by Lee Child
He found his father and his brother in the kitchen, both of them silent and strained to a degree he found excessive. No question that Grandpa Moutier was a nice old guy, but any ninety-year-old was by definition limited in the life expectancy department. No big surprise. The guy had to croak sometime. No one lives forever. And he had already beaten the odds. The guy was already about twenty years old when the Wright brothers flew, for God’s sake.
Reacher made his own coffee, because he liked it stronger than the rest of his family. He made toast, poured cereal, ate and drank, and still no one had spoken to him. Eventually he asked, “What’s up?”
His father’s gaze dipped and swiveled and traversed like an artillery piece, and came to rest on a point on the tabletop, about a foot in front of Reacher’s plate. He said, “The phone this morning.”
“Not Mom, right?”
“No, not that.”
“Then what?”
“We’re in trouble.”
“What, all of us?”
“Me and Joe.”
Reacher asked, “Why? What happened?”
But at that point the doorbell rang, so there was no answer. Neither Joe or his father looked like moving, so Reacher got up and headed for the hallway. It was the same delivery guy as the day before. He went through the same ritual. He unpacked a box and retained it and handed Reacher a heavy spool of electric cable. There must have been a hundred yards of it. The spool was the size of a car tire. The cable was for domestic wiring, like Romex, heavy and stiff, sheathed in gray plastic. The spool had a wire cutter attached to it by a short chain.
Reacher left it on the hallway floor and headed back to the kitchen. He asked, “Why do we need electric cable?”
“We don’t,” his father said. “I ordered boots.”
“Well, you didn’t get them. You got a spool of wire.”
His father blew a sigh of frustration. “Then someone made a mistake, didn’t they?”
Joe said nothing, which was very unusual. Normally in that kind of a situation he would immediately launch a series of speculative analyses, asking about the nature and format of the order codes, pointing out that numbers can be easily transposed, thinking out loud about how QWERTY keyboards put alphabetically remote letters side by side, and therefore how clumsy typists are always a quarter-inch away from an inadvertent jump from, say, footwear to hardware. He had that kind of a brain. Everything needed an explanation. But he said nothing. He just sat there, completely mute.
“What’s up?” Reacher said again, in the silence.
“Nothing for you to worry about,” his father said.
“It will be unless you two lighten up. Which I guess you’re not going to anytime soon, judging by the look of you.”
“I lost a code book,” his father said.
“A code book for what?”
“For an operation I might have to lead.”
“China?”
“How did you know that?”
“Where else is left?”
“It’s theoretical right now,” his father said. “Just an option. But there are plans, of course. And it will be very embarrassing if they leak. We’re supposed to be getting along with China now.”
“Is there enough in the code book to make sense to anyone?”
“Easily. Real names plus code equivalents for two separate cities, plus squads and divisions. A smart analyst could piece together where we’re going, what we’re going to do, and how many of us are coming.”
“How big of a book is it?”
“It’s a regular three-ring binder.”
“Who had it last?” Reacher asked.
“Some planner,” his father said. “But it’s my responsibility.”
“When did you know it was lost?”
“Last night. The call this morning was a negative result for the search I ordered.”
“Not good,” Reacher said. “But why is Joe involved?”
“He isn’t. That’s a separate issue. That was the other call this morning. Another three-ring binder, unbelievably. The test answers are missing. Up at the school. And Joe went there yesterday.”
“I didn’t even see the answer book,” Joe said. “I certainly didn’t take it away with me.”
Reacher asked, “So what exactly did you do up there?”
“Nothing, in the end. I got as far as the principal’s office and I told the secretary I wanted to talk to the guy about the test. Then I thought better of it and left.”
“Where was the answer book?”
“On the principal’s desk, apparently. But I never got that far.”
“You were gone a long time.”
“I took a walk.”
“Around the school?”
“Partly. And other places.”
“Were you in the building across the lunch hour?”
Joe nodded.
“And that’s the problem,” he said. “That’s when they think I took it.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“It’s an honor violation, obviously. I could be excluded for a semester. Maybe the whole year. And then they’ll hold me back a grade, which will be two grades by then. You and I could end up in the same class.”
“You could do my homework,” Reacher said.
“This is not funny.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll have moved on by the end of the semester anyway.”
“Maybe not,” their father said. “Not if I’m in the brig or busted back to private and painting curbstones for the rest of my career. We all could be stuck on Okinawa forever.”
And at that point the phone rang again. Their father answered. It was their mother on the line, from Paris, France. Their father forced a bright tone into his voice, and he talked and listened, and then he hung up and relayed the news that their mother had arrived safely, and that old man Moutier wasn’t expected to live more than a couple of days, and that their mother was sad about it.
Reacher said, “I’m going to the beach.”
15
Reacher stepped out through the door and glanced toward the sea. The street was empty. No kids. He took a snap decision and detoured to the other side and knocked on Helen’s door. The girl he had met the day before. She opened up and saw who it was and crowded out next to him on the stoop and pulled the door all the way closed behind her. Like she was keeping him secret. Like she was embarrassed by him. She picked up on his feeling and shook her head.
“My dad is sleeping,” she said. “That’s all. He sat up and worked all night. And now he’s not feeling so hot. He just flaked, an hour ago.”
Reacher said, “You want to go swimming?”
She glanced down the street, saw no one was there, and said, “Sure. Give me five minutes, OK?” She crept back inside and Reacher turned and watched the street, half hoping that the kid with the boil would come out, and half hoping he wouldn’t. He didn’t. Then Helen came out again, in a bathing suit under a sundress. She had a towel. They walked down the street together, keeping pace, a foot apart, talking about where they’d lived and the places they’d seen. Helen had moved a lot, but not as much as Reacher. Her dad was a rear echelon guy, not a combat Marine, and his postings tended to be longer and more stable.
The morning water was colder than it had been the afternoon before, so they got out after ten minutes or so. Helen let Reacher use her towel, and then they lay on it together in the sun, now just inches apart. She asked him, “Have you ever kissed a girl?”
“Yes,” he said. “Twice.”
“The same girl two times or two girls once each?”
“Two girls more than once each.”
“A lot?”
“Maybe four times each.”
“Where?”
“On the mouth.”
“No, where? In the movies, or what?”
“One in the movies, one in a park.”
“With tongues?”
“Yes.”
She asked, “Are you good at it?
”
He said, “I don’t know.”
“Will you show me how? I’ve never done it.”
So he leaned up on an elbow and kissed her on the mouth. Her lips were small and mobile, and her tongue was cool and wet. They kept it going for fifteen or twenty seconds, and then they broke apart.
He asked, “Did you like it?”
She said, “Kind of.”
“Was I good at it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have anything to compare it with.”
“Well, you were better than the other two I kissed,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, but he didn’t know what she was thanking him for. The compliment or the trial run, he wasn’t sure.
16
Reacher and Helen walked back together, and they almost made it home. They got within twenty yards of their destination, and then the kid with the boil stepped out of his yard and took up a position in the middle of the road. He was wearing the same Corps T-shirt and the same pair of ragged pants. And he was alone, for the time being.
Reacher felt Helen go quiet beside him. She stopped walking and Reacher stopped a pace ahead of her. The big kid was six feet away. The three of them were like the corners of a thin sloping triangle. Reacher said, “Stay there, Helen. I know you could kick this guy’s ass all by yourself, but there’s no reason why both of us should be exposed to the smell.”
The big kid just smiled.
He said, “You’ve been to the beach.”
Reacher said, “And we thought Einstein was smart.”
“How many times have you been?”
“You can’t count that high.”
“Are you trying to make me mad?”
Reacher was, of course. For his age he had always been a freakishly big kid, right from birth. His mother claimed he had been the biggest baby anyone had ever seen, although she had a well-known taste for the dramatic, so Reacher tended to discount that information. But even so, big or not, he had always fought two or three classes up. Sometimes more. With the result that one on one, ninety-nine percent of the time, he had been the small kid. So he had learned to fight like a small kid. All things being equal, size usually wins. But not always, otherwise the heavyweight championship of the world would be decided on the scale, not in the ring. Sometimes, if the small guy is faster and smarter, he can get a result. And one way of being smarter is to make the other guy dumber, which you can do by inducing a rage. An opponent’s red mist is the smaller guy’s best friend. So yes, Reacher was trying to make the smelly kid mad.
But the smelly kid wasn’t falling for it. He was just standing there, taking it, tense but controlled. His feet were well placed, and his shoulders were bunched. His fists were ready to come up. Reacher took one pace forward, into the miasma of halitosis and body odor. Rule one with a guy like that: don’t let him bite you. You could get an infection. Rule two: watch his eyes. If they stayed up, he was going to swing. If they dropped down, he was going to kick.
The guy’s eyes stayed up. He said, “There’s a girl here. You’re going to get your butt kicked in front of a girl. You won’t be able to show your face. You’ll be the neighborhood retard pussy. Maybe I’ll charge the toll every time you come out of your house. Maybe I’ll expand the zone all over the island. Maybe I’ll charge a double toll. From you and your retard brother.”
Rule three with a guy like that: upset the choreography. Don’t wait, don’t back off, don’t be the challenger, don’t be the underdog, don’t think defensively.
In other words, rule four: hit him first.
And not with a predictable little left jab, either.
Because rule five: there are no rules on the back streets of Okinawa.
Reacher snapped a vicious straight right into the guy’s face and caught him square on the cheek.
That got his attention.
The guy rocked back and shook his head and popped a straight right of his own, which Reacher had expected and was ready for. He leaned left and let the fat fist buzz past his ear. Smarter and faster. Then the guy was all tangled up in the follow-through and could do nothing but step back and crouch and start over. Which he got well into doing.
Until he heard the sound of a motorbike. Which was like the bell at the end of a round to him. Like Pavlov’s dog. He hesitated for a fatal split second.
Reacher hesitated, too. But for a shorter time. Purely because of geometry. He was facing up the street, toward the four-way junction. His eyes flicked up and he saw a bike heading north to south, keeping straight on the main road, passing by, not turning in. He processed that information and deleted it even before the bike was gone, just as soon as its speed and position had made a turn impossible. Whereupon his gaze came straight back to his opponent.
Who was at a geometric disadvantage. He was facing down the street, toward the sea. He had nothing to go on but sound. And the sound was loud and diffuse. Not specific. No spatial cues. Just an echoing roar. So like every other animal on earth with better sight than hearing, the guy yielded to a basic instinct. He started to turn his head to look behind him. Irresistible. Then a split second later the auditory input went unambiguous when the roar got trapped behind buildings, and the guy came to his conclusion and stopped his move and started to turn his head back again.
But by then it was far too late. By then Reacher’s left hook was halfway through its travel. It was scything in, hard and fast, every sinew and ropy muscle in his greyhound’s frame unspooling in perfect coordination, with just one aim in sight: to land that big left fist on the guy’s neck.
Total success. The blow landed right on the boil, crushing it, crushing flesh, compressing bone, and the guy went down like he had run full speed into a clothesline. His legs came out from under him and he thumped more or less horizontally on the concrete, just sprawling, tangled and stunned like a pratfall stunt in a silent movie.
Next obvious move was for Reacher to start kicking him in the head, but he had an audience with feminine sensibilities, so he resisted the temptation. The big guy got his face off the floor and he looked nowhere in particular and said, “That was a sucker punch.”
Reacher nodded. “But you know what they say. Only suckers get sucker punched.”
“We’re going to finish this.”
Reacher looked down. “Looks kind of finished already.”
“Dream on, you little punk.”
“Take an eight count,” Reacher said. “I’ll be back.”
17
Reacher hustled Helen up to her house and then he jogged across the street to his own. He went in the door and ran through to the kitchen and found his father in there, alone.
“Where’s Joe?” Reacher asked.
“Taking a long walk,” his father said.
Reacher stepped out to the back yard. It was a square concrete space, empty except for an old patio table and four chairs, and the empty incinerator. The incinerator was about the size of a big round garbage can. It was made of diagonal steel mesh. It was up on little legs. It was faintly gray with old ash, but it had been emptied and cleaned after its last use. In fact, the whole yard had been swept. Marine families. Always meticulous.
Reacher headed back to the hallway. He crouched over the spool of electric cable and unwound six feet of wire and snipped it off with the cutters.
His father asked, “What are you doing?”
“You know what I’m doing, Dad,” Reacher said. “I’m doing what you intended me to do. You didn’t order boots. You ordered exactly what arrived. Last night, after the code book went missing. You thought the news would leak and Joe and I would get picked on as a result. You couldn’t bring us Ka-Bar knives or knuckledusters, so you thought of the next best thing.”
He started to wind the heavy wire around his fist, wrapping one turn after another, the way a boxer binds his hands. He pressed the malleable metal and plastic flat and snug.
His father asked, “So has the news leaked?”
“No,” Reacher said. “T
his is a previous engagement.”
His father ducked his head out the door and looked down the street. He said, “Can you take that guy?”
“Does the Pope sleep in the woods?”
“He has a friend with him.”
“The more the merrier.”
“There are other kids watching.”
“There always are.”
Reacher started wrapping his other hand.
His father said, “Stay calm, son. Don’t do too much damage. I don’t want this family to go three for three this week, as far as getting in trouble is concerned.”
“He won’t rat me out.”
“I know that. I’m talking about a manslaughter charge.”
“Don’t worry, Dad,” Reacher said. “It won’t go that far.”
“Make sure it doesn’t.”
“But I’m afraid it will have to go a certain distance. A little farther than normal.”
“What are you talking about, son?”
“I’m afraid this time I’m going to have to break some bones.”
“Why?”
“Mom told me to. In a way.”
“What?”
“At the airport,” Reacher said. “She took me aside, remember? She told me she figures this place is driving you and Joe crazy. She told me I had to keep an eye on you and him both. She said it’s up to me.”
“Your mother said that? We can look after ourselves.”
“Yeah? How’s that working out so far?”
“But this kid has nothing to do with anything.”
“I think he does,” Reacher said.
“Since when? Did he say something?”
“No,” Reacher said. “But there are other senses apart from hearing. There’s smell, for instance.”
And then he jammed his bulbous gray fists in his pockets and stepped out to the street again.
