Die Trying

kicked hard under the rifle and caught him in the groin. He wheeled away and collapsed. She darted for Borken. Her glittering hand swung a vicious arc. Webster heard a shriek in his ear. The camera showed Borken ducking away. Holly swarming after him.
    But the first man was up again, behind her. Hesitating. Then he was swinging his rifle like a bat. He caught her with the stock flat on the back of her head. She went limp. Her leg stayed stiff. She collapsed over it like she was falling over a gate and sprawled on the road at Borken’s feet.

    TWO DOWN. ONE of them was Holly. Reacher adjusted the field glasses and stared at her. Two still standing. A grunt with a rifle, and Borken with a handgun and the radio. All in a tight knot, visible through the trees twelve hundred yards southeast and three hundred feet below. Reacher stared at Holly, inert on the ground. He wanted her. He loved her for her courage. Two armed men and Borken, and she’d gone for it. Hopeless, but she’d gone for it. He lowered the field glasses and hitched his legs around the chimney. Like he was riding a metal horse. The chimney was warm. His upper body was flat on the slope of the roof. His head and shoulders were barely above the ridge. He raised the field glasses again, and held his breath, and waited.

    THEY SAW BORKEN’Sagitated gestures and then the injured man was getting up and moving in with the other who had hit her. They saw them pinning her arms behind her and dragging her to her feet. Her head was hanging down. One leg was bent, and the other was stiff. They propped her on it and paused. Borken signaled them to move. They dragged her away across the road. Then Borken’s voice came back in Webster’s ear, loud and breathy.
    “OK, fun’s over,” he said. “Put her old man on.”
    Webster handed the radio to Johnson. He stared at it. Raised it to his ear.
    “Anything you want,” he said. “Anything at all. Just don’t hurt her.”
    Borken laughed. A loud, relieved chuckle.
    “That’s the kind of attitude I like,” he said. “Now watch this.”
    The two men dragged Holly up the knoll in front of the ruined office building. Dragged her over to the stump of the dead tree. They turned her and walked her until her back thumped against the wood. They wrapped her arms around the stump behind her. Her head came up. She shook it, in a daze. One man held both wrists while the other fumbled with something. Handcuffs. He locked her wrists behind the tree. The two men stepped away, back toward Borken. Holly fell and slid down the stump. Then she pushed back and stood up. Shook her head again and gazed around.
    “Target practice,” Borken said into the radio.
    Johnson’s aide fiddled with the zoom and made the picture bigger. Borken was walking away. He walked twenty yards south and turned, the Sig-Sauer pointing at the ground, the radio up at his face.
    “Here goes,” he said.
    He turned side-on and raised his arm. Held it out absolutely straight, shoulders turned like a duelist in an old movie. Squinted down the barrel and fired. The pistol kicked silently and there was a puff of dust in the ground, three feet from where Holly was standing still.
    Borken laughed again.
    “Bad shot,” he said. “I need the practice. Might take me a while to get close. But I’ve got fourteen more shells, right?”
    He fired again. A puff of dust from the earth. Three feet the other side of the stump.
    “Thirteen left,” Borken said. “I guess CNN is your best bet, right? Call them and tell them the whole story. Make it an official statement. Get Webster to back you up. Then patch them through on this radio. You won’t give me my fax line, I’m going to have to communicate direct.”
    “You’re crazy,” Johnson said.
    “You’re the one who’s crazy,” Borken said. “I’m a force of history. I can’t be stopped. I’m shooting at your daughter. The President’s godchild. You don’t understand, Johnson. The world is changing. I’m changing it. The world must be my witness.”
    Johnson was silent. Stunned.
    “OK,” Borken said. “I’m going to hang up now. You make that call. Thirteen bullets left. I don’t hear from CNN, the last one kills her.”
    Johnson heard the line go dead and looked up at the screens and saw Borken drop the radio on the ground. Saw him raise the Sig-Sauer two-handed. Saw him sight it in. Saw him put a round right between his daughter’s feet.

    REACHER RESTED AGAINST the warm chimney and lowered