Die Trying

by Child, Lee

  “Reacher,” Borken said. “I should have wasted him at the beginning.”

  Milosevic nodded in agreement.

  “I want him kept away from me,” Milosevic 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 nitrocellulose 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 Barretts 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. Thirty 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, spread-eagled, facedown. 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 dance
d 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 pry 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.