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Then the nose dipped and it turned and hammered low over the diner, and on toward the data centers. A hundred feet below the road looped politely around, but the helicopter ignored it and flew a straight line. It slowed and hovered again. It eased toward the front of EEF’s building, and it came down some more, and then more, to barely clear of rooftop level. The nose dropped. It hung angled in the air. For a good view out the windshield. They were checking the gate, and checking the door.

It crept sideways, always nose-in, like a suckerfish circling a whale, tilted down, getting a good look. The front of the building was untouched, all across its impressive width. No damage. No sign of intruders. So it moved on, and turned ninety degrees, and started down the long, long side wall, fast but careful, looking for damage, looking for intruders, finding neither. It stopped again on the far back corner, hanging in the air, deafening, dust coming up, about to turn and survey the rear wall. It backed off as it turned, safety first, the windshield staying in place, the tail pirouetting around behind it, maintaining the suckerfish angle. It swung into place and moved on.

Then it stopped and hovered again. Because the first thing it saw was a dark-colored pickup truck parked out on the dirt, ten feet from the back curb, twenty feet from the back fence, thirty feet from the building’s back door.

By then Reacher and Turner and Elwood were hidden around the next corner. Adequate for the present moment. But they had nowhere to hide when the helicopter got there. The gaps between the buildings were sixty feet wide. The buildings were hundreds of feet long. No way to outrun a helicopter. So the plan was to stop the helicopter before it got anywhere near them. Reacher had the shotgun braced steady against the steel fence. It was loaded with solid steel slugs. It was aimed where the humpbacked lump on top of the helicopter’s cabin was going to arrive in the next couple of seconds. The engine nacelles and the gearbox. A direct hit up there with a solid steel slug would be guaranteed fatal. The machine would fall to earth. A variant of the original plan. The shotgun disables the vehicle, the submachine guns neutralize the survivors.

Reacher watched the helicopter drift toward his aiming point. The pad of his forefinger eased back against the trigger. It was warm and smooth. Like silk. A precision component. Machined to perfection. From Eagle Pass, Texas. Clearly Mossberg had some fine metalworkers there.

Then Turner screamed over the noise, “Wait, wait.”

“What?”

“Hold your fire,” she called out. “Repeat, hold your fire. Take your finger off the trigger.”

“What’s up?”

“Forget the windshield. Look in the side window. The back one.”

Reacher looked. The rearmost side window was a tall rectangle, bigger than a regular airplane porthole. Pressed up against the inside glass was a pale face. A woman. Dark hair.

It was Julia Bisley.

Reacher put the shotgun back on his shoulder.

No plan survives first contact with the enemy.

Chapter 43

The helicopter backed away a hundred feet and its undercarriage came down and locked in place. It leveled up and drifted down the last fifty feet. A hurricane of sand and dust and deafening noise blew up all around it. It settled on the dirt, exactly parallel with the pickup truck, thirty feet from it, like it was neatly parked in a suburban lot. The engines stopped. Sudden silence came back. Just the lazy whip of the slowing rotor. People were moving around inside. Some kind of reorganization.

The rotor drooped to a final stop.

A sliding door clanged open.

Front and center in the doorway was Julia Bisley, thrust forward and held there like a shield by the men behind her. She had Amanda in her arms. Amanda looked upset and Julia looked terrified.

“Not good,” Reacher said, quietly.

“Got any ideas?” Turner asked.

“Do you guys still have to pass the fitness test every year?”

“Sure, the same as everyone else.”

“Including the two-mile run?”

“Sadly.”

“Then I suggest the colonel takes off now and loops around the front of the buildings and comes back around the end of the last unit, to outflank them. We’ll have their attention, so he’ll be on their blind side.”

“Elwood?”

“Happy to, ma’am, but I’m a grinder, not a sprinter,” he said. “You’ll have to keep them talking.”

“OK, go for it.”

Reacher gave him the marksman rifle. Better from the blind side, when precision was required and noncombatants were involved. Elwood took off in a dogged jog, noisy over the gravel, arms pumping, head back. Reacher watched him through his first fifty yards. He never sped up, and he never slowed down. Relentless. A grinder indeed. At that speed Reacher figured it would take him about eight minutes to get himself in position. Plus a couple more to get his breathing back under control, to where he could aim a rifle with confidence. Ten minutes total. Which was a lot of talking. In a volatile situation, temporarily six against two, with collateral damage just waiting to happen, some of which was only eleven months old.