Die Trying

there, hands cold and wet, staring at the noisy speaker like if he stared at it hard enough, it would change into a crystal ball and let him see what was going down.
    “He’s stopping, he’s stopping,” the guy in the helicopter was saying. “He’s stationary now, he’s stopped on the road, he’s surrounded. Hold your fire, wait for my word, they’re not coming out, open the doors, open the damn doors and drag them out, OK, we got two guys in the front, two guys, one driver, one passenger, they’re coming out, they’re out, secure them, put them in a car, get the keys, open up the back, but watch out, there are two more in there with her. Ok, we’re going to the back, we’re going around to the rear, the doors are locked back there, we’re trying the key. You know what? There’s still writing on the side of this truck. The writing is still there. It says Bright Spark Electrics. I thought it was supposed to be blanked out, right? Painted over or something?”
    In Chicago, a deathly hush fell over the third-floor conference room. McGrath went white. Milosevic looked at him. Brogan stared calmly out of the window.
    “And why is it heading north?” McGrath asked. “Back toward Chicago?”
    The crackling from the speaker was still there. They turned back toward it. Listened hard. They could hear the thump of the rotor blades behind the urgent voice.
    “The rear doors are open,” the voice said. “The doors are open, they’re open, we’re going in, people are coming out, here they come, what the hell is this? There are dozens of people in there. There are maybe twenty people in there. They’re all coming out. They’re still coming out. There are twenty or thirty people in there. What the hell is going on here?”
    The guy broke off. Evidently he was listening to a report radioed up from the ground. McGrath and Brogan and Milosevic stared at the hissing speaker. It stayed quiet for a long time. Nothing coming through at all except the guy’s loud breathing and the hammering of the blades and the waterfall of static. Then the voice came back.
    “Shit,” it said. “Shit, Washington, you there? You listening to this? You know what we just did? You know what you sent us to do? We just busted a load of wetbacks. About thirty illegals from Mexico. Just got picked up from the border. They’re on their way up to Chicago. They say they all got jobs promised up there.”

21
    THE WHITE ECONOLINE droned on. It was moving faster than it had been before. But it was out of the curves. It had lurched around the last of the tight bends, and it had settled to a fast, straight cruise. Noisier than before, because of the extra speed and the whine of the slipstream through the hundred random holes in the roof.
    Reacher and Holly were tight together on the three-foot mattress. They were lying on their backs, staring up at the holes. Each hole was a bright point of light. Not blue, just a point of light so bright it had no color at all. Just a bright point in the dark. Like a mathematical proposition. Total light against the total dark of the surrounding sheet metal. Light, the opposite of dark. Dark, the absence of light. Positive and negative. Both propositions were contrasted vividly up there on the metal roof.
    “I want to see the sky,” Holly said.
    It was warm in the truck. Not hot, like it had been the first day and a half. The whistling slipstream had solved that problem. The rush of air was keeping it comfortable. But it was warm enough that Reacher had taken his shirt off. He had balled it up and crammed it under his head.
    “I want to see the whole sky,” Holly said. “Not just little bits of it.”
    Reacher said nothing in reply. He was counting the holes.
    “What time is it?” Holly asked him.
    “Hundred and thirteen,” Reacher said.
    Holly turned her head to him.
    “What?” she said.
    “Hundred and thirteen holes in the roof,” he said.
    “Great,” she said. “What time is it?”
    “Three-thirty, Central,” he said.
    She snuggled closer. She moved her weight onto her side. Her head was resting on his right shoulder. Her leg was resting on his. His thigh was jammed between hers.
    “Wednesday, right?” she said.
    “Wednesday,” he said.
    She was physically closer to him than many women had allowed themselves to get. She felt lithe and athletic. Firm, but soft. Young. Scented. He was drifting away and enjoying the sensation. He was slightly breathless. But he wasn’t kidding himself