Die Trying

17

HOLLY WAS SITTING up on the mattress, one knee under her chin, the injured leg straight out. Reacher was sitting up beside her, hunched forward, worried, one hand fighting the bounce of the truck and the other hand plunged into his hair.

“What about your mother?” he asked.

“Was your father famous?” Holly asked him back.

Reacher shook his head.

“Hardly,” he said. “Guys in his unit knew who he was, I guess.”

“So you don’t know what it’s like,” she said. “Every damn thing you do, it happens because of your father. I got straight A’s in school, I went to Yale and Harvard, went to Wall Street, but it wasn’t me doing it, it was this weird other person called General Johnson’s daughter doing it. It’s been just the same with the Bureau. Everybody assumes I made it because of my father, and ever since I got there half the people are still treating me especially nice, and the other half are still treating me especially tough just to prove how much they’re not impressed.”

Reacher nodded. Thought about it. He was a guy who had done better than his father. Forged ahead, in the traditional way. Left the old man behind. But he’d known guys with famous parents. The sons of great soldiers. Even the grandsons. However bright they burned, their light was always lost in the glow.

“OK, so it’s tough,” he said. “And the rest of your life you can try to ignore it, but right now it needs dealing with. It opens up a whole new can of worms.”

She nodded. Blew an exasperated sigh. Reacher glanced at her in the gloom.

“How long ago did you figure it out?” he asked.

“Immediately, I guess,” she said. “Like I told you, it’s a habit. Everybody assumes everything happens because of my father. Me too.”

“Well, thanks for telling me so soon,” Reacher said.

She didn’t reply to that. They lapsed into silence. The air was stifling and the heat was somehow mixing with the relentless drone of the noise. The dark and the temperature and the sound were like a thick soup inside the truck. Reacher felt like he was drowning in it. But it was the uncertainty that was doing it to him. Many times he’d traveled thirty hours at a stretch in transport planes, worse conditions than these. It was the huge new dimension of uncertainty that was unsettling him.

“So what about your mother?” he asked her again.

She shook her head.

“She died,” she said. “I was twenty, in school. Some weird cancer.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. Paused, nervously. “Brothers and sisters?”

She shook her head again.

“Just me,” she said.

He nodded, reluctantly.

“I was afraid of that,” he said. “I was kind of hoping this could be about something else, you know, maybe your mother was a judge or you had a brother or a sister who was a congressman or something.”

“Forget it,” she said. “There’s just me. Me and Dad. This is about Dad.”

“But what about him?” he said. “What the hell is this supposed to achieve? Ransom? Forget about it. Your old man’s a big deal, but he’s just a soldier, been clawing his way up the Army pay scales all his life. Faster than most guys, I agree, but I know those pay scales. I was on those scales thirteen years. Didn’t make me rich and they won’t have made him rich. Not rich enough for anybody to be thinking about a ransom. Somebody wanted a ransom out of kidnapping somebody’s daughter, there are a million people ahead of you in Chicago alone.”

Holly nodded.

“This is about influence,” she said. “He’s responsible for two million people and two hundred billion dollars a year. Scope for influence there, right?”

Reacher shook his head.

“No,” he said. “That’s the problem. I can’t see what this is liable to achieve.”

He got to his knees and crawled forward along the mattresses.

“Hell are you doing?” Holly asked him.

“We got to talk to them,” he said. “Before we get where we’re going.”

He lifted his big fist and started pounding on the bulkhead. Hard as he could. Right behind where he figured the driver’s head must be. He kept on pounding until he got what he wanted. Took a while. Several minutes. His fist got sore. But the truck lurched off the pavement and started slowing. He felt the front wheels washing into gravel. The brakes bit in. He was pressed up against the bulkhead by the momentum. Holly rolled a couple of feet along the mattress. Gasped in pain as her knee twisted against the motion.

“Pulled off the highway,” Reacher said. “Middle of nowhere.”

“This is a big mistake, Reacher,” Holly said.

He shrugged and took her hand and helped her into a sitting position, back against the bulkhead. Then he slid forward and put himself between her and the rear doors. He heard the three guys getting out of the cab. Doors slammed. He heard their footsteps crunching over the gravel. Two coming down the right flank, one down the left. He heard the key sliding into the lock. The handle turned.

The left-hand rear door opened two inches. First thing into the truck was the muzzle of the shotgun. Beyond it, Reacher saw a meaningless sliver of sky. Bright blue, small white clouds. Could have been anywhere in the hemisphere. Second thing into the truck was a Glock 17. Then a wrist. The cuff of a cotton shirt. The Glock was rock-steady. Loder.

“This better be good, bitch,” he called.

Hostile. A lot of tension in the voice.

“We need to talk,” Reacher called back.

The second Glock appeared in the narrow gap. Shaking slightly.

“Talk about what, asshole?” Loder called.

Reacher listened to the stress in the guy’s voice and watched the second Glock trembling through its random zigzags.

“This isn’t going to work, guys,” he said. “Whoever told you to do this, he isn’t thinking straight. Maybe it felt like some kind of a smart move, but it’s all wrong. It isn’t going to achieve anything. It’s just going to get you guys in a shitload of trouble.”

There was silence at the rear of the truck. Just for a second. But long enough to tell Reacher that Holly was right. Long enough to know he’d made a bad mistake. The steady Glock snapped back out of sight. The shotgun jerked, like it had just changed ownership. Reacher flung himself forward and smashed Holly down flat on the mattress. The shotgun barrel tipped upward. Reacher heard the small click of the trigger a tiny fraction before an enormous explosion. The shotgun fired into the roof. A huge blast. A hundred tiny holes appeared in the metal. A hundred tiny points of blue light. Spent shot rattled and bounced down and ricocheted around the truck like hail. Then the sound of the gun faded into the hum of temporary deafness.

Reacher felt the slam of the door. The sliver of daylight cut off. He felt the rock of the vehicle as the three men climbed back into the cab. He felt the shake as the rough diesel caught. Then a forward lurch and a yaw to the left as the truck pulled back onto the highway.

FIRST THING REACHER heard as his hearing came back was a quiet keening as the air whistled out through the hundred pellet holes in the roof. It grew louder as the miles rolled by. A hundred high-pitched whistles, all grouped together a couple of semitones apart, fighting and warbling like some kind of demented birdsong.

“Insane, right?” Holly said.

“Me or them?” he said.

He nodded an apology. She nodded back and struggled up to a sitting position. Used both hands to straighten her knee. The holes in the roof were letting light through. Enough light that Reacher could see her face clearly. He could interpret her expression. He could see the flicker of pain. Like a blind coming down in her eyes, then snapping back up. He knelt and swept the spent pellets off the mattress. They rattled across the metal floor.

“Now you’ve got to get out,” she said. “You’ll get yourself killed soon.”