Die Trying (14 page)

“You got any feeling for a motive yet?” Webster asked.

“No idea at all,” McGrath said.

There was silence on the line again.

“OK,” Webster said. “You keeping it real tight up there?”

“Tight as I can,” McGrath said. “Just three of us.”

“Who are you using?” Webster asked.

“Brogan and Milosevic,” McGrath said.

“They any good?” Webster asked.

McGrath grunted. Like he would choose them if they weren't?

“They know Holly pretty well,” he said. “They're good enough.”

“Moaners and groaners?” Webster asked. “Or solid, like people used to be?”

“Never heard them complain,” McGrath said. “About anything. They do the work, they do the hours. They don't even bitch about the pay.”

Webster laughed.

“Can we clone them?” he said.

The levity peaked and died within a couple of seconds. But McGrath appreciated the attempt at morale.

“So how you doing down there?” he asked.

“In what respect, Mack?” Webster said, serious again.

“The old man,” McGrath said. “He giving you any trouble?”

“Which one, Mack?” Webster asked.

“The General?” McGrath said.

“Not yet,” Webster said. “He called this morning, but he was polite. That's how it goes. Parents are usually pretty calm, the first day or two. They get worked up later. General Johnson won't be any different. He may be a big shot, but people are all the same underneath, right?”

“Right,” McGrath said. “Have him call me, if he wants firsthand reports. Might help his situation.”

“OK, Mack, thanks,” Webster said. “But I think we should keep this dentist thing away from everybody, just for the moment. Makes the whole deal look worse. Meantime, send me your stuff. I'll get our people working on it. And don't worry. We'll get her back. Bureau looks after its own, right? Never fails.”

The two Bureau chiefs let the lie die into silence and hung up their phones together.

 

THE YOUNG MAN strolled out of the forest and came face-to-face with the commander. He was smart enough to throw a big salute and look nervous, but he kept it down to the sort of nervousness any grunt showed around the commander. Nothing more, nothing suspicious. He stood and waited to be spoken to.

“Job for you,” the commander said. “You're young, right? Good with all this technical shit?”

The man nodded cautiously.

“I can usually puzzle stuff out, sir,” he said.

The commander nodded back.

“We got a new toy,” he said. “Scanner, for radio frequencies. I want a watch kept.”

The young man's blood froze hard.

“Why, sir?” he asked. “You think somebody's using a radio transmitter?”

“Possibly,” the commander said. “I trust nobody and I suspect everybody. I can't be too careful. Not right now. Got to look after the details. You know what they say? Genius is in the details, right?”

The young man swallowed and nodded.

“So get it set up,” the commander said. “Make a duty rota. Two shifts, sixteen hours a day, OK? Constant vigilance is what we need right now.”

The commander turned away. The young man nodded and breathed out. Glanced instinctively back in the direction of his special tree and blessed his feelings.

 

MILOSEVIC DROVE BROGAN north in his new truck. They detoured via the Wilmette post office so Brogan could mail his twin alimony checks. Then they went looking for the dead dentist's building. There was a local uniform waiting for them in the parking lot in back. He was unapologetic about sitting on the report from the dentist's wife. Milosevic started giving him a hard time about that, like it made the guy personally responsible for Holly Johnson's abduction.

“Lots of husbands disappear,” the guy said. “Happens all the time. This is Wilmette, right? Men are the same here as anywhere, only here they got the money to make it all happen. What can I say?”

Milosevic was unsympathetic. The cop had made two other errors. First, he had assumed that it was the murder of the dentist that had brought the FBI out into his jurisdiction. Second, he was more uptight about covering his own ass on the issue than he was about four killers snatching Holly Johnson right off the street. Milosevic was out of patience with the guy. But then the guy redeemed himself.

“What is it with people?” he said. “Burning automobiles? Some asshole burned a car out by the lake. We got to get it moved. Residents are giving us noise.”

“Where exactly?” Milosevic asked him.

The cop shrugged. He was anxious to be very precise.

“That turnout on the shore,” he said. “On Sheridan Road, just this side of Washington Park. Never saw such a thing before, not in Wilmette.”

Milosevic and Brogan went to check it out. They followed the cop in his shiny cruiser. He led them to the place. It wasn't a car. It was a pickup, a ten-year-old Dodge. No license plates. Doused with gasoline and pretty much totally burned out.

“Happened yesterday,” the cop said. “Spotted about seven-thirty in the morning. Commuters were calling it in, on their way to work, one after the other.”

He circled around and looked over the wreck, carefully.

“Not local,” he said. “That's my guess.”

“Why not?” Milosevic asked him.

“This is ten years old, right?” the guy said. “Around here, there are a few pickups, but they're toys, you know? Big V-8s, lots of chrome? An old thing like this, nobody would give it room on their driveway.”

“What about gardeners?” Brogan asked. “Pool boys, something like that?”

“Why would they burn it?” the cop said. “They needed to change it, they'd chop it in against a new one, right? Nobody burns a business asset, right?”

Milosevic thought about it and nodded.

“OK,” he said. “This is ours. Federal investigation. We'll send a flatbed for it soon as we can. Meanwhile, you guard it, OK? And do it properly, for God's sake. Don't let anybody near it.”

“Why?” the cop asked.

Milosevic looked at him like he was a moron.

“This is their truck,” he said. “They dumped it here and stole the Lexus for the actual heist.”

The Wilmette cop looked at Milosevic's agitated face and then he looked across at the burned truck. He wondered for a moment how four guys could fit across the Dodge's bench seat. But he didn't say anything. He didn't want to risk more ridicule. He just nodded.

17

HOLLY WAS SITTING up on the mattress, one knee under her chin, the injured leg straight out. Reacher was sitting up beside her, hunched forward, worried, one hand fighting the bounce of the truck and the other hand plunged into his hair.

“What about your mother?” he asked.

“Was your father famous?” Holly asked him back.

Reacher shook his head.

“Hardly,” he said. “Guys in his unit knew who he was, I guess.”

“So you don't know what it's like,” she said. “Every damn thing you do, it happens because of your father. I got straight A's in school, I went to Yale and Harvard, went to Wall Street, but it wasn't me doing it, it was this weird other person called General Johnson's daughter doing it. It's been just the same with the Bureau. Everybody assumes I made it because of my father, and ever since I got there half the people are still treating me especially nice, and the other half are still treating me especially tough just to prove how much they're not impressed.”

Reacher nodded. Thought about it. He was a guy who had done better than his father. Forged ahead, in the traditional way. Left the old man behind. But he'd known guys with famous parents. The sons of great soldiers. Even the grandsons. However bright they burned, their light was always lost in the glow.

“OK, so it's tough,” he said. “And the rest of your life you can try to ignore it, but right now it needs dealing with. It opens up a whole new can of worms.”

She nodded. Blew an exasperated sigh. Reacher glanced at her in the gloom.

“How long ago did you figure it out?” he asked.

“Immediately, I guess,” she said. “Like I told you, it's a habit. Everybody assumes everything happens because of my father. Me too.”

“Well, thanks for telling me so soon,” Reacher said.

She didn't reply to that. They lapsed into silence. The air was stifling and the heat was somehow mixing with the relentless drone of the noise. The dark and the temperature and the sound were like a thick soup inside the truck. Reacher felt like he was drowning in it. But it was the uncertainty that was doing it to him. Many times he'd traveled thirty hours at a stretch in transport planes, worse conditions than these. It was the huge new dimension of uncertainty that was unsettling him.

“So what about your mother?” he asked her again.

She shook her head.

“She died,” she said. “I was twenty, in school. Some weird cancer.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. Paused, nervously. “Brothers and sisters?”

She shook her head again.

“Just me,” she said.

He nodded, reluctantly.

“I was afraid of that,” he said. “I was kind of hoping this could be about something else, you know, maybe your mother was a judge or you had a brother or a sister who was a congressman or something.”

“Forget it,” she said. “There's just me. Me and Dad. This is about Dad.”

“But what about him?” he said. “What the hell is this supposed to achieve? Ransom? Forget about it. Your old man's a big deal, but he's just a soldier, been clawing his way up the Army pay scales all his life. Faster than most guys, I agree, but I know those pay scales. I was on those scales thirteen years. Didn't make me rich and they won't have made him rich. Not rich enough for anybody to be thinking about a ransom. Somebody wanted a ransom out of kidnapping somebody's daughter, there are a million people ahead of you in Chicago alone.”

Holly nodded.

“This is about influence,” she said. “He's responsible for two million people and two hundred billion dollars a year. Scope for influence there, right?”

Reacher shook his head.

“No,” he said. “That's the problem. I can't see what this is liable to achieve.”

He got to his knees and crawled forward along the mattresses.

“Hell are you doing?” Holly asked him.

“We got to talk to them,” he said. “Before we get where we're going.”

He lifted his big fist and started pounding on the bulkhead. Hard as he could. Right behind where he figured the driver's head must be. He kept on pounding until he got what he wanted. Took a while. Several minutes. His fist got sore. But the truck lurched off the pavement and started slowing. He felt the front wheels washing into gravel. The brakes bit in. He was pressed up against the bulkhead by the momentum. Holly rolled a couple of feet along the mattress. Gasped in pain as her knee twisted against the motion.

“Pulled off the highway,” Reacher said. “Middle of nowhere.”

“This is a big mistake, Reacher,” Holly said.

He shrugged and took her hand and helped her into a sitting position, back against the bulkhead. Then he slid forward and put himself between her and the rear doors. He heard the three guys getting out of the cab. Doors slammed. He heard their footsteps crunching over the gravel. Two coming down the right flank, one down the left. He heard the key sliding into the lock. The handle turned.

The left-hand rear door opened two inches. First thing into the truck was the muzzle of the shotgun. Beyond it, Reacher saw a meaningless sliver of sky. Bright blue, small white clouds. Could have been anywhere in the hemisphere. Second thing into the truck was a Glock 17. Then a wrist. The cuff of a cotton shirt. The Glock was rock-steady. Loder.

“This better be good, bitch,” he called.

Hostile. A lot of tension in the voice.

“We need to talk,” Reacher called back.

The second Glock appeared in the narrow gap. Shaking slightly.

“Talk about what, asshole?” Loder called.

Reacher listened to the stress in the guy's voice and watched the second Glock trembling through its random zigzags.

“This isn't going to work, guys,” he said. “Whoever told you to do this, he isn't thinking straight. Maybe it felt like some kind of a smart move, but it's all wrong. It isn't going to achieve anything. It's just going to get you guys in a shitload of trouble.”

There was silence at the rear of the truck. Just for a second. But long enough to tell Reacher that Holly was right. Long enough to know he'd made a bad mistake. The steady Glock snapped back out of sight. The shotgun jerked, like it had just changed ownership. Reacher flung himself forward and smashed Holly down flat on the mattress. The shotgun barrel tipped upward. Reacher heard the small click of the trigger a tiny fraction before an enormous explosion. The shotgun fired into the roof. A huge blast. A hundred tiny holes appeared in the metal. A hundred tiny points of blue light. Spent shot rattled and bounced down and ricocheted around the truck like hail. Then the sound of the gun faded into the hum of temporary deafness.

Reacher felt the slam of the door. The sliver of daylight cut off. He felt the rock of the vehicle as the three men climbed back into the cab. He felt the shake as the rough diesel caught. Then a forward lurch and a yaw to the left as the truck pulled back onto the highway.

 

FIRST THING REACHER heard as his hearing came back was a quiet keening as the air whistled out through the hundred pellet holes in the roof. It grew louder as the miles rolled by. A hundred high-pitched whistles, all grouped together a couple of semitones apart, fighting and warbling like some kind of demented birdsong.