Nothing to Lose

Reacher planted his back heel in the mud and leaned in and launched a flurry of heavy punches, a fast deadly rhythm, four blows, right, left, right, left,one to the gut,two to the jaw,three to the head, andfour, a crushing uppercut under the chin, like he was his demented five-year-old self all over again, but five times heavier and eight times more experienced. The foreman was already on his way down when the uppercut landed. It lifted him back up and then dropped him like the earth had opened up. Reacher spun away and lined up and kicked the scrabbling giant in the head, like he was punting a football, instep against ear. The impact pinwheeled the guy’s body a whole two feet and dropped him back in the mud.

The foreman lay still.

The giant lay still.

Game over.

Reacher checked his hands for broken bones and found none. He stood still and got his breathing under control and glanced north through the light. Thurman had broken free of Vaughan’s grasp and was heading for the gate again, slipping and sliding and twisting and turning to fend her off. His hat was gone. His hair was wet and wild. Reacher set off in their direction. Paused to collect the giant wrench from where it had fallen. He hefted it up and carried it on his shoulder like an ax. He trudged onward, heavily. A slow-motion chase. He caught Vaughan ten yards from the gate and passed her and clamped a hand on Thurman’s shoulder and pressed downward. The old guy folded up and went down on his knees. Reacher moved onward, to the gate. He found the little gray box. Flipped the lid. Saw the keypad. Swung the wrench and smashed it to splinters. Hit it again. And again. It fell out of its housing in small broken pieces. A small metal chassis hung up on thin trailing wires. Reacher chopped downward with the wrench until the wires tore and ruptured and the chassis fell to the ground.

Thurman was still on his knees. He said, “What are you doing? Now we can’t get out of here.”

“Wrong,” Reacher said. “You can’t, but we can.”

“How?”

“Wait and see.”

“It’s not possible.”

“Would you have given me the combination?”

“Never.”

“So what’s the difference?”

Vaughan said, “Reacher, what the hell is in your pockets?”

“Lots of things,” Reacher said. “Things we’re going to need.”

71

Reacher trudged through the mud and rolled Thurman’s men into what medics called the recovery position. On their sides, arms splayed, necks at a natural angle, one leg straight and the other knee drawn up. No danger of choking. A slight danger of drowning, if the puddles didn’t stop filling. The rain was still hard. It thrashed against their slickers and drummed on the sides of their boots.

Thurman poked and prodded at the shattered box where the keypad had been. No result. The gates stayed closed. He gave up and slipped and slid back to the center of the hidden area. Reacher and Vaughan fought their way across to the eighteen-wheeler. It was just standing there, shut down and silent and oblivious.

Vaughan said, “You really think this is a bomb?”

Reacher said, “Don’t you?”

“Thurman was mighty plausible. About the gifts for Afghanistan.”

“He’s a preacher. It’s his job to be plausible.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“What if I’m right?”

“How much damage could it do?”

“If they built it right I wouldn’t want to be within three miles of it when it goes off.”

“Threemiles?”

“Twenty tons of TNT, twenty tons of shrapnel. It won’t be pretty.”

“How do we get out of here?”

“Where’s your truck?”

“Where we left it. They ambushed me. Opened the outer gate and drove me through the plant in Thurman’s SUV. It’s parked the other side of the inner gate. Which you just made sure will never open again.”

“No big deal.”

“You can’t climb the wall.”

“But you can,” Reacher said.

They talked for five fast minutes about what to do and how to do it. Knives, welds, the average size and thickness of a car’s roof panel, canvas straps, knots, trailer hitches, four-wheel-drive, low-range gearing. Thurman was pacing aimlessly a hundred yards away. They left him there and headed through the mud to the wall. They picked a spot ten feet left of the gate. Reacher took the two switchblades out of his pocket and handed them to Vaughan. Then he stood with his back to the wall, directly underneath the maximum radius of the horizontal cylinder above. Rain sheeted off it and soaked his head and shoulders. He bent down and curled his left palm and made a stirrup. Vaughan lined up directly in front of him, facing him, and put her right foot in the stirrup. He took her weight and she balanced with her wrists on his shoulders and straightened her leg and boosted herself up. He cupped his right hand under her left foot. She stood upright in his palms and her weight fell forward and her belt buckle hit him in the forehead.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Nothing we haven’t done before,” he said, muffled.

“I’m ready,” she said.