The novels of Lee Child are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author�s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright � 2012 by Lee Child

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Published in the United Kingdom as Reacher�s Rules by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, A Random House Group Company.

All photographs courtesy of Shutterstock, except for this page, which is courtesy of Wikipedia.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

�Hope for the best, plan for the worst.�

Never count on anything except surprise and unpredictability and danger.

Ring doorbells with your knuckles or elbows to avoid leaving fingerprints.

Sit in diners or bars with your back to the wall so you cannot be surprised from behind.

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

�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.

THE UNITED STATES ARMY

�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

�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.

�I�m not afraid of death, death�s afraid of me.�

It�s a part of life, missing the dead.

�People live and then they die, and as long as they do both things properly, there�s nothing much to regret.�

Life�s a bitch and then you die.

Soldiers contemplate death. They live with it, they accept it. They expect it. But deep down they want it to be fair.

Get into their minds, think like them.

Try birthdays, wedding anniversaries, house numbers; these are the passwords most people use.

Most people can�t remember all their passwords. If you look, you can find where they�ve written them down.

Try two-digit prime numbers, or the number whose square root is the sum of its digits.

Watch the position of their fingers when keying in a code so you can copy it.

The perfect PIN:

�I�d probably write out my birthday, month, day, year, and find the nearest prime number. Actually that would be a problem, because there would be two equally close, one exactly seven less and one exactly seven more. So I guess I�d use the square root instead, rounded to three decimal places. Ignore the decimal point; that would give me six numbers, all different.�

�I like dogs. If I lived anywhere I�d have three or four.�

Don�t leave dogs out overnight in a place where there are mountain lions. That�s a sure way of having no dogs in the morning.

Remember, dogs are different from people, no free will, easily misled. But on reflection�not that different.

�You don�t buy a dog and bark yourself.�

Never show fear when facing fighting dogs.

Don�t run away from dogs, walk.

Dogs trained to attack will attack anything that moves�including you.

When confronted by two or more dogs, be aware that like people, dogs have a pecking order. With two dogs, one of them has to be superior to the other, and will attack first.

You can intimidate a dog and show him who�s boss by baring your teeth.

�You don�t throw my friends out of helicopters and live to tell the tale.�

Hit early, hit hard.

Stand with your back to the sun so that it�s in your enemy�s eyes.

Make the first shot count.

Get your retaliation in first; show them who they�re dealing with.

Say you�ll count to three�then throw your punch at two.

Never revive a guy who has just pulled a gun on you.

Train yourself to use aggression in the face of danger.

�Soon as he was neutralized, it was two against one. And I�ve never had a problem with those kind of odds.�

When confronted by two or more opponents, know that the one who does all the talking is the leader. Hit him first and hit him hard; then the others will think twice.

Cheat. The gentlemen who behaved decently aren�t there to train anybody. They are already dead.

�Then I cheated. Instead of counting three I headbutted him full in the face.�

If plan A doesn�t work, move on to plan B.

If you have to fight five guys, then identify the ringleader. Any five guys will have one ringleader, two enthusiastic followers, and two reluctant followers. Put the ringleader down, and both of the keen sidekicks, and it�s over. The reluctant pair just run for it. It never gets worse than three-on-one.

�Attacking me was like pushing open a forbidden door. What waited on the other side was his problem.�

Look at each opponent in turn. Serene self- confidence works wonders.

Try not to get into a fight when you�ve just put on clean clothes.

Stay alive, and see what the next minute brings.

Never get distracted from the job at hand.

Use the first precious second for the first precious blow. Fight, and win. Fight, and win.

Don�t think ahead�if you think about the aftermath, you usually don�t get that far.

�His eyes were closed, which made it not much of a fair fight, but those are always my favorite kind.�

Make the first shot count.

Look like you mean it, and people back off a lot.

�He had no prejudice against fast food. Better than slow food, for a traveling man.�

Don�t eat before you go into an Army postmortem.

You need protein and fats and sugars, it doesn�t matter where they come from.

Eat when you can, because you never know when you will next get the chance.

Be friendly with the cookhouse detail.

�I�m a big guy���I need nutrition.�

Eat and plan.

Always eat a perfect breakfast: pancakes. Egg on the top, bacon on the side, plenty of syrup. And plenty of coffee.

Before a night of action and stress, go for empty calories, fats, and complex carbohydrates: pizza and soda.

After giving a wounded man a shot of morphine, remember to mark his forehead with an M, to warn the medics not to give him an overdose.

When you�ve knocked someone unconscious, put him into the recovery position. If you want him to recover.

�No need to put a guy in a coma over four grease marks on a shirt.�

To set your own broken nose, smack yourself firmly in the face with the heel of your hand.

Use duct tape to keep a broken nose in place, or to patch up a knife wound.

�Duct tape: the finest field dressing in the world. The Marines once flew me from Lebanon to Germany with nothing but duct tape keeping my lower intestine in.�

A well-aimed headbutt can leave your opponent unconscious but may leave you with a bruised forehead.

After a fistfight, the best cure for a sore hand is to wrap it around a cold beer.

�I never get angry. I�m a very placid type of guy.�

Know when to get mad, and know when to count to ten before you get mad.

�I�ve counted way past ten on this one. Way past.�

Feel the aggression building, and use it and control it; let the adrenaline pump you up.

�They mess with me, they answer to me.�

The most unbearable type of anger is a woman�s�do anything to avoid it.

�If they hurt her, you know what I�m going to do? I�m going to come back down here and break your spine. I�m going to stand you up and snap it like a rotten twig.�

�I wasn�t angry. I was barely interested. If I had been angry, we�d be cleaning up with a fire hose. As it is, we�re going to need a forklift truck.�

THINGS YOU�LL NEVER HEAR REACHER SAY

�Fighting Reacher was like having a running chain saw thrown at you.�

>>IN A KNIFE FIGHT

Don�t get cut early. Nothing weakens you faster than blood loss.

Use your fist as well as the knife. People forget you have two hands.

It helps to be fighting for your life. And not just for fun.

A cut to the forehead can mean so much blood it blinds your opponent.

When someone hurts you, step in, not away.

Use whichever part of your body is the best weapon at the time.

Use your left foot if you want to mitigate the damage; calibration is an art.

�Your big soft heart, Reacher. One day it will get you killed.�

When facing an opponent with no obvious weak point, go for the eyes.

�A 7-pound metal club is good. But a 250-pound human club is better.�

Use the elbow to hit the skull; the skull is harder than the hand, the elbow gets less damaged.

When you�re fighting against brass knuckles, don�t get hit.

Aim for the side of the skull, which is softer and displaces the brain more.

Don�t aim for the middle of the body, which is easier to defend; aim high for the head or low for the knees.

If you�re swinging a weapon, get near and get near early.

If they glance up they�re going to use their fists; if they glance down they�re going to kick.

A headbutt changes the game. No one expects a headbutt.

It�s like bringing a sawed-off shotgun to a knife fight.

Basic rule of thumb with six guys: you have to be quick. You can�t hit a guy less than once.

�Hit them fast, hit them hard, and hit them a lot.�

THINGS YOU�LL NEVER HEAR REACHER SAY

The combative grip. Right at the last split second pull your hand back a fraction and close around the knuckles, not the palm. The old Army trick is that they go to shake your hand, but they�re aiming to crush it. A macho ritual. The way out of it is to be ready. Pull back a fraction and squeeze back. Squeeze their knuckles, not the meat of their palm. Their grip is neutralized. They never stand a chance.

The campaigning politician grip. Fumble the handshake, and grip the back of the recipient�s hand, not the palm, creating a breathless �so much support here I�ve got to be quick� type of response. So it�s strictly the shaker�s choice when to let go.

Shake or squeeze. Your choice.

�Gas, grass, or ass�the price of hitchhiking?�

Set up base on a significant interchange.

Stand with one foot on the shoulder of the highway, and one in the traffic lane.

Stick out your thumb.

Stand in a way that suggests need but not desperation.

Try to look friendly (especially if you are overwhelmingly large and/or have an obvious facial wound, such as a broken nose).

Smile.

�It�s all about free will. It�s all about making choices. You can tell me now, or you can tell me after I break your legs.�

The hardest part of any adversarial conversation is the beginning. An early answer is a good sign. Answering becomes a habit.

Ask once, ask twice if you must, but don�t ask three times.

First chat about shared interests to build up trust; then it�s harder for them to start lying.

�Be skeptical but not too skeptical. Too much skepticism leads to paranoia and paralysis.�

If the night shift won�t help you, maybe the day shift will. (Night workers are always tougher�less contact with the public.)

Ask a librarian�they�re nice people, they�ll tell you things if you ask them.

�Every city has a cusp, where the good part of town turns bad.�

�Everyone�s life needs an organizing principle, and relentless forward motion was Reacher�s.�

Always move on and never look back. Never do the same thing twice.

The best place for a nomad to sleep is a motel. It has beds and doors that lock. Pay cash and don�t give your real name.

�Part of being a drifter means you look forward, not backward. You concentrate on what�s ahead.�

Arrange the smallest details in your life so that you can move on at a split second�s notice.

Own nothing, carry nothing.

Two days in one place is about the limit.

Hurry up and wait.

�Hurry up and wait was the real MP motto. Not Assist, Protect, Defend.�

Never volunteer for anything. Soldier�s basic rule.

Confusion and unpredictability are what you should expect.

If in doubt, be flippant.

When the Navy says three hours, it means three hours. One hundred and eighty minutes, not a second more, not a second less.

The soldierly way to kill people is to shoot or stab or hit or strangle. They don�t do subtle.

Confront your enemies.

�Back in the day.�

�Delta is full of guys who can stay awake for a week and walk a hundred miles and shoot the balls off a tsetse fly, but it�s relatively empty of guys who can do all that and then tell you the difference between a Shiite and a trip to the latrine.�

Almost any place is serviceable; there is always somewhere worse to compare it with.

First you check, then you double-check.

Eat every time you can, sleep every time you can.

�He was pretty sure he didn�t want to live in a house. The desire just passed him by. The necessary involvement intimidated him. It was a physical weight, exactly like the suitcase in his hand.�

Don�t own a house. You could be traced by paying property tax, insurance, electricity, heating, water�� even by the electoral roll.

If you never rent an apartment, or even a room, they�ll never be able to trace you by your last known address.

�You�re the only person I know who wants to be homeless.�

Don�t own a car. You have to pay insurance, oil changes, inspection, tax, gasoline. You�ll be identified by your car�s registration number. Hitch a ride, or hop on a Greyhound bus.

A liar usually has all the signs on display: gulps, false starts, stammers, and fidgets.

The memory center is in the left brain, the imagination in the right�so a glance to the left generally means they�re remembering things; to the right, they�re making stuff up.

They�ll avoid eye contact, and touch or scratch their noses or ears.

Truthful people are perfectly capable of saying no, but generally they stop and think about it first. The one who says no immediately is usually lying.

�I can lie with the best of them���sadly.�

�For a military cop, going into a bar is like a batter stepping up to the plate. It�s his place of business.�

Count the exits (there are usually three).

Work out which exits you can use.

Look at the crowd�where are the knots of trouble, who falls silent, who stares.

Look for weapons�antique revolvers, bottles, or�better�pool cues.

Stare everyone down.

Sit with your back to the wall, even if there are plenty of mirrors.

Call 911�the other guys are going to need an ambulance��

�It was a long, long time since he�d lost a two-on-one bar fight.�

�He was an observant man. He had made his living by noticing details. He was living because he noticed details.�

Think about everything you�ve seen and heard. Work the clues.

The U.S. Army Military Police

CODE OF ETHICS

I AM A SOLDIER IN THE UNITED STATES ARMY.

I AM OF THE TROOPS AND FOR THE TROOPS.

I HOLD ALLEGIANCE TO MY COUNTRY AND DEVOTION TO DUTY ABOVE ALL ELSE.

I PROUDLY RECOGNIZE MY OBLIGATION TO PERFORM MY DUTY WITH INTEGRITY, LOYALTY, AND HONESTY.

I WILL ASSIST AND PROTECT MY FELLOW SOLDIERS IN A MANNER THAT IS FAIR, COURTEOUS, AND IMPARTIAL.

I WILL PROMOTE, BY PERSONAL EXAMPLE, THE HIGHEST STANDARDS OF SOLDIERING, STRESSING PERFORMANCE AND PROFESSIONALISM.

I WILL STRIVE TO MERIT THE RESPECT OF OTHERS, SEEKING NO FAVOR BECAUSE OF POSITION BUT, INSTEAD, THE SATISFACTION OF A MISSION ACCOMPLISHED AND A JOB WELL DONE.

And

I DO NOT MESS WITH THE SPECIAL INVESTIGATORS.

�With a better attitude he could have been Chief of Staff by now.�

�We investigate, we prepare, we execute. We find them, we take them down.�

Military Police

TRAINING

U.S. military policemen are trained to maintain order, investigate crimes, and offer security in combat zones.

Training takes place for nine weeks at Fort Leonard Wood�s Stem Village, an imitation town complete with houses, jail, a bank, and a theater. Recruits are taught skills including marksmanship, unarmed combat, investigation, VIP protection, evasive driving, surveillance, and first aid; and how to deal with sabotage, suicide, damage to private property, and dead bodies. They also study Miranda rights, military law, collecting evidence, search and apprehension, interrogation, and directing traffic.

It�s not about strength or violence, but all about technique�making the right moves and striking in the right places�to physically restrain a perpetrator.

NEVER OFF DUTY

�He glanced at himself in an old spotted mirror. Six-five, two fifty, hands as big as frozen turkeys, hair all over the place, unshaven, torn shirt cuffs up on his forearms like Frankenstein�s monster. A bum.�

1. ALWAYS SHAVE AND GET A GOOD HAIRCUT

A whitewall. Leave an inch and a half on the top and use clippers to shave the bottom and the sides up toward it. Then flip the clippers over and square off the sideburns and clean the fuzz off the neck. Unless you�re going undercover.

2. DON�T SKIP THE SHOWER

Four kinds, depending on circumstances:

The straight shower (11 minutes)�shower and hair wash

The shave and shower (22 minutes)�shave, hair wash, shower

The special procedure (30 minutes +)�shower and hair wash, shave, shower, and second hair wash

The even longer one. When you�ve got company

�I�m that guy���The only guy in the world who doesn�t have a cellphone.�

Remember that if the satellite can show you the way on your GPS, it can also pinpoint your exact location.

The guy who relies on his head clock has no use for a fancy watch.

�He came from a world where a sudden dive for a pocket was more likely to mean a gun than a phone.�

Put your brain first�electronic devices can affect your ability to process information, your concentration, and your sleep.

Why would you want to allow the world and his wife to track you down by phone?

If you�re constantly looking down at your phone, you�re not looking at the world around you.

�I don�t need to go hunting them. I already know I�m smarter than an armadillo.�

The basis of any scam is telling people what they want to hear. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

A classic confidence trick is where you drip, drip, drip the unimportant stuff but then hold back on the final installment.

Assess and evaluate.

Paranoia prefers triple bluffs to double bluffs.

Killers don�t stop at two murders. If they do more than one, they do more than two.

�People don�t look for complications. You hear hoofbeats, you look for horses, not zebras.�

�Something for nothing, that�s a foreign language.�

All good scam artists stick as close to the truth as possible.

There�s always something out of context, even before you know what the context ought to be.

Force yourself to think like they think.

�The whole of life is a gamble, from the very beginning to the very end.�

�I�m sleeping well���but I think that�s mostly because of the tranquilizers.�

Sleep when you can, because you never know when you�re going to sleep again.

Accept that you�ll never find a bed that will accommodate your feet as well as your head.

Careful, sleep can be a symptom of caffeine deprivation.

Sleep as much as you can, because tiredness causes more foul-ups than carelessness and stupidity put together.

If you go to sleep fully dressed, you�ll be ready for action when you wake.

You�ll feel safer sleeping with a handgun under your pillow.

�A medical man would say I passed out. I prefer to think I just went to sleep.�

�He set the clock in his head for two hours, and he breathed in once, and he breathed out once, and then he fell asleep, almost instantly.�

�I�ve got no use for possessions. Travel light, travel far.�

Never carry a spare shirt.

Be on as few pieces of paper as it is possible for a human being to be.

�To fill a small bag means selecting, and choosing, and evaluating. Pretty soon I�d have a big bag, and then two or three. A month later I�d be like the rest of you.�

Never have a credit card, real estate, a driver�s license, a car, a wife, children, or an address.

Take one day at a time.

�I�m not a vagrant���I�m a hobo. Big difference.�

Always travel by road�you don�t need ID and can pay with cash.

�Carry a spare shirt and pretty soon you�re carrying spare pants. Then you need a suitcase. Next thing you know, you�ve got a house and a car and a savings plan and you�re filling out all kinds of forms.�

THINGS YOU�LL NEVER SEE REACHER DO

�Reacher said nothing.�

If in doubt, say nothing.

Keeping your mouth shut is a devastating weapon.

Your silence will make your opponent want to babble.

Say nothing, do nothing.

You need a reason for speech, but you need more for silence.

�For the infantry it all came down to simple arithmetic. If you could inflict two casualties for every one you took, you were ahead.�

�To fail to take the battle to the enemy when your back is to the wall is to perish.�

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Think like the enemy; be the enemy.

When contemplating the offensive, the first thing you must plan is your inevitable retreat.

If your attack is going too well, you have walked into an ambush.

Combat will occur on the ground between two adjoining maps.

Never leave enemy ordnance usable.

�All plans fall apart as soon as the first shot is fired.�

Friendly fire isn�t that friendly.

If you can�t attack at one end, you have to defend at the other.

Incoming fire has the right of way.

Double back to positions the enemy thinks are abandoned.

If you�re surrounded, that simplifies your problems.

�Sooner or later, you�ve got to engage the enemy�s main force. You don�t win the war unless you do that. You take it on and you destroy it.�

In order to win, you must be prepared to lose.

Don�t worry about why it went wrong. Just damn well put it right.

Know how to deceive the enemy, and that sooner or later they have to be fought head-on.

If you attack you have to keep on and on attacking until the enemy is run off its feet and the war is won.

Everything in war is improvisation.

Try to look unimportant. They may be low on ammo.

Never retreat, just advance in the opposite direction.

�Cocked and locked.�

�If you really want to know, one at a time is usually enough for me.�

For details of Jack Reacher�s adventures and books by Lee Child, go to www.leechild.com.