Lee Child - Without Fail

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 toward 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 toward 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 gray 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 coworker, 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 a beat.

“I think she was happy where she was,” he said. “She could have changed back, you know, afterward, 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, toward 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.”

There 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 amp;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 themselves. 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 louvers 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 louver 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.