Die Trying (24 page)

Those of them with enough demerits to be on tomorrow's punishment detail were trying to get some sleep. If he didn't limit it to a firing squad, they could be in for a lot of work. Messy, unpleasant work. And even if Loder got away with it, there was always the other guy. The big guy who had come in with the federal bitch. There wasn't much chance of him surviving past breakfast time. They couldn't remember the last time any stray stranger had lasted longer than that.

 

HOLLY JOHNSON HAD a rule. It was a rule bred into her, like a family motto. It had been reinforced by her long training at Quantico. It was a rule distilled from thousands of years of military history and hundreds of years of law enforcement experience. The rule said: hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

She had no reason to believe she would not be speeding south in a jeep just as soon as her new ally could arrange it. He was Bureau-trained, the same as she was. She knew that if the tables were turned, she would get him out, no problem at all. So she knew she could just sit tight and wait. But she wasn't doing that. She was hoping for the best, but she was planning for the worst.

She had given up on the bathroom. No way out there. Now she was going over the room itself, inch by inch. The new pine boarding was nailed tight to the frame, all six surfaces. It was driving her crazy. Inch-thick pine board, the oldest possible technology, used for ten thousand years, and there was no way through it. For a lone woman without any tools, it might as well have been the side of a battleship.

So she concentrated on finding tools. It was like she was personally speeding through Darwin's evolutionary process. Apes came down from the trees and they made tools. She was concentrating on the bed. The mattress was useless. It was a thin, crushed thing, no wire springs inside. But the bed frame was more promising. It was bolted together from iron tubes and flanges. If she could take it apart, she could put one of the little right-angle flanges in the end of the longest tube and make a pry bar seven feet long. But the bolts were all painted over. She had strong hands, but she couldn't begin to move them. Her fingers just bruised and slipped on her sweat.

 

LODER HAD BEEN dragged away and Reacher was locked up alone with the last remaining guard from the evening detail. The guard sat behind the plain desk and propped his weapon on the wooden surface with the muzzle pointing directly at him sitting on his chair. His hands were still cuffed behind him. He had decisions to make. First was no way could he sit all night like that. He glanced calmly at the guard and eased himself up and slid his hands underneath. Pressed his chest down onto his thighs and looped his hands out under his feet. Then he sat up and leaned back and forced a smile, hands together in his lap.

“Long arms,” he said. “Useful.”

The guard nodded slowly. He had small piercing eyes, set back in a narrow face. They gleamed out above the big beard, through the camouflage smudges, but the gleam looked innocent enough.

“What's your name?” Reacher asked him.

The guy hesitated. Shuffled in his seat. Reacher could see some kind of natural courtesy was prompting a reply. But there were obvious tactical considerations for the guy. Reacher kept on forcing the smile.

“I'm Reacher,” he said. “You know my name. You got a name? We're here all night, we may as well be a little civilized about it, right?”

The guy nodded again, slowly. Then he shrugged.

“Ray,” he said.

“Ray?” Reacher said. “That your first name or your last?”

“Last,” the guy said. “Joseph Ray.”

Reacher nodded.

“OK, Mr. Ray,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Call me Joe,” Joseph Ray said.

Reacher forced the smile again. The ice was broken. Like conducting an interrogation. Reacher had done it a thousand times. But never from this side of the desk. Never when he was the one wearing the cuffs.

“Joe, you're going to have to help me out a little,” he said. “I need some background here. I don't know where I am, or why, or who all you guys are. Can you fill me in on some basic information?”

Ray was looking at him like he was maybe having difficulty knowing where to start. Then he was glancing around the room like maybe he was wondering whether he was allowed to start at all.

“Where exactly are we?” Reacher asked him. “You can tell me that, right?”

“Montana,” Ray said.

Reacher nodded.

“OK,” he said. “Where in Montana?”

“Near a town called Yorke,” Ray said. “An old mining town, just about abandoned.”

Reacher nodded again.

“OK,” he said. “What are you guys doing here?”

“We're building a bastion,” Ray said. “A place of our own.”

“What for?” Reacher asked him.

Ray shrugged. An inarticulate guy. At first, he said nothing. Then he sat forward and launched into what seemed to Reacher like a mantra, like something the guy had rehearsed many times. Or like something the guy had been told many times.

“We came up here to escape the tyranny of America,” he said. “We have to draw up our borders and say, it's going to be different inside here.”

“Different how?” Reacher asked him.

“We have to take America back, piece by piece,” Ray said. “We have to build a place where the white man can live free, unmolested, in peace, with proper freedoms and proper laws.”

“You think you can do that?” Reacher said.

“It happened before,” Ray said. “It happened in 1776.

People said enough is enough. They said we want a better country than this. Now we're saying it again. We're saying we want our country back. And we're going to get it back. Because now we're acting together. There were a dozen militias up here. They all wanted the same things. But they were all acting alone. Beau's mission was to put people together. Now we're unified and we're going to take our country back. We're starting here. We're starting now.”

Reacher nodded. Glanced to his right and down at the dark stain where Loder's nose had bled onto the floor.

“Like this?” he said. “What about voting and democracy? All that kind of stuff? You should vote people out and vote new people in, right?”

Ray smiled sadly and shook his head.

“We've been voting for two hundred and twenty years,” he said. “Gets worse all the time. Government's not interested in how we vote. They've taken all the power away from us. Given our country away. You know where the government of this country really is?”

Reacher shrugged.

“D.C., right?” he said.

“Wrong,” Ray said. “It's in New York. The United Nations building. Ever asked yourself why the UN is so near Wall Street? Because that's the government. The United Nations and the banks. They run the world. America's just a small part of it. The President is just one voice on a damn committee. That's why voting is no damn good. You think the United Nations and the world banks care what we vote?”

“You sure about all this?” Reacher asked.

Ray nodded, vigorously.

“Sure I'm sure,” he said. “I've seen it at work. Why do you think we send billions of dollars to the Russians when we got poverty here in America? You think that's the free choice of an American government? We send it because the world government tells us to send it. You know we got camps here? Hundreds of camps all over the country? Most of them are for United Nations troops. Foreign troops, waiting to move in when we start any trouble. But forty-three of them are concentration camps. That's where they're going to put us when we start speaking out.”

“You sure?” Reacher said again.

“Sure I'm sure,” Ray said again. “Beau's got the documents. We've got the proof. There are things going on you wouldn't believe. You know it's a secret federal law that all babies born in the hospital get a microchip implanted just under their skin? When they take them away, they're not weighing them and cleaning them up. They're implanting a microchip. Pretty soon the whole population is going to be visible to secret satellites. You think the space shuttle gets used for science experiments? You think the world government would authorize expenditure for stuff like that? You got to be kidding. The space shuttle is there to launch surveillance satellites.”

“You're joking, right?” Reacher said.

Ray shook his head.

“No way,” he said. “Beau's got the documents. There's another secret law, guy in Detroit sent Beau the stuff. Every car built in America since 1985 has a secret radio transmitter box in it, so the satellites can see where it's going. You buy a car, the radar screens in the UN building know where you are, every minute of the day and night. They've got foreign forces training in America, right now, ready for the official takeover. You know why we send so much money to Israel? Not because we care what happens to the Israelis. Why should we care? We send the money because that's where the UN is training the secret world army. It's like an experimental place. Why do you think the UN never stops the Israelis from invading people? Because the UN has told them what to do in the first place. Training them for the world takeover. There are three thousand helicopters right now, at airbases round the U.S., all ready for them to use. Helicopters, painted flat black, no markings.”

“You sure?” Reacher said again. He was keeping his voice somewhere between worried and skeptical. “I never heard about any of this stuff.”

“That proves it, right?” Ray said.

“Why?” Reacher asked.

“Obvious, right?” Ray said. “You think the world government is going to allow media access to that stuff? World government controls the media, right? They own it. So it's logical that whatever doesn't appear in the media is what is really happening, right? They tell you the safe stuff, and they keep the secrets away from you. It's all true, believe me. I told you, Beau's got the documents. Did you know every U.S. highway sign has a secret mark on the back? You drive out and take a look. A secret sign, to direct the world troops around the country. They're getting ready to take over. That's why we need a place of our own.”

“You think they're going to attack you?” Reacher asked.

“No doubt about it,” Ray said. “They're going to come right after us.”

“And you figure you can defend yourselves?” Reacher said. “A few guys in some little town in Montana?”

Joe Ray shook his head.

“Not a few guys,” he said. “There are a hundred of us.”

“A hundred guys?” Reacher said. “Against the world government?”

Ray shook his head again.

“We can defend ourselves,” he said. “Beau's a smart leader. This territory is good. We're in a valley here. Sixty miles north to south, sixty miles east to west. Canadian border along the northern edge.”

He swept his hand through the air, above eye level, left to right like a karate chop, to demonstrate the geography. Reacher nodded. He was familiar with the Canadian border. Ray used his other hand, up and down the left edge of his invisible map.

“Rapid River,” he said. “That's our western border. It's a big river, completely wild. No way to cross it.”

He moved the Canadian border hand across and rubbed a small circle in the air, like he was cleaning a pane of glass.

“National forest,” he said. “You seen it? Fifty miles, east to west. Thick virgin forest, no way through. You want an eastern border, that forest is as good as you're going to get.”

“What about the south?” Reacher asked.

Ray chopped his hand sideways at chest level.

“Ravine,” he said. “Natural-born tank trap. Believe me, I know tanks. No way through, except one road and one track. Wooden bridge takes the track over the ravine.”

Reacher nodded. He remembered the white truck pattering over a wooden structure.

“That bridge gets blown,” Ray said. “No way through.”

“What about the road?” Reacher asked.

“Same thing,” Ray said. “We blow the bridge, and we're safe. Charges are set right now.”

Reacher nodded slowly. He was thinking about air attack, artillery, missiles, smart bombs, infiltration of Special Forces, airborne troops, parachutes. He was thinking about Navy SEALs bridging the river or Marines bridging the ravine. He was thinking about NATO units rumbling straight down from Canada.

“What about Holly?” he asked. “What do you want with her?”

Ray smiled. His beard parted and his teeth shone out as bright as his eyes. “Beau's secret weapon,” he said. “Think about it. The world government is going to use her old man to lead the attack. That's why they appointed him. You think the President appoints those guys? You got to be joking. Old man Johnson's a world government guy, just waiting for the secret command to move. But when he gets here, what's he going to find?”

“What?” Reacher asked.

“He comes up from the south, right?” Ray said. “First building he sees is that old courthouse, southeast corner of town. You were just there. She's up on the second floor, right? You notice the new construction? Special room, double walls, twenty-two inches apart. The space is packed with dynamite and blasting caps from the old mine stores. The first stray shell will blow old man Johnson's little girl to kingdom come.”

Reacher nodded again, slowly. Ray looked at him.

“We're not asking much,” he said. “Sixty miles by sixty miles, what is that? Thirty-six hundred square miles of territory.”

“But why now?” Reacher asked. “What's the big hurry?”