Nothing to Lose

back by what felt like a truck. He went down hard and got a mouthful of mud and reflexively rolled away and jacked himself back up and dodged and missed a punch from the plant foreman by about an inch and a half.
    Two against one again.
    Inefficient.
    The foreman launched another big roundhouse swing and Reacher swatted it away and saw the giant struggling to get up. His hands and knees were scrabbling and sliding in the mud. Fifty feet north Vaughan had hold of Thurman’s collar. He was struggling to get free. Maybe winning. Then the foreman swung again and Reacher moved and the foreman’s fist glanced off his shoulder. But not before stinging a bruise from where he had been hit before, in the bar.
    Which hurt.
    OK, no more Mr. Nice Guy.
    Reacher planted his back heel in the mud and leaned in and launched a flurry of heavy punches, a fast deadly rhythm, four blows, right, left, right, left, one to the gut, two to the jaw, three to the head, and four, a crushing uppercut under the chin, like he was his demented five-year-old self all over again, but five times heavier and eight times more experienced. The foreman was already on his way down when the uppercut landed. It lifted him back up and then dropped him like the earth had opened up. Reacher spun away and lined up and kicked the scrabbling giant in the head, like he was punting a football, instep against ear. The impact pinwheeled the guy’s body a whole two feet and dropped him back in the mud.
    The foreman lay still.
    The giant lay still.
    Game over.
    Reacher checked his hands for broken bones and found none. He stood still and got his breathing under control and glanced north through the light. Thurman had broken free of Vaughan’s grasp and was heading for the gate again, slipping and sliding and twisting and turning to fend her off. His hat was gone. His hair was wet and wild. Reacher set off in their direction. Paused to collect the giant wrench from where it had fallen. He hefted it up and carried it on his shoulder like an ax. He trudged onward, heavily. A slow-motion chase. He caught Vaughan ten yards from the gate and passed her and clamped a hand on Thurman’s shoulder and pressed downward. The old guy folded up and went down on his knees. Reacher moved onward, to the gate. He found the little gray box. Flipped the lid. Saw the keypad. Swung the wrench and smashed it to splinters. Hit it again. And again. It fell out of its housing in small broken pieces. A small metal chassis hung up on thin trailing wires. Reacher chopped downward with the wrench until the wires tore and ruptured and the chassis fell to the ground.
    Thurman was still on his knees. He said, “What are you doing? Now we can’t get out of here.”
    “Wrong,” Reacher said. “You can’t, but we can.”
    “How?”
    “Wait and see.”
    “It’s not possible.”
    “Would you have given me the combination?”
    “Never.”
    “So what’s the difference?”
    Vaughan said, “Reacher, what the hell is in your pockets?”
    “Lots of things,” Reacher said. “Things we’re going to need.”

71
    Reacher trudged through the mud and rolled Thurman’s men into what medics called the recovery position. On their sides, arms splayed, necks at a natural angle, one leg straight and the other knee drawn up. No danger of choking. A slight danger of drowning, if the puddles didn’t stop filling. The rain was still hard. It thrashed against their slickers and drummed on the sides of their boots.
    Thurman poked and prodded at the shattered box where the keypad had been. No result. The gates stayed closed. He gave up and slipped and slid back to the center of the hidden area. Reacher and Vaughan fought their way across to the eighteen-wheeler. It was just standing there, shut down and silent and oblivious.
    Vaughan said, “You really think this is a bomb?”
    Reacher said, “Don’t you?”
    “Thurman was mighty plausible. About the gifts for Afghanistan.”
    “He’s a preacher. It’s his job to be plausible.”
    “What if you’re wrong?”
    “What if I’m right?”
    “How much damage could it do?”
    “If they built it right I wouldn’t want to be within three miles of it when it goes off.”
    “Three miles ?”
    “Twenty tons of TNT, twenty tons of shrapnel. It won’t be pretty.”
    “How do we get out of here?”
    “Where’s your truck?”
    “Where we left it. They ambushed me. Opened the outer gate and drove me through the plant in Thurman’s SUV. It’s parked