Make Me

It was a New Holland backhoe, from the farm equipment dealer north of the wagon train trail. Westwood chugged it back through the plaza and onward past the motel. If not a test drive, at least a courtesy loan. Without the courtesy part. But a loan nonetheless. Reacher had no intention of keeping it. On the back it had a claw arm and a digging shovel, very narrow, with two aggressive teeth. An entrenching tool. On the front the bucket was broad and tall, but shallow. More like a bulldozer blade. It was clearly a versatile machine. All kinds of things could be bolted on. It was brand-new, brightly painted, and completely clean. It had a new-backhoe smell. The cab was just about wide enough for three, but there was only one seat. Westwood was in it, because he had to be. There were all kinds of levers and pedals. Chang was standing sideways on Westwood’s left, and Reacher was jammed in sideways on his right. The engine was roaring. The thing was built for hard work and short back-and-forth distances, between hole and pile, but there were road-going gears in there too. Westwood had it wound up to about thirty miles an hour when they left the plaza.

Not into the mouth of the private driveway.

Into the wheat.

Westwood had the front bucket set a couple of feet off the ground, with the bottom edge jutting forward. Like a metal chin. It smashed the wheat down, like a blunt scythe, and thick golden clouds of dust and fragments filled the air, like an ongoing linear explosion, and stalky debris thrashed the underside, and on the edges of the furrow the wheat swayed back in waves and brushed the windows. The land was flat in a global sense but where the rubber met the dirt it was uneven and lumpy. The backhoe was pitching fore-and-aft like a boat, and bouncing on its tires. They were soft, and they bulged and floundered on every bump. Westwood was hammering up and down in his seat. Reacher and Chang were hanging on sideways, like subway riders on a runaway train.

The metal chin hammered on.

Dust and fragments howled all around them.

Thirty miles an hour.

Twenty miles to go.

Elementary school.

Forty minutes.

But better than taking the private driveway. Which could be mined. Or at least spiked. And which definitely involved a straight head-on ten-mile approach to a right-angle corner, where any sane defender would mount a fifty-caliber machine gun. Arriving by car on the dirt road would be like coming up the motel stairs two at a time. We could pick you off like squirrels. Better to have some freedom of movement. Which meant an off-road vehicle. Which meant a battering ram. Hence the front bucket. Which was also bulletproof, and the size of a twin-bed mattress. Heavy steel, for humping jagged rocks. There was a sliver of visibility over the top. As much as they needed. For the wheat, anyway. So far, so good. The plan was working. Except for one small unintended consequence. Mainly because of the slamming around.

Reacher’s headache was coming back.

Most of the way the farm was out of sight behind the wheat, so they steered by the sun. Not exact, but close enough. First visual contact happened about a quarter-mile from where they were aiming, and just about right on time. A house and six outbuildings. Fences and beaten earth. A phone line on poles. The diesel generator’s top-hat exhaust.

And the stink of hogs.

Like a chemical weapon.

Westwood looped away, and came back head-on, and stopped about two hundred yards out. The engine died back to an idle. Last fragments of wheat settled back to earth.

Quiet.

All alone.

Reacher felt like a predator above a water hole.

Then the water hole started shooting back.

Three weapons firing. Long guns. All the same. Distinctive. Flat solid barks, and the crack of fast bullets in the air. NATO rounds out of M16s, if Reacher was a gambling man. All of them so far missing. Understandable. It was a deceptive shot. Two hundred yards, absolutely flat, eye to eye. Except it was absolutely curved, because it was part of a spherical planet. Hence the miscalculation.

Westwood said, “Should we back off?”

“No,” Reacher said. He counted in his head. He said, “Move up fifty yards. Now. Put the pressure on. They’re coming up to a magazine change.”

“Fifty yards forward?”

“Now.”

Westwood moved it up.

A ragged lull. Pretty slow. No infantry training. That was for damn sure. Then the pot-shots started again. All of them misses.

Until a single hit.

Right in the center of the front bucket. A tiny thrill through the framework. The bullet, collapsing. Then the sound, arriving late, a sonorous clang.

Reacher said, “I’m impressed.”

Chang said, “By what?”

“Finally they hit a target only slightly smaller than a barn door. Thereby revealing the front bucket is indeed bulletproof. So we’re good to go.”

Westwood said, “Now?”

“No time like the present.”

Chang said, “Take care, Reacher.”

“You too, Chang.”

They opened their doors and jumped down to the ground, one on the left, and one on the right.

Chapter 55