Running Blind (The Visitor)

Belgium.”
    “Did you have sex with either of them?” Lamarr asked.
    Reacher turned to stare at her. “What kind of a question is that?”
    “A straightforward one.”
    “Well, no, I didn’t.”
    “They were both pretty, right?”
    Reacher nodded. “Prettier than you, that’s for damn sure.”
    Lamarr looked away and went quiet. Blake turned dark red and stepped into the silence. “Did they know each other?”
    “I doubt it. There’s a million people in the Army, and they were serving four thousand miles apart at different times.”
    “And there was no sexual relationship between you and either of them?”
    “No, there wasn’t.”
    “Did you attempt one? With either of them?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “Why not? Afraid they’d rebuff you?”
    Reacher shook his head. “I was with somebody else on both occasions, if you really want to know, and one at a time is usually enough for me.”
    “Would you like to have had sex with them?”
    Reacher smiled, briefly. “I can think of worse things.”
    “Would they have said yes to you?”
    “Maybe, maybe not.”
    “What’s your best guess?”
    “Were you ever in the Army?”
    Blake shook his head.
    “Then you don’t know how it is,” Reacher said. “Most people in the Army would have sex with anything that moves.”
    “So you don’t think they’d have rebuffed you?”
    Reacher kept his gaze tight on Blake’s eyes. “No, I don’t think it would have been a serious worry.”
    There was a long pause.
    “Do you approve of women in the military?” Deerfield asked.
    Reacher’s eyes moved across to him. “What?”
    “Answer the question, Reacher. You approve of women in the military?”
    “What’s not to approve?”
    “You think they make good fighters?”
    "Stupid question,” Reacher said. “You already know they do.”
    “I do?”
    “You were in ’Nam, right?”
    “I was?”
    “Sure you were,” Reacher said. “Homicide detective in Arizona in 1976? Made it to the Bureau shortly afterward? Not too many draft dodgers could have managed that, not there, not back then. So you did your tour, maybe 1970, 1971. Eyesight like that, you weren’t a pilot. Those eyeglasses probably put you right in the infantry. In which case you spent a year getting your ass kicked all over the jungle, and a good third of the people kicking it were women. Good snipers, right? Very committed, the way I heard it.”
    Deerfield nodded slowly. “So you like women fighters? ”
    Reacher shrugged. “You need fighters, women can do it the same as anybody else. Russian front, World War Two? Women did pretty well there. You ever been to Israel? Women in the front line there too, and I wouldn’t want to put too many U.S. units up against the Israeli defenses, at least not if it was going to be critical who won.”
    “So, you got no problems at all?”
    “Personally, no.”
    “You got problems otherwise than personally?”
    “There are military problems, I guess,” Reacher said. “Evidence from Israel shows an infantryman is ten times more likely to stop his advance and help a wounded buddy if the buddy is a woman rather than a man. Slows the advance right down. It needs training out of them.”
    “You don’t think people should help each other?” Lamarr asked.
    “Sure,” Reacher said. “But not if there’s an objective to capture first.”
    “So if you and I were advancing together, you’d just leave me if I got wounded?”
    Reacher smiled. “In your case, without a second thought.”
    “How did you meet Amy Callan?” Deerfield asked.
    “I’m sure you already know,” Reacher said.
    “Tell me anyway. For the record.”
    “Are we on the record?”
    “Sure we are.”
    “Without reading me my rights?”
    “The record will show you had your rights, any old time I say you had them.”
    Reacher was silent.
    “Tell me about Amy Callan,” Deerfield said again.
    “She came to me with a problem she was having in her unit,” Reacher said.
    “What problem?”
    “Sexual harassment.”
    “Were you sympathetic?”
    “Yes, I was.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I was never abused because of my gender. I didn’t see why she should have to be.”
    “So what did you do?”
    “I arrested the officer she was accusing.”
    “And what did you do then?”
    “Nothing. I was a policeman, not a prosecutor. It was out of my hands.”
    “And what happened?”
    “The officer won his case. Amy Callan left the service. ”
    “But the officer’s career was