“We need it to be totally flat,” Neagley said.
Reacher nodded at the wheel. “Except for maybe one little hill a hundred yards from where Armstrong is going to be. And another little hill a hundred yards back from it, where we can watch from.”
“It isn’t going to be that easy.”
“It never is,” Reacher said.
They drove on, another whole hour. They were heading north and east into emptiness. The sun rose well clear of the horizon. The sky was banded pink and purple. Behind them the Rockies blazed with reflected light. Ahead and to the right the grasslands ran into the distance like a stormy ocean.
There was no more snow in the air. The big lazy flakes had disappeared.
“Turn here,” Neagley said.
“Here?” He slowed to a stop and looked at the turn. It was just a dirt road, leading south to the middle of nowhere.
“There’s a town down there?” he asked.
“According to the map,” Neagley said.
He backed up and made the turn. The dirt road ran a mile through pines and then broke out with a view of absolutely nothing.
“Keep going,” Neagley said.
They drove on, twenty miles, thirty. The road rose and fell. Then it peaked and the land fell away in front of them into a fifty-mile-wide bowl of grass and sage. The road ran ahead through it straight south like a faint pencil line and crossed a river in the base of the bowl. Two more roads ran into the bridge from nowhere. There were tiny buildings scattered randomly. The whole thing looked like a capital letter K, lightly peppered with habitation where the three lines of the letter met.
“That’s Grace, Wyoming,” Neagley said. “Where this road crosses the south fork of the Cheyenne River.”
Reacher eased the Yukon to a stop. Put it in park and crossed his arms on the top of the wheel. Leaned forward with his chin on his hands and stared ahead through the windshield.
“We should be on horses,” he said.
“Wearing white hats,” Neagley said. “With Colt .45s.”
“I’ll stick with the Steyrs,” Reacher said. “How many ways in?”
Neagley traced her finger over the map.
“North or south,” she said. “On this road. The other two roads don’t go anywhere. They peter out in the brush. Maybe they head out to old cattle ranches.”
“Which way will the bad guys come?”
“Nevada, they’ll come in from the south. Idaho, from the north.”
“So we can’t stay right here and block the road.”
“They might be down there already.”
One of the buildings was a tiny pinprick of white in a square of green. Froelich’s church, he thought. He opened his door and got out of the car. Walked around to the tailgate and came back with the bird-watcher’s spotting scope. It was like half of a huge pair of binoculars. He steadied it against the open door and put it to his eye.
The optics compressed the view into a flat grainy picture that danced and quivered with his heartbeat. He focused until it was like looking down at the town from a half-mile away. The river was a narrow cut. The bridge was a stone structure. The roads were all dirt. There were more buildings than he had first thought. The church stood alone in a tended acre inside the south angle of the K. It had a stone foundation and the rest of it was clapboard painted white. It would have looked right at home in Massachusetts. Its grounds widened out to the south and were mowed grass studded with headstones.
South of the graveyard was a fence, and behind the fence was a cluster of two-story buildings made of weathered cedar. They were set at random angles to one another. North of the church were more of the same. Houses, stores, barns. Along the short legs of the K were more buildings. Some of them were painted white. They were close together near the center of town, farther apart as the distance increased. The river ran blue and clear, east and north into the sea of grass. There were cars and pickups parked here and there. Some pedestrian activity. It looked like the population might reach a couple of hundred.
“It was a cattle town, I guess,” Neagley said. “They brought the railroad in as far as Casper, through Douglas. They must have driven the herds sixty, seventy miles south and picked it up there.”
“So what do they do now?” Reacher asked.
The town wobbled in the scope as he spoke.
“No idea,” she said. “Maybe they all invest on-line.”
He passed her the scope and she refocused and stared down through it. He watched the lens move fractionally up and down and side to side as she covered the whole area.
“They’ll set up to the south,” she said. “All the preservice activity will happen south of the church. They’ve got a couple of old barns a hundred yards out, and some natural cover.”
“How will they aim to get away?”
The scope moved an eighth of an inch, to the right.
“They’ll expect roadblocks north and south,” she said. “Local cops. That’s a no-brainer. Their badges might get them through, but I wouldn’t be counting on it. This is a whole different situation. There might be confusion, but there won’t be crowds.”
“So how?”
“I know how I’d do it,” she said. “I’d ignore the roads altogether. I’d take off across the grass, due west. Forty miles of open country in some big four-wheel-drive, and you hit the highway. I doubt the Casper PD has got a helicopter. Or the Highway Patrol. There are only two highways in the whole state.”
“Armstrong will come in a helicopter,” Reacher said. “Probably from some Air Force base in Nebraska.”
“But they won’t use his helicopter to chase the bad guys. They’ll be exfiltrating him or taking him to a hospital. I’m sure that’s some kind of standard protocol.”
“Highway Patrol would set up north and south on the highway. They’ll have nearly an hour’s warning.”
Neagley lowered the scope and nodded. “I’d anticipate that. So I’d drive straight across the highway and get back off-road. West of the highway is ten thousand square miles of nothing between Casper and the Wind River Reservation, with only one major road through it. They’d be long gone before somebody whistled up a helicopter and started the search.”
“That’s a bold plan.”
“I’d go for it,” Neagley said.
Reacher smiled. “I know you would. Question is, will these guys? I’m wondering if they’ll take one look and turn around and forget about it.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’ll take them down while they’re looking. We don’t need to catch them in the act.”
Reacher climbed back into the driver’s seat.
“Let’s go to work,” he said.
The bowl was very shallow. They lost maybe a hundred feet of elevation in the twenty miles they drove before they reached the town. The road was hard-packed dirt, smooth as glass, beautifully scraped and contoured. An annual art, Reacher guessed, performed anew every year when the winter snows melted and the spring rains finished. It was the kind of road Model T Fords rolled down in documentary films. It curved as it approached the town so that the bridge could cross the river at an exact right angle.
The bridge seemed to represent the geographic center of town. There was a general store that offered postal service and a breakfast counter. There was a forge set back behind it that had probably fixed ranch machinery way back in history. There was a feed supplier’s office and a hardware store. There was a one-pump gas station with a sign that read: Springs Repaired. There were sidewalks made of wood fronting the buildings. They ran like boat docks, floating on the earth. There was a quiet leathery man loading groceries into a pickup bed.
“They won’t come here,” Reacher said. “This is the most exposed place I’ve ever seen.”
Neagley shook her head. “They won’t know that until they’ve seen it for themselves. They might be in and out in ten minutes, but ten minutes is all we need.”
“Where are we going to stay?”
She pointed. “Over t
here.”
There was a plain-fronted red cedar building with numerous small windows and a sign that read: Clean Rooms.
“Terrific,” Reacher said.
“Drive around,” Neagley said. “Let’s get a feel for the place.”
A letter K has only four options for exploration, and they had already covered the northern leg on the way in. Reacher backed up to the bridge and struck out north and east, following the river. That road led past eight houses, four on each side, and then narrowed after another half-mile to a poor stony track. There was a barbed-wire fence lost in the grass on the left, and another on the right.
“Ranch land,” Neagley said.
The ranches themselves were clearly miles away. Fragments of the road were visible as it rose and fell over gentle contours into the distance. Reacher turned the truck around and headed back and turned down the short southeast leg. It had more houses and they were closer together, but it was otherwise similar. It narrowed after the same distance and ran on toward nothing visible. There was more barbed wire and an inexplicable wooden shed with no door. Inside the shed was a rusting pickup truck with pale weedy grass growing up all around it. It looked like it had been parked there back when Richard Nixon was Vice President.
“OK, go south,” Neagley said. “Let’s see the church.”
The south leg led seventy miles to Douglas, and they drove the first three miles of it. The town’s power and telephone lines came in from that direction, strung on tarred poles, looping on into the distance, following the road. The road passed the church and the graveyard, then the cluster of cedar buildings, then a couple of abandoned cattle barns, then maybe twenty or thirty small houses, and then the town finished and there was just infinite grassland ahead. But it wasn’t flat. There were crevices and crevasses worn smooth by ten thousand years of winds and weather. They undulated calmly, up and down to maximum depths of ten or twelve feet, like slow ocean swells. They were all connected in a network. The grass itself was a yard high, brown and dead and brittle. It swayed in waves under the perpetual breeze.
“You could hide an infantry company in there,” Neagley said.
Reacher turned the car and headed back toward the church. Pulled over and parked level with the graveyard. The church itself was very similar to the one outside Bismarck. It had the same steep roof over the nave and the same blocky square tower. It had a clock on the tower and a weather vane and a flag, and a lightning rod. It was white, but not as bright. Reacher glanced west to the horizon and saw gray clouds massing over the distant mountains.
“It’s going to snow,” he said.
“We can’t see anything from here,” Neagley said.
She was right. The church was built right in the river valley bottom. Its foundation was probably the lowest structure in town. The road to the north was visible for maybe a hundred yards. Same in the south. It ran in both directions and rose over gentle humps and disappeared from sight.
“They could be right on top of us before we know it,” Neagley said. “We need to be able to see them coming.”
Reacher nodded. Opened his door and climbed out of the car. Neagley joined him and they walked toward the church. The air was cold and dry. The graveyard lawn was dead under their feet. It felt like the beginning of winter. There was a new grave site marked out with cotton tape. It lay to the west of the church, in virgin grass on the end of a row of weathered headstones. Reacher detoured to take a look. There were four Froelich graves in a line. Soon to be a fifth, on some sad day in the near future. He looked at the rectangle of tape and imagined the hole dug deep and crisp and square.
Then he stepped away and looked around. There was flat empty land opposite the church on the east side of the road. It was a big enough space to land a helicopter. He stood and imagined it coming in, rotors thumping, turning in the air to face the passenger door toward the church, setting down. He imagined Armstrong climbing out. Crossing the road. Approaching the church. The vicar would probably greet him near the door. He stepped sideways and stood where Armstrong might stand and raised his eyes. Scanned the land to the south and west. Bad news. There was some elevation there, and about a hundred and fifty yards out there were waves and shadows in the moving grass that must mean dips and crevices in the earth beneath it. There were more beyond that distance, all the way out to infinity.
“How good do you think they are?” he asked.
Neagley shrugged. “They’re always either better or worse than you expect. They’ve shown some proficiency so far. Shooting downhill, thin air, through grass, I’d be worried out to about five hundred yards.”
“And if they miss Armstrong they’ll hit somebody else by mistake.”
“Stuyvesant needs to bring a surveillance helicopter too. This angle is hopeless, but you could see everything from the air.”
“Armstrong won’t let him,” Reacher said. “But we’ve got the air. We’ve got the church tower.”
He turned and walked back toward it.
“Forget the rooming house,” he said. “This is where we’re going to stay. We’ll see them coming, north or south, night or day. It’ll all be over before Stuyvesant or Armstrong even get here.”
They were ten feet from the church door when it opened and a clergyman stepped out, closely followed by an old couple. The clergyman was middle-aged and looked very earnest. The old couple were both maybe sixty years old. The man was tall and stooped, and a little underweight. The woman was still good-looking, a little above average height, trim and nicely dressed. She had short fair hair turning gray the way fair hair does. Reacher knew exactly who she was, immediately. And she knew who he was, or thought she did. She stopped talking and stopped walking and just stared at him the same way her daughter had. She looked at his face, confused, like she was comparing similarities and differences against a mental image.
“You?” she said. “Or is it?”
Her face was strained and tired. She was wearing no makeup. Her eyes were dry, but they hadn’t been for the last two days. That was clear. They were rimmed with red and lined and swollen.
“I’m his brother,” Reacher said. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“You should be,” she said. “Because this is entirely Joe’s fault.”
“Is it?”
“He made her change jobs, didn’t he? He wouldn’t date a coworker, so she had to change. He wouldn’t change. She went over to the dangerous side, while he stayed exactly where he was, safe and sound. And now look what’s come of it.”
Reacher paused a beat.
“I think she was happy where she was,” he said. “She could have changed back, you know, afterward, if she wasn’t. But she didn’t. So I think that means she wanted to stay there. She was a fine agent, doing important work.”
“How could she change back? Was she supposed to see him every day like nothing had happened?”
“I meant she could have waited the year, and then changed back.”
“What difference does a year make? He broke her heart. How could she ever work for him again?”
Reacher said nothing.
“Is he coming here?” she asked.
“No,” Reacher said. “He’s not.”
“Good,” she said. “Because he wouldn’t be welcome.”
“No, I guess he wouldn’t,” Reacher said.
“I suppose he’s too busy,” she said.
She walked off, toward the dirt road. The clergyman followed her, and so did Froelich’s father. But then he hesitated and turned back.
“She knows it’s not really Joe’s fault,” he said. “We both know Mary Ellen was doing what she wanted.”
Reacher nodded. “She was terrific at it.”
“Was she?”
“Best they ever had.”
The old man nodded, like he was satisfied.
“How is Joe?” he asked. “I met him a couple of times.”
“He died,” Reacher said. “Five years ago. In the line of duty.”
&
nbsp; There was quiet for a moment.
“I’m very sorry,” the old man said.
“But don’t tell Mrs. Froelich,” Reacher said. “If it helps her not to know.”
The old man nodded again and turned away and set off after his wife with a strange loping stride.
“See?” Neagley said quietly. “Not everything is your fault.”
There was a notice board planted in the ground near the church door. It was like a very slim cabinet mounted on sturdy wooden legs. It had glass doors. Behind the doors was a square yard of green felt with slim cotton tapes thumbtacked diagonally all over it. Notices typed on a manual typewriter were slipped behind the tapes. At the top was a permanent list of regular Sunday services. The first was held every week at eight o’clock in the morning. This was clearly a denomination that demanded a high degree of commitment from its parishioners. Next to the permanent list was a hastily typed announcement that this Sunday’s eight o’clock service would be dedicated to the memory of Mary Ellen Froelich. Reacher checked his watch and shivered in the cold.
“Twenty-two hours,” he said. “Time to lock and load.”
They brought the Yukon nearer to the church and opened the tailgate. Bent over together and loaded all four weapons. They took a Steyr each. Neagley took the H&K and Reacher took the M16. They distributed the spare rounds between them, as appropriate. Then they locked the car and left it.
“Is it OK to bring guns into a church?” Neagley asked.
“It’s OK in Texas,” Reacher said. “Probably compulsory here.”
They hauled the oak door open and stepped inside. It was very similar to the Bismarck building. Reacher wondered briefly whether rural communities had bought their churches by mail order, the same as everything else. It had the same parchment-white paint, the same shiny pews, the same pulpit. The same three bell ropes hanging down inside the tower. The same staircase. They went all the way up to the high ledge and found a ladder bolted to the wall, with a trapdoor above it.
“Home sweet home,” Reacher said.
He led the way up the ladder and through the trapdoor and into the bell chamber. The bell chamber was not the same as the one in Bismarck. It had a clock added into it. There was a four-foot cube of brass machinery mounted centrally on iron girders just above the bells themselves. The clock had two faces, both driven simultaneously by the same gears inside the cube. Long iron shafts ran straight out from the cube, through the walls, through the backs of the faces, all the way to the external hands. The faces were mounted in the openings where the louvers had been, to the east and the west. The machinery was ticking loudly. Gear wheels and ratchets were clicking. They were setting up tiny sympathetic resonances in the bells themselves.
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