The Affair: A Reacher Novel

at an airport. I was surprised they didn’t hear the clacking and ticking from inside my head.
    I looked at them again, left to right, and then right to left.
    I couldn’t figure it out.
    Then finally I understood: they were amateurs.
    The Mississippi backwoods, next to Tennessee and Alabama. Civilian militias. Pretend soldiers. Men who like to run around in the woods with guns, but who like to say they’re defending some vital thing or other. Men who like to shoot the shit in the surplus store, right after their bulk purchase of old fatigues and Italian battledress.
    And men who like to buy their guns at country gun stores. At certain country gun stores in particular. Because certain country gun stores are near military bases, and therefore some of them have something special for sale under the counter. All it takes is someone on the inside, and believe me, there is always someone on the inside. A steady stream of M16s and Berettas and worse is written off every year as lost or damaged or otherwise unusable, whereupon it is destroyed, except it isn’t. It’s hustled out the back door in the dead of night and an hour later it’s under the counter at the gun shop.
    I have arrested many people, often in groups larger than the one in front of me, but I have never been very good at it. The best arrests run on pure bluster, and I get self-conscious if I have to rant and rave. Better for me to land an early sucker punch, to shut them down right at the very beginning. Except that shouting
freeze freeze freeze
makes me a little self-conscious too. The words come out a little tentative. Almost like a request.
    But I had with me the greatest conversation-stopper ever made: a pump-action shotgun. At the cost of one unfired shell, I could makethe kind of sound that would freeze any three men to any three spots in the world.
    The most intimidating noise ever heard.
    Crunch crunch
.
    My ejected shell hit the leaves at my feet and the three guys froze solid.
    I said, “Now the rifles hit the deck.”
    Normal voice, normal pitch, normal tone.
    The sandy-haired guy dropped his rifle first. He was pretty damn quick about it. Then went the older guy, and last of the three came the wiry one.
    “Stand still now,” I said. “Don’t give me a reason.”
    Normal voice, normal pitch, normal tone.
    They stood reasonably still. Their arms came up a little, out from their sides, slowly, and they ended up a small distance from their bodies, where they held them. They spread their fingers. No doubt they spread their toes inside their boots and sneakers and shoes. Anything to appear unarmed and undangerous.
    I said, “And now you take three big paces backward.”
    They complied, all three guys, all three taking exaggerated stumbling steps, and all three ending up more than a body’s length from their rifles.
    I said, “And now you turn around.”

Chapter
52
    I had never seen any of them before. After the slow spin the older guy had ended up facing me on my left. He was completely unknown to me. He was just a guy, not very significant, a little pouchy and worn. The guy in the middle was the sandy-haired one. He was like the older man would have been, had he grown up twenty years later and in better circumstances. Just a guy, a little soft and civilized. The third guy was different. He was what you get when you eat squirrels for four generations. Smarter than a rat and tougher than a goat, and jumpier than either one.
    I tucked the Winchester’s stock up in my right armpit and pulled my elbow back and held the gun one-handed. I aimed it less than perfectly at the guys on the right. But then, it was a twelve-gauge shotgun. My aim didn’t need to be perfect.
    I used my left arm as a communications aid and looked at the older guy and said, “Now comes the part where you take out your sidearm and hand it to me.”
    He didn’t respond.
    I said, “And here’s how you’re going to do it. You’re going to pull it out of the holster with one finger and one thumb, and then you’re going to juggle it around and reverse it in your hand, and you’re going to point it at yourself, OK?”
    No response.
    I said, “Second prize is I shoot you in the legs.”
    Normal voice, normal pitch, normal tone.
    No response. Not at first. I thought about wasting another shell and pumping the gun again, but in the end I didn’t need to. The old guy wasn’t a hero. He hopped right to it after a second’s thought. He did the finger and thumb thing, and