Die Trying by Lee Child

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,