Chapter 38

Patty and Shorty held hands, and somehow the palm to palm contact was better than talking, when it came to saying what they had to say. They were both feeling weird, somewhere between paralyzed and frantic, sometimes breathless, caught up in a strange double flip-flop inversion. It was pitch dark, so they were safe, except for night vision, so they weren’t, except night vision couldn’t be used, so they were. One step they felt secure. Like little kids, hiding. They could see no one, therefore no one could see them. The next step they felt they were walking the length of a gigantic airport runway, two tiny figures all alone in the vastness, lit up by a thousand probing searchlights.

They didn’t know which feeling was real.

Maybe neither.

They walked on.

They waited for arrows.

None came.

They anticipated sentries wide on the flanks. Impatient types, hoping for the best. Hoping for early contact. They planned to avoid them by coming in pretty much centrally. Pretty much halfway between any two distant outposts. With the fire behind them every step. But then at the last moment they planned to veer off course, just as far as the edge of the blaze would cover them. Then they would work around in the woods and pick up the track’s direction a little farther down. Better than walking right in, they thought. Surely the mouth of the track would be watched very carefully.

Also they planned to split up. Just temporarily. Just by ten yards or so.

“Close enough to help,” Patty said.

Then she thought, far enough to get away when the other one is killed.

But out loud she said, “Far enough not to make one big target.”

In the distance behind them the motel’s roof fell in. A huge cloud of sparks rose up, and hungry new flames started in on the timbers. The fire was brighter than ever.

“Now,” Patty said.

They went south. To their right. They skipped along sideways, glancing ahead, glancing back at the fire, trying to stay covered by its white-out glow, by the very last edge of its halo, but also pushing the envelope, going as wide as they dared, and then wider, and wider still, and then Shorty ran for the woods first, as agreed. He made it. Patty waited. No sound. No shouted warning. She went after him, squeezing between the same two trees, aiming to head around the same quarter circle, back toward the track. She could hear him up ahead. She was close enough to help. She glanced behind her. She was far enough to get away. Would she? She thought, a mile in my shoes, baby. Who knew what anyone would do?

She walked on.

Then two things happened so fast and sudden her mind went blank. They came out of nowhere. Too fast to see. Two things happened. That was all she knew. And then nothing. Except Shorty was suddenly standing in front of her, and a guy was lying on the ground. Then came a painful slow motion replay, like a mental reaction. Maybe a therapeutic purpose. Post traumatic. In her mind she saw a guy looming up. Literally a nightmare vision. All in black, tight nylon, a bow, an arrow, a hideous mechanical one-eyed face. The bow jerking right, tilting down, at her legs, aiming low. They’ll shoot to wound . Then the string drawing back, the arrowhead winking in the moonlight, then out of nowhere Shorty was behind the guy, swinging his long metal flashlight like the riot police, hitting the guy full on behind the ear, every ounce of his potato farmer bulk and muscle behind it, plus every ounce of his anger and fury and fear and humiliation. The guy went straight down. Dead, she was sure. The sound alone told her. The flashlight against his skull. She was a country girl. She had heard enough cows killed to know what it took.

Close enough to help.

It had worked.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I busted my flashlight,” he said. “It doesn’t turn on anymore.”

“You can have mine,” she said. “It’s the least I can do.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Keep mine for a weapon,” he said.

They traded flashlights. An absurd little ceremony.

“Thank you,” she said again.

“You’re welcome.”

She looked away.

“But,” she said.

“But what?”

“They know there are two of us. They must have known we would play it like that.”

“I guess.”

“Which is a risk for them.”

“I guess.”

“They must have known that upfront.”

“OK.”

“I think their obvious solution would be to hunt in pairs.”

A voice said, “Damn right about that, little girl.”

They turned around.

Another nightmare vision. Glistening black nylon tight to the skin, a complicated bow lurid with composite layers, a steel arrowhead as big as a serving spoon, a Cyclops stare through an expressionless glass circle.

The nightmare vision shot Shorty in the leg.

The bowstring thumped, the arrow hissed, and Shorty screamed and went down like he had fallen through a trapdoor. The arrow was stuck in his thigh. He was hauling on it, and jerking his head side to side, and clamping his jaw up and down, which bit his scream into separate rapid-fire gasps of agony, much faster than breathing, ah ah ah, like a racing heartbeat.

Patty was calm. Like Shorty had been before. When her mind was blank. Now his was. Suddenly she thought, this is how life is supposed to feel. She heard herself in her head, as if she was her own teammate, at her own shoulder, saying sure, Shorty’s bad, but he won’t get any worse in the next three seconds. Not medically possible. So feel free to take care of the other thing first.

Which was the guy with the bow. Who was old, she saw. Suddenly a second teammate was at her other shoulder, saying sure, you’re going to notice more now, much more detail, because now you’re operating at a higher level, or maybe a more primitive level, where senses are more acute, so that although the guy is dressed head to toe in shiny black, and has a machine on his face, you can tell from his posture and his movements he’s about our grandfather’s age, and he’s stooped, and he’s sparrow-chested, and if we think back to all the older guys we’ve known, uncles and great-uncles and so on, and the lousy shape they were in, and we adjust for height and weight, then maybe we don’t have too much to worry about with this guy.

He was slow with his reload. His right elbow was slow to bend. Kind of awkward. Arthritis, maybe. He tried to compensate by scrabbling for the arrow early. He fumbled it. Patty breathed in. She felt she was at the head of a tight V-shaped formation, somehow now in motion, loud music playing, her loyal teammates marching at her shoulder, willing her on, bearing her forward, buoying her up, making her weightless.

The first teammate whispered, I think the thing to remember, when all is said and done, apart from anything else, is that this guy shot Shorty with an arrow. Which by any standards is completely out of order.

The second teammate said, the night vision device will protect his face. Better to aim for his throat.

Keep mine for a weapon, Shorty had said.

She did it beautifully. Despite very little prior experience. She felt it all happen, at a molecular level. She sensed every compound flooding her brain. Some were complex emotions. Mostly about Shorty. Primeval feelings. Much stronger than she expected. Some were simple software downloads. Dusty old how-to manuals, left behind from savage eras deep in prehistory. She absorbed them all, and they gave her animal grace, and strength, and speed, and cunning, and ferocity, plus some kind of serene human abandon over the top of it all, that made her surrender to instinct completely. She danced across the space, trailing the flashlight behind her, shuffling her stride to perfection, swinging the flashlight ahead of her, accelerating it hard, keeping it low, the Cyclops eye coming down to track it, then whipping it up in a savage U-shaped curve, into the narrowing angle between the dropping chin and the arching neck.

It hit with a crunch she felt all the way to her elbow. The guy went down like he ran into a clothes rope. He landed on his back. She grabbed his bow and threw it away. His night vision was bound to his head with thick rubber straps. She tore it off. He was a thin, pale, sour man, about seventy years old.

His mouth was opening and closing like a goldfish.

Panic in his eyes.

He couldn’t breathe.

He pointed to his throat, both hands, desperate urgent gestures.

Can’t breathe, he mouthed.

Tough shit, she thought.

Then she heard Shorty whimper.

Later she knew she would have no defense, if a lawyer accused her of flying into a murderous rage. Damn right she did. Or if he asked her, sternly, did you in fact beat the victim to death with the flashlight? Damn right she did. With blows to the head, exclusively. A lot to his face. With every ounce of her strength. Until his skull looked like a bag of nails.

Then she crawled back to Shorty.

Who was quiet.

He had seen.

First things first. She got her hands under his arms and dragged him deeper into the woods. She got him sitting upright against a tree. She got his legs straight out in front. Then she ran back to the guy she had killed. She took his night vision device. She strapped it on. She hated it. It smelled of his breath and his hair, and dirty metal, and perished military rubber.

But now she could see. Luminous green, in fantastic detail. Every vein in every leaf on every tree was sharp as a pin. As if lit from inside. Glowing softly. At her feet she saw every twig and every fallen flake of bark, with exquisite precision. In the far distance she saw trees just as bright as the trees close by. It was better than daylight. It was unnatural. It was amplified, and smoothed, and gated, and displayed. She felt like Superman.

She ran back to Shorty, and got to work.

Reacher took the dead guy’s night vision device. He strapped it on and adjusted the buckles. The world went bright and green and highly detailed. He took the whole quiver of arrows. He slung it over his shoulder. Twenty knives on sticks. Better than nothing.

He moved deeper into the woods. No danger of getting lost. The track was still visible through the trees, even though it was now thirty yards to his left. It still showed clearly. Its luminosity was exactly equal to everything else. The night vision ignored shadow and distance. Every single thing got the same green and meticulous attention.

He moved up four paces and stopped. He figured the second guy would be close, but not too close. Near enough for a rapid response, far enough to escape a train wreck. Within earshot, certainly.

He turned a long slow circle. He examined every detail. Night vision was not the same thing as thermal imaging. That was a different department entirely. If the guy lit a cigarette with a match, then sure, he would show up as a sudden bright flare. But solely because of the light, not the heat. Night vision didn’t know about heat. If the guy didn’t light a cigarette, he wouldn’t really show up at all. Certainly not as a fat orange sausage of body temperature. At best he would show up as a pale ghostly shape the same as every other pale ghostly shape. Or not show up. He was automatically camouflaged. Because everything was green.

No sign of him.

Reacher checked the other side of the track. He moved back and forth, to see through the trees. Fifty yards away, easy. Perfect detail. Better than daylight. No light and shade, no dappling, no near and far. Each tree glowed exactly the same, as if equally radioactive, in some nightmare future world. Each vine and bramble was a separate delicate line, impossibly thin, like engraving on a banknote.

He saw the guy.

Leaning on a tree, about six feet from the edge of the track. Skintight clothing, dark in color, bow in his hand, looking mostly forward up the track, but glancing back all the time, down the track, behind him. He was anxious. He couldn’t hear his partner. Now he had to choose. Respond, or dodge a train wreck?

He was forty yards from Reacher. Which implied some cautious stalking. For one of them, anyway. A painstaking task. Laborious. Reacher stood still. Sometimes he believed in letting the other guy do the work.

First he took a second arrow from the quiver. One in each hand. Then he chose a tree. A thick, strong specimen. About sixty years old, he thought, judging by Ryantown. He put his shoulder against it. He was a little thicker front to back than it was wide side to side. But it was close enough. He ranged away a step and squatted down. He used the arrow in his right hand to beat and batter and scythe through the undergrowth, big dramatic sweeps of his arm, intended to replicate the sound of a staggering man falling over, maybe rolling, maybe thrashing around. It was maybe convincing. Maybe not. It could have been rare mammals mating. So to perfect the illusion he added a loud strangled gasping groan, as if in terrible pain, part stoic, part pleading, in a voice he hoped was like a guy as handsome as a movie actor.

Then he straightened up and stood sideways behind his tree.

He waited. Two whole minutes. He thought the guy wasn’t fooled. But then he heard him. Close by. Very quiet. Slow and steady. Exactly on line. He was a good stalker. He was probably right-handed. Therefore the bow would be in his left. The bow would be thrust forward, half ready. The string would be halfway back. Not slack, not tight. An awkward posture. He would be leading with his left shoulder, and walking half sideways.

Reacher waited.

The guy got slower. Now he was close to where he thought he heard the noise. He was anxious. But cautious too.

He called out in a fierce whisper, “Hey, four, are you there?”

Reacher didn’t move.

The guy said, “Where are you, man? I think I lost you somewhere along the way. We need to get moving. We got something on fire up there.”

South Texas, Reacher thought. A polite, sincere voice.

He kicked the brambles at his feet.

The guy said, “Four, is that you?”

Reacher didn’t move.

The guy said, “Are you hurt?”

As a reply Reacher made a quiet sound in the back of his throat. He guessed the nearest word in English would be air, said long and breathy.

The guy crept closer.

And closer.

He came around Reacher’s tree, leading with his far shoulder, his belly exposed, looking through a tube, which in many ways was a technical marvel, with only one significant negative, which was a lack of extreme peripheral vision. Which meant the guy came half a step too far around the tree. Before he saw. Before he froze. Reacher stabbed him with the arrow, a vicious uppercut high in the stomach, hard enough to bury the arrow up to Reacher’s fist, hard enough to lift the guy up off his feet. Reacher let go of the arrow and whipped his hand back. The guy collapsed on his knees. The arrow was sticking out of his gut. Sloping down. Maybe six inches of shaft, and then the feathers.

The guy pitched forward on his face. He landed square on the feathers. The arrowhead punched out his back. It looked wet and slimy. Not red. Green, of course.

Steven had lost one of the flashlights. The GPS had blinked off and never returned. An impact, possibly. Currently the surviving flashlight was sixty feet in the forest, sixty yards from the track. It had not moved for many minutes. He didn’t know why.

But his bigger worry was the heart rate monitors. Now four had flatlined. Now four of their customers were technically dead. Which was obviously insane. It was an equipment fault. Had to be. But better safe than sorry. Maybe someone should go take a look. The GPS showed Peter and Robert widely separated, on the flanks, at the edge of the forest. Still in neutral mode, not interfering, there for advice and reassurance alone, only if called upon, nothing more. Mark was moving, in a wide loop back toward the buildings. Not fast. He was either walking or riding slow on his bike. Too slow. They all needed to get moving. He needed to tell them. But he couldn’t. The radio hub had burned up. Their earpieces were useless. They were hearing nothing. Therefore doing nothing. Watching the fire, maybe.

Then the surviving flashlight started to move.