Tripwire

“So we need to deal,” he said.

Reacher stood and mopped his eye and said nothing. His head was buzzing with pain. Buzzing and screaming. He was begi

“We need to deal,” the guy said again.

“No deal,” Reacher replied.

The guy twisted the hook a little more and jammed the revolver in a little harder. Jodie gasped. It was a Smith and Wesson Model 60. Two-inch barrel, stainless steel,.38 caliber, five shots in the cylinder. The sort of thing a woman carries in her purse or a man conceals on his body. The barrel was so short and the guy was digging it in so hard his knuckles were hard up against Jodie’s side. She was hanging forward against the pressure of his arm. Her hair was falling over her face. Her eyes were looking up straight at Reacher, and they were the loveliest eyes he had ever seen.

“Nobody says no deal to Victor Hobie,” the guy snarled.

Reacher fought the pain and kept the Steyr steady and level on the guy’s forehead, right where the pink scars met the gray skin.

“You’re not Victor Hobie,” he said. “You’re Carl Allen, and you’re a piece of shit.”

There was silence. Pain was hammering in his head. Jodie was staring harder at him, questions in her eyes.

“You’re not Victor Hobie,” he said again. “You’re Carl Allen.”

The name hung in the air and the guy seemed to recoil away from it. He dragged Jodie backward, stepping over the corpse of the thickset guy, turning her to keep her body between himself and Reacher, walking slowly backward into the dark office. Reacher followed unsteadily with the Steyr held high and level. There were people in the office. Reacher saw dimmed windows and living-room furniture and three people milling around, the fair-haired woman in the silk dress and two men in suits. They were all staring at him. Staring at his gun, and the silencer, and his forehead, and the blood pouring down onto his shirt. Then they were regrouping themselves like automatons and moving toward a tight square group of sofas. They threaded their separate ways inside and sat down and placed their hands on the glass coffee table which was filling the space. Six hands on the table, three faces turned toward him, expressions of hope and fear and astonishment visible on each of them.

“You’re wrong,” the guy with the hook said.

He backed away with Jodie in a wide circle until he was behind the farthest sofa. Reacher moved with them all the way and stopped opposite. His Steyr was leveled right over the heads of the three cowering people leaning on the coffee table. His blood was dripping off his chin onto the back of the sofa below him.

“No, I’m right,” he said. “You’re Carl Allen. Born April eighteenth, 1949, south of Boston, some leafy suburb. Normal little family, going nowhere. You got drafted in the summer of 1968. Private soldier, capabilities rated below average in every category. Sent to Vietnam as an infantryman. A grunt, a humble foot soldier. War changes people, and when you got there you turned into a real bad guy. You started scamming. Buying and selling, trading drugs and girls and whatever else you could get your filthy hands on. Then you started lending money. You turned really vicious. You bought and sold favors. You lived like a king for a long time. Then somebody got wise. Pulled you out of your cozy little situation and put you in-country. The jungle. The real war. A tough unit, with a tough officer riding you. It pissed you off. First chance you got, you fragged the officer. And then his sergeant. But the unit turned you in. Very unusual. They didn’t like you, did they? Probably owed you money. They called it in and two cops called Gunston and Zabrinski came out to pick you up. You want to deny anything yet?”

The guy said nothing. Reacher swallowed. His head was hurting badly. There was real pain digging in deep behind the cuts. Real serious pain.

“They came in a Huey,” he said. “A decent young kid called Kaplan was flying it. Next day he came back, flying copilot for an ace named Victor Hobie. Gunston and Zabrinski had you ready and waiting on the ground. But Hobie’s Huey was hit on takeoff. It went down again, four miles away. He was killed, along with Kaplan and Gunston and Zabrinski and three other crew called Bamford and Tardelli and Soper. But you survived. You were burned and you lost your hand, but you were alive. And your evil little brain was still ticking over. You swapped dog tags with the first guy you got to. Happened to be Victor Hobie. You crawled away with his tags around your neck. Left yours on his body. Right then and there Carl Allen and his criminal past ceased to exist. You made it to a field hospital, and they thought they were treating Hobie. They wrote his name down in their records. Then you killed an orderly and got away. You said I’m not going back, because you knew as soon as you arrived anywhere somebody would realize you weren’t Hobie. They’d find out who you were, and you’d be back in the shit. So you just disappeared. A new life, a new name. A clean slate. You want to deny anything yet?”

Allen tightened his grip on Jodie.

“It’s all bullshit,” he said.

Reacher shook his head. Pain flashed in his eye like a camera.

“No, it’s all true,” he said. “Nash Newman just identified Victor Hobie’s skeleton. It’s lying in a casket in Hawaii with your dog tags around its neck.”

“Bullshit,” Allen said again.

“It was the teeth,” Reacher said. “Mr. and Mrs. Hobie sent their boy to the dentist thirty-five times, to give him perfect teeth. Newman says they’re definitive. He spent an hour with the X rays, programming the computer. Then he recognized the exact same skull when he walked back past the casket. Definitive match.”

Allen said nothing.

“It worked for thirty years,” Reacher said. “Until those two old people finally made enough noise and somebody poked around. And now it’s not going to work any longer, because you’ve got me to answer to.”

Allen sneered. It made the unmarked side of his face as ugly as the burns.

“Why the hell should I answer to you?”

Reacher blinked the blood out of his eye over the unwavering Steyr.

“A lot of reasons,” he said quietly. “I’m a representative. I’m here to represent a lot of people. Like Victor Truman Hobie. He was a hero, but because of you he was written off as a deserter and a murderer. His folks have been in agony, thirty long years. I represent them. And I represent Gunston and Zabrinski, too. They were both MP lieutenants, both twenty-four years old. I was an MP lieutenant when I was twenty-four. They were killed because of what you did wrong. That’s why you’re going to answer to me, Allen. Because I’m them. Scum like you gets people like me killed.”

Allen’s eyes were blank. He shifted Jodie’s weight to keep her directly in front of him. Twisted the hook and jammed the gun in harder. He nodded, just a fractional movement of his head.

“OK, I was Carl Allen,” he said. “I admit it, smart guy. I was Carl Allen, and then that was over. Then I was Victor Hobie. I was Victor Hobie for a real long time, longer than I was ever Carl Allen, but I guess that’s over now, too. So now I’m going to be Jack Reacher.”

“What?”

“That’s what you’ve got,” Allen said. “That’s the deal. That’s your trade. Your name, for this woman’s life.”

“What?” Reacher said again.

“I want your identity,” Allen said. “I want your name.”

Reacher just stared at him.

“You’re a drifter, no family,” Allen said. “Nobody will ever miss you.”

“Then what?”

“Then you die,” Allen said. “We can’t have two people with the same name ru

Jodie was staring straight at Reacher, waiting.

“No deal,” Reacher said.

“I’ll shoot her,” Allen said.

Reacher shook his head again. The pain was fearsome. It was building stronger and spreading behind both his eyes.