Die Trying

by Child, Lee

  Webster spread his hands. Spoke directly to the back of the guy’s head.

  “Sir, this is a big deal,” he said. “They’re arming themselves, they’ve taken a hostage, they’re talking about secession from the Union.”

  The President nodded.

  “Don’t you understand, that’s the problem?” he said. “If this were about three weirdos in a hut in the woods with a bomb, we’d send you in there right away. But it isn’t. This could lead to the biggest constitutional crisis since 1860.”

  “So you agree with me,” Webster said. “You’re taking them seriously.”

  The President shook his head. Sadly, like he was upset but not surprised Webster didn’t get the point.

  “No,” he said. “We’re not taking them seriously. That’s what makes this whole thing so damn difficult. They’re a bunch of deluded idiots, seeing plots everywhere, conspiracies, muttering about independence for their scrubby little patch of worthless real estate. But the question is: how should a mature democratic nation react to that? Should it massacre them all, Harland? Is that how a mature nation reacts? Should it unleash deadly force against a few deluded idiot citizens? We spent a generation condemning the Soviets for doing that. Are we going to do the same thing?”

  “They’re criminals, sir,” Webster said.

  “Yes, they are,” the President agreed, patiently. “They’re counterfeiters, they own illegal weapons, they don’t pay federal taxes, they foment racial hatred, maybe they even robbed an armored car. But those are details, Harland. The broad picture is they’re disgruntled citizens. And how do we respond to that? We encourage disgruntled citizens in Eastern Europe to stand up and declare their nationhood, right? So how do we deal with our own disgruntled citizens, Harland? Declare war on them?”

  Webster clamped his jaw. He felt adrift. Like the thick carpets and the quiet paint and the unfamiliar scented air inside the Oval Office were choking him.

  “They’re criminals,” he said again. It was all he could think of to say.

  The President nodded. Still a measure of sympathy.

  “Yes, they are,” he agreed again. “But look at the broad picture, Harland. Look at their main offense. Their main offense is they hate their government. If we deal with them harshly for that, we could face a crisis. Like we said, there are maybe sixty million Americans ready to be tipped over the edge. This Administration is very aware of that, Harland. This Administration is going to tread very carefully.”

  “But what about Holly?” he asked. “You can’t just sacrifice her.”

  There was a long silence. The President kept his chair turned away.

  “I can’t react because of her, either,” he said quietly. “I can’t allow myself to make this personal. Don’t you see that? A personal, emotional, angry response would be wrong. It would be a bad mistake. I have to wait and think. I’ve talked it over with the General. We’ve talked for hours. Frankly, Harland, he’s pissed at me, and again frankly, I don’t blame him. He’s just about my oldest friend, and he’s pissed at me. So don’t talk to me about sacrifice, Harland. Because sacrifice is what this office is all about. You put the greater good in front of friendship, in front of all your own interests. You do it all the time. It’s what being President means.”

  There was another long silence.

  “So what are you saying to me, Mr. President?” Webster asked.

  Another long silence.

  “I’m not saying anything to you,” the President said. “I’m saying you’re in personal command of the situation. I’m saying come see Mr. Dexter Monday morning, if there’s still a problem.”

  NOBODY WAITED IN the car. Too restless for that. They got out into the chill mountain air and milled aimlessly around. Johnson and his aide strolled north with the driver and looked at the proposed location for the command post. McGrath and Brogan and Milosevic kept themselves apart as a threesome. McGrath smoked, lost in thought. Time to time, he would duck back into the Army Chevrolet and use the car phone. He called the Montana State Police, the power company, the phone company, the Forest Service.

  Brogan and Milosevic strolled north. They found an armored vehicle. Not a tank, some kind of a personnel carrier. There was the officer who had met them with the car and maybe eight soldiers standing near it. Big, silent men, pitching tents on the shoulder in the lee of the rocks. Brogan and Milosevic nodded a greeting to them and strolled back south. They rejoined McGrath and waited.

  Within forty minutes they all heard the faint roar of heavy diesels far to the south. The noise built and then burst around the curve. There was a small convoy of trucks. Big, boxy vehicles, mounted high on exaggerated drivetrains, big wheels, huge tires, axles grinding around. They roared nearer, moving slow in low gear. The officer from the car ran to meet them. Pointed them up to where he wanted them. They roared slowly past and stopped two abreast in the road where it straightened into the rock cutting.

  There were four vehicles. Black and green camouflage, rolls of netting on the flanks, stenciled numbers and big single stars in white. The front two trucks bristled with antennas and small dishes. The rear two were accommodations. Each vehicle had hydraulic jacks at each corner. The drivers lowered the jacks and the weight came up off the tires. The jacks pushed against the camber of the road and leveled the floors. Then the engines cut off and the loud diesel roaring died into the mountain silence.

  The four drivers vaulted down. They ran to the rear of their trucks and opened the doors. Reached in and folded down short aluminum ladders. Went up inside and flicked switches. The four interiors lit up with green light. The drivers came back out. Regrouped and saluted the officer.

  “All yours, sir,” the point man said.

  The officer nodded. Pointed to the Chevy.

  “Drive back in that,” he said. “And forget you were ever here.”

  The point man saluted again.

  “Understood, sir,” he said.

  The four drivers walked to the Chevy. Their boots were loud in the silence. They got in the car and fired it up. Turned in the road and disappeared south.

  BACK IN HIS office, Webster found the Borken profile on his desk and a visitor waiting for him. Green uniform under a khaki trench coat, maybe sixty, sixty-two, iron-gray stubble on part of his head, battered brown leather briefcase under his arm, battered canvas suit carrier on the floor at his feet.

  “I understand you need to talk to me,” the guy said.

  “I’m General Garber. I was Jack Reacher’s CO for a number of years.”

  Webster nodded.

  “I’m going to Montana,” he said. “You can talk to me there.”

  “We anticipated that,” Garber said. “If the Bureau can fly us out to Kalispell, the Air Force will take us on the rest of the way by helicopter.”

  Webster nodded again. Buzzed through to his secretary. She was off duty.

  “Shit,” Webster said.

  “My driver is waiting,” Garber said. “He’ll take us out to Andrews.”

  Webster called ahead from the car and the Bureau Lear was waiting ready. Twenty minutes after leaving the White House, Webster was in the air heading west over the center of the city. He wondered if the President could hear the scream of his engines through his thick bulletproof glass.

  THE AIR FORCE technicians arrived with the satellite trucks an hour after the command post had been installed. There were two vehicles in their convoy. The first was similar to the command post itself, big, high, boxy, hydraulic jacks at each corner, a short aluminum ladder for access. The second was a long flatbed truck with a big satellite dish mounted high on an articulated mechanism. As soon as it was parked and level, the mechanism kicked in and swung the dish up to find the planes, seven miles up in the darkening sky. It locked on and the delicate electronics settled down to tracking the moving signals. There was a continuous motor sound as the dish moved through a subtle arc, too slowly for the eye to detect. The techs hauled out a cable the thickness of a sapling’s tr
unk from the flatbed and locked it into a port on the side of the closed truck. Then they swarmed up inside and fired up the monitors and the recorders.

  McGrath hitched a ride with the soldiers in the armored carrier. They rumbled a mile south and met a waiting Montana State Police cruiser on the road. The state guy conferred with McGrath and opened his trunk. Pulled out a box of red danger flares and an array of temporary road signs. The soldiers jogged south and put a pair of flares either side of a sign reading: Danger, Road Out. They came back north and set up a trio of flares in the center of the blacktop with a sign reading: Bridge Out Ahead. Fifty yards farther north, they blocked the whole width of the road with more flares. They strung Road Closed signs across behind them. When the state guy had slalomed his way back south and disappeared, the soldiers took axes from their vehicle and started felling trees. The armored carrier nudged them over and pushed them across the road, engine roaring, tires squealing. It lined them up in a rough zigzag. A vehicle could get through, but only if it slowed to a dead crawl and threaded its way past. Two soldiers were posted as sentries on the shoulders. The other six rode back north with McGrath.

  Johnson was in the command vehicle. He was in radio contact with Peterson. The news was bad. The missile unit had been out of radio contact for more than eight hours. Johnson had a rule of thumb. He had learned it by bitter experience in the jungles of Vietnam. The rule of thumb said: when you’ve lost radio contact with a unit for more than eight hours, you mark that unit down as a total loss.

  WEBSTER AND GARBER did not talk during the plane ride. That was Webster’s choice. He was experienced enough as a bureaucrat to know that whatever he heard from Garber, he’d only have to hear all over again when the full team was finally assembled. So he sat quietly in the noisy jet whine and read the Borken profile from Quantico. Garber was looking questions at him, but he ignored them. Explain it to Garber now, and he’d only have to do it all over again for McGrath and Johnson.

  The evening air at Kalispell was cold and gray for the short noisy walk across the apron to the Air Force Bell. Garber identified himself to the copilot who dropped a short ladder to the tarmac. Garber and Webster scrambled up inside and sat where they were told. The copilot signaled with both hands that they should fasten their harnesses and that the ride would take about twenty-five minutes. Webster nodded and listened to the beat of the rotor as it lifted them all into the air.

  GENERAL JOHNSON HAD just finished another long call to the White House when he heard the Bell clattering in. He stood framed in the command post doorway and watched it put down on the same gravel turnout, two hundred yards south. He saw two figures spill out and crouch away. He saw the chopper lift and yaw and turn south.

  He walked down and met them halfway. Nodded to Garber and pulled Webster to one side.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  Webster shook his head.

  “No change,” he said. “White House is playing safe. You?”

  “Nothing,” Johnson said.

  Webster nodded. Nothing more to say.

  “What we got here?” he asked.

  “Far as the White House knows, nothing,” Johnson said. “We’ve got two camera planes in the air. Officially, they’re on exercises. We’ve got eight Marines and an armored car. They’re on exercises, too. Their COs know where they are, but they don’t know exactly why, and they’re not asking.”

  “You sealed the road?” Webster asked.

  Johnson nodded.

  “We’re all on our own up here,” he said.

  34

  REACHER AND HOLLY sat alone in the forest, backs to two adjacent pines, staring at the mound above Jackson’s grave. They sat like that until the afternoon light faded and died. They didn’t speak. The forest grew cold. The time for the decision arrived.

  “We’re going back,” Holly said.

  It was a statement, not a question. A lot of resignation in her voice. He made no reply. He was breathing low, staring into space, lost in thought. Reliving in his mind her taste and smell. Her hair and her eyes. Her lips. The feel of her, strong and lithe and urgent underneath him.

  “Nightfall,” she said.

  “Not just yet,” he said.

  “We have to,” she said. “They’ll send the dogs after us.”

  He didn’t speak again. Just sat there, eyes locked into the distance.

  “There’s nowhere else to go,” she said.

  He nodded slowly and stood up. Stretched and caught his breath as his tired muscles cramped. Helped Holly up and took his jacket down off the tree and shrugged it on. Left the crowbar lying in the dirt next to the shovel.

  “We leave tonight,” he said. “Shit’s going to hit the fan tomorrow. Independence Day.”

  “Sure, but how?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” he said.

  “Don’t take risks on my account,” she said.

  “You’d be worth it,” he said.

  “Because of who I am?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Because of who you are,” he said. “Not because of who your father is. Or your damn godfather. And no, I didn’t vote for him.”

  She stretched up and kissed him on the mouth.

  “Take care, Reacher,” she said.

  “Just be ready,” he said. “Maybe midnight.”

  She nodded. They walked the hundred yards south to the rocky outcrop. Turned and walked the hundred yards east to the clearing. Came out of the woods straight into a semicircle of five guards waiting for them. Four rifles. Center man was Joseph Ray. He was in charge of the detail, with a Glock 17 in his hand.

  “She goes back to her room,” Ray said. “You go in the punishment hut.”

  The guards formed up. Two of them stepped either side of Holly. Her eyes were blazing and they didn’t try to take her elbows. Just walked slowly beside her. She turned and glanced back at Reacher.

  “See you later, Holly,” Reacher called.

  “Don’t you bet on that, Ms. Johnson,” Joseph Ray said, and laughed.

  He escorted Reacher to the door of the punishment hut. Took out a key and unlocked the door. Swung it open. Pushed Reacher through, gun out and ready. Then he pulled the door closed again and relocked it.

  The punishment hut was the same size and shape as Borken’s command hut. But it was completely empty. Bare walls, no windows, lights meshed with heavy wire. On the floor near one end was a perfect square of yellow paint, maybe twelve inches by twelve. Apart from that, the hut was featureless.

  “You stand on that square,” Ray said.

  Reacher nodded. He was familiar with that procedure. Being forced to stand at attention, hour after hour, never moving, was an effective punishment. He had heard about it, time to time. Once, he’d seen the results. After the first few hours, the pain starts. The back goes, then the agony spreads upward from the shins. By the second or third day, the ankles swell and burst and the thighbones strike upward and the neck collapses.

  “So stand on it,” Ray said.

  Reacher stepped to the corner of the hut and bent to the floor. Made a big show of brushing the dust away with his hand. Turned and lowered himself gently so he was sitting comfortably in the angle of the walls. Stretched his legs out and folded his hands behind his head. Crossed his ankles and smiled.

  “You got to stand on the square,” Ray said.

  Reacher looked at him. He had said: believe me, I know tanks. So he had been a soldier. A grunt, in a motorized unit. Probably a loader, maybe a driver.

  “Stand up,” Ray said.

  Give a grunt a task, and what’s the thing he’s most afraid of? Getting chewed out by an officer for failing to do it, that’s what.

  “Stand up, damn it,” Ray said.

  So either he doesn’t fail, or if he does, he conceals it. No grunt in the history of the world has ever just gone to his officer and said: I couldn’t do it, sir.

  “I’m telling you to stand up, Reacher,” Ray said quietly.

&
nbsp; If he fails, he keeps it a big secret. Much better that way.

  “You want me to stand up?” Reacher asked.

  “Yeah, stand up,” Ray said.

  Reacher shook his head.

  “You’re going to have to make me, Joe,” he said.

  Ray was thinking about it. It was a reasonably slow thought process. Its progress was visible in his body language. First, the Glock came up. Then it went back down. Shooting at the prisoner was its own admission of failure. It was the same thing as saying: I couldn’t make him do it, sir. Then he glanced at his hands. Glanced across at Reacher. Glanced away. Unarmed combat was rejected. He stood there, in a fog of indecision.

  “Where did you serve?” Reacher asked him.

  Ray shrugged.

  “Here and there,” he said.

  “Like where and where?” Reacher asked.

  “I was in Germany twice,” Ray said. “And I was in Desert Storm.”

  “Driver?” Reacher asked.

  “Loader,” Ray answered.

  Reacher nodded.

  “You boys did a good job,” he said. “I was in Desert Storm. I saw what you boys did.”

  Ray nodded. He took the opening, like Reacher knew he would. If you can’t let them beat you, you let them join you. Ray moved casually to his left and sat down on the floor, back against the door, Glock resting against his thigh. He nodded again.

  “We whupped them,” he said.

  “You sure did,” Reacher said. “You whupped them real good. So, Germany and the desert. You liked it there?”

  “Not much,” Ray said.

  “You liked their systems?” Reacher asked.

  “What systems?” Ray asked back.

  “Their governments,” Reacher said. “Their laws, their liberties, all that stuff.”

  Ray looked mystified.

  “Never noticed,” he said. “Never paid any attention.”

  “So how do you know they’re better than ours?” Reacher asked.