Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [131]
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
The hallway was almost too crowded to move. It was full of football players, four of them lying around like carcasses, like beached whales, limbs taped, heads flopping. Reacher picked his way around them and watched out a window. The two late arrivals were making their way past Dorothy Coe’s pick-up, past John’s own Yukon, hustling through the damp and the cold, heading for the door, full of high spirits.
Reacher opened the door and stepped out to meet them head-on. He drew his sawn-off across his body, a long high exaggerated movement like a pirate drawing an ancient flintlock pistol, and he held it right-handed, elbow bent and comfortable, and he aimed it at the guy who had hit him. But he looked at John.
“You let me down,” he said.
Both guys came to a dead stop and stared at him a little more urgently than he thought was warranted, until he remembered the duct tape on his face. Like war paint. He smiled and felt it pucker. He looked back at the guy who had hit him and said, “It was nothing that couldn’t be fixed. But I’m not certain you’ll be able to say the same.”
Neither guy spoke. Reacher kept his eyes on the guy who had hit him and said, “Take out your car keys and toss them to me.”
The guy said, “What?”
“I’m bored with John’s Yukon. I’m going to use your truck the rest of the day.”
“You think?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
No response.
Reacher said, “It’s make-your-mind-up-time, boys. Either do what I tell you, or get shot.”
The guy dipped into his pocket and came out with a bunch of keys. He held them up briefly, to prove what they were, and then he tossed them underhand to Reacher, who made no attempt to catch them. They bounced off his coat and landed on the gravel. Reacher wanted his left hand free and his attention all in one place. He looked at the guy again and asked, “So how does your nose feel right now?”
The guy said, “It feels OK.”
“It looks like it has been busted before.”
The guy said, “Two times.”
Reacher said, “Well, they say three is a lucky number. They say the third time’s the charm.”
Nobody spoke.
Reacher said, “John, lie facedown on the ground.”
John didn’t move.
Reacher fired into the ground at John’s feet. The gun boomed and kicked and the sound rolled away across the land, loud and dull, like a quarry explosion. John howled and danced. Not hit, but stung in the shins by fragments of gravel kicked up by the blast. Reacher waited for quiet and pumped the gun, a solid crunch-crunch, probably the most intimidating sound in the world. The husk of the spent cartridge ejected and flew through the air and landed near the car keys and skittered away.
John got down on the ground. First he got on his knees, awkwardly, like he was in church, and then he spread his hands and lowered himself facedown, reluctantly, like a bad-tempered coach had demanded a hundred push-ups. Reacher called over his shoulder, “Doctor? Bring me the duct tape, would you?”
No response from inside the house.
Reacher called, “Don’t worry, doctor. There won’t be any comebacks. Never again. This is the last day. Tomorrow you’ll be living like normal people. These guys will be unemployed, heading back where they came from, looking for new jobs.”
There was a long, tense pause. Then a minute later the doctor came out with the tape. He didn’t look at the two guys. He kept his face averted and his eyes down. Old habits. He gave the roll to Reacher and ducked back inside. Reacher tossed the tape to the guy who had hit him and said, “Make it so your buddy can’t move his arms or legs. Or I will, by some other method, probably including spinal injury.”
The guy caught the roll of tape and got to work. He wrapped John’s wrists with a tight three-layer figure eight, and then he wrapped the waist of the eight in the other direction, around and around. Plastic handcuffs. Reacher had no idea of the tensile strength of duct tape in terms of engineering numbers, but he knew no human could pull