The Affair_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [147]
I didn’t answer. I took one more step and opened the rear door and got in the back seat behind him. I closed the door after me and shuffled over to the center of the bench and both men craned around to look at me.
“Sir?” Riley said again.
“What’s going on here?” his father asked.
“Change of plan,” I said.
I could smell beer on their breath and smoke and sweat in their clothing.
“I have a plane to catch,” the senator said.
“At midnight,” I said. “No one will look for you before then.”
“What the hell does that mean? Do you know who I am?”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
“What do you want?”
“Instant obedience,” I said. I took out the Beretta for the second time that evening, fast, swift, like a magician. One minute my hand was empty, and the next it was full of dull steel. I clicked the safety to fire, a small sound, but ominous in the silence.
The senator said, “You’re making a very serious mistake, young man. As of right now your military career is over. Whether it gets any worse than that is entirely up to you.”
“Be quiet,” I said. I leaned forward and bunched Reed Riley’s collar in my hand, the same way I had with the sergeant from Benning. But this time I put the muzzle of the gun in the hollow behind his right ear. Soft flesh, no bone. Just the right size.
“Drive on,” I said. “Very slowly. Turn left on the crossing. Head up the railroad line.”
Riley said, “What?”
“You heard me.”
“But the train is coming.”
“At midnight,” I said. “Now hop to it, soldier.”
It was a difficult task. Instinctively he wanted to lean forward over the wheel for a better view out the front. But I wouldn’t let him. I had him hauled back hard against the seat, pulled and pushed. But even so, he did OK. He rolled forward and spun the wheel hard and crabbed diagonally up onto the rise. He lined it up and felt his right front tire hit the groove in the pavement. He eased forward, dead straight, and the edge of the blacktop fell away under us. His right-hand tires stayed up on the rail. His left-hand wheels were down on the ties. A fine job. As good as Deveraux.
“You’ve done this before,” I said.
He didn’t answer.
We rolled on, less than walking pace, radically tilted, the right side of the car up and running smooth, the left side down and rising and falling over the ties like a boat on a swell. We rolled past the old water tower, then ten more yards, and then I said, “Stop.”
“Here?”
“It’s a good spot,” I said.
He braked gently and the car stopped, right on the line, still tilted over. I kept hold of his collar and kept the gun in place. Ahead of me through the windshield the rails ran straight north to a vanishing point far in the distance, like slim silver streaks in the moonlight.
I said, “Captain, use your left hand and open all the windows.”
“Why?”
“Because you guys already stink. And it’s only going to get worse, believe me.”
Riley scrabbled blindly with his fingers and first his father’s window came down, then mine, then the one opposite me.
Fresh night air came in on the breeze.
I said, “Senator, lean over and turn the lights off.”
It took him a second to find the switch, but he did it.
I said, “Now turn the engine off and give me the key.”
He said, “But we’re parked on the railroad track.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“You asked me that before. And I answered. Now do what you’re told. Or do I have to make a campaign contribution first? In which case please consider my contribution to be not shooting your son through the knee.”
The old guy made a small sound in his throat, the kind of thing I had heard once or twice before, when jokes turned out not to be jokes, when dire situations turned from bad to worse, when nightmares were revealed to be waking realities. He leaned sideways and twisted the key and pulled it and held it out to me.
“Toss it on the back seat,” I said.
He did so, and it landed next to me and skittered down the slope in the cushion made by the tilt of the car.
I said, “Now both of you put your hands on your head.”
The senator went