Gunfire behind them. The rebels were still coming.
Kinsman stopped at a small clearing, checking his GPS. "Extraction point is two hundred meters ahead!"
Reacher heard the helicopters before he saw them. The distinctive whop-whop-whop of rotor blades cutting through the humid air.
Kinsman was grinning, his face streaked with mud and blood. "Hell yeah!"
The rebels heard the helicopters too. They increased their rate of fire, desperate to kill the Americans before they could escape. Rounds tore through the jungle, shredding leaves and bark. One caught Kinsman in the thigh, punching through the meat of his leg. He grunted but didn't go down, didn't even slow down.
They broke into the clearing just as the first Blackhawk came in low and fast. The door gunner was already firing, his M240 laying down a wall of lead that forced the rebels back into the jungle. The helicopter flared, its skids touching down for just a moment.
"GO! GO! GO!" The crew chief was waving them forward, screaming to be heard over the rotor wash.
Kinsman grabbed Reacher and started dragging him toward the helicopter. Reacher tried to help, tried to move his legs, but they weren't cooperating anymore. He was dead weight. Two hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight.
Kinsman didn't care. He pulled, dragged, hauled Reacher across the clearing. The CO's face was purple with effort, veins standing out on his neck and forehead. His wounded leg left a trail of blood in the grass, but he didn't stop.
A rebel broke from the tree line, his AK firing on full auto. The door gunner cut him down, but two more took his place. Then four more. Then six.
"COME ON!" The crew chief was leaning out of the helicopter, reaching for them.
Kinsman got Reacher to the skid. With a grunt of effort that Reacher could hear even over the helicopter and the gunfire, the CO grabbed him by the vest and belt and literally threw him into the helicopter. Reacher landed hard on the deck, his head bouncing off the metal floor. Stars exploded across his vision.
Kinsman hauled himself in after, collapsing next to Reacher.
The Blackhawk lifted off, the pilot pulling pitch and banking hard to the left. Rounds pinged off the fuselage, but they were up and they were moving.
Reacher tried to sit up, tried to see out the door. "Mave–"
Kinsman grabbed him, held him down. "Second bird is going in for her!"
Reacher watched through the open door as the clearing fell away below them. He could see the second Blackhawk coming in, could see the rebels swarming toward it. Could see?—
Then they were over the jungle canopy and the clearing was gone, lost in the sea of green below.
Reacher's vision was going dark at the edges again. The crew chief was working on him, cutting away his vest, packing his wounds with gauze. The man's lips were moving but Reacher couldn't hear what he was saying. The ringing in his ears had become a roar, drowning out everything else.
He looked at Kinsman. The CO was sitting with his back against the bulkhead, his hand pressed against the wound in his thigh. Blood seeped between his fingers. But he was smiling.
"Bastards," Kinsman said. “Ruined my pants.”
Reacher wanted to respond, wanted to say something about Mave, about the ambush, about how Kinsman had just saved his life. But the darkness was closing in now, narrowing his vision to a pinpoint. The last thing he saw before he passed out was Kinsman's face, still smiling, still in command.
Then nothing.
2
TWO YEARS LATER, 1990
The fluorescent lights in the Treasury Department's fifth floor hummed with the same monotonous frequency they always did.
It was as if Treasury had its own soundtrack, and it wasn’t a very good one.
Joe Reacher sat at his desk and reviewed a spreadsheet of wire transfers between a shell company in Panama and three different accounts in Miami.
Numbers. Columns. Dates. Amounts.
Reacher circled a transaction dated March 15th—$47,000, an odd amount, not round enough to be a standard payment but not random enough to be legitimate—and cross-referenced it with his notes.
