Lee Child - Without Fail

“Normal people don’t kidnap women and cut thumbs off and kill innocent bystanders.”

She nodded.

“OK,” she said again. “It’s a theory. But where can we go with it?”

“Armstrong himself, maybe,” Reacher said. “But that would be a difficult conversation to have with a Vice President-elect. And would he even remember? If he inherited the kind of temper that gets a guy thrown out of the Army he could have had dozens of fights long ago. He’s a big guy. Could have spread mayhem far and wide before he got a handle on it.”

“His wife? They’ve been together a long time.”

Reacher said nothing.

“Time to get going,” Neagley said. “We meet with Bannon at seven. Are we going to tell him?”

“No,” Reacher said. “He wouldn’t listen.”

“Go shower,” Neagley said.

Reacher nodded. “Something else first. It kept me awake last night for an hour. It nagged at me. Something that’s not here, or something that hasn’t been done.”

Neagley shrugged.

“OK,” she said. “I’ll think about it. Now get your ass in gear.”

He dressed in the last of Joe’s suits. It was charcoal gray and as fine as silk. He used the last of the clean shirts. It was stiff with starch and as white as new snow. The last tie was dark blue with a tiny repeated pattern. When you looked very closely you saw that each element of the pattern was a diagram of a pitcher’s hand, gripping a baseball, preparing to throw a knuckleball.

He met Neagley out in the lobby and ate a muffin from the buffet and took a cup of coffee with him in the Secret Service Town Car. They were late into the conference room. Bannon and Stuyvesant were already there. Bannon was still dressed like a city cop. Stuyvesant was back in a Brooks Brothers suit. Reacher and Neagley left one seat unoccupied between themselves and Stuyvesant. Bannon stared at the empty place, like maybe it was supposed to symbolize Froelich’s absence.

“The FBI is not going to have agents in Grace, Wyoming,” he said. “Special request from Armstrong, via the director. He doesn’t want a circus out there.”

“Suits me,” Reacher said.

“You’re wasting your time,” Bannon said. “We’re complying only because we’re happy to. The bad guys know how this stuff works. They were in the business. They’ll have understood his statement was a trap. So they won’t show up.”

Reacher nodded. “Won’t be the first trip I ever wasted.”

“I’m warning you against independent action.”

“There won’t be any action, according to you.”

Bannon nodded.

“Ballistics tests are in,” he said. “The rifle we found in the warehouse is definitely the same gun that fired the Minnesota bullet.”

“So how did it get here?” Stuyvesant asked.

“We burned more than a hundred man-hours last night,” Bannon said. “All I can tell you for sure is how it didn’t get here. It didn’t fly in. We checked all commercial arrivals into eight airports and there were no firearms manifests at all. Then we traced all private planes into the same eight airports. Nothing even remotely suspicious.”

“So they drove it in?” Reacher said.

Bannon nodded. “But Bismarck to D.C. is more than thirteen hundred miles. That’s more than twenty hours absolute minimum, even driving like a lunatic. Impossible, in the time frame. So the rifle was never in Bismarck. It came in direct from Minnesota, which was a little more than eleven hundred miles in forty-eight hours. Your grandmother could do that.”

“My grandmother couldn’t drive,” Reacher said. “Still figuring on three guys?”

Bannon shook his head. “No, on reflection we’re sticking at two. The whole thing profiles better that way. We figure the team was split one and one between Minnesota and Colorado on Tuesday and it stayed split afterward. The guy pretending to be the Bismarck cop was acting solo at the church. We figure he had the submachine gun only. Which makes sense, because he knew Armstrong was going to be buried in agents as soon as the decoy rifle was discovered. And a submachine gun is better than a rifle against a cluster of people. Especially an H amp;K MP5. Our people say it’s as accurate as a rifle at a hundred yards and a lot more powerful. Thirty-round magazines, he would have chewed through six agents and gotten to Armstrong easy enough.”

“So why was the other guy bothering to drive here at the time?” Stuyvesant asked.

“Because these are your people,” Bannon said. “They’re realistic professionals. They knew the odds. They knew they couldn’t guarantee a hit in any one particular place. So they went through Armstrong’s schedule and planned to leapfrog ahead of each other to cover all the bases.”

Stuyvesant said nothing.

“But they were together yesterday,” Reacher said. “You’re saying the first guy drove the Vaime here and I saw the guy from Bismarck on the warehouse roof.”

Bannon nodded. “No more leapfrogging, because yesterday was the last good opportunity for a spell. The Bismarck guy must have flown in, commercial, not long after the Air Force brought you back.”

“So where’s the H amp;K? He must have abandoned it in Bismarck somewhere between the church and the airport. You find it?”

“No,” Bannon said. “But we’re still looking.”

“And who was the guy the state trooper saw in the subdivision?”

“We’re discounting him. Almost certainly just a civilian.”

Reacher shook his head. “So this solo guy hid the decoy rifle and legged it back to the church with the H amp;K all by himself?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Have you ever hidden out and lined up to shoot a man?”

“No,” Bannon said.

“I have,” Reacher said. “And it’s not a lot of fun. You need to be comfortable, and relaxed, and alert. It’s a muscle thing. You get there well ahead of time, you settle in, you adjust your position, you figure out your range, you check the wind, you assess the angle of elevation or depression, you calculate the bullet drop. Then you lie there, staring through the sight. You get your breathing slow, you let your heart rate drop. And you know what you want at that point, more than anything else in the whole world?”

“What?”

“You want somebody you trust watching your back. All of your concentration is out there in front of you, and you start to feel an itch in your spine. If these guys are realistic professionals like you say they are, then no way would one of them work that church tower alone.”

Bannon was silent.

“He’s right,” Neagley said. “Best guess is the guy in the subdivision was the back-watcher, on his way from hiding the decoy. He was looping around, well away from the fence. The shooter was hiding out in the church, waiting for him to get back.”

“Which begs a question,” Reacher said. “Like, who was it on the road from Minnesota at the time?”

Bannon shrugged.

“OK,” he said. “So there are three of them.”

“All ours?” Stuyvesant asked, neutrally.

“I don’t see why not,” Bannon said.

Reacher shook his head. “You’re obsessed. Why don’t you just arrest everybody who ever worked for the Secret Service? There are probably some hundred-year-olds left over from FDR’s first term.”

“We’re sticking with our theory,” Bannon said.

“Fine,” Reacher said. “Keeps you out of my hair.”

“I warned you against vigilantism, twice.”

“And I heard you twice.”

The room went silent. Then Bannon’s face softened. He glanced across at Froelich’s empty chair.

“Even though I would completely understand your motive,” he said.

Reacher stared down at the table.