The final two buildings were storehouses. One stood in line with the last dormitory. The other was set some distance away. Fowler led Reacher into the nearer shed. It was crammed with supplies. One wall was lined with huge plastic drums filled with water.
“Beans, bullets and bandages,” Fowler said. “That’s Beau’s motto. Sooner or later we’re going to face a siege. That’s for damn sure. And it’s pretty obvious the first thing the government is going to do, right? They’re going to fire artillery shells armed with plague germs into the lake that feeds our water system. So we’ve stockpiled drinking water. Twenty-four thousand gallons. That was the first priority. Then we got canned food, enough for two years. Not enough if we get a lot of people coming in to join us, but it’s a good start.”
The storage shed was crammed. One floor-to-ceiling bay was packed with clothing. Familiar olive fatigues, camouflage jackets, boots. All washed and pressed in some Army laundry, packed up and sold off by the bale.
“You want some?” Fowler asked.
Reacher was about to move on, but then he glanced down at what he was wearing. He had been wearing it continuously since Monday morning. Three days solid. It hadn’t been the best gear to start with, and it hadn’t improved with age.
“OK,” he said.
The biggest sizes were at the bottom of the pile. Fowler heaved and shoved and dragged out a pair of pants, a shirt, a jacket. Reacher ignored the shiny boots. He liked his own shoes better. He stripped and dressed, hopping from foot to foot on the bare wooden floor. He did up the shirt buttons and shrugged into the jacket. The fit felt good enough. He didn’t look for a mirror. He knew what he looked like in fatigues. He’d spent enough years wearing them.
Next to the door, there were medical supplies ranged on shelves. Trauma kits, plasma, antibiotics, bandages. All efficiently laid out for easy access. Neat piles, with plenty of space between. Borken had clearly rehearsed his people in rushing around and grabbing equipment and administering emergency treatment.
“Beans and bandages,” Reacher said. “What about the bullets?”
Fowler nodded toward the distant shed.
“That’s the armory,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
The armory was bigger than the other storage shed. Huge lock on the door. It held more weaponry than Reacher could remember seeing in a long time. Hundreds of rifles and machine guns in neat rows. The stink of fresh gun oil everywhere. Floor-to-ceiling stacks of ammo boxes. Familiar wooden crates of grenades. Shelves full of handguns. Nothing heavier than an infantryman could carry, but it was still a hell of an impressive sight.
THE TWO BOLTS securing the mesh base were the easiest. They were smaller than the others. The big bolts holding the frame together took all the strain. The mesh base just rested in there. The bolts holding it down were not structural. They could have been left out altogether, and the bed would have worked just the same.
She flaked and scraped the paint back to the bare metal. Heated the bolt heads with the towel. Then she pulled the rubber tip off her crutch and bent the end of the aluminum tube into an oval. She used the strength in her fingers to crush the oval tight over the head of the bolt. Used the handle to turn the whole of the crutch like a giant socket wrench. It slipped off the bolt. She cursed quietly and used one hand to crush it tighter. Turned her hand and the crutch together as a unit. The bolt moved.
THERE WAS A beaten earth path leading out north from the ring of wooden buildings. Fowler walked Reacher down it. It led to a shooting range. The range was a long, flat alley painstakingly cleared of trees and brush. It was silent and unoccupied. It was only twenty yards wide, but over a half-mile long. There was matting laid at one end for the shooters to lie on, and far in the distance Reacher could see the targets. He set off on a slow stroll toward them. They looked like standard military-issue plywood cutouts of running, crouching soldiers. The design dated right back to World War II. The crude screen-printing depicted a German infantryman, with a coal-scuttle helmet and a savage snarl. But as he got closer Reacher could see these particular targets had crude painted additions of their own. They had new badges daubed on the chests in yellow paint. Each new badge had three letters. Four targets had: FBI. Four had: ATF. The targets were staggered backward over distances ranging from three hundred yards right back to the full eight hundred. The nearer targets were peppered with bullet holes.
“Everybody has to hit the three-hundred-yard targets,” Fowler said. “It’s a requirement of citizenship here.”
Reacher shrugged. Wasn’t impressed. Three hundred yards was no kind of a big deal. He kept on strolling down the half-mile. The four-hundred-yard targets were damaged, the five-hundred-yard boards less so. Reacher counted eighteen hits at six hundred yards, seven at seven hundred, and just two at the full eight hundred.
“How old are these boards?” he asked.
Fowler shrugged.
“A month,” he said. “Maybe two. We’re working on it.”
“You better,” Reacher said.
“We don’t figure to be shooting at a distance,” Fowler replied. “Beau’s guess is the UN forces will come at night. When they think we’re resting up. He figures they might succeed in penetrating our perimeter to some degree. Maybe by a half-mile or so. I don’t think they will, but Beau’s a cautious guy. And he’s the one with all the responsibility. So our tactics are going to be nighttime outflanking maneuvers. Encircle the UN penetration in the forest and mow it down with cross fire. Up close and personal, right? That training’s going pretty well. We can move fast and quiet in the dark, no lights, no sound, no problem at all.”
Reacher looked at the forest and thought about the wall of ammunition he’d seen. Thought about Borken’s boast: impregnable. Thought about the problems an army faces fighting committed guerrillas in difficult terrain. Nothing is ever really impregnable, but the casualties in taking this place were going to be spectacular.
“This morning,” Fowler said. “I hope you weren’t upset.”
Reacher just looked at him.
“About Loder, I mean,” Fowler said.
Reacher shrugged. Thought to himself: it saved me a job of work.
“We need tough discipline,” Fowler said. “All new nations go through a phase like this. Harsh rules, tough discipline. Beau’s made a study of it. Right now, it’s very important. But it can be upsetting, I guess.”
“It’s you should be upset,” Reacher said. “You heard of Joseph Stalin?”
Fowler nodded.
“Soviet dictator,” he said.
“Right,” Reacher said. “He used to do that.”
“Do what?” Fowler asked.
“Eliminate his potential rivals,” Reacher said. “On trumped-up charges.”
Fowler shook his head.
“The charges were fair,” he said. “Loder made mistakes.”
Reacher shrugged.
“Not really,” he said. “He did a reasonable job.”
Fowler looked away.
“You’ll be next,” Reacher said. “You should watch your back. Sooner or later, you’ll find you’ve made some kind of a mistake.”
“We go back a long way,” Fowler said. “Beau and me.”
“So did Beau and Loder, right?” Reacher said. “Stevie will be OK. He’s no threat. Too dumb. But you should think about it. You’ll be next.”
Fowler made no reply. Just looked away again. They walked together back down the grassy half-mile. Took another beaten track north. They stepped off the path to allow a long column of children to file past. They were marching in pairs, boys and girls together, with a woman in fatigues at the head of the line and another at the tail. The children were dressed in cut-down military surplus gear and they were carrying tall staffs in their right hands. Their faces were blank and acquiescent. The girls had untrimmed straight hair, and the boys had rough haircuts done with bowls and blunt shears. Reacher stood and watched them pass. They stared straight ahead as they walked. None of them risked a sideways glance at him.
The new path ran uphill through a thin belt of trees and came out on a flat area fifty yards long and fifty yards wide. It had been leveled by hand. Discarded fieldstone had been painted white and laid at intervals around the
