Echo Burning jr-5

by Lee Child

  "Couple hours," Billy said.

  They were doing about sixty, heading south on the dead-straight road. The landscape was unchanging. Scrubby dry grassland on the left, sullen limestone caliche on the right, broken up into ledges and layers. All of it baking under the relentless sun. There was no traffic. The road looked like it saw one or two vehicles a day. Maybe all they had to do was get far enough away, pull over, throw him out, and he'd die slowly of thirst before anybody got to him. Or of exhaustion, walking back. Or of rattlesnake bites.

  "No, less than a couple hours," Josh said. "Hundred miles is all."

  So maybe they were headed to the bar they had mentioned yesterday. Maybe they had friends there. They better had, Reacher thought. A pair of fifth-rate cowboys ain't going to do it for me. Then he breathed out again. Relaxed. Struggled with a decision. The problem with the kind of undiluted raging aggression he had described to Carmen was it came out so all-or-nothing. He recalled his first day in high school. The summer after he finished his elementary education, the family moved back stateside for a six-month tour. He was enrolled in a big high school off-base, somewhere in New Jersey, somewhere near Fort Dix. And he was ready for it. In his usual serious earnest fashion he calculated that high school would be bigger and better than elementary school, in every way, including the seriousness of the locker-room scuffling. So he made his usual new-school first-day plan to jump on the very first guy who tried anything. That had always worked well for him. Hit hard, hit early, get your retaliation in first. It made a big impression. But this time, make an even bigger impression, hit harder than ever, because clearly high school was going to be a whole new kind of a deal.

  So sure enough some hard kid shoved him the first morning, and ten minutes later the hard kid was on his way to the hospital for a three-week stay. Then Reacher discovered it was really a very genteel school, in a good neighborhood, and that he'd reacted way too drastically, and everybody was looking at him like he was some sort of a barbarian. And he felt like one. He felt a little ashamed. From then on, he'd become calmer. He'd learned to be certain what he was into before he did anything. And he'd learned to offer warnings, sometimes, in certain circumstances.

  "We coming straight back?" he asked.

  It was a smart tactical question. They couldn't say no, without alerting him. They couldn't say yes, if they weren't going there in the first place. "We're going for a couple beers first," Billy said.

  "Where?"

  "Where we went yesterday."

  "I'm broke," Reacher said. "I didn't get paid yet."

  "We're buying," Josh said.

  "The feed store open late? On a Saturday?"

  "Big order, they'll accommodate us," Billy said. Maybe it was a new supplier. Maybe they changed their source.

  "I guess you use them a lot," he said.

  "All the years we've been here," Josh said.

  "Then we're going straight back?"

  "Sure we are," Billy said. "You'll be back in time for your beauty sleep."

  "That's good," Reacher said. He paused. "Because that's the way I like it," he said. Mess with me now, you get what you get. Billy said nothing. Josh just smiled and drove.

  The scenery flattened very gradually as they headed south. From his time with the maps he knew the Rio Grande was curling around toward them from the west. They were entering the river basin, where wide prehistoric waters had scoured the land. Josh kept the speed at a steady sixty. Billy stared idly out of his window. The road remained straight and featureless. Reacher rested his head on the gun rack behind him and waited. Waiting was something he was accustomed to. Many times in his career, frantic action had been preceded by a long drive. It usually happened that way. The patient accumulation of evidence, the arrival at a conclusion, the identification of a suspect, the drive out to deal with him. Waiting was a skill you learned fast, in the military.

  The road got rougher the farther south they drove. The truck labored over it. The load bed was empty, so the rear wheels bounced and skipped. There were vultures on some of the telephone poles. The sun was low in the west. There was a sign on the shoulder. It said ECHO 5 MILES. It was pocked with bullet holes.

  "I thought Echo was north," Reacher said. "Where Ellie goes to school."

  "It's split," Billy said. "Half of it up there, half of it down here. Hundred sixty miles of nothing in between."

  "World's biggest town, end to end," Josh said. "Bigger than Los Angeles."

  He eased off the gas around a long slow curve and a cluster of small buildings came into view in the distance, all of them built low to the ground, all of them lit from behind by the low sun. There were tin advertisements on the shoulder, three miles out, announcing well in advance what the buildings were going to be. There was going to be another gas station, and a country store. And a bar, called the Longhorn Lounge, owned and operated by somebody named Harley. It had the last sign, but it was the first establishment they came to. It was a hundred feet east of the shoulder of the road, built out of tarred boards under an iron roof, crouched low at an angle in the middle of two acres of parched earth. There were ten or twelve pick-up trucks parked nose-in to the building like airplanes at a terminal. And nearest the door was the sheriff's secondhand police car, just sitting there like it had been abandoned.

  Josh bumped across the parking lot and put the truck in line with the others. The bar had neon beer signs in the windows, trapped between dirty glass and faded gingham drapes. Josh turned the motor off. Put the keys in his pocket. In the sudden quiet Reacher could hear bar noise, the roar of extractor fans and air conditioners, the thump of an overworked jukebox amplifier, the rumble of talking, the chink of bottles and glasses, the click of pool balls. Sounded like a reasonable crowd in there.

  Josh and Billy opened their doors together and swung out. Reacher slid out through the passenger door and stood with his back to the sun. It was still hot. He could feel heat all over him, right from the back of his neck to the heels of his shoes.

  "O.K.," Billy said. "We're buying."

  There was an inside lobby with an old-fashioned pay phone and scrawled numbers and old messages creeping over the boards alongside it. Then there was a second door, with a yellow glass window in it, that led into the bar itself. Billy pushed it open.

  For a military cop, walking into a bar is like a batter stepping to the plate. It's his place of business. Maybe ninety percent of low-grade trouble in the service happens in bars. Put a bunch of young men trained for aggression and reaction alongside a limitless supply of alcohol, add in unit rivalries, add in the presence of civilian women and their civilian husbands and boyfriends, and it becomes inevitable. So just like a batter walks warily from the on-deck circle, watching the infield, surveying the outfield, calculating angles and distances, a military cop is all eyes on the way into a bar. First, he counts the exits. There are usually three. The front door, the back door out beyond the rest rooms, and the private door from the office behind the bar. Reacher saw that the Longhorn Lounge had all three of them. The windows were too small to be useful to anybody.

  Then the MP looks at the crowd. He looks for knots of trouble. Who falls silent and stares? Where are the challenges? Nowhere, in the Longhorn. There were maybe twenty or twenty-five people in the long low room, all men, all tanned and lean and dressed in denim, none of them paying any kind of attention beyond casual glances and nods of easy familiarity toward Billy and Josh. The sheriff was nowhere to be seen. But there was an unoccupied stool at the bar with a fresh bottle sitting on a used napkin in front of it. Maybe the place of honor.

  Then the MP looks for weapons. There was an antique revolver above the bar, wired onto a wooden plaque with a message branded into it with a hot poker: WE DON'T CALL 911. There would be a few modern handguns here and there in the room. There were long-neck bottles all over the place, but Reacher wasn't worried about them. Bottles are no real use as weapons. Except in the movies, where they make them out of spun sugar and print the labels on tis
sue paper. A real bottle won't break against a table top. The glass is too thick. They just make a loud banging noise. They have some marginal use as clubs, but the pool table worried him more. It sat in the middle of the room, all covered in hard celluloid balls, four guys with four cues using it, maybe a dozen more cues vertical in a long rack on the nearest wall. Short of a shotgun, a pool cue is the best barroom weapon ever invented. Short enough to be handy, long enough to be useful, made out of fine hardwood and nicely weighted with lead.

  The air was unnaturally cold and thick with beer fumes and smoke and noise. The jukebox was near the pool table, and beyond it was an area with small round lounge tables surrounded by stools padded with red vinyl. Billy held up three fingers to the barman and got three cold bottles in exchange. He carried them laced between his fingers and led the way toward the tables. Reacher stepped ahead of him and got there first. He wanted his choice of seats. Back to the wall was his rule. All three exits in view, if possible. He threaded his way in and sat down. Josh sat to his half-right, and Billy sat half-left. Pushed a bottle across the scarred surface of the table. People had stubbed cigarettes on the wood. The sheriff came into the room from the rear, from the direction of the rest rooms, checking that his pants were zipped. He paused a second when he saw Reacher, nothing in his face, and then he moved on and sat down at the bar, on the unoccupied stool, his shoulders hunched, his back to the crowd.

  Billy raised his bottle like a toast.

  "Good luck," he said.

  You're going to need it, pal, Reacher thought. He took a long pull from his own bottle. The beer was cold and gassy. It tasted strongly of hops.

  "I need to make a phone call," Billy said.

  He pushed back from the table and stood up again. Josh leaned to his right, trying to fill the new vacant space in front of Reacher. Billy made it through the crowd and went outside to the lobby. Reacher took another sip of his beer and estimated the passage of time. And counted the people in the room. There were twenty-three of them, excluding himself, including the barman, who he guessed was Harley. Billy came back inside two minutes and forty seconds. He bent and spoke into the sheriff's ear. The sheriff nodded. Billy spoke some more. The sheriff nodded again. Drained his bottle and pushed back from the bar and stood up. Turned to face the room. Glanced once in Reacher's direction and then stepped away and pushed out through the door. Billy stood and watched him go and then threaded his way back to the table.

  "Sheriff's leaving," he said. "He remembered he had urgent business elsewhere."

  Reacher said nothing.

  "Did you make your call?" Josh asked, like it was rehearsed.

  "Yes, I made my call," Billy said. Then he sat down on his stool and picked up his bottle. "Don't you want to know who I called?" he said, looking across at Reacher.

  "Why would I give a rat's ass who you called?" Reacher said.

  "I called for the ambulance," Billy said. "Best to do it ahead of time, because it comes all the way from Presidio. It can take hours to get here."

  "See, we got a confession to make," Josh said. "We lied to you before. There was a guy we ran off. He was knocking boots with the Mexican woman. Bobby didn't think that was appropriate behavior, in the circumstances, what with Sloop being in prison and all. So we got asked to take care of it. We brought him down here."

  "Want to know what we did?" Billy asked.

  "I thought we were going to the feed store," Reacher said.

  "Feed store's up in San Angelo."

  "So what are we doing all the way down here?"

  "We're telling you, is what. This is where we brought the other guy."

  "What's this other guy got to do with me?"

  "Bobby figures you're in the same category, is what."

  "He thinks I'm knocking boots with her too?"

  Josh nodded. "He sure does."

  "What do you think?"

  "We agree with him. Why else would you come around? You're no horseman, that's for damn sure."

  "Suppose I told you we're just good friends?"

  "Bobby says you're more than that."

  "And you believe him?"

  Billy nodded. "Sure we do. She conies on to him. He told us that himself. So why should you be any different? And hey, we don't blame you. She's a good-looking piece of ass. I'd go there myself, except she's Sloop's. You got to respect family, even with beaners. That's the rule around here."

  Reacher said nothing.

  "Her other guy was a schoolteacher," Billy said. "Got way out of line. So we brought him down here, and we took him out back, in the yard, and we got us a hog butchering knife, and we got us a couple of guys to hold him, and we pulled his pants down, and we told him we were going to cut it off. He was all crying and whimpering and messing himself. Begging and whining. Promising he'd get himself lost. Pleading with us not to cut. But we cut just a little anyway. For the fun of it. There was blood everywhere. Then we let him go. But we told him if we ever saw his face again, we'd take it all the way off for real. And you know what? We never saw his face again."

  "So it worked," Josh said. "It worked real good. Only problem was he nearly bled out, from the wound. We should have qalled ahead for the ambulance. We figured we should remember that, for the next time. Live and learn, that's what we always say. So this time, we did call ahead. Especially for you. So you should be grateful."

  "You cut the guy?" Reacher asked.

  "We sure did."

  "Sounds like you're real proud of yourselves."

  "We do what it takes. We look after the family."

  "And you're admitting it to me?"

  Josh nodded. "Why shouldn't we? Like, who the hell are you?"

  Reacher shrugged. "Well, I'm not a schoolteacher."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means you aim to cut me, it'll be you goes in the ambulance."

  "You think?"

  Reacher nodded. "That horse I was on shit more trouble than you guys are going to give me."

  He looked at each of them in turn, openly and evenly. Serene self-confidence works wonders, in a situation like that. And he felt confident. It was confidence born of experience. It was a long, long time since he'd lost a two-on-one bar fight.

  "Your choice," he said. "Quit now, or go to the hospital."

  "Well, you know what?" Josh said, smiling. "I think we'll stay with the program. Because whatever the hell kind of a guy you think you are, we're the ones got a lot of friends in here. And you don't."

  "I didn't inquire about your social situation," Reacher said. But it was clearly true. They had friends in there. Some kind of a subliminal vibe was quieting the room, making people restless and watchful. They were glancing over, then glancing at each other. The atmosphere was building. The pool game was slowing down. Reacher could feel tension in the air. The silences were starting. The challenges. Maybe it was going to be worse than two-on-one. Maybe a lot worse. Billy smiled.

  "We don't scare easy," he said. "Call it a professional thing."

  They get in the ring with bulls that weigh a ton and a half, Bobby had said. They ain't going to be too worried about you. Reacher had never been to a rodeo. He knew nothing about them, except for occasional passing impressions from television or the movies. He guessed the riders sat on some kind of a fence, near the pen, and they jumped on just as the bull was released out into the ring. Then they had to stay on. What was it, eight seconds? And if they didn't, they could get kicked around pretty badly. They could get stomped. Or gored, with the horns. So these guys had some kind of dumb courage. And strength. And resilience. And they were accustomed to pain and injury. But they were also accustomed to some kind of a pattern. Some kind of a structured buildup. Some kind of a measured countdown, before the action suddenly started. He didn't know for sure how it went. Maybe three, two, one, go. Maybe ten, nine, eight. Whatever, they were accustomed to waiting, counting off the seconds, tensing up, breathing deeply, getting ready for it.

  "So let's do it," he said.
"Right now, in the yard."

  He came out from behind the table and stepped past Josh before he could react. Walked ahead, away from the jukebox, to the right of the pool table, heading for the rest room exit. Knots of people blocked him and then parted to let him through. He heard Josh and Billy following right behind him. He felt them counting down, tensing up, getting ready. Maybe twenty paces to the exit, maybe thirty seconds to the yard. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight. He kept his steps even, building on the rhythm. Twenty-seven, twenty-six. Arms loose by his side.

  Twenty-five, twenty-four.

  He snatched the last pool cue from the rack and reversed it in his hands and scythed a complete hundred-eighty-degree turn and hit Billy as hard as he could in the side of the head, one. There was a loud crunch of bone clearly audible over the jukebox noise and a spray of blood and Billy went down like he had been machine-gunned. He swung again, chopping full-force at Josh like a slugger swinging for the fences, two. Josh's hand came up to block the blow and his forearm broke clean in half. He screamed and Reacher swung again for the head, three, connecting hard, knocking him sideways. He jabbed for the face and punched out a couple of teeth, four. Backhanded the cue with all his strength against the upper arm and shattered the bone, five. Josh went down head-to-toe with Billy and Reacher stood over them both and swung again four more times, fast and hard, six, seven, eight, nine, against ribs and collarbones and knees and skulls. A total of nine swings, maybe six or seven seconds of furious explosive force. Hit hard, hit early, get your retaliation in first. While they're still waiting for the bell.

  The other men in the bar had spun away from the action and now they were crowding back in again, slowly and warily. Reacher turned a menacing circle with the cue held ready. He bent and took the truck keys from Josh's pocket. Then he dropped the cue and let it clatter to the floor and barged his way through the crowd to the door, breathing hard, shoving people out of his way. Nobody seriously tried to stop him. Clearly friendship had its limits, down there in Echo County. He made it into the lot, still breathing fast. The heat broke him out in a sweat, instantly. He made it back to the truck. Slid inside and fired it up and backed away from the building and peeled away north. The bar door stayed firmly closed. Nobody came after him.