Die Trying

Dexter shook his head again.

“No, you’re not,” he said. “We didn’t meet today, and I didn’t speak with the President today. We didn’t know anything about it today. Tell us all about it on Monday, Harland, if there’s still a problem.”

Webster just sat there. He was a smart enough guy, but right then he couldn’t figure if he was being handed the deal of a lifetime, or a suicide pill.

JOHNSON AND HIS aide arrived in Butte an hour later. They came in the same way, Air Force helicopter from Peterson up to the Silver Bow County airport. Milosevic took an air-to-ground call as they were on approach and went out to meet them in a two-year-old Grand Cherokee supplied by the local dealership. Nobody spoke on the short ride back to town. Milosevic just drove and the two military men bent over charts and maps from a large leather case the aide was carrying. They passed them back and forth and nodded, as if further comment was u

The upstairs room in the municipal building was suddenly crowded. Five men, two chairs. The only window faced southeast over the street. The wrong direction. The five men were instinctively glancing at the blank wall opposite. Through that wall was Holly, two hundred and forty miles away.

“We’re going to have to move up there,” General Johnson said.

His aide nodded.

“No good staying here,” he said.

McGrath had made a decision. He had promised himself he wouldn’t fight turf wars with these guys. His agent was Johnson’s daughter. He understood the old guy’s feelings. He wasn’t going to squander time and energy proving who was boss. And he needed the old guy’s help.

“We need to share facilities,” he said. “Just for the time being.”

There was a short silence. The General nodded slowly. He knew enough about Washington to decode those five words with a fair degree of accuracy.

“I don’t have many facilities available,” he said in turn. “It’s the holiday weekend. Exactly seventy-five percent of the U.S. Army is on leave.”

Silence. McGrath’s turn to do the decoding and the slow nodding.

“No authorization to cancel leave?” he asked.

The General shook his head.

“I just spoke with Dexter,” he said. “And Dexter just spoke with the President. Feeling was this thing is on hold until Monday.”

The crowded room went silent. The guy’s daughter was in trouble, and the White House fixer was playing politics.

“Webster got the same story,” McGrath said. “Can’t even bring the Hostage Rescue Team up here yet. Time being, we’re on our own, the three of us.”

The General nodded to McGrath. It was a personal gesture, individual to individual, and it said: we’ve leveled with each other, and we both know what humiliation that cost us, and we both know we appreciate it.

“But there’s no harm in being prepared,” the General said. “Like the little guy suspects, the military is comfortable with secret maneuvers. I’m calling in a few private favors that Mr. Dexter need never know about.”

The silence in the room eased. McGrath looked a question at him.

“There’s a mobile command post already on its way,” the General said.

He took a large chart from his aide and spread it out on the desk.

“We’re going to rendezvous right here,” he said.

He had his finger on a spot northwest of the last habitation in Montana short of Yorke. It was a wide curve on the road leading into the county, about six miles shy of the bridge over the ravine.

“The satellite trucks are heading straight there,” he said. “I figure we move in, set up the command post, and seal off the road behind us.”

McGrath stood still, looking down at the map. He knew that to agree was to hand over total control to the military. He knew that to disagree was to play petty games with his agent and this man’s daughter. Then he saw that the General’s finger was resting a half-inch south of a much better location. A little farther north, the road narrowed dramatically. It straightened to give a clear view north and south. The terrain tightened. A better site for a roadblock. A better site for a command post. He was amazed that the General hadn’t spotted it. Then he was flooded with gratitude. The General had spotted it. But he was leaving room for McGrath to point it out. He was leaving room for give-and-take. He didn’t want total control.

“I would prefer this place,” McGrath said.

He tapped the northerly location with a pencil. The General pretended to study it. His aide pretended to be impressed.

“Good thinking,” the General said. “We’ll revise the rendezvous.”

McGrath smiled. He knew damn well the trucks were already heading for that exact spot. Probably already there. The General gri

“What can the spy planes show us?” Brogan asked.

“Everything,” the General’s aide said. “Wait until you see the pictures. The cameras on those babies are unbelievable.”

“I don’t like it,” McGrath said. “It’s going to make them nervous.”

The aide shook his head.

“They won’t even know they’re there,” he said. “We’re using two of them, flying straight lines, east to west and west to east. They’re thirty-seven thousand feet up. Nobody on the ground is even going to be aware of them.”

“That’s seven miles up,” Brogan said. “How can they see anything from that sort of height?”

“Good cameras,” the aide said. “Seven miles is nothing. They’ll show you a cigarette pack lying on the sidewalk from seven miles. The whole thing is automatic. The guys up there hit a button, and the camera tracks whatever it’s supposed to track. Just keeps pointing at the spot on the ground you chose, transmitting high-quality video by satellite, then you turn around and come back, and the camera swivels around and does it all again.”

“Undetectable?” McGrath asked.

“They look like airliners,” the aide said. “You look up and you see a tiny little vapor trail and you think it’s TWA on the way somewhere. You don’t think it’s the Air Force checking whether you polished your shoes this morning, right?”

“Seven miles, you’ll see the hairs on their heads,” Johnson said. “What do you think we spent all those defense dollars on? Crop dusters?”

McGrath nodded. He felt naked. Time being, he had nothing to offer except a couple of rental jeeps, two years old, waiting at the sidewalk.

“We’re getting a profile on this Borken guy,” he said. “Shrinks at Quantico are working it up now.”

“We found Jack Reacher’s old CO,” Johnson said. “He’s doing desk duty in the Pentagon. He’ll join us, give us the spread.”

McGrath nodded.

“Forewarned is forearmed,” he said.

The telephone rang. Johnson’s aide picked it up. He was the nearest.

“When are we leaving?” Brogan asked.

McGrath noticed he had asked Johnson direct.

“Right now, I guess,” Johnson said. “The Air Force will fly us up there. Saves six hours on the road, right?”

The aide hung up the phone. He looked like he’d been kicked in the gut.

“The missile unit,” he said. “We lost radio contact, north of Yorke.”