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The left-hand guard went down easily enough, too. Reacher put a bullet through the side of his head, just above the ear, and he fell heavily, right on top of the spreadeagled Bureau guy. But the right-hand guard reacted. He spun away and hurdled the taut ropes, racing for the trees. Reacher paused a beat and dropped him ten feet away. The guy sprawled and slid noisily through the shale and put up a slick of dust. Twitched once and died.
Then Reacher waited. The last staccato echo of the three shots came back off the farthest mountains and faded into quiet. Reacher watched the trees, all around the Bastion. Watched for movement. The sunlight was bright. Too bright to be sure. There was a lot of contrast between the brightness of the clearing and the dark of the forest. So he waited.
Then he came out from behind the radio hut at a desperate run. He sprinted straight across the clearing to the mess in the middle. Hauled the bodies out of the way. The guard was sprawled right on top of the Bureau guy. The unit leader was across his legs. He dumped them out of the way and found the knife. Sawed through the four coarse ropes. Dragged the Bureau guy upright and pushed him off back the way he'd come. Then he grabbed the two nearest rifles and sprinted after him. Caught him up halfway. The guy was just tottering along. So Reacher caught him under the arms and bundled him to safety. Threw him well into the trees behind the huts and stood bent over, panting. Then he took the magazines off the new rifles and put one in his pocket and one on his own gun. They were both the elongated thirty-shot versions. He'd been down to six rounds. Now he had sixty. A ten-fold increase. And he had another pair of hands.
"Are you Brogan?" he asked. "Or McGrath?"
The guy answered stiffly and neutrally. There was fear and panic and confusion in his face.
"McGrath," he said. "FBI."
Reacher nodded. The guy was shaken up, but he was an ally. He took Fowler's Glock out of his pocket and held it out to him, butt first. McGrath was panting quietly and glancing wildly toward the deep cover of the trees. There was aggression in his stance. His hands were balled into fists.
"What?" Reacher asked him, concerned.
McGrath darted forward and snatched the Glock and stepped back. Raised it and went into a shooting stance and pointed it two-handed. At Reacher's head. The cut ends of the ropes trailed down from his wrists. Reacher just stared blankly at him.
"Hell are you doing?" he asked.
"You're one of them," McGrath said back. "Drop the rifle, OK?"
"What?" Reacher said again.
"Just do it, OK?" McGrath said.
Reacher stared at him, incredulous. Pointed through the trees at the sprawled bodies in the Bastion.
"What about that?" he asked. "Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
The Glock did not waver. It was rock-steady, pointed straight at his head, at the apex of a perfect braced position. McGrath looked like a picture in a training manual, except for the ropes hanging like streamers from his wrists and ankles.
"Doesn't that count for something?" Reacher asked again, pointing.
"Not necessarily," McGrath growled back. "You killed Peter Bell, too. We know that. Just because you don't allow your troops to rape and torture your hostages doesn't necessarily put you on the side of the angels."
Reacher looked at him for a long moment, astonished. Thought hard. Then he nodded cautiously and dropped the rifle exactly halfway between the two of them. Drop it right at his own feet, McGrath would just tell him to kick it over toward him. Drop it too near McGrath's feet, and it wouldn't work. This guy was an experienced agent. From the look of his shooting stance, Reacher was expecting at least a basic level of competence from him.
McGrath glanced down. Hesitated. He clearly didn't want Reacher near him. He didn't want him stepping nearer to nudge the rifle on toward him. So he slid his own foot forward to drag the weapon back close. He was maybe ten inches shorter than Reacher, all told. Aiming the Glock at Reacher's head from six feet away, he was aiming it upward at a fairly steep angle. As he slid his foot forward, he decreased his effective height by maybe an inch, which automatically increased the upward slope of his arms by a proportionate degree. And as he slid his foot forward, it brought him slightly closer to Reacher, which increased the upward angle yet more. By the time his toe was scrabbling for the weapon, his upper arms were near his face, interfering with his vision. Reacher waited for him to glance down again.
He glanced down. Reacher let his knees go and fell vertically. Lashed back upward with his forearm and batted the Glock away. Swiped a wide arc with his other arm behind McGrath's knees and dumped him flat on his back in the dirt. Closed his hand over McGrath's wrist and squeezed gently until the Glock shook free. He picked it up by the barrel and held it the wrong way around.
"Look at this," he said.
He shook his cuff back and exposed the crusted weal on his left wrist.
"I'm not one of them," he said. "They had me handcuffed most of the time."
Then he held the Glock out, butt first, offering it again. McGrath stared at it, and then stared back into the clearing. He ducked his head left and right to take in the bodies. Glanced back at Reacher, still confused.
"We had you down as a bad guy," he said.
Reacher nodded.
"Evidently," he said. "But why?"
"Video in the dry cleaners," McGrath said. "Looked just like you were snatching her up."
Reacher shook his head.
"Innocent passerby," he said.
McGrath kept on looking hard at him. Quizzically, thinking. Reacher saw him arrive at a decision. He nodded in turn and accepted the Glock and laid it on the forest floor, exactly between them, like it's positioning was a symbol, a treaty. He started fumbling at his shirt bur tons. Cut ends of rope flailed at his wrists and ankles.
"OK, can we start over?" he said, embarrassed.
Reacher nodded and stuck out his hand.
"Sure," he said. "I'm Reacher, you're McGrath. Holly's agent-in-charge. Pleased to meet you."
McGrath smiled ruefully and shook hands limply. Then he started fumbling at the knots on his wrist, one-handed.
"You know a guy called Garber?" McGrath asked.
Reacher nodded.
"Used to work for him," he said.
"Garber told us you were clean," McGrath said. "We didn't believe him."
"Naturally," Reacher said. "Garber always tells the truth. So nobody ever believes him."
"So I apologize," McGrath said. "I'm sorry, OK? But just try and see it my way. You've been public enemy number one for five days."
Reacher waved the apology away and stood up and helped McGrath to his feet. Bent back down to the dirt and picked up the Glock and handed it to him.
"Your nose OK?" he asked.
McGrath slipped the gun into his jacket pocket. Touched his nose gently and grimaced.
"Bastard hit me," he said. "I think it's broken. Just turned and hit me, like they couldn't wait."
There was a noise in the woods, off to the left. Reacher caught McGrath's arm and pulled him deeper into the forest. Pushed through the brush and got facing east. He stood silently and listened for movement. McGrath was taking the ropes off his ankles and winding himself up to ask a question.
"So is Holly OK?" he said.
Reacher nodded. But grimly.
"So far," he said. "But it's going to be a hell of a problem getting her out."
"I know about the dynamite," McGrath said. "That was the last thing Jackson called in. Monday night."
"It's a problem," Reacher said again. "One stray round, and she's had it. And there are a hundred trigger-happy people up here. Whatever we do, we need to do it carefully. Have you got reinforcements coming in? Hostage rescue?"
McGrath shook his head.
"Not yet," he said. "Politics."
"Maybe that's good," Reacher said. "They're talking about mass suicide if they look like getting beat. Live free or die, you know?"
"Whichever," McGrath said. "Their choice. I don't care what happens to them. I just care about Holly."
They fell silent and crept together through the trees. Stopped deep in the woods, about level with the back of the mess hall. Now Reacher was winding himself up to ask a question. But he waited, frozen, a finger to his lips. There was noise to his left. A patrol, sweeping the fringe of the forest. McGrath made to move, but Reacher caught his arm and stopped him. Better to stand stock still than to risk making noise of their own. The patrol came nearer. Reacher raised his rifle and switched it to rapid fire. Smothered the sound of the click with his palm. McGrath held his breath. The patrol was visible, ten feet away through the trees. Six men, six rifles. They were glancing rhythmically as they walked, left and right, left and right, between the edge of the sunny clearing and the dark green depths of the woods. Reacher breathed out, silently. Amateurs, with poor training and bad tactics. The bright sun in their eyes on every second glance was ruining their chances of seeing into the gloom of the forest. They were blind. They passed by without stopping. Reacher followed the sound of their progress and turned back to McGrath.
"Where are Brogan and Milosevic?" he whispered.
McGrath nodded, morosely.
"I know," he said, quietly. "One of them is bent. I finally figured that out about half a second before they grabbed me up."
"Where are they?" Reacher asked again.
"Up here somewhere," McGrath said. "We came in through the ravine together, a mile apart."
"Which one is it?" Reacher asked.
McGrath shrugged.
"I don't know," he said. "Can't figure it out. I've been going over and over it. They both did good work. Milosevic found the dry cleaner. He brought the video in. Brogan did a lot of work tracing it all back here to Montana. He traced the truck. He liaised with Quantico. My gut says neither one is bent."
"When was I ID'd?" Reacher asked.
"Thursday morning," McGrath said. "We had your complete history."
Reacher nodded.
"He called it in right away," he said. "These people suddenly knew who I was, Thursday morning."
McGrath shrugged again.
"They were both there at the time," he said. "We were all down at Peterson."
"Did you get Holly's fax?" Reacher asked.
"What fax?" McGrath said. "When?"
"This morning," Reacher said. "Early, maybe ten to five? She faxed you a warning."
"We're intercepting their line," McGrath said. "In a truck, down the road here. But ten to five, I was in bed."
"So who was minding the store?" Reacher asked.
McGrath nodded.
"Milosevic and Brogan," he said, sourly. The two of them. Ten to five this morning, they'd just gone on duty. Whichever one of them it is must have gotten the fax and concealed it. But which one, I just don't know."
Reacher nodded back.
"We could figure it out," he said. "Or we could just wait and see. One of them will be walking around best of friends and the other will be in handcuffs, or dead. We'll be able to tell the difference."
McGrath nodded, sourly.
"I can't wait," he said.
Then Reacher stiffened and pulled him ten yards farther into the woods. He had heard the patrol coming back through the trees.
"Reacher," Borken said. "I should have wasted him at the beginning."
Milosevic nodded in agreement.
"I want him kept away from me," he said. "I heard the autopsy report on your friend Peter Bell. I just want my money and safe passage out of here, OK?"
Borken nodded. Then he laughed. A sharp, nervous laugh that was part excitement, part tension. He stood up and walked out from behind the bench. Laughed and grinned and slapped Milosevic on the shoulder.
She'd heard: crack crack... crack. But she didn't know who was shooting at who, or why. They weren't handgun shots. She knew the flat bark of a handgun from her time at Quantico. These were shots from a long gun. Not the heavy thump of the big Barratts from the rifle range. A lighter weapon than that. Somebody firing a medium-caliber rifle three times. Or three people firing once, in a ragged volley. But whichever it was, something was happening. And she had to be ready.
McGrath looked surprised.
"Why Brogan?" he asked.
They were squatted down, backs to adjacent trunks, thirty yards into the woods, invisible. The search patrol had tracked back and missed them again. McGrath had given Reacher the whole story. He had rattled through the important parts of the investigation, one professional to another, in a sort of insider's shorthand. Reacher had asked sharp questions and McGrath had given short answers.
"Time and distance," Reacher said. "That was crucial. Think about it from their point of view. They put us in the truck and they raced off straight to Montana. What's that? Maybe seventeen hundred miles? Eighteen hundred?"
"Probably," McGrath allowed.
"And Brogan's a smart guy," Reacher said. "And he knows you're a smart guy. He knows you're smart enough to know that he's smart enough. So he can't dead-end the whole thing. But what he can do is keep you all far enough behind the action to stop you being a problem. And that's what he did. He managed the flow of information. The communication had to be two-way, right? So Monday, he knew they'd rented a truck. But right through Wednesday, he was still focusing you on stolen trucks, right? He wasted a lot of time with that Arizona thing. Then he finally makes the big breakthrough with the rental firm and the stuff with the mud, and he looks like the big hero, but in reality what he's done is keep you way behind the chase. He's given them all the time they need to get us here."
"But he still got us here, right?" McGrath said. "A ways behind them, OK, but he brought us right here all the same."
"No loss to him," Reacher said. "Borken was just itching to tell you where she was, soon as she was safely here, right? The destination was never going to be a secret, was it? That was the whole point. She was a deterrent to stop you attacking. No point in that, without telling you exactly where she was."
McGrath grunted. Thinking about it. Unconvinced.
"They bribed him," Reacher said. "You better believe it. They've got a big war chest, McGrath. Twenty million dollars, stolen bearer bonds."
"The armored car robbery?" McGrath asked. "Northern California somewhere? They did that?"
"They're boasting about it," Reacher said.
McGrath ran it through his head. Went pale. Reacher saw it and nodded.
"Right," he said. "Let me make a guess: Brogan was never short of money, was he? Never groused about the salary, did he?"
"Shit," McGrath said. "Two alimony checks every month, girlfriend, silk jackets, and I never even thought twice about it. I was just so grateful he wasn't one of the moaners."
"He's collecting his next payment right now," Reacher said. "And Milosevic is dead or locked up somewhere."
McGrath nodded slowly.
"And Brogan worked out of California," he said. "Before he came to me. Shit, I never thought twice. A buck gets ten he was the exact agent who went after Borken. He said Sacramento couldn't make it stick. Said the files were unclear as to why not. Why not is because Borken was handing him bucketfuls of dollars to make sure it didn't stick. And the bastard was taking them."
Reacher nodded. Said nothing.
"Shit," McGrath said again. "Shit, shit, shit. My fault."
Still Reacher said nothing. More tactful just to keep quiet. He understood McGrath's feelings. Understood his position. He had been in the same position himself, time to time in the past. He had felt the knife slip in, right between the shoulder blades.
"I'll deal with Brogan later," McGrath said finally. "After we go get Holly. She mention me at all? She realize I'd come get her? She mention that?"
Reacher nodded.
"She told me she trusted her people," he said.
Then Reacher waited. The last staccato echo of the three shots came back off the farthest mountains and faded into quiet. Reacher watched the trees, all around the Bastion. Watched for movement. The sunlight was bright. Too bright to be sure. There was a lot of contrast between the brightness of the clearing and the dark of the forest. So he waited.
Then he came out from behind the radio hut at a desperate run. He sprinted straight across the clearing to the mess in the middle. Hauled the bodies out of the way. The guard was sprawled right on top of the Bureau guy. The unit leader was across his legs. He dumped them out of the way and found the knife. Sawed through the four coarse ropes. Dragged the Bureau guy upright and pushed him off back the way he'd come. Then he grabbed the two nearest rifles and sprinted after him. Caught him up halfway. The guy was just tottering along. So Reacher caught him under the arms and bundled him to safety. Threw him well into the trees behind the huts and stood bent over, panting. Then he took the magazines off the new rifles and put one in his pocket and one on his own gun. They were both the elongated thirty-shot versions. He'd been down to six rounds. Now he had sixty. A ten-fold increase. And he had another pair of hands.
"Are you Brogan?" he asked. "Or McGrath?"
The guy answered stiffly and neutrally. There was fear and panic and confusion in his face.
"McGrath," he said. "FBI."
Reacher nodded. The guy was shaken up, but he was an ally. He took Fowler's Glock out of his pocket and held it out to him, butt first. McGrath was panting quietly and glancing wildly toward the deep cover of the trees. There was aggression in his stance. His hands were balled into fists.
"What?" Reacher asked him, concerned.
McGrath darted forward and snatched the Glock and stepped back. Raised it and went into a shooting stance and pointed it two-handed. At Reacher's head. The cut ends of the ropes trailed down from his wrists. Reacher just stared blankly at him.
"Hell are you doing?" he asked.
"You're one of them," McGrath said back. "Drop the rifle, OK?"
"What?" Reacher said again.
"Just do it, OK?" McGrath said.
Reacher stared at him, incredulous. Pointed through the trees at the sprawled bodies in the Bastion.
"What about that?" he asked. "Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
The Glock did not waver. It was rock-steady, pointed straight at his head, at the apex of a perfect braced position. McGrath looked like a picture in a training manual, except for the ropes hanging like streamers from his wrists and ankles.
"Doesn't that count for something?" Reacher asked again, pointing.
"Not necessarily," McGrath growled back. "You killed Peter Bell, too. We know that. Just because you don't allow your troops to rape and torture your hostages doesn't necessarily put you on the side of the angels."
Reacher looked at him for a long moment, astonished. Thought hard. Then he nodded cautiously and dropped the rifle exactly halfway between the two of them. Drop it right at his own feet, McGrath would just tell him to kick it over toward him. Drop it too near McGrath's feet, and it wouldn't work. This guy was an experienced agent. From the look of his shooting stance, Reacher was expecting at least a basic level of competence from him.
McGrath glanced down. Hesitated. He clearly didn't want Reacher near him. He didn't want him stepping nearer to nudge the rifle on toward him. So he slid his own foot forward to drag the weapon back close. He was maybe ten inches shorter than Reacher, all told. Aiming the Glock at Reacher's head from six feet away, he was aiming it upward at a fairly steep angle. As he slid his foot forward, he decreased his effective height by maybe an inch, which automatically increased the upward slope of his arms by a proportionate degree. And as he slid his foot forward, it brought him slightly closer to Reacher, which increased the upward angle yet more. By the time his toe was scrabbling for the weapon, his upper arms were near his face, interfering with his vision. Reacher waited for him to glance down again.
He glanced down. Reacher let his knees go and fell vertically. Lashed back upward with his forearm and batted the Glock away. Swiped a wide arc with his other arm behind McGrath's knees and dumped him flat on his back in the dirt. Closed his hand over McGrath's wrist and squeezed gently until the Glock shook free. He picked it up by the barrel and held it the wrong way around.
"Look at this," he said.
He shook his cuff back and exposed the crusted weal on his left wrist.
"I'm not one of them," he said. "They had me handcuffed most of the time."
Then he held the Glock out, butt first, offering it again. McGrath stared at it, and then stared back into the clearing. He ducked his head left and right to take in the bodies. Glanced back at Reacher, still confused.
"We had you down as a bad guy," he said.
Reacher nodded.
"Evidently," he said. "But why?"
"Video in the dry cleaners," McGrath said. "Looked just like you were snatching her up."
Reacher shook his head.
"Innocent passerby," he said.
McGrath kept on looking hard at him. Quizzically, thinking. Reacher saw him arrive at a decision. He nodded in turn and accepted the Glock and laid it on the forest floor, exactly between them, like it's positioning was a symbol, a treaty. He started fumbling at his shirt bur tons. Cut ends of rope flailed at his wrists and ankles.
"OK, can we start over?" he said, embarrassed.
Reacher nodded and stuck out his hand.
"Sure," he said. "I'm Reacher, you're McGrath. Holly's agent-in-charge. Pleased to meet you."
McGrath smiled ruefully and shook hands limply. Then he started fumbling at the knots on his wrist, one-handed.
"You know a guy called Garber?" McGrath asked.
Reacher nodded.
"Used to work for him," he said.
"Garber told us you were clean," McGrath said. "We didn't believe him."
"Naturally," Reacher said. "Garber always tells the truth. So nobody ever believes him."
"So I apologize," McGrath said. "I'm sorry, OK? But just try and see it my way. You've been public enemy number one for five days."
Reacher waved the apology away and stood up and helped McGrath to his feet. Bent back down to the dirt and picked up the Glock and handed it to him.
"Your nose OK?" he asked.
McGrath slipped the gun into his jacket pocket. Touched his nose gently and grimaced.
"Bastard hit me," he said. "I think it's broken. Just turned and hit me, like they couldn't wait."
There was a noise in the woods, off to the left. Reacher caught McGrath's arm and pulled him deeper into the forest. Pushed through the brush and got facing east. He stood silently and listened for movement. McGrath was taking the ropes off his ankles and winding himself up to ask a question.
"So is Holly OK?" he said.
Reacher nodded. But grimly.
"So far," he said. "But it's going to be a hell of a problem getting her out."
"I know about the dynamite," McGrath said. "That was the last thing Jackson called in. Monday night."
"It's a problem," Reacher said again. "One stray round, and she's had it. And there are a hundred trigger-happy people up here. Whatever we do, we need to do it carefully. Have you got reinforcements coming in? Hostage rescue?"
McGrath shook his head.
"Not yet," he said. "Politics."
"Maybe that's good," Reacher said. "They're talking about mass suicide if they look like getting beat. Live free or die, you know?"
"Whichever," McGrath said. "Their choice. I don't care what happens to them. I just care about Holly."
They fell silent and crept together through the trees. Stopped deep in the woods, about level with the back of the mess hall. Now Reacher was winding himself up to ask a question. But he waited, frozen, a finger to his lips. There was noise to his left. A patrol, sweeping the fringe of the forest. McGrath made to move, but Reacher caught his arm and stopped him. Better to stand stock still than to risk making noise of their own. The patrol came nearer. Reacher raised his rifle and switched it to rapid fire. Smothered the sound of the click with his palm. McGrath held his breath. The patrol was visible, ten feet away through the trees. Six men, six rifles. They were glancing rhythmically as they walked, left and right, left and right, between the edge of the sunny clearing and the dark green depths of the woods. Reacher breathed out, silently. Amateurs, with poor training and bad tactics. The bright sun in their eyes on every second glance was ruining their chances of seeing into the gloom of the forest. They were blind. They passed by without stopping. Reacher followed the sound of their progress and turned back to McGrath.
"Where are Brogan and Milosevic?" he whispered.
McGrath nodded, morosely.
"I know," he said, quietly. "One of them is bent. I finally figured that out about half a second before they grabbed me up."
"Where are they?" Reacher asked again.
"Up here somewhere," McGrath said. "We came in through the ravine together, a mile apart."
"Which one is it?" Reacher asked.
McGrath shrugged.
"I don't know," he said. "Can't figure it out. I've been going over and over it. They both did good work. Milosevic found the dry cleaner. He brought the video in. Brogan did a lot of work tracing it all back here to Montana. He traced the truck. He liaised with Quantico. My gut says neither one is bent."
"When was I ID'd?" Reacher asked.
"Thursday morning," McGrath said. "We had your complete history."
Reacher nodded.
"He called it in right away," he said. "These people suddenly knew who I was, Thursday morning."
McGrath shrugged again.
"They were both there at the time," he said. "We were all down at Peterson."
"Did you get Holly's fax?" Reacher asked.
"What fax?" McGrath said. "When?"
"This morning," Reacher said. "Early, maybe ten to five? She faxed you a warning."
"We're intercepting their line," McGrath said. "In a truck, down the road here. But ten to five, I was in bed."
"So who was minding the store?" Reacher asked.
McGrath nodded.
"Milosevic and Brogan," he said, sourly. The two of them. Ten to five this morning, they'd just gone on duty. Whichever one of them it is must have gotten the fax and concealed it. But which one, I just don't know."
Reacher nodded back.
"We could figure it out," he said. "Or we could just wait and see. One of them will be walking around best of friends and the other will be in handcuffs, or dead. We'll be able to tell the difference."
McGrath nodded, sourly.
"I can't wait," he said.
Then Reacher stiffened and pulled him ten yards farther into the woods. He had heard the patrol coming back through the trees.
* * *
Inside the courtroom, Borken had heard the three shots. He was sitting in the judge's chair and he heard them clearly. They went: crack crack... crack and repeated a dozen times as each of the distant slopes cannoned the echo back toward him. He sent a runner back to the Bastion. A mile there, a mile back on the winding path through the woods. Twenty minutes wasted, then the runner got back panting with the news. Three corpses, four cut ropes."Reacher," Borken said. "I should have wasted him at the beginning."
Milosevic nodded in agreement.
"I want him kept away from me," he said. "I heard the autopsy report on your friend Peter Bell. I just want my money and safe passage out of here, OK?"
Borken nodded. Then he laughed. A sharp, nervous laugh that was part excitement, part tension. He stood up and walked out from behind the bench. Laughed and grinned and slapped Milosevic on the shoulder.
* * *
Holly Johnson knew no more than most people do about dynamite. She couldn't remember its exact chemical composition. She knew ammonium nitrate and nitro cellulose were in there somewhere. She wondered about nitroglycerin. Was that mixed in too? Or was that some other kind of explosive? Either way, she figured dynamite was some kind of a sticky fluid, soaked into a porous material and molded into sticks. Heavy sticks, quite dense. If her walls were packed with heavy dense sticks they would absorb a lot of sound. Like a soundproofing layer in a city apartment. Which meant the shots she'd heard had been reasonably close.She'd heard: crack crack... crack. But she didn't know who was shooting at who, or why. They weren't handgun shots. She knew the flat bark of a handgun from her time at Quantico. These were shots from a long gun. Not the heavy thump of the big Barratts from the rifle range. A lighter weapon than that. Somebody firing a medium-caliber rifle three times. Or three people firing once, in a ragged volley. But whichever it was, something was happening. And she had to be ready.
* * *
Garber heard the shots, too. Crack crack... crack, maybe a thousand yards northwest of him, maybe twelve hundred. Then a dozen spaced echoes coming back from the mountainsides. He was in no doubt about what they represented. An M-16, firing singles, the first pair in a tight group of two which the military called a double tap. The sound of a competent shooter. The idea was to get the second round off before the first shell case hit the ground. Then a third target, or maybe an insurance shot into the second. An unmistakable rhythm. Like a signature. The audible signature of somebody with hundreds of hours of weapons training behind him. Garber nodded to himself and moved forward through the trees.* * *
"It must be Brogan," Reacher whispered.McGrath looked surprised.
"Why Brogan?" he asked.
They were squatted down, backs to adjacent trunks, thirty yards into the woods, invisible. The search patrol had tracked back and missed them again. McGrath had given Reacher the whole story. He had rattled through the important parts of the investigation, one professional to another, in a sort of insider's shorthand. Reacher had asked sharp questions and McGrath had given short answers.
"Time and distance," Reacher said. "That was crucial. Think about it from their point of view. They put us in the truck and they raced off straight to Montana. What's that? Maybe seventeen hundred miles? Eighteen hundred?"
"Probably," McGrath allowed.
"And Brogan's a smart guy," Reacher said. "And he knows you're a smart guy. He knows you're smart enough to know that he's smart enough. So he can't dead-end the whole thing. But what he can do is keep you all far enough behind the action to stop you being a problem. And that's what he did. He managed the flow of information. The communication had to be two-way, right? So Monday, he knew they'd rented a truck. But right through Wednesday, he was still focusing you on stolen trucks, right? He wasted a lot of time with that Arizona thing. Then he finally makes the big breakthrough with the rental firm and the stuff with the mud, and he looks like the big hero, but in reality what he's done is keep you way behind the chase. He's given them all the time they need to get us here."
"But he still got us here, right?" McGrath said. "A ways behind them, OK, but he brought us right here all the same."
"No loss to him," Reacher said. "Borken was just itching to tell you where she was, soon as she was safely here, right? The destination was never going to be a secret, was it? That was the whole point. She was a deterrent to stop you attacking. No point in that, without telling you exactly where she was."
McGrath grunted. Thinking about it. Unconvinced.
"They bribed him," Reacher said. "You better believe it. They've got a big war chest, McGrath. Twenty million dollars, stolen bearer bonds."
"The armored car robbery?" McGrath asked. "Northern California somewhere? They did that?"
"They're boasting about it," Reacher said.
McGrath ran it through his head. Went pale. Reacher saw it and nodded.
"Right," he said. "Let me make a guess: Brogan was never short of money, was he? Never groused about the salary, did he?"
"Shit," McGrath said. "Two alimony checks every month, girlfriend, silk jackets, and I never even thought twice about it. I was just so grateful he wasn't one of the moaners."
"He's collecting his next payment right now," Reacher said. "And Milosevic is dead or locked up somewhere."
McGrath nodded slowly.
"And Brogan worked out of California," he said. "Before he came to me. Shit, I never thought twice. A buck gets ten he was the exact agent who went after Borken. He said Sacramento couldn't make it stick. Said the files were unclear as to why not. Why not is because Borken was handing him bucketfuls of dollars to make sure it didn't stick. And the bastard was taking them."
Reacher nodded. Said nothing.
"Shit," McGrath said again. "Shit, shit, shit. My fault."
Still Reacher said nothing. More tactful just to keep quiet. He understood McGrath's feelings. Understood his position. He had been in the same position himself, time to time in the past. He had felt the knife slip in, right between the shoulder blades.
"I'll deal with Brogan later," McGrath said finally. "After we go get Holly. She mention me at all? She realize I'd come get her? She mention that?"
Reacher nodded.
"She told me she trusted her people," he said.
43
For the first time in twenty years general Garber had killed a man. He hadn't meant to. He had meant to lay the man out and take his weapon. That was all. The man was part of an inner screen of sentries. They were posted at haphazard intervals in a line a hundred yards south of the courthouse. Garber had trawled back and forth in the woods and scoped them out. A ragged line of sentries, maybe forty or fifty yards between each one, two on the shoulders of the road and the rest in the forest.
Garber had selected the one nearest to a straight line between himself and the big white building. The man was going to have to move. Garber needed direct access. And he needed a weapon. So he had selected the man and worked nearer to him. He had scraped up a fist-sized rock from the damp forest floor. He had worked around behind him.
Their lack of training made the whole thing easy. A sentry screen should be mobile. They should be moving side-to-side along the length of the perimeter they are told to defend. That way, they cover every inch of the territory, and they find out if the next man in line has been ambushed and dumped on the floor. But these men were static. Just standing there. Watching and listening. Bad tactic.
The selected man was wearing a forage cap. It was camouflaged with the wrong camouflage. It was a black-and-gray interrupted pattern. Carefully designed to be very effective in an urban environment. Useless in a sun-dappled forest. Garber had come up behind the man and swung the rock. Hit him neatly on the back of the head.
Hit him too hard. Problem was, people are different. There's no set amount of impact that will do it. Not like playing pool. You want to roll the ball into the corner pocket, you know just about exactly how hard you need to cue. But skulls are different. Some are hard. This man's wasn't. It cracked like an eggshell and the spinal cord severed right up at the top and the man was dead before he hit the ground.
"Shit," Garber breathed.
He wasn't worried about the ethics of the situation. Not worried about that at all. Forty years of dealing with hard men gone bad had defined a whole lot of points for him, ethically. He was worried about buzzards. Unconscious men don't attract them. Dead men do. Buzzards circling overhead spread information. They tell the other sentries: one of your number is dead.
So Garber changed his plan slightly. He took the dead man's M-16 and moved forward farther than he really wanted to. He moved up to within twenty yards of where the trees petered out. He worked left and right until he saw a rock outcrop, ten yards beyond the edge of the woods. That would be the site of his next cautious penetration. He slipped behind a tree and squatted down. Stripped the rifle and checked its condition. Reassembled it, and waited.
"We made a mistake about that guy," Webster said.
General Johnson nodded.
"I wish Garber was still here," he said. "I owe him an apology."
"Planes are low on fuel," the aide said into the silence.
Johnson nodded again.
"Send one back," he said. "We don't need both of them up there anymore. Let them spell each other."
The aide called Peterson and within half a minute three of the six screens in the vehicle went blank as the outer plane peeled off and headed south. The inner plane relaxed its radius and zoomed its camera out to cover the whole area. The close-up of the clearing fell away to the size of a quarter and the big white courthouse swam into view, bottom right-hand corner of the screens. Three identical views on three glowing screens, one for each of them. They hunched forward in their chairs and stared. The radio in Webster's pocket started crackling.
"Webster?" Borken's voice said. "You there?"
"I'm here," Webster replied.
"What's with the plane?" Borken said. "You losing interest or something?"
For a second, Webster wondered how he knew. Then he remembered the vapor trails. They were like a diagram, up there in the sky.
"Who was it?" he asked. "Brogan or Milosevic?"
"What's with the plane?" Borken asked again.
"Low fuel," Webster said. "It'll be back."
There was a pause. Then Borken's voice came back.
"OK," he said.
"So who was it?" Webster asked again. "Brogan or Milosevic?"
But the radio just went dead on him. He clicked the button off and caught Johnson looking at him. Johnson's face was saying: the military man turned out good and the Bureau guy turned out bad. Webster shrugged. Tried to make it rueful. Tried to make it mean: we both made mistakes. But Johnson's face said: you should have known.
"Could be a problem, right?" the aide said. "Brogan and Milosevic? Whichever one is the good guy, he still thinks Reacher's his enemy. And whichever one is the bad guy, he knows Reacher's his enemy."
Webster looked away. Turned back to the bank of screens.
"One camera is enough," he said.
"Sure," Milosevic said. "One is as good as two."
"We don't need interference right now," Borken said. "So we should nail Reacher before we do anything else."
Milosevic glanced around, nervously.
"Don't look at me," he said. "I'm staying in here. I just want my money."
Borken looked at him. Still thinking.
"You know how to catch a tiger?" he asked. "Or a leopard or something? Out in the jungle?"
"What?" Milosevic asked.
"You tether a goat to a stake," Borken said. "And lie in wait."
"What?" Milosevic asked again.
"Reacher was willing to rescue McGrath, right?" Borken said. "So maybe he's willing to rescue your pal Brogan, too."
Garber went cold. He knew what had happened to Jackson. McGrath had told him. He raised his rifle. Sighted in on the nearer point man. Tracked him smoothly as he moved right to left. Then his peripheral vision swept the other five. Then he thought about the sentry screen behind him. He grimaced and lowered the rifle. Impossible odds. He had a rule: stick to the job in hand. He'd preached it like a gospel for forty years. And the job in hand was to get Holly Johnson out alive. He crept backward into the forest and shrugged at the two men beside him.
They saw the two point men burst out into the sunlight. Then four more men, walking in step, rifles slung, leaning outward, arms counterbalancing something heavy they were carrying. Something that was bucking and thrashing and screaming.
"Christ," McGrath whispered. "That's Brogan."
Reacher stared for a long time. Silent. Then he nodded.
"I was wrong," he said. "Milosevic is the bad guy."
McGrath clicked the Glock's trigger to release the safety device.
"Wait," Reacher whispered.
He moved right and signaled McGrath to follow. They stayed deep in the trees and paralleled the six men and Brogan across the clearing. The men were moving slow across the shale, and Brogan's screaming was getting louder. They looped past the bodies and the tent pegs and the cut ropes and walked on.
"They're going to the punishment hut," Reacher whispered.
They lost sight of them as the trees closed around the path to the next clearing. But they could still hear the screaming. Sounded like Brogan knew exactly what was going to happen to him. McGrath remembered recounting Borken's end of the conversation on the radio. Reacher remembered burying Jackson's mangled body.
They risked getting a little closer to the next clearing. Saw the six men head for the windowless hut and stop at the door. The point men turned and covered the area with their rifles. The guy gripping Brogan's right wrist fumbled the key out of his pocket with his spare hand. Brogan yelled for help. He yelled for mercy. The guy unlocked the door. Swung it open. Stopped in surprise on the threshold and shouted.
Joseph Ray came out. Still naked, his clothes balled in his arms. Dried blood all over the bottom of his face like a mask. He danced and stumbled over the shale in his bare feet. The six men watched him go.
"Who the hell's that?" McGrath whispered.
"Just some asshole," Reacher whispered back.
Brogan was dropped onto the ground. Then he was hauled upright by the collar. He was staring wildly around and screaming. Reacher saw his face, white and terrified, mouth open. The six men threw him into the hut. They stepped in after him. The door slammed. McGrath and Reacher moved closer. They heard screams and the thump of a body hitting the walls. Those sounds went on for several minutes. Then it went quiet. The door opened. The six men filed out, smiling and dusting their hands. The last man darted back for a final kick. Reacher heard the blow land and Brogan scream. Then the guy locked the door and hustled after the others. They crunched over the stones and were gone. The clearing fell silent.
Then she did what she'd been rehearsing. She pulled the rubber foot off the bottom of her crutch. Smashed the metal end into the tile in the shower. The tile shattered. She reversed the crutch and used the end of the curved elbow clip to prise the shards off the wall. She selected two. Each was a rough triangle, narrow at the base and pointed. She used the edge of the elbow clip to scrape away the clay at the leading point. Left the vitrified white surface layer intact, like the blade of a knife.
She put her weapons in two separate pockets. Pulled the shower curtain to conceal the damage. Put the rubber foot back on the crutch. Limped back to her mattress and sat down to wait.
"Was that Brogan?" Webster asked out loud.
The aide ran the video back and watched again.
"He's face down," he said. "Hard to tell."
He froze the action and used the digital manipulator to enlarge the picture. Adjusted the joystick to put the spreadeagled man in the center of the screen. Zoomed right in until the image blurred.
"Hard to tell," he said again. "It's one of them, that's for sure."
"I think it was Brogan," Webster said.
Johnson looked hard. Used his finger and thumb against the screen to estimate the guy's height, head to toes.
"How tall is he?" he asked.
"What?" McGrath said.
Reacher was behind McGrath in the trees, staring out at the punishment hut. He was staring at the front wall. The wall was maybe twelve feet long, eight feet high. Right to left there was a two-foot panel, then the door, thirty inches wide, hinged on the right, handle on the left. Then a panel probably seven and a half feet wide running down to the end of the building.
"How tall is he?" Reacher asked again.
"Christ, does it matter?" McGrath said.
"I think it does," Reacher said.
McGrath turned and stared at him.
"Five nine, maybe five ten," he said. "Not an especially big guy."
The cladding was made up of horizontal eight-by-fours nailed over the frame. There was a seam halfway up. The floor was probably three-quarters board laid over two-by-fours. Therefore the floor started nearly five inches above the bottom of the outside cladding. About an inch and a half below the bottom of the doorway.
"Skinny, right?" Reacher said.
McGrath was still staring at him.
"Thirty-eight regular, best guess," he said.
Reacher nodded. The walls would be two-by-fours clad inside and out with the plywood. Total thickness five and a half inches, maybe less if the inside cladding was thinner. Call it the inside face of the end wall was five inches in from the corner, and the floor was five inches up from the bottom.
"Right-handed or left-handed?" Reacher asked.
"Speak to me," McGrath hissed.
"Which?" Reacher said.
"Right-handed," McGrath said. "I'm pretty sure."
The two-by-fours would be on sixteen-inch centers. That was the standard dimension. But from the corner of the hut to the right-hand edge of the door, the distance was only two feet. Two feet less five inches, for the thickness of the end wall, was nineteen inches. There was probably a two-by-four set right in the middle of that span. Unless they skimped it, which was no problem. The wall would be stuffed with fiberglass wadding, for insulation.
"Stand back," Reacher whispered.
"Why?" McGrath said.
"Just do it," Reacher replied.
McGrath moved out of the way. Reacher put his eyes on a spot ten inches in from the end of the hut and just shy of five feet up from the bottom. Swayed left and rested his shoulder on a tree. Raised his M-16 and sighted it in.
"Hell are you doing?" McGrath hissed.
Reacher made no reply. Just waited for his heart to beat and fired. The rifle cracked and the bullet punched through the siding a hundred yards away. Ten inches from the corner, five feet from the ground.
"Hell are you doing?" McGrath hissed again.
Reacher just grabbed his arm and pulled him into the woods. Dragged him north and waited. Two things happened. The six men burst back into the clearing. And the door of the punishment hut opened. Brogan was framed in the doorway. His right arm was hanging limp. His right shoulder was shattered and pumping blood. In his right hand, he was holding his Bureau .38. The hammer was back. His ringer was tight on the trigger.
Reacher snicked the M-16 to burst fire. Stitched five bursts of three shells into the ground, halfway across the clearing. The six men skidded away, like they were suddenly facing an invisible barrier or a drop off a tall cliff. They ran for the woods. Brogan stepped out of the hut. Stood in a bar of sunshine and tried to lift his revolver. His arm wouldn't work. It hung uselessly.
"Decoy," Reacher said. "They thought I'd go in after him. He was waiting behind the door with his gun. I knew he was the bad guy. But they had me fooled for a moment."
McGrath nodded slowly. Stared at the government-issue .38 in Brogan's hand. Remembered his own being confiscated. He raised the Glock and wedged his wrist against a tree. Sighted down the barrel.
"Forget it," Reacher said.
McGrath kept his eyes on Brogan and shook his head.
"I'm not going to forget it," he said quietly. "Bastard sold Holly out."
"I meant forget the Glock," Reacher said. "That's a hundred yards. Glock won't get near. You'd be lucky to hit the damn hut from here."
McGrath lowered the Glock and Reacher handed him the M-16. Watched with interest as McGrath sighted it in.
"Where?" Reacher asked.
"Chest," McGrath said.
Reacher nodded.
"Chest is good," he said.
McGrath steadied himself and fired. He was good, but not really good. The rifle was still set to burst fire, and it loosed three rounds. The first hit Brogan in the upper left of his forehead, and the other two stitched upward and blasted fragments off the door frame. Good, but not very. But good enough to do the job. Brogan went down like a marionette with the strings cut. He just telescoped into the ground, right in front of the doorway. Reacher took the M-16 back and sprayed the trees on the edge of the clearing until the magazine clicked empty. Reloaded and handed the Glock back to McGrath. Nodded him east through the forest. They turned together and walked straight into Joseph Ray. He was unarmed and half dressed. Blood dried on his face like brown paint. He was fumbling with his shirt buttons. They were done up into the wrong holes.
"Women and children are going to die," he said.
"You all got an hour, Joe," Reacher said back to him. "Spread the word. Anybody wants to stay alive, better head for the hills."
The guy just shook his head.
"No," he said. "We've got to assemble on the parade ground. Those are our instructions. We've got to wait for Beau there."
"Beau won't be coming," Reacher said.
Ray shook his head again.
"He will be," he said. "You won't beat Beau, whoever you are. Can't be done. We got to wait for him. He's going to tell us what to do."
"Run for it, Joe," Reacher said. "For Christ's sake, get your kids out of here."
"Beau says they have to stay here," Ray said. "Either to enjoy the fruits of victory, or to suffer the consequences of defeat."
Reacher just stared at him. Ray's bright eyes shone out. His teeth flashed in a brief defiant smile. He ducked his head and ran away.
"Women and children are going to die?" McGrath repeated.
"Borken's propaganda," Reacher said. "He's got them all convinced compulsory suicide is the penalty for getting beat around here."
"And they're standing still for it?" McGrath asked.
"He controls them," Reacher said. "Worse than you can imagine."
"I'm not interested in beating them," McGrath said. "Right now, I just want to get Holly out."
"Same thing," Reacher said.
They walked on in silence, through the trees in the direction of the Bastion.
"How did you know?" McGrath asked. "About Brogan?"
Reacher shrugged.
"I just felt it," he said. "His face, I guess. They like hitting people in the face. They did it to you. But Brogan was unmarked. I saw his face, no damage, no blood. I figured that was wrong. The excitement of an ambush, the tension, they'd have worked it off by roughing him up a little. Like they did with you. But he was theirs, so he just walked in, handshakes all around."
McGrath nodded. Put his hand up and felt his nose.
"But what if you were wrong?" he said.
"Wouldn't have mattered," Reacher said. "If I was wrong, he wouldn't have been standing behind the door. He'd have been down on the floor with a bunch of broken ribs because all that thumping around would have been for real."
McGrath nodded again.
"And all that shouting," Reacher said. "They paraded along, real slow, with the guy shouting his head off. They were trying to attract my attention."
"They're good at that," McGrath said. "Webster's worried about it. He doesn't understand why Borken seems so set on getting attention, escalating this whole thing way bigger than he needs to."
They were in the woods. Halfway between the small clearing and the Bastion. Reacher stopped. Like the breath had been knocked out of him. His hands went up to his mouth. He stood breathless, like all the air had been sucked off the planet.
"Christ, I know why," he said. "It's a decoy."
"What?" McGrath asked.
"I'm getting a bad feeling," Reacher said.
"About what?" McGrath asked him, urgently.
"Borken," Reacher said. "Something doesn't add up. His intentions. Strike the first blow. But where's Stevie? You know what? I think there are two first blows, McGrath. This stuff up here and something else, somewhere else. A surprise attack. Like Pearl Harbor, like his damn war books. That's why he's set on escalating everything. Holly, the suicide thing. He wants all the attention up here."
Garber had selected the one nearest to a straight line between himself and the big white building. The man was going to have to move. Garber needed direct access. And he needed a weapon. So he had selected the man and worked nearer to him. He had scraped up a fist-sized rock from the damp forest floor. He had worked around behind him.
Their lack of training made the whole thing easy. A sentry screen should be mobile. They should be moving side-to-side along the length of the perimeter they are told to defend. That way, they cover every inch of the territory, and they find out if the next man in line has been ambushed and dumped on the floor. But these men were static. Just standing there. Watching and listening. Bad tactic.
The selected man was wearing a forage cap. It was camouflaged with the wrong camouflage. It was a black-and-gray interrupted pattern. Carefully designed to be very effective in an urban environment. Useless in a sun-dappled forest. Garber had come up behind the man and swung the rock. Hit him neatly on the back of the head.
Hit him too hard. Problem was, people are different. There's no set amount of impact that will do it. Not like playing pool. You want to roll the ball into the corner pocket, you know just about exactly how hard you need to cue. But skulls are different. Some are hard. This man's wasn't. It cracked like an eggshell and the spinal cord severed right up at the top and the man was dead before he hit the ground.
"Shit," Garber breathed.
He wasn't worried about the ethics of the situation. Not worried about that at all. Forty years of dealing with hard men gone bad had defined a whole lot of points for him, ethically. He was worried about buzzards. Unconscious men don't attract them. Dead men do. Buzzards circling overhead spread information. They tell the other sentries: one of your number is dead.
So Garber changed his plan slightly. He took the dead man's M-16 and moved forward farther than he really wanted to. He moved up to within twenty yards of where the trees petered out. He worked left and right until he saw a rock outcrop, ten yards beyond the edge of the woods. That would be the site of his next cautious penetration. He slipped behind a tree and squatted down. Stripped the rifle and checked its condition. Reassembled it, and waited.
* * *
Harland Webster rolled back the videotape for the fourth time and watched the action again. The puff of pink mist, the guard going down, the second guard taking off, the camera's sudden jerked zoom out to cover the whole of the clearing, the second guard silently sprawling. Then a long pause. Then Reacher's crazy sprint. Reacher tossing bodies out of the way, slashing at the ropes, bundling McGrath to safety."We made a mistake about that guy," Webster said.
General Johnson nodded.
"I wish Garber was still here," he said. "I owe him an apology."
"Planes are low on fuel," the aide said into the silence.
Johnson nodded again.
"Send one back," he said. "We don't need both of them up there anymore. Let them spell each other."
The aide called Peterson and within half a minute three of the six screens in the vehicle went blank as the outer plane peeled off and headed south. The inner plane relaxed its radius and zoomed its camera out to cover the whole area. The close-up of the clearing fell away to the size of a quarter and the big white courthouse swam into view, bottom right-hand corner of the screens. Three identical views on three glowing screens, one for each of them. They hunched forward in their chairs and stared. The radio in Webster's pocket started crackling.
"Webster?" Borken's voice said. "You there?"
"I'm here," Webster replied.
"What's with the plane?" Borken said. "You losing interest or something?"
For a second, Webster wondered how he knew. Then he remembered the vapor trails. They were like a diagram, up there in the sky.
"Who was it?" he asked. "Brogan or Milosevic?"
"What's with the plane?" Borken asked again.
"Low fuel," Webster said. "It'll be back."
There was a pause. Then Borken's voice came back.
"OK," he said.
"So who was it?" Webster asked again. "Brogan or Milosevic?"
But the radio just went dead on him. He clicked the button off and caught Johnson looking at him. Johnson's face was saying: the military man turned out good and the Bureau guy turned out bad. Webster shrugged. Tried to make it rueful. Tried to make it mean: we both made mistakes. But Johnson's face said: you should have known.
"Could be a problem, right?" the aide said. "Brogan and Milosevic? Whichever one is the good guy, he still thinks Reacher's his enemy. And whichever one is the bad guy, he knows Reacher's his enemy."
Webster looked away. Turned back to the bank of screens.
* * *
Borken put the radio back in the pocket of his black uniform. Drummed his fingers on the judge's desk. Looked at the people looking back at him."One camera is enough," he said.
"Sure," Milosevic said. "One is as good as two."
"We don't need interference right now," Borken said. "So we should nail Reacher before we do anything else."
Milosevic glanced around, nervously.
"Don't look at me," he said. "I'm staying in here. I just want my money."
Borken looked at him. Still thinking.
"You know how to catch a tiger?" he asked. "Or a leopard or something? Out in the jungle?"
"What?" Milosevic asked.
"You tether a goat to a stake," Borken said. "And lie in wait."
"What?" Milosevic asked again.
"Reacher was willing to rescue McGrath, right?" Borken said. "So maybe he's willing to rescue your pal Brogan, too."
* * *
General Garber heard the commotion and risked moving up a few yards. He made it to where the trees thinned out and he crouched. Shuffled sideways to his left to get a better view. The courthouse was dead ahead up the rise. The south wall was face-on to him, but he had a narrow angle down the front. He could see the main entrance. He could see the steps up to the door. He saw a gaggle of men come out. Six men. There were two flanking point men, alert, scanning around, rifles poised. The other four were carrying somebody, spreadeagled, face-down. The person had been seized by the wrists and the ankles. It was a man. Garber could tell by the voice. He was bucking and thrashing and screaming. It was Brogan.Garber went cold. He knew what had happened to Jackson. McGrath had told him. He raised his rifle. Sighted in on the nearer point man. Tracked him smoothly as he moved right to left. Then his peripheral vision swept the other five. Then he thought about the sentry screen behind him. He grimaced and lowered the rifle. Impossible odds. He had a rule: stick to the job in hand. He'd preached it like a gospel for forty years. And the job in hand was to get Holly Johnson out alive. He crept backward into the forest and shrugged at the two men beside him.
* * *
The Chinook crew had clambered out of their wrecked craft and stumbled away into the forest. They had thought they were heading south, but in their disorientation they had moved due north. They had passed straight through the sentry screen without knowing anything about it and come upon a three-star general sitting at the base of a pine. The general had hauled them down and told them to hide. They thought they were in a dream, and they were hoping to wake up. They said nothing and listened as the screaming faded behind the ruined county offices.* * *
Reacher and McGrath heard it minutes later. Faintly, at first, deep in the forest to their left. Then it built louder. They moved together level with a gap between huts where they could see across the Bastion to the mouth of the track. They were ten feet into the forest, far enough back to be well concealed, far enough forward to observe.They saw the two point men burst out into the sunlight. Then four more men, walking in step, rifles slung, leaning outward, arms counterbalancing something heavy they were carrying. Something that was bucking and thrashing and screaming.
"Christ," McGrath whispered. "That's Brogan."
Reacher stared for a long time. Silent. Then he nodded.
"I was wrong," he said. "Milosevic is the bad guy."
McGrath clicked the Glock's trigger to release the safety device.
"Wait," Reacher whispered.
He moved right and signaled McGrath to follow. They stayed deep in the trees and paralleled the six men and Brogan across the clearing. The men were moving slow across the shale, and Brogan's screaming was getting louder. They looped past the bodies and the tent pegs and the cut ropes and walked on.
"They're going to the punishment hut," Reacher whispered.
They lost sight of them as the trees closed around the path to the next clearing. But they could still hear the screaming. Sounded like Brogan knew exactly what was going to happen to him. McGrath remembered recounting Borken's end of the conversation on the radio. Reacher remembered burying Jackson's mangled body.
They risked getting a little closer to the next clearing. Saw the six men head for the windowless hut and stop at the door. The point men turned and covered the area with their rifles. The guy gripping Brogan's right wrist fumbled the key out of his pocket with his spare hand. Brogan yelled for help. He yelled for mercy. The guy unlocked the door. Swung it open. Stopped in surprise on the threshold and shouted.
Joseph Ray came out. Still naked, his clothes balled in his arms. Dried blood all over the bottom of his face like a mask. He danced and stumbled over the shale in his bare feet. The six men watched him go.
"Who the hell's that?" McGrath whispered.
"Just some asshole," Reacher whispered back.
Brogan was dropped onto the ground. Then he was hauled upright by the collar. He was staring wildly around and screaming. Reacher saw his face, white and terrified, mouth open. The six men threw him into the hut. They stepped in after him. The door slammed. McGrath and Reacher moved closer. They heard screams and the thump of a body hitting the walls. Those sounds went on for several minutes. Then it went quiet. The door opened. The six men filed out, smiling and dusting their hands. The last man darted back for a final kick. Reacher heard the blow land and Brogan scream. Then the guy locked the door and hustled after the others. They crunched over the stones and were gone. The clearing fell silent.
* * *
Holly limped across the raised floor to the door. Pressed her ear onto it and listened. All quiet. No sound. She limped back to her mattress and picked up the spare pair of fatigue trousers. Used her teeth to pick the seams. Tore the material apart until she had separated the front panel of one of the legs. It gave her a piece of canvas cloth maybe thirty inches long and six wide. She took it into the bathroom and ran the sink full of hot water. Soaked the strip of cloth in it. Then she took off her trousers. Squeezed the soaking canvas out and bound it as tight as she could around her knee. Tied it off and put her trousers back on. Her idea was the hot wet cloth might shrink slightly as it dried. It might tighten more. It was as near as she was going to get to solving her problem. Keeping the joint rigid was the only way to kill the pain.Then she did what she'd been rehearsing. She pulled the rubber foot off the bottom of her crutch. Smashed the metal end into the tile in the shower. The tile shattered. She reversed the crutch and used the end of the curved elbow clip to prise the shards off the wall. She selected two. Each was a rough triangle, narrow at the base and pointed. She used the edge of the elbow clip to scrape away the clay at the leading point. Left the vitrified white surface layer intact, like the blade of a knife.
She put her weapons in two separate pockets. Pulled the shower curtain to conceal the damage. Put the rubber foot back on the crutch. Limped back to her mattress and sat down to wait.
* * *
The problem with using just one camera was that it had to be set to a fairly wide shot. That was the only way to cover the whole area. So any particular thing was small on the screen. The group of men carrying something had shown up like a large insect crawling across the glass."Was that Brogan?" Webster asked out loud.
The aide ran the video back and watched again.
"He's face down," he said. "Hard to tell."
He froze the action and used the digital manipulator to enlarge the picture. Adjusted the joystick to put the spreadeagled man in the center of the screen. Zoomed right in until the image blurred.
"Hard to tell," he said again. "It's one of them, that's for sure."
"I think it was Brogan," Webster said.
Johnson looked hard. Used his finger and thumb against the screen to estimate the guy's height, head to toes.
"How tall is he?" he asked.
* * *
"How tall is he?" Reacher asked suddenly."What?" McGrath said.
Reacher was behind McGrath in the trees, staring out at the punishment hut. He was staring at the front wall. The wall was maybe twelve feet long, eight feet high. Right to left there was a two-foot panel, then the door, thirty inches wide, hinged on the right, handle on the left. Then a panel probably seven and a half feet wide running down to the end of the building.
"How tall is he?" Reacher asked again.
"Christ, does it matter?" McGrath said.
"I think it does," Reacher said.
McGrath turned and stared at him.
"Five nine, maybe five ten," he said. "Not an especially big guy."
The cladding was made up of horizontal eight-by-fours nailed over the frame. There was a seam halfway up. The floor was probably three-quarters board laid over two-by-fours. Therefore the floor started nearly five inches above the bottom of the outside cladding. About an inch and a half below the bottom of the doorway.
"Skinny, right?" Reacher said.
McGrath was still staring at him.
"Thirty-eight regular, best guess," he said.
Reacher nodded. The walls would be two-by-fours clad inside and out with the plywood. Total thickness five and a half inches, maybe less if the inside cladding was thinner. Call it the inside face of the end wall was five inches in from the corner, and the floor was five inches up from the bottom.
"Right-handed or left-handed?" Reacher asked.
"Speak to me," McGrath hissed.
"Which?" Reacher said.
"Right-handed," McGrath said. "I'm pretty sure."
The two-by-fours would be on sixteen-inch centers. That was the standard dimension. But from the corner of the hut to the right-hand edge of the door, the distance was only two feet. Two feet less five inches, for the thickness of the end wall, was nineteen inches. There was probably a two-by-four set right in the middle of that span. Unless they skimped it, which was no problem. The wall would be stuffed with fiberglass wadding, for insulation.
"Stand back," Reacher whispered.
"Why?" McGrath said.
"Just do it," Reacher replied.
McGrath moved out of the way. Reacher put his eyes on a spot ten inches in from the end of the hut and just shy of five feet up from the bottom. Swayed left and rested his shoulder on a tree. Raised his M-16 and sighted it in.
"Hell are you doing?" McGrath hissed.
Reacher made no reply. Just waited for his heart to beat and fired. The rifle cracked and the bullet punched through the siding a hundred yards away. Ten inches from the corner, five feet from the ground.
"Hell are you doing?" McGrath hissed again.
Reacher just grabbed his arm and pulled him into the woods. Dragged him north and waited. Two things happened. The six men burst back into the clearing. And the door of the punishment hut opened. Brogan was framed in the doorway. His right arm was hanging limp. His right shoulder was shattered and pumping blood. In his right hand, he was holding his Bureau .38. The hammer was back. His ringer was tight on the trigger.
Reacher snicked the M-16 to burst fire. Stitched five bursts of three shells into the ground, halfway across the clearing. The six men skidded away, like they were suddenly facing an invisible barrier or a drop off a tall cliff. They ran for the woods. Brogan stepped out of the hut. Stood in a bar of sunshine and tried to lift his revolver. His arm wouldn't work. It hung uselessly.
"Decoy," Reacher said. "They thought I'd go in after him. He was waiting behind the door with his gun. I knew he was the bad guy. But they had me fooled for a moment."
McGrath nodded slowly. Stared at the government-issue .38 in Brogan's hand. Remembered his own being confiscated. He raised the Glock and wedged his wrist against a tree. Sighted down the barrel.
"Forget it," Reacher said.
McGrath kept his eyes on Brogan and shook his head.
"I'm not going to forget it," he said quietly. "Bastard sold Holly out."
"I meant forget the Glock," Reacher said. "That's a hundred yards. Glock won't get near. You'd be lucky to hit the damn hut from here."
McGrath lowered the Glock and Reacher handed him the M-16. Watched with interest as McGrath sighted it in.
"Where?" Reacher asked.
"Chest," McGrath said.
Reacher nodded.
"Chest is good," he said.
McGrath steadied himself and fired. He was good, but not really good. The rifle was still set to burst fire, and it loosed three rounds. The first hit Brogan in the upper left of his forehead, and the other two stitched upward and blasted fragments off the door frame. Good, but not very. But good enough to do the job. Brogan went down like a marionette with the strings cut. He just telescoped into the ground, right in front of the doorway. Reacher took the M-16 back and sprayed the trees on the edge of the clearing until the magazine clicked empty. Reloaded and handed the Glock back to McGrath. Nodded him east through the forest. They turned together and walked straight into Joseph Ray. He was unarmed and half dressed. Blood dried on his face like brown paint. He was fumbling with his shirt buttons. They were done up into the wrong holes.
"Women and children are going to die," he said.
"You all got an hour, Joe," Reacher said back to him. "Spread the word. Anybody wants to stay alive, better head for the hills."
The guy just shook his head.
"No," he said. "We've got to assemble on the parade ground. Those are our instructions. We've got to wait for Beau there."
"Beau won't be coming," Reacher said.
Ray shook his head again.
"He will be," he said. "You won't beat Beau, whoever you are. Can't be done. We got to wait for him. He's going to tell us what to do."
"Run for it, Joe," Reacher said. "For Christ's sake, get your kids out of here."
"Beau says they have to stay here," Ray said. "Either to enjoy the fruits of victory, or to suffer the consequences of defeat."
Reacher just stared at him. Ray's bright eyes shone out. His teeth flashed in a brief defiant smile. He ducked his head and ran away.
"Women and children are going to die?" McGrath repeated.
"Borken's propaganda," Reacher said. "He's got them all convinced compulsory suicide is the penalty for getting beat around here."
"And they're standing still for it?" McGrath asked.
"He controls them," Reacher said. "Worse than you can imagine."
"I'm not interested in beating them," McGrath said. "Right now, I just want to get Holly out."
"Same thing," Reacher said.
They walked on in silence, through the trees in the direction of the Bastion.
"How did you know?" McGrath asked. "About Brogan?"
Reacher shrugged.
"I just felt it," he said. "His face, I guess. They like hitting people in the face. They did it to you. But Brogan was unmarked. I saw his face, no damage, no blood. I figured that was wrong. The excitement of an ambush, the tension, they'd have worked it off by roughing him up a little. Like they did with you. But he was theirs, so he just walked in, handshakes all around."
McGrath nodded. Put his hand up and felt his nose.
"But what if you were wrong?" he said.
"Wouldn't have mattered," Reacher said. "If I was wrong, he wouldn't have been standing behind the door. He'd have been down on the floor with a bunch of broken ribs because all that thumping around would have been for real."
McGrath nodded again.
"And all that shouting," Reacher said. "They paraded along, real slow, with the guy shouting his head off. They were trying to attract my attention."
"They're good at that," McGrath said. "Webster's worried about it. He doesn't understand why Borken seems so set on getting attention, escalating this whole thing way bigger than he needs to."
They were in the woods. Halfway between the small clearing and the Bastion. Reacher stopped. Like the breath had been knocked out of him. His hands went up to his mouth. He stood breathless, like all the air had been sucked off the planet.
"Christ, I know why," he said. "It's a decoy."
"What?" McGrath asked.
"I'm getting a bad feeling," Reacher said.
"About what?" McGrath asked him, urgently.
"Borken," Reacher said. "Something doesn't add up. His intentions. Strike the first blow. But where's Stevie? You know what? I think there are two first blows, McGrath. This stuff up here and something else, somewhere else. A surprise attack. Like Pearl Harbor, like his damn war books. That's why he's set on escalating everything. Holly, the suicide thing. He wants all the attention up here."
44
Holly was standing upright and facing her door when they came for her. The tight wrap on her knee was drying stiff. So she had to stand, because her leg would no longer bend. And she wanted to stand, because that was the best way to do it.
She heard the footsteps in the lobby. Heard them clatter up the stairs. Two men, she estimated. She heard them halt outside her door. Heard the key slide in and the lock click back. She blinked once and took a breath. The door opened. Two men crowded in. Two rifles. She stood upright and faced them. One stepped forward.
"Outside, bitch," he said.
She gripped her crutch. Leaned on it heavily and limped across the floor. Slowly. She wanted to be outside before anybody realized she could move better than they thought. Before anybody realized she was armed and dangerous.
"Why?" McGrath asked urgently.
"Because I haven't seen Stevie," Reacher said. "Not since early this morning. Stevie's not here anymore. Stevie's gone somewhere else."
"Reacher, you're not making any sense," McGrath said.
Reacher shook his head like he was clearing it and snapped back into focus. Set off racing east through the trees. Talking quietly, but urgently.
"I was wrong," he said. "Borken said they were going to strike the first blow. Against the system. I thought he meant the declaration of independence. I thought that was the first blow. The declaration, and the battle to secure this territory. I thought that was it. On its own. But they're doing something else as well. Somewhere else. They're doing two things at once. Simultaneous."
"What are you saying?" McGrath asked.
"Attention," Reacher said. "The declaration of independence is focusing attention up here in Montana, right?"
"Sure," McGrath said. "They planned to have CNN and the United Nations up here watching it happen. That's a lot of attention."
"But they'd have been in the wrong place," Reacher said. "Borken had a bookcase full of theory telling him not to do what they expect. A whole shelf all about Pearl Harbor. And I overheard him talking in the mine. When he was fetching the missile launcher. Fowler was with him. Borken told Fowler by tonight this place will be way down the list of priorities. So they're doing something else someplace else as well. Something different, maybe something bigger. Twin blows against the system."
"But what?" McGrath asked. "And where? Near here?"
"No," Reacher said. "Probably far away. Like Pearl Harbor was. They're reaching out, trying to land a killer blow somewhere. Because there's a time factor here. It's all coordinated."
McGrath stared at him.
"They planned it well," Reacher said. "Getting everybody's attention fixed up here. Independence. That stuff they were going to do with you. They were going to kill you slowly, with the cameras watching. Then the threats of mass suicide, women and children dying. A high-stakes siege. So nobody would be looking anywhere else. Borken's cleverer than I thought. Twin blows, each one covering for the other. Everybody's looking up here, then something big happens someplace else, everybody's looking down there, and he consolidates his new nation back up here."
"But where is it happening, for God's sake?" McGrath asked. "And what the hell is it?"
Reacher stopped and shook his head.
"I just don't know," he said.
Then he froze. There was a crashing noise up ahead and a patrol of six men burst around a tight thicket of pines and stopped dead in front of them. They had M-16s in their hands, grenades on their belts, and surprise and delight on their faces.
She heard the footsteps in the lobby. Heard them clatter up the stairs. Two men, she estimated. She heard them halt outside her door. Heard the key slide in and the lock click back. She blinked once and took a breath. The door opened. Two men crowded in. Two rifles. She stood upright and faced them. One stepped forward.
"Outside, bitch," he said.
She gripped her crutch. Leaned on it heavily and limped across the floor. Slowly. She wanted to be outside before anybody realized she could move better than they thought. Before anybody realized she was armed and dangerous.
* * *
"Strike the first blow," Reacher said. "I interpreted that all wrong.""Why?" McGrath asked urgently.
"Because I haven't seen Stevie," Reacher said. "Not since early this morning. Stevie's not here anymore. Stevie's gone somewhere else."
"Reacher, you're not making any sense," McGrath said.
Reacher shook his head like he was clearing it and snapped back into focus. Set off racing east through the trees. Talking quietly, but urgently.
"I was wrong," he said. "Borken said they were going to strike the first blow. Against the system. I thought he meant the declaration of independence. I thought that was the first blow. The declaration, and the battle to secure this territory. I thought that was it. On its own. But they're doing something else as well. Somewhere else. They're doing two things at once. Simultaneous."
"What are you saying?" McGrath asked.
"Attention," Reacher said. "The declaration of independence is focusing attention up here in Montana, right?"
"Sure," McGrath said. "They planned to have CNN and the United Nations up here watching it happen. That's a lot of attention."
"But they'd have been in the wrong place," Reacher said. "Borken had a bookcase full of theory telling him not to do what they expect. A whole shelf all about Pearl Harbor. And I overheard him talking in the mine. When he was fetching the missile launcher. Fowler was with him. Borken told Fowler by tonight this place will be way down the list of priorities. So they're doing something else someplace else as well. Something different, maybe something bigger. Twin blows against the system."
"But what?" McGrath asked. "And where? Near here?"
"No," Reacher said. "Probably far away. Like Pearl Harbor was. They're reaching out, trying to land a killer blow somewhere. Because there's a time factor here. It's all coordinated."
McGrath stared at him.
"They planned it well," Reacher said. "Getting everybody's attention fixed up here. Independence. That stuff they were going to do with you. They were going to kill you slowly, with the cameras watching. Then the threats of mass suicide, women and children dying. A high-stakes siege. So nobody would be looking anywhere else. Borken's cleverer than I thought. Twin blows, each one covering for the other. Everybody's looking up here, then something big happens someplace else, everybody's looking down there, and he consolidates his new nation back up here."
"But where is it happening, for God's sake?" McGrath asked. "And what the hell is it?"
Reacher stopped and shook his head.
"I just don't know," he said.
Then he froze. There was a crashing noise up ahead and a patrol of six men burst around a tight thicket of pines and stopped dead in front of them. They had M-16s in their hands, grenades on their belts, and surprise and delight on their faces.