early.
9.M
She smelled the first sentry before she saw him. He was moving upwind
toward her, smoking. The odor of the cigarette and the unwashed
uniform drifted down to her and she pulled silently to her right. She
looped a wide circle around him and waited. He walked on down the hill
and was gone.
The second sentry heard her. She sensed it. Sensed him stopping and
listening. She stood still. Thought hard. She didn’t want to use the
Ingram. It was too inaccurate. She was certain to miss with it. And
the noise would be fatal. So she bent down and scratched up two small
stones. An old jungle trick she had been told about as a child. She
tossed the first stone twenty feet to her left. Waited. Tossed the
second thirty feet. She heard the sentry figure something was moving
slowly away to the left. Heard him drift in that direction. She
drifted right. A wide circle, and onward, up the endless hill.
Fowler shouldered through the small semicircle of onlookers. Stepped
up face to face with him. Stared hard at him. Then six guards were
coming through the crowd. Five of them had rifles leveled and the
sixth had a length of chain in his hand. Fowler stood aside and the
five rifles jammed hard into Reacher’s gut. He glanced down at them.
The safety catches were off and they were all set to automatic fire.
Time to go,” Fowler said.
He vanished behind the sturdy trunk and Reacher felt the cuffs come
off. He leaned forward off the tree and the muzzles tracked back,
following the motion. Then the cuffs went back on, with the chain
looped into them. Fowler gripped the chain and Reacher was dragged
through the Bastion, facing the five guards. They were all walking
backward, their rifles leveled a foot from his head. People were lined
into a tight cordon. He was dragged between them. The people hissed
and muttered at him as he passed. Then they broke ranks and ran ahead
of him, up toward the parade ground.
The third sentry caught her. Her knee let her down. She had to scale
a high rocky crag, and because of her leg, she had to do it backwards.
She sat on the rock like it was a chair and used her good leg and the
crutch to push herself upward, a foot at a time. She reached the top
and rolled over on her back on the ground,
gasping from the effort, and then she squirmed upright and stood,
face-to-face with the sentry.
For a split second she was blank with surprise and shock. He wasn’t.
He had stood at the top of the bluff and watched every inch of her
agonizing progress. So he wasn’t surprised. But he was slow. An
opponent like Holly, he should have been quick. He should have been
ready. Her reaction clicked in before he could get started. Basic
training took over. It came without thinking. She balled her fist and
threw a fast, low uppercut. Caught him square in the groin. He folded
forward and down and she wrapped her left arm around his throat and
crunched him in the back of his neck with her right forearm. She felt
his vertebrae smash and his body go slack. Then she clamped her palms
over his ears and twisted his head around savagely, one way and then
the other. His spinal cord severed and she turned him and dropped him
over the crag. He thumped and crashed his way down over the rocks,
dead limbs flailing. Then she cursed and swore bitterly. Because she
should have taken his rifle. It was worth a dozen Ingrams. But there
was no way she was going to climb all the way down to get it. Climbing
back up again would delay her too long.
The parade ground was full of people. All standing in neat ranks.
Reacher guessed there were maybe a hundred people there. Men and
women. All in uniform. All armed. Their weapons formed a formidable
array of firepower. Each person had either a fully automatic rifle or
a machine gun slung over their left shoulder. Each person had an