‘So why?’
‘Because I liked Sorenson. I liked her a lot. She was fair and decent to me.’
‘So come to her memorial service. Write to the newspaper. Start a fund for a statue. You don’t have to go into battle for her.’
‘Battle offers me better odds.’
‘In what way?’
‘It gives me some kind of a chance to survive the night.’
‘How are those better odds? If you come back with me, you’re guaranteed to survive the night.’
‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘If I come back with you, I’m guaranteed to die of shame.’
There was no more conversation. No more argument. No more back and forth. Just an awkward silence. No doubt the FBI had appropriate banter for the occasion. The army sure did. But private jokes are private. So neither Reacher nor Delfuenso said anything. She just looked at his face. He wasn’t sure why. It was all smeared with dirt. With cowshit, probably. Maybe it was just as well his nose wasn’t working.
Delfuenso said, ‘Good luck.’
Then she backed away, elbows and knees, and she crabbed through a turn and set off back the way they had come, towards Lacey’s store. Reacher watched her until she was lost to sight. He waited a minute more, to be sure she wasn’t going to break her word and double back. He knew she wanted to. But she didn’t. Because of Lucy, presumably.
He waited a minute more, to be doubly sure, and then he turned around the other way and crawled forward into the darkness.
SEVENTY
WEST POINT HAD talked for hundreds of hours about tactics and strategy, and Reacher had paid attention, in a theoretical way. But in a practical way he preferred his own methods. Which were based entirely on the other guys. No point in thinking about himself all the time. He knew his own strengths, which were few, and his own weaknesses, which were many. It was the other guys that mattered. What were their strengths?
Well, they were good shooters. Or at least one of them was. That was clear. A head shot at four hundred yards in the dark of night was by no means extraordinary, but it was thoroughly competent.
But apart from that, they wouldn’t have much. And their weaknesses would be significant. Mostly caused by fear. They would be so accustomed to secrecy and paranoia their perceptions would be permanently altered. As in: Reacher was betting that right then they were making two very bad decisions. First, they were overthinking his approach. They were assuming anyone originally with Sorenson would now either quit or track around ninety or more degrees and come at them from a different direction. They were briefly considering a double bluff from such a person, but paranoia prefers triple bluffs to doubles, so they were focusing their main attentions on the three new angles, not the one old angle. The southeast approach was now considered sterile, as far as they were concerned. No doubt they would post a guy or two anyway, but they wouldn’t be their best guys, and they would be spending most of their time craning over their shoulders towards where they thought the real action was.
And therefore second, they were about to send out a party into that safe and sterile corridor, to haul away Sorenson’s body. Because they were worried about who she was. And because they couldn’t leave her lying out there. It wasn’t their land. Some farmer’s granddaddy had given it up to the DoD, way back in the day, and then these many years later the granddaddy’s grandson had gotten it back again, and he was working it, starting early every morning, like farmers do. So for secrecy’s sake the body had to go. And real soon. Paranoia waits for no man. Five or ten minutes, Reacher thought. They would come out one of the larger doors on the north side. Two of them, probably. In a vehicle. They would drive straight over.
They would stop ten feet from where Reacher had dug himself into the dirt.
It was eight minutes, and they did exactly what Reacher was expecting. A pick-up truck came looping around out of the north, on the same trajectory but at a tighter angle than McQueen’s upside-down-J-shape GPS tracks. It was a grey truck. Primer, maybe. Hard to see in the moonlight. But there. Not a crew cab. Just a regular pick-up. It headed straight over, bouncing on the dirt. It was showing no lights. Secrecy, and paranoia. The cab was dark and shadowed. No detail to be seen inside. But there would be two guys minimum. Maximum of three. More likely two.
The truck slowed and two guys hung their heads out the windows, looking for what they had come for. Sorenson’s hair was clotting black by then, but there was still enough white skin to guide them in. Still enough of a gleam in the pale moonlight. They acquired their target and rolled through the last twenty yards and backed up with their tailgate near where she lay. They got out together and stood still for a moment.
Two of them. Not three. The dome light in the cab proved it.
Unarmed. Nothing held in their hands, nothing slung on their backs.
They walked towards her.
Reacher was not a superstitious man, nor was he spiritual in any way, nor did he care for ancient taboos. But it was important to him they didn’t touch her.
They shuffled around and looked down, in a head-scratching kind of a way. Like any two grunts anywhere, handed a task. They were Syrians, Reacher figured. But pale. The alleged Italians. They looked stunted. Small, wiry frames. Thin necks.
They got themselves set. They planted their feet. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Their job was pretty obvious. The mechanics were self-evident. The geometry was what it was. The one on the left would do half the work, and the one on the right would do the other half. They would pick up what they could, and the dawn birds would take care of the rest.
They bent their knees.
And the ground behind them opened like a folk tale and a giant nightmare figure rose up out of it, shedding dirt and slime like a waterfall, and it took one long step and smashed its right fist into the back of the left-hand guy’s neck, a huge, vicious, downward-clubbing blow, like the apparition was driving a railroad spike with its knuckles, and then after the impact there was a long, elegant follow-through, the huge fist sweeping way down past the knee, then immediately whipping back up, the same route, like a convulsion, the giant figure jerking at the waist, its elbow smashing the right-hand guy square in the throat.
Then Reacher knelt on the first guy’s chest, and pinched the guy’s nose shut with the fingers of one hand, and jammed the other hand palm-down over the guy’s mouth.
No struggle. Already dead.
The second guy struggled. But not for long.
Reacher wiped his hands in the dirt and headed for the pick-up truck.
SEVENTY-ONE
THEIR GUNS WERE in the truck, dumped on the seats. Two Colt sub-machine guns, with canvas slings. Like M16 rifles, basically, but shorter and chambered for the nine-millimetre Parabellum. American made, nine hundred rounds a minute, twenty-round magazines, your choice of full auto or three-round bursts or single shots. Reacher didn’t like them much. America had never really gotten into the sub-machine gun business. Not in a convincing way. There were many better choices to be had from Europe. Steyr, or Heckler und Koch. Just ask Delta Force. Or Quantico, for that matter. The guys on the plane wouldn’t be armed with Colts. That was for damn sure.
But still. Something was better than nothing. Reacher checked them over. They were loaded and they seemed to work. He closed the passenger door and tracked around to the driver’s side. He pushed the seat back and got in. The engine was still running. The truck was a Ford. Nothing fancy. He wound both windows down and tucked his Glock under his right thigh and piled both Colts on the passenger seat.
Good to go.
