Free Small Wars by Lee Child Page A

said:
U.S. Army
. Above his left pocket his tape said:
Reacher
.
    He said, “Forgive me for interrupting your journey, but I can’t push it out the way. Can’t turn the wheel. I think the power steering broke.”
    She said, “Colonel, I’m sorry.”
    He said, “I’m guessing your car doesn’t have a trailer hitch.”
    “I could help you push.”
    “That’s kind of you, but it would take ten of us.”
    She said, “Are you who I think you are?”
    “That depends.”
    “You’re Joe Reacher. You just got a new counterintelligence command.”
    “Correct on both counts,” Joe Reacher said. “I’m pleased to meet you.” He glanced down at her nameplate. Plastic, white on black, because of the tailored Class As.
The nameplate is adjusted to individual figure differences, centered horizontally on the right side between one and two inches above the top button of the coat
. He looked at her unit insignia and her badges of rank. He said, “You must be Caroline Crawford. Congratulations.”
    “You’ve heard of me?”
    “Part of my job. But it’s not part of yours to know who I am.”
    “Not part of my job, but part of my interest. I like to track the key players.”
    “I’m not a key player.”
    “Sir, bullshit, with respect, sir.”
    “Academic interest, or career interest?”
    She half smiled, half shrugged, but didn’t answer.
    He said, “Both, right?”
    She said, “I don’t see why it can’t be.”
    “How high do you plan to get?”
    “Three stars,” she said. “In the Joint Chiefs’ office, maybe. Anything more would be in the lap of the gods.”
    Joe Reacher said, “Well, good luck with all of that,” and he put his hand in his battledress pocket, and he came out with a standard army-issue Beretta M9 semi-automatic pistol, and he shot Caroline Crawford with it, twice in the chest and once in the head.
    —
    Also with a new posting the same week as Caroline Crawford was a military police major named David Noble. He was detaching from his current command and heading to Fort Benning, Georgia, from where he would oversee criminal investigations throughout the southeastern military districts. A brand-new reorganization. Someone’s baby. Unlikely to last, but temporarily important work. Noble never got to do it. He was in a car wreck on the way. In South Carolina. An adjacent state. Nearly there. Not fatal, but he ended up at Walter Reed. He had a collapsed lung. He couldn’t breathe right. So an emergency substitute was decided on and hunted down and pulled off his current maneuvers and hustled north to Benning. Just how it always was, for the army. Situation entirely normal. A big job, the second-best guy, a week late. On the bright side people said this new one was a fast study and a hard worker. He might catch up. If he got started right away.
    So it was that the same moment Joe Reacher said, “I’m not a key player,” his younger brother, Jack Reacher, walked into a brand-new office more than a hundred miles away, and then out again, in search of coffee, almost ready to begin overseeing criminal investigations throughout the southeastern military districts.
    —
    The Porsche was found early the next morning, by four soldiers in a Humvee, who were trying to find a shortcut back to Smith after a night exercise had gone all kinds of wrong in terms of navigation. They recognized the car from a distance. It was already famous on the base. The new War Plans lady. Hot, smart, and rich. Nothing wrong with any of that. Nothing at all. Maybe she had a flat tire. Maybe she was in need of assistance.
    As they pulled closer they thought the car was empty.
    Then they saw it wasn’t.
    They rolled by at walking speed and their high seating positions let them look down inside the Porsche, where they saw a woman in Class A uniform flopped over backward across the seats, shot twice in the chest and once in the head.
    They parked nearby, and called it in on the radio. Then they sat tight. Crime scenes were