Chapter 36

Patty pulled the door all the way open, and stood staring out, from one inch inside the threshold. The outside air was soft and sweet. The sky was dark as iron.

“This is crazy,” she said. “I don’t want to go. I want to stay here. I feel safe here.”

“We aren’t safe here,” Shorty said. “We’re sitting ducks here.”

“We’re sitting ducks everywhere. They have night vision.”

“There are only six of them.”

“Nine,” Patty said. “You think the assholes are going to be impartial?”

“We can’t stay here.”

Patty said nothing. She put her hand out the door. She opened her fingers. She felt the air. She pushed it and cupped it, like swimming.

“We’ll go to Florida,” Shorty said. “We’ll have a windsurfer business. Maybe jet skis too. We’ll sell T-shirts. That’s where the money is. Patty and Shorty’s Aquatic Emporium. We could have a fancy design.”

Patty looked back at him.

“Jet skis need servicing,” she said.

“I’ll hire a mechanic,” he said. “Regular as clockwork. I promise.”

She paused a beat.

“OK,” she said. “Let’s go to Florida.”

They took nothing except the flashlights. They hustled out between the dead Honda and a pick-up parked next door. They tracked around room twelve, and came back on the blind side, along the back wall, to where they guessed their bathroom was. They pressed their backs against the siding. West was dead ahead. A faint gray acre of grass, and then a wall of trees, low and black beyond it. They listened hard, and they looked for lights. They heard nothing, and they saw nothing.

They held hands and set out walking. Fast, but not running. They slipped and stumbled. Soon they were out in the open. Shorty imagined weird one-eyed night-vision goggles turning in his direction. Zooming in, and focusing. Patty thought, if they see you early, they might just track you for a spell. They fixed their eyes on the dark horizon. The wall of trees. They hustled on toward it. Closer and closer. Faster and faster. They ran the last fifty yards.

They slipped between the first trunks and stopped dead, bent over, breathing hard, gasping, for air, from relief, with primitive joy at having survived. Some kind of ancient victory. Making them stronger. They stood up again. They listened. They heard nothing. They moved deeper into the woods. On and on. Slow going, because of vines and low stuff around their ankles, and because of stepping left, and stepping right, around all the trees. Plus it was dark. They didn’t risk the flashlights. Not yet. Because of the night vision. They figured it would be like setting themselves on fire.

Five minutes later Patty said, “Are we still heading west?”

Shorty said, “I think so.”

“We should turn south now.”

“Why?”

“We were out in the open an awful long time. They could have been watching from a distance. They saw us heading west, so now they think we’re going to continue heading west.”

“Do they?”

“Because unconsciously people project spatial things in straight lines.”

“Do they?”

“So we need to turn off one way or the other. North or south. They can project us west all they want. We’ll never show up. I like south better. If we find a road, it’s a straight shot to town.”

“OK, we should make a left turn.”

“If we’re really heading west right now.”

“I’m pretty sure,” Shorty said.

So Patty turned what she hoped was exactly ninety degrees. She checked it carefully. She was shoulder-on to Shorty. She was sideways on to the way they had just been walking. She set out in the new direction. Shorty followed. On and on. The same slow progress. Grabby vines, and whip-like saplings. Sometimes fallen boughs, propped diagonally across their path. Which meant a detour, and a long look back, to make sure they hadn’t gotten turned around.

Way far in the distance they heard a bike. Maybe a mile away. A short trip. It started up, it rode a minute, and it shut down again. The faintest sound. Repositioning, maybe. For what? On what basis? Patty stopped walking, and Shorty bumped into her.

She said, “Do they ride them all the time, like horseback, or do they get off and approach on foot?”

“I guess I don’t hear them buzzing around all the time, so yeah, I guess they park them and fan out on foot.”

“Which means we won’t hear them coming. Mark was bullshitting.”

“There’s a surprise.”

“We’re in trouble.”

“It’s a big woods. They need to get closer than forty feet. That guy was real far away. He was shit out of luck.”

“We should turn southwest now,” Patty said.

“Why?”

“I think from here it would be the fastest way to the break in the trees.”

“Won’t they guess?”

“We can’t worry about that anymore. There are nine of them. Between them they can guess everything.”

“OK, we should head half a turn to the right.”

“If we’re really heading south right now.”

“I’m pretty sure,” Shorty said. “More or less.”

“I think we got turned around.”

“Not by much.”

Patty said nothing.

Shorty said, “What?”

“I think we’re lost in the woods. Which is full of archers who want to kill us. I think I’m going to die surrounded by trees. Which I guess is fair. I work in a sawmill.”

“You OK?”

“A bit light headed.”

“Hang in there. We’re close enough for government work. Turn half right, keep on going, and we’ll reach the clearing.”

They did all those things. They turned half right, they kept on going, and they reached the clearing. A minute later. But it was the wrong clearing. They were behind the motel again. The same gray acre of grass. A different angle. But only slightly. They were coming out of the woods about twenty yards from where they ran in.

Reacher heard motorcycle engines far in the distance. First a swarm, like a whole bunch together, buzzing faintly, right at the edge of silence, then individual machines about a mile away, some driving by, some slowing down. Not the clumsy bass beat of American machines. The other kind of motorbike noise. High revs, gears and chains, all kinds of cams and valves and other parts howling and thrashing up and down. The quad-bikes, he assumed. There had been nine, neatly parked in three rows of three. In front of the barn. Now they were out and about, revving and squirming their way through the trees.

Hunting, said the back part of his brain.

OK, said the front part. Maybe a protected species. A bear cub, or something. Highly illegal. Maybe that was the victim.

Except a bear cub didn’t drive an import or hide with the blind down.

He stopped in the dark and shuffled off the track. He stood six feet in the trees. Way up ahead he heard a bike. Not moving. Idling in place. Waiting. No headlight. Then it shut down. The silence became total again. Overhead where the canopy was thin there were slivers of steel-gray sky. Moonlight on low cloud.

Reacher moved up through the trees, following the track, six feet from its edge.

Patty sat on the ground, with her back against a tree. She stared across at the motel. The blind side. The back wall. Where they had started.

“You OK?” Shorty said again.

She thought, if they see you early, they might just track you for a spell.

Out loud she said, “Sit down, Shorty. Rest when you can. This could be a long night.”

He sat down. The next tree.

He said, “We’ll get better at it.”

“No, we won’t,” she said. “Not without a compass. It’s impossible. We tried three straight lines and ended up walking a pretzel.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to wake up and find this has all been a horrible dream.”

“Apart from that.”

“I want to go east. I think the track is the only way. Alongside, in the trees. So we don’t get lost. Any other direction is futile. We could wander all night.”

“They know that.”

“They always knew. They knew sooner or later we have no alternative but to try the track. Our last resort. We should have known too. We were stupid. Thirty square miles with six guys was always ridiculous. What kind of game is that? It’s a lottery. But it isn’t thirty square miles. It’s a narrow strip either side of the track. That’s where all the action will be. It’s inevitable. They’re waiting for us there. The only gamble for them is what angle we approach from. And when.”

Shorty was quiet a long moment. Breathing in, breathing out.

Then he said, “I want to try something.”

“What kind of something?”

“First I want to see if it’s possible. I don’t want to look stupid.”

She thought, short odds, Shorty.

Out loud she said, “What do we need to do?”

“Follow me,” he said.

In the back parlor Steven tracked the GPS chips inside their flashlights. They were beefy transmitters, powered by a parasitic feed from the four brand new D-cell batteries, with long antennas taped inside the aluminum cases. Currently they were moving from the edge of the forest toward the back of the motel. Medium speed. Walking, not running. In a precisely straight line, which was in stark contrast to their previous navigational performance, which had been chaotic. They had been staggering uncertainly south of west from the get-go, in a tight curling line they evidently thought was straight. Their left turn looked good temporarily, but they wandered again, almost in a circle, and then their final turn brought them back to where they had started. On two occasions they had crossed their own tracks, apparently without realizing.

He watched. They made it to the motel’s back wall. Then they retraced their earlier steps exactly. They tracked back around the end of the building. Around room twelve. Into the lot. Past room eleven. Then they stopped, outside room ten.