Tripwire

Reacher shuddered. Not from the pain, but because he knew Allen was right. He could feel his knees. They were there, and they were strong. But a fit man never feels his knees. They’re just a part of him. Feeling them valiantly holding up 250 pounds of body weight means that pretty soon they won’t be. It’s an early warning.

“You’re going down, Reacher,” Allen called again. “You’re shaking, you know that? You’re slipping away from us. Couple of minutes, I’ll walk right over and shoot you in the head. All the time in the world.”

Reacher shuddered again and scoped it out. It was hard to think. He was dizzy. He had an open head wound. His skull was penetrated. Nash Newman flashed into his mind, holding up bones in a classroom. Maybe Nash would explain it, many years in the future. A sharp object penetrated the frontal lobe-here-and pierced the meninges and caused a hemorrhage. His gun hand was shaking. Then Leon was there, scowling and muttering if plan A doesn’t work, move on to plan B.

Then the Louisiana cop was there, the guy from years ago in another life, talking about his.38-caliber revolvers, saying you just can’t rely on them to put a guy down, not if he’s coming at you all pumped up on angel dust. Reacher saw the guy’s unhappy face. You can’t rely on a.38 to put a man down. And a short-barrel.38, worse still. Hard to hit a target with a short barrel. And with a struggling woman in your arms, harder still. Although her struggling might put the bullet dead center by accident. His head spun. It was being pounded by a giant with a jackhammer. His strength was draining out of him from the inside. His right eye was jacked open and it was dry and stinging, like needles were in it. Five more minutes, maybe, he was thinking. Then I’m done for.

He was in a rented car, next to Jodie, driving back from the zoo. He was talking. It was warm in the car. There was sun and glass. He was saying the basis of any scam is show them what they want to see. The Steyr wobbled in his hand and he thought OK, Leon, here’s plan B. See how you like it.

His knees buckled and he swayed. He came back upright and brought the Steyr back to the only thin sliver of Allen’s head he could make out. The muzzle wavered through a circle. A small circle at first, then a larger one as the weight of the gun overwhelmed the control in his shoulder. He coughed and pushed blood out of his mouth with his tongue. The Steyr was coming down. He watched the front sight dropping like a strong man was pulling on it. He tried to bring it up, but it wouldn’t come. He forced his hand upward, but it just moved sideways, like an invisible force was deflecting it. His knees went again and he jerked back upright like a spasm. The Steyr was miles away. It was hanging down to the right. It was pointing at the desk. His elbow was locked against its weight and his arm was bending. Allen’s hand was moving. He watched it one-eyed and wondered is what I feel for Jodie as good as being pumped up on angel dust? The barrel snagged out from a fold of cloth and came free of her jacket. Am I going to make it? His knees were going and he started shaking. Wait. Just wait.

Allen’s wrist snapped forward. He saw it move. It was very quick. He saw the black hole in the stainless barrel. It was clear of her body. She smashed her head down and he whipped the Steyr back and got it pretty close to the target before Allen fired. It was within a couple of inches. That was all. A couple of lousy inches. Fast, he thought, but not fast enough. He saw the revolver hammer click forward and then a flower of bright flame bloomed out from the barrel and a freight train hit him in the chest. The roar of the shot was completely lost behind the immense physical impact of the bullet hitting him. It was a blow from a giant hammer the size of a planet. It thumped and crashed and deafened him from the inside. There was no pain. No pain at all. Just a huge cold numbness in his chest and a silent vacuum of total calm in his mind. He thought hard for a split second and fought to stay firm on his feet and he kept his eye wide open long enough to concentrate on the puff of soot coming from the Steyr’s silencer. Then he moved his eye the last little fraction and watched Allen’s head burst open twelve feet away. There was an explosion of blood and bone in the air, a cloud three or four feet wide, and it was spreading like a mist. He asked himself is he dead now? and when he heard himself answer surely he must be he let himself go and rolled his eye up in his head and fell backward through perfect still silent blackness that continued forever and ended nowhere.

18

HE KNEW HE was dying because faces were coming toward him and all of them were faces he recognized. They came in a long stream, unending, ones and twos together, and there were no strangers among them. He had heard it would be like this. Your life was supposed to flash before your eyes. Everybody said so. And now it was happening. So he was dying.

He guessed when the faces stopped, that was it. He wondered who the last one would be. There were a number of candidates. He wondered who chose the order. Whose decision was it? He felt mildly irritated he wasn’t allowed to specify. And what would happen next? When the last face was gone, what then?

But something was going seriously wrong. A face loomed up who he didn’t know. It was then he realized the Army was in charge of the parade. It had to be. Only the Army could accidentally include someone he had never seen before. A complete stranger, in the wrong place at the wrong time. He supposed it was fitting. He had lived most of his life under the control of the Army. He supposed it was pretty natural they would take charge of organizing this final part. And one mistake was tolerable. Normal, even acceptable, for the Army.

But this guy was touching him. Hitting him. Hurting him. He suddenly realized the parade had finished before this guy. This guy wasn’t in the parade at all. He came after it. Maybe this guy was there to finish him off. Yes, that was it. Had to be that way. This guy was here to make sure he died on schedule. The parade was over, and the Army couldn’t let him survive it. Why should they go to all the trouble of putting it on and then have him survive it? That would be no good. No good at all. That would be a serious lapse in procedure. He tried to recall who had come before this guy. The second-to- last person, who was really the last person. He didn’t remember. He hadn’t paid attention. He slipped away and died without remembering who had been the last face in his parade.

HE WAS DEAD, but he was still thinking. Was that OK? Was this the afterlife? That would be a hell of a thing. He had lived nearly thirty-nine years assuming there was no afterlife. Some people had agreed with him, others had argued with him. But he’d always been adamant about it. Now he was right there in it. Somebody was going to come sneering up to him and say told you so. He would, if the boot was on the other foot. He wouldn’t let somebody get away with being absolutely wrong about something, not without a little friendly ribbing at least.

He saw Jodie Garber. She was going to tell him. No, that wasn’t possible. She wasn’t dead. Only a dead person could yell at you in the afterlife, surely. A live person couldn’t do it. That was pretty obvious. A live person wasn’t in the afterlife. And Jodie Garber was a live person. He’d made certain of it. That had been the whole damn point. And anyway, he was pretty sure he had never discussed the afterlife with Jodie Garber. Or had he? Maybe many years ago, when she was still a kid? But it was Jodie Garber. And she was going to speak to him. She sat down in front of him and pushed her hair behind her ears. Long blond hair, small ears.

“Hi, Reacher,” she said.

It was her voice. No doubt about it. No mistake. So maybe she was dead. Maybe it had been an automobile accident. That would be a hell of an irony. Maybe she was hit by a speeding truck on lower Broadway, on her way home from the World Trade Center.

“Hey, Jodie,” he said.

She smiled. There was communication. So she was dead. Only a dead person could hear another dead person speak, surely. But he had to know.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“St. Vincent’s,” she said.

Saint Peter he had heard of. He was the guy at the gates. He had seen pictures. Well, not really pictures, but cartoons, at least. He was an old guy in a robe, with a beard. He stood at a lectern and asked questions about why