Worth Dying For

Reacher opened the driver’s door. He put his knee on the seat and leaned inside. The guy who had spoken before asked, ‘So where are we going?’

‘Not far,’ Reacher said.

‘Can’t you tell us?’

‘I’m going to park next to the Ford you burned.’

‘What, just up there?’

‘I said not far.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then I’m going to set this car on fire.’

The two men glanced at each other, not understanding. The one who had spoken before said, ‘You’re going to drive with us in the back? Like, loose?’

‘You can put your seat belts on if you like. But it’s hardly worth it. It’s not very far. And I’m a careful driver. I won’t have an accident.’

The guy said, ‘But,’ and then nothing more.

‘I know,’ Reacher said. ‘I’ll have my back turned. You could jump me.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘But you won’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘You just won’t. I know it.’

‘Why wouldn’t we?’

‘Because you’ll be dead,’ Reacher said, and he shot the first guy in the forehead, and then the second, a brisk double tap, no pause, bang bang, no separation at all. The rear window shattered and blood and bone and brain hit the remains of the glass, delayed, slower than the bullets, and the two guys settled peacefully, slower still, like afterthoughts, like old people falling asleep, but with open eyes and fat beads of purple welling out of the neat holes in their brows, welling and lengthening and becoming slow lazy trickles that ran down to the bridges of their noses.

Reacher backed out of the car and straightened up and looked north. Nine-millimetre Parabellums. Fine ammunition. The two slugs were probably hitting the ground right about then, a mile farther on, burning their way into the frigid dirt.

Reacher checked room seven and found a wallet in a coat. There was a Nevada driver’s licence in it, made out in the name of Roberto Cassano, at a local Las Vegas address. There were four credit cards and a little more than ninety dollars in cash. Reacher took sixty and got in the Impala and drove forty yards and parked tight up against the shell of the Ford. He gave the sixty bucks to Vincent in the lounge, two rooms, one night, and then he borrowed rags and matches, and as soon as the fuse was set in the Chevy’s filler neck he hustled back to the Tahoe he had left on the shoulder. The first major flames were showing as he drove by, and he saw the fuel tank go up in his mirror, about four hundred yards later. The angle he was at and the way the fireball rose and then smoked and died made the motel sign look real, like it was a genuine working rocket, like it was blasting off for the infinite emptiness of space.

Eldridge Tyler heard the gunshots. Two faint pops, rapid, a double tap, very distant, really nothing more than vague percussive holes in the winter air. Not a rifle. Not a shotgun. Tyler knew firearms, and he knew the way their sounds travelled across the land. A handgun, he thought, three or four miles away. Maybe the hunt was over. Maybe the big man was down. He moved again, easing one leg, easing the other, stretching one arm, stretching the other, rolling his shoulders, rotating his neck. He dug into his canvas tote bag and came out with a bottle of water and a brown-bread sandwich. He put both items within easy reach. Then he peered out through the space left by the missing louvre, and took a careful look around. Because maybe the big man wasn’t down. Tyler took nothing for granted. He was a cautious man. His job was to watch and wait, and watch and wait he would, until he was told different.

He leaned up on his hands and craned around and looked behind him. The sun had moved a little south of east and low slanting light was falling on the shelter’s entrance. The tripwire’s plastic insulation had dewed over with dawn mist and was glistening faintly. Ten minutes, Tyler thought, before it dried and went invisible again.

He turned back and lay flat and snuggled behind the scope again, and he put his finger on the trigger.

FIFTY-FOUR

DOROTHY COE USED THE GUEST BATHROOM AND SHOWERED fast, ready for work at the motel. She stopped in the kitchen to drink coffee and eat toast with the doctor and his wife, and then she changed her mind about her destination. She asked, ‘Where did Reacher go?’

The doctor said, ‘I’m not sure.’

‘He must have told you.’

‘He’s working on a theory.’

‘He knows something now. I can feel it.’

The doctor said nothing.

Dorothy Coe asked, ‘Where did he go?’

The doctor said, ‘The old barn.’

Dorothy Coe said, ‘Then that’s where I’m going too.’

The doctor said, ‘Don’t.’

Reacher drove south on the two-lane road and coasted to a stop a thousand yards beyond the barn. It stood on the dirt a mile away to the west, close to its smaller companion, crisp in the light, canted down at one corner like it was kneeling. Reacher got out and grasped the roof bar and stood on the seat and hauled himself up and stood straight, like he had before on the doctor’s Subaru, but higher this time, because the Tahoe was taller. He turned a slow circle, the sun in his eyes one way, his shadow immense the other. He saw the motel in the distance to the north, and the three Duncan houses in the distance to the south. Nothing else. No people, no vehicles. Nothing was stirring.

He stepped down on the hood and jumped down to the ground. He ignored the tractor ruts and walked straight across the dirt, a direct line, homing in, aiming for the gap between the barn and the smaller shelter.

Eldridge Tyler heard the truck. Just the whisper of faraway tyres on coarse blacktop, the hiss of exhaust through a catalytic converter, the muted thrash of turning components, all barely audible in the absolute rural silence. He heard it stop. He heard it stay where it was. It was a mile away, he thought. It was not one of the Duncans with a message. They would come all the way, or call on the phone. It was not the shipment, either. Not yet. The shipment was still hours away.

He rolled on his side and looked back at the tripwire. He rehearsed the necessary moves in his head, should someone come: snatch back the rifle, roll on his hip, sit up, swivel around, and fire point blank. No problem.

He faced front again and put his eye on the scope and his finger on the trigger.

Ten minutes later Reacher was halfway to the barn, assessing, evaluating, counting in his head. He was alone. He was the last man standing. All ten football players were down, the Italians were down, the Arabs in the Ford were down, the remaining Iranian was accounted for, and all four Duncans were holed up in one of their houses. Reacher felt he could trust that last piece of information. The local phone tree seemed to be an impeccable source of human intelligence. Humint, the army called it, and the army Reacher had known would have been crazy with jealousy at such vigilance.

He walked on, bending his line a little to centre himself in the gap between the buildings. The barn was on his right, and the smaller shelter was on his left. The brambles at their bases looked like hasty freehand shading on a pencil drawing. Dry sticks in the winter, possibly a riot of colour and petals in the summer. Possibly an attraction. Kids’ bikes could handle the tractor ruts. Balloon tyres, sturdy frames.

He walked on.

Eldridge Tyler stilled his breathing and concentrated hard and strained to hear whatever sounds there were to be heard. He knew the land. The earth was always moving, heating, cooling, vibrating, suffering tiny tremors and microscopic upheavals, forcing small stones upward through its many layers to the broken surfaces above, where they lay in the ruts and the furrows, waiting to be stepped on, to be kicked, to be crunched together, to be sent clicking one against the other. It was not possible to walk silently across open land. Tyler knew that. He kept his eye to the scope, his finger on the trigger, and his ears wide open.

Reacher stopped fifty yards out and stood absolutely still, looking at the buildings in front of him and juggling circular thoughts in his head. His theory was either all the way right or all the way wrong. The eight-year-old Margaret Coe had come for the flowers, but she hadn’t gotten trapped by accident. The bike proved the proposition. A child impulsive enough to drop a bike on a path might have dashed inside a derelict structure and injured herself badly. But a child earnest and serious enough to wheel her bike in with her would have taken care and not gotten hurt at all. Human nature. Logic. If there had been an accident, the bike would have been found outside. The bike had not been found outside, therefore there had been no accident.