Never Go Back

Except the records showed you had spent hours on the phone to South Dakota with some guy. And scuttlebutt around the building said the guy had been a previous 110th CO. Your duty captain knew that for sure, because I told him, first time I called. Maybe lots of people knew. Certainly I got a lot of name recognition when I showed up yesterday. And you and I could be assumed to share some common interests. We might have talked about the front burner. Either just shooting the shit, or maybe you were even asking me for a perspective.’
    ‘But I didn’t mention Afghanistan to you at all.’
    ‘But they didn’t know that. The phone log shows duration, not content. They didn’t have a recording. So I was a theoretical loose end. Maybe I knew what you knew. Not much of a problem, because I wasn’t likely to show up. They seem to have checked me out. They claim to know how I live. But just in case, they made some plans. They had the Big Dog thing standing by, for instance.’
    ‘I don’t see how that would help them any. You’d have been in the system, with plenty of time to talk.’
    ‘I was supposed to run,’ Reacher said. ‘I was supposed to disappear and never come near the army again, the whole rest of my life. That was the plan. That was the whole point. They even showed up at the motel to make sure I understood. And the Big Dog thing was a great choice for that. The guy is dead, and there’s an affidavit. There’s no real way to fight it. Running would have been entirely rational. Sergeant Leach thought if she could find a way of warning me, I’d head for the hills.’
    ‘Why didn’t you run?’
    ‘I wanted to ask you out to dinner.’
    ‘No, really?’
    ‘Not my style. I figured it out when I was about five years old. A person either runs or he fights. It’s a binary choice, and I’m a fighter. Plus, they had something else in their back pocket.’
    ‘Which was?’
    ‘Something else designed to make me run, which didn’t, either.’
    ‘Which was?’
    Samantha Dayton.
    Sam.
    Fourteen years old.
    I’ll get to it .
    ‘I’ll tell you later,’ Reacher said. ‘It’s a complicated story.’
    The bus ground onward, all low gears and loud diesel, past the strip mall Reacher knew, with the hardware store, and the pharmacy, and the picture-framing shop, and the gun store, and the dentist, and the Greek restaurant. Then it moved out into territory he hadn’t seen before. Onward, and away.
    He said, ‘Look on the bright side. Your problem ain’t exactly brain surgery. Whatever rabbit you were chasing in Afghanistan is behind all this shit. So we need to work backward from him. We need to find out who his friends are, and we need to find out who did what, and when, and how, and why, and then we need to bring the hammer down.’
    Turner said, ‘There’s a problem with that.’
    Reacher nodded.
    ‘I know,’ he said. ‘It won’t be easy. Not from the outside. It’s like we’ve got one hand tied behind our back. But we’ll give it our best shot.’
    ‘Unfortunately that’s not the problem I’m talking about.’
    ‘So what is?’
    ‘Someone thinks I know something I don’t. That’s the problem.’
    ‘What don’t you know?’
    ‘I don’t know who the rabbit is,’ Turner said. ‘Or what the hell he’s doing, or where, or why. Or how. In fact I don’t know what’s happening in Afghanistan at all.’
    ‘But you sent two guys there.’
    ‘Much earlier. For a completely different reason. In Kandahar. Pure routine. Entirely unconnected. But along the way they picked up on a whisper from a Pashtun informer, that an American officer had been seen heading north to meet with a tribal leader. The identity of the American was not known, and his purpose was not known, but the feeling was it can’t have been anything good. We’re drawing down. We’re supposed to be heading south, not north, towards Bagram and Kabul, prior to getting the hell out. We’re not supposed to be way up in-country, having secret meetings with towelheads. So I sent my guys to chase the rumour. That was all.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘The day before I was busted. So I won’t even have a name until they report back to me. Which they won’t be able to, not until I’m back on the inside.’
    Reacher said nothing.
    Turner said, ‘What?’
    ‘It’s worse than that.’
    ‘How can it be?’
    ‘They won’t be able to report back ever,’ Reacher said. ‘Because they’re dead.’

TWENTY-FOUR
    REACHER TOLD TURNER