Die Trying by Lee Child

facing diagonally away in fear and perplexity. Sleepy children, woken

up in the middle of the night to witness something.

Loder turned himself around in a slow circle and waved the silent

staring people nearer. He moved his arm in a wide inclusive gesture,

like a ringmaster in a circus.

“We got her,” he yelled into the silence. The federal bitch is

here.”

His voice boomed back off the distant mountains.

“Where the hell are we?” Holly asked him.

Loder turned back and smiled at her.

“Our place, bitch,” he said quietly. “A place where your federal

buddies can’t come get you.”

“Why not?” Holly asked him. “Where the hell are we?”

That could be hard for you to understand,” Loder said.

“Why?” Holly said. “We’re somewhere, right? Somewhere in the

States?”

Loder shook his head.

“No,” he said.

Holly looked blank.

“Canada?” she said.

The guy shook his head again.

“Not Canada, bitch,” he said.

Holly glanced around at the trees and the mountains. Glanced up at the

vast night sky. Shuddered in the sudden chill.

“Well, this isn’t Mexico,” she said.

The guy raised both arms in a descriptive little gesture.

“This is a brand-new country,” he said.

llfi

TWENTY-TWO

THE ATMOSPHERE IN THE CHICAGO FIELD OFFICE WEDNESDAY evening was like a

funeral, and in a way it was a funeral, because any realistic hope of

getting Holly back had died. McGrath knew his best chance had been an

early chance. The early chance was gone. If Holly was still alive,

she was a prisoner somewhere on the North American continent, and he

would not get even the chance to find out where until her kidnapers

chose to call. And, so far, approaching sixty hours after the snatch,

they had not called.

He was at the head of the long table in the third-floor conference

room. Smoking. The room was quiet. Milosevic was sitting to one

side, back to the windows. The afternoon sun had inched its way around

to evening and fallen away into darkness. The temperature in the room

had risen and fallen with it, down to a balmy summer dusk. But the two

men in there were chilled with anticlimax. They barely looked up as

Brogan came in to join them. He was holding a sheaf of computer

printouts. He wasn’t smiling, but he looked reasonably close to it.

“You got something?” McGrath asked him. Brogan nodded purposefully

and sat down. Sorted the printouts into four separate handfuls and

held them up, each one in turn.

“Quantico,” he said. They’ve got something. And the crime database in

DC. They’ve got three somethings. And I had an idea.”

He spread his papers out and looked up.

“Listen to this,” he said. “Graphic granite, interlocking crystals,

cherts, gneisses, schists, shale, foliated metamorphics, quartzites,

quartz crystals, red-bed sandstones, Triassic red sand, acidic

volcanics, pink feldspar, green chlorite, ironstone, grit, sand and

silt. You know what all that stuff is?”

McGrath and Milosevic shrugged and shook their heads.

“Geology,” Brogan said. The people down in Quantico looked at the

pickup. Geologists, from the Materials Analysis Unit. They looked at

the shit thrown up under the wheel arches. They figured out what the

stuff is, and they figured out where that pickup has been. Little tiny

pieces of rock and sediment stuck to the metal. Like a sort of a

geological fingerprint.”

“OK, so where has it been?” McGrath asked.

“Started out in California,” Brogan said. “Citrus grower called Dutch

Borken bought it, ten years ago, in Mojave. The manufacturer traced

that for us. That part is nothing to do with geology. Then the

scientists say it was in Montana for a couple of years. Then they

drove it over here, northern route, through North Dakota, Minnesota and

Wisconsin.”

They sure about this?” McGrath said.

“Like a trucker’s logbook,” Brogan said. “Except written with shit on

the underneath, not with a pen on paper.”

“So who is this Dutch Borken?” McGrath asked. “Is he involved?”

Brogan shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Dutch Borken is dead.”

“When?” McGrath asked.

“Couple of years ago,” Brogan said. “He borrowed money, farming went

all to hell, the bank foreclosed, he stuck a twelve-bore in his mouth