throat. He guessed the nearest word in English would be air, said long and breathy.
The guy crept closer.
And closer.
He came around Reacher’s tree, leading with his far shoulder, his belly exposed, looking through a tube, which in many ways was a technical marvel, with only one significant negative, which was a lack of extreme peripheral vision. Which meant the guy came half a step too far around the tree. Before he saw. Before he froze. Reacher stabbed him with the arrow, a vicious uppercut high in the stomach, hard enough to bury the arrow up to Reacher’s fist, hard enough to lift the guy up off his feet. Reacher let go of the arrow and whipped his hand back. The guy collapsed on his knees. The arrow was sticking out of his gut. Sloping down. Maybe six inches of shaft, and then the feathers.
The guy pitched forward on his face. He landed square on the feathers. The arrowhead punched out his back. It looked wet and slimy. Not red. Green, of course.
* * *
—
Steven had lost one of the flashlights. The GPS had blinked off and never returned. An impact, possibly. Currently the surviving flashlight was sixty feet in the forest, sixty yards from the track. It had not moved for many minutes. He didn’t know why.
But his bigger worry was the heart rate monitors. Now four had flatlined. Now four of their customers were technically dead. Which was obviously insane. It was an equipment fault. Had to be. But better safe than sorry. Maybe someone should go take a look. The GPS showed Peter and Robert widely separated, on the flanks, at the edge of the forest. Still in neutral mode, not interfering, there for advice and reassurance alone, only if called upon, nothing more. Mark was moving, in a wide loop back toward the buildings. Not fast. He was either walking or riding slow on his bike. Too slow. They all needed to get moving. He needed to tell them. But he couldn’t. The radio hub had burned up. Their earpieces were useless. They were hearing nothing. Therefore doing nothing. Watching the fire, maybe.
Then the surviving flashlight started to move.
Chapter 39
Shorty’s pants leg was soaked with blood. Patty couldn’t tear the fabric. Too wet, too heavy, too slippery. She ran back and got an arrow. She used the edge of its head to widen the slit the first arrow had made. The new arrow was sharp. It was as good as a kitchen knife. She opened a length about six inches either side of the wound. She peeled back the sticky fabric. She took a look. The wound was vertical. The arrow had come in with one tang up and one tang down, and it had hit above his knee, about a third of the way up his thigh. Dead on central. It had speared through muscle and hit bone. She wasn’t a doctor but she knew the words. Through the quadriceps to the femur. Ninety degrees from the femoral artery. Not even close. He wasn’t going to bleed to death. They had been lucky.
Except she was pretty sure the impact of the arrow had broken the bone.
She felt around. There was a ledge-shaped lump on the back of his leg. Like a displaced fracture. His hamstrings were pushed out of place. He was gasping and groaning, muted, teeth clamped, and moaning, partly with pain, partly with fury. He was pale green, in the night vision. In shock, but not all the way. His heartbeat was fast, but steady.
She studied the arrow she had used to cut the cloth. The head was a simple triangle. Two wicked edges came together at the point. The body thickened gracefully in the middle, to seat the shaft. To add weight and momentum. The edges were like razors. They would slice through anything. But there were no barbs. The edges would slice right back out again just as easily. Not even slice. No further damage. The pathway was already cut.
Except Shorty’s muscle had spasmed and clamped down hard. It was gripping the arrow like a vise.
She said, “Shorty, I need you to relax your leg.”
He said, “I can’t feel my leg.”
“I think it’s broken.”
“That can’t be good.”
“I need to get you to the hospital. But first I need to pull the arrow out. Right now you’re gripping it. You need to let it go.”
“I got no control. All I know is it hurts like hell.”
She said, “I think we really