Lee Child - Jack Reacher 11 Bad Luck and Trouble

Bad Luck And Trouble

The man was called Calvin Franz and the helicopterwas a Bell 222. Franz had two broken legs, so he had tobe loaded on board strapped to a stretcher. Not adifficult maneuver. The Bell was a roomy aircraft,twinengined, designed for corporate travel and policedepartments, with space for seven passengers. The reardoors were as big as a panel vans and they openedwide. The middle row of seats had been removed. Therewas plenty of room for Franz on the floor.

The helicopter was idling. Two men were carrying thestretcher. They ducked low under the rotor wash andhurried, one backward, one forward.

When they reached the open door the guy who hadbeen walking backward got one handle up on the silland ducked away. The other guy stepped forward andshoved hard and slid the stretcher all the way inside.

Franz was awake and hurting. He cried out and jerkedaround a little, but not much, because the straps acrosshis chest and thighs were buckled tight. The two menclimbed in after him and got in their seats behind themissing row and slammed the doors.

Then they waited.

The pilot waited.

A third man came out a gray door and walked acrossthe concrete. He bent low under the rotor and held ahand flat on his chest to stop his necktie whipping inthe wind. The gesture made him look like a guilty manproclaiming his innocence. He tracked around the Bellslong nose and got in the forward seat, next to the pilot.

Go, he said, and then he bent his head toconcentrate on his harness buckle.

The pilot goosed the turbines and the lazy whop-whopof the idling blade slid up the scale to an urgentcentripetal whip-whip-whip and then disappearedbehind the treble blast of the exhaust. The Bell liftedstraight off the ground, drifted left a little, rotatedslightly, and then retracted its wheels and climbed athousand feet. Then it dipped its nose and hammerednorth, high and fast. Below it, roads and science parksand small factories and neat isolated suburbancommunities slid past. Brick walls and metal sidingblazed red in the late sun. Tiny emerald lawns andturquoise swimming pools winked in the last of thelight.

The man in the forward seat said, You know wherewere going?

The pilot nodded and said nothing.

The Bell clattered onward, turning east of north,climbing a little higher, heading for darkness. It crosseda highway far below, a river of white lights crawling westand red lights crawling east. A minute north of thehighway the last developed acres gave way to low hills,barren and scrubby and uninhabited. They glowedorange on the slopes that faced the setting sun andshowed dull tan in the valleys and the shadows. Thenthe low hills gave way in turn to small roundedmountains. The Bell sped on, rising and falling,following the contours below. The man in the forwardseat twisted around and looked down at Franz on thefloor behind him.

Smiled briefly and said, Twenty more minutes, maybe.

Franz didnt reply. He was in too much pain.

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The Bell was rated for a 161-mph cruise, so twentymore minutes took it almost fifty-four miles, beyond themountains, well out over the empty desert. The pilotflared the nose and slowed a little. The man in theforward seat pressed his forehead against the windowand stared down into the darkness.

Where are we? he asked.

The pilot said, Where we were before.

Exactly?

Roughly.

Whats below us now?

Sand.

Height?

Three thousand feet.

Whats the air like up here?

Still. A few thermals, but no wind.

Safe?

Aeronautically.

So lets do it.

The pilot slowed more and turned and came to astationary hover, three thousand feet above the desertfloor. The man in the forward seat twisted around againand signaled to the two guys way in back. Bothunlocked their safety harnesses. One crouched forward,avoiding Franzs feet, and held his loose harness tightin one hand and unlatched the door with the other. Thepilot was half-turned in his own seat, watching, and hetilted the Bell a little so the door fell all the way openunder its own weight.

Then he brought the craft level again and put it into aslow clockwise rotation so that motion and air pressureheld the door wide. The second guy from the rearcrouched near Franzs head and jacked the stretcherupward to a forty-five degree slope. The first guyjammed his shoe against the free end of the stretcherrail to stop the whole thing sliding across the floor. Thesecond guy jerked like a weightlifter and brought thestretcher almost vertical. Franz sagged down againstthe straps. He was a big guy, and heavy. Anddetermined. His legs were useless but his upper bodywas powerful and straining hard. His head wassnapping from side to side.

The first guy took out a gravity knife and popped theblade. Used it to saw through the strap around Franzsthighs. Then he paused a beat and sliced the straparound Franzs chest. One quick motion. At the exactsame time the second guy jerked the stretcher fullyupright. Franz took an involuntary step forward. Ontohis broken right leg. He screamed once, briefly, and thentook a second instinctive step. Onto his broken left leg.

His arms flailed and he collapsed forward and hisupper-body momentum levered him over the lockedpivot of his immobile hips and took him straight outthrough the open door, into the noisy darkness, into thegaleforce rotor wash, into the night.

Three thousand feet above the desert floor.

For a moment there was silence. Even the enginenoise seemed to fade.

Then the pilot reversed the Bells rotation and rockedthe other way and the door slammed neatly shut. Theturbines spun up again and the rotor bit the air and thenose dropped.

The two guys clambered back to their seats.

The man in front said, Lets go home now.

Seventeen days later Jack Reacher was in Portland,Oregon, short of money. In Portland, because he had tobe somewhere and the bus he had ridden two dayspreviously had stopped there. Short of money, becausehe had met an assistant district attorney calledSamantha in a cop bar, and had twice bought her dinnerbefore twice spending the night at her place.

Now she had gone to work and he was walking awayfrom her house, nine oclock in the morning, headingback to the downtown bus depot, hair still wet from hershower, sated, relaxed, destination as yet unclear, with avery thin wad of bills in his pocket.

The terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, hadchanged Reachers life in two practical ways. Firstly, inaddition to his folding toothbrush he now carried hispassport with him. Too many things in the new erarequired photo ID, including most forms of travel.

Reacher was a drifter, not a hermit, restless, notdysfunctional, and so he had yielded gracefully.