The Affair: A Reacher Novel

authorized at the very highest level possible. There is no higher level than the level that authorized this mission. Whoever you are, mister, you are making a very big mistake.”
    I said, “Shut up.”
    The guy with the sandy hair looked straight at the runt and said, “Don’t say anything.”
    I looked at the runt and said, “Say what you like. No one will believe you anyway. Everyone knows a pussy like you is just there for the ride.”
    I turned away. Back to the old guy.
    The runt said, “I shot the black boy.”
    I turned back.
    I asked him, “Why?”
    “He was acting aggressive.”
    I shook my head.
    “I saw the corpse,” I said. “The bullet hit high under his arm. No damage to the arm itself. I think he had his hands up. I think he was surrendering.”
    The runt sniffed and said, “I suppose it could have looked that way.”
    I uncrossed the Winchester and the Beretta. I raised the handgun. I pointed it at the little guy’s face.
    I said, “Tell me about yesterday.”
    He looked straight at me.
    Calculation in his little rat eyes.
    He decided I wasn’t going to shoot.
    He said, “We were north of here yesterday.”
    “And?”
    “I guess you could say I’m two for two this season.”
    “Who applied the field dressing?”
    The sandy-haired guy said, “I did. It was an accident. We were just following orders.”
    I turned back to the runt and said, “Tell me again. About sighting in on a sixteen-year-old boy with his hands up.”
    I moved my aim half an inch upward. The exact center of his forehead.
    The guy grinned and said, “I suppose he might have been waving.”
    I pulled the trigger.
    The gun worked fine. Just fine. Exactly as it should. The sound of the shot cracked and hissed and rolled. Birds flew up in the sky. The spent case ejected and bounced off a tree and hit me hard in the thigh. The runt’s head blew apart and wet-slapped the leaves behind him, and he went down vertically, his skinny butt to his heels, and then he bounced slackly and spilled over in the kind of boneless tangle only the recently and violently dead can achieve.
    * * *
    I waited for the sound to die away and for my hearing to come back and I looked at the two survivors and I said, “Your alleged mission has just been terminated. As of right now. And the Tennessee Free Citizens has just been disbanded. As of this moment. They’re totally out of business now. You two run along and spread that news. You’ve got thirty minutes to haul your sorry asses out of my woods. You’ve got an hour to get out of this state altogether. All of you. Any slower than that, I’ll send a Ranger company after you. Now beat it.”
    The two survivors just stood there for a second, completely still, pale and shocked and afraid. Then they came to. And they ran. They really hustled. I listened to them go until their noise faded away to nothing. It took a long time, but then they were gone and I knew they wouldn’t be back. They had taken a casualty, and they had no appetite for that kind of thing. I was sure they would make a martyr of the guy, but I was equally sure they would take great pains to avoid sharing his glorious fate. Blood and brains are realities, and realities are unwelcome visitors in the world of make-believe.
    I clicked the safety on the Beretta and put it in my pants pocket. I untucked my shirt and let the tails hide it. Then I headed back the way I had come, leading with one shoulder and then the other, as I slipped between the trees with the Winchester upright in front of me.

Chapter
53
    Elizabeth Deveraux was waiting exactly where she had left me, right next to her car, six feet from the tree line. I stepped out of the woods right in front of her and she jumped a little, but then she gathered herself pretty quickly. I guessed she didn’t want to insult me by being surprised I had made it. Or she didn’t want to show she had been anxious. Or both. I kissed her on the lips and handed back the Winchester and she asked, “What happened?”
    I said, “They’re some kind of a citizens’ council from Tennessee. Some kind of a half-assed amateur backwoods militia. They’re leaving now.”
    “I heard a handgun.”
    “One of them was so overcome with regret he committed suicide.”
    “Did he have things to regret?”
    “More than most.”
    “Who brought them here?”
    I said, “That’s the big question, isn’t it?”
    I returned her spare shotgun ammunition from my pockets. She made me put it in the