by Lee Child
The second-biggest chunk of the money was carried by Westwood. Enough to impress. His cockpit computer was a rented Ford’s speedometer and his wristwatch. High school, not postgrad. If a car needs to travel fifteen miles in fifteen minutes, how fast must it go? All tied to the train, of course. He found an AM station with traffic-and-weather-together, which said the railroad was on or close. To schedule, presumably. He could do no better.
Meanwhile Reacher and Chang were in the FedEx truck. They had called the depot in Oklahoma City and said they had a super-rush urgent overnight package for a place called Mother’s Rest. They were told the latest time they could bring it. They came five minutes before. They found the night driver smoking in the alley. He said Mother’s Rest was on his regular route. He agreed official bank-banded bricks of hundred dollar bills were wonderful things. Especially with a little psychology thrown in. Take as many as you want. Whatever you think is fair. All we want to do is ride in the back. And arrive at train time exactly. Which the guy said he could do. No problem. With his eyes shut. It was his regular route. They could ride up front if they wanted, and then hop in the back when they were getting close by.
And then hop out again, hopefully unnoticed, behind the Cadillac driver’s store, amid all the helicopter mayhem and the train panic and the Westwood confusion. If the timing worked. Which it had, apparently. There had been plenty of mayhem. That was for damn sure. And no one in the store. Which was a bonus in the short term. But a burden in the long term. It was one more thing for later.
Which began with whichever Moynahan it was Reacher had kicked in the balls. They saw the guy limping along a cross street, heading in the direction of the diner or the store. Or the motel, conceivably. He went down easy, hog-tied tight with five of the cable zips from the hardware store, and gagged with one of the rags from the same source, and dumped in the abandoned CPA’s office next door to FedEx, which had not been furnished with much of a lock.
Then came the guy’s brother or cousin or whatever he was, wearing a ridiculous leather hat, looking for something. He went down too, just as easy, five cable ties, one rag, and a berth on the CPA’s floor, right next to his relative. Then came the spare parts guy. From the irrigation store. Looking for the first two. This time there was no conversation about football. Just the ties, a rag, the floor.
Regular folk kept well out the way. They stayed indoors. Some kind of an ancient instinct, presumably. Maybe because of the sub-machineguns. They looked alien. Like movie props. Nothing to do but hide. The 911 service was the same thing as disconnected. The cops were a long way away. And it was hot anyway. More comfortable inside, with the AC.
The Cadillac driver walked right into it. He thought his store was still his. Ties, rag, floor. They had to go further to find the dry goods owner. They got him coming out the back of his building, holding a small bottle of Pepto-Bismol. Ties, rag, floor.
Then the well ran dry, when the crew-cab screamed away from behind the diner.
Leaving Westwood all alone.
Who said, “They agreed to the gasoline engine.”
Reacher nodded. “They’ll keep the con going to the end. Whatever it is.”
“I assume the farm is where they went.”
“Where else is there?”
“Are we ready?”
“We’ve done what we can.”
“I’ll get us there.”
“I know you will.”
“And that’s where you’ll ditch me, right?”
Chang said, “We won’t ditch you. Unless you want to be ditched.”
“I don’t.”
Reacher said, “I wish I could send you ahead. Instead of me. You’re a grown-up. I don’t care what happens to you. Come if you want. Stay with us all the way. But stay with us on my left-hand side.”
“Why that?”
“I’m right-handed. I like freedom of movement.”
“Understood. Let’s go.”
In the normal way of business it would have been called a test drive. An unfamiliar piece of equipment, driven briefly and experimentally by an intending purchaser. Except that Reacher was not an intending purchaser. He rarely purchased anything, and nothing that wasn’t consumable, and certainly not farm equipment. The salesman knew. And Reacher wasn’t driving it, either, because he couldn’t. He didn’t know how. He got over the first problem with the sub-machinegun, and the second with Westwood, who had once learned how to drive such a thing because science editors sometimes got sucked into judging science projects, which sometimes led to hands-on involvement in neighborhood do-gooder bullshit, which often meant shoveling some kind of actual shit, and mechanically was always the best way to handle that.
It was a New Holland backhoe, from the farm equipment dealer north of the wagon train trail. Westwood chugged it back through the plaza and onward past the motel. If not a test drive, at least a courtesy loan. Without the courtesy part. But a loan nonetheless. Reacher had no intention of keeping it. On the back it had a claw arm and a digging shovel, very narrow, with two aggressive teeth. An entrenching tool. On the front the bucket was broad and tall, but shallow. More like a bulldozer blade. It was clearly a versatile machine. All kinds of things could be bolted on. It was brand-new, brightly painted, and completely clean. It had a new-backhoe smell. The cab was just about wide enough for three, but there was only one seat. Westwood was in it, because he had to be. There were all kinds of levers and pedals. Chang was standing sideways on Westwood’s left, and Reacher was jammed in sideways on his right. The engine was roaring. The thing was built for hard work and short back-and-forth distances, between hole and pile, but there were road-going gears in there too. Westwood had it wound up to about thirty miles an hour when they left the plaza.
Not into the mouth of the private driveway.
Into the wheat.
Westwood had the front bucket set a couple of feet off the ground, with the bottom edge jutting forward. Like a metal chin. It smashed the wheat down, like a blunt scythe, and thick golden clouds of dust and fragments filled the air, like an ongoing linear explosion, and stalky debris thrashed the underside, and on the edges of the furrow the wheat swayed back in waves and brushed the windows. The land was flat in a global sense but where the rubber met the dirt it was uneven and lumpy. The backhoe was pitching fore-and-aft like a boat, and bouncing on its tires. They were soft, and they bulged and floundered on every bump. Westwood was hammering up and down in his seat. Reacher and Chang were hanging on sideways, like subway riders on a runaway train.
The metal chin hammered on.
Dust and fragments howled all around them.
Thirty miles an hour.
Twenty miles to go.
Elementary school.
Forty minutes.
But better than taking the private driveway. Which could be mined. Or at least spiked. And which definitely involved a straight head-on ten-mile approach to a right-angle corner, where any sane defender would mount a fifty-caliber machine gun. Arriving by car on the dirt road would be like coming up the motel stairs two at a time. We could pick you off like squirrels. Better to have some freedom of movement. Which meant an off-road vehicle. Which meant a battering ram. Hence the front bucket. Which was also bulletproof, and the size of a twin-bed mattress. Heavy steel, for humping jagged rocks. There was a sliver of visibility over the top. As much as they needed. For the wheat, anyway. So far, so good. The plan was working. Except for one small unintended consequence. Mainly because of the slamming around.
Reacher’s headache was coming back.
Most of the way the farm was out of sight behind the wheat, so they steered by the sun. Not exact, but close enough. First visual contact happened about a quarter-mile from where they were aiming, and just about right on time. A house and six outbuildings. Fences and beaten earth. A phone line on poles. The diesel generator’s top-hat exhaust.
And the stink of hogs.
Like a chemical weapon.
Westwood looped away, and came bac
k head-on, and stopped about two hundred yards out. The engine died back to an idle. Last fragments of wheat settled back to earth.
Quiet.
All alone.
Reacher felt like a predator above a water hole.
Then the water hole started shooting back.
Three weapons firing. Long guns. All the same. Distinctive. Flat solid barks, and the crack of fast bullets in the air. NATO rounds out of M16s, if Reacher was a gambling man. All of them so far missing. Understandable. It was a deceptive shot. Two hundred yards, absolutely flat, eye to eye. Except it was absolutely curved, because it was part of a spherical planet. Hence the miscalculation.
Westwood said, “Should we back off?”
“No,” Reacher said. He counted in his head. He said, “Move up fifty yards. Now. Put the pressure on. They’re coming up to a magazine change.”
“Fifty yards forward?”
“Now.”
Westwood moved it up.
A ragged lull. Pretty slow. No infantry training. That was for damn sure. Then the pot-shots started again. All of them misses.
Until a single hit.
Right in the center of the front bucket. A tiny thrill through the framework. The bullet, collapsing. Then the sound, arriving late, a sonorous clang.
Reacher said, “I’m impressed.”
Chang said, “By what?”
“Finally they hit a target only slightly smaller than a barn door. Thereby revealing the front bucket is indeed bulletproof. So we’re good to go.”
Westwood said, “Now?”
“No time like the present.”
Chang said, “Take care, Reacher.”
“You too, Chang.”
They opened their doors and jumped down to the ground, one on the left, and one on the right.
Chapter 55
Westwood had quoted from his recent research and said old-style wheat grew about four feet tall, but it was being bred down to a brawnier plant with more seeds, just two feet high. In which case the local farmers were still old-style. The wheat was easily four feet tall. Not that Reacher needed it for cover. Very little cover was required against guys who couldn’t hit a target only slightly smaller than a barn door. But surprise was always a good thing. So he crawled. Some visible disturbance, but gentle, and hard to locate precisely where, from two hundred yards. The nighttime dew had not burned off. His knees and elbows got thick with mud. There were new clothes in his future. That was clear. Even without the mud. The smell of the hogs was pretty bad. The air was thick with it. It was bound to get in the fabric. So, a new outfit tomorrow. A good idea anyway, he thought, with Chang around.
Then he thought, this ends today.
Chang won’t be around tomorrow.
After a hundred lateral yards he curved tight toward the farm, aiming to get closer to it as he moved around its perimeter. As close as possible. Less than a hundred feet would make him happy. He was a big admirer of the MP5K. It was a slightly-swollen handgun that worked like a much-miniaturized rifle. Set to single shot, it stood a chance of hitting at ninety feet. Or eighty. Or seventy-five. Which would be a bonus.
Five minutes in he risked raising his head to check where he was. Which was in a pretty good spot. He had moved around the dial counterclockwise, from the ten to beyond the eight. And he had gotten much closer. And sure enough, the countervailing defenders, being uncertain of their marksmanship, had grouped at a point physically nearest the main threat, but consistent with their own safety. They perceived the main threat to be the backhoe, and the nearest cover was an outbuilding near the fence, about the size of a single-car garage. Three guys were hiding behind it. Which put them exactly side on to Reacher. Clear as day. A classic flanking maneuver. West Point would have been proud.
The counterman from the diner was there. And the one-eyed clerk from the motel. And the hog farmer, who had led the deputation up the stairs. Big hands, broad shoulders, clothes all covered with dirt.
All of them with M16 rifles.
Reacher waited. His head hurt, both sides.
Chang crawled the other way, and got closer sooner, because her role was not to outflank. Her role was to wait for the backhoe to move, and then open a second front with a sustained burst of fire. Which would drive them into cover, where Reacher would shoot them in the back.
That was his plan. She had been dubious. But his plan had worked so far. He had predicted four early prisoners and gotten five. And he predicted at the farm they would shoot but miss, and he was right about that too. But even so she had asked him again if this part would work. No, he had said, it won’t. They’ll fall back to the house. A managed retreat. They must have a position prepared. Something hardened. Like a safe room.
She had asked, then why are we doing it this way?
He had said, because we might get lucky.
She crawled on. She wanted to get closer. She knew the numbers. A thirty-round magazine would be gone in two seconds. She wanted to make both of them count. She wanted to get lucky. If she hit one and he hit one, that was two less for later. Which was good.
Which were words she had never spoken, before she met him.
She crawled on, getting closer. The smell of the pigs was bad. In her head she lined herself up with the satellite image. She was at the eleven o’clock position. The hog pen was at the three. It stank. It told her two things. This was no genteel resort. Not possible. Some folks couldn’t come close. Not without gagging.
And Keever was buried there. She knew. In the hog pen. They couldn’t dig in the fields. Even a low-speed version of how Westwood had driven would be visible from the air. And they would worry about the air. They had Keever’s wallet. They had seen his FBI cards. Defunct, like hers, but they didn’t know that.
She felt close to him.
She raised her head. She saw a fence and an outbuilding about the size of a single-car garage. The backhoe sat alone, idling, knee deep in the wheat, far to her right. The outbuilding was their only cover against it. At least one of them would lean out and fire. Right in front of her.
She put two spare magazines on the ground. Lined up and ready to go.
She wanted to get lucky.
She clicked her fire selector to auto.
She lined up her sights.
She waited.
Westwood kicked the engine to life and pulled levers, and pushed others, and he brought the front bucket vertical, and moved it up, until he could see nothing out the windshield but its painted rear surface. Safety over visibility. His part of the plan was fluid from that point onward. Reacher had told him to hold the wheel straight and drive slowly forward. Blind. Keep on going. Through the fence if necessary. Don’t worry. Don’t stop. Unless something else happens first.
Fluid.
The future of journalism. The internet had changed everything. Now news was personal. The reporter had to be in the story. A first-hand account. The reporter had to be the story.
Blogs, features, platforms, book deals.
He dipped the clutch. He rattled the lever into gear.
He set off forward.
Reacher heard the backhoe move. He felt dizzy. He was on his knees, but he was swaying. He raised his head. Two fences. Two outbuildings. Six guys. Double vision. He smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. He tried again.
Better.
Way to his left the backhoe rolled forward. The big slack tires gave and flexed. The three guys stood back-to, pressed up against the rear of the building. Rifles at port arms. Then the counterman rolled around the corner and inched along the end wall. He got to the next corner and took a cautious look. He raised his rifle.
Reacher aimed. The H&K was essentially a twelve-inch tube with a pistol grip at both ends. Very precise. Iron sights.
The counterman aimed at the backhoe. And waited. Behind him the one-eyed guy slid toward the opposite corner.
The backhoe rolled on. The tires squelched. The wheat brushed the bottom of the bucket, and sprang back up.
>
Reacher’s head hurt. Both sides. A cerebral contusion, contusio cerebri, in fact two, both coup and contre-coup. Arcing and sparking between them, like electricity.
Then Chang fired.
Full auto. Nine hundred rounds a minute. Impossibly fast. A brief blur of sound, like a manic sewing machine. Two seconds. A whole mag. Dirt stitched up in a line and a splinter of wood blew off the building.
The one-eyed guy ducked back.
The counterman craned further around his corner, looking for the new source of danger. Reacher’s gun tracked his move. Rear sight, front sight, target.
Reacher fired. Single shot. Range, eighty feet. Nine-millimeter Parabellum, 124 grains, full metal jacket. Muzzle velocity, more than eight hundred miles an hour. Time to target, less than a fifteenth of a second. Virtually instantaneous.
The round hit the guy high on the back, dead center, at the base of the neck. A spine shot. Lucky. Reacher had been aiming lower, at center mass. The biggest part of the target. Always safest. With an in-built advantage. Center meant center. There was stuff on the edges, side to side, and especially up and down. The legs and the head. Misses had somewhere to go. The guy went down. Just a slow fall forward into the corner of the building, which tipped him around and dumped him on the floor.
The hog farmer hit the deck. Out of sight. Behind the wheat. Smart guy. But the one-eyed clerk took a step. Raised his gun. Fired. The bullet cracked in the air and smashed through the wheat about thirty feet to Reacher’s right.
Chang fired again.
A second magazine. Good for her. Resolve and determination. The same manic purring. Dirt kicked up and splinters flew.
Then silence.
The one-eyed guy slid back to the corner and leaned around and aimed at where the sound had been.
The backhoe rolled closer.
Some small part of Reacher’s mind didn’t want to shoot at the one-eyed guy. He’s a poor old handicapped man. Didn’t seem fair. Except right then he was a poor old handicapped man pointing a lethal weapon at Chang. So Reacher aimed. About ninety feet. He kept his focus tight on the front sight. A needle post in a hooded ring. He stared at its paint. At its every molecular pit and detail. Razor sharp. The rear sight was a blur. The target was a blur. For maximum accuracy. How he was trained. The front sight was everything. Eventually it would all come together. Blur, post, blur. And it did. Three things merged. Linear. Rock steady.