Ли Чайлд - Past Tense

He put it in his pocket. He walked back to the Honda. He put the shard of tile aside. He laid the towels neatly one on top of the other, like a thick quilt. He shuffled it into position, flat on the gravel, under the Honda’s rear end. He did the same thing with the towels from five, seven, and eleven, under the Volvo, the Persian carpet van, and the pick-up truck respectively.

He went back to the Honda and laid down on his back. He squirmed into position. He stabbed the shard of tile into the bottom of the gas tank. Again and again. It was tougher than he expected. A flake of porcelain smashed off the tile. Shit, he thought. Please. I don’t want to look stupid . He knew what she was thinking.

But for once in his life he got lucky. The missing flake of porcelain sharpened the tip. It added a third dimension. It made it a needle. He changed his position and seated the base of the tile in his blunt potato farmer’s palm, and he stabbed it upward, as hard as he could.

He felt the tip go in.

He felt a stain of gasoline.

He widened the hole, and a minute later he had about five gallons soaked into the pad of towels. He did the same thing three more times, under the truck and the van and the Volvo. His head spun from the fumes. But he felt full of strength and energy. Full of doing, and fighting, and winning. He pulled out the dripping wads one by one and piled them on the boardwalk. All apart from one small towel, which he took with him. Soaked in gasoline. He slid it under the Honda’s battery. He poked it into crevices and draped it over bolts and brackets.

Then he backed away and straightened up and shook his hands to dry them. He got in the driver’s seat and put the key in the lock. He clicked it on. He clicked every switch he could find. Heated rear windshield, lights, wipers, radio. Whatever. He wanted maximum load.

He got out. He took the nail clipper from his pocket and unfolded the file. It was a thin blade maybe two inches long and a quarter inch wide, made of gritty metal, with a curl on the end, good for scraping.

He put one arm under the hood. He bent it at the elbow, and dipped down, and twisted his hand underneath, and he slid the tip of the file into the severed space between the two halves of the stiff black wire. Between the two copper pennies. He twisted the file. He completed the circuit. Metal to metal to metal. There was a furious fizzing cascade of sparks, and the gas-soaked towel went whoomp and burst into flames, and Shorty dropped the nail clipper and snatched his hand away, and then he ran back and forth to the boardwalk, grabbing more towels, lighting them on fire from the flames under the Honda’s hood, tossing them into rooms, into eleven, into ten, on the bed, on the floor, into seven, into five, the last few anywhere, on the boardwalk, on a plastic lawn chair, outside the office door.

They walked backward across the lot. Already flames were curling out of doors and windows. Fantastic shapes were boiling under the eaves, racing laterally, stopping, starting, like breathing, then joining together and lighting the roof on fire.

Shorty said, ‘They can’t afford to look at it. Not with night vision. It would fry their eyeballs. All we have to do is keep it directly behind us, and they won’t see us coming.’

In her head Patty thought out the geometry, and she nodded, and said, ‘That’s pretty smart, Shorty.’

They walked east through the meadow, past their suitcase, keeping themselves exactly in line, with the fire plumb behind them, and the mouth of the track dead ahead.

Reacher found a quad bike parked on the track. It loomed up in grey filtered moonlight. He was six feet in the trees. He dodged left and right to see the whole picture. The bike was stopped on a diagonal, facing mostly back towards the motel. The front wheels were turned in that direction. The handlebar was askew. As if it had driven down, and slowed, and turned a tight half circle. But not completely. Not a full 180.

No sign of a rider.

Hunting, said the back of his brain.

OK, said the front. But where? Up ahead, surely. The guy had driven down, and swung around, and parked. When he figured he was safely beyond the far edge of the action. Like a backstop position. He had thought about it carefully. Reacher had heard him, in the distance. The guy had sat astride his idling bike, most of a minute, presumably leaning forward on his handlebars, staring ahead, calculating. Then he had shut down and gotten off, and presumably he had walked back the way he had come, to get closer to the action, to squeeze the perimeter, to improve his angles. Which meant Reacher was currently behind him. Always a good place to be. He looked ahead through the trees. He dodged left and right for a better view.

No sign of the guy.

Reacher moved up in the trees. Hard going. Vines, brambles, leafy undergrowth shrubs. Not quiet, either. But he broke up his footsteps to a staccato rhythm. Not left, right, left, right. Not like a route march. Just random scrabbling. Like an animal. Maybe a fox, digging cover. In the dark. Maybe a bear cub. Hard to tell. He kept on going.

He saw the rider.

But only just.

The guy was standing in the middle of the track, almost invisible in the moonlight gloom. He was half turned away from something up ahead. He was an extraordinary figure. He was dressed in tight black clothes, like athletic gear. He had an archery bow slung across his back. He had a quiver of arrows. Strapped to his head was a one-lens night-vision device. Like a Cyclops eye. U.S. Army. Second generation. Reacher had used them.

A night hunt, said the back of his brain. Told you so.

OK, said the front.

There was a faint glow on the horizon. Slightly red, slightly orange.

Reacher moved up in the trees. A long step, a furtive rustle, and then another. The guy didn’t notice. He was moving his head, trying to see the distant glow in the corner of his eye, where it wouldn’t burn too bright, but he couldn’t do it. He kept flinching away. In the end he flipped the optical tube up and out of the way, and he took a look with the naked eye. He stepped back, and left, to get a better view.

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 night-time 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 axe, 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.