Never Go Back

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 cafe with the griddle, and onward to the crossroads in the centre of town.