35

“I REFUSE TO believe it,” General Garber said.

“He’s involved,” Webster said in reply. “That’s for damn sure. We got the pictures, clear as day.”

Garber shook his head.

“I was promoted lieutenant forty years ago,” he said. “Now I’m a three-star general. I’ve commanded thousands of men. Tens of thousands. Got to know most of them well. And out of all of them, Jack Reacher is the single least likely man to be involved in a thing like this.”

Garber was sitting ramrod-straight at the table in the mobile command post. He had shed his khaki raincoat to reveal an old creased uniform jacket. It was a jacket which bore the accumulated prizes of a lifetime of service. It was studded with badges and ribbons. It was the jacket of a man who had served forty years without ever making a single mistake.

Johnson was watching him carefully. Garber’s grizzled old head was still. His eyes were calm. His hands were laid comfortably on the table. His voice was firm, but quiet. Definite, like he was being asked to defend the proposition that the sky was blue and the grass was green.

“Show the General the pictures, Mack,” Webster said.

McGrath nodded and opened his envelope. Slid the four stills over the table to Garber. Garber held each one up in turn, tilted to catch the green light from the overhead. Johnson was watching his eyes. He was waiting for the flicker of doubt, then the flicker of resignation. He saw neither.

“These are open to interpretation,” Garber said.

His voice was still calm. Johnson heard an officer loyally defending a favored subordinate. Webster and McGrath heard a policeman of sorts expressing a doubt. They figured forty years’ service had bought the guy the right to be heard.

“Interpretation how?” Webster asked.

“Four isolated moments out of a sequence,” Garber said. “They could be telling us the wrong story.”

Webster leaned over and pointed at the first still.

“He’s grabbing her stuff,” he said. “Plain as day, General.”

Garber shook his head. There was silence. Just electronic hum throughout the vehicle. Johnson saw a flicker of doubt. But it was in McGrath’s eyes, not Garber’s. Then Brogan rattled his way up the ladder. Ducked his head into the truck.

“Surveillance tapes, chief,” he said. “We’ve been reviewing the stuff the planes got earlier. You should come see it.”

He ducked out again and the four men glanced at each other and got up. Walked the short distance through the cold evening to the satellite truck and up the ladder. Milosevic was in shirtsleeves, bathed in the blue light from a bank of video screens. He shuttled a tape back and pressed play. Four screens lit up with a perfect clear overhead view of a tiny town. The quality of the picture was magnificent. Like a perfect movie picture, except filmed vertically downward, not horizontal.

“Yorke,” Milosevic said. “The old courthouse, bottom right. Now watch.”

He hit fast wind and watched the counter. Slowed the tape and hit play again.

“This is a mile and a quarter away,” he said. “The camera tracked northwest. There’s a parade ground, and this rifle range.”

The camera had zoomed out for a wide view of the area. There were two clearings with huts to the south, and a flat parade ground to the north. In between was a long narrow scar in the undergrowth, maybe a half-mile long and twenty yards wide. The camera zoomed right out for a moment, to establish the scale, then it tightened in on a crowd at the eastern end of the range. Then it tightened further to a small knot of people standing on some brown matting. There were four men clearly visible. And one woman. General Johnson gasped and stared at his daughter.

“When was this?” he asked.

“Few hours ago,” Milosevic said. “She’s alive and well.”

He froze the picture and tapped his fingernail four times on the glass.

“Reacher,” he said. “Stevie Stewart. We figure this one is Odell Fowle. And the fat guy is Beau Borken. Matches his file photo from California.”

Then he hit play again. The camera held steady on the matting, from seven miles up in the sky. Borken pressed his bulk to the floor and lay motionless. Then a silent puff of dust was seen under the muzzle of his rifle.

“They’re shooting a little over eight hundred yards,” Milosevic said. “Some kind of a competition, I guess.”

They watched Borken’s five final shots, and then Reacher picked up his rifle.

“That’s a Barrett,” Garber said.

Reacher lay motionless and then fired six silent shots, well spaced. The crowd milled around, and eventually Reacher was lost to sight in the trees to the south.

“OK,” Webster said. “How do you want to interpret that, General Garber?”

Garber shrugged. A dogged expression on his face.

“He’s one of them, no doubt about it,” Webster said. “Did you see his clothes? He was in uniform. Showing off on the range? Would they give him a uniform and a rifle to play with if he wasn’t one of their own?”

Johnson spooled the tape back and froze it. Looked at Holly for a long moment. Then he walked out of the trailer. Called over his shoulder to Webster.

“Director, we need to go to work,” he said. “I want to make a contingency plan well ahead of time. No reason for us not to be ready for this.”

Webster followed him out. Brogan and Milosevic stayed at the video console. McGrath was watching Garber. Garber was staring at the blank screen.

“I still don’t believe it,” he said.

He turned and saw McGrath looking at him. Nodded him out of the trailer. The two men walked together into the silence of the night.

“I can’t prove it to you,” Garber said. “But Reacher is on our side. I’ll absolutely guarantee that, personally.”

“Doesn’t look that way,” McGrath said. “He’s the classic type. Fits our standard profile perfectly. Unemployed ex-military, malcontent, dislocated childhood, probably full of all kinds of grievances.”

Garber shook his head.

“He’s none of those things,” he said. “Except unemployed ex-military. He was a fine officer. Best I ever had. You’re making a big mistake.”

McGrath saw the look on Garber’s face.

“So you’d trust him?” he asked. “Personally?”

Garber nodded grimly.

“With my life,” he said. “I don’t know why he’s there, but I promise you he’s clean, and he’s going to do what needs doing, or he’s going to die trying.”

EXACTLY SIX MILES north, Holly was trusting to the same instinct. They had taken her disassembled bed away, and she was lying on the thin mattress on the floorboards. They had taken the soap and the shampoo and the towel from the bathroom as a punishment. They had left the small pool of blood from the dead woman’s head untouched. It was there on the floor, a yard from her makeshift bed. She guessed they thought it would upset her. They were wrong. It made her happy. She was happy to watch it dry and blacken. She was thinking about Jackson and staring at the stain like it was a Rorschach blot telling her: you’re coming out of the shadow now, Holly.

WEBSTER AND JOHNSON came up with a fairly simple contingency plan. It depended on geography. The exact same geography they assumed had tempted Borken to choose Yorke as the location for his bastion. Like all plans based on geography, it was put together using a map. Like all plans put together using a map, it was only as good as the map was accurate. And like most maps, theirs was way out of date.

They were using a large-scale map of Montana. Most of its information was reliable. The main features were correct. The western obstacle was plain to see.

“We assume the river is impassable, right?” Webster said.

“Right,” Johnson agreed. “The spring melts are going to be in full flow. Nothing we can do there before Monday. When we get some equipment.”