Never Go Back: (Jack Reacher 18)

viability of the United States depended entirely on the ability of the citizenry to carry eight-by-four sheets of board, safely and in vast quantities.

    The late start to the day turned out to be a good thing. Or a feature, not a bug, as Turner might have put it. It meant they would be driving the highway in the dark. Better than driving it in the light. On the one hand highways got the heaviest policing, but on the other hand cops can’t see what they can’t see, and there was nothing less visible than a pair of headlights doing the legal limit on an Interstate highway at night.
    Reacher said, ‘How are we going to get the exact A.M. number?’
    Turner said, ‘We’re going to take a deep breath and go way out on a limb. We’re going to ask someone to get all snarled up in a criminal conspiracy, aiding and abetting.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Sergeant Leach, I hope. She’s pretty solid, and her heart is in the right place.’
    ‘I agree,’ Reacher said. ‘I liked her.’
    ‘We have records and transcripts in the file room. All she has to do is go take a look at them.’
    ‘And then what?’
    ‘Then it gets harder. We’ll have a reference number, but not a name or a biography. And a sergeant can’t access that database. I’m the only one at Rock Creek who can. Morgan now, I suppose, but we can hardly ask him.’
    Reacher said, ‘Leave that part to me.’
    ‘You don’t have access.’
    ‘But I know someone who does.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The Judge Advocate General.’
    ‘You know him?’
    ‘Not personally. But I know his place in the process. He’s forcing me to defend a bullshit charge. I’m entitled to cast the net wide in my own defence. I can ask for pretty much anything I want. Major Sullivan can handle it for me.’
    ‘No, in that case my lawyer should. It’s much more relevant to my bullshit charge than yours.’
    ‘Too dangerous for the guy. Moorcroft got beaten half to death for trying to get you out of jail. They’re never going to let your counsel get near that information.’
    ‘Then it’s dangerous for Sullivan, too.’
    ‘I don’t think they’ll be watching her yet. They’ll find out afterwards for sure, but by then it’s too late. There’s no point closing the barn door after the horse is out.’
    ‘Will she do it for you?’
    ‘She’ll have to. She has a legal obligation.’
    They drove on, quiet and comfortable, staying in West Virginia, tracking around the jagged dip where the end of Maryland’s panhandle juts south, then setting course for a town called Grafton. From there the Toyota’s electronics showed a road running northwest, which joined I-79 just south of Fairmont.
    Turner said, ‘Were you worried?’
    Reacher said, ‘About what?’
    ‘Those eight guys.’
    ‘Not very.’
    ‘Then I guess that study from when you were six was right on the money.’
    ‘Correct conclusion,’ Reacher said. ‘Wrong reasoning.’
    ‘How so?’
    ‘They thought my brain was wired backward. They got all excited about my DNA. Maybe they were planning to breed a new race of warriors. You know what the Pentagon was like back then. But I was too young to take much of an interest. And they were wrong, anyway. When it comes to fear, my DNA is the same as anyone else’s. I trained myself, that’s all. To turn fear into aggression, automatically.’
    ‘At the age of six?’
    ‘No, at four and five. I told you on the phone. I figured it was a choice. Either I cower back, or I get in their faces.’
    ‘I’ve never seen anyone fight with no hands.’
    ‘Neither had they. And that was the point.’

    They stopped for gas and a meal in a place called Macomber, and then they rolled on, ever westward, through Grafton, and then they took the right fork, through a village called McGee, and eventually they came to the I-79 entrance ramp, which the Toyota told them was about an hour south of the Pittsburgh International Airport, which meant they would arrive there at about eight in the evening. The sky was already dark. Night had closed in, secure, and enveloping, and concealing.
    Turner said, ‘Why do you like to live like this?’
    Reacher said, ‘Because my brain is wired backward. That’s what they missed, all those years ago. They looked at the wrong part of me. I don’t like what normal people like. A little house with a chimney and a lawn and a picket fence? People love that stuff. They work all their lives, just to pay for it. They take thirty-year mortgages. And good for them.