by Lee Child
Allen’s eyes were blank. He shifted Jodie’s weight to keep her directly in front of him. Twisted the hook and jammed the gun in harder. He nodded, just a fractional movement of his head.
“OK, I was Carl Allen,” he said. “I admit it, smart guy. I was Carl Allen, and then that was over. Then I was Victor Hobie. I was Victor Hobie for a real long time, longer than I was ever Carl Allen, but I guess that’s over now, too. So now I’m going to be Jack Reacher.”
“What?”
“That’s what you’ve got,” Allen said. “That’s the deal. That’s your trade. Your name, for this woman’s life.”
“What?” Reacher said again.
“I want your identity,” Allen said. “I want your name.”
Reacher just stared at him.
“You’re a drifter, no family,” Allen said. “Nobody will ever miss you.”
“Then what?”
“Then you die,” Allen said. “We can’t have two people with the same name running around, can we? It’s a fair trade. Your life, for the woman’s life.”
Jodie was staring straight at Reacher, waiting.
“No deal,” Reacher said.
“I’ll shoot her,” Allen said.
Reacher shook his head again. The pain was fearsome. It was building stronger and spreading behind both his eyes.
“You won’t shoot her,” he said. “Think about it, Allen. Think about yourself. You’re a selfish piece of shit. The way you are, you’re always number one. You shoot her, I’ll shoot you. You’re twelve feet away from me. I’m aiming at your head. You pull your trigger, I pull mine. She dies, you die one-hundredth of a second later. You won’t shoot me either, because you start to line up on me, you go down before you’re even halfway there. Think about it. Impasse.”
He stared him down through the pain and the gloom. A classic standoff. But there was a problem. A serious flaw in his analysis. He knew that. It came to him in a cold flash of panic. It came to Allen at the exact same moment. Reacher knew that, too, because he saw it settle in his eyes, complacently.
“You’re miscalculating,” Allen said. “You’re missing something.”
Reacher made no response.
“Right now it’s a stalemate,” Allen said. “And it always will be, as long as I’m standing here and you’re standing there. But how long are you going to be standing there?”
Reacher swallowed against the pain. It was hammering at him.
“I’ll be standing here as long as it takes,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of time. Like you figured, I’m a drifter. I don’t have any pressing appointments to get to.”
Allen smiled.
“Brave words,” he said. “But you’re bleeding from the head. You know that? You’ve got a piece of metal sticking in your head. I can see it from here.”
Jodie nodded desperately, eyes full of terror.
“Check it out, Mr. Curry,” Allen said. “Tell him.”
The guy on the sofa underneath the Steyr crabbed around and knelt up. He kept well away from Reacher’s gun arm and craned his head around to look. Then his face creased in horror.
“It’s a nail,” he said. “A woodworking nail. You’ve got a nail in your head.”
“From the reception desk,” Allen said.
The guy called Curry ducked down again and Reacher knew it was true. As soon as the words were spoken, the pain doubled and quadrupled and exploded. It was a piercing agony centered in his forehead, an inch above his eye. The adrenaline had masked it for a long time. But adrenaline doesn’t last forever. He forced his mind away from it with all the power of his will, but it was still there. Bad pain, razor-sharp and nausea-dull all at the same time, booming and throbbing through his head, sending brilliant lightning strikes into his eyes. The blood had soaked his shirt, all the way down to his waist. He blinked, and saw nothing at all with his left eye. It was full of blood. Blood was running down his neck and left arm and dripping off his fingertips.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Don’t anybody worry about me.”
“Brave words,” Allen said again. “But you’re in pain and you’re losing a lot of blood. You won’t outlast me, Reacher. You think you’re tough, but you’re nothing next to me. I crawled away from that helicopter with no hand. Severed arteries. I was on fire. I survived three weeks in the jungle like that. Then I got myself home free. Then I lived with danger for thirty years. So I’m the tough guy here. I’m the toughest guy in the world. Mentally and physically. You couldn’t outlast me even if you didn’t have a nail in your damn head. So don’t kid yourself, OK?”
Jodie was staring at him. Her hair was golden in the faint diffused light from the window blinds. It was hanging forward over her face, parted by the sweep of her brow. He could see her eyes. Her mouth. The curve of her neck. Her slim strong body, tense against Allen’s arm. The hook, shining against the color of her suit. The pain was hammering in his head. His soaked shirt was cold against his skin. There was blood in his mouth. It tasted metallic, like aluminum. He was feeling the first faint tremors in his shoulder. The Steyr was starting to feel heavy in his hand.
“And I’m motivated,” Allen said. “I’ve worked hard for what I’ve got. I’m going to keep it. I’m a genius and a survivor. You think I’m going to let you take me down? You think you’re the first person who ever tried?”
Reacher swayed against the pain.
“Now let’s up the stakes a little,” Allen called to him.
He forced Jodie upward with all the strength in his arm. Jammed the gun in so hard she bent away from it, folding forward against the arm and sideways against the gun. He hauled her up so he was invisible behind her. Then the hook moved. The arm came up from crushing her waist to crushing her chest. The hook plowed over her breasts. She gasped in pain. The hook moved up until the arm was at a steep angle crushing her body and the hook was resting on the side of her face. Then the elbow turned out and the steel tip dug into the skin of her cheek.
“I could rip her open,” Allen said. “I could tear her face off, and there’s nothing you could do about it except feel worse. Stress makes it worse, right? The pain? You’re starting to feel faint, right? You’re on your way out, Reacher. You’re going down. And when you’re down, the stalemate is over, believe me.”
Reacher shuddered. Not from the pain, but because he knew Allen was right. He could feel his knees. They were there, and they were strong. But a fit man never feels his knees. They’re just a part of him. Feeling them valiantly holding up 250 pounds of body weight means that pretty soon they won’t be. It’s an early warning.
“You’re going down, Reacher,” Allen called again. “You’re shaking, you know that? You’re slipping away from us. Couple of minutes, I’ll walk right over and shoot you in the head. All the time in the world.”
Reacher shuddered again and scoped it out. It was hard to think. He was dizzy. He had an open head wound. His skull was penetrated. Nash Newman flashed into his mind, holding up bones in a classroom. Maybe Nash would explain it, many years in the future. A sharp object penetrated the frontal lobe—here—and pierced the meninges and caused a hemorrhage. His gun hand was shaking. Then Leon was there, scowling and muttering if plan A doesn’t work, move on to plan B.
Then the Louisiana cop was there, the guy from years ago in another life, talking about his .38-caliber revolvers, saying you just can’t rely on them to put a guy down, not if he’s coming at you all pumped up on angel dust. Reacher saw the guy’s unhappy face. You can’t rely on a .38 to put a man down. And a short-barrel .38, worse still. Hard to hit a target with a short barrel. And with a struggling woman in your arms, harder still. Although her struggling might put the bullet dead center by accident. His head spun. It was being pounded by a giant with a jackhammer. His strength was draining out of him from the inside. His right eye was jacked open and it was dry and stinging, like needles were in it. Five more minutes, maybe, he was thinking. Then I’m done for.
He was in a rented car, next
to Jodie, driving back from the zoo. He was talking. It was warm in the car. There was sun and glass. He was saying the basis of any scam is show them what they want to see. The Steyr wobbled in his hand and he thought OK, Leon, here’s plan B. See how you like it.
His knees buckled and he swayed. He came back upright and brought the Steyr back to the only thin sliver of Allen’s head he could make out. The muzzle wavered through a circle. A small circle at first, then a larger one as the weight of the gun overwhelmed the control in his shoulder. He coughed and pushed blood out of his mouth with his tongue. The Steyr was coming down. He watched the front sight dropping like a strong man was pulling on it. He tried to bring it up, but it wouldn’t come. He forced his hand upward, but it just moved sideways, like an invisible force was deflecting it. His knees went again and he jerked back upright like a spasm. The Steyr was miles away. It was hanging down to the right. It was pointing at the desk. His elbow was locked against its weight and his arm was bending. Allen’s hand was moving. He watched it one-eyed and wondered is what I feel for Jodie as good as being pumped up on angel dust? The barrel snagged out from a fold of cloth and came free of her jacket. Am I going to make it? His knees were going and he started shaking. Wait. Just wait.
Allen’s wrist snapped forward. He saw it move. It was very quick. He saw the black hole in the stainless barrel. It was clear of her body. She smashed her head down and he whipped the Steyr back and got it pretty close to the target before Allen fired. It was within a couple of inches. That was all. A couple of lousy inches. Fast, he thought, but not fast enough. He saw the revolver hammer click forward and then a flower of bright flame bloomed out from the barrel and a freight train hit him in the chest. The roar of the shot was completely lost behind the immense physical impact of the bullet hitting him. It was a blow from a giant hammer the size of a planet. It thumped and crashed and deafened him from the inside. There was no pain. No pain at all. Just a huge cold numbness in his chest and a silent vacuum of total calm in his mind. He thought hard for a split second and fought to stay firm on his feet and he kept his eye wide open long enough to concentrate on the puff of soot coming from the Steyr’s silencer. Then he moved his eye the last little fraction and watched Allen’s head burst open twelve feet away. There was an explosion of blood and bone in the air, a cloud three or four feet wide, and it was spreading like a mist. He asked himself is he dead now? and when he heard himself answer surely he must be he let himself go and rolled his eye up in his head and fell backward through perfect still silent blackness that continued forever and ended nowhere.
18
HE KNEW HE was dying because faces were coming toward him and all of them were faces he recognized. They came in a long stream, unending, ones and twos together, and there were no strangers among them. He had heard it would be like this. Your life was supposed to flash before your eyes. Everybody said so. And now it was happening. So he was dying.
He guessed when the faces stopped, that was it. He wondered who the last one would be. There were a number of candidates. He wondered who chose the order. Whose decision was it? He felt mildly irritated he wasn’t allowed to specify. And what would happen next? When the last face was gone, what then?
But something was going seriously wrong. A face loomed up who he didn’t know. It was then he realized the Army was in charge of the parade. It had to be. Only the Army could accidentally include someone he had never seen before. A complete stranger, in the wrong place at the wrong time. He supposed it was fitting. He had lived most of his life under the control of the Army. He supposed it was pretty natural they would take charge of organizing this final part. And one mistake was tolerable. Normal, even acceptable, for the Army.
But this guy was touching him. Hitting him. Hurting him. He suddenly realized the parade had finished before this guy. This guy wasn’t in the parade at all. He came after it. Maybe this guy was there to finish him off. Yes, that was it. Had to be that way. This guy was here to make sure he died on schedule. The parade was over, and the Army couldn’t let him survive it. Why should they go to all the trouble of putting it on and then have him survive it? That would be no good. No good at all. That would be a serious lapse in procedure. He tried to recall who had come before this guy. The second-to-last person, who was really the last person. He didn’t remember. He hadn’t paid attention. He slipped away and died without remembering who had been the last face in his parade.
HE WAS DEAD, but he was still thinking. Was that OK? Was this the afterlife? That would be a hell of a thing. He had lived nearly thirty-nine years assuming there was no afterlife. Some people had agreed with him, others had argued with him. But he’d always been adamant about it. Now he was right there in it. Somebody was going to come sneering up to him and say told you so. He would, if the boot was on the other foot. He wouldn’t let somebody get away with being absolutely wrong about something, not without a little friendly ribbing at least.
He saw Jodie Garber. She was going to tell him. No, that wasn’t possible. She wasn’t dead. Only a dead person could yell at you in the afterlife, surely. A live person couldn’t do it. That was pretty obvious. A live person wasn’t in the afterlife. And Jodie Garber was a live person. He’d made certain of it. That had been the whole damn point. And anyway, he was pretty sure he had never discussed the afterlife with Jodie Garber. Or had he? Maybe many years ago, when she was still a kid? But it was Jodie Garber. And she was going to speak to him. She sat down in front of him and pushed her hair behind her ears. Long blond hair, small ears.
“Hi, Reacher,” she said.
It was her voice. No doubt about it. No mistake. So maybe she was dead. Maybe it had been an automobile accident. That would be a hell of an irony. Maybe she was hit by a speeding truck on lower Broadway, on her way home from the World Trade Center.
“Hey, Jodie,” he said.
She smiled. There was communication. So she was dead. Only a dead person could hear another dead person speak, surely. But he had to know.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“St. Vincent’s,” she said.
Saint Peter he had heard of. He was the guy at the gates. He had seen pictures. Well, not really pictures, but cartoons, at least. He was an old guy in a robe, with a beard. He stood at a lectern and asked questions about why you should be let in. But he didn’t remember Saint Peter asking him any questions. Maybe that came later. Maybe you had to go out again, and then try to get back in.
But who was Saint Vincent? Maybe he was the guy who ran the place you stayed while you were waiting for Saint Peter’s questions. Like the boot camp part. Maybe old Vincent ran the Fort Dix equivalent. Well, that would be no problem. He’d murdered boot camp. Easiest time he’d ever done. He could do it again. But he was annoyed about it. He’d finished up a major, for God’s sake. He’d been a star. He had medals. Why the hell should he do boot camp all over again?
And why was Jodie here? She was supposed to be alive. He realized his left hand was clenching. He was intensely irritated. He’d saved her life, because he loved her. So why was she dead now? What the hell was going on? He tried to struggle upright. Something was tying him down. What the hell? He was going to get some answers or he was going to knock some heads together.
“Take it easy,” Jodie said to him.
“I want to see Saint Vincent,” he said. “And I want to see him right now. Tell him to get his sorry ass in this room inside five minutes or I’m going to be seriously pissed off.”
She looked at him and nodded.
“OK,” she said.
Then she looked away and stood up. She disappeared from his sight and he lay back down. This wasn’t any kind of a boot camp. It was too quiet, and the pillows were soft.
LOOKING BACK, IT should have been a shock. But it wasn’t. The room just swam into focus and he saw the decor and the shiny equipment and he thought hospital. He changed from being dead to being alive with the same little mental shrug a busy man gives when he realizes he’s wrong abou
t what day it is.
The room was bright with sun. He moved his head and saw he had a window. Jodie was sitting in a chair next to it, reading. He kept his breathing low and watched her. Her hair was washed and shiny. It fell past her shoulders, and she was twirling a strand between her finger and thumb. She was wearing a yellow sleeveless dress. Her shoulders were brown with summer. He could see the little knobs of bone on top. Her arms were long and lean. Her legs were crossed. She was wearing tan penny loafers that matched the dress. Her ankles glowed brown in the sun.
“Hey, Jodie,” he said.
She turned her head and looked at him. Searched his face for something and when she found it she smiled.
“Hey yourself,” she said. She dropped the book and stood up. Walked three paces and bent and kissed him gently on the lips.
“St. Vincent’s,” he said. “You told me, but I was confused.”
She nodded.
“You were full of morphine,” she said. “They were pumping it in like crazy. Your bloodstream would have kept all the addicts in New York happy.”
He nodded. Glanced at the sun in the window. It looked like afternoon.
“What day is it?”
“It’s July. You’ve been out three weeks.”
“Christ, I ought to feel hungry.”
She moved around the foot of the bed and came up on his left. Laid her hand on his forearm. It was turned palm-up and there were tubes running into the veins of his elbow.
“They’ve been feeding you,” she said. “I made sure you got what you like. You know, lots of glucose and saline.”
He nodded.
“Can’t beat saline,” he said.
She went quiet.
“What?” he asked.
“Do you remember?”
He nodded again.
“Everything,” he said.
She swallowed.
“I don’t know what to say,” she whispered. “You took a bullet for me.”