Never Go Back

danger.’
    Reacher nodded. At the age of six he had gone to a movie, on a Marine base somewhere in the Pacific. A kids’ matinee. A cheap sci-fi potboiler. All of a sudden a monster had popped up out of a slimy lagoon. The youthful audience was being filmed in secret, with a low-light camera. A psy-ops experiment. Most kids had recoiled in terror when the monster appeared. But Reacher hadn’t. He had leapt at the screen instead, ready to fight, with his switchblade already open. They said his response time had been three-quarters of a second.
    Six years old.
    They had taken his switchblade away.
    They had made him feel like a psychopath.
    Turner said, ‘And you did well at West Point. And your service years were impressive.’
    ‘If you close your eyes and squint. Personally I remember a lot of friction and shouting. I was on the carpet a lot of the time.’
    ‘But maybe bad is good. From some particular perspective. Suppose there’s a desk somewhere, in the Pentagon, maybe. Suppose someone’s sole job is to track a certain type of person, who might be useful in the future, under a certain type of circumstance. Like long-range contingency planning, for a new super-secret unit. Deniable, too. Like a list of suitable personnel. As in, when the shit hits the fan, who are you gonna call?’
    ‘Now it sounds like you who’s been watching movies.’
    ‘Nothing happens in the movies that doesn’t happen in real life. That’s one thing I’ve learned. You can’t make this stuff up.’
    ‘Speculation,’ Reacher said.
    ‘Is it impossible there’s a database somewhere, with a hundred or two hundred or a thousand names in it, of people the military wants to keep track of, just in case?’
    ‘I guess that’s not impossible.’
    ‘It would be a very secret database. For a number of obvious reasons. Which means that if these guys have seen it, thereby knowing how you live, they’re not just senior staff officers. They’re very senior staff officers. You said so yourself. They have access to files in any branch of the service they want.’
    ‘Speculation,’ Reacher said again.
    ‘But logical.’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘Very senior staff officers,’ Turner said again.
    Reacher nodded. Like flipping a coin. Fifty-fifty. Either true, or not true.
    The first turn they came to was Route 220, which was subtly wider than the road they were on, and flatter, and better surfaced, and straighter, and altogether more important in every way. In comparison it felt like a major artery. Not exactly a highway, but because of their heightened sensitivities it looked like a whole different proposition.
    ‘No,’ Turner said.
    ‘Agreed,’ Reacher said. There would be gas and coffee, probably, and diners and motels, but there could be police too, either state or local. Or federal. Because it was the kind of road that showed up well on a map. Reacher pictured a hasty conference somewhere, with impatient fingers jabbing paper, with urgent voices saying roadblocks here, and here, and here .
    ‘We’ll take the next one,’ he said.
    Which gave them seven more tense minutes. The road stayed empty. Trees to the left, trees to the right, nothing ahead, nothing behind. No lights, no sound. But nothing happened. And the next turn was better. On a map it would be just an insignificant grey trace, or more likely not there at all. It was a high hill road, very like the one they had already tried, narrow, lumpy, twisting and turning, with ragged shoulders and shallow rainwater ditches on both sides. They took it gratefully, and its darkness swallowed them up. Turner got her small-road rhythm going, keeping her speed appropriate, keeping her movements efficient. Reacher relaxed and watched her. She was leaning back in her seat, her arms straight out, her fingers on the wheel, sensitive to the tiny quivering messages coming up from the road. Her hair was hooked behind her ears, and he could see slim muscles in her thigh, as she worked first one pedal and then the other.
    She asked, ‘How much money did the Big Dog make?’
    ‘Plenty,’ Reacher said. ‘But not enough to drop a hundred grand on a defensive scam, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
    ‘But he was right at the end of the chain. He wasn’t the top boy. He wasn’t a mass wholesaler. He would be seeing only a small part of the profit. And it was sixteen years ago. Things have changed.’
    ‘You think this is about stolen ordnance?’
    ‘It could be. The Desert Storm