Ли Чайлд - Without Fail

The way a man goes through a gate works like this: he stops walking momentarily. He stands still. He has to, whichever way the gate hinges. If it hinges toward him, he reaches out for the latch and flips it open and pulls the gate and kind of stands on tiptoe and arches his legs so the gate can swing past them. If it hinges away from him, he stands still while he finds the latch and pushes it open. That’s faster, but there’s still a moment where there’s no real forward motion at all. And this particular gate opened toward the house. That fact was clearly visible through the Hensoldt. There was going to be a two-second window of perfect opportunity.

Armstrong reached the gate. Stopped walking. One hundred and twenty-six yards away the man with his eye to the scope nudged the rifle a fraction left until the target was exactly centered. Held his breath. Eased his finger back. Took up the slack in the trigger. Then he squeezed it all the way. The rifle coughed loudly and kicked gently. The bullet took a hair over four-tenths of a second to travel the hundred and twenty-six yards. It hit Armstrong with a wet thump high on the forehead. It penetrated his skull and followed a downward angle through his frontal lobe, through his central ventricles, through his cerebellum. It shattered his first vertebra and exited at the base of his neck through soft tissue near the top of his spinal cord. It flew on and struck the ground eleven feet farther back and buried itself deep in the earth.

Armstrong was clinically dead before he hit the ground. The bullet’s path caused massive brain trauma and its kinetic energy pulsed outward through brain tissue and was reflected back by the inside of the skull bones like a big wave in a small swimming pool. The resulting damage was catastrophic. All brain function ceased before gravity dropped the body.

One hundred and twenty-six yards away the man with his eye to the scope lay perfectly still for a second. Then he cradled the rifle flat against his torso and rolled away until it was safe to stand. He racked the rifle’s bolt and caught the hot shell case in his gloved hand and dropped it into his pocket. Moved backward into cover and then walked away, completely shielded from view.

Neagley was uncharacteristically quiet in the car. Maybe she was worried about the day ahead. Maybe she could sense the altered chemistry. Reacher didn’t know, and either way he wasn’t in a hurry to find out. He just sat quiet while Froelich battled the traffic. She looped northwest and used the Whitney Young bridge across the river and drove past the RFK football stadium. Then she took Massachusetts Avenue and stayed away from the congestion around the government part of town. But Mass. Ave. was slow itself, and it was nearly nine o’clock before they arrived in Armstrong’s Georgetown street. She parked behind another Suburban near the mouth of the tent. An agent stepped off the sidewalk and rounded the hood to talk with her.

“The spook just got here,” he said. “They’ll be into Spying 101 by now.”

“Should be 201 by now, surely,” Froelich said. “He’s been doing it long enough.”

“No, CIA stuff is awful complicated,” the guy said. “For plain folks, anyway.”

Froelich smiled and the guy walked away. Took up station again on the sidewalk. Froelich buzzed her window up and half-turned to face Reacher and Neagley equally.

“Foot patrol?” she said.

“Why I wore my coat,” Reacher said.

“Four eyes are better than two,” Neagley said.

They got out together and left Froelich in the warmth of the car. The street side of the house was quiet and well covered so they walked north and turned right to get a view of the back. There were cop cars top and bottom of the alley. Nothing was happening. Everything was buttoned up tight against the cold. They walked onward to the next street. There were cop cars there, too.

“Waste of time,” Neagley said. “Nobody’s going to get him in his house. I assume the police would notice somebody hauling in an artillery piece.”

“So let’s get breakfast,” Reacher said. They walked back to the cross street and found a doughnut shop. Bought coffee and crullers and perched on stools in front of a long counter built inside the store window. The window was misted with condensation. Neagley used a napkin and wiped crescent shapes to see through.

“Different tie,” she said.

He glanced down at it.

“Different suit,” she said.

“You like it?”

“I would if we still lived in the 1990s,” she said.

He said nothing. She smiled.

“So,” she said.

“What?”

“Ms. Froelich collected the set.”

“You could tell?”

“Unmistakable.”

“Free will on my part,” Reacher said.

Neagley smiled again. “I didn’t think she raped you.”

“You going to be all judgmental now?”

“Hey, your call. She’s a nice lady. But so am I. And you never come on to me .”

“You ever wanted me to?”

“No.”

“That’s the point. I like my interest to be welcome.”

“Which must limit your options some.”

“Some,” he said. “But not completely.”

“Apparently not,” Neagley said.

“You disapprove?”

“Hell no. Be my guest. Why do you think I stayed on in the hotel? I didn’t want to get in her way, is all.”

“ Her way? Was it that obvious?”

“Oh please,” Neagley said.

Reacher sipped his coffee. Ate a cruller. He was hungry and it tasted great. Iced hard on the outside, light in the middle. He ate another and sucked his fingertips clean. Felt the caffeine and the sugar hit his bloodstream.

“So who are these guys?” Neagley asked. “You got any feelings?”

“Some,” Reacher said. “I’d have to concentrate hard to line them up. Not worth starting with that until we know if we’re staying on the job.”

“We won’t be,” Neagley said. “Our job ends with the cleaners. And that’s a waste of time in itself. No way will they have a name for us. Or if they do, it’ll be phony. Best we’ll get is a description. Which is bound to be useless.”

Reacher nodded. Finished his coffee.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Once around the block for form’s sake.”

They walked as slowly as they could bear to in the cold. Nothing was happening. Everything was quiet. There were cop cars or Secret Service vehicles on every street. Their exhaust fumes clouded white and drifted in the still air. Apart from that absolutely nothing was moving. They turned corners and came up on Armstrong’s street from the south. The white tent was ahead of them on the right. Froelich was out of her car, waving to them urgently. They hurried up the sidewalk to meet her.

“Change of plan,” she said. “There was a problem on the Hill. He cut the CIA thing short and headed up there.”

“He left already?” Reacher asked.

Froelich nodded. “He’s rolling now.”

Then she paused and listened to a voice in her earpiece.

“He’s arriving,” she said.

She lifted her wrist and spoke into her microphone.

“Situation report, over,” she said, and listened again.

There was a wait. Thirty seconds. Forty.

“OK, he’s inside,” she said. “Secure.”

“So what now?” Reacher said.

Froelich shrugged. “Now we wait. That’s what this job is. It’s about waiting.”

They drove back to the office and waited the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. Froelich received regular situation reports. Reacher built up a pretty good picture of how things were organized. Metro cops were stationed outside the Senate Office buildings in cars. Secret Service agents held the sidewalk. Inside the street doors were members of the Capitol’s own police force, one officer manning each metal detector, plenty more patrolling the hallways. Mingled in with them were more Secret Service. The transition business itself took place in upstairs offices with pairs of agents outside every door. Armstrong’s personal detail stayed with him at all times. The radio reports spoke of a fairly static day. There was a lot of sitting around and talking going on. Plenty of deals being made. That was clear. Reacher recalled the phrase smoke-filled rooms , except he guessed nobody was allowed to smoke anymore.