Never Go Back

The guy from the passenger side tracked around the hood and formed up with the driver. The two of them stood there, side by side. Both wore sneakers on their feet, big and white and shapeless. Neither had been in the Middle East recently. No sunburn, no squint lines, no stress and strain in their eyes. Both were young, somewhere south of thirty. Technically Reacher was old enough to be their father. They were NCOs, he thought. Specialists, probably, not sergeants. They didn’t look like sergeants. Not wise enough. The opposite, in fact. They had dull, blank faces.

The guy from the passenger side said, ‘Are you Jack Reacher?’

Reacher said, ‘Who’s asking?’

‘We are.’

‘And who are you?’

‘We’re your legal advisers.’

Which they weren’t, obviously. Reacher knew that. Army lawyers don’t travel in pairs and breathe through their mouths. They were something else. Bad news, not good. In which case immediate action was always the best bet. Easy enough to mime sudden comprehension and an eager approach and a hand raised in welcome, and easy enough to let the eager approach become unstoppable momentum, and to turn the raised hand into a scything blow, elbow into the left-hand guy’s face, hard and downward, followed by a stamp of the right foot, as if killing an imaginary cockroach had been the whole point of the exercise, whereupon the bounce off the stamp would set up the same elbow backhand into the right-hand guy’s throat, one, two, three, smack, stamp, smack, game over.

Easy enough. And always the safest approach. Reacher’s mantra: get your retaliation in first. Especially when outnumbered two to one against guys with youth and energy on their side.

But. He wasn’t sure. Not completely. Not yet. And he couldn’t afford a mistake of that nature. Not then. Not under the circumstances. He was inhibited. He let the moment pass.

He said, ‘So what’s your legal advice?’

‘Conduct unbecoming,’ the guy said. ‘You brought the unit into disrepute. A court martial would hurt us all. So you should get the hell out of town, right now. And you should never come back again.’

‘No one mentioned a court martial.’

‘Not yet. But they will. So don’t stick around for it.’

‘I’m under orders.’

‘They couldn’t find you before. They won’t find you now. The army doesn’t use skip tracers. And no skip tracer could find you anyway. Not the way you seem to live.’

Reacher said nothing.

The guy said, ‘So that’s our legal advice.’

Reacher said, ‘Noted.’

‘You need to do more than note it.’

‘Do I?’

‘Because we’re offering an incentive.’

‘What kind?’

‘Every night we find you still here, we’re going to kick your ass.’

‘Are you?’

‘Starting tonight. So you’ll get the right general idea about what to do.’

Reacher said, ‘You ever bought an electrical appliance?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘I saw one once, in a store. It had a yellow label on the back. It said if you messed with it you ran the risk of death or serious injury.’

‘So?’

‘Pretend I’ve got the same kind of label.’

‘We’re not worried about you, old man.’

Old man. Reacher saw an image of his father in his mind. Somewhere sunny. Okinawa, possibly. Stan Reacher, born in Laconia, New Hampshire, a Marine captain serving in Japan, with a wife and two teenage sons. Reacher and his brother had called him the old man, and he had seemed old, even though at that point he must have been ten years younger than Reacher was that night.

‘Turn around,’ Reacher said. ‘Go back wherever you came from. You’re in over your heads.’

‘Not how we see it.’

‘I used to do this for a living,’ Reacher said. ‘But you know that, right?’

No response.

‘I know all the moves,’ Reacher said. ‘I invented some of them.’

No reply.

Reacher still had his key in his hand. Rule of thumb: don’t attack a guy who just came through a door that locks. A bunch is better, but even a single key makes a pretty good weapon. Socket the head against the palm, poke the shaft out between the index and middle fingers, and you’ve got a fairly decent knuckleduster.

But. They were just dumb kids. No need to get all bent out of shape. No need for torn flesh and broken bones.

Reacher put his key in his pocket.

Their sneakers meant they had no plans to kick him. No one kicks things with soft white athletic shoes. No point. Unless they were aiming to deliver blows with their feet merely for the points value alone. Like one of those martial arts fetishes with a name like something off a Chinese food menu. Tae kwon do, and so on. All very well at the Olympic Games, but hopeless on the street. Lifting your leg like a dog at a hydrant was just begging to get beat. Begging to get tipped over and kicked into unconsciousness.

Did these guys even know that? Were they looking at his own feet? Reacher was wearing a pair of heavy boots. Comfortable, and durable. He had bought them in South Dakota. He planned to keep on wearing them all winter long.

He said, ‘I’m going inside now.’

No response.

He said, ‘Goodnight.’

No response.