Tripwire (Jack Reacher 3)

Chapter 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 you should be let in. But he didn't remember Saint Peter asking him any questions. Maybe that came later. Maybe you had to go out again, and then try to get back in.

But who was Saint Vincent? Maybe he was the guy who ran the place you stayed while you were waiting for Saint Peter's questions. Like the boot camp part. Maybe old Vincent ran the Fort Dix equivalent. Well, that would be no problem. He'd murdered boot camp. Easiest time he'd ever done. He could do it again. But he was annoyed about it. He'd finished up a major, for God's sake. He'd been a star. He had medals. Why the hell should he do boot camp all over again?

And why was Jodie here? She was supposed to be alive. He realized his left hand was clenching. He was intensely irritated. He'd saved her life, because he loved her. So why was she dead now? What the hell was going on? He tried to struggle upright. Something was tying him down. What the hell? He was going to get some answers or he was going to knock some heads together.

"Take it easy," Jodie said to him.

"I want to see Saint Vincent," he said. "And I want to see him right now. Tell him to get his sorry ass in this room inside five minutes or I'm going to be seriously pissed off. "

She looked at him and nodded.

"OK," she said.

Then she looked away and stood up. She disappeared from his sight and he lay back down. This wasn't any kind of a boot camp. It was too quiet, and the pillows were soft.

LOOKING BACK, IT should have been a shock. But it wasn't. The room just swam into focus and he saw the decor and the shiny equipment and he thought hospital. He changed from being dead to being alive with the same little mental shrug a busy man gives when he realizes he's wrong about what day it is.

The room was bright with sun. He moved his head and saw he had a window. Jodie was sitting in a chair next to it, reading. He kept his breathing low and watched her. Her hair was washed and shiny. It fell past her shoulders, and she was twirling a strand between her finger and thumb. She was wearing a yellow sleeveless dress. Her shoulders were brown with summer. He could see the little knobs of bone on top. Her arms were long and lean. Her legs were crossed. She was wearing tan penny loafers that matched the dress. Her ankles glowed brown in the sun.

"Hey, Jodie," he said.

She turned her head and looked at him. Searched his face for something and when she found it she smiled.

"Hey yourself," she said. She dropped the book and stood up. Walked three paces and bent and kissed him gently on the lips.

"St. Vincent's," he said. "You told me, but I was confused. "

She nodded.

"You were full of morphine," she said. "They were pumping it in like crazy. Your bloodstream would have kept all the addicts in New York happy. "

He nodded. Glanced at the sun in the window. It looked like afternoon.

"What day is it?"

"It's July. You've been out three weeks. "

"Christ, I ought to feel hungry. "

She moved around the foot of the bed and came up on his left. Laid her hand on his forearm. It was turned palm-up and there were tubes running into the veins of his elbow.

"They've been feeding you," she said. "I made sure you got what you like. You know, lots of glucose and saline. "

He nodded.

"Can't beat saline," he said.

She went quiet.

"What?" he asked.

"Do you remember?"

He nodded again.

"Everything," he said.

She swallowed.

"I don't know what to say," she whispered. "You took a bullet for me. "

"My fault," he said. "I was too slow, is all. I was supposed to trick him and get him first. But apparently I survived it. So don't say anything. I mean it. Don't ever mention it. "

"But I have to say thank you," she whispered.

"Maybe I should say thank you," he said. "Feels good to know somebody worth taking a bullet for. "

She nodded, but not because she was agreeing. It was just random physical motion designed to keep her from crying.

"So how am I?" he asked.

She paused for a long moment.

"I'll get the doctor," she said quietly. "He can tell you better than me. "

She went out and a guy in a white coat c

ame in. Reacher smiled. It was the guy the Army had sent to finish him off at the end of his parade. He was a small, wide, hairy man who could have found work wrestling.

"You know anything about computers?" he asked.

Reacher shrugged and started worrying this was a coded lead-in to bad news about a brain injury, impairment, loss of memory, loss of function.

"Computers?" he said. "Not really. "

"OK, try this," the doctor said. "Imagine a big Cray supercomputer humming away. We feed it everything we know about human physiology and everything we know about gunshot wounds and then we ask it to design us a male person best equipped to survive a thirty-eight in the chest. Suppose it hums away for a week. What does it come up with?"

Reacher shrugged again. "I don't know. "

"A picture of you, my friend," the doctor said. "That's what. The damn bullet didn't even make it into your chest. Your pectoral muscle is so thick and so dense it stopped it dead. Like a three-inch kevlar vest. It popped out the other side of the muscle wall and smashed a rib, but it went no farther. "

"So why was I out three weeks?" Reacher asked immediately. "Not for a muscle wound or a broken rib, that's for damn sure. Is my head OK?"

The doctor did a weird thing. He clapped his hands and punched the air. Then he stepped closer, beaming all over his face.

"I was worried about it," he said. "Real worried about it. Bad wound. I would have figured it for a nail gun, until they told me it was shotgun debris from manufactured furniture. It penetrated your skull and was about an eighth inch into your brain. Frontal lobe, my friend, bad place to have a nail. If I had to have a nail in my skull, the frontal lobe would definitely not be my first choice. But if I had to see a nail in anybody else's frontal lobe I'd pick yours, I guess, because you've got a skull thicker than Neanderthal man's. Anybody normal, that nail would have been all the way in, and that would have been thank you and good night. "

"So am I OK?" Reacher asked again.

"You just saved us ten thousand dollars in tests," the doctor said happily. "I told you the news about the chest, and what did you do? Analytically? You compared it with your own internal database, realized it wasn't a very serious wound, realized it couldn't have needed three weeks of coma, remembered your other injury, put two and two together and asked the question you asked. Immediately. No hesitation. Fast, logical thinking, assembly of pertinent information, rapid conclusion, lucid questioning of the source of a possible answer. Nothing wrong with your head, my friend. Take that as a professional opinion. "

Reacher nodded slowly. "So when can I get out of here?"

The doctor took the medical chart off the foot of the bed. There was a mass of paper clipped to a metal board. He riffed it through. "Well, your health is excellent in general, but we better watch you a while. Couple more days, maybe. "

"Nuts to that," Reacher said. "I'm leaving tonight. "

The doctor nodded. "Well, see how you feel in an hour. "

He stepped close and stretched up to a valve on the bottom of one of the IV bags. Clicked it a notch and tapped a tube with his finger. Watched carefully and nodded and walked back out of the room. He passed Jodie in the doorway. She was walking in with a guy in a seersucker jacket. He was about fifty, pale, short gray hair. Reacher watched him and thought a buck gets ten this is the Pentagon guy.

"Reacher, this is General Mead," Jodie said.

"Department of the Army," Reacher said.

The guy in the jacket looked at him, surprised. "Have we met?"

Reacher shook his head. "No, but I knew one of you would be sniffing around, soon as I was up and running. "