Die Trying by Lee Child

swung their gaze from window to window as the landscape rotated

below.

There was paint in the motor pool,” Reacher said. “I tripped over the

cans. Probably camouflage base coat They slapped it on this morning.

Damn stuff is probably still wet.”

They saw a Kenworth they had passed minutes ago. It was snuffling

along a thousand feet below. Then a long stretch of empty pavement.

Then a white pickup. More empty road. Then a dark-green panel truck,

speeding south.

“Down, down,” Reacher was calling through.

“Is that it?” McGrath asked.

The gap between the panel truck and the pickup in front was

lengthening. The truck was falling back. There was nothing behind it,

all the way to the horizon. The Night Hawk was losing height. It was

dropping toward the truck the way an eagle heads for a baby rabbit.

“Is that it?” McGrath asked again.

That’s it,” Reacher said.

“It sure is,” Holly whooped.

“You positive?” McGrath asked.

“Look at the roof!” Holly told him.

McGrath looked. The roof was streaked with dark-green paint, but he

could see it was peppered with tiny holes. Like somebody had fired a

shotgun right through it.

“We stared at those damn holes for two whole days,” Holly said. “I’ll

remember them the rest of my life.”

There are a hundred and thirteen of them,” Reacher said. “I counted.

It’s a prime number.”

Holly laughed and leaned over. Smacked a joyous high five with him.

That’s our truck,” she said. “No doubt about it.”

“Can you see the driver?” McGrath asked.

The pilot tilted down and rocked sideways for a close look.

“It’s Stevie,” Holly shouted back. “For sure. We’ve got him.”

This thing got weapons?” Webster asked.

Two big machine guns,” the pilot called through. “But I’m not going to

use them. That I can’t do. Military can’t get involved in law

enforcement.”

“Can you fly this thing straight and level?” Reacher asked him. “Fifty

miles an hour? Maybe sixty? Without asking too many questions?”

The pilot laughed. It came through the headsets tinny and distorted.

“I can fly this thing any old way you want me to,” he said. “With the

general’s permission, of course.”

Johnson nodded cautiously. Reacher leaned down and picked the Barrett

up off the floor. Unfastened his harness and stood up into a crouch.

Waved to Holly to change seats with him. She crawled across in front

of McGrath and Reacher eased into her place. He could feel the Night

Hawk slowing and dropping in the air. He put some length into Holly’s

harness and fastened it loosely around his waist. Stretched back for

the door release. Tugged at the handle and the door slid back on its

runners.

Then there was a gale of air coming in as the slipstream howled through

the opening and the aircraft was turning half-sideways, sliding through

the air like a car skids through snow. The green truck was below and

behind, maybe two hundred feet down. The pilot was stabilizing his

speed until he matched the truck’s progress and tilting the aircraft so

that Reacher’s eye line was pointing straight down at the road.

“How’s this?” the pilot asked.

Reacher thumbed his mike button.

“Dead on,” he said. “Anything up ahead?”

“One vehicle coming north,” the co-pilot said. “When that’s through,

you got nothing at all for ten miles.”

“Anything behind?” Reacher asked. He saw the northbound vehicle

streak by below.

McGrath stuck his head out into the gale. Ducked back in and nodded.

“Clear behind,” he said.

Reacher raised the Barrett to his shoulder. Put a round in the breech.

Shooting at a moving vehicle from another moving vehicle is not a great

recipe for accuracy, but he was looking at a distance of less than

seventy yards and a target about twenty feet long and seven feet wide,

so he wasn’t worrying about it. He put the crosshairs on a point

two-thirds of the way down the length of the roof. He figured the

forward movement of the truck and the backward movement of the air

might put the bullet dead center through the load compartment. He

wondered vaguely whether the three-foot mattress was still in there.

Aftfi