Without Fail

"We should have stayed around," Reacher said.

"The place is swarming with cops," Froelich said. "FBI will join them. That’s their job. We focus on Armstrong. And I don’t like it any better than you do."

"What was the rifle? Did you see it?"

She shook her head. "We’ll get a report. They said it was in a bag. Some kind of vinyl carrying case."

"Hidden in the grass?"

She nodded. "Where it’s long at the base of the fence."

"When was the church locked?"

"Last thing Sunday. More than sixty hours ago."

"So I guess our guys picked the lock. It’s a crude old mechanism. The keyhole’s so big you can practically get your whole hand in there."

"You sure you didn’t see them?"

Reacher shook his head. "But they saw me. They were in there with me. They saw where I hid the key. They let themselves out."

"You probably saved Armstrong’s life. And my ass. Although I don’t understand their plan. They were in the church and their rifle was a hundred yards away?"

"Wait until we know what the rifle was. Then maybe we’ll understand."

The plane turned at the end of the runway and accelerated immediately. Took off and climbed hard. The engine noise throttled back after five minutes and Reacher heard the journalists starting their foreign-relations conversation again. They didn’t ask any questions about the early return.

They touched down at Andrews at six-thirty local time. The city was quiet. The long Thanksgiving weekend had already started, halfway through the afternoon. The motorcade headed straight in on Branch Avenue and drove through the heart of the capital and out again to Georgetown. Armstrong was shepherded into his house through the white tent. Then the cars turned listlessly and headed back to base. Stuyvesant wasn’t around. Reacher and Neagley followed Froelich to her desk and she accessed her NCIC search results. They were hopeless. There was a small proud rubric at the top of the screen that claimed the software had compiled for five hours and twenty-three minutes and come up with no less than 243,791 matches. Anything that ever mentioned any two of a thumbprint or a document or a letter or a signature was neatly listed. The sequence began exactly twenty years ago and averaged more than thirty entries for each of the 7,305 days since. Froelich sampled the first dozen reports and then skipped ahead to random interim dates. There was nothing even remotely useful.

"We need to refine the parameters," Neagley said. She squatted next to Froelich and moved the keyboard closer. Cleared the screen and called up the inquiry box and typed thumbprint-as-signature. Reached for the mouse and clicked on search. The hard drive chattered and the inquiry box disappeared. The phone rang and Froelich picked it up. Listened for a moment and put it down.

"Stuyvesant’s back," she said. "He’s got the preliminary FBI report on the rifle. He wants us in the conference room."

"We came close to losing today," Stuyvesant said.

He was at the head of the table with sheets of faxed paper spread out in front of him. They were covered in dense type, a little blurred from transmission. Reacher could see the cover sheet’s heading, upside down. There was a small seal on the left, and U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation on the right.

"First factor is the unlocked door," Stuyvesant said. "The FBI’s guess is the lock was picked early this morning. They say a child could have done it with a bent knitting needle. We should have secured it with a temporary lock of our own."

"Couldn’t do it," Froelich said. "It’s a landmark building. Can’t be touched."

"Then we should have changed the venue."

"I looked for alternatives first time around. Every other place was worse."

"You should have had an agent on the roof," Neagley said.

"No budget," Stuyvesant said. "Until after the inauguration."

"If you get that far," Neagley said.

"What was the rifle?" Reacher asked, in the silence.

Stuyvesant squared the paper in front of him. "Your guess?"

"Something disposable," Reacher said. "Something they weren’t actually planning on using. In my experience something that gets found that easily is supposed to get found that easily."

Stuyvesant nodded. "It was barely a rifle at all. It was an ancient.22 varmint gun. Badly maintained, rusty, probably hadn’t been used in a generation. It was not loaded and there was no ammunition with it."

"Identifying marks?"

"None."

"Fingerprints?"

"Of course not."

Reacher nodded.

"Decoy," he said.

"The unlocked door is persuasive," Stuyvesant said. "What did you do when you went in, for instance?"

"I locked it again behind me."

"Why?"

"I like it that way, for surveillance."

"But if you were going to be shooting?"

"Then I would have left it open, especially if I didn’t have the key."

"Why?"

"So I could get out fast, afterward."

Stuyvesant nodded. "The unlocked door means they were in there to shoot. My take is they were waiting in there with the MP5 or the Vaime Mk2. Maybe both weapons. They imagined the junk gun would be spotted far away at the fence, the bulk of the police presence would move somewhat toward it, we would move Armstrong toward the motorcade, whereupon they would have a clear shot at him."

"Sounds right to me," Reacher said. "But I didn’t actually see anybody in there."

"Plenty of places to hide in a country church," Stuyvesant said. "Did you check the crypt?"

"No."

"The loft?"

"No."

"Plenty of places," Stuyvesant said again.

"I sensed somebody."

"Yes," Stuyvesant said. "They were in there. That’s for sure."

There was silence for a beat.

"Any unexplained attendees?" Froelich asked.

Stuyvesant shook his head. "It was pure chaos. Cops running everywhere, the crowd scattering. By the time order was restored at least twenty people had left. It’s understandable. You’re in a crowd on an open field, somebody finds a gun, you run like hell. Why wouldn’t you?"

"What about the man on foot in the subdivision?"

"Just a guy in a coat," Stuyvesant said. "State cop couldn’t really come up with anything more than that. Probably just a civilian out walking. Probably nobody. My guess is our guys were already in the church by that time."

"Something must have aroused the trooper’s suspicions," Neagley said.

Stuyvesant shrugged. "You know how it is. How does a North Dakota State Trooper react around the Secret Service? He’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Somebody looks suspicious, he’s got to call it in even if he can’t articulate exactly why afterward. And we can’t moan at him for it. I’d rather he erred on the side of caution. Don’t want to make him afraid to be vigilant."

"So we’ve still got nothing," Froelich said.

"We’ve still got Armstrong," Stuyvesant said. "And Armstrong’s still got a pulse. So go eat dinner and be back here at ten for the FBI meeting."

First they went back to Froelich’s office to check on Neagley’s NCIC search. It was done. In fact it had been done before they even stepped away from the desk. The rubric at the top of the screen said the search had lasted nine-hundredths of a second and come up with zero matches. Froelich called up the inquiry box again and typed thumbprint on letter. Clicked on search and watched the screen. It redrew immediately and came up with no matches in eight-hundredths of a second.

"Getting nowhere even faster now," she said.

She tried thumbprint on message. Same result, no matches in eight-hundredths of a second. She tried thumbprint on threat. Identical result, identical eight-hundredths of a second. She sighed with frustration.

"Let me have a go," Reacher said. She got up and he sat down in her chair and typed a short letter signed with a big thumbprint.

"Idiot," Neagley said.

He clicked the mouse. The screen redrew instantly and reported that within the seven-hundredths of a second it had spent looking the software had detected no matches.

"But it was a new speed record," Reacher said, and smiled.

Neagley laughed, and the mood of frustration eased a little. He typed thumbprint and squalene and hit search again. A tenth of a second later the search came back blank.

"Slowing down," he said.

He tried squalene on its own. No match, eight-hundredths of a second.

He typed squalane with an a. No match, eight-hundredths of a second.

"Forget it," he said. "Let’s go eat."

"Wait," Neagley said. "Let me try again. This is like an Olympic event."

She nudged him out of the chair. Typed single unexplained thumbprint. Hit search. No match, six-hundredths of a second. She smiled.

"Six hundredths," she said. "Folks, we have a new world record."

"Way to go," Reacher said.

She typed solo unexplained thumbprint. Hit search.

"This is kind of fun," she said.

No match, six-hundredths of a second.

"Tied for first place," Froelich said. "My turn again."

She took Neagley’s place at the keyboard and thought for a long moment.