He turned back to the door. Raised the rifle again. Acquired the target. Out of sheer habit, he waited for his breath to be out and his heart to be between beats. Then he pulled the trigger. It took a thousandth of a second for the sound of the shot to hit his ear, and seventy times as long as that for the big heavy bullet to hit the truck. Nothing happened for a second. Then the truck ceased to exist.
It was suddenly a blinding fireball rolling down the highway like a hot white tumbleweed. A gigantic concussion ring blasted outward. The helicopter was. .h.i.t by a violent shock-wave and tossed sideways and five hundred feet higher in the air. The pilot caught it at the top and slewed back. Steadied it in the air and swung around. Dropped the nose. There was nothing to see on the highway except a roiling cloud of thin smoke slowing into a teardrop shape three hundred yards long.
No debris, no metal, no hurtling wheels, no clattering wreckage.
Nothing at all except microscopic invisible particles of vapor accelerating into the atmosphere way faster than the speed of sound.
The pilot stuck around at a hover for a long moment and then drifted east. Put his craft gently down on the scrub, a hundred yards from the shoulder. Shut the engines down. Reacher sat in the deafening silence and undipped his belt. Laid the Barrett on the floor and vaulted out through the open door. Walked slowly toward the highway.
A ton of dynamite. A whole ton. A h.e.l.l of a bang. There was nothing left at all. He guessed there were flattened gra.s.ses for a half-mile all around but that was it. The terrible energy of the explosion had blasted outward and met absolutely nothing at all in its path. Nothing soft, nothing vulnerable. It had blasted outward and then weakened and slowed and died to a puff of breeze miles away and it had hurt nothing.
Nothing at all. He stood in the silence and closed his eyes.
Then he heard footsteps behind him. It was Holly. He heard her good leg alternating with her bad leg. A long stride, then a shuffle. He opened his eyes and looked at the road. She walked around in front of him and stopped. Laid her head on his chest and put her arms around him. Squeezed him tight and held on. He raised his hand to her head and smoothed her hair behind her ear, like he had seen her do.
"All done," she said.
"Get a problem, solve a problem," he said. That"s my rule."
She was quiet for a long time.
"I wish it was always that easy," she said.
The way she said it, after the delay, it was like a long speech. Like a closely reasoned argument. He pretended not to know which problem she was talking about.
"Your father?" he said. "You"re way, way out of his shadow now."
She shook her head against his chest.
"I don"t know," she said.
"Believe it," he said. That thing you did for me on the parade ground was the smartest, coolest, bravest thing I ever saw anybody do, man or woman, young or old. Better than anything I ever did. Better than anything your old man ever did. He"d give his front-teeth for guts like that. So would I. You"re way out of anybody"s shadow now, Holly.
Believe it."
"I thought I was," she said. "I felt like it. I really did. For a while. But then when I saw him again, I felt just the same as I always did. I called him Dad."
"He is your dad," Reacher said.
"I know," she replied. That"s the problem."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"So change your name," he said. That might do it."
He could feel her holding her breath.
"Is that a proposal?" she asked.
"It"s a suggestion," he said.
"You think Holly Reacher sounds good?" she asked.
His turn to stay quiet for a long time. His turn to catch his breath.
And, finally, his turn to talk about the real problem.
"It sounds wonderful," he said. "But I guess Holly McGrath sounds better."
She made no reply.
"He"s the lucky guy, right?" he said.
She nodded. A small motion of her head against his chest "So tell him," he said.
She shrugged in his arms.
"I can"t," she said. "I"m nervous."
"Don"t be," he said. "He might have something similar to tell you."
She looked up. He squinted down at her.
"You think so?" she asked.
"You"re nervous, he"s nervous," Reacher said. "Somebody should say something. I"m not about to do it for either of you."
She squeezed him harder. Then she stretched up and kissed him. Hard and long on the mouth.
Thank you," she said.
"For what?" he asked.
"For understanding," she said.
He shrugged. It wasn"t the end of the world. Just felt like it "Coming?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"No," he said.
She left him on the shoulder of US 93, right there in Idaho. He watched her all the way back to the Night Hawk. Watched her climb the short ladder. She paused and turned. Looked back at him. Then she ducked up and in. The door closed. The rotor thumped. He knew he would never see her again. His clothes tore at him and the dust swirled all around him as the helicopter took off. He waved it away.
Watched it until it was lost to sight. Then he took a deep breath and looked left and right along the empty highway. Friday, the Fourth of July. Independence Day.
Sat.u.r.day the fifth and Sunday the sixth, Yorke County was sealed oft and secret army units were moving in and out around the clock. Air artillery squads recovered the missile unit. They took it south in four Chinooks. Quartermasters went in and recovered all the ordnance they could find. They collected enough for a small war.
Medical corpsmen removed the bodies. They found the twenty men from the missile unit in the cave. They found the skeletons Reacher had crawled through. They found five mutilated bodies in another cave.
Dressed like workmen. Like builders or carpenters. They took Fowler out of the command hut and Borken from the road in front of the courthouse. They brought Milosevic down from the mountain bowl and Brogan out of the small clearing west of the Bastion. They found Jackson"s rough grave in the forest and dug him up. They laid eighteen dead militiamen and one dead woman side by side on the rifle range and helicoptered them away.
One of Garber"s military investigators flew in alone and took the hard disk out of the financial computer and put it on a chopper for transport to Chicago. Engineers moved in and dynamited the mine entrances. Sappers moved into the Bastion and disabled the water supply and tore down the power lines. They set fire to the huts and watched as they burned. Late Sunday night, when the last of the smoke was rising, they marched back to their choppers and lifted away south.
Early Monday morning, Harland Webster was back in the oft-white parlor inside the White House. Ruth Rosen was smiling at him and asking how his holiday weekend had been. He was smiling back at her and saying nothing. An hour later, the morning sun was rolling west to Chicago and three agents were arresting Brogan"s girlfriend. They grilled her for thirty minutes and advised her to get out of town, leaving behind anything he had ever bought her. Then the same agents took Milosevic"s brand new Ford Explorer out of the Federal Building"s parking lot and drove it five miles south. They left it on a quiet street, doors unlocked, keys in. By the time it had been stolen, Holly Johnson was arriving at the knee clinic for an early appointment. An hour after that, she was back at her desk. Before lunch, the missing money from the bearer-bond robbery was following a route of her own choosing out of the Caymans. Six o"clock Monday evening she was home and packing.
She threw her bags into her car and drove north. Moved into McGrath"s house up in Evanston.
Tuesday morning, there were three separate stories on the National Militia Internet. Refugees from an isolated valley in Montana had drifted south and west to new settlements with reports of a recent world government maneuver. Foreign troops had wiped out a band of militia heroes. The foreign battalion had been led by a French mercenary. He had succeeded only because he had used cla.s.sified SDI technology, including satellites and lasers and microchips. Journalists picked up on the story and called the Hoover Building. Late Tuesday evening, in a prepared statement, an FBI spokesperson denied all knowledge of any such events.
Early Wednesday morning, after five hitched rides and four buses through seven states, Reacher was finally in Wisconsin. It was where he had aimed to be exactly a week before. He liked it there. It struck him as a fine place to be in July. He stayed until Friday afternoon.
Lee Child was born in the industrial Midlands. He studied law, and worked for twenty years in commercial television. He lives in c.u.mbria with his wife and daughter. He is the author of one previous thriller, Killing Floor.
Also by Lee Child
KILLING FLOOR
DIE TRYING
TRIPWIRE
THE VISITOR
ECHO BURNING
WITHOUT FAIL
PERSUADER
THE ENEMY
ONE SHOT
THE HARD WAY
BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE
NOTHING TO LOSE
GONE TOMORROW