by Lee Child
They walked backward across the lot. Already flames were curling out of doors and windows. Fantastic shapes were boiling under the eaves, racing laterally, stopping, starting, like breathing, then joining together and lighting the roof on fire.
Shorty said, “They can’t afford to look at it. Not with night vision. It would fry their eyeballs. All we have to do is keep it directly behind us, and they won’t see us coming.”
In her head Patty thought out the geometry, and she nodded, and said, “That’s pretty smart, Shorty.”
They walked east through the meadow, past their suitcase, keeping themselves exactly in line, with the fire plumb behind them, and the mouth of the track dead ahead.
—
Reacher found a quad-bike parked on the track. It loomed up in gray filtered moonlight. He was six feet in the trees. He dodged left and right to see the whole picture. The bike was stopped on a diagonal, facing mostly back toward the motel. The front wheels were turned in that direction. The handlebar was askew. As if it had driven down, and slowed, and turned a tight half circle. But not completely. Not a full 180.
No sign of a rider.
Hunting, said the back of his brain.
OK, said the front. But where? Up ahead, surely. The guy had driven down, and swung around, and parked. When he figured he was safely beyond the far edge of the action. Like a backstop position. He had thought about it carefully. Reacher had heard him, in the distance. The guy had sat astride his idling bike, most of a minute, presumably leaning forward on his handlebars, staring ahead, calculating. Then he had shut down and gotten off, and presumably he had walked back the way he had come, to get closer to the action, to squeeze the perimeter, to improve his angles. Which meant Reacher was currently behind him. Always a good place to be. He looked ahead through the trees. He dodged left and right for a better view.
No sign of the guy.
Reacher moved up in the trees. Hard going. Vines, brambles, leafy undergrowth shrubs. Not quiet, either. But he broke up his footsteps to a staccato rhythm. Not left, right, left, right. Not like a route march. Just random scrabbling. Like an animal. Maybe a fox, digging cover. In the dark. Maybe a bear cub. Hard to tell. He kept on going.
He saw the rider.
But only just.
The guy was standing in the middle of the track, almost invisible in the moonlight gloom. He was half turned away from something up ahead. He was an extraordinary figure. He was dressed in tight black clothes, like athletic gear. He had an archery bow slung across his back. He had a quiver of arrows. Strapped to his head was a one-lens night vision device. Like a Cyclops eye. U.S. Army. Second generation. Reacher had used them.
A night hunt, said the back of his brain. Told you so.
OK, said the front.
There was a faint glow on the horizon. Slightly red, slightly orange.
Reacher moved up in the trees. A long step, a furtive rustle, and then another. The guy didn’t notice. He was moving his head, trying to see the distant glow in the corner of his eye, where it wouldn’t burn too bright, but he couldn’t do it. He kept flinching away. In the end he flipped the optical tube up and out of the way, and he took a look with the naked eye. He stepped back, and left, to get a better view.
Reacher stepped forward, and right.
Something was on fire, way far in the distance.
The guy was about eight feet away. To the right, and a little ahead. He was a well built individual. With the night vision up he was as handsome as a movie actor.
A nighttime bowhunter.
Of what?
There’s always a victim, said the back of his brain.
Reacher moved.
The guy heard. He took the bow off his back in one fluid motion. A split second later he had an arrow in his hand. He nocked the arrow and half drew the string, and held the weapon half ready, pointing low. He looked all around. His night vision was still in the up position. Disengaged. The arrowhead was wide and flat. It shone faintly in the moonlight. It was a decent chunk of steel. It would do some damage. Like getting hit with an ax, but harder.
Then the guy raised the bow high, both hands, as if he was about to ford a river. He used his forearm to knock his optical tube back into place. Now he had vision again. He peered around, grotesquely, mostly ahead, one huge glass eye the size of a coffee can, his head moving slowly.
Reacher stepped back, and left. He lined up the trees. He wanted a sliver of view, but a narrow one. The narrower the better.
The guy kept peering around. He covered what was ahead of him. Then he turned, to see what was to the side of him. Then he turned some more, to see what was behind him.
He looked straight at Reacher. The blank glass lens fixed right on him. The guy raised the bow and drew the string. Reacher swayed right. The arrow fired and buried itself in the tree in front of him with a ringing thunk that sang through the hardwood from bole to crown.
Like an ax, but harder.
The guy reloaded with fast practiced movements, all right-handed, taking an arrow from the quiver, fitting it to the bow, at the head, at the feathers, then drawing back the string. Ready. Not much slower than working a bolt action rifle. Same kind of ballpark.
Reacher called out, “Are you aware that you’re shooting at a human target?”
The guy fired again. There was a thump of energy in the air as the bowstring released, and the shish of the arrow in flight, and then the same slamming thunk as it hit a tree.
Reacher thought, I guess I’ll take that as a yes.
Told you so, said the back of his brain.
The front of his brain noted that in all his long and varied life, which included military service in many different parts of the world, he had never before been attacked with a bow and arrow. It was a brand new experience. But no fun so far. The night vision was the problem. He was at a huge disadvantage. He knew second generation gear pretty well. He had used various AN/PVS models. Army Navy Portable Visual Search. Like most second generation military gear they were logical developments of the first generation. Images were much sharper around the edge of the lens. Light amplification was boosted from a thousand to twenty thousand times. They gave a highly detailed fine-grained picture, monochrome, slightly gray, mostly green, a little cool, a little wispy. A little fluid and ghostly. Not quite reality. In some ways better.
A huge tactical advantage. Twenty thousand times was a big differential. He had zero times. He had almost pitch dark. It took a strenuous wide-eyed stare even to tell the difference between a tree and not a tree. There were occasional glimmers of dappled moonlight, some of them real, most of them wishful thinking. Far to the left was the orange glow in the sky. Getting brighter. He could see the gleam of the next arrowhead. It was ready to go. It was tracking left, tracking right, trying to find a line through the trees. The guy was stepping in, stepping back, going left, going right. Trying to find his shot. A three dimensional problem. Then a four dimensional problem, when Reacher started moving too, randomly, left, left, right, not much, really just swaying, but enough to need a new ballistic calculation every single time.
Reacher called out, “You need to come closer.”
The guy didn’t move.
Reacher said, “Come in the trees with me.”
The guy didn’t answer.
“You would if I was a deer,” Reacher said.
The guy locked on. The glassy end of the coffee can pointed straight at Reacher. Who saw only a sliver of the right-hand edge of the lens. A chord, in geometric language. A chopped-off edge of a circle. Which in turn meant the guy saw only Reacher’s right eye, and then a wide tree, and then maybe part of his left shoulder. Not a great target. Reacher knew people who could have hit it with anything from a lawn dart to a nuclear missile, but clearly the guy with the bow wasn’t one of them. Because Reacher was still alive to have the thought.
“Come in the trees with me,” he said again.
The guy didn’t answer. No doubt he was thinking things thro
ugh. Reacher sure was. A small crowded space, with limited room for maneuver, especially with a bow. Tactically awkward, especially in terms of range. Anything more than arm’s length, there was a tree in the way. But anything less than arm’s length was game over. The bow could be grabbed, the night vision could be knocked off, and lethal weapons could be seized from the quiver. Like knives on sticks. The guy had about twenty of them.
He wouldn’t come in the trees.
Reacher moved to his left. The arrowhead tracked him. Still no clear shot. Nor would there be for three more steps. After which there was moonlight, because the canopy was thin up ahead. The canopy was thin up ahead because a tree was missing. Which left a hole. Much smaller than where they turned the Mercedes. Maybe half as wide, and half as deep. But a hole all the same. Directly in Reacher’s path. A room-sized space, with no trees in the way. Mathematically impossible not to find a shot. The available options would look like a route map in the back of an airline magazine.
Speed would be the critical factor. A running man might cross the space in less than a second. His critical center mass would be sideways on. It would pass through any particular point in time and space in less than a tenth of a second. Arrows were fast, but not like bullets. Deflection would have to be calculated. The guy would have to shoot ahead of the target. Into the space where the target was about to arrive. He would have to fire the arrow in anticipation. Ahead of time. He had no choice. Like swinging at a fastball. He had to commit.
Reacher ran left, one stride, two, three, maximum acceleration, and the guy fired at where he was going to be, a cast iron slam dunk grand slam, except Reacher jinked to the right, just ahead of the last tree, like a running back in a broken field, and instead of entering the treeless room-sized space he came straight at the guy, who was caught fumbling his reload. Easy enough in your momma’s basement, Reacher thought. Not so easy now. He barreled straight into the guy, shoulder first. Maximum demolition. No need for finesse. The guy went sprawling, all arms and legs. Reacher kicked whichever part of him was nearest. Then he grabbed the bow, and pulled the night vision off the guy’s head, and slid an arrow out of his quiver.
Then he froze.
Anything less than arm’s length was game over .
They would know that.
They would hunt in pairs.
He grabbed the guy by the collar and hauled him into the trees on the far side of the track. His bow clattered on the blacktop. It came to rest out in the open. Unfortunate. It told a clear story. Like the opening frame of a movie. Reacher stopped six feet in the trees. He hauled the guy upright. He made him stand in front, like a human shield. From behind he pushed the tip of the arrow up under the guy’s chin. Into the fleshy part. The guy went up on tiptoes and raised his head as high as it would go.
Reacher pushed harder.
He whispered, “Who are you hunting?”
The guy breathed out like a sigh, which without his current tense condition might have sounded deeply contemplative, as if a subject of immense complexity had just been introduced, that would require great scholarship and debate to resolve. Even from behind Reacher could sense his lips working, perhaps subconsciously, as he rehearsed an opening statement. But he didn’t speak. Instead his breathing grew panicked for a spell. Then it resolved. As if he had accepted something. Too late Reacher realized the panic must have been over the biggest complexities of all, which would include the cops coming, and the FBI, and cable TV, and the trial of the century, the whole bizarre freak show out in the open, and the shame and humiliation and embarrassment and disgust. And then the certain life sentence.
The acceptance was what to do about it.
Under the circumstances, the best thing for all concerned.
The guy flipped his feet out from under his knees, like a starfish, like a parachutist jumping out an airplane door, and he lunged forward and took his whole falling weight on the point of the arrow under his chin. Which sliced up into his mouth, through his tongue, through his palate, through his sinus cavity, and into his brain.
Then Reacher let it go.
—
In the back parlor Steven was losing screen after screen. Most of the cameras were on the motel, looking outward, disguised as brackets for the rainwater gutters. As the motel burned, they burned. Also all the comms hubs were in the roof space. All the radio antennas, and all the telephone links. It had been the obvious location. The motel was closest to central, with respect to the forest as a whole. It was slightly elevated. They were rebuilding it anyway. They put it all in there. Now it was burning up. Including the hidden satellite dish for the secret internet account. No way to trace that ISP. But now gone. They were alone in the world. They were cut off.
The GPS still worked, in the flashlights. That came direct to the house. Currently it showed Patty and Shorty heading for the mouth of the track. In a straight line. With the burning motel directly behind them, no doubt. Smart. It had never been thought of. Not in any of their brainstorming sessions. Not in any of their simulations. It should have been thought of. Night vision or no night vision, they would be very hard to see, against a bright moving glare directly behind them. Not until they were very close.
His final problem was customer number three’s heart rate monitor. It was sounding an alarm. Not a necessary piece of equipment, but part of the terms and conditions. A private experiment, run by Robert, who wanted to test the notion that the thrill of the hunt was in the chase. He thought not, based on experience in Thailand. He thought the thrill came in the delicious hour after the prey was cornered. He wanted numbers to prove it. Hence customers were to wear monitors. Data was to be recorded. So far number three had displayed increasing excitement, with a recent huge peak, and then he had flatlined. According to his monitor, he was dead.
Chapter 38
Patty and Shorty held hands, and somehow the palm to palm contact was better than talking, when it came to saying what they had to say. They were both feeling weird, somewhere between paralyzed and frantic, sometimes breathless, caught up in a strange double flip-flop inversion. It was pitch dark, so they were safe, except for night vision, so they weren’t, except night vision couldn’t be used, so they were. One step they felt secure. Like little kids, hiding. They could see no one, therefore no one could see them. The next step they felt they were walking the length of a gigantic airport runway, two tiny figures all alone in the vastness, lit up by a thousand probing searchlights.
They didn’t know which feeling was real.
Maybe neither.
They walked on.
They waited for arrows.
None came.
They anticipated sentries wide on the flanks. Impatient types, hoping for the best. Hoping for early contact. They planned to avoid them by coming in pretty much centrally. Pretty much halfway between any two distant outposts. With the fire behind them every step. But then at the last moment they planned to veer off course, just as far as the edge of the blaze would cover them. Then they would work around in the woods and pick up the track’s direction a little farther down. Better than walking right in, they thought. Surely the mouth of the track would be watched very carefully.
Also they planned to split up. Just temporarily. Just by ten yards or so.
“Close enough to help,” Patty said.
Then she thought, far enough to get away when the other one is killed.
But out loud she said, “Far enough not to make one big target.”
In the distance behind them the motel’s roof fell in. A huge cloud of sparks rose up, and hungry new flames started in on the timbers. The fire was brighter than ever.
“Now,” Patty said.
They went south. To their right. They skipped along sideways, glancing ahead, glancing back at the fire, trying to stay covered by its white-out glow, by the very last edge of its halo, but also pushing the envelope, going as wide as they dared, and then wider, and wider still, and then Shorty ran for the woods first, as agreed. He made it. Patty
waited. No sound. No shouted warning. She went after him, squeezing between the same two trees, aiming to head around the same quarter circle, back toward the track. She could hear him up ahead. She was close enough to help. She glanced behind her. She was far enough to get away. Would she? She thought, a mile in my shoes, baby. Who knew what anyone would do?
She walked on.
Then two things happened so fast and sudden her mind went blank. They came out of nowhere. Too fast to see. Two things happened. That was all she knew. And then nothing. Except Shorty was suddenly standing in front of her, and a guy was lying on the ground. Then came a painful slow motion replay, like a mental reaction. Maybe a therapeutic purpose. Post traumatic. In her mind she saw a guy looming up. Literally a nightmare vision. All in black, tight nylon, a bow, an arrow, a hideous mechanical one-eyed face. The bow jerking right, tilting down, at her legs, aiming low. They’ll shoot to wound . Then the string drawing back, the arrowhead winking in the moonlight, then out of nowhere Shorty was behind the guy, swinging his long metal flashlight like the riot police, hitting the guy full on behind the ear, every ounce of his potato farmer bulk and muscle behind it, plus every ounce of his anger and fury and fear and humiliation. The guy went straight down. Dead, she was sure. The sound alone told her. The flashlight against his skull. She was a country girl. She had heard enough cows killed to know what it took.
Close enough to help.
It had worked.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I busted my flashlight,” he said. “It doesn’t turn on anymore.”
“You can have mine,” she said. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Keep mine for a weapon,” he said.
They traded flashlights. An absurd little ceremony.
“Thank you,” she said again.
