by Lee Child
Chapter 13
Every city has a cusp, where the good part of town turns bad. Washington D. C. was no different. The border between desirable and undesirable ran in a ragged irregular loop, bulging outward here and there to accommodate reclaimed blocks, swooping inward in other areas to claim inroads of its own. It was pierced in some places by gentrified corridors. Elsewhere it worked gradually, shading imperceptibly over hundreds of yards down streets where you could buy thirty different blends of tea at one end and cash checks at the other for thirty percent of the proceeds.
The shelter selected for Armstrong's appearance was halfway into the no-man's-land north of Union Station. To the east were train tracks and switching yards. To the west was a highway running underground in a tunnel. All around were decayed buildings. Some of them were warehouses and some of them were apartments. Some of them were abandoned, some of them were not. The shelter itself was exactly what Froelich had described. It was a long low one-story building made of brick. It had large metal-framed windows evenly spaced in the walls. It had a yard next to it twice its own size. The yard was closed in on three sides by high brick walls. It was impossible to decipher the building's original purpose. Maybe it had been a stable, back when Union Station's freight had been hauled away by horses. Maybe later it was updated with new windows and used as a trucking depot after the horses faded away. Maybe it had served time as an office. It was impossible to tell.
It housed fifty homeless people every night. They were woken early every morning and given breakfast and turned out on the streets. Then the fifty cots were stacked and stored and the floor was washed and the air was misted with disinfectant. Metal tables and chairs were carried in and placed where the beds had been. Lunch was available every day, and dinner, and then the reverse conversion to a dormitory took place at nine every evening.
But this day was different. Thanksgiving Day was always different, and this year it was more different than usual. Wake-up call happened a little earlier and breakfast was served a little faster. The overnighters were shown the door a full half hour before normal, which was a double blow to them because cities are notoriously quiet on Thanksgiving Day and panhandling receipts are dismal. The floor was washed more thoroughly than usual and more disinfectant was sprayed into the air. The tables were positioned more exactly, the chairs were lined up more precisely, more volunteers were on hand, and all of them were wearing fresh white sweatshirts with the benefactor's name brightly printed in red.
The first Secret Service agents to arrive were the line-of-sight team. They had a large-scale city surveyor's map and a telescopic sight removed from a sniper rifle. One agent walked through every step that Armstrong was scheduled to take. Every separate pace he would stop and turn around and squint through the scope and call out every window and every rooftop he could see. Because if he could see a rooftop or a window, a potential marksman on that rooftop or in that window could see him. The agent with the map would identify the building concerned and check the scale and calculate the range. Anything under seven hundred feet he marked in black.
But it was a good location. The only available sniper nests were on the roofs of the abandoned five-story warehouses opposite. The guy with the map finished up with a straight line of just five black crosses, nothing more. He wrote checked with scope, clear daylight, 0845 hrs, all suspect locations recorded across the bottom of the map and signed his name and added the date. The agent with the scope countersigned and the map was rolled and stored in the back of a department Suburban, awaiting Froelich's arrival.
Next on scene was a convoy of police vans with five separate canine units in them. One unit cleared the shelter. Two more entered the warehouses. The last two were explosives hunters who checked the surrounding streets in all directions on a four-hundred-yard radius. Beyond four hundred yards, the maze of streets meant there were too many potential access routes to check, and therefore too many to bomb with any realistic chance of success. As soon as a building or a street was pronounced safe a D. C. patrolman took up station on foot. The sky was still clear and the sun was still out. It gave an illusion of warmth. It kept grousing to a minimum.
By nine thirty the shelter was the epicenter of a quarter of a square mile of secure territory. D. C. cops held the perimeter on foot and in cars and there were better than fifty more loose in the interior. They made up the majority of the local population. The city was still quiet. Some of the shelter inhabitants were hanging around. There was nowhere productive to go, and they knew from experience that to be early in the lunch line was better than late. Politicians didn't understand portion control, and pickings could be getting slim after the first thirty minutes.
Froelich arrived at ten o'clock exactly, driving her Suburban, Reacher and Neagley riding with her. Stuyvesant was right behind in a second Suburban. Behind him were four more trucks carrying five department sharpshooters and fifteen general-duty agents. Froelich parked on the sidewalk tight against the base of the warehouse wall. Normally she might have just blocked the street beyond the shelter entrance, but she didn't want to reveal the direction of Armstrong's intended approach to onlookers. He was actually scheduled to come in from the south, but that information and ten minutes with a map could predict his route all the way from Georgetown.
She assembled her people in the shelter's yard and sent the sharpshooters to secure the warehouse roofs. They would be up there three hours before the event started, but that was normal. Generally they were the first to arrive and the last to leave. Stuyvesant pulled Reacher aside and asked him to go up there with them.
"Then come find me," he said. "I want a firsthand report about how bad it is. "
So Reacher walked across the street with an agent called Crosetti and they ducked past a cop into a damp hallway full of trash and rat droppings. There were stairs winding up through a central shaft. Crosetti was in a Kevlar vest and was carrying a rifle in a hard case. But he was a fit guy. He was half a flight ahead of Reacher at the top.
The stairs came out inside a rooftop hutch. There was a wooden door that opened outward into the sunlight. The roof was flat. It was made of asphalt. There were pigeon corpses here and there. There were dirty skylights made of wired glass and small metal turrets on top of ventilation pipes. The roof was lipped with a low wall, set on top with eroded coping stones. Crosetti walked to the left edge, and then the right. Made visual contact with his colleagues on either side. Then he walked to the front to check the view. Reacher was already there.
The view was good and bad. Good in the conventional sense because the sun was shining and they were five floors up in a low-built part of town. Bad because the shelter's yard was right there underneath them. It was like looking down into a shoe box from a distance of three feet up and three feet away. The back wall where Armstrong would be standing was dead ahead. It was made out of old brick and looked like the execution wall in some foreign prison. Hitting him would be easier than shooting a fish in a barrel.
"What's the range?" Reacher asked.
"Your guess?" Crosetti said.
Reacher put his knees against the lip of the roof and glanced out and down.
"Ninety yards?" he said.
Crosetti unsnapped a pocket in his vest and took out a range finder.
"Laser," he said. He switched it on and lined it up.
"Ninety-two to the wall," he said. "Ninety-one to his head. That was a pretty good guess. "
"Windage?"
"Slight thermal coming up off the concrete down there," Crosetti said. "Nothing else, probably. No big deal. "
"Practically like standing right next to him," Reacher said.
"Don't worry," Crosetti said. "As long as I'm up here nobody else can be. That's the job today. We're sentries, not shooters. "
"Where are you going to be?" Reacher asked.
Crosetti glanced all around his little piece of real estate and pointed.
"Over there, I guess," he said. "Tight in the
far corner. I'll face parallel with the front wall. Slight turn to my left and I'm covering the yard. Slight turn to my right, I'm covering the head of the stairwell. "
"Good plan," Reacher said. "You need anything?"
Crosetti shook his head.
"OK," Reacher said. "I'll leave you to it. Try to stay awake. "
Crosetti smiled. "I usually do. "
"Good," Reacher said. "I like that in a sentry. "
He went back down five flights through the darkness and stepped out into the sun. Walked across the street and glanced up. Saw Crosetti nestled comfortably in the angle of the corner. His head and his knees were visible. So was his rifle barrel. It was jutting upward against the bright sky at a relaxed forty-five degrees. He waved. Crosetti waved back. He walked on and found Stuyvesant in the yard. He was hard to miss, given the color of his sweater and the brightness of the daylight.
"It's OK up there," Reacher said. "Hell of a firing platform, but as long as your guys hold it we're safe enough. "
Stuyvesant nodded and turned around and scanned upward. All five warehouse roofs were visible from the yard. All five were occupied by sharpshooters. Five silhouetted heads, five silhouetted rifle barrels.
"Froelich is looking for you," Stuyvesant said.
Nearer the building, staff and agents were hauling long trestle tables into place. The idea was to form a barrier with them. The right-hand end would be hard against the shelter's wall. The left-hand end would be three feet from the yard wall opposite. There would be a pen six feet deep behind the line of tables. Armstrong and his wife would be in the pen with four agents. Directly behind them would be the execution wall. Up close it didn't look so bad. The old bricks looked warmed by the sun. Rustic, even friendly. He turned his back on them and looked up at the warehouse roofs. Crosetti waved again. I'm still awake, the wave said.
"Reacher," Froelich called.
He turned around and found her walking out of the shelter toward him. She was carrying a clipboard thick with paper. She was up on her toes, busy, in charge, in command. She looked magnificent. The black clothes emphasized her litheness and made her eyes blaze with blue. Dozens of agents and scores of cops swirled all around her, every one of them under her personal control.
"We're doing fine here," she said. "So I want you to take a stroll. Just check around. Neagley's already out there. You know what to look for. "
"Feels good, doesn't it?" he asked.
"What?"
"Doing something really well," he said. "Taking charge. "
"Think I'm doing well?"
"You're the best," he said. "This is tremendous. Armstrong's a lucky man. "
"I hope," she said.
"Believe it," he said.
She smiled, quickly and shyly, and moved on, leafing through her paperwork. He turned the other way and walked back out to the street. Turned right and planned a route in his head that would keep him on a block-and-a-half radius.
There were cops on the corner and the beginnings of a ragged crowd of people waiting for the free lunch. There were two television trucks setting up fifty yards down the street from the shelter. Hydraulic masts were unfolding themselves and satellite dishes were rotating. Technicians were unrolling cable and shouldering cameras. He saw Bannon with six men and a woman he guessed were the FBI task force. They had just arrived. Bannon had a map unrolled on the hood of his car and his agents were clustered around looking at it. Reacher waved to Bannon and turned left and passed the end of an alley that led down behind the warehouses. He could hear a train on the tracks ahead of him. The mouth of the alley was manned by a D. C. cop, facing outward, standing easy. There was a police cruiser parked nearby. Another cop in it. Cops everywhere. The overtime bill was going to be something to see.
There were broken-down stores here and there, but they were all closed for the holiday. Some of the storefronts were churches, also closed. There were auto body shops nearer the railroad tracks, all shuttered and still. There was a pawnshop with a very old guy outside washing the windows. He was the only thing moving on the street. His store was tall and narrow and had concertina barriers inside the glass. The display space was crammed with junk of every description. There were clocks, coats, musical instruments, alarm radios, hats, record players, car stereos, binoculars, strings of Christmas lights. There was writing on the windows, offering to buy just about any article ever manufactured. If it didn't grow in the ground or move by itself, this guy would give you money for it. He also offered services. He would cash checks, appraise jewelry, repair watches. There was a tray of watches on view. They were mostly old-fashioned wind-up items, with bulging crystals and big square luminescent figures and sculpted hands. Reacher glanced again at the sign: Watches Repaired. Then he glanced again at the old guy. He was up to his elbows in soap suds.
"You fix watches?" he asked.
"What have you got?" the old guy said. He had an accent. Russian, probably.
"A question," Reacher said.
"I thought you had a watch to fix. That was my business, originally. Before quartz. "
"My watch is fine," Reacher said. "Sorry. "
He pulled back his cuff to check the time. Quarter past eleven.
"Let me see that," the old guy said.
Reacher extended his wrist.
"Bulova," the old guy said. "American military issue before the Gulf War. A good watch. You buy it from a soldier?"
"No, I was a soldier. "
The old guy nodded. "So was I. In the Red Army. What's the question?"
"You ever heard of squalene?"
"It's a lubricant. "
"You use it?"
"Time to time. I don't fix so many watches now. Not since quartz. "
"Where do you get it?"
"Are you kidding?"
"No," Reacher said. "I'm asking a question. "
"You want to know where I get my squalene?"
"That's what questions are for. They seek to elicit information. "
The old guy smiled. "I carry it around with me. "
"Where?"
"You're looking at it. "
"Am I?"
The old guy nodded. "And I'm looking at yours. "
"My what?"
"Your supply of squalene. "
"I haven't got any squalene," Reacher said. "It comes from sharks' livers. Long time since I was next to a shark. "
The old man shook his head. "You see, the Soviet system was very frequently criticized, and believe me I've always been happy to tell the truth about it. But at least we had education. Especially in the natural sciences. "
"C-thirty H-fifty," Reacher said. "It's an acyclic hydrocarbon. Which when hydrogenated becomes squalane with an a. "
"You understand any of that?"
"No," Reacher said. "Not really. "
"Squalene is an oil," the old guy said. "It occurs naturally in only two places in the known biosphere. One is inside a shark's liver. The other is as a sebaceous product on the skin around the human nose. "
Reacher touched his nose. "Same stuff? Sharks' livers and people's noses?"
The old guy nodded. "Identical molecular structure. So if I need squalene to lubricate a watch, I just dab some off on my fingertip. Like this. "
He wiped his wet hand on his pant leg and extended a finger and rubbed it down where his nose joined his face. Then he held up the fingertip for inspection.
"Put that on the gear wheel and you're OK," he said.
"I see," Reacher said.
"You want to sell the Bulova?"
Reacher shook his head.
"Sentimental value," he said.
"From the Army?" the old guy said. "You're nekulturniy. "
He turned back to his task and Reacher walked on.
"Happy Thanksgiving," Reacher called. There was no reply. He met Neagley a block from the shelter. She was walking in from the opposite direction. She turned around a
nd walked back with him, keeping her customary distance from his shoulder.
"Beautiful day," she said. "Isn't it?"
"I don't know," he said.
"How would you do it?"
"I wouldn't," he said. "Not here. Not in Washington D. C. This is their backyard. I'd wait for a better chance someplace else. "
"Me too," she said. "But they missed in Bismarck. Wall Street in ten days is no good to them. Then they're deep into December, and the next thing is more holidays and then the inauguration. So they're running out of opportunities. And we know they're right here in town. "
Reacher said nothing. They walked past Bannon. He was sitting in his car.
They arrived back at the shelter at noon exactly. Stuyvesant was standing near the entrance. He nodded a cautious greeting. Inside the yard everything was ready. The serving tables were lined up. They were draped with pure white cloths that hung down to the floor. They were loaded with food warmers laid out in a line. There were ladles and long-handled spoons neatly arrayed. The kitchen window opened directly into the pen behind the tables. The shelter hall itself was set up for dining. There were police sawhorses arranged so that the crowd would be funneled down the left edge of the yard. Then there was a right turn across the face of the serving area. Then another right along the wall of the shelter and in through the door. Froelich was detailing positions for each of the general-duty agents. Four would be at the entrance to the yard. Six would line the approach to the serving area. One would secure each end of the pen, from the outside. Three would patrol the exit line.
"OK, listen up," Froelich called. "Remember, it's very easy to look a little like a homeless person, but very hard to look exactly like a homeless person. Watch their feet. Are their shoes right? Look at their hands. We want to see gloves, or ingrained dirt. Look at their faces. They need to be lean. Hollow cheeks. We want to see dirty hair. Hair that hasn't been washed for a month or a year. We want to see clothes that are molded to the body. Any questions?"
Nobody spoke.
"Any doubt at all, act first and think later," Froelich called. "I'm going to be serving behind the tables with the Armstrongs and the personal detail. We're depending on you not to send us anybody you don't like, OK?"
She checked her watch.
"Five past twelve," she said. "Fifty-five minutes to go. "
Reacher squeezed through at the left-hand end of the serving tables and stood in the pen. Behind him was a wall. To his right was a wall. To his left were the shelter windows. Ahead to his right was the approach line. Any individual would pass four agents at the yard entrance and six more as he shuffled along. Ten suspicious pairs of eyes before anybody got face-to-face with Armstrong himself. Ahead to the left was the exit line. Three agents funneling people into the hall. He raised his eyes. Dead ahead were the warehouses. Five sentries on five roofs. Crosetti waved. He waved back.
"OK?" Froelich asked.
She was standing across the serving table from him. He smiled.
"Dark or light?" he asked.
"We'll eat later," she said. "I want you and Neagley freelance in the yard. Stay near the exit line, so you get a wide view. "
"OK," he said.
"Still think I'm doing well?"
He pointed left.
"I don't like those windows," he said. "Suppose somebody bides his time all the way through the line, keeps his head down, behaves himself, picks up his food, makes it inside, sits down, and then pulls a gun and fires back through the window?"
She nodded.
"Already thought about it," she said. "I'm bringing three cops in from the perimeter. Putting one in each window, standing up, facing the room. "
"That should do it," he said. "Great job. "
"And we're going to be wearing vests," she said. "Everybody in the pen. The Armstrongs, too. "
She checked her watch again.
"Forty-five minutes," she said. "Walk with me. "
They walked out of the yard and across the street to where she had parked her Suburban. It was in a deep shadow made by the warehouse wall. She unlocked the tailgate and swung it open. The shadow and the tinted glass made it dark inside. The load bay was neatly packed with equipment. But the backseat was empty.
"We could get in," Reacher said. "You know, fool around a little. "
"We could not. "
"You said it was fun, fooling around at work. "
"I meant the office. "
"Is that an invitation?"
She paused. Straightened up. Smiled.
"OK," she said. "Why not? I might like that. "
Then she smiled wider.
"OK," she said again. "Soon as Armstrong is secure, we'll go do it on Stuyvesant's desk. As a celebration. "
She leaned in and grabbed her vest and stretched up and kissed him on the cheek. Then she ducked away and headed back. He slammed the tailgate and she locked it from forty feet away with the remote.
With thirty minutes to go she put her vest on under her jacket and ran a radio check. She told the police commander he could start marshaling the crowd near the entrance. Told the media they could come into the yard and start the tapes rolling. With fifteen minutes to go she announced that the Armstrongs were on their way.
"Get the food out," she called.
The kitchen crew swarmed into the pen and the cooks passed pans of food out through the kitchen window. Reacher leaned on the shelter wall at the end of the line of serving tables, on the public side. He put his back flat on the bricks between the kitchen window and the first hall window. He would be looking straight down the food line. A half-turn to his left, he would be looking at the approach line. A half-turn to his right, he would be looking into the pen. People would have to skirt around him with their loaded plates. He wanted a close-up view. Neagley stood six feet away, in the body of the yard, in the angle the sawhorses made. Froelich paced near her, nervous, thinking through the last-minute checks for the hundredth time.
"Arrival imminent," she said into her wrist microphone. "Driver says they're two blocks away. You guys on the roof see them yet?"
She listened to her earpiece and then spoke again.
"Two blocks away," she repeated.
The kitchen crew finished loading the food warmers and disappeared. Reacher couldn't see because of the brick walls but he heard the motorcade. Several powerful engines, wide tires on the pavement, approaching fast, slowing hard. A Metro cruiser pulled past the entrance, then a Suburban, then a Cadillac limo that stopped square in the gateway. An agent stepped forward and opened the door. Armstrong stepped out and turned back and offered his hand to his wife. Cameramen pressed forward. The Armstrongs stood up straight together and paused a beat by the limo's door and smiled for the lenses. Mrs. Armstrong was a tall blond woman whose genes had come all the way from Scandinavia a couple of hundred years ago. That was clear. She was wearing pressed jeans and a puffed-up goose-down jacket a size too large to accommodate her vest. Her hair was lacquered back into a frame around her face. She looked a little uncomfortable in the jeans, like she wasn't accustomed to wearing them.
Armstrong was in jeans too, but his were worn like he lived in them. He had a red plaid jacket buttoned tight. It was a little too small to conceal the shape of the vest from an expert eye. He was bareheaded, but his hair was brushed. His personal detail surrounded them and eased them into the yard. Cameras panned as they walked past. The personal agents were dressed like Froelich. Black denim, black nylon jackets zipped over vests. Two of them were wearing sunglasses. One of them was wearing a black ball cap. All of them had earpieces and bulges at their waists where their handguns were.
Froelich led them into the pen behind the serving tables. One agent took each end and stood with arms folded for nothing but crowd surveillance. The third agent and Froelich and the Armstrongs themselves took the middle to do the serving. They milled around for a second and then arranged themselves with the thir
d agent on the left, then Armstrong, then Froelich, then Armstrong's wife on the right. Armstrong picked up a ladle in one hand and a spoon in the other. Checked the cameras were on him and raised the utensils high, like weapons.
"Happy Thanksgiving, everybody," he called.
The crowd swarmed slowly through the gateway. They were a subdued bunch. They moved lethargically and didn't talk much. No excited chatter, no buzz of sound. Nothing like the hotel lobby at the donor reception. Most of them were swaddled in several heavy layers. Some of them had rope belts. They had hats and fingerless gloves and downcast faces. Each had to pass left and right and left and right through the six screening agents. The first recipient looped past the last agent and took a plastic plate from the first server and was subjected to the full brilliance of Armstrong's smile. Armstrong spooned a turkey leg onto the plate. The guy shuffled along and Froelich gave him vegetables. Armstrong's wife added the stuffing. Then the guy shuffled past Reacher and headed inside for the tables. The food smelled good and the guy smelled bad.
It continued like that for five minutes. Every time a pan of food was emptied it was replaced by a new one passed out through the kitchen window. Armstrong was smiling like he was enjoying himself. The line of homeless people shuffled forward. The cameras rolled. The only sound was the clatter of metal utensils in the serving dishes and the repeated banalities from the servers. Enjoy! Happy Thanksgiving! Thanks for coming by!
Reacher glanced at Neagley. She raised her eyebrows. He glanced up at the warehouse roofs. Glanced at Froelich, busy with her long-handled spoon. Looked at the television people. They were clearly bored. They were taping a whole hour and they knew it would be edited to eight seconds maximum with boilerplate commentary laid over it. Vice President-elect Armstrong served the traditional Thanksgiving turkey today at a homeless shelter here in Washington D. C. Cut to first-quarter football highlights.
The line was still thirty people long when it happened.
Reacher sensed a dull chalky impact nearby and something stung him on the right cheek. In the corner of his eye he saw a puff of dust around a small cratered chip on the surface of the back wall. No sound. No sound at all. A split second later his brain told him: Bullet. Silencer. He looked at the line. Nobody moving. He snapped his head to the left and up. The roof. Crosetti wasn't there. Crosetti was there. He was twenty feet out of position. He was shooting. It wasn't Crosetti.
Then he tried to defeat time and move faster than the awful slow motion of panic would allow him. He pushed off the wall and filled his lungs with air and turned toward Froelich as slowly as a man running through a swimming pool. His mouth opened and desperate words formed in his throat and he tried to shout them out. But she was already well ahead of him.
She was screaming, "G-u-u-n!"
She was spinning in slow motion. Her spoon was loose in the air, arcing up over the table, glittering in the sun, spraying food. She was on Armstrong's left. She was jumping sideways at him. Her left arm was scything up to shield him. She was jumping like a basketball player going for a hook shot. Twisting in midair. She got her right hand on his shoulder for a pivot and used the momentum of her left to turn herself around face-on to him. She drew her knees up and landed square on his upper chest. Breath punched out of him and his legs buckled and he was going down backward when the second silenced bullet hit her in the neck. There was no sound. No sound at all. Just a bright vivid backward spray of blood in the sunlight, as fine as autumn mist.
It hung there in a long conical cloud, like vapor, pink and iridescent. It stretched to a point as she fell. Her spoon came down through it, tumbling end over end, disturbing its shape. It lengthened in a long graceful curve. She went down and left her blood in the air behind her like a question mark. Reacher turned his head like it was clamped with an enormous weight and saw the slope of a shoulder far away on the roof, moving backward out of sight. He turned infinitely slowly back to the yard and saw the wet pink arrow of Froelich's blood pointing down to a place now out of sight behind the tables.
Then time restarted and a hundred things happened all at once, all at high speed, all with shattering noise. Agents smothered Armstrong's wife and hauled her to the ground. She was screaming loud. Shrieking desperately. Agents pulled their guns and started firing up at the warehouse roof. There was shouting and wailing from the crowd. People were stampeding. Running everywhere under the heavy repeated thumping of powerful handguns. Reacher clawed at the serving tables and hurled them behind him and fought his way through the wreckage to Froelich. Agents were dragging Armstrong out from underneath her. Auto engines were revving. Tires were squealing. Guns were firing. There was smoke in the air. Sirens were yelping. Armstrong disappeared off the floor and Reacher fell to his knees in a lake of blood next to Froelich and cradled her head in his arms. All her litheness was gone. She was completely limp and still, like her clothes were empty. But her eyes were wide open. They were moving slowly from side to side, searching, like she was curious about something.
"Is he OK?" she whispered.
Her voice was very quiet, but alert.
"Secure," Reacher said.
He slid a hand under her neck. He could feel her earpiece wire. He could feel blood. She was soaked with it. It was pulsing out. More than pulsing. It was like a warm hard jet, driven by the whole of her blood pressure. It forced and bubbled its way out between his clamped fingers like a strong bathtub faucet being turned high and low, high and low. He raised her head and let it fall back a fraction and saw a ragged exit wound in the right front side of her throat. It was leaking blood. Like a river. Like a flood. It was arterial blood, draining out of her.
"Medics," he called.
Nobody heard him. His voice didn't carry. There was too much noise. The agents around him were firing up at the warehouse roof. There was a continuous crashing and booming of guns. Spent shell cases were ejecting and hitting him on the back and bouncing off and hitting the ground with small brassy sounds he could hear quite well.
"Tell me it wasn't one of us," Froelich whispered.
"It wasn't one of you," he said.
She dropped her chin to her chest. Welling blood flooded out between the folds of her skin. Poured down and soaked her shirt. Pooled on the ground and ran away between the ridges in the concrete. He flattened his hand hard against the back of her neck. It was slippery. He pressed harder. The flow of blood loosened his grip, like it was hosing his hand away. His hand was slipping and floating on the tide.
"Medics," he called again, louder.
But he knew it was useless. She probably weighed about one-twenty, which meant she had eight or nine pints of blood in her. Most of them were already gone. He was kneeling in them. Her heart was doing its job, thumping away valiantly, pumping her precious blood straight out onto the concrete around his legs.
"Medics," he screamed.
Nobody came.
She looked straight up at his face.
"Remember?" she whispered.
He bent closer.
"How we met?" she whispered.
"I remember," he said.
She smiled weakly, like his answer satisfied her completely. She was very pale now. There was blood everywhere on the ground. It was a vast spreading pool. It was warm and slick. Now it was frothing and foaming at her neck. Her arteries were empty and filling with air. Her eyes moved in her head and then settled on his face. Her lips were stark white. Turning blue. They fluttered soundlessly, rehearsing her last words.
"I love you, Joe," she whispered.
Then she smiled, peacefully.
"I love you too," he said.
He held her for long moments more until she bled out and died in his arms about the same time Stuyvesant gave the cease-firing order. There was sudden total silence. The strong coppery smell of hot blood and the cold acid stink of gun smoke hung in the air. Reacher looked up and back and saw a cameraman shouldering his way toward him with hi
s lens tilting down like a cannon. Saw Neagley stepping into his path. Saw the cameraman pushing her. She didn't seem to move a muscle but suddenly the cameraman was falling. He saw Neagley catch the camera and heave it straight over the execution wall. He heard it crash to the ground. He heard an ambulance siren starting up far in the distance. Then another. He heard cop cars. Feet running. He saw Stuyvesant's pressed gray pants next to his face. He was standing in Froelich's blood.
Stuyvesant did nothing at all. Just stood there for what felt like a very long time, until they all heard the ambulance in the yard. Then he bent down and tried to pull Reacher away. Reacher waited until the paramedics got very close. Then he laid Froelich's head gently on the concrete. Stood up, sick and cramped and unsteady. Stuyvesant caught his elbow and walked him away.
"I didn't even know her name," Reacher said.
"It was Mary Ellen," Stuyvesant told him.
The paramedics fussed around for a moment. Then they went quiet and gave it up and covered her with a sheet. Left her there for the medical examiners and the crime-scene investigators. Reacher stumbled and sat down again, with his back to the wall, his hands on his knees, his head in his hands. His clothes were soaked with blood. Neagley sat down next to him, an inch away. Stuyvesant squatted in front of them both.
"What's happening?" Reacher asked.
"They're locking the city down," Stuyvesant said. "Roads, bridges, the airports. Bannon's in charge of it. He's got all his people out, and Metro cops, U. S. marshals, cops from Virginia, state troopers. Plus some of our people. We'll get them. "
"They'll use the railroad," Reacher said. "We're right next to Union Station. "
Stuyvesant nodded.
"They're searching every train," he said. "We'll get them. "
"Was Armstrong OK?"
"Completely unharmed. Froelich did her duty. "
There was a long silence. Reacher looked up.
"What happened on the roof?" he asked. "Where was Crosetti?"
Stuyvesant looked away.
"Crosetti was decoyed somehow," he said. "He's in the stairwell. He's dead too. Shot in the head. With the same silenced rifle, probably. "
Another long silence.
"Where was Crosetti from?" Reacher asked.
"New York, I think," Stuyvesant said. "Maybe Jersey. Somewhere up there. "
"That's no good. Where was Froelich from?"
"She was a Wyoming girl. "
Reacher nodded.
"That'll do," he said. "Where's Armstrong now?"
"Can't tell you that," Stuyvesant said. "Procedure. "
Reacher raised his hand and looked at his palm. It was rimed with blood. All the lines and scars were outlined in red.
"Tell me," he said. "Or I'll break your neck. "
Stuyvesant said nothing.
"Where is he?" Reacher repeated.
"The White House," Stuyvesant said. "In a secure room. It's procedure. "
"I need to go talk to him. "
"Now?"
"Right now. "
"You can't. "
Reacher looked away, beyond the fallen tables. "I can. "
"I can't let you do that. "
"So try to stop me. "
Stuyvesant was quiet for a long moment.
"Let me call him first," he said.
He stood up awkwardly and walked away.
"You OK?" Neagley asked.
"It's like Joe all over again," Reacher said. "Like Molly Beth Gordon. "
"Nothing you could have done. "
"Did you see it?"
Neagley nodded.
"She took a bullet for him," Reacher said. "She told me that was just a figure of speech. "
"Instinct," Neagley said. "And she was unlucky. Must have missed her vest by half an inch. Subsonic bullet, it would have bounced right off. "
"Did you see the shooter?"
Neagley shook her head. "I was facing front. Did you?"
"A glimpse," Reacher said. "One man. "
"Hell of a thing," Neagley said.
Reacher nodded and wiped his palms on his pants, front and back. Then he ran his hands through his hair. "If I wrote insurance I wouldn't touch any of Joe's old friends. I'd tell them to commit suicide and save the bad guys the trouble. "
"So what now?"
He shrugged. "You should go home to Chicago. "
"You?"
"I'm going to stick around. "
"Why?"
"You know why. "
"The FBI will get them. "
"Not if I get them first," Reacher said.
"You made up your mind?"
"I held her while she bled to death. I'm not going to just walk away. "
"Then I'll stick around, too. "
"I'll be OK on my own. "
"I know you will," Neagley said. "But you'll be better with me. "
Reacher nodded.
"What did she say to you?" Neagley asked.
"She said nothing to me. She thought I was Joe. "
He saw Stuyvesant picking his way back through the yard. Hauled himself upright with both hands against the wall.
"Armstrong will see us," Stuyvesant said. "You want to change first?"
Reacher looked down at his clothes. They were soaked with Froelich's blood in big irregular patches. It was cooling and drying and blackening.
"No," he said. "I don't want to change first. "
They used the Suburban that Stuyvesant had arrived in. It was still Thanksgiving Day and D. C. was still quiet. They saw almost no civilian activity. Almost everything out and moving was law enforcement. There was a double ring of hasty police roadblocks on every thoroughfare around the White House. Stuyvesant kept his strobes going and was waved through all of them. He showed his ID at the White House vehicle gate and parked outside the West Wing. A Marine sentry passed them to a Secret Service escort who led them inside. They went down two flights of stairs to a vaulted basement built from brick. There were plant rooms down there. Other rooms with steel doors. The escort stopped in front of one of them and knocked hard.
The door was opened from the inside by one of Armstrong's personal detail. He was still wearing his Kevlar vest. Still wearing his sunglasses, although the room had no windows. Just bright fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. Armstrong and his wife were sitting together on chairs at a table in the center of the room. The other two agents were leaning against the walls. The room was silent. Armstrong's wife had been crying. That was clear. Armstrong himself had a smudge of Froelich's blood on the side of his face. He looked deflated. Like this whole White House thing was no longer fun.
"What's the situation?" he asked.
"Two casualties," Stuyvesant said quietly. "The sentry on the warehouse roof, and M. E. herself. They both died at the scene. "
Armstrong's wife turned away like she had been slapped.
"Did you get the people who did it?" Armstrong asked.
"The FBI is leading the hunt," Stuyvesant said. "Just a matter of time. "
"I want to help," Armstrong said.
"You're going to help," Reacher said.
Armstrong nodded. "What can I do?"
"You can issue a formal statement," Reacher said. "Immediately. In time for the networks to get it on the evening news. "
"Saying what?"
"Saying you're canceling your holiday weekend in North Dakota out of respect for the two dead agents. Saying you're holing up in your Georgetown house and going absolutely nowhere at all before you attend a memorial service for your lead agent in her hometown in Wyoming on Sunday morning. Find out the name of the town and mention it loud and clear. "
Armstrong nodded again.
"OK," he said. "I could do that, I guess. But why?"
"Because they won't try again here in D. C. Not against the security you're going to have at your house. So they'll go home and wait. Which gives me until Sunda
y to find out where they live. "
"You? Won't the FBI find them today?"
"If they do, that's great. I can move on. "
"And if they don't?"
"Then I'll find them myself. "
"And if you fail?"
"I don't plan to fail. But if I do, then they'll show up in Wyoming to try again. At Froelich's service. Whereupon I'll be waiting for them. "
"No," Stuyvesant said. "I can't allow it. Are you crazy? We can't secure a situation out West on seventy-two hours' notice. And I can't use a protectee as bait. "
"He doesn't have to actually go," Reacher said. "There probably won't even be a service. He just has to say it. "
Armstrong shook his head. "I can't say it if there isn't going to be a service. And if there is a service, I can't say it and not show up. "
"If you want to help, that's what you've got to do. "
Armstrong said nothing.
They left the Armstrongs in the West Wing basement and were escorted back to the Suburban. The sun was still shining and the sky was still blue. The buildings were still white and golden. It was still a glorious day.
"Take us back to the motel," Reacher said. "I want to get a shower. Then I want to meet with Bannon. "
"Why?" Stuyvesant asked.
"Because I'm a witness," Reacher said. "I saw the shooter. On the roof. Just a glimpse of his back as he moved away from the edge. "
"You got a description?"
"Not really," Reacher said. "It was only a glimpse. I couldn't describe him. But there was something about how he moved. I've seen him before. "
