by Lee Child
CHAPTER 12
Dawn happened somewhere way over in the east about an hour into the drive. The sky changed from black to gray to purple and then low orange sunlight came up over the horizon. Reacher switched his headlights off. He didn’t like to run with lights after daybreak. Just a subliminal thing, for the State Troopers camped out on the shoulders. Lights after dawn suggested all kinds of things, like fast through-the-night escapes from trouble hundreds of miles behind. The Mustang was already provocative enough. It was loud and aggressive and it was the kind of car that gets stolen a lot.
But the troopers that Reacher saw stayed put on the shoulder. He kept the car at a nothing-to-hide seventy miles an hour and touched the CD button on the dash. Got a blast of mid-period Sheryl Crow in return, which he didn’t mind at all. He stayed with it. Every day is a winding road, Sheryl told him. I know, he thought. Tell me about it.
He crossed the Ohio River on a long iron trestle with the sun low on his left. For a moment it turned the slow water into molten gold. Light reflected up at him from below the horizontal and made the inside of the car unnaturally bright. The trestle spars flashed past like a stroboscope. The effect was disconcerting. He closed his left eye and entered Kentucky squinting.
He kept south on a county road and waited for the Blackford River. According to Ann Yanni’s maps it was a tributary that flowed on a southeast-to-northwest diagonal into the Ohio. Near its source it formed a perfect equilateral triangle about three miles on a side with two rural routes. And according to Helen Rodin’s information James Barr’s favored firing range was somewhere inside that triangle.
But it turned out that the firing range was the triangle. Three miles out Reacher saw a wire fence on the left shoulder of the road that started directly after he crossed the Blackford on a bridge. The fence ran all the way to the next intersection and had Keep Out Live Gunfire signs on every fourth post. Then it turned a sixty-degree angle and ran three more miles north and east. Reacher followed it and where it met the Blackford again he found a gate and a gravel clearing and a complex of low huts. The gate was chained. It was hung with a hand-painted sign that read: Open 8 A.M. Until Dark.
He checked his watch. He was a half hour too early. On the other side of the road was an aluminum coach diner fronted by a gravel lot. He pulled in and stopped the Mustang right by the diner’s door. He was hungry. The Marriott’s room-service steak seemed like a long time ago.
He ate a long slow breakfast at a window table and watched the scene across the street. By eight o’clock there were three pickup trucks waiting to get into the range. At five after eight a guy showed up in a black diesel Humvee and mimed an apology for being late and unchained the gate. He stood aside and let his customers in ahead of him. Then he climbed back in his Humvee and followed them. He went through the same apologetic routine at the main hut door and then all four guys went inside and disappeared from view. Reacher called for another cup of coffee. He figured he would let the guy deal with the early rush and then stroll over when he had a moment to talk. And the coffee was good. Too good to pass up. It was fresh, hot, and very strong.
By eight-twenty he started to hear rifles firing. Dull percussive sounds, robbed of their power and impact by distance and wind and berms of earth. He figured the guns were about two hundred yards away, firing west. The shots came slow and steady, the sound of serious shooters aiming for the inner rings. Then he heard a string of lighter pops from a handgun. He listened to the familiar sounds for a spell and then left two bucks on the table and paid a twelve-dollar check at the register. Went outside and got back in the Mustang and drove through the lot and bumped up over the camber of the road and straight in through the range’s open gate.
He found the Humvee guy behind a waist-high counter in the main hut. Up close he was older than he had looked from a distance. More than fifty, less than sixty, sparse gray hair, lined skin, but ramrod straight. He had a weathered neck wider than his head and the sort of eyes that pegged him as an ex-Marine noncom even without the tattoos on his forearms and the souvenirs on the wall behind him. The tattoos were old and faded and the souvenirs were mostly pennants and unit patches. But the centerpiece of the display was a yellowing paper target framed under glass. It had a tight group of five .300 holes inside the inner ring and a sixth just clipping it.
“Help you?” the guy said. He was looking past Reacher’s shoulder, out the window, at the Mustang.
“I’m here to solve all your problems,” Reacher said.
“Really?”
“No, not really. I just want to ask you some questions.”
The guy paused. “About James Barr?”
“Good guess.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I don’t speak to reporters.”
“I’m not a reporter.”
“That’s a five-liter Mustang out there with a couple of options on it. So it ain’t a cop car or a rental. And it’s got Indiana plates. And it’s got an NBC sticker in the windshield. Therefore my guess is you’re a reporter fixing to gin up a television story about how James Barr used my place to train and prepare.”
“Did he?”
“I told you, I’m not talking.”
“But Barr came here, right?”
“I’m not talking,” the guy said again. No malice in his voice. Just determination. No hostility. Just self-assurance. He wasn’t talking. End of story. The hut went quiet. Nothing to hear except the distant gunfire and a low rattling hum from another room. A refrigerator, maybe.
“I’m not a reporter,” Reacher said again. “I borrowed a reporter’s car, that’s all. To get down here.”
“So what are you?”
“Just a guy who knew James Barr way back. I want to know about his friend Charlie. I think his friend Charlie led him astray.”
The guy didn’t say: What friend? He didn’t ask: Who’s Charlie? He just shook his head and said, “Can’t help you.”
Reacher switched his gaze to the framed target.
“Is that yours?” he asked.
“Everything you see here is mine.”
“What range was it?” he asked.
“Why?”
“Because I’m thinking that if it was six hundred yards, you’re pretty good. If it was eight hundred, you’re very good. If it was a thousand, you’re unbelievable.”
“You shoot?” the guy asked.
“I used to,” Reacher said.
“Military?”
“Once upon a time.”
The guy turned around and lifted the frame off its hook. Laid it gently on the counter and turned it around for inspection. There was a handwritten inscription in faded ink across the bottom of the paper: 1978 U.S. Marine Corps 1000 Yard Invitational. Gunny Samuel Cash, third place. Then there were three signatures from three adjudicators.
“You’re Sergeant Cash?” Reacher said.
“Retired and scuffling,” the guy said.
“Me too.”
“But not from the Corps.”
“You can tell that just by looking?”
“Easily.”
“Army,” Reacher said. “But my dad was a Marine.”
Cash nodded. “Makes you half-human.”
Reacher traced his fingertip over the glass, above the bullet holes. A fine group of five, and a sixth that had drifted just a hair.
“Good shooting,” he said.
“I’d be lucky to do that at half the range today.”
“Me too,” Reacher said. “Time marches on.”
“You saying you could have done it back in the day?”
Reacher didn’t answer. Truth was he had actually won the Marine Corps 1000 Yard Invitational, exactly ten years after Cash had scraped third place. He had placed all his rounds through the precise center of the target, in a ragged hole a man could put his thumb through. He had displayed the shiny cup on one office shelf after another through twelve busy months. It had been an exceptional year. He had been at some kind o
f a peak, physically, mentally, every way there was. That year, he couldn’t miss, literally or metaphorically. But he hadn’t defended his title the following year, even though the MP hierarchy had wanted him to. Later, looking back, he understood how that decision marked two things: the beginning of his long slow divorce from the army, and the beginning of restlessness. The beginning of always moving on and never looking back. The beginning of never wanting to do the same thing twice.
“Thousand yards is a long way,” Gunny Cash said. “Truth is, since I left the Corps I haven’t met a man who could even put a mark on the paper.”
“I might have been able to clip the edge,” Reacher said.
Cash took the frame off the counter and turned and hung it back on its hook. He used the ball of his right thumb to level it.
“I don’t have a thousand-yard range here,” he said. “It would be a waste of ammunition and it would make the customers feel bad about themselves. But I’ve got a nice three-hundred that’s not being used this morning. You could try it. A guy who could clip the paper at a thousand should be able to do pretty well at three hundred.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Don’t you think?” Cash said.
“I guess,” Reacher said.
Cash opened a drawer and took out a new paper target. “What’s your name?”
“Bobby Richardson,” Reacher said. Robert Clinton Richardson, hit .301 in 1959, 141 hits in 134 games, but the Yanks still only finished third.
Cash took a roller ball pen from his shirt pocket and wrote R. Richardson, 300 yards, and the date and time on the paper.
“Record keeper,” Reacher said.
“Habit,” Cash said. Then he drew an X inside the inner ring. It was about half an inch tall and because of the slant of his handwriting a little less than half an inch wide. He left the paper on the counter and walked away into the room with the refrigerator noise. Came back out a minute later carrying a rifle. It was a Remington M24, with a Leupold Ultra scope and a front bipod. A standard-issue Marine sniper’s weapon. It looked to be well used but in excellent condition. Cash placed it sideways on the counter. Detached the magazine and showed Reacher that it was empty. Operated the bolt and showed Reacher that the chamber was empty, too. Reflex, routine, caution, professional courtesy.
“Mine,” he said. “Zeroed for three hundred yards exactly. By me myself, personally.”
“Good enough,” Reacher said. Which it was. An ex-Marine who in 1978 had been the third-best shooter in the world could be trusted on such matters.
“One shot,” Cash said. He took a single cartridge from his pocket. Held it up. It was a .300 Winchester round. Match grade. He stood it upright on the X on the paper target. It hid it entirely. Then he smiled. Reacher smiled back. He understood the challenge. He understood it perfectly. Hit the X and I’ll talk to you about James Barr.
At least it’s not hand-to-hand combat, Reacher thought.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Outside the air was still, and it was neither hot nor cold. Perfect shooting weather. No shivering, no risk of thermals or currents or shimmer. No wind. Cash carried the rifle and the target, and Reacher carried the cartridge in the palm of his hand. They climbed into Cash’s Humvee together and Cash fired it up with a loud diesel clatter.
“You like this thing?” Reacher asked, over the noise.
“Not really,” Cash said. “I’d be happier with a sedan. But it’s a question of image. Customers like it.”
The landscape was all low hills, covered in grass and stunted trees. Someone had used a bulldozer to carve wide straight paths through it. The paths were hundreds of yards apart and hundreds of yards long, and all of them were parallel. Each path was a separate rifle range. Each range was isolated from the others by natural hills and backed by high berms made from the earth scraped up by the bulldozer. The whole place looked like a half-built golf course. It was part green, part raw, all covered with red earth gashes. White-painted rocks and boulders delineated tracks through it, some for vehicles, some for foot traffic.
“My family has owned this land forever,” Cash said. “The range was my idea. I thought I could be like a golf pro, or tennis. You know those guys, they’ve been on the tour, they retire, they set up teaching afterward.”
“Did it work?” Reacher asked.
“Not really,” Cash said. “People come here to shoot, but to get a guy to admit he doesn’t really know how is like pulling teeth.”
Reacher saw three pickup trucks parked at separate shooting stations. The guys who had been waiting at eight o’clock were well into their morning sessions. They were all prone on coconut mats, firing, pausing, sighting, firing again.
“It’s a living,” Cash said, in answer to a question Reacher hadn’t asked. Then he pulled the Humvee off the main track and drove three hundred yards down the length of an empty range. He got out and clipped the paper target to a frame and got back in and K-turned the truck and headed back. He parked it neatly and shut it down.
“Good luck,” he said.
Reacher sat still for a moment. He was more nervous than he should have been. He breathed in and held it and felt the thrill of caffeine in his veins. Just a tiny microscopic tremble. Four fast cups of strong coffee were not an ideal preparation for accurate long-distance shooting.
But it was only three hundred yards. Three hundred yards, with a good rifle, no heat, no cold, still air. More or less the same thing as pressing the muzzle into the center of the target and pulling the trigger. He could do it with his eyes closed. There was no fundamental problem with the marksmanship. The problem was with the stakes. He wanted the puppet master more than he had wanted the Marines’ cup all those years before. A lot more. He didn’t know why. But that was the problem.
He breathed out. It was only three hundred yards. Not six. Not eight. Not a thousand. No big deal.
He slid out of the Humvee and took the rifle off the back seat. Carried it across rough earth to the coconut mat. Placed it gently with its bipod feet a yard back from the edge. Bent down and loaded it. Stepped back behind it and lined himself up and crouched, knelt, lay full length. He snuggled the stock into his shoulder. Eased his neck left and right and looked around. It felt like he was alone in the middle of nowhere. He ducked his head. Closed his left eye and moved his right eye to the scope. Draped his left hand over the barrel and pressed down and back. Now he had a tripod mount. The bipod, and his shoulder. Solid. He spread his legs and turned his feet out so they were flat on the mat. Drew his left leg up a little and dug the sole of his shoe into the mat’s fibers so the deadweight of the limb anchored his position. He relaxed and let himself sprawl. He knew he must look like a guy who had been shot, instead of a guy preparing to shoot.
He gazed through the scope. Saw the hypervivid image of great optics. He acquired the target. It looked close enough to touch. He laid the reticle where the two strokes of the X met. Squeezed the slack out of the trigger. Relaxed. Breathed out. He could feel his heart. It felt like it was loose in his chest. The caffeine was buzzing in his veins. The reticle was dancing over the X. It was hopping and jerking, left and right, up and down, in a tiny random circle.
He closed his right eye. Willed his heart to stop. Breathed out and kept his lungs empty, one second, two. Then again, in, out, hold. He pulled all his energy downward, into his gut. Let his shoulders slacken. Let his muscles relax. Let himself settle. He opened his eye again and saw that the reticle was still. He stared at the target. Feeling it. Wanting it. He pulled the trigger. The gun kicked and roared and the muzzle blast blew a cloud of dust out of the coconut mat and obscured his view. He lifted his head and coughed once and ducked back to the scope.
Bull’s-eye.
The X was gone. There was a neat hole drilled through the center of it, leaving only four tiny ballpoint ticks visible, one at the top and one at the bottom of each stroke. He coughed again and pushed back and stood up. Cash dropped down in his place and used the scope to che
ck the result.
“Good shooting,” he said.
“Good rifle,” Reacher said.
Cash operated the bolt and the spent case fell out on the mat. He got to his knees and picked it up and put it in his pocket. Then he stood up and carried the rifle back toward the Humvee.
“So do I qualify?” Reacher called after him.
“For what?”
“For talking to.”
Cash turned around. “You think this was a test?”
“I sincerely hope it was.”
“You might not want to hear what I’ve got to say.”
“Try me,” Reacher said.
Cash nodded. “We’ll talk in the office.”
They detoured up the length of the range for Cash to retrieve the target. Then they turned and drove back to the huts. They passed the pickup guys. They were still blasting away. Cash parked and they went inside and Cash filed Reacher’s target in a drawer, under R for Richardson. Then he danced his fingers forward to B for Barr and pulled out a thick sheaf of paper.
“You looking to show your old buddy didn’t do it?” he asked.
“He wasn’t my buddy,” Reacher said. “I knew him once, is all.”
“And?”
“I don’t remember him being that great a shooter.”
“TV news said it was pretty short range.”
“With moving targets and deflection angles.”
“TV said the evidence is pretty clear.”
“It is,” Reacher said. “I’ve seen it.”
“Check these out,” Cash said.
He dealt the filed targets like a deck of cards, all along the length of the counter. Then he butted them edge-to-edge and squared them off to make room for more. Then he started a second row, directly underneath the first. In the end he had thirty-two sheets of paper displayed, two long rows of repetitive concentric circles, all of them marked J. Barr, 300 yards, with times and dates stretching back three years.
