He said, “Did you train for this stuff at Quantico?”

She said, “To a certain extent. But a long time ago. And in a different environment. Mostly urban. With traffic lights and four-way stops and one-way streets. We don’t have many options here. Did you train for it?”

“No, I was never any good at driving.”

“Should we let them make the first move?”

“First we need to figure out what they’ve been told to do. If it’s surveillance only, we can lead them all the way to Oklahoma City and lose them there. The only fights you truly win are the ones you don’t have.”

“What if it’s not surveillance only?”

“Then they’ll do it like the movies. They’ll bump us from behind.”

“To scare us? Or worse than that?”

“That would be a very big step for them to take.”

“They’ll make it look like an accident. Tourist lady fell asleep on the long straight road and crashed. I’m sure it happens all the time.”

Reacher said nothing.

“We can’t outrun them,” Chang said. “Not in this thing.”

“So let them get close and then switch to the other lane and hit the brakes. Send them on ahead.”

“When?”

“Don’t ask me,” Reacher said. “I failed defensive driving. I lasted less than a day. They made me go qualify on something else. When they get big in the mirror, I guess.”

Chang drove on. Two-handed now. One minute. Two. She said, “I want to see their moves. We need to force their hand.”

“You sure?”

“They’re the home team. We need to shake them up.”

“OK. Speed up a bit.”

She hit the gas and he turned around and stared out the back window. The pale flash of a concerned face. He said, “Faster.”

The little green Ford jumped ahead, almost two hundred yards, and then the pick-up reacted, and its grille rose up, and it came charging closer. Chang said, “Give me a real-time distance countdown. I can’t judge in the mirrors.”

“They’re at eighty yards now,” Reacher said. “Which gives us about eight seconds.”

“Less, because I’m going to slow down. This thing might tip over.”

“Sixty yards.”

“OK, I’m clear ahead.”

“And behind. It’s just the two of us on the road. Forty yards.”

“I’m slowing some more. We can’t do this over sixty.”

“Twenty yards.”

“I’m going to do it at ten yards.”

“OK, now, do it now.”

And she did. She swerved left and braked hard and the pick-up came within an inch of clipping her right back corner, but it missed, and it sped on ahead, braking hard but much later. Meanwhile the little green Ford did a lot of side-to-side rocking and tipping, but soon enough it was stopped dead, safe, back in the correct lane, a hundred yards behind the pick-up truck, their relative positions completely inverted after a noisy few seconds.

Chang said, “Of course, this begs the fairly obvious question, what now? We turn around, they turn around. And then they’re chasing us all over again.”

“Drive straight at them,” Reacher said.

“And crash?”

“That’s always an option.”

But the pick-up moved first. It turned around in the road and came back toward them, but very slowly, just creeping along, barely more than idle speed. Which Reacher took as a message. Like a white flag.

“They want to talk,” he said. “They want to do this face to face.”

The truck stopped ten yards ahead and both doors opened. Two men climbed out. Sturdy individuals, both about six feet and two hundred pounds, both somewhere in their middle thirties, both with mirrored sunglasses, both with thin cotton jackets over T-shirts. They looked cautious but confident. Like they knew what they were doing. Like they were the home team.

Chang said, “They must be armed. They wouldn’t be doing it this way otherwise.”

“Possible,” Reacher said.

The two men took up position in the middle of the no-man’s-land between the two vehicles. One was on the left of the center line, and one was on the right. They stood easy, just waiting, hands by their sides.

Reacher said, “Run them over.”

“I can’t do that.”

“OK, I guess I’ll go see what they want. Any problems, take off for Oklahoma City without me, and best of luck.”

“No, don’t get out. It’s too dangerous.”

“For me or for them? They’re just a couple of country boys.”

“We should assume they have guns.”

“But only temporarily.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Maybe,” Reacher said. “But never forget it was Uncle Sam who made me this way. I passed every other course, except driving.”

He opened his door, and stepped out.

Chapter 14