Without Fail
Chapter 10
They did what they could at the scene, but it was useless. Nendick just lay on the kitchen floor, not moving, not really conscious, but not really unconscious either. He was in some kind of a fugue state. Like suspended animation. He was pale and damp with perspiration. His breathing was shallow. His pulse was weak. He was responsive to touch and light but nothing else. An hour later he was in a guarded room at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center with a tentative diagnosis of psychosis-induced catatonia.
"Paralyzed with fear, in layman's language," the doctor said. "It's a genuine medical condition. We see it most often in superstitious populations, like Haiti, or parts of Louisiana. Voodoo country, in other words. The victims get cold sweats, pallor, loss of blood pressure, near-unconsciousness. Not the same thing as adrenaline-induced panic. It's a neurogenic process. The heart slows, the large blood vessels in the abdomen take blood away from the brain, most voluntary function shuts down."
"What kind of threat could do that to a person?" Froelich asked, quietly.
"One that the person sincerely believes," the doctor answered. "That's the key. The victim has to be convinced. My guess is his wife's kidnappers described to him what they would do to her if he talked. Then your arrival triggered a crisis, because he was afraid he would talk. Maybe he even wanted to talk, but he knew he couldn't afford to. I wouldn't want to speculate about the exact nature of the threat against his wife."
"Will he be OK?" Stuyvesant asked.
"Depends on the condition of his heart. If he tends toward heart disease he could be in serious trouble. The cardiac stress is truly enormous."
"When can we talk to him?"
"No time soon. Depends on him, basically. He needs to come around."
"It's very important. He's got critical information."
The doctor shook his head.
"Could be days," he said. "Could be never."
They waited a long fruitless hour during which nothing changed. Nendick just lay there inert, surrounded by beeping machines. He breathed in and out, but that was all. So they gave it up and left him there and drove back to the office in the dark and the silence. Regrouped in the windowless conference room and faced the next big decision.
"Armstrong's got to be told," Neagley said. "They've staged their demonstration. No place to go now except stage the real thing."
Stuyvesant shook his head. "We never tell them. It's a rigid policy. Has been for a hundred and one years. We're not going to change it now."
"Then we should limit his exposure," Froelich said.
"No," Stuyvesant said. "That's an admission of defeat in itself, and it's a slippery slope. We pull out once, we'll be pulling out forever, every single threat we get. And that must not happen. What must happen is that we defend him to the best of our ability. So we start planning, now. What are we defending against? What do we know?"
"That two men are already dead," Froelich replied.
"Two men and one woman," Reacher said. "Look at the statistics. Kidnapped is the same thing as dead, ninety-nine times in a hundred."
"The photographs were proof of life," Stuyvesant said.
"Until the poor guy delivered. Which he did almost two weeks ago."
"He's still delivering. He's not talking. So I'm going to keep on hoping."
Reacher said nothing.
"Know anything about her?" Neagley asked.
Stuyvesant shook his head. "Never met her. Don't even know her name. I hardly know Nendick, either. He's just some technical guy I sometimes see around."
The room went quiet.
"FBI has got to be told as well," Neagley said. "This isn't just about Armstrong now. There's a kidnap victim dead or in serious danger. That's the Bureau's jurisdiction, no question. Plus the interstate homicide. That's their bag too."
The room stayed very quiet. Stuyvesant sighed and looked around at each of the others, slowly and carefully, one at a time.
"Yes," he said. "I agree. It's gone too far. They need to know. God knows I don't want to, but I'll tell them. I'll let us take the hit. I'll hand everything over to them."
There was silence. Nobody spoke. There was nothing to say. It was exactly the right thing to do, in the circumstances. Approval would have seemed sarcastic, and commiseration wasn't appropriate. For the Nendick couple and two unrelated families called Armstrong, maybe, but not for Stuyvesant.
"Meanwhile we'll focus on Armstrong," he said. "That's all we can do."
"Tomorrow is North Dakota again," Froelich said. "More open-air fun and games. Same place as before. Not very secure. We leave at ten."
"And Thursday?"
"Thursday is Thanksgiving Day. He's serving turkey dinners in a homeless shelter here in D.C. He'll be very exposed."
There was a long moment of silence. Stuyvesant sighed again, heavily, and placed his hands palms down on the long wooden table.
"OK," he said. "Be back in here at seven o'clock tomorrow morning. I'm sure the Bureau will be delighted to send over a liaison guy."
Then he levered himself upright and left the room to head back to his office, where he would make the calls that would put a permanent asterisk next to his career.
"I feel helpless," Froelich said. "I want to be more proactive."
"Don't like playing defense?" he asked.
They were in her bed, in her room. It was larger than the guest room. Prettier. And quieter, because it was at the back of the house. The ceiling was smoother. Although it would take angled sunlight to really test it. Which would happen at sunset instead of in the morning, because the window faced the other way. The bed was warm. The house was warm. It was like a cocoon of warmth in the cold gray city night.
"Defense is OK," she said. "But attack is defense, isn't it? In a situation like this? But we always let things come to us. Then we just run away from them. We're too operational. We're not investigative enough."
"You have investigators," he said. "Like the guy who watches the movies."
She nodded against his shoulder. "The Office of Protection Research. It's a strange role. Kind of academic, rather than specific. Strategic, rather than tactical."
"So do it yourself. Try a few things."
"Like what?"
"We're back to the original evidence, with Nendick crapping out. So we have to start over. You should concentrate on the thumbprint."
"It's not on file."
"Files have glitches. Files get updated. Prints get added. You should try again, every few days. And you should widen the search. Try other countries. Try Interpol."
"I doubt if these guys are foreign."
"But maybe they're Americans who traveled. Maybe they got in trouble in Canada or Europe. Or Mexico or South America."
"Maybe," she said.
"And you should check the thumbprint thing as an MO. You know, search the databases to see if anybody ever signed threatening letters with their thumb before. How far back do the archives go?"
"To the dawn of time."
"So put a twenty-year limit on it. I guess way back at the dawn of time plenty of people signed things with their thumbs."
She smiled, sleepily. He could feel it against his shoulder.
"Before they learned to write," he said.
She didn't reply. She was fast asleep, breathing slow, snuggled against his shoulder. He eased his position and felt a shallow dip on his side of the mattress. He wondered if Joe had made it. He lay quiet for a spell and then craned his arm up and switched out the light.
Seemed like about a minute and a half later they were up again and showered and back in the Secret Service conference room eating doughnuts and drinking coffee with an FBI liaison agent named Bannon. Reacher was in his Atlantic City coat and the third of Joe's abandoned Italian suits and the third Somebody amp; Somebody shirt and a plain blue tie. Froelich was in another black pant suit. Neagley was in the same suit she had worn on Sunday evening. It was the one that showed off her figure. The one that Nendick had ignored. She was cycling through her wardrobe as fast as the hotel laundry would let her. Stuyvesant was immaculate in his usual Brooks Brothers. Maybe it was fresh on, maybe it wasn't. There was no way to tell. All his suits were the same. He looked very tired. Actually they all looked very tired, and Reacher was a little worried about that. In his experience tiredness impaired operational efficiency as badly as a drink too many.
"We'll sleep on the plane," Froelich said. "We'll tell the pilot to fly slow."
Bannon was a guy of about forty. He was in a tweed sport coat and gray flannels and looked bluff and Irish and was tall and heavy. He had a red complexion that the winter morning hadn't helped. But he was polite and cheerful and he had supplied the doughnuts and the coffee himself. Two different stores, each chosen for its respective quality. He had been well received. Twenty bucks' worth of food and drink had broken a lot of interagency ice.
"No secrets either way," he said. "That's what we're proposing. And no blame anywhere. But no bullshit, either. I think we got to face the fact that the Nendick woman is dead. We'll look for her like she wasn't, but we shouldn't fool ourselves. So we've got three down already. Some evidence, but not a lot. We're guessing Nendick has met with these guys, and we're assuming they've certainly been to his house, if only to grab up his wife. So that's a crime scene, and we're going over it today, and we'll share what we get. Nendick will help us if he ever wakes up. But assuming he won't anytime soon, we'll go at it from three different directions. First, the message stuff that went down here in D.C. Second, the scene in Minnesota. Third, the scene in Colorado."
"Are your people in charge out there?" Froelich asked.
"Both places," Bannon said. "Our ballistics people figure the Colorado weapon for a Heckler and Koch submachine gun called the MP5."
"We already concluded that," Neagley said. "And it was probably silenced, which makes it the MP5SD6."
Bannon nodded. "You're one of the ex-military, right? In which case you've seen MP5s before. As I have. They're military and paramilitary weapons. Police and federal SWAT teams use them."
Then he went quiet and looked around the assembled faces, like there was more to his point than he had actually articulated.
"What about Minnesota?" Neagley asked.
"We found the bullet," Bannon said. "We swept the farmyard with a metal detector. It was buried about nine inches deep in the mud. Consistent with a shot from a small wooded hillside about a hundred and twenty yards away to the north. Maybe eighty feet of elevation."
"What was the bullet?" Reacher asked.
"NATO 7.62 millimeter," Bannon said.
Reacher nodded. "You test it?"
"For what?"
"Burn."
Bannon nodded. "Low power, weak charge."
"Subsonic ammunition," Reacher said. "In that caliber it has to be a Vaime Mk2 silenced sniper rifle."
"Which is also a police and paramilitary weapon," Bannon said. "Often supplied to antiterrorist units."
He looked around the room again, like he was inviting a comment. Nobody made one. So he pitched it himself.
"You know what?" he said.
"What?"
"Put a list of who buys Heckler amp; Koch MP5s in America side to side with a list of who buys Vaime Mk2s, and you see only one official purchaser on both lists."
"Who?"
"The United States Secret Service."
The room went quiet. Nobody spoke. There was a knock at the door. The duty officer. He stood there, framed in the doorway.
"Mail just arrived," he said. "Something you need to see."
They laid it on the conference room table. It was a familiar brown envelope, gummed flap, metal closure. A computer-printed self-adhesive address label. Brook Armstrong, United States Senate, Washington D.C. Clear black-on-white Times New Roman lettering. Bannon opened his briefcase and took out a pair of white cotton gloves. Pulled them on, right hand, left hand. Tightened them over his fingers.
"Got these from the lab," he said. "Special circumstances. We don't want to use latex. Don't want to confuse the talcum traces."
The gloves were clumsy. He had to slide the envelope to the edge of the table to pick it up. He held it with one hand and looked for something to open it with. Reacher took his ceramic knife out of his pocket and snapped it open. Offered it handle-first. Bannon took it and eased the tip of the blade under the corner of the flap. Moved the envelope backward and the knife forward. The blade cut the paper like it was cutting air. He handed the knife back to Reacher and pressed on the sides of the envelope so it made a mouth. Glanced inside. Turned the envelope over and tipped something out.
It was a single sheet of letter-size paper. Heavyweight white stock. It landed and skidded an inch on the polished wood and settled flat. It had a question printed over two lines, centered between the margins, a little higher than halfway up the sheet. Five words, in the familiar severe typeface: Did you like the demonstration? The last word was the only word on the second line. That isolation gave it some kind of extra emphasis.
Bannon turned the envelope over and checked the postmark.
"Vegas again," he said. "Saturday. They're real confident, aren't they? They're asking if he liked the demonstration three days before they staged it."
"We have to move out now," Froelich said. "Lift-off at ten. I want Reacher and Neagley with me. They've been there before. They know the ground."
Stuyvesant raised his hand. A vague gesture. Either OK or whatever or don't bother me, Reacher couldn't tell.
"I want twice-daily meetings," Bannon said. "In here, seven every morning and maybe ten at night?"
"If we're in town," Froelich said. She headed for the door. Reacher and Neagley followed her out of the room. Reacher caught her and nudged her elbow and steered her left instead of right, down the corridor toward her office.
"Do the database search," he whispered.
She glanced at her watch. "It's way too slow."
"So start it now and let it compile all day."
"Won't Bannon do it?"
"Probably. But double-checking never hurt anybody."
She paused. Then she turned and headed for the interior of the floor. Lit up her office and turned on her computer. The NCIC database had a complex search protocol. She entered her password and clicked the cursor into the box and typed thumbprint.
"Be more specific," Reacher said. "That's going to give you ten zillion plain-vanilla fingerprint cases."
She tabbed backward and typed thumbprint+document+ letter+signature.
"OK?" she said.
He shrugged. "I was born before these things were invented."
"It's a start," Neagley said. "We can refine it later if we need to."
So Froelich clicked on search and the hard disk chattered and the inquiry box disappeared from the screen.
"Let's go," she said.
Moving a threatened Vice President-elect from the District of Columbia to the great state of North Dakota was a complicated undertaking. It required eight separate Secret Service vehicles, four police cars, a total of twenty agents, and an airplane. Staging the local political rally itself required twelve agents, forty local police officers, four State Police vehicles, and two local canine units. Froelich spent a total of four hours on the radio in order to coordinate the whole operation.
She left her own Suburban in the garage and used a stretched Town Car with a driver so she could be free to concentrate on giving orders. Reacher and Neagley sat with her in the back and they drove out to Georgetown and parked near Armstrong's house. Thirty minutes later they were joined by the gun car and two Suburbans. Fifteen minutes after that, an armored Cadillac stretch showed up and parked with its passenger door tight against the tent. Then two Metro cruisers sealed the street, top and bottom. Their light bars were flashing. All vehicles were using full headlights. The sky was dark gray and a light rain was falling. Everybody kept their engines idling to power their heaters and exhaust fumes were drifting and pooling near the curbs.
They waited. Froelich talked to the personal detail in the house and the Air Force ground crew at Andrews. She talked to the cops in their cars. She listened to traffic reports from a radio news helicopter. The city was jammed because of the weather. The Metro traffic division was recommending a long loop right around the Beltway. Andrews reported that the mechanics had signed off on the plane and the pilots were aboard. The personal detail reported that Armstrong had finished his morning coffee.
"Move him," she said.
The transfer inside the tent was invisible, but she heard it happen in her earpiece. The limo moved away from the curb and a Suburban jumped ahead of it and formed up behind the lead cop. The gun car came next, then Froelich's stretch, then the second Suburban, then the trail cop. The convoy moved out and straight up Wisconsin Avenue, through Bethesda, traveling directly away from Andrews. But then it turned right and swung onto the Beltway and settled in for a fast clockwise loop. By then Froelich was patched through to Bismarck and was checking the arrival arrangements. Local ETA was one o'clock and she wanted plans in place so she could sleep on the flight.
The convoy used the north gate into Andrews and swept right onto the tarmac. Armstrong's limo stopped with its passenger door twenty feet from the bottom of the steps up to the plane. The plane was a Gulfstream twinjet painted in the Air Force's ceremonial blue United States of America livery. Its engines were whining loudly and blowing rain across the ground in thin waves. The Suburbans spilled agents and Armstrong slid out of his limo and ran the twenty feet through the drizzle. His personal detail followed, and then Froelich and Neagley and Reacher. A waiting press van contributed two reporters. A second three-man team of agents brought up the rear. Ground crew wheeled the stairs away and a steward closed the airplane door.
Inside it was nothing like the Air Force One Reacher had seen in the movies. It was more like the kind of bus a small-time rock band would ride in, a plain little vehicle customized with twelve better-than-stock seats. Eight of them were arranged in two groups of four with tables between each facing pair, and there were four facing ahead in a row straight across the front. The seats were leather and the tables were wood, but they looked out of place in the utilitarian fuselage. There was clearly a pecking order about who sat where. People crowded the aisle until Armstrong chose his place. He went for a backward-facing window seat in the port-side foursome. The two reporters sat down opposite. Maybe they had arranged an interview to kill the downtime. Froelich and the personal detail took the other foursome. The backup agents and Neagley took the front row. Reacher was left with no choice. The one seat that remained put him directly across the aisle from Froelich, but it also put him right next to Armstrong.
He stuffed his coat into the overhead bin and slid into the seat. Armstrong glanced at him like he was already an old friend. The reporters checked him out. He could feel their inquiring gaze. They were looking at his suit. He could see them thinking: too upmarket for an agent. So who is this guy? An aide? An appointee? He buckled his seat belt like sitting next to Vice Presidents-elect was something he did every four years, regular as clockwork. Armstrong did nothing to disabuse his audience. Just sat there, poised, waiting for the first question.
The engine noise built and the plane moved out to the runway. By the time it took off and leveled out almost everybody except those at Reacher's table was fast asleep. They all just shut down like professionals do when they're faced with a window between periods of intense activity. Froelich was accustomed to sleeping on planes. That was clear. Her head was tucked down on her shoulder and her arms were folded neatly in her lap. She looked good. The three agents around her sprawled a little less decorously. They were big guys. Wide necks, broad shoulders, thick wrists. One of them had his foot shoved out in the aisle. It looked to be about size fourteen. He assumed Neagley was asleep behind him. She could sleep anywhere. He had once seen her sleep in a tree, on a long stakeout. He found the button and laid his chair back a fraction and got comfortable. But then the reporters started talking. To Armstrong, but about him.
"Can we get a name, sir, for the record?" one of them said.
Armstrong shook his head.
"I'm afraid identities need to remain confidential at this point," he said.
"But we can assume we're still in the national security arena here?"
Armstrong smiled. Almost winked.
"I can't stop you assuming things," he said.
The reporters wrote something down. Started a conversation about foreign relations, with heavy emphasis on military resources and spending. Reacher ignored it all and tried to drift off. Came around again when he heard a repeated question and felt eyes on him. One of the reporters was looking in his direction.
"But you do still support the doctrine of overwhelming force?" the other guy was asking Armstrong.
Armstrong glanced at Reacher. "Would you wish to comment on that?"
Reacher yawned. "Yes, I still support overwhelming force. That's for sure. I support it big time. Always have, believe me."
The reporters both wrote it down. Armstrong nodded wisely. Reacher laid his chair back a little more and went to sleep.
He woke up on the descent into Bismarck. Everybody around him was already awake. Froelich was talking quietly to her agents, giving them their standard operational instructions. Neagley was listening along with the three guys in her row. He glanced out Armstrong's window and saw brilliant blue sky and no clouds. The earth was tan and dormant, ten thousand feet below. He could see the Missouri River winding north to south through an endless sequence of bright blue lakes. He could see the narrow ribbon of I-94 running east to west. The brown urban smudge of Bismarck where they met.
"We're leaving the perimeter to the local cops," Froelich was saying. "We've got forty of them on duty, maybe more. Plus state troopers in cars. Our job is to stick close together. We'll be in and out quick. We're arriving after the event has started and we're leaving before it finishes."
"Leave them wanting more," Armstrong said, to nobody in particular.
"Works in show business," one of the reporters said. The plane yawed and tilted and settled into a long shallow glide path. Seat backs came upright and belts were ratcheted tight. The reporters stowed their notebooks. They were staying on the plane. No attraction in open-air local politics for important foreign-relations journalists. Froelich glanced across at Reacher and smiled. But there was worry in her eyes.
The plane put down gently and taxied over to a corner of the tarmac where a five-car motorcade waited. There was a State Police cruiser at each end and three identical stretched Town Cars sandwiched between. A small knot of ground crew standing by with a rolling staircase. Armstrong traveled with his detail in the center limo. The backup crew took the one behind it. Froelich and Reacher and Neagley took the one in front. The air was freezing, but the sky was bright. The sun was blinding.
"You'll be freelancing," Froelich said. "Wherever you feel you need to be."
There was no traffic. It felt like empty country. There was a short fast trip over smooth concrete roads and suddenly Reacher saw the familiar church tower in the distance, and the low surrounding huddle of houses. There were cars parked solid along the side of the approach road all the way up to a State Police roadblock a hundred yards from the community center entrance. The motorcade eased past it and headed for the parking lot. The fences were decorated with bunting and there was a large crowd already assembled, maybe three hundred people. The church tower loomed over all of them, tall and square and solid and blinding white in the winter sun.
"I hope this time they checked every inch of it," Froelich said.
The five cars swept onto the gravel and crunched to a stop. The backup agents were out first. They fanned out in front of Armstrong's car, checking the faces in the crowd, waiting until Froelich heard the all-clear from the local police commander on her radio. She got it and instantly relayed it to the backup leader. He acknowledged immediately and stepped to Armstrong's door and opened it ceremoniously. Reacher was impressed. It was like a ballet. Five seconds, serene, dignified, unhurried, no apparent hesitation at all, but there had already been three-way radio communication and visual confirmation of security. This was a slick operation.
Armstrong stepped out of his car into the cold. He was already smiling a perfect local-boy-embarrassed-by-all-the-fuss smile and stretching out his hand to greet his successor at the head of the reception line. He was bareheaded. His personal detail moved in so close they were almost jostling him. The backup agents got close, too, maneuvering themselves so they kept the tallest two of the three between Armstrong and the church. Their faces were completely expressionless. Their coats were open and their eyes were always moving.
"That damn church," Froelich said. "It's like a shooting gallery."
"We should go check it again," Reacher said. "Ourselves, just to be sure. Have him circulate counterclockwise until we do."
"That takes him nearer the church."
"He's safer nearer the church. Makes the downward angle too steep. There are wooden louvers up there around the bells. The field of fire starts about forty feet out from the base of the tower. Closer than that, he's in a blind spot."
Froelich raised her wrist and spoke to her lead agent. Seconds later they saw him ease Armstrong to his right, into a wide counterclockwise loop around the field. The new senator tagged along. The crowd changed direction and moved with them.
"Now find the guy with the church keys," Reacher said.
Froelich spoke to the local police captain. Listened to his response in her ear.
"The church warden will meet us there," she said. "Five minutes."
They got out of the car and walked across the gravel to the church gate. The air was very cold. Armstrong's head was visible among a sea of people. The sun was catching his hair. He was well out in the field, thirty feet from the tower. The new senator was at his side. Six agents close by. The crowd was moving with them, slowly changing its shape like an evolving creature. There were dark overcoats everywhere. Women's hats, mufflers, sunglasses. The grass was brown and dead from night frosts.
Froelich stiffened. Cupped her hand over her ear. Raised the other hand and spoke into her wrist microphone.
"Keep him close to the church," she said.
Then she dropped her hands and opened her coat. Loosened her gun in its holster.
"State cops on the far perimeter just called in," she said. "They're worried about some guy on foot."
"Where?" Reacher asked.
"In the subdivision."
"Description?"
"Didn't get one."
"How many cops on the field?"
"Forty plus, all around the edge."
"Get them facing outward. Backs to the crowd. All eyes on the near perimeter."
Froelich spoke to the police captain on the radio and issued the order. Her own eyes were everywhere.
"I got to go," she said.
Reacher turned to Neagley.
"Check the streets," he said. "All the access points we found before."
Neagley nodded and moved out toward the entrance drive. Long fast strides, halfway between walking and running.
"You found access points?" Froelich asked.
"Like a sieve."
Froelich raised her wrist. "Move now, move now. Bring him tight against the tower wall. Cover on all three sides. Stand by with the cars. Now, people."
She listened to the response. Nodded. Armstrong was coming close to the tower on the other side, maybe a hundred feet away from them, out of their line of sight.
"You go," Reacher said. "I'll check the church."
She raised her wrist.
"Now keep him there," she said. "I'm coming by."
She headed straight back toward the field without another word. Reacher was left alone at the church gate. He stepped through and headed onward toward the building itself. Waited at the door. It was a huge thing, carved oak, maybe four inches thick. It had iron bands and hinges. Big black nail heads. Above it the tower rose seventy feet vertically into the sky. There was a flag and a lightning rod and a weather vane on the top. The weather vane was not moving. The flag was limp. The air was completely still. Cold, dense air, no breeze at all. The sort of air that takes a bullet and wraps around it and holds it lovingly, straight and true.
A minute later there was the noise of shoes on the gravel and he looked back at the gate and saw the church warden approaching. He was a small man in a black surplice that reached his feet. He had a cashmere coat over it. A fur hat with earflaps tied under his chin. Thick eyeglasses in gold frames. A huge wire hoop in his hand with a huge iron key hanging off it. It was so big it looked like a prop for a comic movie about medieval jails. He held it out and Reacher took it from him.
"That's the original key," the warden said. "From 1870."
"I'll bring it back to you," Reacher said. "Go wait for me on the field."
"I can wait right here," the guy said.
"On the field," Reacher said again. "Better that way."
The guy's eyes were wide and magnified behind his glasses. He turned around and walked back the way he had come. Reacher hefted the big old key in his hand. Stepped to the door and lined it up with the hole. Put it in the lock. Turned it hard. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. He paused. Tried the handle.
The door was not locked.
It swung open six inches with a squeal from the old iron hinges. He remembered the noise. It had sounded much louder when he opened the door at five in the morning. Now it was lost in the low-level hubbub coming from three hundred people on the field.
He pushed the door all the way open. Paused again and then stepped quietly through into the gloom inside. The building was a simple wooden structure with a vaulted roof. The walls were painted a faded parchment white. The pews were worn and polished to a shine. There was stained glass in the windows. At one end there was an altar and a high lectern with steps leading up to it. Some doors to small rooms beyond. Vestries, maybe. He wasn't sure of the terminology.
He closed the door and locked it from the inside. Hid the key inside a wooden chest full of hymnals. Crept the length of the center aisle and stood still and listened. He could hear nothing. The air smelled of old wood and dusty fabrics and candle wax and cold. He crept on and checked the small rooms behind the altar. There were three of them, all small, all with bare wooden floors. All of them empty except for piles of old books and church garments.
He crept back. Through the door into the base of the tower. There was a square area with three bell ropes hanging down in the center. The ropes had yard-long faded embroidered sleeves sewn over the raw ends. The sides of the square area were defined by a steep narrow staircase that wound upward into the gloom. He stood at the bottom and listened hard. Heard nothing. Eased himself up. After three consecutive right-angle turns the stairs ended on a ledge. Then there was a wooden ladder bolted to the inside of the tower wall. It ran upward twenty feet to a trapdoor in the ceiling. The ceiling was boarded solid except for three precise nine-inch holes for the bell ropes. If anybody was up there, he could see and hear through the holes. Reacher knew that. He had heard the dogs pattering around below him, five days ago.
He paused at the foot of the ladder. Stood as quiet as possible. Took the ceramic knife out of his coat pocket and shrugged the coat and suit jacket off and left them piled on the ledge. Stepped onto the ladder. It creaked loudly under his weight. He eased upward to the next rung. The ladder creaked again.
He stopped. Took one hand away from the rung it was gripping and stared at the palm. Pepper. The pepper he had used five days ago was still on the ladder. It was smeared and smudged on the rungs, maybe by his previous descent five days ago, maybe by some new ascent undertaken today by the cops. Or by somebody else. He paused. Eased up another rung. The ladder creaked again.
He paused again. Assess and evaluate. He was on a noisy ladder eighteen feet below a trapdoor. Above the trapdoor was an uncertain situation. He was unarmed, except for a knife with a blade three and a half inches long. He took a breath. Opened the knife and held it between his teeth. Reached up and grasped the side rails of the ladder as far above his head as he could stretch. Catapulted himself upward. He made the remaining eighteen feet in three or four seconds. At the top he kept one foot and one hand on the ladder and swung his body out into open space. Stabilized himself with his fingertips spread on the ceiling above. Felt for movement.
There was none. He reached out and poked the trapdoor upward an inch and let it fall closed. Put his fingertips back on the ceiling. No movement up there. No tremor, no vibration. He waited thirty seconds. Still nothing. He swung back onto the ladder and pushed the trapdoor all the way open and swarmed up into the bell chamber.
He saw the bells, hanging mute in their cradles. Three of them, with iron wheels above, driven by the ropes. The bells were small and black and cast from iron. Nothing like the giant bronze masterpieces that grace the ancient cathedrals of Europe. They were just plain rural artifacts from plain rural history. Sunlight came through the louvers and threw bars of cold light across them. The rest of the chamber was empty. There was nothing up there. It looked exactly as he had left it.
Except it didn't.
The dust was disturbed. There were scuffs and unexplained marks on the floor. Heels and toes, knees and elbows. They weren't his from five days ago. He was sure of that. And there was a faint smell in the air, right at the edge of his consciousness. It was the smell of sweat and tension and gun oil and machined steel and new brass cartridge cases. He turned a slow circle and the smell was gone like it had never been there at all. He stood still and put his fingertips against the iron bells, willing them to give up their secret stored vibrations.
Sound came through the louvers, as well as sunlight. He could hear people clustered near the base of the tower seventy feet below. He stepped over and squinted down. The louvers were weathered wooden slats spaced apart and set into a frame at angles of maybe thirty degrees. The fringe of the crowd was visible. The bulk of it was not. He could see cops on the perimeter of the field, thirty yards apart, standing easy and facing the fences. He could see the community center building. He could see the motorcade waiting patiently in the lot, with the engines running and exhaust vapor clouding white in the cold. He could see the surrounding houses. He could see a lot of things. It was a good firing position. Limited field, but it only takes one shot.
He glanced upward. Saw another trapdoor in the bell chamber ceiling, and another ladder leading up to it. Next to the ladder there were heavy copper grounding straps coming down from the lightning rod. They were green with age. He had ignored the ceiling on his previous visit. He had experienced no desire to climb through and wait eight hours out in the cold. But for somebody looking for an unlimited field of fire on a sunny afternoon the trapdoor would be attractive. It was there for changing the flag, he guessed. The lightning rod and the weather vane might have been there since 1870, but the flag hadn't. It had added a lot of stars since 1870.
He put the knife back between his teeth and started up the new ladder. It was a twelve-foot climb. The wood creaked and gave under his weight. He made it halfway and stopped. His hands were on the side rails. His face was near the upper rungs. They were ancient and dusty. Except for random patches, where they were rubbed perfectly clean. There were two ways to climb a ladder. Either you hold the side rails, or you touch each rung with an overhand grip. He rehearsed in his mind how the grip pattern would go. There would be contact, left and right on alternate rungs. He arched his body outward and looked down. Craned his neck and looked up. He could see clean patches in that exact pattern, to the left and right on alternate rungs. Somebody had climbed the ladder. Recently. Maybe within a day or two. Maybe within an hour or two. Maybe the church warden, hanging a laundered flag. Maybe not.
He hung motionless. Chatter from the crowd drifted up to him through the louvers. He was up above the bells. The maker had soldered his initials on top of each of them where the iron narrowed at the neck. AHB was written there three times over in shaky lines of melted tin.
He eased upward. Placed his fingertips as before on the wood above his head. But these were thick balks of timber, probably faced with lead on the outside surface. They were as solid as stone. A guy could be dancing a jig up above and he would never feel it. He eased up two more rungs. Hunched his shoulders and stepped up another rung until he was crouched at the top of the ladder with the trapdoor pressing down on his back. He knew it would be heavy. It was probably as thick as the roof itself and weatherproofed with lead. Some kind of a lip arrangement on it to stop rain leaking through. He twisted around to look at the hinges. They were iron. A little rusted. Maybe a little stiff.
He took a long wet breath around the knife handle and snapped his legs straight and exploded up through the trap. It crashed back and he scrambled up and out onto the roof into the blinding daylight. Grabbed the knife from his mouth and rolled away. His face grazed the roof. It was lead, pitted and dulled and grayed by more than a hundred and thirty winters. He snapped upright and spun a full circle on his knees.
There was nobody up there.
It was like a shallow lead-lined box, open to the sky at the top. The walls were about three feet high. The floor was raised in the center to anchor the flagpole and the weather vane post and the lightning rod. Up close, they were huge. The lead was applied in sheets, carefully beaten and soldered at the joints. There were shaped funnels in the corners to drain rainwater and snowmelt away.
He crawled on his hands and knees to the edge. He didn't want to stand. He guessed the agents below were trained to watch for random movement taking place in high vantage points above them. He eased his head over the parapet. Shivered in the frigid air. He saw Armstrong directly below. The new senator was standing next to him. The six agents were surrounding them in a perfect circle. Then he saw movement in the corner of his eye. A hundred yards away across the field cops were running. They were gathering at a point near the back corner of the enclosure. They were glancing down at something and spinning away and hunching into their radio microphones. He looked directly down again and saw Froelich forcing her way out through the crowd. She had her index finger pressed onto her earpiece. She was moving fast. Heading toward the cops.
He crawled back again and clambered down through the trapdoor. Slammed it shut above his head and climbed down the ladder. Through the next trapdoor and down the next ladder. He picked up his coat and jacket and ran down the narrow winding stairs. Past the embroidered ends of the bell ropes and through to the main body of the church.
The oak door was standing wide open.
The lid of the hymnal box was up and the key was in the door lock from the inside. He stepped over and stood a yard inside the building. Waited. Listened. Sprinted out into the cold and stopped again six feet down the path. Spun around. There was nobody waiting to ambush him. Nobody there at all. The area was quiet and deserted. He could hear noise far away on the field. He shrugged into his coat and headed toward it. Saw a man running toward him across the gravel, fast and urgent. He was wearing a long brown coat, some kind of heavy twill, halfway between a raincoat and an overcoat. It was flapping open behind him. Tweed jacket and flannel pants under it. Stout shoes. He had his hand raised like a greeting. A gold badge palmed in the hand. Some kind of a Bismarck detective. Maybe the police captain himself.
"Is the tower secure?" he shouted from twenty feet away.
"It's empty," Reacher shouted back. "What's going on?"
The cop stopped where he was and bent over, panting, his hands on his knees.
"Don't know yet," he called. "Some big commotion."
Then he stared beyond Reacher's shoulder at the church.
"Damn it, you should have locked the door," he called. "Can't leave the damn thing open."
He raced on toward the church. Reacher ran the other way, to the field. Met Neagley running in from the entrance road.
"What?" she shouted.
"It's going down," he shouted back.
They ran on together. Through the gate and into the field. Froelich was moving fast toward the cars. They changed direction and cut her off.
"Rifle hidden at the base of the fence," she said.
"Someone's been in the church," Reacher said. He was out of breath. "In the tower. Probably right on the roof. Probably still around someplace."
Froelich looked straight at him and stood completely still for a second. Then she raised her hand and spoke into the microphone on her wrist.
"Stand by to abort," she said. "Emergency extraction on my count of three."
Her voice was very calm.
"Stand by all vehicles. Main car and gun car to target on my count of three."
She paused a single beat.
"One, two, three, abort now, abort now."
Two things happened simultaneously. First there was a roar of engines from the motorcade and it split apart like a starburst. The lead cop car jumped forward and the rear cop car slewed backward and the first two stretch limos hauled through a tight turn and accelerated across the gravel and straight out onto the field. At the same time the personal detail jumped all over Armstrong and literally buried him from view. One agent took the lead and the other two took an elbow each and the backup three piled on and threw their arms up over Armstrong's head from behind and drove him bodily forward through the crowd. It was like a football maneuver, full of speed and power. The crowd scattered in panic as the cars bumped across the grass one way and the agents rushed the other way to meet them. The cars skidded to a stop and the personal detail pushed Armstrong straight into the first and the backup crew piled into the second.
The lead cop had his lights and siren started already and was crawling forward down the exit road. The two loaded limos fishtailed on the grass and turned around on the field and headed back to the pavement. They rolled up straight behind the cop car and then all three vehicles accelerated hard and headed out while the third stretch headed straight for Froelich.
"We can get these guys," Reacher said to her. "They're right here, right now."
She didn't reply. Just grabbed him and Neagley by the arms and pulled them into the limo with her. It roared after the lead vehicles. The second cop fell in directly behind it and just twenty short seconds after the initial abort command the whole motorcade had formed up in a tight line and was screaming away from the scene at seventy miles an hour with every light flashing and every siren blaring.
Froelich slumped back in her seat.
"See?" she said. "We're not proactive. Something happens, we run away."
"Paralyzed with fear, in layman's language," the doctor said. "It's a genuine medical condition. We see it most often in superstitious populations, like Haiti, or parts of Louisiana. Voodoo country, in other words. The victims get cold sweats, pallor, loss of blood pressure, near-unconsciousness. Not the same thing as adrenaline-induced panic. It's a neurogenic process. The heart slows, the large blood vessels in the abdomen take blood away from the brain, most voluntary function shuts down."
"What kind of threat could do that to a person?" Froelich asked, quietly.
"One that the person sincerely believes," the doctor answered. "That's the key. The victim has to be convinced. My guess is his wife's kidnappers described to him what they would do to her if he talked. Then your arrival triggered a crisis, because he was afraid he would talk. Maybe he even wanted to talk, but he knew he couldn't afford to. I wouldn't want to speculate about the exact nature of the threat against his wife."
"Will he be OK?" Stuyvesant asked.
"Depends on the condition of his heart. If he tends toward heart disease he could be in serious trouble. The cardiac stress is truly enormous."
"When can we talk to him?"
"No time soon. Depends on him, basically. He needs to come around."
"It's very important. He's got critical information."
The doctor shook his head.
"Could be days," he said. "Could be never."
They waited a long fruitless hour during which nothing changed. Nendick just lay there inert, surrounded by beeping machines. He breathed in and out, but that was all. So they gave it up and left him there and drove back to the office in the dark and the silence. Regrouped in the windowless conference room and faced the next big decision.
"Armstrong's got to be told," Neagley said. "They've staged their demonstration. No place to go now except stage the real thing."
Stuyvesant shook his head. "We never tell them. It's a rigid policy. Has been for a hundred and one years. We're not going to change it now."
"Then we should limit his exposure," Froelich said.
"No," Stuyvesant said. "That's an admission of defeat in itself, and it's a slippery slope. We pull out once, we'll be pulling out forever, every single threat we get. And that must not happen. What must happen is that we defend him to the best of our ability. So we start planning, now. What are we defending against? What do we know?"
"That two men are already dead," Froelich replied.
"Two men and one woman," Reacher said. "Look at the statistics. Kidnapped is the same thing as dead, ninety-nine times in a hundred."
"The photographs were proof of life," Stuyvesant said.
"Until the poor guy delivered. Which he did almost two weeks ago."
"He's still delivering. He's not talking. So I'm going to keep on hoping."
Reacher said nothing.
"Know anything about her?" Neagley asked.
Stuyvesant shook his head. "Never met her. Don't even know her name. I hardly know Nendick, either. He's just some technical guy I sometimes see around."
The room went quiet.
"FBI has got to be told as well," Neagley said. "This isn't just about Armstrong now. There's a kidnap victim dead or in serious danger. That's the Bureau's jurisdiction, no question. Plus the interstate homicide. That's their bag too."
The room stayed very quiet. Stuyvesant sighed and looked around at each of the others, slowly and carefully, one at a time.
"Yes," he said. "I agree. It's gone too far. They need to know. God knows I don't want to, but I'll tell them. I'll let us take the hit. I'll hand everything over to them."
There was silence. Nobody spoke. There was nothing to say. It was exactly the right thing to do, in the circumstances. Approval would have seemed sarcastic, and commiseration wasn't appropriate. For the Nendick couple and two unrelated families called Armstrong, maybe, but not for Stuyvesant.
"Meanwhile we'll focus on Armstrong," he said. "That's all we can do."
"Tomorrow is North Dakota again," Froelich said. "More open-air fun and games. Same place as before. Not very secure. We leave at ten."
"And Thursday?"
"Thursday is Thanksgiving Day. He's serving turkey dinners in a homeless shelter here in D.C. He'll be very exposed."
There was a long moment of silence. Stuyvesant sighed again, heavily, and placed his hands palms down on the long wooden table.
"OK," he said. "Be back in here at seven o'clock tomorrow morning. I'm sure the Bureau will be delighted to send over a liaison guy."
Then he levered himself upright and left the room to head back to his office, where he would make the calls that would put a permanent asterisk next to his career.
"I feel helpless," Froelich said. "I want to be more proactive."
"Don't like playing defense?" he asked.
They were in her bed, in her room. It was larger than the guest room. Prettier. And quieter, because it was at the back of the house. The ceiling was smoother. Although it would take angled sunlight to really test it. Which would happen at sunset instead of in the morning, because the window faced the other way. The bed was warm. The house was warm. It was like a cocoon of warmth in the cold gray city night.
"Defense is OK," she said. "But attack is defense, isn't it? In a situation like this? But we always let things come to us. Then we just run away from them. We're too operational. We're not investigative enough."
"You have investigators," he said. "Like the guy who watches the movies."
She nodded against his shoulder. "The Office of Protection Research. It's a strange role. Kind of academic, rather than specific. Strategic, rather than tactical."
"So do it yourself. Try a few things."
"Like what?"
"We're back to the original evidence, with Nendick crapping out. So we have to start over. You should concentrate on the thumbprint."
"It's not on file."
"Files have glitches. Files get updated. Prints get added. You should try again, every few days. And you should widen the search. Try other countries. Try Interpol."
"I doubt if these guys are foreign."
"But maybe they're Americans who traveled. Maybe they got in trouble in Canada or Europe. Or Mexico or South America."
"Maybe," she said.
"And you should check the thumbprint thing as an MO. You know, search the databases to see if anybody ever signed threatening letters with their thumb before. How far back do the archives go?"
"To the dawn of time."
"So put a twenty-year limit on it. I guess way back at the dawn of time plenty of people signed things with their thumbs."
She smiled, sleepily. He could feel it against his shoulder.
"Before they learned to write," he said.
She didn't reply. She was fast asleep, breathing slow, snuggled against his shoulder. He eased his position and felt a shallow dip on his side of the mattress. He wondered if Joe had made it. He lay quiet for a spell and then craned his arm up and switched out the light.
Seemed like about a minute and a half later they were up again and showered and back in the Secret Service conference room eating doughnuts and drinking coffee with an FBI liaison agent named Bannon. Reacher was in his Atlantic City coat and the third of Joe's abandoned Italian suits and the third Somebody amp; Somebody shirt and a plain blue tie. Froelich was in another black pant suit. Neagley was in the same suit she had worn on Sunday evening. It was the one that showed off her figure. The one that Nendick had ignored. She was cycling through her wardrobe as fast as the hotel laundry would let her. Stuyvesant was immaculate in his usual Brooks Brothers. Maybe it was fresh on, maybe it wasn't. There was no way to tell. All his suits were the same. He looked very tired. Actually they all looked very tired, and Reacher was a little worried about that. In his experience tiredness impaired operational efficiency as badly as a drink too many.
"We'll sleep on the plane," Froelich said. "We'll tell the pilot to fly slow."
Bannon was a guy of about forty. He was in a tweed sport coat and gray flannels and looked bluff and Irish and was tall and heavy. He had a red complexion that the winter morning hadn't helped. But he was polite and cheerful and he had supplied the doughnuts and the coffee himself. Two different stores, each chosen for its respective quality. He had been well received. Twenty bucks' worth of food and drink had broken a lot of interagency ice.
"No secrets either way," he said. "That's what we're proposing. And no blame anywhere. But no bullshit, either. I think we got to face the fact that the Nendick woman is dead. We'll look for her like she wasn't, but we shouldn't fool ourselves. So we've got three down already. Some evidence, but not a lot. We're guessing Nendick has met with these guys, and we're assuming they've certainly been to his house, if only to grab up his wife. So that's a crime scene, and we're going over it today, and we'll share what we get. Nendick will help us if he ever wakes up. But assuming he won't anytime soon, we'll go at it from three different directions. First, the message stuff that went down here in D.C. Second, the scene in Minnesota. Third, the scene in Colorado."
"Are your people in charge out there?" Froelich asked.
"Both places," Bannon said. "Our ballistics people figure the Colorado weapon for a Heckler and Koch submachine gun called the MP5."
"We already concluded that," Neagley said. "And it was probably silenced, which makes it the MP5SD6."
Bannon nodded. "You're one of the ex-military, right? In which case you've seen MP5s before. As I have. They're military and paramilitary weapons. Police and federal SWAT teams use them."
Then he went quiet and looked around the assembled faces, like there was more to his point than he had actually articulated.
"What about Minnesota?" Neagley asked.
"We found the bullet," Bannon said. "We swept the farmyard with a metal detector. It was buried about nine inches deep in the mud. Consistent with a shot from a small wooded hillside about a hundred and twenty yards away to the north. Maybe eighty feet of elevation."
"What was the bullet?" Reacher asked.
"NATO 7.62 millimeter," Bannon said.
Reacher nodded. "You test it?"
"For what?"
"Burn."
Bannon nodded. "Low power, weak charge."
"Subsonic ammunition," Reacher said. "In that caliber it has to be a Vaime Mk2 silenced sniper rifle."
"Which is also a police and paramilitary weapon," Bannon said. "Often supplied to antiterrorist units."
He looked around the room again, like he was inviting a comment. Nobody made one. So he pitched it himself.
"You know what?" he said.
"What?"
"Put a list of who buys Heckler amp; Koch MP5s in America side to side with a list of who buys Vaime Mk2s, and you see only one official purchaser on both lists."
"Who?"
"The United States Secret Service."
The room went quiet. Nobody spoke. There was a knock at the door. The duty officer. He stood there, framed in the doorway.
"Mail just arrived," he said. "Something you need to see."
They laid it on the conference room table. It was a familiar brown envelope, gummed flap, metal closure. A computer-printed self-adhesive address label. Brook Armstrong, United States Senate, Washington D.C. Clear black-on-white Times New Roman lettering. Bannon opened his briefcase and took out a pair of white cotton gloves. Pulled them on, right hand, left hand. Tightened them over his fingers.
"Got these from the lab," he said. "Special circumstances. We don't want to use latex. Don't want to confuse the talcum traces."
The gloves were clumsy. He had to slide the envelope to the edge of the table to pick it up. He held it with one hand and looked for something to open it with. Reacher took his ceramic knife out of his pocket and snapped it open. Offered it handle-first. Bannon took it and eased the tip of the blade under the corner of the flap. Moved the envelope backward and the knife forward. The blade cut the paper like it was cutting air. He handed the knife back to Reacher and pressed on the sides of the envelope so it made a mouth. Glanced inside. Turned the envelope over and tipped something out.
It was a single sheet of letter-size paper. Heavyweight white stock. It landed and skidded an inch on the polished wood and settled flat. It had a question printed over two lines, centered between the margins, a little higher than halfway up the sheet. Five words, in the familiar severe typeface: Did you like the demonstration? The last word was the only word on the second line. That isolation gave it some kind of extra emphasis.
Bannon turned the envelope over and checked the postmark.
"Vegas again," he said. "Saturday. They're real confident, aren't they? They're asking if he liked the demonstration three days before they staged it."
"We have to move out now," Froelich said. "Lift-off at ten. I want Reacher and Neagley with me. They've been there before. They know the ground."
Stuyvesant raised his hand. A vague gesture. Either OK or whatever or don't bother me, Reacher couldn't tell.
"I want twice-daily meetings," Bannon said. "In here, seven every morning and maybe ten at night?"
"If we're in town," Froelich said. She headed for the door. Reacher and Neagley followed her out of the room. Reacher caught her and nudged her elbow and steered her left instead of right, down the corridor toward her office.
"Do the database search," he whispered.
She glanced at her watch. "It's way too slow."
"So start it now and let it compile all day."
"Won't Bannon do it?"
"Probably. But double-checking never hurt anybody."
She paused. Then she turned and headed for the interior of the floor. Lit up her office and turned on her computer. The NCIC database had a complex search protocol. She entered her password and clicked the cursor into the box and typed thumbprint.
"Be more specific," Reacher said. "That's going to give you ten zillion plain-vanilla fingerprint cases."
She tabbed backward and typed thumbprint+document+ letter+signature.
"OK?" she said.
He shrugged. "I was born before these things were invented."
"It's a start," Neagley said. "We can refine it later if we need to."
So Froelich clicked on search and the hard disk chattered and the inquiry box disappeared from the screen.
"Let's go," she said.
Moving a threatened Vice President-elect from the District of Columbia to the great state of North Dakota was a complicated undertaking. It required eight separate Secret Service vehicles, four police cars, a total of twenty agents, and an airplane. Staging the local political rally itself required twelve agents, forty local police officers, four State Police vehicles, and two local canine units. Froelich spent a total of four hours on the radio in order to coordinate the whole operation.
She left her own Suburban in the garage and used a stretched Town Car with a driver so she could be free to concentrate on giving orders. Reacher and Neagley sat with her in the back and they drove out to Georgetown and parked near Armstrong's house. Thirty minutes later they were joined by the gun car and two Suburbans. Fifteen minutes after that, an armored Cadillac stretch showed up and parked with its passenger door tight against the tent. Then two Metro cruisers sealed the street, top and bottom. Their light bars were flashing. All vehicles were using full headlights. The sky was dark gray and a light rain was falling. Everybody kept their engines idling to power their heaters and exhaust fumes were drifting and pooling near the curbs.
They waited. Froelich talked to the personal detail in the house and the Air Force ground crew at Andrews. She talked to the cops in their cars. She listened to traffic reports from a radio news helicopter. The city was jammed because of the weather. The Metro traffic division was recommending a long loop right around the Beltway. Andrews reported that the mechanics had signed off on the plane and the pilots were aboard. The personal detail reported that Armstrong had finished his morning coffee.
"Move him," she said.
The transfer inside the tent was invisible, but she heard it happen in her earpiece. The limo moved away from the curb and a Suburban jumped ahead of it and formed up behind the lead cop. The gun car came next, then Froelich's stretch, then the second Suburban, then the trail cop. The convoy moved out and straight up Wisconsin Avenue, through Bethesda, traveling directly away from Andrews. But then it turned right and swung onto the Beltway and settled in for a fast clockwise loop. By then Froelich was patched through to Bismarck and was checking the arrival arrangements. Local ETA was one o'clock and she wanted plans in place so she could sleep on the flight.
The convoy used the north gate into Andrews and swept right onto the tarmac. Armstrong's limo stopped with its passenger door twenty feet from the bottom of the steps up to the plane. The plane was a Gulfstream twinjet painted in the Air Force's ceremonial blue United States of America livery. Its engines were whining loudly and blowing rain across the ground in thin waves. The Suburbans spilled agents and Armstrong slid out of his limo and ran the twenty feet through the drizzle. His personal detail followed, and then Froelich and Neagley and Reacher. A waiting press van contributed two reporters. A second three-man team of agents brought up the rear. Ground crew wheeled the stairs away and a steward closed the airplane door.
Inside it was nothing like the Air Force One Reacher had seen in the movies. It was more like the kind of bus a small-time rock band would ride in, a plain little vehicle customized with twelve better-than-stock seats. Eight of them were arranged in two groups of four with tables between each facing pair, and there were four facing ahead in a row straight across the front. The seats were leather and the tables were wood, but they looked out of place in the utilitarian fuselage. There was clearly a pecking order about who sat where. People crowded the aisle until Armstrong chose his place. He went for a backward-facing window seat in the port-side foursome. The two reporters sat down opposite. Maybe they had arranged an interview to kill the downtime. Froelich and the personal detail took the other foursome. The backup agents and Neagley took the front row. Reacher was left with no choice. The one seat that remained put him directly across the aisle from Froelich, but it also put him right next to Armstrong.
He stuffed his coat into the overhead bin and slid into the seat. Armstrong glanced at him like he was already an old friend. The reporters checked him out. He could feel their inquiring gaze. They were looking at his suit. He could see them thinking: too upmarket for an agent. So who is this guy? An aide? An appointee? He buckled his seat belt like sitting next to Vice Presidents-elect was something he did every four years, regular as clockwork. Armstrong did nothing to disabuse his audience. Just sat there, poised, waiting for the first question.
The engine noise built and the plane moved out to the runway. By the time it took off and leveled out almost everybody except those at Reacher's table was fast asleep. They all just shut down like professionals do when they're faced with a window between periods of intense activity. Froelich was accustomed to sleeping on planes. That was clear. Her head was tucked down on her shoulder and her arms were folded neatly in her lap. She looked good. The three agents around her sprawled a little less decorously. They were big guys. Wide necks, broad shoulders, thick wrists. One of them had his foot shoved out in the aisle. It looked to be about size fourteen. He assumed Neagley was asleep behind him. She could sleep anywhere. He had once seen her sleep in a tree, on a long stakeout. He found the button and laid his chair back a fraction and got comfortable. But then the reporters started talking. To Armstrong, but about him.
"Can we get a name, sir, for the record?" one of them said.
Armstrong shook his head.
"I'm afraid identities need to remain confidential at this point," he said.
"But we can assume we're still in the national security arena here?"
Armstrong smiled. Almost winked.
"I can't stop you assuming things," he said.
The reporters wrote something down. Started a conversation about foreign relations, with heavy emphasis on military resources and spending. Reacher ignored it all and tried to drift off. Came around again when he heard a repeated question and felt eyes on him. One of the reporters was looking in his direction.
"But you do still support the doctrine of overwhelming force?" the other guy was asking Armstrong.
Armstrong glanced at Reacher. "Would you wish to comment on that?"
Reacher yawned. "Yes, I still support overwhelming force. That's for sure. I support it big time. Always have, believe me."
The reporters both wrote it down. Armstrong nodded wisely. Reacher laid his chair back a little more and went to sleep.
He woke up on the descent into Bismarck. Everybody around him was already awake. Froelich was talking quietly to her agents, giving them their standard operational instructions. Neagley was listening along with the three guys in her row. He glanced out Armstrong's window and saw brilliant blue sky and no clouds. The earth was tan and dormant, ten thousand feet below. He could see the Missouri River winding north to south through an endless sequence of bright blue lakes. He could see the narrow ribbon of I-94 running east to west. The brown urban smudge of Bismarck where they met.
"We're leaving the perimeter to the local cops," Froelich was saying. "We've got forty of them on duty, maybe more. Plus state troopers in cars. Our job is to stick close together. We'll be in and out quick. We're arriving after the event has started and we're leaving before it finishes."
"Leave them wanting more," Armstrong said, to nobody in particular.
"Works in show business," one of the reporters said. The plane yawed and tilted and settled into a long shallow glide path. Seat backs came upright and belts were ratcheted tight. The reporters stowed their notebooks. They were staying on the plane. No attraction in open-air local politics for important foreign-relations journalists. Froelich glanced across at Reacher and smiled. But there was worry in her eyes.
The plane put down gently and taxied over to a corner of the tarmac where a five-car motorcade waited. There was a State Police cruiser at each end and three identical stretched Town Cars sandwiched between. A small knot of ground crew standing by with a rolling staircase. Armstrong traveled with his detail in the center limo. The backup crew took the one behind it. Froelich and Reacher and Neagley took the one in front. The air was freezing, but the sky was bright. The sun was blinding.
"You'll be freelancing," Froelich said. "Wherever you feel you need to be."
There was no traffic. It felt like empty country. There was a short fast trip over smooth concrete roads and suddenly Reacher saw the familiar church tower in the distance, and the low surrounding huddle of houses. There were cars parked solid along the side of the approach road all the way up to a State Police roadblock a hundred yards from the community center entrance. The motorcade eased past it and headed for the parking lot. The fences were decorated with bunting and there was a large crowd already assembled, maybe three hundred people. The church tower loomed over all of them, tall and square and solid and blinding white in the winter sun.
"I hope this time they checked every inch of it," Froelich said.
The five cars swept onto the gravel and crunched to a stop. The backup agents were out first. They fanned out in front of Armstrong's car, checking the faces in the crowd, waiting until Froelich heard the all-clear from the local police commander on her radio. She got it and instantly relayed it to the backup leader. He acknowledged immediately and stepped to Armstrong's door and opened it ceremoniously. Reacher was impressed. It was like a ballet. Five seconds, serene, dignified, unhurried, no apparent hesitation at all, but there had already been three-way radio communication and visual confirmation of security. This was a slick operation.
Armstrong stepped out of his car into the cold. He was already smiling a perfect local-boy-embarrassed-by-all-the-fuss smile and stretching out his hand to greet his successor at the head of the reception line. He was bareheaded. His personal detail moved in so close they were almost jostling him. The backup agents got close, too, maneuvering themselves so they kept the tallest two of the three between Armstrong and the church. Their faces were completely expressionless. Their coats were open and their eyes were always moving.
"That damn church," Froelich said. "It's like a shooting gallery."
"We should go check it again," Reacher said. "Ourselves, just to be sure. Have him circulate counterclockwise until we do."
"That takes him nearer the church."
"He's safer nearer the church. Makes the downward angle too steep. There are wooden louvers up there around the bells. The field of fire starts about forty feet out from the base of the tower. Closer than that, he's in a blind spot."
Froelich raised her wrist and spoke to her lead agent. Seconds later they saw him ease Armstrong to his right, into a wide counterclockwise loop around the field. The new senator tagged along. The crowd changed direction and moved with them.
"Now find the guy with the church keys," Reacher said.
Froelich spoke to the local police captain. Listened to his response in her ear.
"The church warden will meet us there," she said. "Five minutes."
They got out of the car and walked across the gravel to the church gate. The air was very cold. Armstrong's head was visible among a sea of people. The sun was catching his hair. He was well out in the field, thirty feet from the tower. The new senator was at his side. Six agents close by. The crowd was moving with them, slowly changing its shape like an evolving creature. There were dark overcoats everywhere. Women's hats, mufflers, sunglasses. The grass was brown and dead from night frosts.
Froelich stiffened. Cupped her hand over her ear. Raised the other hand and spoke into her wrist microphone.
"Keep him close to the church," she said.
Then she dropped her hands and opened her coat. Loosened her gun in its holster.
"State cops on the far perimeter just called in," she said. "They're worried about some guy on foot."
"Where?" Reacher asked.
"In the subdivision."
"Description?"
"Didn't get one."
"How many cops on the field?"
"Forty plus, all around the edge."
"Get them facing outward. Backs to the crowd. All eyes on the near perimeter."
Froelich spoke to the police captain on the radio and issued the order. Her own eyes were everywhere.
"I got to go," she said.
Reacher turned to Neagley.
"Check the streets," he said. "All the access points we found before."
Neagley nodded and moved out toward the entrance drive. Long fast strides, halfway between walking and running.
"You found access points?" Froelich asked.
"Like a sieve."
Froelich raised her wrist. "Move now, move now. Bring him tight against the tower wall. Cover on all three sides. Stand by with the cars. Now, people."
She listened to the response. Nodded. Armstrong was coming close to the tower on the other side, maybe a hundred feet away from them, out of their line of sight.
"You go," Reacher said. "I'll check the church."
She raised her wrist.
"Now keep him there," she said. "I'm coming by."
She headed straight back toward the field without another word. Reacher was left alone at the church gate. He stepped through and headed onward toward the building itself. Waited at the door. It was a huge thing, carved oak, maybe four inches thick. It had iron bands and hinges. Big black nail heads. Above it the tower rose seventy feet vertically into the sky. There was a flag and a lightning rod and a weather vane on the top. The weather vane was not moving. The flag was limp. The air was completely still. Cold, dense air, no breeze at all. The sort of air that takes a bullet and wraps around it and holds it lovingly, straight and true.
A minute later there was the noise of shoes on the gravel and he looked back at the gate and saw the church warden approaching. He was a small man in a black surplice that reached his feet. He had a cashmere coat over it. A fur hat with earflaps tied under his chin. Thick eyeglasses in gold frames. A huge wire hoop in his hand with a huge iron key hanging off it. It was so big it looked like a prop for a comic movie about medieval jails. He held it out and Reacher took it from him.
"That's the original key," the warden said. "From 1870."
"I'll bring it back to you," Reacher said. "Go wait for me on the field."
"I can wait right here," the guy said.
"On the field," Reacher said again. "Better that way."
The guy's eyes were wide and magnified behind his glasses. He turned around and walked back the way he had come. Reacher hefted the big old key in his hand. Stepped to the door and lined it up with the hole. Put it in the lock. Turned it hard. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. He paused. Tried the handle.
The door was not locked.
It swung open six inches with a squeal from the old iron hinges. He remembered the noise. It had sounded much louder when he opened the door at five in the morning. Now it was lost in the low-level hubbub coming from three hundred people on the field.
He pushed the door all the way open. Paused again and then stepped quietly through into the gloom inside. The building was a simple wooden structure with a vaulted roof. The walls were painted a faded parchment white. The pews were worn and polished to a shine. There was stained glass in the windows. At one end there was an altar and a high lectern with steps leading up to it. Some doors to small rooms beyond. Vestries, maybe. He wasn't sure of the terminology.
He closed the door and locked it from the inside. Hid the key inside a wooden chest full of hymnals. Crept the length of the center aisle and stood still and listened. He could hear nothing. The air smelled of old wood and dusty fabrics and candle wax and cold. He crept on and checked the small rooms behind the altar. There were three of them, all small, all with bare wooden floors. All of them empty except for piles of old books and church garments.
He crept back. Through the door into the base of the tower. There was a square area with three bell ropes hanging down in the center. The ropes had yard-long faded embroidered sleeves sewn over the raw ends. The sides of the square area were defined by a steep narrow staircase that wound upward into the gloom. He stood at the bottom and listened hard. Heard nothing. Eased himself up. After three consecutive right-angle turns the stairs ended on a ledge. Then there was a wooden ladder bolted to the inside of the tower wall. It ran upward twenty feet to a trapdoor in the ceiling. The ceiling was boarded solid except for three precise nine-inch holes for the bell ropes. If anybody was up there, he could see and hear through the holes. Reacher knew that. He had heard the dogs pattering around below him, five days ago.
He paused at the foot of the ladder. Stood as quiet as possible. Took the ceramic knife out of his coat pocket and shrugged the coat and suit jacket off and left them piled on the ledge. Stepped onto the ladder. It creaked loudly under his weight. He eased upward to the next rung. The ladder creaked again.
He stopped. Took one hand away from the rung it was gripping and stared at the palm. Pepper. The pepper he had used five days ago was still on the ladder. It was smeared and smudged on the rungs, maybe by his previous descent five days ago, maybe by some new ascent undertaken today by the cops. Or by somebody else. He paused. Eased up another rung. The ladder creaked again.
He paused again. Assess and evaluate. He was on a noisy ladder eighteen feet below a trapdoor. Above the trapdoor was an uncertain situation. He was unarmed, except for a knife with a blade three and a half inches long. He took a breath. Opened the knife and held it between his teeth. Reached up and grasped the side rails of the ladder as far above his head as he could stretch. Catapulted himself upward. He made the remaining eighteen feet in three or four seconds. At the top he kept one foot and one hand on the ladder and swung his body out into open space. Stabilized himself with his fingertips spread on the ceiling above. Felt for movement.
There was none. He reached out and poked the trapdoor upward an inch and let it fall closed. Put his fingertips back on the ceiling. No movement up there. No tremor, no vibration. He waited thirty seconds. Still nothing. He swung back onto the ladder and pushed the trapdoor all the way open and swarmed up into the bell chamber.
He saw the bells, hanging mute in their cradles. Three of them, with iron wheels above, driven by the ropes. The bells were small and black and cast from iron. Nothing like the giant bronze masterpieces that grace the ancient cathedrals of Europe. They were just plain rural artifacts from plain rural history. Sunlight came through the louvers and threw bars of cold light across them. The rest of the chamber was empty. There was nothing up there. It looked exactly as he had left it.
Except it didn't.
The dust was disturbed. There were scuffs and unexplained marks on the floor. Heels and toes, knees and elbows. They weren't his from five days ago. He was sure of that. And there was a faint smell in the air, right at the edge of his consciousness. It was the smell of sweat and tension and gun oil and machined steel and new brass cartridge cases. He turned a slow circle and the smell was gone like it had never been there at all. He stood still and put his fingertips against the iron bells, willing them to give up their secret stored vibrations.
Sound came through the louvers, as well as sunlight. He could hear people clustered near the base of the tower seventy feet below. He stepped over and squinted down. The louvers were weathered wooden slats spaced apart and set into a frame at angles of maybe thirty degrees. The fringe of the crowd was visible. The bulk of it was not. He could see cops on the perimeter of the field, thirty yards apart, standing easy and facing the fences. He could see the community center building. He could see the motorcade waiting patiently in the lot, with the engines running and exhaust vapor clouding white in the cold. He could see the surrounding houses. He could see a lot of things. It was a good firing position. Limited field, but it only takes one shot.
He glanced upward. Saw another trapdoor in the bell chamber ceiling, and another ladder leading up to it. Next to the ladder there were heavy copper grounding straps coming down from the lightning rod. They were green with age. He had ignored the ceiling on his previous visit. He had experienced no desire to climb through and wait eight hours out in the cold. But for somebody looking for an unlimited field of fire on a sunny afternoon the trapdoor would be attractive. It was there for changing the flag, he guessed. The lightning rod and the weather vane might have been there since 1870, but the flag hadn't. It had added a lot of stars since 1870.
He put the knife back between his teeth and started up the new ladder. It was a twelve-foot climb. The wood creaked and gave under his weight. He made it halfway and stopped. His hands were on the side rails. His face was near the upper rungs. They were ancient and dusty. Except for random patches, where they were rubbed perfectly clean. There were two ways to climb a ladder. Either you hold the side rails, or you touch each rung with an overhand grip. He rehearsed in his mind how the grip pattern would go. There would be contact, left and right on alternate rungs. He arched his body outward and looked down. Craned his neck and looked up. He could see clean patches in that exact pattern, to the left and right on alternate rungs. Somebody had climbed the ladder. Recently. Maybe within a day or two. Maybe within an hour or two. Maybe the church warden, hanging a laundered flag. Maybe not.
He hung motionless. Chatter from the crowd drifted up to him through the louvers. He was up above the bells. The maker had soldered his initials on top of each of them where the iron narrowed at the neck. AHB was written there three times over in shaky lines of melted tin.
He eased upward. Placed his fingertips as before on the wood above his head. But these were thick balks of timber, probably faced with lead on the outside surface. They were as solid as stone. A guy could be dancing a jig up above and he would never feel it. He eased up two more rungs. Hunched his shoulders and stepped up another rung until he was crouched at the top of the ladder with the trapdoor pressing down on his back. He knew it would be heavy. It was probably as thick as the roof itself and weatherproofed with lead. Some kind of a lip arrangement on it to stop rain leaking through. He twisted around to look at the hinges. They were iron. A little rusted. Maybe a little stiff.
He took a long wet breath around the knife handle and snapped his legs straight and exploded up through the trap. It crashed back and he scrambled up and out onto the roof into the blinding daylight. Grabbed the knife from his mouth and rolled away. His face grazed the roof. It was lead, pitted and dulled and grayed by more than a hundred and thirty winters. He snapped upright and spun a full circle on his knees.
There was nobody up there.
It was like a shallow lead-lined box, open to the sky at the top. The walls were about three feet high. The floor was raised in the center to anchor the flagpole and the weather vane post and the lightning rod. Up close, they were huge. The lead was applied in sheets, carefully beaten and soldered at the joints. There were shaped funnels in the corners to drain rainwater and snowmelt away.
He crawled on his hands and knees to the edge. He didn't want to stand. He guessed the agents below were trained to watch for random movement taking place in high vantage points above them. He eased his head over the parapet. Shivered in the frigid air. He saw Armstrong directly below. The new senator was standing next to him. The six agents were surrounding them in a perfect circle. Then he saw movement in the corner of his eye. A hundred yards away across the field cops were running. They were gathering at a point near the back corner of the enclosure. They were glancing down at something and spinning away and hunching into their radio microphones. He looked directly down again and saw Froelich forcing her way out through the crowd. She had her index finger pressed onto her earpiece. She was moving fast. Heading toward the cops.
He crawled back again and clambered down through the trapdoor. Slammed it shut above his head and climbed down the ladder. Through the next trapdoor and down the next ladder. He picked up his coat and jacket and ran down the narrow winding stairs. Past the embroidered ends of the bell ropes and through to the main body of the church.
The oak door was standing wide open.
The lid of the hymnal box was up and the key was in the door lock from the inside. He stepped over and stood a yard inside the building. Waited. Listened. Sprinted out into the cold and stopped again six feet down the path. Spun around. There was nobody waiting to ambush him. Nobody there at all. The area was quiet and deserted. He could hear noise far away on the field. He shrugged into his coat and headed toward it. Saw a man running toward him across the gravel, fast and urgent. He was wearing a long brown coat, some kind of heavy twill, halfway between a raincoat and an overcoat. It was flapping open behind him. Tweed jacket and flannel pants under it. Stout shoes. He had his hand raised like a greeting. A gold badge palmed in the hand. Some kind of a Bismarck detective. Maybe the police captain himself.
"Is the tower secure?" he shouted from twenty feet away.
"It's empty," Reacher shouted back. "What's going on?"
The cop stopped where he was and bent over, panting, his hands on his knees.
"Don't know yet," he called. "Some big commotion."
Then he stared beyond Reacher's shoulder at the church.
"Damn it, you should have locked the door," he called. "Can't leave the damn thing open."
He raced on toward the church. Reacher ran the other way, to the field. Met Neagley running in from the entrance road.
"What?" she shouted.
"It's going down," he shouted back.
They ran on together. Through the gate and into the field. Froelich was moving fast toward the cars. They changed direction and cut her off.
"Rifle hidden at the base of the fence," she said.
"Someone's been in the church," Reacher said. He was out of breath. "In the tower. Probably right on the roof. Probably still around someplace."
Froelich looked straight at him and stood completely still for a second. Then she raised her hand and spoke into the microphone on her wrist.
"Stand by to abort," she said. "Emergency extraction on my count of three."
Her voice was very calm.
"Stand by all vehicles. Main car and gun car to target on my count of three."
She paused a single beat.
"One, two, three, abort now, abort now."
Two things happened simultaneously. First there was a roar of engines from the motorcade and it split apart like a starburst. The lead cop car jumped forward and the rear cop car slewed backward and the first two stretch limos hauled through a tight turn and accelerated across the gravel and straight out onto the field. At the same time the personal detail jumped all over Armstrong and literally buried him from view. One agent took the lead and the other two took an elbow each and the backup three piled on and threw their arms up over Armstrong's head from behind and drove him bodily forward through the crowd. It was like a football maneuver, full of speed and power. The crowd scattered in panic as the cars bumped across the grass one way and the agents rushed the other way to meet them. The cars skidded to a stop and the personal detail pushed Armstrong straight into the first and the backup crew piled into the second.
The lead cop had his lights and siren started already and was crawling forward down the exit road. The two loaded limos fishtailed on the grass and turned around on the field and headed back to the pavement. They rolled up straight behind the cop car and then all three vehicles accelerated hard and headed out while the third stretch headed straight for Froelich.
"We can get these guys," Reacher said to her. "They're right here, right now."
She didn't reply. Just grabbed him and Neagley by the arms and pulled them into the limo with her. It roared after the lead vehicles. The second cop fell in directly behind it and just twenty short seconds after the initial abort command the whole motorcade had formed up in a tight line and was screaming away from the scene at seventy miles an hour with every light flashing and every siren blaring.
Froelich slumped back in her seat.
"See?" she said. "We're not proactive. Something happens, we run away."
