I walked on, like a fish toward a net. The sun was about as high as it was going to get in March. The air was warm. I could feel heat on my skin. I could feel the road surface under the soles of my shoes. I put my hands in my pockets. Nothing in there, except most of the roll of quarters I had gotten in the diner. I closed my fist around the paper tube. A ten dollar punch, less what I had spent on the phone.
I walked on and stopped ten feet from the skirmish line. The two guys I had met before were on the left. The silent mastermind was on the outside, and the alpha dog was in second position. Both of them had noses like spoiled eggplants. Both of them had two black eyes. Both of them had crusted blood on their lips. Neither one of them exhibited much in the way of balance or focus. Right of the alpha dog was a guy slightly smaller than the others, and next to him was a big guy in a biker vest.
I looked at the alpha dog and said, "This is your plan?"
He didn't answer.
I said, "Four guys? Is that all?"
He didn't answer.
I said, "I was told there were dozens of you."
No answer.
"But I guess logistics and communications were difficult. So you settled on a lighter force, quickly assembled and rapidly deployed. Which is very up to date, actually. You should go to the Pentagon and sit in on some seminars. You'd feel right at home with their thinking."
The new guy second from the right was drunk. He had a low level buzz going on. It was oozing from his pores. I could practically smell it. Beer for breakfast. Maybe with chasers. A decade-long diet, judging by the look of him. So he would be slow to react, and then wild and unaimed afterward. No big problem. The new guy with the biker vest was carrying some kind of back pain. Low down, base of his spine. I could tell because he was standing with his pelvis rolled forward, taking the pressure off. Some kind of rupture or strain. A dozen possible causes. He was a country boy. He could have lifted a bale, or fallen off a horse. No major threat. He would defeat himself. One enthusiastic swing, and all kinds of things would tear loose inside. He would hobble away like a cripple. By which time his drunken friend would already be down. And the other two were already in no kind of good shape. The two I knew. The two that knew me. The alpha dog was slightly on my left, and I'm a right-handed fighter. He was practically volunteering.
Overall, an encouraging situation.
I said, "It's a shame one of you isn't bigger. Or two or three of you. Or all of you, actually."
No answer.
I said, "But hey, a plan's a plan. Did it take long to work out?"
No answer.
I said, "You know what we used to say about plans, up at West Point?"
"What?"
"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
No answer. No movement. I unwrapped my hand from around the roll of quarters. I wasn't going to need them. I took my hands out of my pockets. I said, "The problem with light forces is if things go bad, they go real bad real quick. Look at what happened in Somalia. So you should think very carefully about this choice. You're at a fork in the road here. You have to decide which way to go. You could wade in, just the four of you, right now. But the next stop after that will be the hospital. That's a promise. That's a cast iron guarantee. You'll get hit harder than you've ever been hit before. I'm talking broken bones. I can't promise brain damage. Looks like someone already beat me to that."
No response.
I said, "Or you could attempt a tactical withdrawal now, and then you could take your time putting that big force together. You could come back in a couple of days. Dozens of you. You could find your granddaddy's varmint gun. You could start the painkillers early."
No response. Nothing verbal, anyway. But shoulders slumped a fraction, and feet started shuffling.
"Good decision," I said. "Overwhelming force is always better. You really should go to the Pentagon. You could walk them through your reasoning. They'd listen to you. They're listening to everyone except us."
The alpha dog said, "We'll be back."
"I'll be here," I said. "Whenever you're ready."
They walked away, trying to be casual about it, trying to salvage some dignity. They climbed into their trucks and made a big show of revving their engines and squealing their tires through tight 180 turns. They drove off west into the forest, toward Memphis, toward the rest of the world. I watched them go, and then I walked back to the Sheriff's Department.
* * *
Deveraux had seen the whole thing from the window in the dim corner room. Like a silent movie. No dialogue. She said, "You made them go away. You apologized. I can't believe it."
"Not exactly," I said. "I took a rain check. They're coming back later, dozens of them."
"Why did you do that?"
"More arrests for you. They'll look good for your reelection campaign."
"You're crazy."
"You want to get lunch now?"
"I already have a lunch date," she said.
"Since when?"
"Five minutes ago. Major Duncan Munro called back and asked me to dine with him in the Kelham Officers' Club."
30
Deveraux left for Kelham in her car and I was left alone on the sidewalk. I walked past the vacant lot to the diner. Lunch, for one. I ordered the cheeseburger again, and then stepped over to the phone by the door and called the Pentagon. Colonel John James Frazer. Senate Liaison. He answered on the first ring. I asked him, "What genius decided to classify that plate number?"
He said, "I can't tell you that."
"Whoever, it was a bad mistake. All it did was confirm the car belongs to a Kelham guy. It was practically a public announcement."
"We had no alternative. We couldn't put it in the public domain. Journalists would have gotten it five minutes after local law enforcement. We couldn't allow that."
"Now it sounds like you're telling me it belonged to a Bravo Company guy."
"I'm not telling you anything. But believe me, we had no choice. The consequences would have been catastrophic."
Something in his voice.
"Please tell me you're kidding," I said. "Because right now you're making it sound like it was Reed Riley's own personal vehicle."
No response.
I asked, "Was it?"
No answer.
"Was it?"
"I can't confirm or deny," Frazer said. "And don't ask again. And don't use that name again, either. Not on an unsecured line."
"Does the officer in question have an explanation?"
"I can't comment on that."
I said, "This is getting out of control, Frazer. You need to rethink. The cover up is always worse than the crime. You need to stop it now."
"Negative on that, Reacher. There's a plan in place, and it will stay in place."
"Does the plan include an exclusion zone around Kelham? Maybe for journalists especially?"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I've got circumstantial evidence here of boots on the ground outside of Kelham's fence. Part of the circumstantial evidence is a corpse. I'm telling you, this thing is out of control now."
"Who's the corpse?"
"A scrappy middle-aged guy."
"A journalist?"
"I don't know how to recognize a journalist by sight alone. Maybe that's a skill they teach to the infantry, but they don't teach it to MPs."
"No ID on him?"
"We haven't looked yet. The doctor hasn't finished with him."