Die Trying

by Child, Lee

  “I used to be a soldier,” he said. “I got out, fourteen months ago.”

  “What unit?” she asked.

  “Military police,” he said.

  She screwed her face up in a mock grimace.

  “The baddest of the bad,” she said. “Nobody likes you guys.”

  “Tell me about it,” Reacher said.

  “Explains a lot of things,” she said. “You guys get a lot of special training. So I guess you really are qualified. You should have told me, damn it. Now I guess I have to apologize for what I said.”

  He made no reply to that.

  “Where were you stationed?” she asked.

  “All over the world,” he said. “Europe, Far East, Middle East. Got so I didn’t know which way was up.”

  “Rank?” she asked.

  “Major,” he said.

  “Medals?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Dozens of the damn things,” he said. “You know how it is. Theater medals, of course, plus a Silver Star, two Bronzes, Purple Heart from Beirut, campaign things from Panama and Grenada and Desert Shield and Desert Storm.”

  “A Silver Star?” she asked. “What for?”

  “Beirut,” he said. “Pulled some guys out of the bunker.”

  “And you got wounded doing that?” she said. “That’s how you got the scar and the Purple Heart?”

  “I was already wounded,” he said. “Got wounded before I went in. I think that was what impressed them.”

  “Hero, right?” she said.

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “No way,” he said. “I wasn’t feeling anything. Wasn’t thinking. Too shocked. I didn’t even know I was hit until afterward. If I’d known, I’d have fallen down in a dead faint. My intestine was hanging out. Looked really awful. It was bright pink. Sort of squashy.”

  Holly was quiet for a second. The truck droned on. Another twenty miles covered. North or south or west. Probably.

  “How long were you in the service?” she asked.

  “All my life,” he said. “My old man was a Marine officer, served all over. He married a Frenchwoman in Korea. I was born in Berlin. Never even saw the States until I was nine years old. Five minutes later we were in the Philippines. Round and round the world we went. Longest I was ever anywhere was four years at West Point. Then I joined up and it started all over again. Round and round the world.”

  “Where’s your family now?” she asked.

  “Dead,” he said. “The old man died, what? Ten years ago, I guess. My mother died two years later. I buried the Silver Star with her. She won it for me, really. Do what you’re supposed to do, she used to tell me. About a million times a day, in a thick French accent.”

  “Brothers and sisters?” she said.

  “I had a brother,” he said. “He died last year. I’m the last Reacher on earth, far as I know.”

  “When did you muster out?” she said.

  “April last year,” he said. “Fourteen months ago.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  Reacher shrugged.

  “Just lost interest, I guess,” he said. “The defense cuts were happening. Made the Army seem unnecessary, somehow. Like if they didn’t need the biggest and the best, they didn’t need me. Didn’t want to be part of something small and second-rate. So I left. Arrogant, or what?”

  She laughed.

  “So you became a doorman?” she said. “From a decorated Major to a doorman? Isn’t that kind of second-rate?”

  “Wasn’t like that,” he said. “I didn’t set out to be a doorman, like it was a new career move or anything. It’s only temporary. I only got to Chicago on Friday. I was planning to move on, maybe Wednesday. I was thinking about going up to Wisconsin. Supposed to be a nice place, this time of year.”

  “Friday to Wednesday?” Holly said. “You got a problem with commitment or something?”

  “I guess,” he said. “Thirty-six years I was always where somebody else told me to be. Very structured sort of a life. I suppose I’m reacting against it. I love moving around when I feel like it. It’s like a drug. Longest I’ve ever stayed anywhere was ten consecutive days. Last fall, in Georgia. Ten days, out of fourteen months. Apart from that, I’ve been on the road, more or less all the time.”

  “Making a living by working the door at clubs?” she asked.

  “That was unusual,” he said. “Mostly I don’t work at all, just live off my savings. But I came up to Chicago with a singer, one thing led to another, I got asked to work the door at the club the guy was headed for.”

  “So what do you do if you don’t work?” she asked.

  “I look at things,” he said. “You got to remember, I’m a thirty-seven-year-old American, but I’ve never really been in America much. You been up the Empire State Building?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “I hadn’t,” he said. “Not before last year. You been to the Washington museums?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “I hadn’t,” he said again. “Not before last year. All that kind of stuff. Boston, New York, Washington, Chicago, New Orleans, Mount Rushmore, the Golden Gate, Niagara. I’m like a tourist. Like I’m catching up, right?”

  “I’m the other way around,” Holly said. “I like to travel overseas.”

  Reacher shrugged.

  “I’ve seen overseas,” he said. “Six continents. I’m going to stay here now.”

  “I’ve seen the States,” she said. “My dad traveled all the time, but we stayed here, apart from two tours to Germany.”

  Reacher nodded. Thought back to the time he’d spent in Germany, man and boy. Many years, in total.

  “You picked up on the soccer in Europe?” he asked.

  “Right,” Holly said. “Really big deal there. We were stationed one time near Munich, right? I was just a kid, eleven maybe. They gave my father tickets to some big game in Rotterdam, Holland. European Cup, the Bayern Munich team against some English team, Aston Villa, you ever heard of them?”

  Reacher nodded.

  “From Birmingham, England,” he said. “I was stationed near a place called Oxford at one point. About an hour away.”

  “I hated the Germans,” Holly said. “So arrogant, so overpowering. They were so sure they were going to cream these Brits. I didn’t want to go and watch it happen. But I had to, right? NATO protocol sort of a thing, would have been a big scandal if I’d refused. So we went. And the Brits creamed the Germans. The Germans were so furious. I loved it. And the Aston Villa guys were so cute. I was in love with soccer from that night on. Still am.”

  Reacher nodded. He enjoyed watching soccer, to an extent. But you had to be exposed early and gradually. It looked very free-form, but it was a very technical game. Full of hidden attractions. But he could see how a young girl could be seduced by it, long ago in Europe. A frantic night under floodlights in Rotterdam. Resentful and unwilling at first, then hypnotized by the patterns made by the white ball on the green turf. Ending up in love with the game afterward. But something was ringing a warning bell. If the eleven-year-old daughter of an American serviceman had refused to go, it would have caused some kind of an embarrassment within NATO? Was that what she had said?

  “Who was your father?” he asked her. “Sounds like he must have been an important sort of a guy.”

  She turned her head away. Wouldn’t answer. Reacher stared at her. Another warning bell was ringing.

  “Holly, who the hell is your father?” he asked urgently.

  The defensive tone that had been in her voice spread to her face. No answer.

  “Who, Holly?” Reacher asked again.

  She looked away from him. Spoke to the metal siding of the truck. Her voice was almost lost in the road noise. Defensive as hell.

  “General Johnson,” she said quietly. “At that time, he was C-in-C Europe. Do you know him?”

  Reacher stared up at her. General Johnson. Holly Johnson. Father and daughter.

&nb
sp; “I’ve met him,” he said. “But that’s not the point, is it?”

  She glared at him. Furious.

  “Why?” she said. “What exactly is the damn point?”

  “That’s the reason,” he said. “Your father is the most important military man in America, right? That’s why you’ve been kidnapped, Holly, for God’s sake. These guys don’t want Holly Johnson, FBI agent. The whole FBI thing is incidental. These guys want General Johnson’s daughter.”

  She looked down at him like he had just slapped her hard in the face.

  “Why?” she said. “Why the hell does everybody assume everything that ever happens to me is because of who my damn father is?”

  16

  MCGRATH BROUGHT BROGAN with him and met Milosevic at Meigs Field Airport in Chicago. He brought the four computer-aided mug shots and the test picture of Holly Johnson. He came expecting total cooperation from the airport staff. And he got it. Three hyped-up FBI agents in the grip of fear about a colleague are a difficult proposition to handle with anything other than total cooperation.

  Meigs Field was a small commercial operation, right out in the lake, water on three sides, just below the 12th Street beach, trying to make a living in the gigantic shadow of O’Hare. Their record keeping was immaculate and their efficiency was first-class. Not so they could be ready to handle FBI inquiries on the spur of the moment, but so they could keep on operating and keep on getting paid right under the nose of the world’s toughest competitor. But their records and their efficiency helped McGrath. Helped him realize within about thirty seconds that he was heading up a blind alley.

  The Meigs Field staff were certain they had never seen Holly Johnson or any of the four kidnappers at any time. Certainly not on Monday, certainly not around one o’clock. They were adamant about it. They weren’t overdoing it. They were just sure about it, with the quiet certainty of people who spend their working days being quietly sure about things, like sending small planes up into the busiest air lanes on the planet.

  And there were no suspicious takeoffs from Meigs Field, nowhere between noon and, say, three o’clock. That was clear. The paperwork was explicit on the subject. The three agents were out of there as briskly as they had entered. The tower staff nodded to themselves and forgot all about them before they were even back in their cars in the small parking lot.

  “OK, square one,” McGrath said. “You guys go check out this dentist situation up in Wilmette. I’ve got things to do. And I’ve got to put in a call to Webster. They must be climbing the walls down there in D.C.”

  SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND two miles from Meigs Field the young man in the woods wanted instructions. He was a good agent, well trained, but as far as undercover work was concerned he was new and relatively inexperienced. Demand for undercover operators was always increasing. The Bureau was hard put to fill all the slots. So people like him got assigned. Inexperienced people. He knew as long as he always remembered he didn’t have all the answers, he’d be OK. He had no ego problem with it. He was always willing to ask for guidance. He was careful. And he was realistic. Realistic enough to know he was now in over his head. Things were turning bad in a way which made him sure they were about to explode into something much worse. How, he didn’t know. It was just a feeling. But he trusted his feelings. Trusted them enough to stop and turn around before he reached his special tree. He breathed hard and changed his mind and set off strolling back the way he had come.

  WEBSTER HAD BEEN waiting for McGrath’s call. That was clear. McGrath got him straightaway, like he’d been sitting there in his big office suite just waiting for the phone to ring.

  “Progress, Mack?” Webster asked.

  “Some,” McGrath said. “We know exactly what happened. We got it all on a security video in a dry cleaner’s store. She went in there at twelve-ten. Came out at twelve-fifteen. There were four guys. Three on the street, one in a car. They grabbed her.”

  “Then what?” Webster asked.

  “They were in a stolen sedan,” McGrath said. “Looks like they killed the owner to get it. Drove her five miles south, torched the sedan. Along with the owner in the trunk. They burned him alive. He was a dentist, name of Rubin. What they did with Holly, we don’t know yet.”

  In Washington, Harland Webster was silent for a long time.

  “Is it worth searching the area?” he asked, eventually.

  McGrath’s turn to be quiet for a second. Unsure of the implications. Did Webster mean search for a hideout, or search for another body?

  “My gut says no,” he said. “They must know we could search the area. My feeling is they moved her somewhere else. Maybe far away.”

  There was silence on the line again. McGrath could hear Webster thinking.

  “I agree with you, I guess,” Webster said. “They moved her out. But how, exactly? By road? By air?”

  “Not air,” McGrath said. “We covered commercial flights yesterday. We just hit a private field. Nothing doing.”

  “What about a helicopter?” Webster said. “In and out, secretly?”

  “Not in Chicago, chief,” McGrath said. “Not right next door to O’Hare. More radar here than the Air Force has got. Any unauthorized choppers in and out of here, we’d know about it.”

  “OK,” Webster said. “But we need to get this under control. Abduction and homicide, Mack, it’s not giving me a good feeling. You figure a second stolen vehicle? Rendezvoused with the stolen sedan?”

  “Probably,” McGrath said. “We’re checking now.”

  “Any ideas who they were?” Webster said.

  “No,” McGrath told him. “We got pretty good pictures off the video. Computer enhancements. We’ll download them to you right away. Four guys, white, somewhere between thirty and forty, three of them kind of alike, ordinary, neat, short hair. The fourth guy is real tall, computer says he’s maybe six five. I figure him for the ringleader. He was the one got to her first.”

  “You got any feeling for a motive yet?” Webster asked.

  “No idea at all,” McGrath said.

  There was silence on the line again.

  “OK,” Webster said. “You keeping it real tight up there?”

  “Tight as I can,” McGrath said. “Just three of us.”

  “Who are you using?” Webster asked.

  “Brogan and Milosevic,” McGrath said.

  “They any good?” Webster asked.

  McGrath grunted. Like he would choose them if they weren’t?

  “They know Holly pretty well,” he said. “They’re good enough.”

  “Moaners and groaners?” Webster asked. “Or solid, like people used to be?”

  “Never heard them complain,” McGrath said. “About anything. They do the work, they do the hours. They don’t even bitch about the pay.”

  Webster laughed.

  “Can we clone them?” he said.

  The levity peaked and died within a couple of seconds. But McGrath appreciated the attempt at morale.

  “So how you doing down there?” he asked.

  “In what respect, Mack?” Webster said, serious again.

  “The old man,” McGrath said. “He giving you any trouble?”

  “Which one, Mack?” Webster asked.

  “The General?” McGrath said.

  “Not yet,” Webster said. “He called this morning, but he was polite. That’s how it goes. Parents are usually pretty calm, the first day or two. They get worked up later. General Johnson won’t be any different. He may be a big shot, but people are all the same underneath, right?”

  “Right,” McGrath said. “Have him call me, if he wants firsthand reports. Might help his situation.”

  “OK, Mack, thanks,” Webster said. “But I think we should keep this dentist thing away from everybody, just for the moment. Makes the whole deal look worse. Meantime, send me your stuff. I’ll get our people working on it. And don’t worry. We’ll get her back. Bureau looks after its own, right? Never fails.”

  The two Bureau ch
iefs let the lie die into silence and hung up their phones together.

  THE YOUNG MAN strolled out of the forest and came face-to-face with the commander. He was smart enough to throw a big salute and look nervous, but he kept it down to the sort of nervousness any grunt showed around the commander. Nothing more, nothing suspicious. He stood and waited to be spoken to.

  “Job for you,” the commander said. “You’re young, right? Good with all this technical shit?”

  The man nodded cautiously.

  “I can usually puzzle stuff out, sir,” he said.

  The commander nodded back.

  “We got a new toy,” he said. “Scanner, for radio frequencies. I want a watch kept.”

  The young man’s blood froze hard.

  “Why, sir?” he asked. “You think somebody’s using a radio transmitter?”

  “Possibly,” the commander said. “I trust nobody and I suspect everybody. I can’t be too careful. Not right now. Got to look after the details. You know what they say? Genius is in the details, right?”

  The young man swallowed and nodded.

  “So get it set up,” the commander said. “Make a duty rota. Two shifts, sixteen hours a day, OK? Constant vigilance is what we need right now.”

  The commander turned away. The young man nodded and breathed out. Glanced instinctively back in the direction of his special tree and blessed his feelings.

  MILOSEVIC DROVE BROGAN north in his new truck. They detoured via the Wilmette post office so Brogan could mail his twin alimony checks. Then they went looking for the dead dentist’s building. There was a local uniform waiting for them in the parking lot in back. He was unapologetic about sitting on the report from the dentist’s wife. Milosevic started giving him a hard time about that, like it made the guy personally responsible for Holly Johnson’s abduction.

  “Lots of husbands disappear,” the guy said. “Happens all the time. This is Wilmette, right? Men are the same here as anywhere, only here they got the money to make it all happen. What can I say?”

  Milosevic was unsympathetic. The cop had made two other errors. First, he had assumed that it was the murder of the dentist that had brought the FBI out into his jurisdiction. Second, he was more uptight about covering his own ass on the issue than he was about four killers snatching Holly Johnson right off the street. Milosevic was out of patience with the guy. But then the guy redeemed himself.