Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(98)

Reacher stepped forward, and right.

Something was on fire, way far in the distance.

The guy was about eight feet away. To the right, and a little ahead. He was a well built individual. With the night vision up he was as handsome as a movie actor.

A nighttime bowhunter.

Of what?

There’s always a victim, said the back of his brain.

Reacher moved.

The guy heard. He took the bow off his back in one fluid motion. A split second later he had an arrow in his hand. He nocked the arrow and half drew the string, and held the weapon half ready, pointing low. He looked all around. His night vision was still in the up position. Disengaged. The arrowhead was wide and flat. It shone faintly in the moonlight. It was a decent chunk of steel. It would do some damage. Like getting hit with an ax, but harder.

Then the guy raised the bow high, both hands, as if he was about to ford a river. He used his forearm to knock his optical tube back into place. Now he had vision again. He peered around, grotesquely, mostly ahead, one huge glass eye the size of a coffee can, his head moving slowly.

Reacher stepped back, and left. He lined up the trees. He wanted a sliver of view, but a narrow one. The narrower the better.

The guy kept peering around. He covered what was ahead of him. Then he turned, to see what was to the side of him. Then he turned some more, to see what was behind him.

He looked straight at Reacher. The blank glass lens fixed right on him. The guy raised the bow and drew the string. Reacher swayed right. The arrow fired and buried itself in the tree in front of him with a ringing thunk that sang through the hardwood from bole to crown.

Like an ax, but harder.

The guy reloaded with fast practiced movements, all right-handed, taking an arrow from the quiver, fitting it to the bow, at the head, at the feathers, then drawing back the string. Ready. Not much slower than working a bolt action rifle. Same kind of ballpark.

Reacher called out, “Are you aware that you’re shooting at a human target?”

The guy fired again. There was a thump of energy in the air as the bowstring released, and the shish of the arrow in flight, and then the same slamming thunk as it hit a tree.

Reacher thought, I guess I’ll take that as a yes.

Told you so, said the back of his brain.

The front of his brain noted that in all his long and varied life, which included military service in many different parts of the world, he had never before been attacked with a bow and arrow. It was a brand new experience. But no fun so far. The night vision was the problem. He was at a huge disadvantage. He knew second generation gear pretty well. He had used various AN/PVS models. Army Navy Portable Visual Search. Like most second generation military gear they were logical developments of the first generation. Images were much sharper around the edge of the lens. Light amplification was boosted from a thousand to twenty thousand times. They gave a highly detailed fine-grained picture, monochrome, slightly gray, mostly green, a little cool, a little wispy. A little fluid and ghostly. Not quite reality. In some ways better.

A huge tactical advantage. Twenty thousand times was a big differential. He had zero times. He had almost pitch dark. It took a strenuous wide-eyed stare even to tell the difference between a tree and not a tree. There were occasional glimmers of dappled moonlight, some of them real, most of them wishful thinking. Far to the left was the orange glow in the sky. Getting brighter. He could see the gleam of the next arrowhead. It was ready to go. It was tracking left, tracking right, trying to find a line through the trees. The guy was stepping in, stepping back, going left, going right. Trying to find his shot. A three dimensional problem. Then a four dimensional problem, when Reacher started moving too, randomly, left, left, right, not much, really just swaying, but enough to need a new ballistic calculation every single time.

Reacher called out, “You need to come closer.”

The guy didn’t move.

Reacher said, “Come in the trees with me.”

The guy didn’t answer.

“You would if I was a deer,” Reacher said.

The guy locked on. The glassy end of the coffee can pointed straight at Reacher. Who saw only a sliver of the right-hand edge of the lens. A chord, in geometric language. A chopped-off edge of a circle. Which in turn meant the guy saw only Reacher’s right eye, and then a wide tree, and then maybe part of his left shoulder. Not a great target. Reacher knew people who could have hit it with anything from a lawn dart to a nuclear missile, but clearly the guy with the bow wasn’t one of them. Because Reacher was still alive to have the thought.

“Come in the trees with me,” he said again.

The guy didn’t answer. No doubt he was thinking things through. Reacher sure was. A small crowded space, with limited room for maneuver, especially with a bow. Tactically awkward, especially in terms of range. Anything more than arm’s length, there was a tree in the way. But anything less than arm’s length was game over. The bow could be grabbed, the night vision could be knocked off, and lethal weapons could be seized from the quiver. Like knives on sticks. The guy had about twenty of them.

He wouldn’t come in the trees.

Reacher moved to his left. The arrowhead tracked him. Still no clear shot. Nor would there be for three more steps. After which there was moonlight, because the canopy was thin up ahead. The canopy was thin up ahead because a tree was missing. Which left a hole. Much smaller than where they turned the Mercedes. Maybe half as wide, and half as deep. But a hole all the same. Directly in Reacher’s path. A room-sized space, with no trees in the way. Mathematically impossible not to find a shot. The available options would look like a route map in the back of an airline magazine.