The Christmas Scorpion: A Jack Reacher Short Story

by Child, Lee

  ‘They’ll survive,’ Reacher said. ‘But sooner or later you’re going to have to feed them. You should call ahead. Food and warmth seem to be the issues.’

  The engines screamed louder and the Black Hawk lifted. Out the portholes the light was bright again, and the snow billowed like a huge flat doughnut, perfectly symmetrical all around, until they were a thousand feet up, when the small local disturbance far below settled back to earth, like sparkling mist, an insignificant smudge on a vast white sheet. We can’t see the roads, the pilot had said, and he was right. Whatever vertical distance there was between the crown of the blacktop in the middle and the bottom of the ditches either side was less than the depth of the snow. The view was literally featureless. Icy white everywhere, perfectly smooth, perfectly flat, uninterrupted.

  The pilot asked, ‘What kind of vehicle were they in?’

  Jackson said, ‘A Chevrolet staff car. An Impala. A saloon.’

  ‘Sedan,’ Ness said. ‘Not very tall.’

  Reacher checked the sun in the sky. A winter afternoon. Christmas Eve. About as low as the sun ever got, in Southern California.

  He said, ‘Go up a bit. Five thousand feet, maybe.’

  From the new altitude they could see faint hints of shadows thrown out by the low sun, where the crust of the snow rose or fell half an inch. Over what? Some shadows were isolated and meaningless, just rocks, but others made patterns. Some made straight lines, or gentle curves, which with a little imagination could be linked to other faint ghostly hints of more lines and curves, miles further on, all heading roughly north of east, which was where Fort Irwin was.

  Reacher said, ‘I think that’s the road.’

  They followed it, five thousand feet up, thumping and clattering, with terse words and static in their headsets, sometimes guessing for miles at a time, sometimes needing to zigzag back and forth before picking up the next faint hints of the right direction. Difficult, but also encouraging, in a way, because in comparison they felt a snowed-in Chevy was going to look like a lump the size of a football stadium. An Impala was about five feet tall, Reacher thought, which even if buried completely would leave a broad oval hump about two feet high, which in the low sun would look like the Himalayas.

  He asked, ‘How is the Christmas Scorpion supposed to be getting around?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Ness said. ‘The file says he gets in and out of places like a ghost. No one has ever seen him. But we have to assume he’s human. So he could be stuck in a snowdrift somewhere, same as everyone else.’

  ‘We might see him,’ Reacher said. ‘Today could be two for the price of one. Then my guy would get two medals. Or three, I guess, if your boss gave him one too, because of how the minister of defence is an important person, relatively speaking.’

  ‘My boss?’

  ‘The queen. You could ask her.’

  ‘I could ask for a date with George Clooney, too.’

  The Black Hawk clattered onward, north and east, sometimes tilting or dropping down for a better look. There were snow-covered table rocks that could have been buried cars, but none of them were. There was no sign of life. Inside the noisy cabin the older couple sat mute, hands on their knees, looking uncertain, and maybe a little airsick from all the tilting and swooping. Reacher looked a question at them, as if to say, are you OK? The man shrugged, and the woman responded by winding her scarf tighter around her neck.

  The pilot said, ‘Maybe they turned back. Maybe we’re looking in the wrong direction. What would a smart driver do, under the circumstances? He just passed the spot where we picked you up, and he’s got a long distance and uncertain conditions ahead, so when the snow sets in bad, what does he do? He turns back towards what he already knows, surely. Towards the shelter he’s seen. Or maybe he heads for Barstow. In fact getting to Barstow would be a big win, with a high-value passenger on board. I think they’re behind us.’

  ‘Unless they passed the point of no return,’ Jackson said.

  ‘Decision time, guys. If you’re wrong, we’re getting further away from them a mile every minute.’

  No reply.

  ‘Keep going,’ Reacher said. ‘Doesn’t matter how much common sense the driver had. The passenger outranked him. The passenger is a male politician. Therefore he can’t be seen to chicken out of any challenge, ever. Turning around today would come back to haunt him eventually. It would become a metaphor. He can’t be the guy who didn’t get there.’

  The Black Hawk clattered on. The old couple sat still. They looked puzzled, like people trying to reconstruct a conversation from one side of a cell phone call. Reacher patted the air, as if pushing the matter aside. As if he was saying, don’t worry about it. The man shrugged, and the woman wound her scarf tighter around her neck.

  The pilot said, ‘What’s that?’

  Up ahead was a broad oval hump in a flat field of snow.

  The hump was maybe two feet high.

  Like the Himalayas.

  ‘Go take a look,’ Reacher said.

  The pilot got down to where his rotor wash was blasting snow in every direction, including clean off what looked like a smooth black-painted panel, nicely contoured, no doubt newly washed and waxed for the occasion. The roof of a government-owned Chevy Impala. No doubt about it.

  The pilot put his wheels through the crust of the snow, above where he guessed the road was, and Reacher scrambled out, followed by Ness, and Jackson, and they floundered thigh-high and waist-high, like swimming standing up, to the car, where they dug with their hands, flinging snow aside, searching for a window, for a door, for a handle, digging some more, cracking the door, letting the rotor wash blast inside, like supercharged oxygen, then digging a V, and opening the door all the way, and crawling in.

  They were alive. Blue with cold, and panting for air. Ness went in to check on them. She was also a medic, as well as everything else. The driver was a specialist from Irwin, young and fit, happy to wait. The aide was older and colder but it was his job to wait. So Ness hauled the minister out first. He had grey hair and grey skin, not helped by the cold. He was about sixty years old, and he was dressed in a grey suit. He was low on air and couldn’t walk. Reacher was the biggest guy there, twice Ness’s weight, a head taller than Jackson, so he scooped the minister up and carried him firefighter-style through the swirl and the blast to the hovering helicopter, where he twisted and went up on tiptoe and rolled the guy as gently as possible on to the cabin floor. The old couple stared from their canvas seats.

  Reacher turned back to go get the others, and bumped into Jackson, who was coming the other way. Jackson put his head close and yelled, ‘I have to stay with the minister.’ Reacher nodded and changed places with him, and slapped him on the back, as if passing the baton. He turned to go, and he was a step into his return trip when he heard the old woman’s voice, above him, from inside the Black Hawk, commanding, loud and clear over the engine noise.

  She said, ‘Stay where you are.’

  He didn’t. He turned around. Saw she wasn’t talking to him. She was keeping Jackson out of the helicopter. She was standing inside the door, leaning over the sprawling minister, pointing a gun. A Sig Sauer P226, Reacher noted, automatically. Nine millimetre, fifteen rounds in the magazine, plus probably one in the chamber, total sixteen, against maximum seven opponents, not good odds at all. On the other hand a 226 weighed twenty-seven ounces, which was a heavy weapon for a woman north of sixty. She might get tired. He stared at her. Ness said the Christmas Scorpion got in and out of places like a ghost. No one ever saw him. Because he was a she. The physical characteristic would be a physical mark, he thought. Like a tattoo. Maybe the arachnid itself on a holly leaf. Maybe with a berry. On her neck. Hence all the stupid business with the scarf. They can hear what you say, the pilot had warned. He had used the name. Every time he looked at her she must have thought he could see right through her.

  She had her target at her feet. Delivered there personally, by Reacher himself, like a gift or a tribute.<
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  Except the story didn’t work.

  He felt Ness arrive behind him. She stepped up and stood shoulder to shoulder. Behind her came the aide and the driver. The air was full of snowflakes and the whop-whop of the rotor blades.

  Ness whispered, ‘We brought her exactly where she wanted to be. She’s a genius.’

  ‘Like Lionel Messi,’ Reacher said. ‘I saw him on the television. The whole world expected the far post, Messi scored at the near post. Except something is wrong. It doesn’t work. Who made this threat?’

  ‘The usual people.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Reacher said.

  The old woman yelled, ‘Take a step back.’

  Nobody moved.

  The woman pointed her gun straight down, at the minister’s head. Jackson stepped back. Behind him Reacher stepped back. Ness stayed with him. Behind them the aide and the driver stepped back.

  The old man stepped up next to his wife. They stood together, framed in the doorway. He took out a gun of his own. Same make, same model. Like official issue. He aimed it centre-mass at the small crowd below him. His wife put her own gun away. One was enough. She untied the knot in her scarf and unwound it from her neck, one turn, two. She had a small round tattoo in the pit of her throat, the size of a casino chip, of a Christmas wreath complete with leaves and bows and candles, all surrounding the black silhouette of a scorpion. She wagged her head from side to side, and rubbed the skin on the back of her neck, as if she was relieved to get the scarf off. As if it had been itchy.

  She said, ‘The threat against the minister here has one very interesting aspect.’

  No one spoke.

  ‘OK, I’ll tell you,’ she said. ‘It could have been carried out at any time. Means, motive and opportunity have been in place for many months. So why wait?’

  ‘The meeting,’ Ness whispered to Reacher.

  ‘Two for the price of one,’ the old lady said. ‘Your minister, spelled with a c, and our secretary, spelled with an s. Two very senior figures in a very senior alliance. The resulting chaos could be fatal, especially given the times we live in, which are so bad they drove the dead guys to have a secret meeting on Christmas Eve in the first place. The fallout would be completely unpredictable. All in all it was seen as something worth waiting for. Until the two senior figures were in the same place at the same time.’

  Which they weren’t yet, Reacher thought.

  The woman said, ‘Obviously it’s absurd to think the Scorpion could be a woman. The people who pay the bills wouldn’t deal with a woman. They would doubt a woman would get the kind of access she would need, and by and large they would be right. Obviously the Scorpion is a man.’

  She put her hand in her pocket and came out with a worn leather wallet. She flipped it open. There was a gold shield on one side, and a photo ID on the other.

  ‘FBI,’ she said. ‘My husband here isn’t really my husband. He’s my partner. Counterterrorism. We’re looking after our guy, just the same as you’re looking after your guy.’

  She dug her thumbnail in the pit of her throat and peeled off the tattoo. It was printed on clingy transparent plastic.

  She said, ‘For a long time all we knew was a year ago he had this exact design put on his chest. I promised myself I would wear this thing every day until we caught him. Call me sentimental, I guess. Or superstitious.’

  Means, motive and opportunity, Reacher thought. Why wait?

  The old lady said, ‘For a long time that was all we knew, but now we know more. Who could realistically expect to penetrate Fort Irwin during a lockdown? Who can come and go like a ghost, without attracting a second glance? Who gets access to all the right places?’

  Reacher was ready. Jackson turned and ran, which was stupid, in thick snow, with a gun at his back, and a guy as big as Reacher in his way. In the process of taking him down his T-shirt got torn, thereby exposing a tattoo on his chest identical to the FBI lady’s plastic replica. After that things went smoothly. The law ran its course. Everyone got medals, except Reacher, but he got Christmas dinner in the officers’ mess, with the fire blazing, and that was enough.

  Exclusive extract

  from the new

  Jack Reacher thriller

  Coming in November 2018

  ONE

  JACK REACHER CAUGHT the last of the summer sun in a small town on the coast of Maine, and then, like the birds in the sky above him, he began his long migration south. But not, he thought, straight down the coast. Not like the orioles and the buntings and the phoebes and the warblers and the ruby-throated hummingbirds. Instead he decided on a diagonal route, south and west, from the top right-hand corner of the country to the bottom left, maybe through Syracuse, and Cincinnati, and St Louis, and Oklahoma City, and Albuquerque, and onward all the way to San Diego. Which for an army guy like Reacher was a little too full of navy people, but which was otherwise a fine spot to start the winter.

  It would be an epic road trip, and one he hadn’t made in years.

  He was looking forward to it.

  He didn’t get far.

  He walked inland a mile or so and came to a county road and stuck out his thumb. He was a tall man, more than six feet five in his shoes, heavily built, all bone and muscle, not particularly good-looking, never very well dressed, usually a little unkempt. Not an overwhelmingly appealing proposition. As always most drivers slowed and took a look and then kept on going. The first car prepared to take a chance on him came along after forty minutes. It was a year-old Subaru wagon, driven by a lean middle-aged guy in pleated chino pants and a crisp khaki shirt. Dressed by his wife, Reacher thought. The guy had a wedding ring. But under the fine fabrics was a working man’s body. A thick neck and large red knuckles. The slightly surprised and somewhat reluctant boss of something, Reacher thought. The kind of guy who starts out digging post holes and ends up owning a fencing company.

  Which turned out to be a good guess. Initial conversation established the guy had started out with nothing to his name but his daddy’s old framing hammer, and had ended up owning a construction company, responsible for forty working people, and the hopes and dreams of a whole bunch of clients. He finished his story with a little facial shrug, part Yankee modesty, part genuine perplexity. As in, how did that happen? Attention to detail, Reacher thought. This was a very organized guy, full of notions and nostrums and maxims and cast-iron beliefs, one of which was at the end of summer it was better to stay away from both Route One and I-95, and in fact to get out of Maine altogether as fast as possible, which meant soon and sideways, on Route Two straight west into New Hampshire. To a place just south of Berlin, where the guy knew a bunch of back roads that would get them down to Boston faster than any other way. Which was where the guy was going, for a meeting about marble countertops. Reacher was happy. Nothing wrong with Boston as a starting point. Nothing at all. From there it was a straight shot to Syracuse. After which Cincinnati was easy, via Rochester and Buffalo and Cleveland. Maybe even via Akron, Ohio. Reacher had been in worse places. Mostly in the service.

  They didn’t get to Boston.

  The guy got a call on his cell, after fifty-some minutes heading south on the aforementioned New Hampshire back roads. Which were exactly as advertised. Reacher had to admit the guy’s plan was solid. There was no traffic at all. No jams, no delays. They were bowling along, doing sixty miles an hour, dead easy. Until the phone rang. It was hooked up to the car radio, and a name came up on the navigation screen, with a thumbnail photograph as a visual aid, in this case of a red-faced man wearing a hard hat and carrying a clipboard. Some kind of a foreman on a job site. The guy at the wheel touched a button and phone hiss filled the car, from all the speakers, like surround sound.

  The guy at the wheel spoke into the windshield pillar and said, ‘This better be good news.’

  It wasn’t. It was something to do with an inspector from a municipal buildings department, and a metal flue liner above a fireplace in an entrance lobby, which was properly insulated,
exactly up to code, except that couldn’t be proved visually without tearing down the stonework, which was by that point already three storeys high, nearly done, with the masons booked on a new job starting the next week, or alternatively without ripping out the custom walnut millwork in the dining room on the other side of the chimney, or the millwork in the closet above, which was rosewood and even more complicated, but the inspector was being a hardass about it and needed to see for himself.

  The guy at the wheel glanced at Reacher and said, ‘Which inspector is it?’

  The guy on the phone said, ‘The new one.’

  ‘Does he know he gets a turkey at Thanksgiving?’

  ‘I told him we’re all on the same side here.’

  The guy at the wheel glanced at Reacher again, as if seeking permission, or offering an apology, or both, and then he faced front again and said, ‘Did you offer him money?’

  ‘Five hundred. He wouldn’t take it.’

  Then the cell signal ran out. The sound went garbled, like a robot drowning in a swimming pool, and then it went dead. The screen said it was searching.

  The car rolled on.

  Reacher said, ‘Why would a person want a fireplace in an entrance lobby?’

  The guy at the wheel said, ‘It’s welcoming.’

  ‘I think historically it was designed to repel. It was defensive. Like the campfire burning in the mouth of the cave. It was intended to keep predators at bay.’

  ‘I have to go back,’ the guy said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He slowed the car and pulled over on the gravel. All alone, on the back roads. No other traffic. The screen said it was still searching for a signal.

  ‘I’m going to have to let you out here,’ the guy said. ‘Is that OK?’

  ‘No problem,’ Reacher said. ‘You got me part of the way. For which I thank you very much.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘Whose is the rosewood closet?’

  ‘His.’

  ‘Cut a big hole in it and show the inspector. Then give the client five commonsense reasons why he should install a wall safe. Because this is a guy who wants a wall safe. Maybe he doesn’t know it yet, but a guy who wants a fireplace in his entrance lobby wants a wall safe in his bedroom closet. That’s for damn sure. Human nature. You’ll make a profit. You can charge him for the time it takes to cut the hole.’