Die Trying by Lee Child

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