Without Fail

"They were smart," Reacher said. "They read the map and had the same idea you did, to exit across open country to the west. But then they looked at the town and knew they had to come in that way, too."

The sun slid into the low clouds fifty miles west and the resulting shadow raced east across the grassland and the golden light died. Twilight came down like a circuit breaker had popped open and then there was nothing more to be seen. They lowered the louver screen and ducked away flat to the roof. Crawled across the lead and back down into the bell chamber. Neagley threaded her way under the clock shaft and picked up the Heckler amp; Koch.

"Not yet," Reacher said.

"So when?"

"What will they do now?"

"I guess they’ll get as close as they dare. Then they’ll set up and wait."

Reacher nodded. "They’ll turn the truck around and park it facing west in the best hollow they can find about a hundred, two hundred yards out. They’ll check their sightlines to the east and make sure they can see but can’t be seen. Then they’ll sit tight and wait for Armstrong to show."

"That’s fourteen hours."

"Exactly," Reacher said. "We’re going to leave them out there all night. We’ll let them get cold and stiff and tired. Then the sun will rise right in their eyes. We’ll be coming at them out of the sun. They won’t even see us."

They hid the long guns under the pew nearest the church door and left the Yukon parked where it was. Walked up toward the bridge and took two rooms in the boardinghouse. Then they headed for the grocery store to get dinner ingredients. The sun was gone and the temperature was below freezing. There was snow in the air again. Big feathery flakes were drifting around, reluctant to settle. They swirled and hung in the air and rose back up like tiny birds.

The breakfast counter was all closed down, but the woman in the store offered to microwave something from the freezer cabinet. She seemed to assume Reacher and Neagley were a Secret Service advance detail. Everybody seemed to know Armstrong was expected at the service. She heated up some meat pies and some slushy vegetables. They ate them at the darkened counter. They tasted as good as field rations. The woman wouldn’t take money for them.

The rooms in the boardinghouse were clean, as advertised. They had walls paneled with pine boards. Rag rugs on the floors. One single bed in each, with flowery counterpanes washed so many times they were nearly transparent. There was a bathroom at the far end of the corridor. Reacher let Neagley take the room nearer to it. Then she joined him in his room for a spell, because she was restless and wanted to talk. They sat side by side on the bed, because there was no other furniture.

"We’ll be going up against a prepared position," she said.

"The two of us against two bozos," Reacher replied. "You worried now?"

"It’s gotten harder."

"Tell me again," he said. "I’m not making you do this, am I?"

"You can’t do it alone."

He shook his head. "I could do it alone one-handed with my head in a bag."

"We know nothing about them."

"But we can make some kind of an assessment. The tall guy in Bismarck is the shooter, and the other guy watches his back and drives. Big brother, little brother. There’ll be a lot of loyalty. It’s a brother thing. This whole deal is a brother thing. Explaining the motivation to somebody who wasn’t close would be hard. You can’t just walk up to a stranger and say hey, I want to shoot a guy because his dad threatened to put a stick up my ass and I had to beg him not to."

Neagley said nothing.

"I’m not asking you to participate," Reacher said.

Neagley smiled. "You’re an idiot. I’m worried about you, not me."

"Nothing’s going to happen to me," Reacher said. "I’m going to die an old man in some lonely motel bed."

"This all is a brother thing for you too, isn’t it?"

He nodded. "Has to be. I don’t really give a damn about Armstrong. I liked Froelich, but I would never have known her except for Joe."

"Are you lonely?"

"Sometimes. Not usually."

She moved her hand, very slowly. It started an inch from his hand. She made the inch last like a million miles. Her fingers moved imperceptibly over the washed-out counterpane until they were a fraction from his. Then they lifted and moved more, until they were directly over his and just a fraction above. It was like there was a layer of air between their hands, compressed so hard it was warm and liquid. She floated her hand on the air and kept it motionless. Then she pressed harder and brought it down and her fingers touched the backs of his fingers, very lightly. She turned her elbow so her hand lay precisely aligned. Then she pushed down harder. Her palm felt warm. Her fingers were long and cool. Their tips lay on his knuckles. They moved and traced the lines and scars and tendons. They raked down between his. He turned his hand over. She pressed her palm into his. Laced her fingers through his fingers and squeezed. He squeezed back.

He held her hand for five long minutes. Then she slowly pulled it away. Stood up and stepped to the door. Smiled.

"See you in the morning," she said.

He slept badly and woke up at five, worried about the endgame. Complications crowded in on him. He threw back the covers and slipped out of bed. Dressed in the dark and walked down the stairs and out into the night. It was bitter cold and the snowflakes were blowing in faster. They looked wet and heavy. The weather was moving east. Which was good, he guessed.

There was no light. All the town’s windows were dark, there were no streetlights, there was no moon, there were no stars. The church tower loomed up in the middle distance, faint and gray and ghostly. He walked in the middle of the dirt road and crossed the graveyard. Found the church door and went inside. Crept up the tower stairs by feel. Found the ladder in the dark and climbed up into the bell chamber. The clock ticked loudly. Louder than in the daytime. It sounded like a mad blacksmith beating his iron hammer against his anvil once a second.

He ducked under the clock shaft and found the next ladder. Climbed up out of the darkness onto the roof. Crawled over to the west wall and raised his head. The landscape was infinitely dark and silent. The distant looming mountains were invisible. He could see nothing. He could hear nothing. The air was freezing. He waited.

He waited thirty minutes in the cold. It set his eyes watering and his nose running. He started shivering violently. If I’m cold, they’re nearly dead, he thought. And sure enough after thirty long minutes he heard the sound he had been listening for. The Tahoe’s engine started. It was far away, but it sounded deafening in the night silence. It was somewhere out there to the west, maybe a couple hundred yards distant. It idled for ten whole minutes, running the heater. He couldn’t fix an exact location by sound alone. But then they made a fatal mistake. They flicked the dome light on and off for a second. He saw a brief yellow glow deep down in the grass. The truck was down in a dip. Absolutely concealed, its roof well below the average grade level. A little south of west, but not by much. Maybe a hundred and fifty yards out. It was a fine location. They would probably use the truck itself as the shooting platform. Lie prone on the roof, aim, fire, jump down, jump in, drive away.

He put both arms flat along the wall and faced due west and fixed the memory of the brief yellow flash in his mind against the location of the tower. A hundred and fifty yards out, maybe thirty yards south of perpendicular. He crawled back into the bell tower, past the hammering clock, down to the nave. He retrieved the long guns from under the pew and left them on the cold ground underneath the Yukon. He didn’t want to put them inside. Didn’t want to answer their flash of light with one of his own.

Then he walked back to the boardinghouse and found Neagley coming out of her room. It was nearly six o’clock. She was showered and dressed. They went into his room to talk.

"Couldn’t sleep?" he asked.

"I never sleep," she said. "They still there?"

He nodded. "But there’s a problem. We can’t take them down where they are. We need to move them first."

"Why?"

"Too close to home. We can’t start World War Three out there an hour before Armstrong gets here. And we can’t leave two corpses lying around a hundred and fifty yards from the town. People here have seen us. There’ll be early cops up from Casper. Maybe state troopers. You’ve got your license to think about. We need to drive them off and take them down somewhere deserted. West, where it’s snowing, maybe. This snow will be around until April. That’s what I want. I want to do it far away and I want it to be April before anybody knows that anything happened here."

"OK, how?"

"They’re Edward Fox. They’re not John Malkovich. They want to live to fight another day. We can make them run if we do it right."

They were back at the Yukon before six-thirty. The snowflakes were still drifting in the air. But the sky was beginning to lighten in the east. There was a band of dark purple on the horizon, and then a band of charcoal, and then the blackness of night. They checked their weapons. Laced their shoes, zipped their coats, swung their shoulders to check freedom of action. Reacher put his hat on, and his left glove. Neagley put her Steyr in her inside pocket and slung the Heckler amp; Koch over her back.

"See you later," she whispered.

She walked west into the graveyard. He saw her step over the low fence and turn a little south and then she disappeared in the darkness. He walked to the base of the tower and stood flat against the middle of the west wall and recalculated the Tahoe’s position. Pointed his arm out straight toward it and walked back, moving his arm to compensate for his changes of position, keeping the target locked in. He laid the M16 on the ground with the muzzle pointing a little south of west. He stepped behind the Yukon and leaned on the tailgate and waited for the dawn.