THE JACK REACHER FILES: CHOKE (Episode 1 in the CHOKE Series)

by Jude Hardin

  “You still haven’t heard from Butler and Hauser?”

  “No, but you know how those guys are. They’re probably asleep in the truck somewhere.”

  “They’re going to get in trouble one of these days.”

  “I doubt it. These roving watches are a joke. Instead of putting four men out here every night, they need to just buy some cameras and motion sensors. Then one guy could sit at a desk and monitor the whole compound, and the duty rotation for nightshift would only come around every couple of months. This is ridiculous. It’s not like anyone’s going to bother us out here anyway.”

  “That’s a good idea. Cameras and motion sensors. You need to put that in the suggestion box.”

  “I think I will.”

  Diana waited, hoping the guys would move along so she could get Reacher’s tent number and bunk number and proceed with the mission. She was glad they stopped and chatted, though. Now she knew that there were only two roving watchmen left. There had been four, and now there were two. Everyone else was asleep.

  Two guards were no problem. If necessary, Diana could arrange for them to join their buddies Butler and Hauser out at the torture site. She could call Kobe and tell him to lure them out there and shoot them. It wasn’t what she wanted to do, but it was an option.

  She heard a metallic click followed by the sound of a thumb working a flint wheel. One of the guys outside was lighting a cigarette.

  “Want one?”

  “You know I quit.”

  “I know you quit, but do you want one?”

  “Of course I want one. Why do you want to tempt me like that?”

  “We’re all going to die of something. You know that, right? You could be hit by a bus tomorrow.”

  “I’m going to be here tomorrow. We ain’t got no buses.”

  “But you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, well, if I do get hit by a bus someday, it won’t be because an oxygen tank is slowing me down.”

  There was brief pause, and then the smoker said, “Hey, did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Listen.”

  When the men stopped talking, Diana heard something as well. A scratching sound to her left. Something clawing at the gravel outside the tent.

  Then, suddenly, it was inside the tent.

  A raccoon.

  Through the blurry green haze of the night vision goggles, she saw it go for the food on the little table, making a racket with the potato chip bag and then with the chips themselves, munching on them happily with its sharp little teeth, apparently oblivious to Diana’s presence.

  The guys outside didn’t say anything, but a couple of seconds later Diana heard the chain rattle and the padlock click open, and then she heard the door flap being unzipped. She could have waited there at the desk, and then she could have shot the guards as they entered the tent, but she figured the reports from her 9mm would be loud enough to wake some of the others, the light sleepers, even with the sound suppressor on the barrel. In the movies, a gun with a silencer makes a squeaky little coughing sound. In reality, it’s about as loud as a dictionary being dropped on a hardwood floor. Fine from a mile away, as was the case when Diana shot Butler and Hauser, but not from fifty feet, as was the case now.

  She grabbed the R file and stuffed it into her backpack, dropped to the floor and belly-crawled to the slit she’d cut with her knife, the same opening the raccoon had used to gain access to the abandoned victuals. Unfortunately, when she poked her head through to the other side, she found herself staring at the barrel of an AK-47.

  Same lower-half uniform as Butler and Hauser, camouflaged pants and black boots, but this guy had a shirt on, an olive green button-up with the name JARKE stitched over the left breast pocket.

  “Let me see your hands,” he said. “Real slow and easy.”

  Diana showed him her hands, but she didn’t do it real slow and easy. She did it real fast and hard. Before Jarke could squeeze the trigger on his automatic rifle, before he could even blink, the 9mm slug from her pistol had turned the left side of his face into hamburger.

  Diana scooted her way out of the slit, rose to her feet, ran around to the front of the tent and caught the other guard as he exited the door flap. One shot to the forehead. He dropped to the ground like a sack of bricks.

  Diana glanced over and saw a light come on inside one of the berthing tents. She needed to hurry, or it really was going to be sixty-two against one. Make that fifty-eight, she thought. Four of the CHOKE soldiers had already been eliminated. Not that it mattered much. The odds of her making it out of the compound alive had suddenly gotten a lot slimmer.

  She sprinted toward the chain link fence, toward the opening she’d cut on her way in. She ran as fast as she could, but somewhere around the halfway point, the entire area became flooded with light and a voice behind her shouted, “Stop, or I’ll shoot.”

  Diana stopped. She didn’t have a choice. She was fast, but she couldn’t outrun bullets. She dropped her pistol and raised her hands in the air and waited. Within seconds, she was surrounded by a dozen or so militiamen, some of them in full uniform and some of them shirtless and barefoot.

  One of the more squared-away soldiers stepped forward. Thirty-something, short and skinny, high and tight haircut. The nametag sewn to his shirt said GILBERT. He pulled the hood off Diana’s head and threw it on the ground, and then he removed her night vision goggles and tossed them to one of the other soldiers.

  “You shot two of our guards,” he said.

  “Actually, I shot four of them,” Diana said. “But who’s counting?”

  He backhanded her across the face. The blow stung, but Diana held her ground.

  “Who are you?” Gilbert said. “How did you get in here?”

  Diana knew that it wouldn’t do any good to lie, and she certainly couldn’t tell these goofballs the truth, so she didn’t say anything.

  Another bleary-eyed soldier walked over and stood beside Gilbert. His nametag said Prinzer. He was wearing one of those big Colt Anacondas in a holster on his hip, same as Butler and Hauser. He patted Diana down and removed everything from her pockets, including her cell phone and the little knife she’d used to slice into the tent.

  “Let’s take her out to the tree, Colonel,” he said. “We’ll get her to talk.”

  “At daybreak,” Gilbert said. “Put her in the brig for now. Find out who’s the first alternate for guard duty tonight, and tell him to—”

  “I’m the first alternate,” Prinzer said.

  “Good. She’s all yours until zero seven hundred. If she tries anything, shoot her.”

  Prinzer nodded. “Anyone got something I can tie her hands with?” he said.

  One of the soldiers tossed him a bootlace. He yanked Diana’s backpack off her shoulders, grabbed her wrists and tied them behind her back.

  “Why does Prinzer get to have all the fun?” one of the shirtless men said. “How about we all take a turn with her?”

  Gilbert stepped over and pulled Prinzer’s gun out of its holster. He walked over to the shirtless man, pressed the barrel against his forehead, and pulled the trigger. The shirtless man’s skull exploded in a spray of blood and bone and brain tissue. He fell to the ground. The soldier who’d been standing beside him turned the other way and started retching and gagging like a drunk in an alley, while most of the other men just stood there with astonished expressions on their faces.

  “Anyone else have any questions?” Gilbert said.

  Nobody said anything.

  Gilbert walked back to Prinzer and slid the gun back into the holster.

  Prinzer gripped the back of Diana’s neck with his sweaty fingers and pushed her forward. Gilbert barked out a series of orders, assigning some of the men to take care of the dead guards by the personnel tent, some to take care of the shirtless man with the top of his head blown off, and others to find out about Butler and Hauser. Everyone else followed Prinzer and Diana as far as the gravel line, mumbling an
d grumbling amongst themselves and finally dispersing and returning to their sleeping quarters.

  Prinzer led Diana to the brig tent, one hand on her neck and the other pressing the barrel of the revolver into her ribcage. When they got inside, he switched the light on and shoved her onto a narrow and filthy mattress. He sat in a chair by a folding card table, set his cell phone there in front of him, dumped Diana’s things out and then tossed the empty backpack onto the floor. He looked everything over and then started thumbing through the file folder she’d stolen.

  “Who sent you here?” he said.

  “You’ll never know.”

  “I guess you think you’re tough, huh? Just wait until morning. We’ll find out what you’re up to. Believe me. We’ll find out.”

  “You and everyone else in this camp will be dead by morning,” Diana said. “You should let me go now. It’s your only chance.”

  Prinzer laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. Diana could tell that he’d never had any real training, military or otherwise. Which wasn’t surprising. Guys like Gilbert and Reacher were exceptions in outfits like this. They ended up being the leaders because they were the only ones who knew what they were doing.

  “Dead by morning,” Prinzer said, trying to emphasize the ridiculousness of such a statement. “You’re something else. You know that? What’s your name, anyway?”

  “I’m not joking. If you want to live, you need to come over here and untie my hands right now.”

  Prinzer drew the revolver and pointed it at Diana’s chest, his arm stiff and his hand trembling like a wind sock in a hurricane.

  “Colonel Gilbert told me to shoot you if you try anything,” he said. “So don’t try anything. I’m going to sit right here until sunrise, and you’re going to stay right there, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  “You ever shot anyone before?”

  “No, but there’s always a first time. I won’t hesitate to—”

  “You saw what that gun can do. How did that make you feel?”

  Prinzer swallowed hard. Diana figured he was thinking about the man Gilbert had executed.

  Point blank.

  Bam.

  One second the man was alive, and the next second he wasn’t. Prinzer seemed to be holding up pretty well under the circumstances, but hardly anyone could witness something like that without being affected on a deep level. Diana had seen her share of death, but it wasn’t something you ever got used to. The sight of that man’s head exploding would now be added to her nightmares.

  In the one that recurred most often, Diana was a much younger version of herself, a schoolgirl maybe fifteen years old. Blood everywhere, agonized screams and shouts, ghostly faces passing by in a long and narrow hallway. Diana would try to find the exit, searching for a way out, but there was no way out. The corridor just went on and on. It didn’t end until the dream ended, until the fear finally jarred her awake.

  “We’re not going to talk anymore,” Prinzer said. “Just sit there and be quiet.”

  “Was he a friend of yours?”

  “Shut up.”

  Diana had started working on stretching out the nylon bootlace the minute Prinzer had wrapped it around her wrists. It wasn’t quite loose enough to slip out of yet, but it was getting close.

  Very close.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” she said.

  “Over there.”

  Prinzer pointed toward a steel chamber pot in the corner opposite the mattress. There was a partial roll of toilet paper on the floor beside it.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Diana said.

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  “How am I supposed to get my pants down?”

  Prinzer sat there and stared at nothing for a few seconds. He was thinking about Colonel Gilbert again. About what the shirtless man had suggested, and about the punishment he’d received.

  “I can’t help you with that,” he said.

  Diana stood and walked over to the pot. Here hands were free now, but she kept them behind her back. She hooked her thumbs into her waistband and started pretending to struggle with the cargo pants.

  “Can you at least look the other way?” she said.

  Prinzer sighed. He kept the revolver pointed in Diana’s general direction, turned his head toward the canvas wall closest to the card table.

  “Be quick about it,” he said.

  And she was.

  She was quick about it.

  She dove to the floor and rolled toward the card table. Prinzer fired, but his aim was off. Before he could squeeze the trigger a second time, Diana grabbed the barrel with one hand and the butt with the other and forcefully twisted the gun out of his hand, breaking his wrist in the process. He shouted out in agony, but his pain didn’t linger. It didn’t linger, because he was only alive for another second or two. Diana cupped his chin in her palm and grabbed his hair and twisted his head the same way she’d twisted the gun. His neck snapped like a twig, and he collapsed forward onto the table.

  Diana stuffed everything into her backpack. She slung it over her shoulder and grabbed the phone and the revolver and exited the tent.

  Right away, she heard footsteps approaching. Quickly. Heavily.

  Two men came running around the corner, and Diana used two of her remaining four bullets to put them on the ground. One of them was carrying a Colt Anaconda. Same model as the one in Diana’s hand. Same model she’d seen several times now. CHOKE must have bought a truckload of them, she thought. Maybe they’d gotten a good deal.

  The other guy had a rifle, an AR-15. Diana grabbed the rifle and tossed both of the revolvers into the bushes. As she did, she noticed lights coming on in several of the berthing tents. She made a beeline to the generator, opened the hood and hit the kill switch. As she’d suspected, an alarm sounded, an old school bell or something bolted up in one of the trees and rigged with a relay circuit, but that was of no consequence now. Everyone was waking up anyway.

  The compound was completely dark for a few seconds, and then Diana saw muted yellow beams spotting a few of the tents from the inside as the soldiers grabbed their flashlights and fumbled around for their clothes and boots. Thirty more seconds and they would all be outside and armed to the teeth.

  This time, they would shoot her on sight. There would be no delay, no waiting for daylight to perform an interrogation.

  She kept an eye on the tents until she made her way past the gravel border, and then she started running for the fence. She ran as fast as she could. Heart pounding, lungs burning, sweat dripping from every pore.

  Then she saw the razor ribbon shining in the moonlight. She was almost there.

  Somehow, she managed to pick up the pace, finding a rhythm with her respirations, blocking the pain in her legs, moving along with laser-like focus. She finally made it to the hole she’d cut, crouched down and wriggled through. She turned around and stood there quietly for a few seconds to see if anyone had followed her.

  Nothing.

  No flashlights, no footsteps, no voices.

  She’d gotten a good head start, but she was still almost a mile from where she needed to be.

  Seven minutes, under the best of circumstances.

  And these weren’t the best of circumstances.

  Even though the CHOKE soldiers probably had no idea which direction she’d gone, Diana was concerned that the they might catch up to her before she made it back. She took a few seconds to catch her breath, and then she pulled out Prinzer’s cell phone and punched in Kobe’s number.

  He answered, waited for Diana to speak first.

  “Leopard,” she said, using her code name for identification.

  “Tiger,” Kobe said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m heading your way, still about a mile out. Can you make it to the truck?”

  “I think so.”

  “Can you make it or not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Drive west. You should see me in a minute or two.”


  “Okay.”

  Diana clicked off. She turned and started running again, sprinted twenty feet or so before someone tackled her from behind and threw her to the ground, knocking the rifle out of her hands and the breath out of her lungs.

  The man standing over her must have been six-four or six-five, and she guessed he weighed at least two hundred and thirty pounds. The moon was behind him, and his silhouette looked like something cut from a bodybuilding magazine. Chest as broad as a door, arms like sacks of potatoes.

  He leaned over and picked up the AR-15, pointed it at Diana’s face.

  “What’s your business here?” he said.

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Looking for someone?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You should leave it alone. Might be bad for your health.”

  The man turned and walked away, disappeared into the shadows.

  Diana stared up at the sky, wondering why she was still alive. She’d expected the man to put a bullet in her brain.

  She sat up, struggling to draw some air into her lungs, saw a set of headlights in the distance. She stood and started waving her arms, hoping it was Kobe coming to pick her up.

  And it was.

  Thirty seconds later, she was sitting beside him in the truck. Five minutes after that, she was sitting beside him in the helicopter.

  At seven thousand feet, she unzipped her backpack, pulled out the folder she’d stolen from the CHOKE personnel tent, instructed the pilot to stay in a holding pattern until further notice. She went through every one of the pages, and when she finished she went through every one of them again.

  “There’s no file on Reacher,” she said, communicating with Kobe through the helicopter’s headset system.

  “Maybe he’s using an alias,” Kobe said.

  “Maybe, although he’s never used one before. Not that we know of.”

  Kobe reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell. He clicked on, listened, identified himself, handed the phone to Diana.