will hide them all winter.’
‘OK, let’s go for it,’ Neagley said.
She buzzed her window down and a flurry of snow blew in on
a gale of freezing air. She picked up the Heckler & Koch and
clicked it to full auto. Reacher accelerated hard and plunged
through the next two dips as fast as the truck could take it.
Then he jammed on the brakes at the top of the third peak and
flicked the wheel left. The truck slewed sideways and slid to a
stop with the passenger window facing forward and Neagley
leaned all the way out and waited. The gold Tahoe reared up a
hundred yards ahead and she loosed a long raking burst of fire
aimed low at the rear tyres and the fuel tank. The Tahoe paused
fractionally and then rocked over the peak of its rise and
disappeared again.
Reacher spun the wheel and hit the gas and crawled after it.
The stop had cost them maybe another hundred yards. He
ploughed through three consecutive ravines and stopped again
on the fourth peak. They waited. Ten seconds, fifteen. The
Tahoe did not reappear. They waited twenty seconds. Thirty.
‘Hell is it?’ Reacher muttered.
He slid the truck down the windward face, through the snow,
up the other side. Straight over the top into the next dip. Up the
rise, over the top, down into the snow. No sign of the Tahoe. He
powered on. The tyres spun and the engine screamed. He made
it up the next rise. Stopped dead at the top. The land fell away
twenty feet into a broad gulch. It was thick with snow and the
icy stalks of grass showed less than a foot above it. The Tahoe’s
incoming tracks from the day before were visible straight
ahead, almost obscured by wind and fresh snowfall. But its
outgoing tracks were deep and new. They turned sharply right
385
and ran away to the north, through a tight curve in the ravine,
and then out of sight behind a snow-covered outcrop. There was
silence all around. Snow was driving straight at them. It
was coming upward at them, off the bottom of the dip.
Time and space, Reacher thought. Four dimensions. A classic
tactical problem. The Tahoe might have U-turned and might
be aiming to arrive back at the crucial place at the crucial
time. It could retrace its path and be back near the church just
before Armstrong touched down. But to chase it blind would be
suicide. Because it might not be doubling back at all. It might
be waiting in ambush round the next corner. But to spend too
long thinking about it would be suicide too. Because it might
not be doubling back or waiting in ambush. It might be circling
right round and aiming to come up behind them. A classic
problem. Reacher glanced at his watch. Almost the point of no
return. They had been gone nearly thirty minutes. Therefore it
would take nearly thirty to get back. And Armstrong had been
due in an hour and five.
‘Feel like getting cold?’ he said.
‘No alternative,’ Neagley said back. She opened her door and
slid out into the snow. Ran clumsily to her right, fighting
through the drifts, over the rocks, aiming to connect the legs of
the U. He took his foot off the brake and. nudged the wheel and
eased down the slope. Turned hard right in the ravine bottom
and followed the Tahoe’s tracks. It was the best solution he
could improvise. If the Tahoe was doubling back, he couldn’t
wait for ever. No point in driving cautiously back to the church
and arriving there after Armstrong was already dead. And if he was driving straight into an ambush, he was happy enough to
do it with Neagley standing behind his opponents with a submachine
gun in her hands. He figured that would pretty much
guarantee his survival.
But there was no ambush. He came round the rocks and
turned back east and ¢saw nothing at all except empty wheel
tracks in the snow and Neagley standing fifty yards farther on
with the sun on her back and her gun raised over her head. The all clear signal. He hit the gas and raced up towards her.