Never Go Back: (Jack Reacher 18)

his second block. He was moving fast. He was about to pass the corner of Lafayette Square, which would give him nothing to look at on his left. Not in the dark. And only one thing to look at on his right, basically.
    ‘He’s going to our hotel,’ Turner said. ‘An approach on foot, so the cab driver doesn’t remember. Montague has the Vega card too.’
    ‘From the first flight. Smart guy. He kept on tracking it.’
    ‘This derails your strategy a little.’
    ‘No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy.’
    They hung back, but Shrago didn’t. He went straight in the hotel door, full speed. Like a busy man with important issues to resolve. Getting himself into the role.
    Turner said, ‘Got a new plan?’
    Reacher said, ‘We’re not in there. He’ll figure that out eventually. Then he’ll come out again.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘Did you like the first plan, with the cell phones?’
    ‘It was pretty good.’
    ‘Shrago might rescue it for us. Soon as he figures out we’re not in there, he might call his boss immediately. Like a real-time update. Maybe his boss demands it. In which case what happens after that is nothing to do with you and me. We weren’t there. He just told them that. They’re back in the unknown.’
    ‘If he calls.’
    ‘Fifty-fifty. Either he does, or he doesn’t.’
    ‘If we know that he’s called.’
    ‘He might be on the phone as he walks out.’
    ‘He might have called from our empty room.’
    ‘Fifty-fifty. Either we see it, or we don’t. Either we know, or we guess.’

    They hung back in the park’s outer shadows, and waited. It was almost two o’clock in the morning. The weather had not changed. It was cold and damp. Reacher thought about the girl’s laceless sneakers. Not fifty-state shoes. Then he thought about hotel security, the night watch, checking a bogus ID, opening the register, placing a call to the room, heading upstairs with a pass key. Ten minutes, maybe.
    It was nine minutes.
    Shrago came back out through the door.
    There was no phone in his hand.
    Turner said, ‘Heads or tails, Reacher.’
    Reacher stepped out of the shadows and said, ‘Sergeant Shrago, I need you over here. I have some urgent news.’

SIXTY-SIX

    SHRAGO DIDN’T MOVE . He stood still, right there on the Street sidewalk. Reacher was directly opposite, on the other sidewalk. It was quiet. Two o’clock in the morning. A company town. Reacher said, ‘Sergeant Shrago, the news is that as of this very moment you fit a demographic otherwise known as shit out of luck. Because now you can’t win. We’re too close. Unless you take us both out, right here and right now. On this street. Which you won’t. Because you can’t. Because you’re not good enough. So you’re not going home with a prize tonight. What you need is damage control. Which you can get. All you need to do is write everything down.’
    Shrago didn’t answer.
    Reacher said, ‘Or you could speak it out loud into a tape recorder, if writing isn’t your thing. But one way or the other they’ll make you tell the story. This is going to be a big scandal. Not just the army asking questions. We’ll have Senate committees. You need to be the first one in. They always let the first one go. Like you’re a hero. You need to be that guy, Shrago.’
    Shrago said nothing.
    ‘You can say you don’t know the top boys. Less stress that way. They’ll believe you. Concentrate on Morgan instead. About how he delivered Moorcroft for the beating. They’ll eat that up with a spoon.’
    No response.
    ‘There are only two choices, sergeant. You can run away, or you can cross the street. And running away buys you nothing. If we don’t get you tonight, we’ll get you tomorrow. So crossing the street is the better option. Which you have to do anyway, whether you want to shake our hands, or take us out.’
    Shrago crossed the street. He stepped off his kerb, and walked, across lanes that could feel small in a car, but which looked pretty wide on foot. Reacher watched him all the way, his eyes and his shoulders and his hands, and he saw a kind of off-Broadway performance, a man seeing the light, a man finally understanding where his duty lay, and it was a pretty good act, but showing through all the time was a plan to get past Reacher long enough to put Turner out of action, which would level the contest at one on one. Reacher could see it in his eyes, which were manic, and in his shoulders, which were tensed and driven forward by