Bad Luck and Trouble

blow. The guy’s neck snapped forward and his skull snapped back and bounced straight off Reacher’s fist and smashed forward again until his chin smacked his chest. Whiplash. Like a crash test dummy rear-ended by a speeding truck. The guy went straight down in a heap and his buddy turned toward him in shock and Reacher danced through a short shuffle step and headbutted him full in the face. He knew it was a great one by the sound alone. Bone, gristle, muscle, flesh, the unmistakable crunch of serious damage. The guy stayed vertical but unconscious for a second and then went down flat.
    Reacher rolled the first guy on his back and sat on his chest and pinched his nose with one hand and blocked his mouth with his other palm. Then he waited until the guy suffocated. It didn’t take long. Less than a minute. Then he did the same thing with the other guy. Another minute.
    Then he checked their pockets. The first guy had a cell phone and a gun and a wallet full of cash money and credit cards. Reacher took the gun and the cash money, left the cell phone and the credit cards. The gun was a SIG P226, nine-millimeter. The cash money was a little less than two hundred dollars. The second guy had another phone, another SIG, another wallet.
    Plus Dave O’Donnell’s ceramic knuckleduster.
    It was right there in his jacket pocket. Either a reward for good work at the hospital takedown, or a stolen souvenir. Spoils of war. Reacher put it in his own pocket and jammed the SIGs in his waistband and the cash in his back pocket. Then he wiped his hands on the second guy’s jacket and crawled away, low and fast, peering into the dark where he imagined Neagley to be. He had heard nothing from that direction. Nothing at all. But he wasn’t worried. Neagley against two guys in the dark was about as reliable as the sun setting in the west.
    He found another broad dip in the grass and lay down on his elbows and pulled out his phone. Called Dixon’s number.
    “Where the hell were you?” Lamaison asked him.
    “I told you,” Reacher said. “I don’t pick up when I’m driving.”
    “You’re not driving.”
    “So why didn’t I pick up?”
    “Whatever,” Lamaison said. “Where are you now?”
    “Close by.”
    “Before the 110th Dixon says she was with the 53rd MP and O’Donnell says he was with the 131st.”
    “OK,” Reacher said. “I’ll call you back in ten. When we arrive.”
    He clicked off and sat up cross-legged in the dirt. He had his proof-of-life answers. Only problem was, neither one of them was even remotely true.

75
    Reacher crawled south through the grass, looking for Neagley in the dark. He made it through fifty fast yards and found a corpse instead. He blundered right into it, hands and then knees. It was a man, cooling fast. Blue suit, white shirt. Broken neck.
    “Neagley?” he whispered.
    “Here,” she whispered back.
    She was twenty feet away, lying on her side, propped up on one elbow.
    “You OK?” he asked.
    “Feeling good.”
    “Was there another one?”
    “Behind you,” she said. “To your right.”
    Reacher turned. Same kind of guy, same kind of suit, same kind of shirt.
    Same kind of injury.
    “Any problems?” he asked.
    “Easy,” she said. “And quieter than you. I heard that head butt all the way over here.”
    They bumped fists in the dark, the old ritual, about as much physical contact as she liked to permit.
    “Lamaison thinks we’re on the outside looking in,” Reacher said. “He’s trying to scam us with a deal. If we surrender they’ll lock us all up for a week and then let us go when the heat dies down.”
    “Like we’d believe that.”
    “One of my guys had Dave’s knuckleduster.”
    “That’s not a good sign.”
    “They’re OK so far. I asked for a proof of life. Personal questions. Dixon says she was with the 53rd MP and O’Donnell says he was with the 131st.”
    “That’s bullshit. There was no 53rd MP. And Dave was posted to the 110th straight out of Officer Candidate School.”
    “They’re talking to us,” Reacher said. “Fifty-three is a prime number. Karla knew I’d pick up on that.”
    “So?”
    “Five and three make eight. She’s telling us there are eight hostiles.”
    “Four left, then. Lennox, Parker, and Lamaison. Plus one. Who’s the fourth?”
    “That’s Dave’s message. He’s a words guy. One-three-one. Thirteenth letter of the alphabet, first letter of the alphabet.”
    “ M and A, ” Neagley said.
    “Mauney,” Reacher