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 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 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.
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 facedown,” he said. “Hard to tell.”
He froze the action and used the digital
manipulator to enlarge the picture. Adjusted the joystick to put
the spread-eagled 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 Fiberglas 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 finger 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 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.”