Without Fail (48 page)

"They won't come here," Reacher said. "This is the most exposed place I've ever seen."

Neagley shook her head. "They won't know that until they've seen it for themselves. They might be in and out in ten minutes, but ten minutes is all we need."

"Where are we going to stay?"

She pointed. "Over there."

It was a plain-fronted red cedar building with numerous small windows and a sign that read: Clean Rooms.

"Terrific," Reacher said.

"Drive around," Neagley said. "Let's get a feel for the place." A letter K has only four options for exploration, and they had already covered the northern leg on the way in. Reacher backed up to the bridge and struck out north and east, following the river. That road led past eight houses, four on each side, and then narrowed after another half-mile to a poor stony track. There was a barbed-wire fence lost in the grass on the left, and another on the right.

"Ranch land," Neagley said.

The ranches themselves were clearly miles away. Fragments of the road were visible as it rose and fell over gentle contours into the distance. Reacher turned the truck round and headed back and turned down the short south-east leg. It had more houses and they were closer together, but it was otherwise similar. It narrowed after the same distance and ran on towards nothing visible. There was more barbed wire and an inexplicable wooden shed with no door. Inside the shed was a rusting pick-up truck with pate weedy grass growing up all round it. It looked like it had been parked there back when Richard Nixon was vice president.

"OK, go south," Neagley said. "Let's see the church."

The south leg led seventy miles to Douglas, and they drove the first three miles of it. The town's power and telephone lines came in from that direction, strung on tarred poles, looping on into the distance, following the road. The road passed the church and the graveyard, then the cluster of cedar buildings, then a couple of abandoned cattle barns, then maybe twenty or thirty small houses, and then the town finished and there was just infinite grassland ahead. But it wasn't flaL There were crevices and crevasses worn smooth by ten thousand years of winds and weather. They undulated calmly, up and down to maximum depths of ten or twelve feet, like slow ocean swells. They were all connected in a network. The grass itself was a yard high, brown and dead and brittle. It swayed in waves under the perpetual breeze.

"You could hide an infantry company in there," Neagley said. Reacher turned the car and headed back towards the church. Pulled over and parked level with the graveyard. The church itself was very similar to the one outside Bismarck. It had the same steep roof over the nave and the same blocky square tower. It had a clock on the tower and a weathervane and a flag, and a lightning rod. It was white, but not as bright. Reacher glanced west to the horizon and saw grey clouds massing over the distant mountains.

"It's going to snow," he said.

"We can't see anything from here," Neagley said.

She was right. The church was built right in the river valley bottom. Its foundation was probably the lowest structure in town. The road to the north was visible for maybe a hundred yards. Same in the south. It ran in both directions and rose over gentle humps and disappeared from sight.

"They could be right on top of us before we know it," Neagley said. "We need to be able to see them coming."

Reacher nodded. Opened his door and,climbed out of the car. Neagley joined him and they walked towards the church. The air was cold and dry. The graveyard lawn was dead under their feet. It felt like the beginning of winter. There was a new grave site marked out with cotton tape. It lay to the west of the church, in virgin grass on the end of a row of weathered headstones. Reacher detoured to take a look. There were four Froelich graves in a line. Soon to be a fifth, on some sad day in the near future. He looked at the rectangle of tape and imagined the hole dug deep and crisp and square.

Then he stepped away and looked around. There was flat empty land opposite the church on the east side of the road. It was a big enough space to land a helicopter. He stood and imagined it coming in, rotors thumping, turning in the air to face the passenger door towards the church, setting down. He imagined Armstrong climbing out. Crossing the road. Approaching the church. The vicar would probably greet him near the door. He stepped sideways and stood where Armstrong might stand and raised his eyes. Scanned the land to the south and west. Bad news. There was some elevation there, and about a hundred and fifty yards out there were waves and shadows in the moving grass that must mean dips and crevices in the earth beneath it. There were more beyond that distance, all the way out to infinity.

"How good do you think they are?" he asked.

Neagley shrugged, "They're always either better or worse than you expect. They've shown some proficiency so far. Shooting downhill, thin air, through grass, I'd be worried out to about five hundred yards."

"And if they miss Armstrong they'll hit somebody else by mistake."

"Stuyvesant needs to bring a surveillance helicopter too. This angle is hopeless, but you could see everything from the air."

"Armstrong won't let him," Reacher said. "But we've got the air. We've got the church tower."

He turned and walked back towards it.

"Forget the rooming house," he said. "This is where we're going to stay. We'll see them coming, north or south, night or day. It'll all be over before Stuyvesant or Armstrong even get here."

They were ten feet from the church door when it opened and a clergyman stepped out, closely followed by an old couple. The clergyman was middle-aged and looked very earnest. The old couple were both maybe sixty years old. The man was tall and stooped, and a little underweight. The woman was still good-looking, a little above average height, trim and nicely dressed. She had short fair hair turning grey the way fair hair does. Reacher knew exactly who she was, immediately. And she knew who he was, or thought she did. She stopped talking and stopped walking and just stared at him the same way her daughter had. She looked at his face, confused, like she was comparing similarities and differences against a mental image. "You?" she said. "Or is it?"

Her face was strained and tired. She was wearing no makeup. Her eyes were dry, but they hadn't been for the last two days. That was clear. They were rimmed with red and lined and swollen.

"I'm his brother," Reacher said. "I'm very sorry for your loss."

"You should be," she said. "Because this is entirely Joe's fault."

"Is it?"

"He made her change jobs, didn't he? He wouldn't date a co-worker, so she had to change. He wouldn't change. She went over to the dangerous side, while he stayed exactly where he was, safe and sound. And now look what's come of it." Reacher paused.

"I think she was happy where she was," he said. "She could have changed back, you know, afterwards, if she wasn't. But she didn't. So I think that means she wanted to stay there. She was a fine agent, doing important work."

"How could she change back? Was she supposed to see him every day like nothing had happened?"

"I meant she could have waited the year, and then changed back."

"What difference does a year make? He broke her heart. How could she ever work for him again?"

Reacher said nothing.

"Is he coming here?" she asked.

"No," Reacher said. "He's not."

"Good," she said. "Because he wouldn't be welcome."

"No, I guess he wouldn't," Reacher said.

"I suppose he's too busy," she said.

She walked off, towards the dirt road. The clergyman followed her, and so did Froelich's father. But then he hesitated and turned back.

"She knows it's not really Joe's fault," he said. "We both know Mary Ellen was doing what she wanted."

Reacher nodded. "She was terrific at it."

"Was she?"

"Best they ever had."

The old man nodded, like he was satisfied.

"How is Joe?" he asked. "I met him a couple of times."

"He died," Reacher said. "Five years ago. In the line of duty." They was quiet for a moment.

"I'm very sorry," the old man said.

"But don't tell Mrs Froelich," Reacher said. "If it helps her not to know."

The old man nodded again and turned away and set off after his wife with a strange loping stride.

"See?" Neagley said quietly. "Not everything is your fault." There was a notice board planted in the ground near the church door. It was like a very slim cabinet mounted on sturdy wooden legs. It had glass doors. Behind the doors was a square yard of green felt with slim cotton tapes thumbtacked diagonally all over it. Notices typed on a manual typewriter were slipped behind the tapes. At the top was a permanent list of regular Sunday services. The first was held every week at eight o'clock in the morning. This was clearly a denomination that demanded a high degree of commitment from its parishioners. Next to the permanent list was a hastily typed announcement that this Sunday's eight o'clock service would be dedicated to the memory of Mary Ellen Froelich. Reacher checked his watch and shivered in the cold.

"Twenty-two hours," he said. "Time to lock and load."

They brought the Yukon nearer to the church and opened the tailgate. Bent over together and loaded all four weapons. They took a Steyr each. Neagley took the H&K and Reacher took the M16. They distributed the spare rounds between them, as appropriate. Then they locked the car and left it.

"Is it OK to bring guns into a church?" Neagley asked.

"It's OK in Texas," Reacher said. "Probably compulsory here." They hauled the oak door open and stepped inside. It was very similar to the Bismarck building. Reacher wondered briefly whether rural communities had bought their churches by mail order, the same as everything else. It had the same parchment-white paint, the same shiny pews, the same pulpit. The same three bell ropes hanging down inside the tower. The same staircase. They went all the way up to the high ledge and found a ladder bolted to the wall, with a trapdoor above it. "Home sweet home," Reacher said.

He led the way up the ladder and through the trapdoor and into the bell chamber. The bell chamber was not the same as the one in Bismarck. It had a clock added into it. There was a four-foot cube of brass machinery mounted centrally on iron girders just above the bells. The clock had two faces, both driven simultaneously by the same gears inside the cube. Long iron shafts ran straight out from the cube, through the walls, through the backs of the faces, all the way to the external hands. The faces were mounted in the openings where the louvres had been, to the east and the west. The machinery was ticking loudly. Gear wheels and ratchets were clicking. They were setting up tiny sympathetic resonances in the bells themselves.

"We've got no view east or west," Reacher said.

Neagley shrugged. "North and south is all we need," she said. "That's where the road runs."

"I guess," he said. "You take the south."

He ducked under the girders and the iron shafts and crawled over to the louvre facing north. Knelt up and looked out. Got a perfect view. He could see the bridge and the river. He could see the whole town. He could see the dirt road leading north.

Maybe ten straight miles of it. It was completely empty.

"You OK?" he called.

"Excellent," Neagley called back. "I can almost see Colorado."

"Shout when you spot something."

"You too."

The clock ticked thunk, thunk, thunk once a second. The sound was loud and precise and tireless. He glanced back at the mechanism and wondered whether it would drive him crazy before it sent him to sleep. He heard expensive alloy touching wood ten feet behind him as Neagley put her sub-machine gun down. He laid his M16 on the boards next to his knees. Squirmed around until he was as comfortable as he was going to get. Then he settled in to watch and wait.

EIGHTEEN

The air was cold and seventy feet above ground the breeze was a wind. It came in through the louvres and scoured his eyes and made them water. They had been there two hours, and nothing had happened. They had seen nothing and heard nothing except for the clock. They had learned its sound. Each thunk was made up of a bundle of separate metallic frequencies, starting low down with the muted bass ring of the bigger gears, ranging upward to the tiny treble click of the escapement lever, and finishing with a faint time-delayed ding resonating off the smallest bell. It was the sound of madness.

"I got something," Neagley called. "SUV, I think, coming in from the south."

He took a quick look north and got up off his knees. He was stiff and cold and very uncomfortable. He picked up the bird watcher's scope.

"Catch," he called.

He tossed it in an upward loop over the clock shaft. Neagley twisted and caught it one-handed and turned back to the louvre panel. Put the scope to her eye.

"Might be a new model Chevy Tahoe," she called. "Light gold metallic. Sun is on the windshield. No ID on the occupants." Reacher looked north again. The road was still empty. He could see ten miles. It would take ten minutes to cover ten miles even at a fast cruise. He stood up straight and stretched. Ducked under the clock shafts and crawled over next to Neagley. She moved to her right and he wiped his eyes and stared out south. There was a tiny gold speck on the road, all alone, maybe five miles away.

"Not exactly busy," she said. "Is it?"

She passed him the scope. He refocused it and propped its weight on a louvre and squinted through it. The telephoto compression held the truck motionless. It looked like it was bouncing and swaying on the road but making absolutely no forward progress at all. It looked dirty and travel-stained. It had a big chrome front fender all smeared with mud and salt. The windshield was streaked. The sun's reflection made it impossible to see who was riding in it.

"Why is it still sunny?" he said. "I thought it was going to snow."

"Look to the west," Neagley said.

He put the scope down and turned and put the left side of his face tight against the louvres. Closed his right eye and looked out sideways with his left. The sky was split in two. In the west it was almost black with clouds. In the east it was pale blue and hazy. Giant multiple shafts of sunlight blazed down through mist where the two weather systems met.

"Unbelievable," he said.

"Some kind of inversion," Neagley said. "I hope it stays where it is or we'll freeze our asses off up here."

"It's about fifty miles away."

"And the wind generally blows in from the west."

"Great."

He picked up the scope again and checked on the golden truck. It was maybe a mile closer, bucking and swaying on the dirt. It must have been doing about sixty. "What do you think?" Neagley said.

"Nice vehicle," he said. "Awful colour."

He watched it come on another mile and then handed back the scope.

"I should check north," he said. He crawled under the clock shaft and made it back to his own louvre. There was nothing happening in the north. The road was still empty. He reversed his previous manoeuvre and put his right cheek against the wood and closed his left eye with his hand and checked west again. The snow clouds were clamped down on the mountains. It was like night and day, with an abrupt transition where the foothills started.

"It's a Chevy Tahoe for sure," Neagley called. "It's slowing down."

"See the plate?"

"Not yet. It's about a mile out now, slowing."

"See who's in it?"

"I've got sun and tinted glass. No ID. Half a mile out now." Reacher glanced north. No traffic.

"Nevada plates, I think," Neagley called. "Can't read them. They're all covered in mud. It's right on the edge of town. It's going real slow now. Looks like a reconnaissance cruise. It's not stopping. Still no ID on the occupants. It's getting real close now. "I'm looking right down at the roof. Dark tint on the rear side glass. "I'm going to lose them any second. It's right underneath us now."

Reacher stood up tight against the wall and peered down at the best angle he could get. The way the louvres were set in the frame gave him a blind spot maybe forty feet deep. "Where is it now?" he called.

"Don't know."

He heard the sound of an engine over the moan of the wind. A big V-8, turning slowly. He stared down and a metallic gold hood slid into view. Then a roof. Then a rear window. The truck passed all the way underneath him and rolled through the town and crossed the bridge at maybe twenty miles an hour. It stayed slow for a hundred more yards. Then it accelerated. It picked up speed fast.

"Scope," he called.

Neagley tossed it back to him and he rested it on a louvre and watched the truck drive away to the north..The rear window was tinted black and there was an arc where the wiper had cleared the salt spray. The rear bumper was chrome. He could see raised lettering that read Chevrolet Tahoe. The rear plate was indecipherable. It was caked with road salt. He could see hand marks where the tailgate had been raised and lowered. It looked like a truck that had done some serious mileage in the last day or two.

"It's heading out," he called.

He watched it in the scope all the way. It bounced and swayed and grew smaller and smaller. It took ten whole minutes to drive all the way out of his field of vision. It rose up over the last hump in the road and then disappeared with a last flash of sun on gold paint.

"Anything more?" he called.

"Clear to the south," Neagley called back.

"I'm going down for the map. You can watch both directions while I'm gone. Do some limbo dancing under this damn clock thing."

He crawled to the trapdoor and got his feet on the ladder. Went down, stiff and sore and cold. He made it to the ledge and down the winding staircase. Out of the tower and out of the church into the weak midday sun. He limped across the graveyard towards the car. Saw Froelich's father standing right next to it, looking at it like it might answer a question. The old guy saw his approach reflected in the window glass and spun round to face him.

"Mr Stuyvesant is on the phone for you," he said. "From the Secret Service office in Washington D.C."

"Now?"

"He's been holding twenty minutes. I've been trying to find you."

"Where's the phone?"

"At the house."

The Froelich house was one of the white buildings on the short south-eastern leg of the K. The old guy led the way with his long-loping stride. Reacher had to hurry to keep up with him. The househad a front garden with a white picket fence. It was full of herbs and cottage plants that had died back from the cold. Inside it was dim and fragrant. There were wide dark boards on the floors. Rag rugs here and there. The old guy led the way into a front parlour. There was an antique table under the window with a telephone and a photograph on it. The telephone was an old model with a heavy receiver and a plaited cord insulated with brown fabric. The photograph was of Froelich herself, aged about eighteen. Her hair was a little longer than she had kept it, and a little lighter. Her face was open and innocent, and her smile was sweet. Her eyes were dark blue, alive with hopes for the future.

There was no chair next to the table. Clearly the Froelichs came from a generation that preferred to stand up while talking on the telephone. Reacher unravelled the cord and held the phone to his ear.

"Stuyvesant?" he said.

"Reacher? You got any good news for me?"

"Not yet."

"What's the situation?"

"The service is scheduled for eight o'clock," Reacher said. "But I guess you know that already."

"What else do I need to know?"

"You coming in by chopper?"

"That's the plan. He's still in Oregon right now. We're going to fly him to an air base in South Dakota and then take a short hop in an air force helicopter. We'll have eight people altogether, including me."

"He only wanted three."

"He can't object. We're all her friends."

"Can't you have a mechanical problem? Just stay in South Dakota?"

"He'd know. And the air force wouldn't play anyway. They wouldn't want to go down in history as the reason why he couldn't make it."

Reacher stood and looked out of the window. "OK, so you'll see the church easy enough. You'll land across the street to the east. There's a good place right there. Then he's got about fifty yards to the church door. I can absolutely guarantee the immediate surroundings. We're going to be in the church all night. But you're going to hate what you see farther out. There's about a hundred-fifty-degree field of fire to the south and west. It's completely open. And there's plenty of concealment."

Silence in D.C.

"I can't do it," Stuyvesant said. "I can't bring him into that. Or any of my people. "I'm not going to lose anybody else."

"So just hope for the best," Reacher said.

"Not my way. You're going to have to deliver."

"We will if we can."

"How will I know? You don't have radios. Cell phones won't work out there. And it's too cumbersome to keep on using this land line."

Reacher paused for a second.

"We've got a black Yukon," he said. "Right now it's parked on the road, right next to the church, to the east. If it's still there when you show up, then pull out and go home. Armstrong will just have to swallow it. But if it's gone, then we're gone, and we won't be gone unless we've delivered, you follow?"

"OK, understood," Stuyvesant said. "A black Yukon east of the church, we abort. No Yukon, we land. Have you searched the town?"

"We can't do a house-to-house. But it's a very small place. Strangers are going to stand out, believe me."

"Nendick came round. He's talking a little. He says the same as Andretti. He was approached by the two of them and took them to be cops."

"They are cops. We're definite about that. Did you get descriptions?"

"No. He's still thinking about his wife. Didn't seem right to tell him he probably didn't need to."

"Poor guy."

"I'd like to get some closure for him. At least find her body, maybe."

"I'm not planning an arrest here."

Silence in D.C.

"OK," Stuyvesant said. "I guess we won't be seeing you either way. So, good luck."

"You too," Reacher aid.

He put the receiver back in the cradle and tidied the cord into a neat curl on the table. Looked out at the view. The window faced north and east across an empty ocean of waist-high grass. Then he turned away from it and saw Mr Froelich watching him from the parlour doorway.

"They're coming here, aren't they?" the old man said. "The people who killed my daughter? Because Armstrong is coming here."

"They might be here already," Reacher said.

Mr Froelich shook his head. "Everybody would be talking about it."

"Did you see that gold truck come through?"

The old man nodded. "It passed me, going real slow."

"Who was in it?"

"I didn't see. The windows were dark. I didn't like to stare."

"OK," Reacher said. "If you hear about anybody new in town, come and tell me."

The old man nodded again. "You'll know as soon as I do. And I'll know as soon as anybody new arrives. Word travels fast here."

"We'll be in the church tower," Reacher said. "Are you here on behalf of Armstrong?" Reacher said nothing.

"No," Mr Froelich said. "You're here to take an eye for an eye, aren't you?"

Reacher nodded. "And a tooth for a tooth."

"A life for a life."

"Two for five, to be accurate," Reacher said. "They get the fat end of the deal."

"Are you comfortable with that?"

"Are you?"

The old guy's watery eyes flicked all round the sunless room and came to rest on his daughter's eighteen-year-old face.