It was clear the mob was feeling more emboldened. They knew that Captain Stan Reacher, whose name remained unknown to me just yet, had at best two rounds in his weapon. They pressed in more closely than ever, dragging Tien back to his feet and shoving him toward me. I got the feeling he would be safer if I took him with me after the fight, assuming things went my way.

My corner man raised his hand. His eyes swept over the men surrounding us. Most of them were unarmed but a few of the them held wicked looking parangs, the Asian machete used for cutting sugar cane, bananas, and bamboo. Clubs and bamboo staffs were in evidence as well. Reacher glanced sideways at me, meeting my eyes with what I took to be some kind of message to be ready. Ready for what? His hand dropped. "Fight!"

Everybody's eyes went to Tien and me, and while the mob's attention was diverted, Reacher performed the fastest combat reload I'd ever seen and ever would see again. The magazine dropped out of the Colt's grip and he slapped in a fresh one, assumedly full. I had no idea where he'd been carrying it. It locked in place with a clack even before I heard the used magazine hit the cobbles of the alley. I knew from the sound of it that it was empty. The M1911 had been down to its last round.

The human mind is a funny thing. It sets itself on a course of action and sometimes simply can't be diverted, no matter what. A handful of men at the front of the mob had been waiting for the gun to be emptied. They knew it was down to the last round or two. It was only a matter of time. They saw the slender black magazine drop from the grip, heard it clatter on the greasy cobbles, and even though the fresh mag materialized seemingly from thin air in front of their faces, even though the slide never locked back and the muzzle was pointed at them throughout the entire milliseconds long procedure, they launched their attack. They had made up their minds and even with the gun now fully loaded with fat copper and brass .45 caliber rounds, and the knowledge they were charging toward the certain death that had kept them at bay ever since this new Yankee's arrival, they would not stop. Howling, they surged across the last few yards between us.

It was pandemonium. Tien was caught off guard as the mob propelled him into me, carried like a small bit of driftwood caught in a flash flood. We were both slammed hard against the building behind me, the impact raising my opinion of the sturdiness of Vietnamese architecture a few notches. Gun shots from the Colt slammed back and forth between the brick walls of the alley, the muzzle flashes looking like lightning in a summer storm as I clamped my left hand on Tien's sweaty throat and grabbed his right arm just above his elbow, holding him close like a lover against me for a shield against the blades and clubs that were raining down on both of us, the crush driving me to my knees against the wall. I heard screams from the ground as men fell. The cursing crowd of men buried us with Tien writhing on top on top of me, the impact of blows striking his body being transmitted through his flesh and bone and into my clutching hands and I had an instant's empathy of George Armstrong Custer being overrun by the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne on Last Stand Hill at the Little Bighorn. I was positive the Indians must've smelled better than the drunk, reeking mob as it overwhelmed us.

Two bursts of M16 automatic rifle fire, followed instantly by a third suddenly lessened the weight pressing in on me. The tone of chaos changed from violence to panic. The thudding of boots, a lot of boots, vibrated up through the cobbles and echoed through the alley, penetrating the ringing in my ears. I pushed Tien's now limp body away and shoved myself upright, my shirt catching and snagging on the rough brick pressing back against my shoulder blades.

My corner man had kept his feet. Around him on the cobbles of the alley lay the bodies of five men, two of whom were clearly dead from gunshot wounds to their heads, and another dead from the lack of a head. The head was several yards away, facing down with its nose pressed flat against the stinking cobbles. Death was probably the better option. Reacher's Colt lay at his feet, an empty brass casing stovepiped in the ejection port. He held a parang instead. Near the Colt lay an arm severed above the elbow, and just beyond that, a bare foot and shin missing a body. None of the five bodies were missing any pieces. Whichever man or men was missing the pieces, they had been carted off with the crowd as it fled the alley. A squad of United States Marines armed with black rifles had taken the place of the mob.

"Captain Reacher, sir, it seems we found you just in time. Again."

"I'm not going to disagree with you, Sergeant." He tossed the machete aside and bent to pick up the Colt. He eyeballed the jammed gun with disfavor, and plucked the brass shell out of the ejection port. The slide snapped back into battery. He racked it to chamber a fresh round and thumbed the safety lever up into position.

As he cleared the jam, he asked without taking his eyes away from the sidearm: "You okay, Corporal Longmire?"

I just looked at him, letting my eyes ask the question.

"I've seen you playing that old piano in the Boy-Howdy Beau-Coups Good Times Lounge. Asked who you were. You play better than you box, you know."

"Every one's a critic. Sir."

He smiled. "Can we give you a lift back to base, Corporal?"

"I've got a Jeep from the motor pool parked around the corner. I'll get myself back, sir."

"You armed?"

"No, sir."

Was it disappointment in his eyes? Disapproval? "Son, the United States Government didn't spend several hundred thousand dollars to train you and fly you over here to walk around unarmed."

"No, sir."

He reversed the M1911 and extended it to me grip first. "Take this, just in case."

"Sir…"

He cut me off. "That's an order, Corporal."

I took the gun from him and saluted. "Yes, sir."

He returned the salute. "As you were."

He strode out of the alley with the rest of the Marines behind him, and I never saw him again.

Vic's brows arched. "Wait a minute, so you smuggled it out of Vietnam? Straight arrow Walt Longmire? I don't even know you anymore!"

"I invoke the 5th Amendment. Technically, though, some officers were able to buy their sidearms when they were discharged. The paperwork was prohibitive so it wasn't worth it to most of us. This one wasn't issued to me, so nobody was looking for it, and sure enough nobody saw it. I turned my own into the armory when I got back to the mainland and was discharged." I looked over at Reacher. "Is that the story you heard as a boy?"

"With a few more details. The version I heard was my father telling my mother he had to come up with a creative way to get rid of an extra sidearm before he shipped out the next day. He said it ended up being a little too creative, but worked out in the end."

"Well," Neagley said, and when Reacher glanced at her tilted her head away from our diverse law enforcement cluster. He walked away with her a few steps and they spoke in low tones. He nodded a couple of times, she nodded in return, then turned back to the group with a wave.

"I have to get back to Chicago. It was good to meet you all." We expressed our goodbyes and she turned and walked away. Reacher watched her for a few beats. She didn't look back. He finally turned and rejoined the group.

He must've seen the questions on our faces. "She has a rental car a block down."

My questions were of another nature, but I left them unsaid. My undersheriff didn't. "So that's it, she just walks away and goes home?"

"Something wrong with that?"

Vic studied him for a moment. "Oh my God."

"What?"

"You don't know, do you?"

"Know what?"

"She likes you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"She likes you likes you. Like she'd rather go back to your hotel or wherever you're staying and bang your brains out likes you."

Reacher said nothing.

Vic tsk-tsked and shook her head. "The guy is always last to know."

"You've got this all figured out after just meeting her less than thirty minutes ago?"

"It wasn't hard. She couldn't take her eyes off you the whole time she was standing here. Didn't you see her when you asked her about not breaking Henry's nose? She wanted to crawl into a hole rather than have you think she messed up."

Reacher looked at Vic for a long moment. Then another long moment. His eyes had that focused look that I hadn't yet learned to read, but the little I had learned made me take a casual step closer so I could move between them if need be. Henry did the same thing from his side of the foursome.

Vic didn't back off, but she didn't push it any harder, just gave the look back to him, her tarnished gold against his ice chip blue.

He finally spoke. "I won't say there's nothing there. Neagley is a complicated person. What's between us is what it needs to be, and when it's time to be something else, we'll go from there. Know this: there's nobody I trust more, and anything else is nobody's damn business."