Not a Drill: A Jack Reacher Short Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

location ahead and left, so take care. Two defensive positions ahead and right, so plan to use the first, with the second to fall back on if necessary
. A hundred generations, and by definition all of them survived.
    They walked on, through cool air, like cellar air, still and damp and undisturbed. The trail itself was soft and springy, a dark, leaf-rich loam. Like carpet.
    No hikers up ahead.
    Not in the first five minutes, or the first ten. Which made each new minute more and more likely. Two couples on exactly opposite vectors, one moving fast, one moving slow, fifteen minutes already gone. The window in which the encounter would have to take place was getting smaller and smaller. If it was going to happen, it was going tohappen soon.
    It didn’t.
    Not in the next five minutes, or the next ten. Which was getting arithmetically difficult. It was hard to imagine Henry and Suzanne could be slow enough to make the big numbers work. Unless they had chickened out and turned around, straight back to Naismith. Second thoughts, maybe, and an honorable retreat. They might have stepped out behind Sergeant Cain at the exact same moment Reacher and Helen had paddled away from the kayak dock.
    No way of knowing.
    No hikers up ahead.
    Helen said, “Reacher, you blew it.”
    He said, “Start with the polysyllabic examples. I’m always interested.”
    She said, “Maybe something already happened to them.”
    “But what? There are no search parties coming north out of Naismith. No other hikers. The missing equipment is not jumping up and biting them in the ass. Not actually. You can say so later, figuratively, but so far nothing much can have happened to them.”
    “Then where are they?”
    “They must be static. Maybe they pitched their tent already. Maybe they found the perfect spot.”
    “I think they hustled and we missed them. I think we came in behind them. You blew the call.”
    “Life’s a gamble,” Reacher said again.

    They moved on, speeding up a little, ignoring the sylvan glades to their left and right, every one of them a separate curiosity, like a room in a museum. There was a new breeze high above them, and the canopy was rustling, and tree limbs were clicking and groaning. Small furtive animals made darting sounds in the underbrush. Insects hung in tight clouds, to be avoided if possible, or batted through if not.
    Then the trail jinked right and left around a huge mossy bole four feet wide, andup ahead in the gloom they saw two bright objects stacked side by side on the forest floor. Red and orange and yellow, nylon, straps and buckles.
    Backpacks.
    “Theirs,” Helen said.
    Reacher nodded at her side. He had seen the backpacks before, most recently at the wilderness arch that morning, hoisted into place and ready to go. They walked on and stopped next to the luggage. It was not abandoned. Both packs were set upright, leaning one on the other. They had been carefully placed.
    “They stepped off the trail,” Reacher said. “A little side excursion. No point hauling bags through the brush.”
    “When?” Helen said.
    “Recently, I hope. Which would mean they’re close by.”
    Behind the click and the hum of the living woods there was nothing but silence all around. No gasps, no calls, no feet ripping through the tangled undergrowth.
    Nothing.
    Helen said, “Should we shout?”
    Reacher said, “Not too loud.”
    “Henry? Suzanne?” She said their names like a fierce stage whisper, louder than talking, but far from yelling, with an anxious questioning cadence rising on the ends.
    No response.
    “Suzanne? Henry?”
    No response.
    She said, “They can’t be far away, surely.”
    Reacher studied the brush to the left and the right. Logic said if they had stepped off the trail, they would have done so near their bags. No sense in stacking the packs and then choosing an exit point a hundred yards away. So Reacher knew where to start looking. But he was no kind of an expert tracker. Not out in the wilds. Not