Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  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 and 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. H
er 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 third 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.

  “Remembe
r?” 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 his 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.