Never Go Back (23 page)

Amateurs.

Reacher put his hands on the walkway’s rail, and he gazed out over the scene below, serenely, like a dictator in an old movie, ready to address a crowd.

He said, ‘We need to find a way of getting you guys home before you get hurt. You want to work with me on that?’

He had overheard a guy in a suit on a cell phone one time, who kept on asking,
You want to work with me on that?
He guessed it was a technique taught at expensive seminars in dowdy hotel ballrooms. Presumably because it mandated a positive response. Because civilized people felt an obligation to
work with
one another, if that option was offered. No one ever said,
No, I don’t
.

But the guy from the half-ton did.

He said, ‘No one is here to work with you, boy. We’re here to kick your butt and take our car and our money back.’

‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘We can go down that road, if you like. But there’s no reason why all of you should go to the hospital. You ever heard of Gallup?’

‘Who?’

‘It’s a polling organization. Like at election time. They tell you this guy is going to get fifty-one per cent of the vote, and this other guy is going to get forty-nine.’

‘I’ve heard of them.’

‘You know how they do that? They don’t call everyone in America. That would take too long. So they sample. They call a handful of people and scale up the scores.’

‘So?’

‘That’s what we should do. We should sample. One of us against one of you. We should let the result stand in for what would have happened if we’d all gone at it together. Like the Gallup organization does.’

No answer.

Reacher said, ‘If your guy wins, you get to trade your worst truck for the Corvette. And you get half of Billy Bob’s money.’

No answer.

Reacher said, ‘But if my side wins, we’ll trade the Corvette for your best truck. And we’ll keep all of Billy Bob’s money.’

No answer.

Reacher said, ‘That’s the best I can do, guys. This is America. We need wheels and money. I’m sure you understand that.’

No answer.

Reacher said, ‘My friend here is ready and willing. You got a preference? Would you prefer to fight a woman?’

The guy from the half-ton said, ‘No, that ain’t right.’

‘Then you’re stuck with me. But I’ll sweeten the deal. You can increase the size of your sample. Me against two of you. Want to work with me on that?’

No answer.

‘And I’ll fight with both hands behind my back.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘Both hands behind your back?’

‘For the terms we just agreed. And they’re great terms, guys. I mean, either way you get to keep the Corvette. I’m being reasonable here.’

‘Two of us, and your hands behind your back?’

‘I’d put a bag on my head if I had one.’

‘OK, we’ll take a piece of that.’

‘Terrific,’ Reacher said. ‘Any of you got health insurance? Because that would be a good way to choose up sides.’

Then suddenly next to him Turner whispered, ‘I just remembered what I forgot. From last night. The thing in the original report.’

‘Was it the tribal guy?’ Reacher whispered back.
An unknown American
.
A tribal elder
. The grain of sand. The American was defined as unknown, but the tribal elder was not. ‘They told you his name?’

‘Not his name, exactly. Their names are all too complicated to remember. We use reference numbers instead. Assigned as and when they first become known to U.S. authorities. And the guy’s number was in the report. Which means he’s already in the system. He’s known to somebody.’

‘What was the number?’

‘I don’t remember. A.M. something.’

‘What does A.M. mean?’

‘Afghan male.’

‘That’s a start, I guess.’

Then from below the guy from the half-ton called up, ‘OK, we’re all set down here.’

Reacher glanced down. The small crowd had separated out, six and two. The two were the guy from the half-ton himself, and the bloated guy, full of McDonald’s and Miller High Life.

Turner said, ‘Can you really do this?’

Reacher said, ‘Only one way to find out,’ and he started down the stairs.

THIRTY-SEVEN

THE SIX SPECTATORS
hung back, and Reacher and the chosen two moved together, into clear space, a tight little triangle of three men in lock step, two walking backward and one forward, all of them watchful, vigilant and suspicious. Beyond the parked trucks was an expanse of beaten dirt, about as wide as a city street. To the right was the back of the compound, where the Corvette was, behind the last building, and to the left the lot was open to Route 220, but the entrance was narrow, and there was nothing to see but the blacktop itself and a small stand of trees beyond it. The state police barracks was way to the west. No one on the beaten dirt could see it, and therefore the troopers could see no one on the beaten dirt.

Safe enough.

Good to go.

Normally against two dumb opponents Reacher would have cheated from the get-go. Hands behind his back? He would have planted two elbows into two jaws right after stepping off the last stair. But not with six replacements standing by. That would be inefficient. They would all pile in, outraged, up on some peculiar equivalent of a moral high horse, and thereby buzzed beyond their native capabilities. So Reacher let the triangle adjust and rotate and kick the ground until everyone was ready, and then he jammed his hands in his back pockets, with his palms against his ass.

‘Play ball,’ he said.

Whereupon he saw the two guys take up what he assumed were their combat stances, and then he saw them change radically. Tell a guy you’re going to fight with your hands behind your back, and he hears just that, and only that. He thinks,
this guy is going to fight with his hands behind his back!
And then he pictures the first few seconds in his mind, and the image is so weird it takes over his attention completely.
No hands! An unprotected torso! Just like the heavy bag at the gym!

So guys in that situation see nothing but the upper body, the upper body, the upper body, and the head, and the face, like irresistible targets of opportunity, damage just waiting to be done, unanswerable shots just begging to be made, and their stances open wide, and their fists come up high, and their chins jut forward, and their eyes go narrow and wild with glee as they squint in at the gut or the ribs or the nose or wherever it is they plan to land their first joyous blow. They see nothing else at all.

Like the feet.

Reacher stepped forward and kicked the fat guy in the nuts, solid, right foot, as serious as punting a ball the length of the field, and the guy went down so fast and so hard it was like someone had bet him a million bucks he couldn’t make a hole in the dirt with his face. There was a noise like a bag hitting a floor, and the guy curled up tight and his blubber settled and went perfectly still.

Reacher stepped back.

‘Poor choice,’ he said. ‘Clearly that guy would have been better left on the bench. Now it’s just you and me.’

The guy from the half-ton had stepped back too. Reacher watched his face. And saw all the guy’s previous assumptions being hastily revised. Inevitably.
Yeah, feet
, he was thinking.
I forgot about that
. Which pulled his centre of gravity too low. Now it was all feet, feet, feet. Nothing but feet. The guy’s hands came down, almost to his pelvis, and he put one thigh in front of the other, and he hunched his shoulders so tight that overall he looked like a little kid with a stomach cramp.

Reacher said, ‘You can walk away now and we’ll call it done. Give us a truck, take the Corvette, and you’re out of here.’

The guy from the half-ton said, ‘No.’

‘I’ll ask again,’ Reacher said. ‘But I won’t ask three times.’

The guy said, ‘No.’

‘Then bring it, my friend. Show me the good stuff. You got good stuff, right? Or is driving around in circles all you can do?’

Reacher knew what was coming. The guy was obviously right-handed. So it would be an inswinging right, starting low and never really getting high enough, like a sidearm pitcher, like a boxing glove fixed to a door, and the door slamming, with you in the doorway. That’s what it was going to be like. When it came. The guy was still shuffling around, still trying to find a launch pad.

And then he found one, and then it came. Like a glove on a door. What are you going to do? Most people are going to duck out the way. But one six-year-old at the sci-fi movie isn’t. He’s going to turn sideways, and push forward hard, off bent knees, and he’s going to meet the door with his shoulder, nearer the hinge, about halfway across its width, maybe a little more, a solid aggressive shove where the momentum is lower, well inside the arc of the glove.

Which is what Reacher did with the guy from the half-ton. He twisted, and pushed off, and slammed the guy with his shoulder, right in the centre of his chest, and the guy’s fist flailed all the way around Reacher’s back and came at him from the far side, limp, like the guy was trying to cop a feel in the picture house. After which the guy wobbled backward a long pace and got his balance by jabbing his hands out from his body, which left him stock still and wide open, like a starfish, which he seemed to realize immediately, because he glanced down in horror at Reacher’s moving feet.

Newsflash, my friend.

It’s not the feet.

It’s the head.

The feet were moving in a boxer’s shuffle, creating aim and momentum, and then the upper body was whipping forward, and the neck was snapping down, and the forehead was crunching into the bridge of the guy’s nose, and then snapping back up, job done, Reacher jerking upright, the guy from the half-ton staggering on rubber knees, half a step, and then the other half, and then a vertical collapse, weak and helpless, like a Victorian lady fainting into a crinoline.

Reacher looked up at Turner on the walkway.

He said, ‘Which truck do you think is the best?’

THIRTY-EIGHT

THE CLAUGHTON CODE
of honour was a wonderful thing. That was clear. None of the six spectators interfered or intervened in any way. Either that, or they were worried about what Reacher might do to them, now that his hands were out of his pockets.

In the end Turner liked the fat guy’s truck the best. It was a V-8, but not the one with the leaky muffler. It had the second-fullest tank of gas. It had good tyres. It looked comfortable. She drove it up next to the hidden Corvette, and they transferred Billy Bob’s money from the Corvette’s load space to the truck’s glove compartment, which two receptacles were about the same size, and then they rumbled back past the sullen crowd, and Reacher tossed the Corvette key out his window. Then Turner hit the gas and made the left on 220, past the state troopers, past the café with the griddle, and onward to the crossroads in the centre of town.

Thirty minutes later Petersburg was twenty miles behind them. They were heading west, on a small road on the edge of a national forest. The truck had turned out to be a Toyota, not new, but it ran well. It was as quiet as a library, and it had satellite navigation. It was so heavy it smoothed out the bumps in the road. It had pillowy leather seats and plenty of space inside. Turner looked tiny in it. But happy. She had something to work with. She had a whole scenario laid out.

She said, ‘I can see why these guys are worried. An A.M. number changes everything. The guy is known to us for a reason. Either his activities, or his opinions. And either thing is going to lead us somewhere.’

Reacher asked, ‘How do we access the database?’

‘Change of plan. We’re going to Pittsburgh.’

‘Is the database in Pittsburgh?’

‘No, but there’s a big airport in Pittsburgh.’

‘I was just in Pittsburgh.’

‘At the airport?’

‘On the road.’

‘Variety is the spice of life,’ she said.

Getting to Pittsburgh meant cutting northwest across the state, and hitting I-79 somewhere between Clarksburg and Morgan-town. Then it was a straight shot, basically north. Safe enough, Reacher thought. The Toyota was as big as a house and weighed three tons, but it was effectively camouflaged. What’s the best place to hide a grain of sand? On a beach. And if the Toyota was a grain of sand, then West Virginia’s roads were a beach. Practically every vehicle in sight was a full-size pick-up truck. And Western Pennsylvania would be no different. A visitor from outer space would assume the viability of the United States depended entirely on the ability of the citizenry to carry eight-by-four sheets of board, safely and in vast quantities.

The late start to the day turned out to be a good thing. Or a feature, not a bug, as Turner might have put it. It meant they would be driving the highway in the dark. Better than driving it in the light. On the one hand highways got the heaviest policing, but on the other hand cops can’t see what they can’t see, and there was nothing less visible than a pair of headlights doing the legal limit on an Interstate highway at night.

Reacher said, ‘How are we going to get the exact A.M. number?’

Turner said, ‘We’re going to take a deep breath and go way out on a limb. We’re going to ask someone to get all snarled up in a criminal conspiracy, aiding and abetting.’

‘Who?’

‘Sergeant Leach, I hope. She’s pretty solid, and her heart is in the right place.’

‘I agree,’ Reacher said. ‘I liked her.’

‘We have records and transcripts in the file room. All she has to do is go take a look at them.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then it gets harder. We’ll have a reference number, but not a name or a biography. And a sergeant can’t access that database. I’m the only one at Rock Creek who can. Morgan now, I suppose, but we can hardly ask him.’

Reacher said, ‘Leave that part to me.’

‘You don’t have access.’

‘But I know someone who does.’

‘Who?’

‘The Judge Advocate General.’

‘You know him?’

‘Not personally. But I know his place in the process. He’s forcing me to defend a bullshit charge. I’m entitled to cast the net wide in my own defence. I can ask for pretty much anything I want. Major Sullivan can handle it for me.’