Die Trying by Lee Child

Johnson gasped and stared at his daughter.

“When was this?” he asked.

“Few hours ago,” Milosevic said. “She’s alive and well.”

He froze the picture and tapped his fingernail four times on the

glass.

“Readier,” he said. “Stevie Stewart. We figure this one is Odell

Fowler. And the fat guy is Beau Borken. Matches his file photo from

California.”

Then he hit play again. The camera held steady on the matting, from

seven miles up in the sky. Borken pressed his bulk to the floor and

lay motionless. Then a silent puff of dust was seen under the muzzle

of his rifle.

They’re shooting a little over eight hundred yards,” Milosevic said.

“Some kind of a competition, I guess.”

They watched Borken’s five final shots, and then Reacher picked up his

rifle.

That’s a Barrert,” Garber said.

Reacher lay motionless and then fired six silent shots, well spaced.

The crowd milled around, and eventually Reacher was lost to sight in

the trees to the south.

“OK,” Webster said. “How do you want to interpret that, General

Garber?”

Garber shrugged. A dogged expression on his face.

“He’s one of them, no doubt about it,” Webster said. “Did you see his

clothes? He was in uniform. Showing off on the range? Would they

give him a uniform and a rifle to play with if he wasn’t one of their

own?”

Johnson spooled the tape back and froze it. Looked at Holly for a long

moment. Then he walked out of the trailer. Called over his shoulder

to Webster.

“Director, we need to go to work,” he said. “I want to make a

contingency plan well ahead of time. No reason for us not to be ready

for this.”

Webster followed him out. Brogan and Milosevic stayed at the video

console. McGrath was watching Garber. Garber was staring at the blank

screen.

“I still don’t believe it,” he said.

He turned and saw McGrath looking at him. Nodded him out of the

trailer. The two men walked together into the silence of the night.

“I can’t prove it to you,” Garber said. “But Reacher is on our side.

I’ll absolutely guarantee that, personally.”

“Doesn’t look that way,” McGrath said. “He’s the classic type. Fits

our standard profile perfectly. Unemployed ex-military, malcontent,

dislocated childhood, probably full of all kinds of grievances.”

Garber shook his head.

“He’s none of those things,” he said. “Except unemployed ex-military.

He was a fine officer. Best I ever had. You’re making a big

mistake.”

McGrath saw the look on Garber’s face.

“So you’d trust him?” he asked. “Personally?”

Garber nodded grimly.

“With my life,” he said. “I don’t know why he’s there, but I promise

you he’s clean, and he’s going to do what needs doing, or he’s going to

die trying.”

Exactly six miles north, Holly was trusting to the same instinct. They

had taken her disassembled bed away, and she was lying on the thin

mattress on the floorboards. They had taken the soap and the shampoo

and the towel from the bathroom as a punishment. They had left the

small pool of blood from the dead woman’s head untouched. It was there

on the floor, a yard from her makeshift bed. She guessed they thought

it would upset her. They were wrong. It made her happy. She was

happy to watch it dry and blacken. She was thinking about Jackson and

staring at the stain like it was a Rorschach blot telling her: you’re

coming out of the shadow now, Holly.

Webster and Johnson came up with a fairly simple contingency plan. It

depended on geography. The exact same geography they assumed had

tempted Borken to choose Yorke as the location for his bastion. Like

all plans based on geography, it was put together using a map. Like

all plans put together using a map, it was only as good as the map was

accurate. And like most maps theirs was way out of date.

They were using a large-scale map of Montana. Most of its information

was reliable. The main features were correct. The western obstacle

was plain to see.

“We assume the river is impassable, right?” Webster said.

“Right,” Johnson agreed. The spring melts are going to be in full