Die Trying

laughing. She couldn’t hug back, because her arms were still cuffed behind the post. McGrath let her go and ran down the slope. Smacked a high five with Milosevic.
    “Who’s got the keys?” McGrath yelled.
    Garber pointed over toward the two dead soldiers. McGrath ran to them and searched through the oozing pockets. Came out with a key and ran back up to the knoll. Ducked around to the back of the stump and unlocked Holly’s wrists. She staggered away and McGrath darted forward and grabbed her arm. Milosevic found her crutch on the road and tossed it over. McGrath caught it and handed it to her. She got steady and came down the rise, arm in arm with McGrath. They made it to level ground and stood there together, gazing around in the sudden deafening quiet.
    “Who do I thank?” Holly asked.
    She was holding McGrath’s arm, staring at the remains of Borken, lying sixty feet away. The corpse was flat on its back, high and wide. It had no head.
    “This is General Garber,” McGrath said. “Top boy in the military police.”
    Garber shook his head.
    “Wasn’t me,” he said. “Somebody beat me to it.”
    “Wasn’t me,” Milosevic said.
    Then Garber nodded behind them.
    “Probably this guy,” he said.
    Reacher was on his way down the knoll. Out of breath. A frame six five high and two hundred and twenty pounds in weight is good for a lot of things, but not for sprinting a mile.
    “Reacher,” Holly said.
    He ignored her. Ignored everybody. Just ran on south and turned to stare up at the white wall. He saw bullet holes. A lot of bullet holes. Probably thirty holes, most of them scattered over the second floor in the southeastern corner. He stared at them for a second and ran for the jeep parked at the curb. Snatched the shovel from its clips under the spare fuel can. Sprinted for the steps. Crashed through the door and up the stairs to Holly’s room. Ran for the front wall.
    He could see at least a dozen exit holes punched through the wood. Ragged splintered holes. He smashed the blade of the shovel into one of them. Split the pine board lengthways and used the shovel to wrench it off. Smashed the shovel behind the next and tore it away from the nails securing it. By the time McGrath was in the room, he had exposed four feet of studding. By the time Holly joined them, they were staring into an empty cavity.
    “No dynamite,” she said, quietly.
    Reacher ducked away to the adjacent wall. Tore enough boards off to be sure.
    “There never was any,” Holly said. “Shit, I can’t believe it.”
    “There was some,” McGrath said. “Jackson called it in. Described the whole thing. I saw his report. He unloaded the truck with seven other guys. He carried it up here. He saw it going into the walls, for God’s sake. A ton of dynamite. Kind of a hard thing to be confused about.”
    “So they put it in,” Reacher said. “And then they took it out. They let people see it going in, then they took it out again secretly. They used it somewhere else.”
    “Took it out again?” Holly repeated.
    “Women and children have to die,” Reacher said, slowly.
    “What?” Holly asked. “What are you saying?”
    “But not here,” he said. “Not these women and children.”
    “What?” Holly said again.
    “Not mass suicide,” Reacher said. “Mass murder.”
    Then he just went blank. He was silent. But in his head, he was hearing something. He was hearing the same terrible blast he had heard thirteen years before. The sound of Beirut. The sound of the Marine compound, out near the airport. He was hearing it all over again, and it was deafening him.
    “Now we know what it is,” he muttered through the shattering roar.
    “What is it?” McGrath asked.
    “Low on its springs,” Reacher said. “But we don’t know where it’s gone.”
    “What?” Holly said again.
    “Women and children have to die,” Reacher repeated. “Borken said so. He said the historical circumstances justified it. But he didn’t mean these women and these children up here.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?” McGrath said.
    Reacher glanced at him, and then at Holly, surprised, like he was seeing them both for the first time.
    “I was in the motor pool,” he said. “I saw the truck. Our truck? It was parked up, low on its springs, like it had a heavy weight inside.”
    “What?” Holly said again.
    “They’ve made themselves a truck bomb,” Reacher said. “Stevie’s delivering it somewhere, some public place.