Die Trying by Lee Child

they gotten where they were going, or were they still on their way?

Two hours after starting the patient search, the fingerprint database

brought back a name: Peter Wayne Bell. There was a perfect match,

right hand, thumb and first two fingers. The computer rated the match

on the partial from the little finger as very probable.

Thirty-one years old,” Brogan said. “From Mojave, California. Two

convictions for sex of fences Charged with a double rape, three years

ago, didn’t go down. Victims were three months in the hospital. This

guy Bell had an alibi from three of his friends. Victims couldn’t make

the H), too shaken up by the beatings.”

“Nice guy,” McGrath said.

Milosevic nodded.

“And he’s got Holly,” he said. “Right there in the back of his

truck.”

McGrath said nothing in reply to that. Then the phone rang. He picked

it up. Listened to a short barked sentence. He sat there and Brogan

and Milosevic saw his face light up like a guy who sees his teams all

win the pennant on the same day, baseball, football, basketball and

hockey, all on the same day that his son graduates summa cum laude from

Harvard and his gold stocks go through the roof.

“Arizona,” he shouted. “It’s in Arizona, heading north on US60.”

An old hand in an Arizona State Police cruiser had spotted a white

panel truck making bad lane changes round the sharp curves on US60, as

it winds away from the town of Globe seventy miles east of Phoenix. He

had pulled closer and read the plate. He saw the blue oval and the

Econoline script on the back. He had thumbed his mike and called it

in. Then the world had gone crazy. He was told to stick with the

truck, no matter what. He was told that helicopters would be coming in

from Phoenix and Flagstaff, and from Albuquerque way over in New

Mexico. Every available mobile unit would be coming in behind him from

the south. Up ahead the National Guard would be assembling a

roadblock. Within twenty minutes, he was told, you’ll have more

back-up than you’ve ever dreamed of. Until then, he was told, you’re

the most important lawman in America.

The sales manager from the Dodge dealership in Mojave, California,

called Quantico back within an hour. He’d been over to the storage

room and dug out the records for the sales made ten years ago by the

previous franchise owners. The pickup in question had been sold to a

citrus farmer down in Kendall, fifty miles south of Mojave, in May of

that year. The guy had been back for servicing and emissions testing

for the first four years, and after that they’d never seen him again.

He had bought on a four-year time payment plan and his name was Dutch

Borken.

A half-hour later the stolen white Econoline was twenty-eight miles

further north on US60 in Arizona, and it was the tip of a long

teardrop-shape of fifty vehicles cruising behind it. Above it, five

helicopters were hammering through the air. In front of it, ten miles

to the north, the highway was closed and another forty vehicles were

stationary on the pavement, parked up in a neat arrowhead formation.

The whole operation was being coordinated by the agent-in-charge from

the FBI’s Phoenix office. He was in the lead helicopter, staring down

through the clear desert air at the roof of the truck. He was wearing

a headset with a throat mike, and he was talking continuously.

“OK, people,” he said. “Let’s go for it, right now. Go go go!”

His lead chopper swooped upward out of the way and two others arrowed

down. They hovered just in front of the truck, low down, one on each

side, keeping pace. The police cars behind fanned out across the whole

width of the highway and they all hit their lights and sirens together.

A third chopper swung down and flew backward, right in front of the

truck, eight feet off the ground, strobes flashing, rotors beating the

air. The co-pilot started a sequence of clear gestures, hands wide,

palms out, like he was personally slowing the truck. Then the sirens