Die Trying by Lee Child

came in all loaded down with paramilitary gear. Reacher was familiar

with their procedures. He had read some of their manuals. Heard about

some of their training. He knew guys who had been in and out of

Quantico. He knew how the HRT worked. They were a high-technology

operation. They looked like regular soldiers, in blue. They had

vehicles. This guy he was watching was on foot in the forest. Dressed

like he had just stepped out of a meeting.

It was a puzzle. Eight Marines. No hostage rescue team. An unarmed

search-and-rescue Chinook. Then Reacher suddenly thought maybe he

understood. Maybe this was a very clandestine operation. Low profile.

Invisible. They had tracked Holly all the way west from Chicago, but

for some reason they maybe weren’t gathering any kind of a big force.

They were dealing with it alone. Some tactical reason. Maybe a

political reason. Maybe something to do with Holly and the White

House. Maybe the policy was to deal with this secretly, deal with it

hard, tackle it with a tight little team. So tight the right hand

didn’t know what the left was doing. Hence the unarmed

search-and-rescue chopper. It had come in blind. Hadn’t known what it

was getting into.

In which case this ambushed guy he was watching was direct from

Chicago. Part of the original operation that must have started up back

on Monday. He looked like a senior guy. Maybe approaching fifty.

Could be Brogan, Holly’s section head. Could even be McGrath, the top

boy. In either case that made Milosevic the mole. Question was, was

he up here as well, or was he still back in Chicago?

The jeep turned slowly in the road. The Bureau guy in the suit was in

back, jammed between two armed men. His nose was bleeding and Reacher

could see a swelling starting on his face. Borken had twisted his bulk

around and was talking at him. The rest of the ambush squad was

forming up in the road. The jeep drove past them, north toward town.

Passed by thirty yards from where Reacher was standing in the trees. He

watched it go. Turned and picked up his rifle. Strolled through the

woods, deep in thought.

His problem was priority order. He had a rule: stick to the job in

hand. The job in hand was getting Holly away safe. Nothing else. But

this Bureau guy was in trouble. He thought about Jackson. The last

Bureau guy they’d gotten hold of. Maybe this new guy was heading for

the same fate. In which case, he ought to intervene. And he liked the

look of the guy. He looked tough. Small, but strong. A lot of

energy. Some kind of charisma there. Maybe an ally would be a smart

thing to have. Two heads, better than one. Two pairs of hands. Four

trigger fingers. Useful. But his rule was: stick to the job in hand.

It had worked for him many times over the years. It was a rule which

had served him well. Should he bend that rule? Or not? He stopped

and stood concealed in the forest while the ambush squad marched by on

the road. Listened to the sound of their footsteps die away. Stood

there and thought about the guy some more and forced himself toward a

tough decision.

General Garber watched the whole thing happen, too. He was a hundred

and fifty yards south of the ambush. West side of the road, behind a

rocky outcrop, exactly three hundred yards south of where Readier had

been. He had waited three minutes and then followed McGrath in through

the ravine. Garber was also a reasonably fit man, but a lot older and

it had cost him a lot to keep pace with McGrath. He had arrived at the

rocky outcrop and collapsed, out of breath. He figured he had maybe

fifteen or twenty minutes to recover before the rendezvous took place.

Then his plan was to follow behind the three agents and see what was

going to happen. He didn’t want anybody making mistakes about Jack

Readier.

But the rendezvous had never happened. He had watched the ambush and

realized a lot of mistakes had been made about a lot of things.