Die Trying

Reacher said. “They’re talking about mass suicide if they look like getting beat. Live free or die, you know?”
    “Whichever,” McGrath said. “Their choice. I don’t care what happens to them. I just care about Holly.”
    They fell silent and crept together through the trees. Stopped deep in the woods, about level with the back of the mess hall. Now Reacher was winding himself up to ask a question. But he waited, frozen, a finger to his lips. There was noise to his left. A patrol, sweeping the fringe of the forest. McGrath made to move, but Reacher caught his arm and stopped him. Better to stand stock-still than to risk making noise of their own. The patrol came nearer. Reacher raised his rifle and switched it to rapid fire. Smothered the sound of the click with his palm. McGrath held his breath. The patrol was visible, ten feet away through the trees. Six men, six rifles. They were glancing rhythmically as they walked, left and right, left and right, between the edge of the sunny clearing and the dark green depths of the woods. Reacher breathed out, silently. Amateurs, with poor training and bad tactics. The bright sun in their eyes on every second glance was ruining their chances of seeing into the gloom of the forest. They were blind. They passed by without stopping. Reacher followed the sound of their progress and turned back to McGrath.
    “Where are Brogan and Milosevic?” he whispered.
    McGrath nodded, morosely.
    “I know,” he said, quietly. “One of them is bent. I finally figured that out about half a second before they grabbed me up.”
    “Where are they?” Reacher asked again.
    “Up here somewhere,” McGrath said. “We came in through the ravine together, a mile apart.”
    “Which one is it?” Reacher asked.
    McGrath shrugged.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “Can’t figure it out. I’ve been going over and over it. They both did good work. Milosevic found the dry cleaner. He brought the video in. Brogan did a lot of work tracing it all back here to Montana. He traced the truck. He liaised with Quantico. My gut says neither one is bent.”
    “When was I ID’d?” Reacher asked.
    “Thursday morning,” McGrath said. “We had your complete history.”
    Reacher nodded.
    “He called it in right away,” he said. “These people suddenly knew who I was, Thursday morning.”
    McGrath shrugged again.
    “They were both there at the time,” he said. “We were all down at Peterson.”
    “Did you get Holly’s fax?” Reacher asked.
    “What fax?” McGrath said. “When?”
    “This morning,” Reacher said. “Early, maybe ten to five? She faxed you a warning.”
    “We’re intercepting their line,” McGrath said. “In a truck, down the road here. But ten to five, I was in bed.”
    “So who was minding the store?” Reacher asked.
    McGrath nodded.
    “Milosevic and Brogan,” he said, sourly. “The two of them. Ten to five this morning, they’d just gone on duty. Whichever one of them it is must have gotten the fax and concealed it. But which one, I just don’t know.”
    Reacher nodded back.
    “We could figure it out,” he said. “Or we could just wait and see. One of them will be walking around best of friends and the other will be in handcuffs, or dead. We’ll be able to tell the difference.”
    McGrath nodded, sourly.
    “I can’t wait,” he said.
    Then Reacher stiffened and pulled him ten yards farther into the woods. He had heard the patrol coming back through the trees.

    INSIDE THE COURTROOM. Borken had heard the three shots. He was sitting in the judge’s chair, and he heard them clearly. They went: crack crack . . . crack and repeated a dozen times as each of the distant slopes cannoned the echo back toward him. He sent a runner back to the Bastion. A mile there, a mile back on the winding path through the woods. Twenty minutes wasted, and then the runner got back panting with the news. Three corpses, four cut ropes.
    “Reacher,” Borken said. “I should have wasted him at the beginning.”
    Milosevic nodded in agreement.
    “I want him kept away from me,” Milosevic said. “I heard the autopsy report on your friend Peter Bell. I just want my money and safe passage out of here, OK?”
    Borken nodded. Then he laughed. A sharp, nervous laugh that was part excitement, part tension. He stood up and walked out from behind the bench. Laughed and grinned and slapped Milosevic on the shoulder.

    HOLLY JOHNSON KNEW no more than most people do about dynamite. She