“Wait,” Webster shouted. “What if you’re wrong? What if it’s empty?
You’re only guessing, right? This whole thing is guesswork. We need
proof, Reacher. We need some kind of corroboration here.”
Reacher didn’t glance back. Kept his eye on the scope.
“Bullshit,” he said, quietly, concentrating. This is going to be all
the corroboration we need.”
Webster grabbed his arm.
“You can’t do this,” he said. “You could be killing an innocent
man.”
“Bullshit,” Reacher said again. “If he’s an innocent man, I won’t be
killing him, will I?”
He shook Webster’s hand off his arm. Turned to face him.
Think about it, Webster,” he said. “Relax. Be logical. The proof
comes after I shoot, right? If he’s hauling a bomb, we’ll know all
about it. If he’s hauling fresh air, nothing bad will happen to him.
He’ll just get another hole in his damn truck. Number one hundred and
fourteen.”
He turned back to the door. Raised the rifle again. Acquired the
target. Out of sheer habit, he waited for his breath to be out and his
heart to be between beats. Then he pulled the trigger. It took a
thousandth of a second for the sound of the shot to hit his ear, and
seventy times as long as that for the big heavy bullet to hit the
truck. Nothing happened for a second. Then the truck ceased to exist.
It was suddenly a blinding fireball rolling down the highway like a hot
white tumbleweed. A gigantic concussion ring blasted outward. The
helicopter was hit by a violent shock-wave and tossed sideways and five
hundred feet higher in the air. The pilot caught it at the top and
slewed back. Steadied it in the air and swung around. Dropped the
nose. There was nothing to see on the highway except a roiling cloud
of thin smoke slowing into a teardrop shape three hundred yards long.
No debris, no metal, no hurtling wheels, no clattering wreckage.
Nothing at all except microscopic invisible particles of vapor
accelerating into the atmosphere way faster than the speed of sound.
The pilot stuck around at a hover for a long moment and then drifted
east. Put his craft gently down on the scrub, a hundred yards from the
shoulder. Shut the engines down. Reacher sat in the deafening silence
and undipped his belt. Laid the Barrett on the floor and vaulted out
through the open door. Walked slowly toward the highway.
A ton of dynamite. A whole ton. A hell of a bang. There was nothing
left at all. He guessed there were flattened grasses for a half-mile
all around but that was it. The terrible energy of the explosion had
blasted outward and met absolutely nothing at all in its path. Nothing
soft, nothing vulnerable. It had blasted outward and then weakened and
slowed and died to a puff of breeze miles away and it had hurt nothing.
Nothing at all. He stood in the silence and closed his eyes.
Then he heard footsteps behind him. It was Holly. He heard her good
leg alternating with her bad leg. A long stride, then a shuffle. He
opened his eyes and looked at the road. She walked around in front of
him and stopped. Laid her head on his chest and put her arms around
him. Squeezed him tight and held on. He raised his hand to her head
and smoothed her hair behind her ear, like he had seen her do.
“All done,” she said.
“Get a problem, solve a problem,” he said. That’s my rule.”
She was quiet for a long time.
“I wish it was always that easy,” she said.
The way she said it, after the delay, it was like a long speech. Like
a closely reasoned argument. He pretended not to know which problem
she was talking about.
“Your father?” he said. “You’re way, way out of his shadow now.”
She shook her head against his chest.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Believe it,” he said. That thing you did for me on the parade ground
was the smartest, coolest, bravest thing I ever saw anybody do, man or
woman, young or old. Better than anything I ever did. Better than