Die Trying by Lee Child

tracks running east through the forest.”

She nodded and he pushed off the tree. They hustled up the winding

path to the Bastion. A mile, in the dark. They stumbled on the stones

and saved their breath for walking. The clearing was dark and silent.

They worked their way around beyond the mess hall to the back of the

communications hut. They came out one of the trees and Reacher stepped

close and pressed his ear to the plywood siding. There was no sound

inside.

He used the wire again and they were inside within ten seconds. Holly

found paper and pen. Wrote her message. Dialed the Chicago fax number

and fed the sheet into the machine. It whirred obediently and pulled

the paper through. Fed it back out into her waiting hand. She hit the

button for the confirmation. Didn’t want to leave any trace behind.

Another sheet fed out. It showed the destination number correct. Timed

the message at ten minutes to five, Friday morning, the fourth of July.

She shredded both papers small and buried the pieces in the bottom of

a trashcan.

Reacher rooted around on the long counter and found a paper clip.

Followed Holly back out into the moonlight and relocked the door.

Dodged around and found the cable leading down from the short-wave whip

into the side of the hut. Took the paper clip and worried at it until

it broke. Forced the broken end through the cable like a pin. Pushed

it through until it was even, a fraction showing at each side. The

metal would short-circuit the antenna by connecting the wire inside to

the foil screen. The signal would come down out of the ether, down the

wire, leak into the foil and run away to ground without ever reaching

the short-wave unit itself. The best way to disable a radio. Smash

one up, it gets repaired. This way, the fault is untraceable, until an

exhausted technician finally thinks to check.

“We need weapons,” Holly whispered to him.

He nodded. They crept together to the armory door. He looked at the

lock. Gave it up. It was a huge thing. Unpickable.

“I’ll take the Glock from the guy guarding me,” he whispered.

She nodded. They ducked back into the trees and walked through to the

next clearing. Reacher tried to think of a story to explain his

appearance to Joseph Ray. Figured he might say something about being

beamed over to the UN. Talk about how high-speed beaming can rip you

up a little. They crept around behind the punishment hut and listened.

All quiet. They skirted the corner and Reacher pulled the door. Walked

straight into a nine-millimeter. This time, it wasn’t a Glock. It was

a Sig-Sauer. Not Joseph Ray’s. It was Beau Borken’s. He was standing

just inside the door with Little Stevie at his side, grinning.

THIRTY-SEVEN

FOUR-THIRTY IN THE MORNING, WEBSTER WAS MORE THAN READY for the watch

change. Johnson and Garber and the general’s aide were dozing in their

chairs. McGrath was outside with the telephone linemen. They were

just finishing up. The job had taken much longer than they had

anticipated. Some kind of interface problem. They had physically cut

the phone line coming out of Yorke, and bent the stiff copper down to a

temporary terminal box they had placed at the base of a pole. Then

they had spooled cable from the terminal box down the road to the

mobile command vehicle. Connected it into one of the communications

ports.

But it didn’t work. Not right away. The linemen had fussed with

multimeters and muttered about impedances and capacitances. They had

worked for three solid hours. They were ready to blame the army truck

for the incompatibility when they thought to go back and check their

own temporary terminal box. The fault lay there. A failed component.

They wired in a spare and the whole circuit worked perfectly. Four

thirty-five in the morning, McGrath was shaking their hands and

swearing them to silence when Webster came out of the trailer. The two

men stood and watched them drive away. The noise of their truck died

around the curve. Webster and McGrath stayed standing in the bright