was a good guy. So he discarded this plan.

  No need to assault a police officer, even though she apparently wouldn’t have done anything about it. Apparently, he thought.

  He glanced down at her nameplate. It read: Red Cloud. A look of intrigue splashed across his face and he thought about Chief Red Cloud. This officer must’ve been related to him and proudly wore his name as her own last name.

  He took another glance a little lower and saw her badge clipped to the front of her belt near the lower right hand side of her abdomen. The badge had an Old West design to it. It was natural, unadorned, and simple with a whitish rust color swirling through it and the name of her tribe plastered across the top in big letters: Lakota.

  In the middle of the badge, just under the name of her tribe, was a seal of an Indian head profile with the feathers and all, then at the bottom was the word: Police.

  At the very top of the badge was a blackened arrow that faced upward.

  Officer Red Cloud cocked her head to the left and stared coldly into Reacher’s young face. Then she said, “Slowly turn around and keep your hands up until I tell you otherwise.”

  Reacher didn’t argue. He shrugged and turned slowly and kept his arms up in the air.

  Then she said, “Lower your arms slowly and place them behind your back.”

  Not again, Reacher thought ironically. He had been arrested more than six months ago for beating up three rednecks who were picking on a weaker guy and now he was about to be handcuffed for the same crime. He was starting to think that maybe he wasn’t supposed to help total strangers anymore, because so far the endeavor had brought him nothing but bad luck and trouble.

  “Are you arresting me?”

  “Sir, please comply. Place your arms down behind your back,” Officer Red Cloud said.

  Reacher closed his eyes tight and shrugged and placed his arms down behind his back with his wrists clamped together. No tightening in his muscles. No intention of resisting.

  He heard Officer Red Cloud step closer to him in the snow. Her boots crunched down and she moved in closer behind him. She never lowered her gun until she was close enough to grab him. She had seen big guys before and she knew that part of her job was occasionally having to face a guy much larger than herself. She had been trained to do so way back at the Law Enforcement Academy of Wyoming. The bulk of the school was stationed clear at the opp
osite corner of the state in Douglas, but she had attended most of her classes on a university campus in Cody. It was a joint program like a satellite of the academy, but the courses that taught her how to engage a man of Reacher’s stature were courses that she had to take one semester when she moved down to Douglas.

  And Officer Red Cloud had seen her fair share of big guys. There was Henry Little who ran the general store. He was big, but there was a huge difference between Henry and this guy. This guy had just snuck up behind two guys with special ops backgrounds and taken them down faster than any takedown that she had ever seen before. This guy was serious business.

  She waited until she was in reaching distance of Reacher and then she lowered her gun and held it with only her right hand. Then she reached behind her and pulled out her handcuffs. Reacher heard the clatter of the cuffs together and the chain.

  Officer Red Cloud slammed the first cuff on his left wrist and then the second on his right. She jerked on the chain and made sure that they were tight enough to hold him. This was an action that she had taken hundreds of times before on both practice and real suspects, but this time was the first time that she had actually been afraid that the steel cuffs weren’t going to be enough to restrain the guy.

  Reacher looked back over his shoulder at her and asked, “Is this how you treat every guy who tries to help you?”

  “Help me? How the hell are you helping me?”

  Reacher stayed quiet out of fear of showing his annoyance with her.

  She didn’t wait for a response. Instead she jerked the cuffs and holstered her weapon, but she left the safety buckle undone in case she had to draw it again.

  She tugged on Reacher’s cuffs like reigns to a saddle and she moved him in a southern direction away from the buildings and the two guys.