Die Trying by Lee Child

scouted around the big empty barn. It was a sturdy metal structure,

built throughout with the same flecked, galvanized metal as the stall

railings. The big door was locked from the outside. Probably a steel

bar padlocked into place. No problem if he could get at the padlock,

but he was inside and the padlock was outside.

The walls met the floor with a right-angle flange bolted firmly into

the concrete. The walls themselves were horizontal metal panels maybe

thirty feet long, maybe four feet tall. They were joined together with

more right-angle flanges bolted together. Each flange gave a lip about

six inches deep. Like a giant stepladder with the treads four feet

apart.

He climbed the wall, hauling himself quickly upward, flange to flange,

four feet at a time. The way out of the barn was right there at the

top of the wall, seven sections up, twenty-eight feet off the ground.

There was a ventilation slot between the top of the wall and the

overhanging slope of the metal roof. About eighteen inches high. A

person could roll horizontally through the gap like an old-fashioned

high jumper hang down outside and drop twenty feet to the ground

below.

He could do that, but Holly Johnson couldn’t. She couldn’t even walk

over to the wall. She couldn’t climb it and she sure as hell couldn’t

hang down outside and drop twenty feet onto a set of wrecked cruciate

ligaments.

“Get going,” she called up to him. “Get out of here, right now.”

He ignored her and peered out through the slot into the darkness. The

overhanging eaves gave him a low horizon. Empty country as far as the

eye could see. He climbed down and went up the other three walls in

turn. The second side gave out onto country just as empty as the

first. The third had a view of a farmhouse. White shingles. Lights

in two windows. The fourth side of the barn looked straight up the

farm track. About a hundred and fifty yards to a featureless road.

Emptiness beyond. In the far distance, a single set of headlight

beams. Flicking and bouncing. Widely spaced. Growing larger. Getting

nearer. The truck, coming back.

“Can you see where we are?” Holly called up to him.

“No idea,” Reacher called back. “Farming country somewhere. Could be

anywhere. Where do they have cows like this? And fields and stuff?”

“Is it hilly out there?” Holly called. “Or flat?”

“Can’t tell,” Reacher said. Too dark. Maybe a little hilly.”

“Could be Pennsylvania,” Holly said. They have hills and cows

there.”

Reacher climbed down the fourth wall and walked back to her stall.

“Get out of here, for Christ’s sake,” she said to him. “Raise the

alarm.”

He shook his head. He heard the diesel slowing to turn into the

track.

That may not be the best option,” he said.

She stared at him.

“Who the hell gave you an option?” she said. “I’m ordering you.

You’re a civilian and I’m FBI and I’m ordering you to get yourself to

safety right now.”

Reacher just shrugged and stood there.

“I’m ordering you, OK?” Holly said again. “You going to obey me?”

Reacher shook his head again.

“No,” he said.

She glared at him. Then the truck was back. They heard the roar of

the diesel and the groan of the springs on the rough track outside.

Reacher locked Holly’s cuff and ran back to his stall. They heard the

truck door slam and footsteps on the concrete. Reacher chained his

wrist to the railing and bent the fork back into shape. When the barn

door opened and the light came on, he was sitting quietly on the

straw.

SEVEN

THE MATERIAL USED TO PACK THE TWENTY-TWO-INCH CAVITY between the

outside of the old walls and the inside of the new walls was hauled

over from its storage shed in an open pickup truck. There was a ton of

it and it took four trips. Each consignment was carefully unloaded by

a team of eight volunteers. They worked together like an old-fashioned

bucket-brigade attending a fire. They passed each box along, hand to

hand, into the building, up the stairs to the second floor. The boxes