Die Trying by Lee Child

they left the toast uneaten and walked back together to the crew room.

Johnson looked a lot different from the glossy guy Webster had met with

Monday evening. The early hour and three days’ strain made him look

twenty pounds thinner and twenty years older. His face was pale and

his eyes were red. He looked like a man on the verge of defeat.

“So what do we know?” he asked.

“We think we know most of it,” Webster answered. “Right now our

operational assumption is your daughter’s been kidnaped by a militia

group from Montana. We know their location, more or less. Somewhere

in the northwestern valleys.”

Johnson nodded slowly.

“Any communication?” he asked.

Webster shook his head.

“Not yet,” he said.

“So what’s the reason?” Johnson asked. “What do they want?”

Webster shook his head again.

“We don’t know that yet,” he said.

Johnson nodded again, vaguely.

“Who are they?” he asked.

McGrath opened the envelope he was carrying.

“We’ve got four names,” he said. “Three of the snatch squad, and

there’s pretty firm evidence about who the militia leader is. A guy

named Beau Borken. That name mean anything to you?”

“Borken?” Johnson said. He shook his head. That name means

nothing.”

“OK,” McGrath said. “What about this guy? His name’s Peter Bell.”

McGrafti passed Johnson the computer print of Bell at the wheel in the

Lexus. Johnson took a long look at it and shook his head.

“He’s dead,” McGrath said. “Didn’t make it back to Montana.”

“Good,” Johnson said.

McGrath passed him another picture.

“Steven Stewart?” he said.

Johnson paid the print some attention, but ended up shaking his head.

“Never saw this guy before,” he said.

Tony Loder?” McGrath asked.

Johnson stared at Loder’s face and shook his head.

“No,” he said.

Those three and Borken are all from California,” McGrath said. There

may be another guy called Odell Fowler. You heard that name?”

Johnson shook his head.

“And there’s this guy,” McGrath said. “We don’t know who he is.”

He passed over the photograph of the big guy. Johnson glanced at it,

then glanced away. But then his gaze drifted back.

“You know this one?” McGrath asked him.

Johnson shrugged.

“He’s vaguely familiar,” he said. “Maybe somebody I once saw?”

“Recently?” McGrath asked.

Johnson shook his head.

“Not recently,” he said. “Probably a long time ago.”

“Military?” Webster asked.

“Probably,” Johnson said again. “Most of the people I see are

military.”

His aide crowded his shoulder for a look.

“Means nothing to me,” he said. “But we should fax this to the

Pentagon. If this guy is military maybe there’ll be somebody somewhere

who served with him.”

Johnson shook his head.

“Fax it to the military police,” he said. This guy’s a criminal,

right? Chances are he was in trouble before, in the service. Somebody

there will remember him.”

TWENTY-FIVE

THEY CAME FOR HIM AN HOUR AFTER DAWN. HE WAS DOZING ON his hard chair,

hands cuffed in his lap, Joseph Ray awake and alert opposite him. He

had spent most of the night thinking about dynamite. Old dynamite,

left over from abandoned mining operations. He imagined hefting a

stick in his hand. Feeling the weight. Figuring the volume of the

cavity behind Holly’s walls. Picturing it packed with old dynamite.

Old dynamite, rotting, the nitroglycerin sweating out, going unstable.

Maybe a ton of unstable old dynamite packed in all around her, still

not so far gone it would explode with random movement, but gone bad

enough it would explode under the impact of a stray artillery shell. Or

a stray bullet. Or even a sharp blow with a hammer.

Then there was a rattle of feet on shale as a detachment of men halted

outside the hut. The door was flung open and Reacher turned his head

and saw six guards. The point man clattered inside and hauled him up

by the arm. He was dragged outside into the bright morning sun to face

five men, line abreast, automatic rifles at the slope. Camouflage

fatigues, beards. He stood and squinted in the light. The rifle

muzzles jerked him into rough formation and the six men marched him

across the diameter of the clearing to a narrow path running away from