shoved and dragged out a pair of pants, a shirt, a jacket. Reacher
ignored the shiny boots. He liked his own shoes better. He stripped
and dressed hopping from foot to foot on the bare wooden floor. He did
up the shirt buttons and shrugged into the jacket. The fit felt good
enough. He didn’t look for a mirror. He knew what he looked like in
fatigues. He’d spent enough years wearing them.
Next to the door, there were medical supplies ranged on shelves. Trauma
kits, plasma, antibiotics, bandages. All efficiently laid out for easy
access. Neat piles, with plenty of space between. Borken had clearly
rehearsed his people in rushing around and grabbing equipment and
administering emergency treatment.
“Beans and bandages,” Reacher said. “What about the bullets?”
Fowler nodded toward the distant shed.
That’s the armory,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
The armory was bigger than the other storage shed. Huge lock on the
door. It held more weaponry than Reacher could remember seeing in a
long time. Hundreds of rifles and machine guns in neat rows. The
stink of fresh gun oil everywhere. Floor-to-ceiling stacks of ammo
boxes. Familiar wooden crates of grenades. Shelves full of handguns.
Nothing heavier than an infantryman could carry, but it was still a
hell of an impressive sight.
The two bolts securing the mesh base were the easiest. They were
smaller than the others. The big bolts holding the frame together took
all the strain. The mesh base just rested in there. The bolts holding
it down were not structural. They could have been left out altogether
and the bed would have worked just the same.
She flaked and scraped the paint back to the bare metal. Heated the
bolt heads with the towel. Then she pulled the rubber tip off her
crutch and bent the end of the aluminum tube into an oval. She used
the strength in her fingers to crush the oval tight over the head of
the bolt. Used the handle to turn the whole of the crutch like a giant
socket wrench. It slipped off the bolt. She cursed quietly and used
one hand to crush it tighter. Turned her hand and the crutch together
as a unit. The bolt moved.
There was a beaten earth path leading out north from the ring of wooden
buildings. Fowler walked Reacher down it. It led to a shooting range.
The range was a long, flat alley painstakingly cleared of trees and
brush. It was silent and unoccupied. It was only twenty yards wide,
but over a half-mile long. There was matting laid at one end for the
shooters to lie on and far in the distance Reacher could see the
targets. He set off on a slow stroll toward them. They looked like
standard military-issue plywood cutouts of running, crouching soldiers.
The design dated right back to the Second World War. The crude screen
printing depicted a German infantryman, with a coal-scuttle helmet and
a savage snarl. But as he got closer Reacher could see these
particular targets had crude painted additions of their own. They had
new badges daubed on the chests in yellow paint. Each new badge had
three letters. Four targets had: FBI. Four had: aTF.. The targets
were staggered backwards over distances ranging from three hundred
yards right back to the full eight hundred. The nearer targets were
peppered with bullet holes.
“Everybody has to hit the three-hundred-yard targets,” Fowler said.
“It’s a requirement of citizenship here.”
Reacher shrugged. Wasn’t impressed. Three hundred yards was no kind
of a big deal. He kept on strolling down the half-mile. The
four-hundred-yard targets were damaged, the five-hundred-yard boards
less so. Reacher counted eighteen hits at six hundred yards, seven at
seven hundred, and just two at the full eight hundred.
“How old are these boards?” he asked.
Fowler shrugged.
“A month,” he said. “Maybe two. We’re working on it.”
“You better,” Reacher said.
“We don’t figure to be shooting at distance,” Fowler replied. “Beau’s
guess is the UN forces will come at night. When they think we’re
resting up. He figures they might succeed in penetrating our perimeter
to some degree. Maybe by a half-mile or so. I don’t think they will,