and feel and smells of America as well as he wanted to. It was possible that somebody else could interpret the unseen contours of the invisible landscape or the feel of the air or the temperature of the night and say yes, I’m in this state now or that state now. It was possible people could do that. But Reacher couldn’t. It gave him a problem.
Added to that he had no idea who the kidnappers were. Or what their business was. Or what their intentions were. He’d studied them closely, every opportunity he’d had. Conclusions were difficult. The evidence was all contradictory. Three of them, youngish, maybe somewhere between thirty and thirty-five, fit, trained to act together with a measure of efficiency. They were almost military, but not quite. They were organized, but not official. Their appearance shrieked: amateurs.
Because they were so neat. They all had new clothes, plain chain store cottons and poplins, fresh haircuts. Their weapons were fresh out of the box. The Glocks were brand-new. The shotgun was brand-new, packing grease still visible. Those factors meant they weren’t any kind of professionals. Because professionals do this stuff every day. Whoever they are, Special Forces, CIA, FBI, detectives, it’s their job. They wear working clothes. They use weapons they signed out last year, the year before, tried and trusted weapons, chipped weapons, scratched weapons, working tools. Put three professionals together on any one day, and you’ll see last night’s pizza on one guy’s shirt, another guy won’t have shaved, the third guy will be wearing the awful old pants his buddies make jokes about behind his back. It’s possible you’ll see a new jacket once in a while, or a fresh gun, or new shoes, but the chances of seeing everything new all at once on three working professionals on the same day are so slim as to be absurd.
And their attitude betrayed them. Competent, but jumpy, uptight, hostile, rude, tense. Trained to some degree, but not practiced. Not experienced. They’d rehearsed the theory, and they were smart enough to avoid any gross errors, but they didn’t have the habituation of professionals. Therefore these three were some kind of amateurs. And they had kidnapped a brand-new FBI agent. Why? What the hell could a brand-new FBI agent have done to anybody? Reacher had no idea. And the brand-new FBI agent in question wasn’t saying. Just another component he couldn’t begin to figure. But not the biggest component. The biggest component he couldn’t begin to figure was why the hell he was still there.
He had no problem with how he had gotten grabbed up in the first place. Just a freak of chance had put him alongside Holly Johnson at the exact time the snatch was going down. He was comfortable with that. He understood freak chances. Life was built out of freak chances, however much people would like to pretend otherwise. And he never wasted time speculating about how things might have been different, if this and if that. Obviously if he’d been strolling on that particular Chicago street a minute earlier or a minute later, he’d have been right past that dry cleaner and never known a damn thing about all this. But he hadn’t been strolling a minute earlier or a minute later, and the freak chance had happened, and he wasn’t about to waste his time wondering where he would be now if it hadn’t.
But what he did need to pin down was why he was still there, just over fourteen hours later, according to the clock inside his head. He’d had two marginal chances and one cast-iron certainty of getting out. Right away, on the street, he could have made it. Probably. The possibility of collateral damage had stopped him. Then in the abandoned lot, getting into the white truck, he might have made it. Probably. Three against one, both times, but they were three amateurs against Jack Reacher, and he felt comfortable enough about those odds.
The cast-iron certainty was he could have been out of the
Added to that he had no idea who the kidnappers were. Or what their business was. Or what their intentions were. He’d studied them closely, every opportunity he’d had. Conclusions were difficult. The evidence was all contradictory. Three of them, youngish, maybe somewhere between thirty and thirty-five, fit, trained to act together with a measure of efficiency. They were almost military, but not quite. They were organized, but not official. Their appearance shrieked: amateurs.
Because they were so neat. They all had new clothes, plain chain store cottons and poplins, fresh haircuts. Their weapons were fresh out of the box. The Glocks were brand-new. The shotgun was brand-new, packing grease still visible. Those factors meant they weren’t any kind of professionals. Because professionals do this stuff every day. Whoever they are, Special Forces, CIA, FBI, detectives, it’s their job. They wear working clothes. They use weapons they signed out last year, the year before, tried and trusted weapons, chipped weapons, scratched weapons, working tools. Put three professionals together on any one day, and you’ll see last night’s pizza on one guy’s shirt, another guy won’t have shaved, the third guy will be wearing the awful old pants his buddies make jokes about behind his back. It’s possible you’ll see a new jacket once in a while, or a fresh gun, or new shoes, but the chances of seeing everything new all at once on three working professionals on the same day are so slim as to be absurd.
And their attitude betrayed them. Competent, but jumpy, uptight, hostile, rude, tense. Trained to some degree, but not practiced. Not experienced. They’d rehearsed the theory, and they were smart enough to avoid any gross errors, but they didn’t have the habituation of professionals. Therefore these three were some kind of amateurs. And they had kidnapped a brand-new FBI agent. Why? What the hell could a brand-new FBI agent have done to anybody? Reacher had no idea. And the brand-new FBI agent in question wasn’t saying. Just another component he couldn’t begin to figure. But not the biggest component. The biggest component he couldn’t begin to figure was why the hell he was still there.
He had no problem with how he had gotten grabbed up in the first place. Just a freak of chance had put him alongside Holly Johnson at the exact time the snatch was going down. He was comfortable with that. He understood freak chances. Life was built out of freak chances, however much people would like to pretend otherwise. And he never wasted time speculating about how things might have been different, if this and if that. Obviously if he’d been strolling on that particular Chicago street a minute earlier or a minute later, he’d have been right past that dry cleaner and never known a damn thing about all this. But he hadn’t been strolling a minute earlier or a minute later, and the freak chance had happened, and he wasn’t about to waste his time wondering where he would be now if it hadn’t.
But what he did need to pin down was why he was still there, just over fourteen hours later, according to the clock inside his head. He’d had two marginal chances and one cast-iron certainty of getting out. Right away, on the street, he could have made it. Probably. The possibility of collateral damage had stopped him. Then in the abandoned lot, getting into the white truck, he might have made it. Probably. Three against one, both times, but they were three amateurs against Jack Reacher, and he felt comfortable enough about those odds.
The cast-iron certainty was he could have been out of the
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