Die Trying

trees and tangled undergrowth and rock slides. The road itself was lifted progressively on concrete trestles and rose gently across a bridge. Then more concrete trestles set it down on the level ground to the north and it snaked away through the forest into the mountains.
    But the bridge was blown. Charges had been exploded against the two center trestles. A twenty-foot section of the center span had fallen a hundred feet into the trench. The four men in the lee of the outcrop could see fragments of the road lying shattered in the bottom of the ravine.
    “What do you think?” Johnson asked urgently.
    The Marine commander was giving it a fast sweep through his field glasses. Left and right, up and down, examining the exact terrain.
    “I think it’s shit, sir,” he said.
    “Can you get through?” Johnson asked him.
    The guy lowered his field glasses and shook his head.
    “Not a hope in hell,” he said.
    He stepped across shoulder to shoulder with the General, so Johnson could share the same line of sight. Started talking rapidly and pointing as he did so.
    “We could get down to the bottom,” he said. “We could go in right there, where the rock slide gives us a reasonable descent. But getting up the other side is the problem, sir. The LAV can’t climb much more than forty-five degrees. Most of the north face looks a lot steeper than that. Some places, it’s near enough vertical. Any gentle slopes are overgrown. And they’ve felled trees. See there, sir?”
    He pointed to a wooded area on the slope opposite. Trees had been felled and left lying with their chopped ends facing south.
    “Abatises,” the Marine said. “The vehicle is going to stall against them. No doubt about that. Coming uphill, slowly, those things would stop a tank. We go in there, we’ll be trapped in the ditch, no doubt at all.”
    “So what the hell do we do?” Johnson said.
    The Marine officer shrugged.
    “Bring me some engineers,” he said. “The gap they blew is only about twenty feet wide. We can bridge that.”
    “How long will that take?” Webster asked.
    The Marine shrugged again.
    “All the way up here?” he said. “Six hours? Maybe eight?”
    “Way too long,” Webster said.
    Then the radio receiver in McGrath’s pocket started crackling.

39
    REACHER WAS HIDING out in the woods. Worried about the dogs. They were the only thing he wasn’t certain about. People, he could handle. Dogs, he had very little experience.
    He was in the trees, north of the Bastion, south of the rifle range. He had heard the Chinook hit the ground from a mile away. It hit tail first, smashing and tearing into the wooded slope. It looked to have slipped sideways in the air and missed the courthouse by two hundred yards. No explosions. Not from the courthouse or from the chopper itself. No sound of fuel tanks going up. Reacher was reasonably optimistic for the crew. He figured the trees and the collapse of the big boxy body might have cushioned the impact for them. He had known chopper crews survive worse.
    He had an M-16 rifle in his hand and a Glock in his pocket. The Glock was fully loaded. Seventeen shells. The M-16 had the short clip. Twenty shells, less the one that had killed the guy with the missile. The second M-16 had the long clip. A full load of thirty. But it was hidden in the trees. Because Reacher had a rule: choose the weapon you know for certain is in working order.
    He felt instinctively that the focus of attention would be in the southeast direction. That was where Holly was being held, and that was where the Chinook had come down. That was where the opposition forces would be massing. He felt people would be turning to face southeast, apprehensively, staring down into the rest of the United States, waiting. So he turned his back and headed northwest.
    He moved cautiously. The bulk of the enemy was elsewhere, but he knew there were squads out looking for him. He knew they had already discovered Fowler’s body. He had seen two separate patrols, searching the woods. Six men in each, heavily armed, crashing through the undergrowth, searching. Not difficult to avoid. But the dogs would be difficult to avoid. That was why he was worried. That was why he was moving cautiously.
    He stayed in the trees and skirted the western end of the rifle range. Tracked back east around the parade ground. Fifty yards north, he turned again and paralleled the road up to the mines. He stayed in the trees and moved at a fast jog. Used the