Die Trying by Lee Child

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