Garber standing in a blast of dust. A Night Hawk was landing behind
them. Three men were spilling out and running over. A civilian and a
colonel. And General Johnson. Holly twisted and saw them and buried
her face back in Reacher’s chest.
Garber was the first to them. He pulled them out into the light and
the noise. They stumbled awkwardly, four-legged. The downdraft tore
at them. McGrath stepped near and Holly pulled herself from Reacher’s
grip and threw herself at him and hugged him hard. Then General
Johnson was moving in on her through the crowd.
“Holly,” he mouthed through the din.
She straightened in the light. Grinned at him. Hooked her hair back
behind her ears. Pulled away from McGrath and hugged her father
close.
“Still stuff for me to do, Dad,” she screamed over the engines. “I’ll
tell you everything later, OK?”
FORTY-SIX
REACHER MADE A TWIRLING SIGNAL WITH HIS HAND TO TELL THE helicopter
pilot to keep the engines spinning and ran through the noise and the
eddying dust to take the Barrett back from Garber. He waved the others
toward the machine. Hustled them up the ladder and followed them in
through the sliding door. Laid the Barrett on the metal floor and
dumped himself into a canvas chair. Pulled his headset on. Thumbed
the button and called through to the pilot.
“Stand by, OK?” he said. “I’ll give you a course as soon as I’ve got
one.”
The pilot nodded and ran the engines up out of idle. The rotor thumped
faster and the noise built louder. The weight of the aircraft came up
off the tires.
“Where the hell are we going?” Webster shouted.
“We’re chasing Stevie, chief,” McGrath shouted back. “He’s driving the
truck. The truck is full of dynamite. He’s going to explode it
somewhere. Remember what the Kendall sheriff said? Stevie always got
sent out to do the dirty work? You want me to draw you a damn
picture?”
“But he can’t have gotten out of here,” Webster yelled. The bridge is
blown. And there are no tracks through the forest. They closed them
all.”
“Forest Service guy didn’t say that,” McGrath yelled back. They closed
some of them. He wasn’t sure which ones, was all. What he said was
maybe there’s a way through, maybe there isn’t.”
They had two years to spy it out,” Reacher shouted. “You said the
pickup had spent time on Forest Service tracks, right? Crushed
sandstone all over the underside? They had two whole years to find a
way through the maze.”
Webster glanced to his left, east, over to where the forest lay beyond
the giant mountain. He nodded urgently, eyes wide.
“OK, so we got to stop him,” he yelled. “But where has he gone?”
“He’s six hours ahead of us,” Reacher shouted. “We can assume the
forest was pretty slow. Call it two hours? Then four hours on the
open road. Maybe two hundred miles? Diesel Econoline, hauling a ton,
can’t be averaging more than about fifty.”
“But which damn direction?” Webster yelled through the noise.
Holly glanced at Reacher. That was a question they had asked each
other a number of times, in relation to that exact same truck. Reacher
opened up the map in his head and trawled around it all over again,
clockwise.
“Could have gone east,” he shouted. “He’d still be in Montana, past
Great Falls. Could be down in Idaho. Could be in Oregon. Could be
halfway to Seattle.”
“No,” Garber yelled. Think about it the other way around. That’s the
key to this thing. Where has he been ordered to go? What would the
target be?”
Reacher nodded slowly. Garber was making sense. The target.
“What does Borken want to attack?” Johnson yelled.
Borken had said: you study the system and you learn to hate it. Reacher
thought hard and nodded again and thumbed his mike and called through
to the pilot.
“OK, let’s go,” he said. “Straight on south of here should do it.”
The noise increased louder and the Night Hawk lifted heavily off the
ground. It swung in the air and rose clear of the cliffs. Slipped
south and banked around. Dropped its nose and accelerated hard. The