Die Trying

Ray nodded again. Reacher slipped out into the night. Ray swung the door closed. Reacher backtracked silently and waited around the corner of the hut. Knelt down and found a small rock. Hefted it in his hand and waited for Ray to follow him.

He didn’t come. Reacher waited eight minutes. Long experience had taught him: if they don’t come after six minutes, they aren’t coming at all. People think in five-minute segments, because of the way clocks are laid out. They say: I’ll wait five minutes. Then, because they’re cautious, they add another minute. They think it’s smart. Reacher waited the first five, then the extra one, then added two more for the sake of safety. But Ray didn’t come. He wasn’t going to.

Reacher avoided the clearing. He kept to the trees. He skirted the area in the forest. Ignored the beaten earth paths. He wasn’t worried about the dogs. They weren’t out. Fowler had talked about mountain lions roaming. Nobody leaves dogs out at night where there are mountain lions on the prowl. That’s a sure way of having no dogs left in the morning.

He made a complete circuit of the Bastion, hidden in the trees. The lights were all out and the whole place was still and silent. He waited in the trees behind the mess hall. The kitchen was a square hut, awkwardly co

“How did you get out of there?” she whispered to him.

It was impossible to tell how old she was. Maybe twenty-five, maybe forty-five. She was a handsome woman, lean, long straight hair, but careworn and worried. A flicker of spirit and resilience underneath. She would have been comfortable a hundred years ago, stumbling down the Oregon Trail.

“How did you get out?” she whispered again.

“I walked out the door,” Reacher whispered back.

The woman just looked at him blankly.

“You’ve got to help us,” she whispered.

Then she stopped and wrung her hands and twisted her head left and right, peering into the dark, terrified.

“Help how?” he asked. “Why?”

“They’re all crazy,” the woman said. “You’ve got to help us.”

“How?” he asked again.

She just grimaced, arms held wide, like it was obvious, or like she didn’t know where to start, or how.

“From the begi

She nodded, twice, swallowing, collecting herself.

“People have disappeared,” she said.

“What people?” he asked. “How did they disappear?”

“They just disappeared,” she said. “It’s Borken. He’s taken over everything. It’s a long story. Most of us were up here with other groups, just surviving on our own, with our families, you know? I was with the Northwestern Freemen. Then Borken started coming around, talking about unity? He fought and argued. The other leaders disagreed with his views. Then they just started disappearing. They just left. Borken said they couldn’t stand the pace. They just disappeared. So he said we had to join with him. Said we had no choice. Some of us are more or less prisoners here.”

Reacher nodded.

“And now things are happening up at the mines,” she said.

“What things?” he asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Bad things, I guess. We’re not allowed to go up there. They’re only a mile up the road, but they’re off limits. Something was going on there today. They said they were all working in the south, on the border, but when they came back for lunch, they came from the north. I saw them from the kitchen window. They were smiling and laughing.”

“Who?” Reacher asked.

“Borken and the ones he trusts,” she said. “He’s crazy. He says they’ll attack us when we declare independence and we have to fight back. Starting tomorrow. We’re all scared. We got families, you know? But there’s nothing we can do. You oppose him, and you either get banished, or he raves at you until you agree with him. Nobody can stand up to him. He controls us, totally.”

Reacher nodded again. The woman sagged against him. Tears were on her cheeks.

“And we can’t win, can we?” she said. “Not if they attack us. There’s only a hundred of us, trained up. We can’t beat an army with a hundred people, can we? We’re all going to die.”

Her eyes were wide and white and desperate. Reacher shrugged. Shook his head and tried to make his voice sound calm and reassuring.

“It’ll be a siege,” he said. “That’s all. A standoff. They’ll negotiate. It’s happened before. And it’ll be the FBI, not the Army. The FBI know how to do this kind of a thing. You’ll all be OK. They won’t kill you. They won’t come here looking to kill anybody. That’s just Borken’s propaganda.”

“Live free or die,” she said. “That’s what he keeps saying.”

“The FBI will handle it,” he said again. “Nobody’s looking to kill you.”

The woman clamped her lips and screwed her wet eyes shut and shook her head wildly.

“No, Borken will kill us,” she said. “He’ll do it, not them. Live free or die, don’t you understand? If they come, he’ll kill us all. Or else he’ll make us all kill ourselves. Like a mass suicide thing? He’ll make us do it, I know he will.”

Reacher just stared at her.

“I heard them talking,” she said. “Whispering about it all the time, making secret plans. They said women and children would die. They said it was justifiable. They said it was historic and important. They said the circumstances demanded it.”

“You heard them?” Reacher asked. “When?”

“All the time,” she whispered again. “They’re always making plans. Borken and the ones he trusts. Women and children have to die, they said. They’re going to make us kill ourselves. Mass suicide. Our families. Our children. At the mines. I think they’re going to make us go in the mines and kill ourselves.”

HE STAYED IN the woods until he was well north of the parade ground. Then he tracked east until he saw the road, ru

The road wound up a mountainside in tight hairpin bends. A sure sign it led to something worthwhile, otherwise the labor consumed in its construction would have been meaningless. After a mile of winding and a thousand feet of elevation, the final curve gave out onto a bowl the size of a deserted stadium. It was part natural, part blasted, hanging there in the belly of the giant peaks. The back walls of the bowl were sheer rock faces. There were semicircular holes blasted into them at intervals. They looked like giant mouse holes. Some of them had been built out with waste rock, to provide sheltered entrances. Two of the entrances had been enlarged into giant stone sheds, roofed with timber.

The bowl was floored with loose shale. There were piles of earth and spoil everywhere. Ragged weeds and saplings were forcing their way through. Reacher could see the rusted remains of rail tracks, starting nowhere and ru

There was nothing happening. The whole place was deserted and silent. Quieter than silent. It had that total absence of sound that gets left behind when a busy place is abandoned. The natural sounds were long gone. The swaying trees cleared, the rushing streams diverted, the rustling vegetation burned off, replaced by clattering machines and shouting men. Then when the men and the machines leave, there is nothing left behind to replace their noise. Reacher strained his ears, but heard nothing at all. Silent as the moon.