Webster nodded grimly.
"OK, where exactly in San Francisco?" he asked.
"I'm not sure," Reacher said.
"North end of Market," Holly said. "Right near Embarcadero Plaza. That's where, chief. I've been there on the Fourth. Big parade in the afternoon, fireworks over the water at night. Huge crowds all day long."
"Huge crowds everywhere on the Fourth," Webster said. "You better be guessing right, people."
McGrath looked up. A slow smile was spreading over his bruised face.
"We are guessing right," he said. "It's San Francisco for sure. Not Minneapolis or anyplace else."
Reacher smiled back and winked. McGrath had gotten it.
"You want to tell me why?" Webster asked him.
McGrath was still smiling.
"Go figure," he said. "You're the damn Director."
"Because it's the nearest?" Webster asked.
McGrath nodded.
"In both senses," he said, and smiled again.
"What both senses?" Webster asked. "What are we talking about?"
Nobody answered him. The military men were quiet. Holly and McGrath were staring out through the windows at the ground, two thousand feet below. Reacher was craning up, looking ahead through the pilot's Plexiglas canopy.
"Where are we?" he asked him.
The pilot pointed down at a concrete ribbon below.
"That's U.S. 93," he said. "Just about to leave Montana and enter Idaho. Still heading due south."
Reacher nodded.
"Great," he said. "Follow 93. It's the only road goes south, right? We'll catch him somewhere between here and Nevada."
HE STARTED WORRYING near the top of the second hour. Started worrying badly. Started desperate revisions to his grade school calculations. Maybe Stevie was driving faster than fifty. He was a fast driver. Faster than Bell had been. Maybe he was doing nearer sixty. Where did that put him? Three hundred and sixty miles out. In which case they wouldn't catch him until two hours fifteen minutes had elapsed. What if he was doing seventy? Could that Econoline sustain seventy, hour after hour, with a ton in back? Maybe. Probably. In which case he was four hundred and twenty miles out. A total of two hours forty minutes before they overhauled him. That was the envelope. Somewhere between one hour fifty minutes and two hours forty minutes, somewhere between Montana and Nevada. A whole fifty minutes of rising panic. More than a hundred miles of concrete ribbon to watch before he could know for sure he was wrong and they had to peel off hopelessly northeast toward Minnesota.
The helicopter was flying nose down, top speed, straight along U.S. 93. The seven passengers were craned forward, staring down at the road. They were over a town called Salmon. The pilot was calling out information like a tour guide. The giant peak of Mount McGuire, ten thousand feet, way off to the right. Twin Peaks, ten and a half thousand feet, up ahead to the right. Borah Peak, highest of all, twelve and a half thousand feet, way ahead to the left. The aircraft rose and fell a thousand feet above the terrain. Hurtled along lower than the surrounding peaks, nose down to the highway like a bloodhound.
Time ticked away. Twenty minutes. Thirty. The road was pretty much empty. It connected Missoula in the north to Twin Falls in Idaho, three hundred miles to the south. Neither was a booming metropolis and this was a holiday. Everybody had already gotten where they were going. There was an occasional automobile and an occasional trucker working overtime. No white Econoline. There had been two white vehicles, but they were both pickups. There had been one panel truck, but it was dark green. That was all. Nothing else. No white truck. Sometimes the road was empty all the way to the horizon in front of them. The time was ticking away. Like a bomb. Forty minutes. Fifty.
"I'm going to call Minneapolis," Webster said. "We blew it."
McGrath waited, hoping. He shook his head.
"Not yet," he said. "That's a desperation move. Mass panic. Can you imagine the crowds? The evacuation? People are going to get trampled."
Webster peered out and down. Stared at the road for a full minute. Fifty-four minutes into the fifty-minute envelope.
"Get worse than trampled if that damn truck's already up there," he said. "You want to imagine that?"
Time ticked away. Fifty-eight minutes. An hour. The road stayed empty.
"There's still time," Garber said. "San Francisco or Minneapolis, either one, he's still got to be a long way short."
He glanced at Reacher. Doubt and trust visible in his eyes, in approximately equal measures. More time ticked away. An hour and five minutes. The road still stayed empty, all the way to the distant horizon. The speeding helicopter reeled it in, only to reveal a new horizon, still empty.
"He could be anywhere," Webster said. "San Francisco's wrong, maybe Minneapolis is wrong, too. He could be in Seattle already. Or anywhere."
"Not Seattle," Reacher said.
He stared forward. Stared on and on. Fear and panic had him by the throat. He checked his watch again and again. An hour and ten minutes. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. An hour and fifteen minutes. He stared at the watch and the empty ribbon below. Then he sat back and went quiet. Chilled with terror. He had hung on as long as he could, but they had reached the point where the math went absurd. To be this far south without passing him, Stevie would need to be driving at a hundred miles an hour. Or a hundred and twenty. Or a hundred and fifty. He glanced at the others and spoke in a voice which didn't sound like his own.
"I blew it," he said. "It must have been Minneapolis."
Then the thump of the engines faded and for the second time that day the huge bass roar of the bomb came back. He kept his eyes wide open so he wouldn't have to see it, but he saw it anyway. Not Marines this time, not hard men camped out in the heat to do a job, but soft people, women and children, small and smaller, camped out in a city park to watch fireworks, vaporizing and bursting into a hazy pink dew like his friends had done thirteen years before. The bone fragments coming out of children and hissing away through the burning air and hitting other children a hundred yards farther on. Hitting them and tearing through their soft guts like shrapnel and putting the luckiest ones in the hospital for a whole agonizing year.
They were all staring at him. He realized tears were rolling down his cheeks and splashing onto his shirt.
"I'm sorry," he said.
They looked away.
"I got calls to make," Webster said. "Why is it Minneapolis now? Why was it ever San Francisco?"
"Federal Reserve branches," Reacher said quietly. "There are twelve of them. The nearest two to Montana are San Francisco and Minneapolis. Borken hated the Fed. He thought it was the main instrument of the world government. He thought it was a big conspiracy to eliminate the middle classes. It was his special theory. He said it put him ahead in his understanding. And he believed the Fed ordered his father's bank to finagle the old guy into taking a loan so they could deliberately default him later."
"So Borken's attacking the Fed?" Johnson asked urgently. Reacher nodded.
"Twin blows," he said. "In the war against the world government. Attack the old system with a surprise move, like Pearl Harbor. At the same time as setting up a brand-new system for converts to flock to. One bird with two stones."
He stopped talking. Too tired to continue. Too dispirited. Garber was staring at him. Real pain in his face. The beating of the engines was so loud it sounded like total silence.