The Midnight Line

by Lee Child

  Reacher walked to the door of the bar. He pulled it open and stepped inside. The air was dark and hot and smelled of spilled beer. The room was rectangular, with a full-length copper bar on the left, and tables on the right. There was an arch in the rear wall, with a narrow corridor beyond. Restrooms and a pay phone and a fire door. Four windows. A total of six potential exits. The first thing an ex-MP counted.

  The eight bikers were packed in around two four-tops shoved together by a window. They had beers on the go, in heavy glasses wet with humidity. The new guy was shoehorned in, pear shaped on a chair, with the fullest glass. Six of the others were in a similar category, in terms of size and shape and general visual appeal. One was worse. About five-eight, stringy, with a narrow face and restless eyes.

  Reacher stopped at the bar and asked for coffee.

  “Don’t have any,” the barman said. “Sorry.”

  “Is that Jimmy Rat over there? The small guy?”

  “You got a beef with him, you take it outside, OK?”

  The barman moved away. Reacher waited. One of the bikers drained his glass and stood up and headed for the restroom corridor. Reacher crossed the room and sat down in his vacant chair. The wood felt hot. The eighth guy made the connection. He stared at Reacher, and then he glanced at Jimmy Rat.

  Who said, “This is a private party, bud. You ain’t invited.”

  Reacher said, “I need some information.”

  “About what?”

  “Charitable donations.”

  Jimmy Rat looked blank. Then he remembered. He glanced at the door, somewhere beyond which lay the pawn shop, where he had made assurances. He said, “Get lost, bud.”

  Reacher put his left fist on the table. The size of a supermarket chicken. Long thick fingers with knuckles like walnuts. Old nicks and scars healed white against his summer tan. He said, “I don’t care what scam you’re running. Or who you’re stealing from. Or who you’re fencing for. I got no interest in any of that. All I want to know is where you got this ring.”

  He opened his fist. The ring lay in his palm. West Point 2005. The gold filigree, the black stone. The tiny size. Jimmy Rat said nothing, but something in his eyes made Reacher believe he recognized the item.

  Reacher said, “Another name for West Point is the United States Military Academy. There’s a clue right there, in the first two words. This is a federal case.”

  “You a cop?”

  “No, but I got a quarter for the phone.”

  The missing guy got back from the restroom. He stood behind Reacher’s chair, arms spread wide in exaggerated perplexity. As if to say, what the hell is going on here? Who is this guy? Reacher kept one eye on Jimmy Rat, and one on the window alongside him, where he could see a faint ghostly reflection of what was happening behind his shoulder.

  Jimmy Rat said, “That’s someone’s chair.”

  “Yeah, mine,” Reacher said.

  “You’ve got five seconds.”

  “I’ve got as long as it takes for you to answer my question.”

  “You feeling lucky tonight?”

  “I won’t need to be.”

  Reacher put his right hand on the table. It was a little larger than his left. Normal for right-handed people. It had a few more nicks and scars, including a white V-shaped blemish that looked like a snakebite, but had been made by a nail.

  Jimmy Rat shrugged, like the whole conversation was really no big deal.

  He said, “I’m part of a supply chain. I get stuff from other people who get it from other people. That ring was donated or sold or pawned and not redeemed. I don’t know anything more than that.”

  “What other people did you get it from?”

  Jimmy Rat said nothing. Reacher watched the window with his left eye. With his right he saw Jimmy Rat nod. The reflection in the glass showed the guy behind winding up a big roundhouse right. Clearly the plan was to smack Reacher on the ear. Maybe topple him off the chair. At least soften him up a little.

  Didn’t work.

  Reacher chose the path of least resistance. He ducked his head, and let the punch scythe through the empty air above it. Then he bounced back up, and launched from his feet, and twisted, and used his falling-backward momentum to jerk his elbow into the guy’s kidney, which was rotating around into position just in time. It was a good solid hit. The guy went down hard. Reacher fell back in his chair and sat there like absolutely nothing had happened.

  Jimmy Rat stared.

  The barman called, “Take it outside, pal. Like I told you.”

  He sounded like he meant it.

  Jimmy Rat said, “Now you’ve got trouble.”

  He sounded like he meant it too.

  Right then Chang would be shopping for dinner. Maybe a small grocery close to her home. Wholesome ingredients. But simple. She was probably tired.

  A bad day.

  Reacher said, “I’ve got six fat guys and a runt. That’s a walk in the park.”

  He stood up. He turned and stepped on the guy on the floor and walked over him. Onward to the door. Out to the gravel, and the line of shiny bikes. He turned and saw the others come out after him. The not-very magnificent seven. Generally stiff and bow-legged, and variously contorted due to beer guts and bad posture. But still, a lot of weight. In the aggregate. Plus fourteen fists, and fourteen boots.

  Possibly steel capped.

  Maybe a very bad day.

  But who cared, really?

  The seven guys fanned out in a semicircle, three on Jimmy Rat’s left, and three on his right. Reacher kept moving, rotating them the way he wanted, his back to the street. He didn’t want to get trapped against someone’s rear fence. He didn’t want to get jammed in a corner. He didn’t plan on running, but an option was always a fine thing to have.

  The seven guys tightened their semicircle, but not enough. They stayed about ten feet away, with better than a yard between each one of them. Which made the first two plays obvious. They would come shuffling in, slowly, maybe grunting and glaring, whereupon Reacher would move fast and punch his way through the line, after which everyone would turn around, Reacher now facing a new inverted semicircle, now only six in number. Then rinse and repeat, which would reduce them to five. They wouldn’t fall for it a third time, so at that point they would swarm, all except Jimmy Rat, who Reacher figured wouldn’t fight at all. Too smart. Which in the end would make it a close-quarters four-on-one brawl.

  A bad day.

  For someone.

  “Last chance,” Reacher said. “Tell the little guy to answer my question, and you can all go back to your suds.”

  No one spoke. They tightened some more and hunched down into crouches and started shuffling forward, hands apart and ready. Reacher picked out his first target and waited. He wanted him five feet away. One pace, not two. Better to save the extra energy for later.

  Then he heard tires on the road again, behind him, and in front of him the seven guys straightened up and looked around, with exaggerated wide-eyed innocence all over their faces. Reacher turned and saw the cop car again. The same guy. County Police. The car coasted to a stop and the guy took a good long look. He buzzed his passenger window down, and leaned across inside, and caught Reacher’s eye, and said, “Sir, please approach the vehicle.”

  Which Reacher did, but not on the passenger side. He didn’t want to turn his back. Instead he tracked around the trunk to the driver’s window. Which buzzed down, while the passenger side buzzed back up. The cop had his gun in his hand. Relaxed, held low in his lap.

  The cop said, “Want to tell me what’s going on here?”

  Reacher said, “Were you army or Marine Corps?”

  “Why would I be either?”

  “Most of you are, in a place like this. Especially the ones who hike all the way to the nearest PX to get their hair cut.”

  “I was army.”

  “Me too. There’s nothing going on here.”

  “I need to hear the whole story. Lots of guys were in the army. I
don’t know you.”

  “Jack Reacher, 110th MP. Terminal at major. Pleased to meet you.”

  The cop said, “I heard of the 110th MP.”

  “In a good way, I hope.”

  “Your HQ was in the Pentagon, right?”

  “No, our HQ was in Rock Creek, Virginia. Some ways north and west of the Pentagon. I had the best office there for a couple of years. Was that your security question?”

  “You passed the test. Rock Creek it was. Now tell me what’s going on. You looked like you were fixing to fight these guys.”

  “So far we’re just talking,” Reacher said. “I asked them something. They told me they would prefer to answer me outside in the open air. I don’t know why. Maybe they were worried about eavesdroppers.”

  “What did you ask them?”

  “Where they got this ring.”

  Reacher rested his wrist on the door and opened his hand.

  “West Point,” the cop said.

  “Sold to the pawn shop by these guys. I want to know who they got it from.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I guess I want to know the story.”

  “These guys won’t tell you.”

  “You know them?”

  “Nothing we can prove.”

  “But?”

  “They bring stuff in from South Dakota through Minnesota. Two states away. But never enough to get the Feds interested in an interstate kind of thing. And never enough to put a South Dakota police detective on an airplane. So it’s pretty much risk-free for them.”

  “Where in South Dakota?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Reacher said nothing.

  The cop said, “You should get in the car. There are seven of them.”

  “I’ll be OK,” Reacher said.

  “I’ll arrest you, if you like. To make it look good. But you need to be gone. Because I need to be gone. I can’t stay here my whole watch.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Maybe I should arrest you anyway.”

  “For what? Something that hasn’t happened yet?”

  “For your own safety.”

  “I could take offense,” Reacher said. “You don’t seem very worried about their safety. You talk like it’s a foregone conclusion.”

  “Get in the car. Call it a tactical retreat. You can find out about the ring some other way.”

  “What other way?”

  “Then forget all about it. A buck gets ten there’s no story at all. Probably the guy came back all sad and bitter and sold the damn ring as fast as he could. To pay the rent on his trailer.”

  “Is that how it is around here?”

  “Often enough.”

  “You’re doing OK.”

  “It’s a spectrum.”

  “It wasn’t a guy. The ring is too small. It was a woman.”

  “Women live in trailers too.”

  Reacher nodded. He said, “I agree, a buck gets ten it’s nothing. But I want to know for sure. Just in case.”

  Silence for a moment. Just the engine’s whispered idle, and a breeze in the telephone wires.

  “Last chance,” the cop said. “Play it smart. Get in the car.”

  “I’ll be OK,” Reacher said again. He stepped back and straightened up. The cop shook his head in exasperation, and waited a beat, and then gave up and drove away, slowly, tires hissing on the blacktop, exhaust fumes trailing. Reacher watched him all the way to the corner, and then he stepped back up on the sidewalk, where the black-clad semicircle re-formed around him.

  Chapter 4

  The seven bikers resumed their previous positions, and they hunched down into their combat stances again, feet apart, hands held wide and ready. But they didn’t move. They didn’t want to. Not right away. From their point of view a new factor had been introduced. Their opponent was completely batshit crazy. He had proved it. He had been offered a graceful exit by the county cops, and he had turned it down. He had stayed to fight it out.

  Why?

  They didn’t know.

  Reacher waited. At that point he figured Chang would be hauling her packages home. Dumping them on the kitchen counter. Assembling her ingredients. Taking a knife from a drawer. Maybe heating the stove. Dinner for one. A quiet evening. A relief, perhaps.

  Still the bikers didn’t move.

  Reacher said, “You guys having second thoughts now?”

  No response.

  Reacher said, “Answer my question and I’ll let you walk away.”

  No movement.

  Reacher waited.

  Then eventually he said, “A person less patient than me might think it’s time to shit or get off the pot.”

  Still no response.

  Reacher smiled.

  He said, “Then I guess I was just born lucky. This is like winning the slots in Vegas. Ding, ding, ding. I got seven big girls all in a line.”

  Which got a reaction, like he wanted it to. Like he needed it to. Motion was his friend. He wanted moving mass and momentum. He wanted them raging and blundering. Which he got. They glanced among themselves, outraged, but not wanting to be the first to move, or the last, and then on some kind of unspoken signal they all jerked forward, suddenly mad as hell, all pumped up and vulnerable. Reacher put his original plan in action. It was still good. Still the obvious play. He waited until they were five feet away, and then he launched hard and smashed through the line with a horizontal elbow in his first target’s face, and then he turned immediately and launched again, no delay at all, stamping his foot to kill the old momentum and get some new, scything his elbow at the guy to the right of the sudden new gap, who turned straight into it, facing front with all kinds of urgency, meeting the blow like a head-on wreck on the highway.

  Two down.

  Reacher turned again and stood still. The five survivors formed up in a new semicircle. Reacher took a long step back. Simply to gauge their intentions. Which were exactly as predicted. Jimmy Rat faded backward, and the other four came on forward.

  Reacher had graduated most of the specialist combat schools the army had to offer, most of them on posts inside the old Confederacy, all of them staffed by grizzled old veterans who had done things no normal person could imagine. Such schools concluded with secret notes in secret files and a lot of bruises and maybe even broken bones. The rule of thumb in such establishments, when faced with four opponents, was to make it three opponents pretty damn quickly. And then to make it two opponents just as fast, which was the win right there, the whole ball game, because obviously any graduate of any such school could not possibly have the slightest problem going one-on-two, because if he did, it would mean the instructors had done a poor job of instructing, which was of course logically impossible in the army.

  Reacher called it getting his retaliation in first. The four guys were all hunched again, arms wide, bow-legged and feet apart. Maybe they thought such poses looked threatening. To Reacher they looked like a target-rich environment. He darted in and picked off the end guy on the left with a kick in the balls, and then danced away at right-angles, in line with them, where the back three couldn’t get to him without detouring around the end guy, who by that point was doubled over, retching and puking and gasping.

  Reacher stepped back again. The back three came after him, making the detour, the first guy going right, the second left, the third right again. All of which gave Reacher time to slip around behind the line of bikes, to the other side. Which gave the three guys a decision to make. Obviously two would follow one way and one the other, but which one and which way? Obviously the lone guy carried the greatest risk. He was the weak point and would get hit first, and maybe hardest. Who wanted that duty?

  Reacher saw Jimmy Rat watching from the sidewalk.

  The three guys split up two and one, the two coming around to Reacher’s right, the lone guy from the left. Reacher moved to meet him, fast, his mind on the invisible geometry unspooling behind him, figuring