by Lee Child
“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 that 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.
“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 quiet, 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.
BORKEN HAD DEPLOYED every man he had to the search for Reacher, except for the two he had retained to deal with Holly. He heard them start down the courthouse stairs. He pulled the radio from his pocket and flipped it open. Extended the stubby antenna and pressed the button.
“Webster?” he said. “Get focused in, OK? We’ll talk again in a minute.”
He didn’t wait for any reply. Just snapped the radio off and turned his head as he tracked the sound of the footsteps on their way outside.
FROM SEVENTY-FIVE YARDS south, Garber saw them come out the door and down the steps. He had moved out of the woods. He had moved forward and crouched behind the outcrop of rock. He figured that was safe enough, now he had backup of a sort. The Chinook crewmen were thirty yards behind him, well separated, well hidden, instructed to yell if anybody approached from the rear. So Garber
was resting easy, staring up the slope at the big white building.
He saw two armed men, bearded, starting down the steps. They were dragging a smaller figure with a crutch. A halo of dark hair, neat green fatigues. Holly Johnson. He had never seen her before. Only in the photographs the Bureau men had shown him. The photographs had not done her justice. Even from seventy-five yards, he could feel the glow of her character. Some kind of radiant energy. He felt it, and pulled his rifle closer.
THE M-16 IN Reacher’s hands was a 1987 product manufactured by the Colt Firearms Company in Hartford, Connecticut. It was the A2 version. Its principal new feature was the replacement of automatic fire with burst fire. For the sake of economy, the trigger relocked after each burst of three shells. The idea was to waste less ammunition.
Six targets, three shells each from the fresh magazine, a total of eighteen shells and six trigger pulls. Each burst of three shells took a fifth of a second, so the firing sequence itself amounted to just one and a fifth seconds. It was pulling the trigger over and over again which wasted the time. It wasted so much time for Reacher that he ran into trouble after the fourth guy was down. He wasn’t aiming. He was just tracking a casual left-to-right arc, close range into the bodies in front of him. The opposing rifles were coming up as a unit. The first four never got there. But the fifth and the sixth were already raised horizontal by the time the fourth went back down, two and a quarter seconds into the sequence.
So Reacher gambled. It was the sort of instinctive gamble you take so fast that to call it a split-second decision is to understate the speed by an absurd factor. He skipped his M-16 straight to the sixth guy, totally sure that McGrath would take the fifth guy with the Glock. The sort of instinctive gamble you take based on absolutely nothing at all except a feeling, which is itself based on absolutely nothing at all except the look of the guy, and how he compares with the look of other people worth trusting in the past.
The flat crack of the Glock was lost under the rattle of the M-16, but the fifth guy went down simultaneous with the sixth. Reacher and McGrath crashed sideways together into the brush and flattened into the ground. Stared through the sudden dead silence at the cordite smoke rising gently through the shafts of sunlight. No movement. No survivors. McGrath blew a big sigh and stuck out his hand, from flat on the ground. Reacher twisted around and shook it.
“You’re pretty quick for an old guy,” he said.
“That’s how I got to be an old guy,” McGrath said back.
They stood up slowly and ducked back farther into the trees. Then they could hear more people moving toward them in the forest. A stream of people was moving northwest out of the Bastion. McGrath raised the Glock again and Reacher snicked the M-16 back to singles. He had twelve shells left. Too few to waste, even with the A2’s economy measure. Then they saw women through the trees. Women and children. Some men with them. Family groups. They were marching in columns of two. Reacher saw Joseph Ray, a woman at his side, two boys marching blankly in front of him. He saw the woman from the mess kitchen, marching side by side with a man. Three children walking stolidly in front of them.
“Where are they going?” McGrath whispered.
“The parade ground,” Reacher said. “Borken ordered it, right?”
“Why don’t they just run for it?” McGrath said.
Reacher shrugged and said nothing. He had no explanation. He stood concealed and watched the blank faces pass through the dappled woods. Then he touched McGrath’s arm and they sprinted on through the trees and came out behind the mess hall. Reacher glanced cautiously around. Stretched up and grabbed at the roof overhang. Put a foot on the window ledge and hauled himself up onto the shingles. Crawled up the slope of the roof and steadied himself against the bright metal chimney. Raised the stolen field glasses and trained them southeast, down toward the town, thinking: OK, but what the hell else is happening? And where?
GENERAL JOHNSON’SAIDE had the most aptitude with the computer controls, either from familiarity with such things, or from being younger. He used the rubber knobs and the joystick to focus on the area in front of the courthouse steps. Then he zoomed out a touch to frame the view. He had the western face of the courthouse on the right of the screen and the eastern face of the ruined county office on the left. In between were the two lawns, one abandoned and scrubby, the other still reasonably flat. The road ran vertically up the center of the picture, like a map. The jeep which had brought McGrath in was still there where they had dumped it. The aide used it to check his focus. It came in crisp and clear. It was a military-surplus vehicle. Smudged white stencils. They could see the windshield folded down, and a canvas map case, and a jerrican for fuel and a short-handled shovel clipped on the rear.
They all saw the two men bring Holly out. From above, they were in a perfect straight diagonal line, with Holly alone in the middle, like the shape you see when a die rolls a three. They brought her out and waited. Then they saw a huge figure lumbering down the courthouse steps behind them. Borken. He stepped into the road and looked up. Right into the camera, invisible seven miles above him. He stared and waved. Raised his right hand high. There was a black gun in it. Then he looked down and fiddled with something in his left hand. Raised it to his ear. The radio on the desk in front of Webster crackled. Webster picked it up and flipped it open.
“Yes?” he said.
They saw Borken waving up at the camera again.
“See me?” he said.
“We see you,” Webster said quietly.
“See this?” Borken said.
He raised the gun again. The General’s aide zoomed in tight. Borken’s huge bulk filled the screen. Upturned pink face, black pistol held high.
“We see it,” Webster said.
The aide zoomed back out. Borken resumed his proper perspective.
“Sig-Sauer P226,” Borken said. “You familiar with that weapon?”
Webster paused. Glanced around.
“Yes,” he said.
“Nine-millimeter,” Borken said. “Fifteen shots to a clip.”
“So?” Webster asked.
Borken laughed. A loud sound in Webster’s ear.
“Time for some target practice,” Borken said. “And guess what the target is?”
They saw the two men move toward Holly. Then they saw Holly’s crutch come up. She held it level with both hands. She smashed it hard into the first man’s gut. She whipped it back and swung it. Spun and hit the second man in the head. But it was light aluminum. No weight behind it. She dropped it and her hands went to her pockets. Came out with something in each palm. Things that glinted and caught the sun. She skipped forward and slashed desperately at the face in front of her. Danced and whirled and swung the glinting weapons.
The aide jerked the zoom control. The first man was down, clutching at his throat and face. Blood on his hands. Holly was spinning fast circles, slashing at the air like a panther in a cage, turning on a stiff leg, the other foot dancing in and out as she darted left and right. Webster could hear distorted breathing and gasping through the earpiece. He could hear shouting and screaming. He stared at the screen and pleaded silently: go left, Holly, go for the jeep.
She went right. Swung her left hand high and held her right hand low, like a boxer. Darted for the second man. He raised his rifle, but crossways, in a sheer panic move to ward off the slashing blow. He punched the rifle up to meet her arm, and her wrist cracked against the barrel. Her weapon flew off into the air. She kicked hard under the rifle and caught him in the groin. He wheeled away and collapsed. She darted for Borken. Her glittering hand swung a vicious arc. Webster heard a shriek in his ear. The camera showed Borken ducking away. Holly swarming after him.
But the first man was up again, behind her. Hesitating. Then he was swinging his rifle like a bat. He caught her with the stock flat on the back of her head. She went limp. Her leg stayed stiff. She collapsed over it like she was falling over a gate and sprawled on the road at Borken’s feet.
TWO DOWN. ONE of them was Holly. Reacher adjusted the field glasses and stared at her. Two still standing. A grunt with a rifle, and Borken with a handgun and the radio. All in a tight knot, visible through the trees twelve hundred yards southeast and three hundred feet below. Reacher stared at Holly, inert on the ground. He wanted her. He loved her for her courage. Two armed men and Borken, and she’d gone for it. Hopeless, but she’d gone for it. He lowered the field glasses and hitched his legs around the chimney. Like he was riding a metal horse. The chimney was warm. His upper body was flat on the slope of the roof. His head and shoulders were barely above the ridge. He raised the field glasses again, and held his breath, and waited.
THEY SAW BORKEN’Sagitated gestures and then the injured man was getting up and moving in with the other who had hit her. They saw them pinning her arms behind her and dragging her to her feet. Her head was hanging down. One leg was bent, and the other was stiff. They propped her on it and paused. Borken signaled them to move. They dragged her away across the road. Then Borken’s voice came back in Webster’s ear, loud and breathy.
“OK, fun’s over,” he said. “Put her old man on.”
Webster handed the radio to Johnson. He stared at it. Raised it to his ear.
“Anything you want,” he said. “Anything at all. Just don’t hurt her.”
Borken laughed. A loud, relieved chuckle.
“That’s the kind of attitude I like,” he said. “Now watch this.”
The two men dragged Holly up the knoll in front of the ruined office building. Dragged her over to the stump of the dead tree. They turned her and walked her until her back thumped against the wood. They wrapped her arms around the stump behind her. Her head came up. She shook it, in a daze. One man held both wrists while the other fumbled with something. Handcuffs. He locked her wrists behind the tree. The two men stepped away, back toward Borken. Holly fell and slid down the stump. Then she pushed back and stood up. Shook her head again and gazed around.