Echo Burning

shots.”
    “With handguns. Best way to defend against handguns is hide a long way off and shoot back with the biggest rifle you can find.”
    She shook her head. “I can’t be a part of this, Reacher. It’s not right. And I’ve never even held a rifle.”
    “You don’t have to shoot,” he said. “But you have to be a witness. You have to identify exactly who comes for us. I’m relying on you. It’s vital.”
    “How will I see? It’s dark out there.”
    “We’ll fix that.”
    “It’s going to rain.”
    “That’ll help us.”
    “This is not right,” she said again. “The police should handle this. Or the FBI. You can’t just shoot at people.”
    The air was heavy with storm. The breeze was blowing again and he could smell pressure and voltage building in the sky.
    “Rules of engagement, Alice,” he said. “I’ll wait for an overtly hostile act before I do anything. Just like the U.S. Army. O.K.?”
    “We’ll be killed.”
    “You’ll be hiding far away.”
    “Then you’ll be killed. You said it yourself, they’re good at this.”
    “They’re good at walking up to somebody and shooting them in the head. What they’re like out in the open in the dark against incoming rifle fire is anybody’s guess.”
    “You’re crazy.”
    “Seven minutes,” he said.
    She glanced backward at the road from the north. Then she shook her head and shoved the gearstick into first and held her foot on the clutch. He leaned in and squeezed her shoulder.
    “Follow me close, O.K.?” he said.
    He ran down to the motor barn and got into the Greer family’s Cherokee. Racked the seat back and started the engine and switched on the headlights. Reversed into the yard and straightened up and looped around the motor barn and headed straight down the dirt track into open country. Checked the mirror and saw the VW right there behind him. Looked ahead again and saw the first raindrop hit his windshield. It was as big as a silver dollar.

16
    They drove in convoy for five fast miles through the dark. There was no moonlight. No starlight. Cloud cover was low and thick but it held the rain to nothing more than occasional splattering drops, ten whole seconds between each of them, maybe six in every minute. They exploded against the windshield into wet patches the size of saucers. Reacher swatted each of them separately with the windshield wipers. He held steady around forty miles an hour and followed the track through the brush. It turned randomly left and right, heading basically south toward the storm. The ground was very rough. The Jeep was bouncing and jarring. The VW was struggling to keep pace behind him. Its headlights were swinging and jumping in his mirrors.
    Five miles from the house the rain was still holding and the mesquite and the fractured limestone began to narrow the track. The terrain was changing under their wheels. They had started out across a broad desert plain that might have been cultivated grassland a century ago. Now the ground was rising slowly and shading into mesa. Rocky outcrops rose leftand right in the headlight beams, channeling them roughly south and east. Taller stands of mesquite crowded in and funneled them tighter. Soon there was nothing more than a pair of deep ruts worn through the hardpan. Ledges and sinkholes and dense patches of thorny low brush meant they had no choice but to follow them. They curved and twisted and felt like a riverbed.
    Then the track bumped upward and straightened and ran like a highway across a miniature limestone mesa. The stone was a raised pan as big as a football field, maybe a hundred twenty yards long and eighty wide, roughly oval in shape. There was no vegetation growing on it. Reacher swung the Jeep in a wide circle and used the headlights on bright to check the perimeter. All around the edges the ground fell away a couple of feet into rocky soil. Stunted bushes crowded anyplace they could find to put their roots. He drove a second circle, wider, and he liked what he saw. The miniature mesa was as bare as a dinner plate laid on a dead lawn. He smiled to himself. Timed out in his head what they needed to do. Liked the answer he came up with.
    He drove all the way to the far end of the rock table and stopped where the track bumped down off it and disappeared onward. Alice pulled the VW alongside him. He jumped out of the Jeep and ducked down to her window. The night air was still hot. Still damp. The urgent breeze was back. Big raindrops fell