The Affair_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [89]
I took a breath and moved on, closer and closer, left and right through the trees, five more yards, then six, then seven, leading with my left elbow, then my right, swimming through the crowded space, the Winchester shotgun held upright in front of me. The three guys had no idea I was there. I could sense them ahead of me, unaware, standing still, looking outward, going quiet, settling in, their lunch hour excitement over. I held my breath and moved up one tree closer to them, silently, then another tree, then another, and then finally I got my first clear sight of them.
And I had no clue what I was looking at.
Chapter
51
There were three men, as I had thought. They were fifteen feet from me. The width of a room. They all had their backs to me. One was gray-haired and heavy. He was wearing Vietnam-era olive drab fatigues. They were too tight on him. He was carrying an M16 rifle and I could see the butt of a Beretta M9 semi-automatic pistol in a webbing holster on his belt. A nine-millimeter handgun. Standard U.S. Army issue, as was the M16. The guy had old paratrooper boots on his feet, and no hat on his head.
The second guy was younger and a little taller but not much thinner. He was sandy haired, and he was wearing what I was sure were Italian army combat fatigues. Similar to ours, but different. Better cut. He was carrying an M16 by its top handle. Right-handed. No sidearm. He was wearing black athletic sneakers. No hat. He had a small backpack in non-matching camouflage.
The third guy was wearing 1980s-issue U.S. Army woodland pattern camouflage BDUs. He wasn’t fat. Far from it. He was a runt. Maybe five feet six, maybe a hundred and forty pounds. Lean and wiry and hardscrabble and nervous. He was carrying an M16 too. Civilian shoes on his feet, no hat, no sidearm. He was the smoker. There was a lit cigarette between the first two fingers of his left hand.
At first the Italian battledress made me wonder if they were some kind of a weird NATO force. But the first guy’s Vietnam fatigues didn’t fit with any current 1997 scenario, however screwed up international politics might have been by then, and neither did the third guy’s street shoes, nor did their collective lack of combat headgear, or their lack of portable lunch rations, or their completely unprofessional behavior. I didn’t know what they were. My mind ran through random possibilities, like a departures board runs through flights at an airport. I was surprised they didn’t hear the clacking and ticking from inside my head.
I looked at them again, left to right, and then right to left.
I couldn’t figure it out.
Then finally I understood: they were amateurs.
The Mississippi backwoods, next to Tennessee and Alabama. Civilian militias. Pretend soldiers. Men who like to run around in the woods with guns, but who like to say they’re defending some vital thing or other. Men who like to shoot the shit in the surplus store, right after their bulk purchase of old fatigues and Italian battledress.
And men who like to buy their guns at country gun stores. At certain country gun stores in particular. Because certain country gun stores are near military bases, and therefore some of them have something special for sale under the counter. All it takes is someone on the inside, and believe me, there is always someone on the inside. A steady stream of M16s and Berettas and worse is written off every year as lost or damaged or otherwise unusable, whereupon it is destroyed, except it isn’t. It’s hustled out the back door in the dead of night and an hour later it’s under the counter at the gun shop.
I have arrested