‘Want to show me?’
‘Sure,’ the guy said. ‘But he’s an hour uphill. We didn’t want him found too soon.’
‘Then how do I know you did it?’
‘We’re telling you.’
‘I need proof. This is a very large fee we’re talking about here.’
‘Two boxes each.’
‘Between you,’ Stackley said.
Then he looked again and said, ‘There were three of you yesterday.’
The guy said, ‘Indisposed.’
‘With what?’
‘Sore throat.’
‘I need proof about the big guy,’ Stackley said. ‘This is a business deal we got going here.’
The guy with the boots put his hand in his pocket and came out with a slim blue booklet. Silver printing. A passport, maybe three years old, a little curled and bent. He handed it over. Stackley opened it up. The big guy’s photo was right there. A face like a stone. His name was Jack Reacher. No middle initial.
‘From his pocket,’ the guy said. ‘Less messy than his scalp.’
Stackley put the passport in his own pocket.
He said, ‘I’ll keep it as a souvenir.’
‘Sure.’
‘Nice work.’
‘We aim to please.’
‘But you caught me out,’ Stackley said. ‘Business is too good. I’m running low.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You’ll have to wait.’
‘That wasn’t the deal.’
‘What do you want me to do? Say no to someone else, just in case you got it done, which frankly I didn’t expect so soon? I can’t hold stuff back on a theoretical basis.’
‘So you got nothing left?’
‘Not much.’
The guy said, ‘Want to show me?’
‘Sure,’ Stackley said. He wasn’t averse. A dwindling stock was a kind of advertisement all its own. The modern environment. Business was all about velocity now. It was rule one. He turned towards the camper door.
And came face to face with the guy from the passport.
Reacher eased out of the trees, and crept up within a yard of the guy. He was about to tap him in the kidney, but right then the guy turned around towards the camper door, so he tapped him in the stomach instead, just enough to fold him over. He used the same hand on the guy’s shoulder to force him face-down in the dirt, where he searched him. He came up with his own passport from one coat pocket, and a nine-millimetre from another, and a .22 jammed in one boot, and a switchblade jammed in the other. The nine-mil was an old Smith & Wesson Model 39, with handsome grips made of polished wood. The .22 was a Ruger, not a vest pocket gun, but it fit in the boot. The switchblade was a piece of junk, made in China, maybe in a toy factory.
Stackley was huffing and puffing in the dirt, and squirming a little, which Reacher thought was excessive for a guy barely hurt. He checked the pick-up’s cab. Nothing in the glove compartment. But under the lip of the driver’s seat there was a mounting clip, where a fire extinguisher might have been, except in this case the clip had been modified, and was currently full of another elderly nine-millimetre with wooden grips, in this case an old Springfield P9. Apart from that there was nothing but drifts of old gas receipts and sandwich wrappers.
Reacher stepped back to where Stackley was lying, and he held the old Smith out at arm’s length. He clicked the button and dropped the mag from five feet up. It hit Stackley in the head. Stackley yelped. Reacher dropped the gun itself. Stackley yelped again. Reacher did the same thing with the Ruger, mag and frame, and then the Springfield, mag and frame. A total of six separate yelps.
Reacher said, ‘Get up now, Stackley.’
Stackley forced himself upright, a little bent over, a little pale in the face. All shook up. Rubbing his painful head. Facing the same kind of animal issues the two cowboys had, the night before. You fail to kill a man, and then you look up and see him right there. Does he own you now?
Reacher said, ‘Open up the back of the truck.’
The doors were flimsy plastic. Stackley got them propped wide. Then he stood back. Reacher pulled a blanket aside. One forlorn box, mostly empty. It had just three patches left in it, each one individually wrapped, all of them sliding around in a space made for more.
Not much.
Reacher stepped away.
‘Stocks seem to be running low,’ he said. ‘What do you do about that, in the normal course of business?’
‘I’m sorry, man,’ Stackley said. ‘About the other thing. I had no choice. I was told to do it. It wasn’t personal.’
‘We’ll discuss it later,’ Reacher said.
‘There’s a guy. I have to do what he says. He told me to. It wasn’t like I wanted to. You have to believe that.’
‘Later.’
‘I really didn’t think these guys would do it. I thought I was going through the motions, that’s all. So at least I could say I tried. It’s their fault really.’
‘I asked you a question.’
‘I don’t remember what it was.’
‘Your stock is low,’ Reacher said. ‘What happens next?’
Stackley got a look in his eye, like some kind of a thought process was taking place back there. He looked up, and then down. A junction, Reacher thought, or a transition. A change from one thing to another. From winning to losing, from hope to despair.
To surrender.
Stackley breathed out, like a sigh of defeat.
He said, ‘When I run out I go get more.’
‘Where from?’
‘It’s a kind of warehouse, where you drive in and line up. You wait until midnight.’
‘Where is the warehouse?’
Stackley paused a beat.
‘We have a special burner phone,’ he said. ‘We get a text message.’
‘Where is your special burner phone?’
Stackley pointed at the camper shell.
He said, ‘In a locker in back.’
Reacher said, ‘Get it for me.’
Stackley stepped up and leaned inside. Reacher heard the snap of a catch. Afterwards he recalled a split second of fast chaotic thought, like his whole life was flashing in front of his eyes, except it wasn’t his whole life, merely his mistakes of the last thirty seconds, explained and analysed and ridiculed and exaggerated to a ludicrous degree. To the point where in his mind he saw his name as a footnote in a psychology textbook about bias confirmation, in a famous case where a guy saw a movement in another guy’s eyes, and took it to mean exactly what he wanted it to mean all along.
Stackley hadn’t surrendered. Instead he had thought hard and fast and seen a way out. A lifeline. The guy was no dummy. The change in his eyes had been a movement away from losing and back to winning. From despair back to hope. Reacher had read it completely wrong. Completely ass-backward. Too optimistic. Too willing to look on the bright side of life. Which also screwed up his conclusion about the weapons. He had instinctively assumed once you had taken a Springfield, and a Smith, and a Ruger .22 from a guy, then you were pretty much done with finding more firearms. Which had made it fun to take them apart and drop them on the guy’s head.
Whereas the psychology textbooks would say a guy with three could have four, dead easy. Especially a dope dealer, who took things in trade.
Dumb.
Stackley straightened up and turned around.