by Dan Ames
For instance, now.
Ten more pull-ups and he could go home to a huge pitcher of ice water. Delaying gratification was a daily ritual, a way to keep his edge in-between missions. In war zones, being used to nearly every kind of deprivation known to man, made it easier to focus and execute.
Tallon closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and cranked out the rest of the pull-ups, the last one taking every last, twitching muscle in his body to chin the tree branch, his jaw scraping along the rough bark.
Tallon let go, dropped to his feet, felt the blood cascade back down to his arms. He took a deep breath and then turned and set off for his house at a slow, steady run.
He’d already covered six miles before the pull-up routine and was now cooling down, if that was possible in nearly 100-degree heat. His boots kicked up dust as he jogged, coating the sweat on his legs with brownish red powder.
Overhead, a hawk circled in lazy turns, looking for a small rodent whose survival had inspired confidence and hopefully, foolishness.
As he neared his final destination, Tallon slowed to a walk and mentally ran through his schedule for the rest of the day. First, that giant pitcher of water. Then, a shower and some protein. Leftover chicken, with plenty of hot sauce and a side of grilled peppers. He felt his mouth water at the prospect of the meal.
After that, some computer work. Emails to answer; calendars to update; a check on the series of invoices he’d billed for his last job, a dirty little security gig in South Africa that had nearly gone belly-up.
As he approached his home, what was commonly called a casita, or small ranch, Tallon immediately knew something was off.
Because of his background, and his line of work, he had invested a huge amount of money into a state-of-the-art security system. In fact, Tallon hadn’t installed the security system in the house, he’d built the house around the security system.
Every aspect of the home build had been performed with security in mind. The landscaping was sparse in order to prevent attackers using it for cover. Shooting angles from the house were taken into account.
A slightly raised elevation provided a vantage point from the defender’s point-of-view. Bulletproof windows, steel reinforced doors, advanced fire protection were all included.
Cameras were everywhere. Some obvious, others hidden. Some were live-streaming twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Others were motion-activated.
When his phone buzzed in the pocket of his cargo shorts, he checked it, and saw that he had a visitor.
Tallon broke into a run, and withdrew the compact Sig Sauer from one of his pockets. It held ten rounds of 40 S&W. He glanced again at the live video on his phone. It looked like a truck had parked in his yard and its driver was now sprawled on the ground.
Tallon reached his compound and circled carefully to the front. None of his other cameras or alarms had been tripped.
Still, an ambush was always possible.
He took cover near the east wall of his home, and carefully peered around the corner.
He saw the truck.
An older Ford.
Dirty.
It looked like the driver’s side window was shattered, and Tallon counted at least seven bullet holes at various spots on the vehicle, two of them in the middle of the windshield.
The man on the ground was not moving.
He had come to rest on his belly, with one arm outstretched directly forward, as if he had been reaching for something, or someone. The other arm was wide to the side, the palm turned up.
A shadow crossed the yard and Tallon glanced up, saw the vulture circling high overhead.
He waited.
Listened.
The desert teaches a man patience. Things are never what they first appear, and eventually the truth reveals itself. Small creatures appear after several minutes of silence. A bird tentatively calls out. A snake slithers across a hot rock face.
Now, nothing happened.
The man didn’t move.
No one appeared.
Not a sound came from the house.
All of Tallon’s other security measures were still quietly in place.
He carefully stepped forward, the gun in his hand, ready to be brought into line at the first sign of trouble.
As his boots crunched on the rocky soil, the man on the ground didn’t move. Tallon didn’t stare at the body, he kept his eyes moving, looking over and around the man, in case he was the bait.
Nothing appeared.
Finally, Tallon stood over the man. It was clear there were no weapons in his hands. The body could be booby trapped, of course. An explosive charge placed beneath, triggered by the body being moved.
At last, Tallon looked down and studied the man. The chest wasn’t moving.
He wasn’t breathing.
Tallon knelt down, his gun at the ready, and felt the man’s neck.
No pulse.
He stepped back, studied the man’s face. Something jogged his memory, and although no answer appeared, Tallon knew he’d seen him before. Somewhere. Some other time. Maybe even talked to him, or worked with him.
Tallon walked backward to the truck. Glanced inside. Blood everywhere. Tallon felt a surge of admiration for the dead man. Most people wouldn’t have been able to withstand that kind of carnage, and still drive a truck.
Which begged the question, why had the man driven here?
There was nothing else inside the vehicle.
Tallon walked back to the man, wanted to avoid touching him because his next move was to call the cops.
Something caught his eye.
Although his first glance had been to confirm the lack of weapons, he now saw something in the man’s outstretched hand. The one that looked like it had been reaching for something.
Now, Tallon understood.
The man had been delivering something.
It was white, with splotches of red.
Round.
A crumpled piece of paper covered in the dead man’s blood.
Tallon carefully reached for it, and plucked it gently from the dead man’s hand, careful not to touch the skin of the hand and leave any kind of print.
Tallon slowly pulled the edges of the paper out until he could see the handwriting.
He turned the paper so the words were horizontal and read left to right.
Though partially obscured by bloodstains, Tallon could read what the note said, but he didn’t understand the message.
One of the words was a name, and Tallon recognized it.
But taken together, he had no idea what the term communicated.
As the hot sun bore down, and the vulture circled closer, Tallon read the words once more:
Operation Reacher.
4
The meeting took place underground.
Above the room sat a quintessential Falls Church, Virginia, mansion. An impressive estate, the original home consisted of six bedrooms and seven bathrooms, a wood-paneled library, media room, swimming pool and enormous, gourmet kitchen. In the basement was a wine cellar and a tasting room.
An additional guest house had been added, but built in the same neo-classical style as the main house. Above the garage there was a home gym and yoga studio.
Earlier in the evening, a small group of men had descended into the wine cellar, made their way to the tasting room and accessed a hidden door that led to a conference room, wired for cellular communication and equipped with high-speed Internet. All of it encrypted and the data transmissions were all sent through a complex rerouting system to make tracing the information stream impossible.
The electronics didn’t stop there, however. The room was home to a vast array of countermeasures designed to prevent eavesdropping. In short, the men in the conference room could access and share data communications without fear of surveillance.
Several of the men present had helped themselves to a glass of wine, while only one had an unlit cigar in his mouth. They represented different ethnicities with
one African-American, one Hispanic, and one Asian. The rest were white men. Their ages ranged from the youngest at forty-one, to the oldest, at seventy-three.
The patriarch was the second oldest, at sixty-five. He sat at the head of the conference room table. He had neither wine, nor a cigar. He had close-cropped silver hair, a lined face and jagged teeth.
He looked every bit the hardened ex-soldier he was. His rise in the organization hadn’t tempered his raw aggression. Office politics hadn’t taken any of the burr from his hide.
“What the hell?” he asked, the minute the outer door was closed, and the green light above the conference room’s big-screen television had appeared.
No one was listening, save for the ears around the table.
Imperceptibly, heads turned toward the Asian man. He was the youngest, and the most technologically savvy. His role within the group was one of primarily project management.
“Apparently, the team member who went rogue managed to escape the containment effort,” he said. “An active pursuit is ongoing.”
“Really bad timing,” the man to the left of the leader said. “Considering what’s happening tomorrow.”
“It won’t affect that,” the African-American said. “That window is closed.”
“Each second that goes by, the long-term effects multiply,” the leader said. “When is this going to get under control? Permanently?”
The Asian man sighed, lifted a tablet and swiped quickly. He scanned the screen and the men waited.
“Any time estimate would be a guess at this point,” he said.
“Worst-case scenario?”
“Six hours,” the Asian said. “That’s worst-case. Best-case is six minutes.”
“All we can do is wait?” the Hispanic man asked. No one answered. “Well, if we’re just going to wait, we might as well put the time to good use. Let’s talk about Phase 2 of the plan–”
The Asian man held up a slender finger.
“Wait,” he said. He read from the tablet rapidly and then set it down.
“I have a name. Are any of you familiar with it?”
He glanced back down at the screen, then up at the man at the head of the table.
He spoke.
“Michael Tallon.”
5
Pauling wasn’t a big fan of intuition. It was too much about faith in something unknown. Rather than that subjective term, she thought of intuition as observations that were made on the subconscious level, struggling to come to the surface.
Logan Brody, for instance.
After he’d left, with the knowledge that Pauling would consider his case, she was left with a strange feeling. She hadn’t turned Brody down, but she hadn’t accepted his project, either. They’d briefly discussed the possibility of her putting together an investigative team, with Pauling as the “quarterback.”
Still, something had held Pauling back.
Now, alone in her office, she fought back against the idea that her intuition was telling her something.
Instead, she thought about her observations.
Logan Brody had been a well-put-together man. Expensive suit. Pricey watch. Articulate. A man of substance.
In fact, she had been on the verge of taking his case, but it was something about the end of their conversation that had given her pause.
What was it?
She closed her eyes and imagined Brody talking to her. How he occasionally shifted in his seat to cross or uncross his legs. Pauling remembered noting his shoes. His watch. The way he spoke.
Her mind flashed again on the way he shifted in her leather visitors chair. Was it a sign of discomfort? Why? The chair was expensive, and high-quality. Had he been subtly shifting position because he was not telling the truth? Was it a tell?
Pauling went back to her computer and accessed her security system. It was a digital setup and she had the ability to play back video of her cameras. She rewound the hallway camera outside her door until she got to the point where Brody left her office.
She watched him as the door closed and then he turned, walked down the hall, and went left toward the stairs. His briefcase was in his left hand. Nothing in his right.
He walked at an average pace, not too fast, not too slow, either.
She studied his body.
And then she realized what it was.
His suit fit nicely, except from the back, she could tell it was slightly off.
And Pauling knew why.
Logan Brody was carrying a gun.
She was sure of it. Having spent the majority of her career around armed law enforcement, she could recognize the signs. The thing is, Brody’s gun must have been a compact carry. Something small. Not a full-sized automatic, for instance. Maybe even a five-shot revolver. Concealed carry.
Considering what he had told her, why was she surprised?
She wasn’t, not really. Still, something about it made her uneasy. Should he have told her he’d bought a gun because his life was in danger? It seemed like it would have been pertinent information. So why hadn’t he?
Pauling closed the security video window on her computer and launched her web browser. She typed “Logan Brody” into a search engine and watched her screen populate with the results.
There were quite a few Logan Brodys. One was a veterinarian in Idaho. Another, a college student in Alabama. There were some other individuals with names that were similar in spelling, but not exact. Loghan Broady. Logan Brady. Logan Bradee.
One thing was clear to Pauling, though.
No one matched.
She didn’t see a single image or web entry that matched the Logan Brody who had just walked out of her office.
That made no sense. It was nearly impossible in this day and age to be a wealthy person without your name being mentioned somewhere on the Internet. Business profiles, interviews, news of major corporate transactions, society events and all of the publicity that goes along with making a fortune, no matter the size.
Pauling checked her notes.
Logan Brody had given her two names.
His wife’s.
And the name of his wife’s lover.
Gina Brody was the wife, so Pauling typed the name into the search engine, and once again, an exact match did not appear. That possibly made a little more sense as the woman had a maiden name.
Next, Pauling tried “Logan and Gina Brody” to see if they came up as a couple, perhaps attending a charity event together. Or a marriage announcement. Or real estate transactions.
Zip.
Nada.
Zilch.
The bad feeling inside Pauling’s gut was growing bigger by the minute.
One last name.
The lover.
Joe Pritchard.
A cop, or at least some type of law enforcement.
This one would be a lot easier. Pauling still had access to a whole bunch of government and law enforcement databases. She entered the name Joe Pritchard and set the search to New York State.
She got a hit.
Pauling leaned forward, clicked on the single entry.
Joe Pritchard. A game warden in Trout River, New York. Pauling did a quick check on the map. It was as far north in the state as you could possibly get, right on the border with Canada. Next, she studied the man’s personal information.
Retired.
Birthdate: 3/23/36.
Something told Pauling that an 82-year-old retired game warden who lived over three hundred miles from New York City wasn’t the man Logan Brody claimed was boinking his wife. Unless she had a thing for elderly, retired game wardens, which would constitute one of the strangest fetishes she’d ever heard of.
Pauling decided to drop the geographic restriction, and search Joe Pritchard on a nationwide basis. Maybe he had moved to New York recently and his new address hadn’t been updated.
Three hits came up.
One was a border agent in New Mexico.
One worked parking enforcement in Key West.
The third was a state trooper in Alaska.
Pauling closed her browser and shut down her computer. Everything about Logan Brody was wrong, and she was not going to take the case. She would email him with a referral and claim her case load was too heavy to accept the project.
She locked up her office, went down the stairs and out onto 4th street, headed toward home. Her co-op was only a few blocks away and the cool air felt great on her face as she walked.
This whole kind of thing happened occasionally in her line of work. People hired private investigators for a variety of reasons, but most often, it was because of a highly personal and intense situation. Because of that, they often used fake names and changed details of their story to protect their anonymity, up to a certain point.
There was something about Logan Brody that was off, though.
And maybe it was because he claimed his wife and her lover were trying to kill him.
Or, maybe it was that he had been carrying a gun and failed to mention it.
Or, as Pauling passed a department store window with an angled mirror that allowed her to see behind her, it was because of what she now saw.
Logan Brody was following her.
6
Much later, Tallon would look back at the moment and wonder exactly why he did what he did.
It just happened naturally.
He slipped the note with the words Operation Reacher into his pocket.
And then he checked the time on his Ball watch. He wanted to remember the exact moment in case it came up during the interrogation he knew would be coming.
Then, he called the cops.
The town of Independence Springs had a small police force, and within fifteen minutes of Tallon’s phone call, every member of the force was on the scene.
The Chief of Police, a man named Shepard, stood over the body. He was a tall man, a little out of shape with love handles bulging out over his beltline and a thick neck. His ruddy jowls shook like pudding when he moved his head.
Shepard stared at the body, then turned his head toward the truck, back to the body, then over to Tallon. He repeated the circuit several times before finally walking over to Tallon once again.
