The Sentinel (Jack Reacher #25) - Lee Child Page 0,27

to reveal a small pistol and a pair of worn handcuffs tucked against the raised edge of his seat.

The gun was a pointless prop, Reacher thought. There was no way he could use it. He’d need a second guy to have any chance. Someone else in the back seat. To hold the gun on Reacher and keep him penned in behind the empty passenger seat. It was impossible for Marty to do it. Not while he was driving. He couldn’t watch the road and aim behind him at the same time. He’d have to twist around. Avoid the head restraints. Fire more or less at random. In which case Reacher would just take the gun from him.

‘Think about it,’ Marty said. ‘The cops are running you out of town for a reason. You think if you were found in a ditch, full of bullets from a gun registered to a punk who died when Reagan was president, anyone would give two shits?’

‘I certainly wouldn’t be happy about it.’

‘Who cares about your happiness?’

Reacher shuffled a little further to the left. ‘Seems like we got off on the wrong foot, Marty. Let’s start again. Call a truce. How about this? I won’t cause any trouble in your car. And you come clean about where you’re taking me. And don’t say the highway because I know that’s not true.’

‘OK. Not the highway. You’re right.’

‘Then where?’

‘You’ll find out when we get there.’

‘You don’t know me very well, Marty, so I won’t hold it against you, but I’m not the kind of guy who likes vague answers. Precision is important to me. So I’m going to give you another chance. Where are you taking me?’

Marty moved his thigh again and tapped the gun with his right hand. ‘What makes you think you’re in a position to be giving out chances?’

‘During those twenty years you say you spent in the police department, did you ever notice the way squad cars had a plexiglass panel dividing the front and the back?’

‘Sure I noticed. And I didn’t like it. Those panels are bulletproof. They stopped me from shooting smartasses when I was driving them places.’

‘An understandable attitude in certain situations.’ Reacher shuffled the rest of the way across. ‘But it’s one you might want to reconsider right now.’

Reacher unfastened Marty’s seat belt and grabbed the loose section with his left hand, whipping it back and pinning the tongue against the door with his left knee. He stretched around and laid his left palm over Marty’s forehead and pulled back, clamping his head in place. Then he snaked his right arm around the seat and pressed his fist against Marty’s throat. The car swerved. Marty struggled with the wheel for a moment. Then he grabbed his gun and flailed around, pointing it backward and trying to bring it to bear on Reacher, who was pressing himself tight against the back of the driver’s seat.

Reacher increased the pressure on Marty’s throat until he could feel his windpipe begin to collapse. ‘Drop the gun.’

Marty continued to flail around for a moment before reality sank in and he let go of the gun. It bounced off the passenger seat and rattled down into the footwell.

Reacher relaxed the pressure a little. ‘Good. Now stop the car.’

Marty accelerated.

‘Not smart, Marty. If you don’t stop the car a number of things will happen. First, I’ll compress your neck. There are all kinds of veins and arteries in a person’s neck. They’ll be squashed flat. That’ll cut off the oxygen supply to your brain. Soon you’ll black out. If the car’s still moving, we’ll crash. Which would be fine from my point of view. The back of this seat will protect me. You, on the other hand, would have a problem. A major one. I don’t know how strong your grasp of physics is, but one principle in particular would come into play. Inertia. You know what that is?’

Reacher felt a slight shake of Marty’s head.

‘Inertia is the tendency for an object to maintain its current state. If something is stationary it stays stationary, unless something else moves it. If something is moving it keeps moving, unless something stops it. The same thing applies to the human body. It’s why cars have seat belts. Without them, if you crash, the car stops but the occupants keep moving. They burst through the windshield. Impale themselves on sharp objects. All kinds of painful things can happen. Maybe fatal things. And you’re not wearing a seat belt, are you,