Die Trying by Lee Child

time ago. And it looked like it had never been much of a place to

begin with. The road came through north to south, and there had been

four developed blocks flanking it, two on the east side and two on the

west. The courthouse took up the whole of the southeastern block and

it faced what might have been some kind of a county office on the

southwestern block. The western side of the street was higher. The

ground sloped way up. The foundation of the county office building was

about level with the second floor of the courthouse. It had started

out the same type of structure, but it had fallen into ruin, maybe

thirty years before. The paint was peeled and the siding showed

through iron-gray. There was no glass in any window. The sloping

knoll surrounding it had returned to mountain scrub. There had been an

ornamental free dead center. It had died a long time ago, and it was

now just a stump, maybe seven feet high, like an execution post.

The northern blocks were rows of faded, boarded-up stores. There had

once been tall ornate frontages concealing simple square

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buildings, but the decay of the years had left the frontages the same

dull brown as the boxy wooden structures behind. The signs above the

doors had faded to nothing. There were no people on the sidewalks. No

vehicle noise, no activity, no nothing. The place was a ghost. It

looked like an abandoned cowboy town from the Old West.

This was a mining town,” Fowler said. “Lead, mostly, but some copper,

and a couple of seams of good silver for a while. There was a lot of

money made here, that’s for damn sure.”

“So what happened?” Reacher asked.

Fowler shrugged.

“What happens to any mining place?” he said. “It gets worked out, is

what. Fifty years ago, people were registering claims in that old

county office like there was no tomorrow, and they were disputing them

in that old courthouse, and there were saloons and banks and stores up

and down the street. Then they started coming up with dirt instead of

metal and they moved on, and this is what got left behind.”

Fowler was looking around at the dismal view and Reacher was following

his gaze. Then he transferred his eyes upward a couple of degrees and

took in the giant mountains rearing on the horizon. They were massive

and indifferent, still streaked with snow on the third of July. Mist

hung in the passes and floated through the dense conifers. Fowler

moved and Reacher followed him up a track launching steeply northwest

behind the ruined county office. The guards followed in single file

behind. He realized this was the track he’d stumbled along twice in

the dark the night before. After a hundred yards they were in the

trees. The track wound uphill through the forest. Progress was easier

in the filtered green daylight. After a mile of walking they had made

maybe a half-mile of straight-line progress and they came out in the

clearing the white truck had driven into the previous night. There was

a small sentry squad, armed and immaculate, standing at attention in

the center of the space. But there was no sign of the white truck. It

had been driven away.

“We call this the Bastion,” Fowler said. These were the very first

acres we bought.”

In the clear daylight, the place looked different. The Bastion was a

big, tidy clearing in the brush, nestled in a mountain bowl

91 n three hundred feet above the town itself. There was no man-made

perimeter. The perimeter had been supplied a million years ago by the

great glaciers grinding down from the pole. The north and the west

sides were mountainous, rearing straight up to the high peaks. Reacher

saw snow again, packed by the wind into the high north-facing gullies.

If it was there in July it must be there twelve months of the year.

To the southeast the town was just visible below them through the gaps

in the trees where the track had been carved out. Reacher could see

the ruined county building and the white courthouse set below it like