Die Trying by Lee Child

McGrath found the rifle Reacher had used before and passed it up to the

roof. Reacher took it and checked the number. Nodded. McGrath ran

like crazy for the mouth of the stony track. Disappeared down it at a

sprint. Reacher watched him go. Thumbed the big bullets in the

magazine and checked the spring. Pressed the magazine home gently with

his palm. Raised the Barrett to his shoulder and balanced it carefully

on the ridgeline. Pulled the stock in and ducked his eye to the scope.

Used his left thumb to ease the focus out to twelve hundred yards. It

racked the lens right out to the stop. He laid his left palm over the

barrel. Operated the silky mechanism and put a round in the breech.

Stared down at the scene below.

The telescope on the rifle bunched it all up, but the geometry was

fine. Holly was up on the knoll, slightly to the right of dead ahead.

Handcuffed to the dead tree. He stared at her face for a long moment.

Then he nudged the scope. Borken was below her, maybe sixty feet

farther on, firing up the rise at her, slightly to the left. He was

walking short arcs, back and forth. But anywhere he chose to stop,

there was a hundred miles of empty country behind his head. The

courthouse walls were well away from Reacher’s trajectory. Safe

enough. Safe, but not easy. Twelve hundred yards was a hell of a

distance. He breathed out and waited for Borken to stop pacing.

Then he froze. In the corner of his eye, he caught the gleam of sun on

dull metal. Maybe seventy yards farther on down the slope. A rock. A

man behind the rock. A rifle. A familiar head, grizzled hair on some

of it. General Garber. Garber, with an M-16, behind a rock, moving

the muzzle side to side as he tracked his target, who was walking short

arcs seventy yards directly in front of him.

Reacher breathed out and smiled. He felt a warm flood of gratitude.

Garber. He had back up. Garber, shooting from just seventy yards. In

that split-second he knew Holly was safe. The warm flood of gratitude

coursed through him.

Then it changed to an icy blast of panic. His brain kicked in. The

compressed geometry below him exploded into a dreadful diagram. Like

something on a page, like a textbook explanation of a disaster. From

Garber’s angle, the courthouse was directly behind Borken. When Borken

stopped moving, Garber was going to fire at him. He might hit or he

might miss. Either way, his bullet was going to hit the courthouse

wall. Probably right up there in the southeastern corner, second

floor. The ton of old dynamite would go up in a percussive fireball a

quarter mile wide. It would vaporize Holly and shred Garber himself.

The shock-wave would probably knock Reacher right off the mess hall

roof, twelve hundred yards away. How the hell could Garber not know?

Borken stopped pacing. Stood sideways on and steadied himself. Reacher

blew out a lungful of air. He moved the Barrett. He put the

crosshairs dead center on Holly Johnson’s temple, right where the soft

dark hair billowed down toward her eyes. He kept his lungs empty and

waited for the next thump of his heart. Then he squeezed the

trigger.

Garber watched Borken’s arm come up. Waited until he had steadied.

Squinted down the M-16’s sighting grooves and put the pink and white

head dead center. It sat there, big and obvious against the blur of

sunny white wall behind it. He waited like he’d been taught to a

lifetime ago. Waited until his breath was out and his heart was

between beats. Then he pulled the trigger.

General Johnson had closed his eyes. His aide was staring at the

screen. Webster was watching through a lattice of fingers, mouth open,

like a child with a new babysitter watching a horror movie on

television, way after his bedtime.

First thing out of the barrel of Reacher’s Barrett was a blast of hot

gas. The powder in the cartridge exploded in a fraction of a millionth

of a second and expanded to a superheated bubble. That bubble of gas