Past Tense

Chapter 40

Reacher got through the next section of forest pretty quick, because of the night vision. He stayed six feet off the track. He made no attempt to be stealthy or quiet. He relied on the mathematical randomness of tree distribution to save him from arrows. A clear shot from distance was always going to be a hundred to one.

At one point way far away he heard four separated pops. Two groups, a one and a three. Tiny hollow pinpricks of sound. Maybe thirty seconds apart. The back of his brain said, those were suppressed nine-millimeter rounds, fired in the open air, about a mile away. The front said, or maybe they were something cooking off, possibly aerosol cans, in the fire. Which was getting brighter again. It had flared up once, when he figured the roof fell in, and then it had faded away a little. But now the glow was back, and wider, as if more than one thing was burning.

He stopped. Up ahead on the left he saw two quad-bikes parked side by side, front end in, at an angle, half in and half out of the trees. Like outside a country roadhouse. The night vision showed no riders nearby. Presumably they were up ahead. On foot. Closer to the action. Like the last two. These were the next two. They were operating a multilayered defense. One pair after another. Which was why Reacher had avoided the infantry. He didn’t enjoy slogging through endless terrain.

He moved on, quieter than before.

He stopped again.

He saw a guy up ahead. On the other side of the track, about thirty feet in the trees. Small in the distance, but lit up evenhandedly, like everything else. Delineated with exquisite care, in fine gray and green lines. Clothes like a scuba diver, a bow, a Cyclops eye.

No sign of his partner. Some signs of anxiety. Mostly about the glow in the sky, Reacher thought. The guy kept looking toward it, and ducking away. Maybe a crude measure of how bright it was getting. How soon he had to flinch away. The guy was tall and substantial, and his head was up, and his shoulders were square. But he wasn’t comfortable. Reacher had seen his type before. Not just in the army. No doubt the guy was a big-deal alpha male at whatever it was he was good at. But right then he was out of his depth. He was twitching with confusion. Or resentment. As if deep down he couldn’t understand why his staff officers or his executive assistants hadn’t taken care of things for him a damn sight better.

Reacher moved up through the trees, on the other side of the track. He moved slowly and quietly. All the way to where he was exactly level with the guy. Reacher was six feet in the trees. Then came the track. The guy was thirty feet in on the other side. A straight line on a plan. But not a clear shot in a forest. The guy was too deep. He had boxed himself in. Too defensive. He had no natural avenue of attack.

Reacher walked across the track, dead on line, a hundred random trees between him and the guy. He stepped back into the woods on the other side, and he worked his way through, now twenty feet from the guy, still dead on line. The glow in the sky was amplified twenty thousand times, and it winked and danced through the leaves, like camera flashes, like a movie star stepping out of a car. Up ahead the guy was looking down. Maybe the sparkle bothered him.

Now he was ten feet away. Reacher eased his speed back to nothing. He took a good look around. A full 360. He studied the picture, section by section. Highly detailed, fine-grained, monochrome, slightly gray, mostly green, a little cool, a little wispy. A little fluid and ghostly. Not quite reality. In some ways better.

No sign of a partner.

Reacher moved on. As always he believed in staying flexible, but as always he also had a plan. Which in this case was to stab the guy in the neck with an arrow. Which would be easy enough. Because arm’s length was game over. But flexibility intervened. Up close, even in glimpsed slivers between trees, it was clear the guy was worried in a particular kind of way. An elemental way. Like a billionaire whose plane crashes on an uninhabited island. Or whose car gets in a fender bender in the wrong neighborhood. The food chain. Suddenly not as high as he thought. Maybe ready to make a deal.

Reacher rushed him, and the guy reacted by jerking his bow up, probably nothing more than animal instinct, not a considered decision, which was a shame, because just in case Reacher had to scythe his arrow down, like a knife on a stick, to slash all four of the guy’s left-hand knuckles. The guy howled and dropped the bow, and Reacher stepped real close, their optical tubes colliding, and he kicked the guy behind the knees, so that he fell over on his back, whereupon Reacher flipped the guy’s night vision up with his foot, and then jammed the same foot on the guy’s throat, and forced the tip of the arrow between his lips, and tapped it on his teeth.

“Want to talk?” he whispered.

The guy couldn’t answer in words, because of the arrow jammed against his teeth, or in gestures either, because of the foot jammed against his throat. Instead he kind of nodded with his eyes. Some kind of desperate plea. Some kind of promise.

Reacher withdrew the arrow.

He asked, “Who are you hunting?”

The guy said, “This is not what it seems.”

“How so?”

“I came here to hunt wild boar.”

“And what are you hunting instead?”

“I was deceived.”

“What are you hunting?”

“People,” the guy said. “Not what I came for.”

“How many people?”

“Two.”

“Who are they?”

“Canadians,” the guy said. “A young couple. Their names are Patty Sundstrom and Shorty Fleck. They got stranded here. I was tricked into it. I was told wild boar. They lied to me.”

“Who lied to you?”

“A man named Mark. He owns this place.”

“Mark Reacher?”

“I don’t know his last name.”

“Why didn’t you call the cops?”

“No cell service here. No phones in the room.”

“Why haven’t you run away?”

The guy didn’t answer.

“Why didn’t you stay in your room tonight and refuse to participate?”

No response.

“Why are you nevertheless stalking around in the dark with your bow and arrow?”

No answer.

“Wait,” Reacher said.

He heard a car up ahead. He saw bright jagged shards of amplified light coming through the trees. A big vehicle with its headlights on. He flipped up his tube. The world went dark, all except for the track, thirty feet to his right. It was all lit up, like the inside of a long low tunnel. Twin high beams were punching forward. A Mercedes rolled by. It was shiny black, a big SUV, shaped like a fist. Its tail lights showed red for a moment. Then it was gone.

Reacher dropped his tube back in place. The world went green and highly detailed again. He shifted his foot on the guy’s neck. To make room. For the tip of the arrow. He steadied it against the welt of his shoe, and exerted modest downward pressure. The guy tried to scream, but Reacher trod harder and stopped him.

The guy said, “I didn’t know what I was getting into. I swear. I’m a banker. I’m not like these other guys. I’m a victim too.”

“You’re a banker?”

“I run a hedge fund. These other guys are nothing to do with me.”

“I guess the world has moved on,” Reacher said. “You seem to expect better treatment because you’re a banker. When did that become a thing? I guess I blinked and missed it.”

“I didn’t know they were hunting people.”

“I think you did,” Reacher said. “I think that’s why you came.”

He leaned harder on the arrow, and harder, until it pierced the skin, and drove down through the neck, clipping the spine, and out again the other side, pinning the guy like a dead butterfly against the forest floor. Against a tree root, by the feel of it. Gnarled and hard. But Reacher strained and leaned and pushed until the arrow was solidly rooted, and perfectly upright, like a monument.

Then he moved on through the trees.

Mark stopped his Mercedes nose to nose with the tow truck. He had run the numbers. There was a maximum four people technically still unaccounted for. Who were Karel and the Wall Street guy, plus Patty and Shorty themselves. Plus hypothetically a fifth person, if the outside pair had been victims of a third party. Of the big guy, perhaps, come back again. Because he had spotted something. Because he had been unconvinced.

Peter’s fault.

Four people. Or five. All up ahead. Maybe a long way ahead. He needed three short minutes. That was all. Maybe less. He needed to reverse the tow truck out to the road, high speed, into a ditch if necessary, anything to get it out the way, and then he needed to sprint back, and hop in his car, and blast off. To anywhere. North, south, east or west. Three minutes, maybe less. That was all. But, five people, in locations unknown, each location being either more than three minutes away, which wasn’t a problem, or less than, which was.

But it would be hard to be less than, he thought in the end. In practical terms. Even with bikes. He ran the scene in his mind. Like speed chess. First this, then that, then the other thing. He felt he knew what would happen. It was a loud diesel engine. Everyone would hear it in the distance. At first the customers would assume the perimeter was being loosened. An on-the-fly in-game adjustment. To keep the fun coming. Patty and Shorty would think a version of the same thing. They had done well so far, so they would assume now the goalposts were being moved against them. None of them would be suspicious. Three minutes didn’t matter. None of them would react at all.

Except Karel. It was his truck. He would know some kind of weird shit was going on. He might let it go, because he thought he was more or less a semi-detached member of the team now, after the last couple of days, as reflected in the generous discount, and so on. He might feel a bit mi casa su casa about it. He might even take it as a courtesy, not to be dragged out of the game. He was there as a customer, after all, not an umpire. It wasn’t his job to make on-the-fly adjustments. He might let it go.

Or he might not.

He might be more than three minutes away. Even if he reacted immediately. He would need to thread his way through the forest, possibly sixty yards or more, back to wherever he parked his bike. That could be three minutes right there.

Or not.

Realistic. Dispassionate. Overall he figured there was a good chance of success. Either Karel would let it go, or he wouldn’t, multiplied by either he was close by, or he wasn’t. Two coin tosses in a row. Disaster priced at four to one, success at four to three. Numbers didn’t lie. No cognitive bias.

He left the Mercedes running, and he left the driver’s door open. He squeezed between the trees and the truck’s enormous hood. He battled his way to where the cab towered above him. He grabbed the handles and climbed the ladder.

The door was locked.

Which he had not foreseen. For once he hadn’t known what would happen. Such a simple thing. It had never occurred to him. Not in a million years. He hung there, one foot on a step, one hand on a handle, swinging free, poked by trees. At first he was angry. Karel was stupid to leave the truck without the door open and the key in. Who the hell would do that? It was insane. Flexibility was everything. They might have needed to move the truck at any time. In-game management was always fluid. Everyone knew that.

Then he got worried. A sick hollow feeling. Where was the key, if not in the truck? The best case was bad enough. The best case said the key was in Karel’s pocket, which meant finding the guy, and taking it from him. Which would create a delay. Potentially a long delay. Which would in turn increase his exposure to any remaining hostile elements. Not good.

But it was better than the worst case. Karel’s pockets were tight. Stretch fabric, shiny black. Would he want to carry a key? Would any of them? They had left their rooms open, after all, to Shorty’s great advantage, with his flaming towels. They hadn’t wanted to carry those particular keys. Maybe they thought lumps and bumps in their pockets spoiled the look.

The worst case said Karel had left the tow truck key on room two’s dresser. To be picked up in the morning. Now to be picked up never, or years in the future as a lucky find, ashy, melted, twisted out of shape, purpose unknown.

Mark climbed down the ladder and forced his way along the hood to his car. He reversed ten yards, and turned around in the hole in the trees, and drove back the way he had come.

Patty saw him pass by again. She had seen him leave, minutes before. If it was really him. She was only guessing it was Mark in the car. Because of the night vision she hadn’t looked at the driver directly. The car had its headlights on. Way too bright. But as she ducked away she heard the hum of its engine, and the whoosh of its tires. She knew it was a regular type of car. Or wagon, or SUV. She just felt it was Mark inside. Running away, she thought, the first time he passed. But evidently not, because he came back again.

Maybe it wasn’t Mark after all.

She couldn’t find the quad-bikes. She didn’t think they would be deep in the trees. The spaces were too tight. It would be too easy to get wedged in forever. So she confined her search near the edges of the track. She expected to find them parked side by side, maybe backed half into the bushes, maybe angled, as if ready for action, but also leaving space for others to get by, as a courtesy, if they wanted to. But she found nothing.

She stopped walking. She was already a long way from Shorty. She didn’t know how much further she should go. She looked ahead, carefully. She was growing accustomed to the night vision. She turned around and looked behind her. The glow in the sky was bright again. Too bright to look at directly. She half turned back and checked to the south. She saw a small nocturnal creature skitter across six feet of open ground, and dive into a pile of leaves. It was lit up the same as everything else, a pale, wan, scuttling green. Probably gray in real life. Probably a rat.

She turned all the way back around.

She looked ahead again.

There was a man in front of her.

The same as before. The same nightmare vision. Out of nowhere. Out of nothing. Just suddenly there. With a bow held ready. The string was drawn back. The arrow was aimed. But not the same as before. Not at her legs. This time higher.

No Shorty behind him.

Not the same as before.

The nightmare vision spoke.

“We meet again,” it said.

She knew the voice. It was Karel. The weasel with the tow truck. From the Yugoslav army. Who looked like a blurry face in the back of a war crimes photo. She should have known. She was stupid.

Karel asked, “Where’s Shorty?”

She didn’t answer.

“Didn’t he make it? Or maybe you don’t know for sure. Maybe you went your separate ways. You ain’t a pair right now. He ain’t up ahead, because I checked. He can’t be behind you, because that would be neither use nor ornament.”

She looked away.

“Interesting,” Karel said. “Is he back there for a reason?”

She didn’t answer.

He smiled under his glassy snout.

Wide and delighted.

He said, “Is he wounded?”

No reply.

“This is exciting,” he said. “You’re out gathering roots and berries, to make a potion, to heal your man. You’re worried. You’re anxious to get back. This is a truly delightful situation. You and I are going to have so much fun.”

“I was looking for a quad-bike,” she said.

“No point,” he said. “My truck is parked in the way. No one gets out of here before me. I ain’t dumb.”

He lowered his aim.

To her legs.

“No,” she said.

“No what?”

“Yes, Shorty was wounded. Now I need to get back to him.”

“How bad was he wounded?”

“Pretty bad. I think his thigh bone is broken.”

“Shame,” Karel said.

“I need to go see him now.”

“The game says freedom of movement depends on not getting tagged.”

“Please,” she said.

“Please what?”

“I don’t like the game.”

“But I do.”

“I think we should quit. It has gotten way out of hand.”

“No, I think it has gotten to the good part.”

Patty didn’t speak again. She just stood there, with her flashlight in one hand and her arrow in the other. It was the working flashlight, not even the weapon. The arrow would be good for slashing or stabbing, but the guy was ten feet away. Out of range.

He drew back the string an extra inch. The arrowhead moved backward, the same inch, toward his hand, clenched tight around the grip. The bow curved harder. It sang with tension.

It was the working flashlight.

All in one movement she dropped the arrow and found the switch and lit up the beam. It was like she remembered, from the first time, checking on the Honda’s heater hoses. A bright white beam of light, hard and focused. She aimed it right at the guy. At his face. At his big glass eye. She lit it up and pinned it down. He flinched away and his arrow fired wide and low and thrashed through the undergrowth and thumped in the ground. He ducked and squirmed and twisted. She chased him with the beam of light, like a physical weapon, jabbing, thrusting, aiming always for his face. He fell to the ground and rolled over and tore the machine off his head.

She switched off the flashlight and ran through the trees.