But still, he was big.
Twenty yards to go.
They waited.
The wrestler was staring dead ahead. He had tiny dark eyes set back deep in his tiny head. Not much expression. Altogether passive. Hence his relative lack of success in the post-college world, perhaps. Perhaps he lacked drive. Perhaps he failed to interpret the world around him. In which case, too bad. He was going to have to suck it up. He had been warned. Obviously. He had been drafted as a replacement. There was a clue in the word. He knew what he was getting into. He could have declined.
Fifteen yards to go.
The older guy was glancing left and right at his troops. He looked mostly excited. He was about to see some real good fun. But he was a little anxious too. In a faraway corner of his mind. Which he knew was crazy. How could they lose? It was a slam dunk, surely. But he couldn’t shake the feeling. Reacher saw it in his face. He helped it along, any way he could. The slow walk. The long strides, the loose shoulders. The hands away from the sides. The head up, and the eyes hard on the guy. The primitive signal, learned long ago.
Ten yards out.
The older guy couldn’t shake the feeling. It was right there in his face. Suddenly he looked like he was working on a contingency plan. A potential change of tactics. Just in case. As an alternative. He looked ready to shout new orders. Which made him a legitimate target. Even though he was fifty-something and soft. He was a commander in the field. Rules of engagement. They were what they were. He was going to have to suck it up too.
Reacher figured the other three would run away. Or at least they would back off, palms out, and they would stammer their way through some kind of not-our-idea plea deal. Loyalty had its limits. Especially to promises of menial labor from people who were pretty much assholes anyway.
They would run.
Five yards to go.
Reacher believed in staying flexible, but also having a plan, and in his experience it was about fifty-fifty which got used in the end. On this occasion the plan was to never slow down, to arrive at full speed, and to head-butt the wrestler mid stride. Which would check all the boxes. Surprise, overwhelming force, general shock and awe. With a convenient ethical twist. Literally. It would leave the older guy perfectly situated for a left hook, which was Reacher’s weaker hand, which was about as humane as he could see how to make it.
But it turned out flexibility was better. Because of the wrestler. He dropped into some kind of combat stance. Like a theatrical pose. Like a photographer was egging him on. Telling him to bring it. Maybe for the front page of the local newspaper. High School Star Wins Trophy. That kind of thing. The guy was giving it his best shot. Wasn’t really working. He looked like a fat kid pretending to be a grizzly bear. Stubby arms, like claws. At the ready. Kind of crouching, knees bent, feet apart.
So Reacher modified the plan. On the fly. West Point would have been proud of him. He preserved the essentials, and altered only the details. He never slowed down. He arrived at full speed. But instead of head-butting the guy, he kicked him in the balls. A sudden target of opportunity. Because of the feet apart. He got him with pace, and momentum, and a vicious scything upswing, and a dead-on perfect connection.
A football would have left the stadium.
It came out both good and bad.
The good part was it put him exactly where he should be. Ready for the left hook. Which he delivered. It was short and choppy by classical standards. Not elegant at all. Not much more than a whipped-in clout. But it was effective. Bang. Daddy went down sideways. His command influence was terminated.
The bad part was the wrestler was wearing an athletic protector. A cup. Smart kid. He had interpreted the world. He had prepared. Even so, he had taken a heavy blow. Like a blunt cookie-cutter smashing down on tough and gristly dough. But he wasn’t disabled. He was still on his feet, stumping around, breathing hard. Shock, yes. Awe, not so much. Which meant the other three guys didn’t run away. They didn’t back off, palms out, pleading. Instead they crowded in a step, a blocking maneuver, to let their quarterback recover behind them.
Reacher thought, damn. The vagaries of chance. He should have stuck to the original plan. The guy wasn’t wearing a football helmet. He wanted to back off a pace, to reset the geometry, but he didn’t let himself. It would send the wrong message. Instead he hit the guy crowding nearest. A solid shot to the gut. Which doubled the guy over, his face on his knees, puking and gasping, so Reacher hit him again, with an elbow chopped down hard against the back of the guy’s head, which planted him face first in the grass. Game over right there, so Reacher stepped left and lined up the next guy. No delay. Nothing to be gained by standing around shooting the breeze. Better just to set them up and knock them down.
But the next guy was barged out the way. By the wrestler coming through the line. His hands were out and his body was all swelled up with rage. He shoved another guy out the way. He was coming on like a dump truck. Then he planted his feet. He crouched. Face to face. Like the start of a bout. He glared. He snarled.
Reacher thought, OK, then.
He knew squat about wrestling. He had never tried it. Never felt the need. Too sweaty. Too many rules. Too much like a last resort. He believed a fight should be won or lost long before it came to rolling around on the floor.
In the distance Burke was still jumping up and down and waving his arm.
The wrestler moved. His body turned like a single rigid unit, and he thumped his right foot down, just ahead of where it had been before. Then he turned the other way, just as rigid, and he thumped his left foot down. Like sumo. Now he was half a step closer. He was maybe a couple inches shorter than Reacher. But probably twenty pounds heavier. He was a big solid guy. That was for damn sure. He was all hard sleek muscle, smoothed out into a fluid shape, as if by passage through air or water. Like a bull seal. Or a mortar shell.
A replacement. Not exactly, Reacher thought. The guy was an improvement. He was there to strengthen the roster. He was specialist talent, drafted in for the occasion. After the lessons of the night before. Maybe he had been borrowed from a friend of a friend. Maybe he was a nightclub bouncer. In Manchester. Or even Boston. Maybe that was the big leagues, for college stars.
Reacher decided to stay clear of his arms. Wrestling was all about grabbing and grasping and grappling. The guy was probably good at it. Or at least experienced. He probably knew all kinds of follow-up tricks. He would know a dozen different ways to get his opponent down on the mat. Which would be a fate best avoided. A horizontal struggle would be a problem. Too much bulk. It could end up like trying to bench press a whale. Fortunately the guy’s arms were not long. The exclusion zone was not large. There was some scope for action. Something could be done.
But what exactly? For once in his life Reacher wasn’t sure. The head butt was still a possibility, but risky, because it meant stepping right into the bear-claw grasp. And maybe the guy knew enough to twist away and take the blow on his neck, which up close looked about as sensitive as an automobile tire. Body shots could be delivered, fast right-left-right combinations, like working with the heavy bag, but the guy was built with the kind of slabby construction that would feel like punching a bulletproof vest. With about as much effect.
The wrestler moved again. The same dramatic maneuver. Again like sumo. Reacher had seen it on the television. In the afternoons, in motels. Grainy orange pictures. Huge men in fancy loincloths, blank and oiled and implacable.
Now the guy was a whole step closer.
Overhead the hawk circled slowly.
Too late Reacher realized what the guy was going to do. Which was to barge forward, leading with his stomach, again like the sumo on the television, except in that case the other guy was also doing the exact same thing, so they met in the middle with a loud slap, but Reacher wasn’t moving at all, which meant the other guy had all the momentum to himself, which meant Reacher was about to get hit hard. Like getting run over by a tractor tire.