came in all loaded down with paramilitary gear. Reacher was familiar
with their procedures. He had read some of their manuals. Heard about
some of their training. He knew guys who had been in and out of
Quantico. He knew how the HRT worked. They were a high-technology
operation. They looked like regular soldiers, in blue. They had
vehicles. This guy he was watching was on foot in the forest. Dressed
like he had just stepped out of a meeting.
It was a puzzle. Eight Marines. No hostage rescue team. An unarmed
search-and-rescue Chinook. Then Reacher suddenly thought maybe he
understood. Maybe this was a very clandestine operation. Low profile.
Invisible. They had tracked Holly all the way west from Chicago, but
for some reason they maybe weren’t gathering any kind of a big force.
They were dealing with it alone. Some tactical reason. Maybe a
political reason. Maybe something to do with Holly and the White
House. Maybe the policy was to deal with this secretly, deal with it
hard, tackle it with a tight little team. So tight the right hand
didn’t know what the left was doing. Hence the unarmed
search-and-rescue chopper. It had come in blind. Hadn’t known what it
was getting into.
In which case this ambushed guy he was watching was direct from
Chicago. Part of the original operation that must have started up back
on Monday. He looked like a senior guy. Maybe approaching fifty.
Could be Brogan, Holly’s section head. Could even be McGrath, the top
boy. In either case that made Milosevic the mole. Question was, was
he up here as well, or was he still back in Chicago?
The jeep turned slowly in the road. The Bureau guy in the suit was in
back, jammed between two armed men. His nose was bleeding and Reacher
could see a swelling starting on his face. Borken had twisted his bulk
around and was talking at him. The rest of the ambush squad was
forming up in the road. The jeep drove past them, north toward town.
Passed by thirty yards from where Reacher was standing in the trees. He
watched it go. Turned and picked up his rifle. Strolled through the
woods, deep in thought.
His problem was priority order. He had a rule: stick to the job in
hand. The job in hand was getting Holly away safe. Nothing else. But
this Bureau guy was in trouble. He thought about Jackson. The last
Bureau guy they’d gotten hold of. Maybe this new guy was heading for
the same fate. In which case, he ought to intervene. And he liked the
look of the guy. He looked tough. Small, but strong. A lot of
energy. Some kind of charisma there. Maybe an ally would be a smart
thing to have. Two heads, better than one. Two pairs of hands. Four
trigger fingers. Useful. But his rule was: stick to the job in hand.
It had worked for him many times over the years. It was a rule which
had served him well. Should he bend that rule? Or not? He stopped
and stood concealed in the forest while the ambush squad marched by on
the road. Listened to the sound of their footsteps die away. Stood
there and thought about the guy some more and forced himself toward a
tough decision.
General Garber watched the whole thing happen, too. He was a hundred
and fifty yards south of the ambush. West side of the road, behind a
rocky outcrop, exactly three hundred yards south of where Readier had
been. He had waited three minutes and then followed McGrath in through
the ravine. Garber was also a reasonably fit man, but a lot older and
it had cost him a lot to keep pace with McGrath. He had arrived at the
rocky outcrop and collapsed, out of breath. He figured he had maybe
fifteen or twenty minutes to recover before the rendezvous took place.
Then his plan was to follow behind the three agents and see what was
going to happen. He didn’t want anybody making mistakes about Jack
Readier.
But the rendezvous had never happened. He had watched the ambush and
realized a lot of mistakes had been made about a lot of things.