The guy was nimble and came straight back. Reacher rolled away, but not fast enough. The guy got in a kick that caught him high on the back and rolled him faster. A rare position for Reacher to be in. But not unknown. Rule one was get the hell up, right now. So was rule two. And three. Staying down was one foot in the grave. So he waited until he rolled face down and then sprang upright like he was a gym rat showing off after fifty push-ups. Now he was breathing hard. And swelling up with anger. He was pretty sure kicking wasn’t in the rules of wrestling. The game had changed.
He thought, OK, then.
The wrestler dropped down into his combat stance again. And Reacher saw what he should have seen before. Or would have seen before, if the game had changed a little sooner.
He waited.
The wrestler charged. A low-down swarming thrust, off bent and powerful legs. Reacher stepped in and kicked him in the knee, just as hard as he had kicked him in the cup, with the same scything upswing, and an equally perfect connection. Plus the guy ran right into it. He brought all his own momentum to the party. A football would have left two stadiums. The result was spectacular. The knee was any heavy guy’s weak spot. A knee was a knee. A humble joint. It was what it was. It didn’t get bigger and stronger just because a guy chose to spend a whole semester lifting weights. It just got more and more stressed.
In this case it more or less exploded. The kneecap shattered or dislocated and maybe a whole bunch of stuff was severed inside, because the guy went down like his strings were cut, and then the same rule-one instinct bounced him upright again, immediately, howling, standing on one leg, waving the bear claws for balance. The two surviving guys stepped back a pace. Like the stock market. Investments can go down as well as up. Behind them in the distance Burke was standing still and watching, peering anxiously, pressed up tight against the fence.
From that point on Reacher opted for brutal efficiency. Style points no longer mattered. The wrestler threw a despairing bear claw at him, and Reacher caught it and jerked him off balance, and he went down again, awkwardly, clumsily, whereupon Reacher kicked him in the head, once, twice, until he went still.
Reacher stood up straight, and breathed out, and in, and out.
The two surviving guys stepped back another pace. They shuffled in place and tried to look aw-shucks sheepish. They raised their hands, palms out. They patted the air in front of them. Surrendering. But also distancing themselves. Making a point.
Not our idea.
Reacher asked them, “Where did you find this tub of lard?”
He kicked the wrestler one more time, in the ribs, but gently, as if merely to indicate which particular tub of lard he was talking about.
No one answered.
“You should tell me,” Reacher said. “It’s important to your futures.”
The kid on the right said, “He came up this morning.”
“From where?”
“Boston. He lives there now, but he grew up here. We knew him in high school.”
“Did he win trophies?”
“Lots of them.”
“Get lost now,” Reacher said.
They did. They ran south, at a sprint, up the slope, knees and elbows pumping. Reacher watched them go. Then he picked his way through the vanquished and walked on through the orchard. Burke was waiting at the fence. He held up the hand he had been waving. In it was his phone.
“It kept trying to ring,” he said. “But there’s really no service here. So I walked back to where I got half a bar. It was the ornithologist. He was returning your call, from the university. He said it was his only chance to talk, because he’s tied up the rest of the day. So I ran back here and tried to attract your attention.”
“I saw,” Reacher said.
“He left a message.”
“On the phone?”
“With me.”
Reacher nodded.
He said, “First I need to call Amos at the Laconia PD.”
Chapter 29
The fifth arrival was as unobtrusive as the first and the third. In the back parlor Mark and Steven and Robert heard the bell ring, from the wire across the blacktop. They watched the screens. Robert lined up three different views of the track. They waited. Two miles took four minutes at thirty miles an hour, and six minutes at twenty. Call it five