'Cranky but stable. No urgency, within reason.'
'They can hear what you say, you know. It's me they can't hear.'
'Notice they're not denying it.'
'Is the high-ranking Brit a civilian?'
'Affirmative, plus a civilian aide.'
'Irwin gatehouses report no civilian arrivals in the past six hours.'
'Then they're stuck in a snow bank somewhere between here and there.'
Reacher gave the pilot a wait-one gesture, and he plugged in headsets for Ness and Jackson and himself, so they could confer with the crew over the scream of the engines
'I hope they turned the motor off. You can gas yourself.'
'Then you freeze. We better go find them.'
'Which is why I asked about the needs of the evacs. We can't follow the roads because we can't see the roads. A visual search could take some time.'
'They'll survive,' Reacher said. 'But sooner or later you're going to have to feed them. You should call ahead. Food and warmth seem to be the issues.'
The engines screamed louder and the Black Hawk lifted.
Through the portholes the light was bright again, and the snow billowed like a huge flat doughnut, perfectly symmetrical all around, until they were a thousand feet up, when the small local disturbance far below settled back to earth, like sparkling mist, an insignificant smudge on a vast white sheet.
We can't see the roads, the pilot had said, and he was right. Whatever vertical distance there was between the crown of the blacktop in the middle and the bottom of the ditches either side was less than the depth of the snow.
But will they be in time to stop the deadly hitman – known as the Christmas Scorpion – from striking?
The view was literally featureless. Icy white everywhere, perfectly smooth, perfectly flat, uninterrupted.
The pilot asked: 'What kind of vehicle were they in?'
Jackson said: 'A Chevrolet staff car. An Impala. A saloon.'
'Sedan,' Ness said. 'Not very tall.'
Reacher checked the sun in the sky. A winter afternoon. Christmas Eve. About as low as the sun ever got, in southern California.
He said: 'Go up a bit. Five thousand feet, maybe.'
From the new altitude they could see faint hints of shadows thrown out by the low sun, where the crust of the snow rose or fell half an inch.
Over what? Some shadows were isolated and meaningless, just rocks, but others made patterns.
Some made straight lines, or gentle curves, which with a little imagination could be linked to other faint ghostly hints of more lines and curves, miles farther on, all heading roughly north of east, which was where Fort Irwin was.
Reacher said: 'I think that's the road.'
They followed it, five thousand feet up, thumping and clattering, with terse words and static in their headsets, sometimes guessing for miles at a time, sometimes needing to zigzag back and forth before picking up the next faint hints of the right direction.
Difficult, but also encouraging, in a way, because in comparison they felt a snowed-in Chevy was going to look like a lump the size of a football stadium.
An Impala was about five feet tall, Reacher thought, which even if buried completely would leave a broad oval hump about two feet high, which in the low sun would look like the Himalayas.
He asked: 'How is the Christmas Scorpion supposed to be getting around?'
'We don't know,' Ness said. 'The file says he gets in and out of places like a ghost. No one has ever seen him.
But we have to assume he's human. So he could be stuck in a snowdrift somewhere, same as everyone else.'
'We might see him,' Reacher said. 'Today could be two for the price of one. Then my guy would get two medals. Or three, I guess, if your boss gave him one too, because of how the minister of defence is an important person, relatively speaking.'
'My boss?'
'The Queen. You could ask her.'
'I could ask for a date with George Clooney, too.'
The Black Hawk clattered onward, north and east, sometimes tilting or dropping down for a better look.
There were snow-covered table rocks that could have been buried cars, but none of them was. There was no sign of life.
Find out in the second, and final, instalment of our gripping Christmas short story by bestselling author Lee Child…
Inside the noisy cabin the older couple sat mute, hands on their knees, looking uncertain, and maybe a little airsick from all the tilting and swooping. Reacher looked a question at them, as if to say, are you OK? The man shrugged, and the woman responded by winding her scarf tighter around her neck.
The pilot said: 'Maybe they turned back. Maybe we're looking in the wrong direction. What would a smart driver do, under the circumstances?
He just passed the spot where we picked you up, and he's got a long distance and uncertain conditions ahead, so when the snow sets in bad, what does he do? He turns back towards what he already knows, surely.
Toward the shelter he's seen. Or maybe he heads for Barstow. In fact getting to Barstow would be a big win, with a high-value passenger on board. I think they're behind us.'
'Unless they passed the point of no return,' Jackson said.
'Decision time, guys. If you're wrong, we're getting further away from them a mile every minute.'
No reply.
'Keep going,' Reacher said. 'Doesn't matter how much common sense the driver had. The passenger outranked him.
The passenger is a male politician. Therefore he can't be seen to chicken out of any challenge, ever. Turning around today would come back to haunt him eventually. It would become a metaphor. He can't be the guy who didn't get there.'
The Black Hawk clattered on. The old couple sat still. They looked puzzled, like people trying to reconstruct a conversation from one side of a cell phone call.
Reacher patted the air, as if pushing the matter aside. As if he was saying, don't worry about it. The man shrugged, and the woman wound her scarf tighter around her neck.
The pilot said: 'What's that?'
Up ahead was a broad oval hump in a flat field of snow.
The hump was maybe two feet high.
Like the Himalayas.
'Go take a look,' Reacher said.
The pilot got down to where his rotor wash was blasting snow in every direction, including clean off what looked like a smooth black-painted panel, nicely contoured, no doubt newly washed and waxed for the occasion.
The roof of a government-owned Chevy Impala. No doubt about it.
The pilot put his wheels through the crust of the snow, above where he guessed the road was, and Reacher scrambled out, followed by Ness, and Jackson, and they floundered thigh-high and waist-high, like swimming standing up, to the car, where they dug with their hands, flinging snow aside, searching for a window, for a door, for a handle, digging some more, cracking the door, letting the rotor wash blast inside, like supercharged oxygen, then digging a V, and opening the door all the way, and crawling in.
They were alive. Blue with cold, and panting for air. Ness went in to check on them. She was also a medic, as well as everything else.
The driver was a specialist from Irwin, young and fit, happy to wait. The aide was older and colder but it was his job to wait. So Ness hauled the minister out first.
He had grey hair and grey skin, not helped by the cold. He was about 60 years old, and he was dressed in a grey suit.
He was low on air and couldn't walk. Reacher was the biggest guy there, twice Ness's weight, a head taller than Jackson, so he scooped up the minister and carried him firefighter-style through the swirl and the blast to the hovering helicopter, where he twisted and went up on tiptoe and rolled the guy as gently as possible onto the cabin floor.
The old couple stared from their canvas seats.