Keep all exits in view.
Walk up the edge of stairs to minimize the chances of loud creaks. Stairs squeak at their centers where they’re weakest.
Go to bed fully clothed so you are always ready for action.
Never look through peepholes in doors. Someone could be on the other side, waiting to see the glass darken and shoot you in the eye.
“We’re making an omelette here … we’re going to have to break some eggs.”
“Optimism is good. Blind faith is not.”
Always lift a door handle upward. If a door
squeaks, it’s because it’s dropped on its hinges.
Upward pressure helps.
Climb through a hole feetfirst. If there’s an ax or a bullet waiting, better to take it in the legs than in the head.
If someone’s likely to shoot at you, plant yourself in the middle of a restaurant full of innocent people.
“Most guys who don’t check new equipment are still alive, but by no means all of them.”
Never trust a weapon you haven’t personally test-fired.
After you use a car to commit a crime, get it cleaned thoroughly, inside and out, twice, then make sure you leave no DNA.
Always have a penny in your pocket—you never know when you’re going to need it to unscrew a pair of license plates.
If you are climbing up toward a trapdoor into an uncertain situation, catapult yourself up the last eighteen feet as fast as you can.
“The less I relax, the luckier I get.”
THINGS YOU’LL NEVER HEAR REACHER SAY
Sorry, I’ve forgotten my watch.
First thing to do before attacking a lock is to check that it’s not already open. Nothing will make you feel stupider than picking a lock that’s not locked.
The bigger and more ornate the lock, the easier it is to pick.
“Get a problem, solve a problem.”
Iron bars protecting a window can be forced open with a tire iron. Force it into the siding next to one of the screws. Make a shallow dent in the metal, shove the iron in sideways and under the bars, and haul on it until it gives.
For a door with a glass panel, use the sole of your shoe to break a hole in the glass, then reach through to the handle.
To kick a door down: take a run toward the door, making sure to stay upright, and with your dominant leg kick the area below the doorknob hard, using your sole or your heel.
(NB: All these techniques are most successful when there’s no one home.)
“A magazine he knew to be full, in a gun he knew to be working. A sensible step for a man who planned to live through the next five minutes.”
Next to a shotgun, a pool cue is the best weapon in a fight.
A handgun at two hundred feet is the same thing as crossing your fingers and making a wish.
No point in having a weapon at all unless it’s ready for instant use.
Don’t trust a .38-caliber revolver. You can’t rely on them to put a guy down.
A chisel plunged into the back of your head is going to seriously ruin your day.
>>HOW TO USE A CIGARETTE AS AN EFFECTIVE WEAPON
Take quick, deep pulls to heat the coal on the end of the cigarette up to a couple thousand degrees. When it has lengthened to a point like an arrow, apply quickly to a vulnerable part of the body. Such as an eye.
Rolls of quarters in your fists—good old- fashioned technology.
Choose the weapon you know for sure is in working order.
The longer a barrel, the straighter it shoots.
A cup of hot coffee is also a weapon in the right hands.
“Twelve-gauge lead shots settle most disputes at the first time of asking.”
The best way to get hold of a random untraceable gun is to steal it from someone who already stole it. That way there are no official comebacks.
Keep a gun with a single shell locked in the chamber and all the other bullets loose. More jams are caused by tired magazine springs than any other single reason.
>>CREATING A WEAPON FROM A CERAMIC BATHROOM TILE
Sharpen it into the shape of a knife. A bathroom tile, being entirely ceramic, is harder than anything except a diamond. Harder than steel, sharper than steel. And it won’t trigger a metal detector.
THINGS YOU’LL NEVER SEE REACHER DO
Fill in an insurance form
THE UNITED STATES ARMY
MILITARY POLICE
Law-enforcement branch of the United States Army, established to:
• maintain discipline and security in the Army
• protect supply routes and guard prisoners
• act as a fighting force in combat
• act as peacekeepers at war’s end
• aid disaster relief
• manage internal security
• uphold democracy
It is one of the most deployed branches of the Army.
“I don’t come from anywhere. I come from a place called Military.”
“If in doubt, drink coffee.”
Nothing’s too urgent for coffee.
A bad coffee mug has a thick lip—too wide, too shallow, too much mass—it will cool the drink too fast.
A good coffee mug is cylindrical in shape, narrow in relation to its height and with a thin lip.
“I love coffee. Give me the chance and I drink coffee like an alcoholic drinks vodka.”
Coffee tastes better if the latrines are dug downstream from an encampment.
U.S. Army Field Regulations, 1861
“The Reacher brothers’ need for caffeine made heroin addiction look like a little take-it-or-leave-it sideline.”
Ignore the fancy brews and get a tall house blend, black, no cream.
It’s all about the caffeine.
Coffee keeps you awake. Until you want to go to sleep.
Never say no to a cup of coffee.
THINGS YOU’LL NEVER HEAR REACHER SAY
No more coffee for me.
>>FIVE FACTS ABOUT COFFEE
The earliest recorded evidence of coffee drinking was in the middle of the fifteenth century in Yemen.
Drinking coffee increases short-term recall, and decreases the risk of gout in men over the age of forty.
After petroleum, coffee is the second most traded product in the world.
In North America and Europe the quantity of coffee drunk is about a third of that of tap water.
Finland consumes more coffee per head than any other country.
“I’m not scared of anybody … But certainly I preferred it when he was dead.”
Some things are worth being afraid of. And some things are not.
To be afraid of a survivable thing is irrational.
Focus on the job at hand.
“Reacher didn’t like crowds. He was a mild agoraphobic—from agora, the Greek word for a crowded public marketplace. Random crowds … organized crowds … riots and revolutions. A crowd is like the largest animal on earth—the heaviest, the hardest to control, the hardest to stop.”
A courageous guy is someone who feels the fear but conquers it.