Die Trying

snow again, packed by the wind into the high north-facing gullies. If it was there in July, it had to be there twelve months of the year.
    To the southeast, the town was just visible below them through the gaps in the trees where the track had been carved out. Reacher could see the ruined county building and the white courthouse set below it like models. Directly south, the mountain slopes fell away into the thick forest. Where there were no trees, there were savage ravines. Reacher gazed at them, quietly. Fowler pointed.
    “Hundred feet deep, some of those,” he said. “Full of elk and bighorn sheep. And we got black bears roaming. A few of the folk have seen mountain lions on the prowl. You can hear them in the night, when it gets real quiet.”
    Reacher nodded and listened to the stunning silence. Tried to figure out how much quieter the nights could be. Fowler turned and pointed here and there.
    “This is what we built,” he said. “So far.”
    Reacher nodded again. The clearing held ten buildings. They were all large utilitarian wooden structures, built from plywood sheet and cedar, resting on solid concrete piles. There was an electricity supply into each building from a loop of heavy cable running between them.
    “Power comes up from the town,” Fowler said. “A mile of cable. Running water, too, piped down from a pure mountain lake through plastic tubing, installed by militia labor.”
    Reacher saw the hut he’d been locked into most of the night. It was smaller than the others.
    “Administration hut,” Fowler said.
    One of the huts had a whip antenna on the roof, maybe sixty feet high. Shortwave radio. And Reacher could see a thinner cable, strapped to the heavy power line. It snaked into the same hut, and didn’t come out again.
    “You guys are on the phone?” he asked. “Unlisted, right?”
    He pointed and Fowler followed his gaze.
    “The phone line?” he said. “Runs up from Yorke with the power cable. But there’s no telephone. World government would tap our calls.”
    He gestured for Reacher to follow him over to the hut with the antenna, where the line terminated. They pushed in together through the narrow door. Fowler spread his hands in a proud little gesture.
    “The communications hut,” he said.
    The hut was dark and maybe twenty feet by twelve. Two men inside, one crouched over a tape recorder, listening to something on headphones, the other slowly turning the dial of a radio scanner. Both long sides of the hut had crude wooden desks built into the walls. Reacher glanced up at the gable and saw the telephone wire running in through a hole drilled in the wall. It coiled down and fed a modem. The modem was wired into a pair of glowing desktop computers.
    “The National Militia Internet,” Fowler said.
    A second wire bypassed the desktops and fed a fax machine. It was whirring away to itself and slowly rolling a curl of paper out.
    “The Patriotic Fax Network,” Fowler said.
    Reacher nodded and walked closer. The fax machine sat on the counter next to another computer and a large shortwave radio.
    “This is the shadow media,” Fowler said. “We depend on all this equipment for the truth about what’s going on in America. You can’t get the truth any other way.”
    Reacher took a last look around and shrugged.
    “I’m hungry,” he said. “That’s the truth about me. No dinner and no breakfast. You got someplace with coffee?”
    Fowler looked at him and grinned.
    “Sure,” he said. “Mess hall serves all day. What do you think we are? A bunch of savages?”
    He dismissed the six guards and gestured again for Reacher to follow him. The mess hall was next to the communications hut. It was about four times the size, twice as long and twice as wide. Outside, it had a sturdy chimney on the roof, fabricated from bright galvanized metal. Inside, it was full of rough trestle tables in neat lines, simple benches pushed carefully underneath. It smelled of old food and the dusty smell that large communal spaces always have.
    There were three women working in there. They were cleaning the tables. They were dressed in olive fatigues, and they all had long, clean hair and plain, unadorned faces, red hands and no jewelry. They paused when Fowler and Reacher walked in. They stopped working and stood together, watching. Reacher recognized one of them from the courtroom. She gave him a cautious nod of greeting. Fowler stepped forward.
    “Our guest missed breakfast,” he