Without Fail

“Come back to bed,” he said.

“Can’t,” she said. “Got to go to work.”

“He’ll be OK for a spell. And if he isn’t, they can always get another one. That Twentieth Amendment thing. They’ll be lining up around the block.”

“And I’ll be lining up for a new job. Maybe flipping burgers.”

“You ever done that?”

“What, flipped burgers?”

“Been out of work.”

She shook her head. “Never.”

He smiled. “I haven’t really worked for five years.”

She smiled back. “I know. I checked the computers. But you’re working today. So get your ass out of bed.”

She gave him a fine view of her own ass as she walked away to her own bathroom. He lay still for a second longer with Dawn Pe

He met Froelich at the bottom of the stairs. She was in a feminine version of his own outfit, a black pant suit with an open-necked white blouse. But her coat was better. It was dark gray wool, very formal. She was putting her earpiece in. It had a curly wire that straightened after six inches to run down her back.

“Want to help?” she said. She pulled her elbows back in the same gesture she had used when she woke up. It pushed her jacket collar off the back of her neck. He dropped the wire down between her jacket and her blouse. The tiny plug on the end acted like a counterweight and took it all the way to her waist. She pulled her coat and her jacket aside and he found a black radio unit clipped to her belt in the small of her back. The microphone lead was already plugged in and threaded up her back and down her left sleeve. He plugged the earpiece in. She let her jacket and her coat fall back into place and he saw her gun in a holster clipped to her belt near her left hip, butt forward for easy access by her right hand. It was a big, boxy SIG-Sauer P226, which he was happy about. Altogether a better proposition than the previous-issue Beretta in her kitchen drawer.

“OK,” she said. Then she took a deep breath. Checked her watch. Reacher did the same thing. It was nearly a quarter to eight.

“Sixteen hours and sixteen minutes to go,” she said. “Call Neagley and tell her we’re on our way.”

He used her mobile as they walked back to her Suburban. The morning was damp and cold, exactly the same as the night had been except now there was some grudging gray light in the sky. The Suburban’s windows were all misted over with dew. But it started on the first turn of the key and the heater worked fast and the interior was warm and comfortable by the time Neagley climbed on board outside the hotel.

Armstrong slipped a leather jacket over his sweater and stepped out of his back door. The wind caught his hair and he zipped the coat as he walked to his gate. Two paces before he got there he was picked up in the scope. The scope was a Hensoldt 1.5-6×42 BL originally supplied with a SIG SSG 3000 sniper rifle, but it had been adapted by the Baltimore gunsmith to fit its new home, which was on top of a Vaime Mk2. Vaime was a word registered by Oy Vaime

The way a man goes through a gate works like this: he stops walking momentarily. He stands still. He has to, whichever way the gate hinges. If it hinges toward him, he reaches out for the latch and flips it open and pulls the gate and kind of stands on tiptoe and arches his legs so the gate can swing past them. If it hinges away from him, he stands still while he finds the latch and pushes it open. That’s faster, but there’s still a moment where there’s no real forward motion at all. And this particular gate opened toward the house. That fact was clearly visible through the Hensoldt. There was going to be a two-second window of perfect opportunity.

Armstrong reached the gate. Stopped walking. One hundred and twenty-six yards away the man with his eye to the scope nudged the rifle a fraction left until the target was exactly centered. Held his breath. Eased his finger back. Took up the slack in the trigger. Then he squeezed it all the way. The rifle coughed loudly and kicked gently. The bullet took a hair over four-tenths of a second to travel the hundred and twenty-six yards. It hit Armstrong with a wet thump high on the forehead. It penetrated his skull and followed a downward angle through his frontal lobe, through his central ventricles, through his cerebellum. It shattered his first vertebra and exited at the base of his neck through soft tissue near the top of his spinal cord. It flew on and struck the ground eleven feet farther back and buried itself deep in the earth.

Armstrong was clinically dead before he hit the ground. The bullet’s path caused massive brain trauma and its kinetic energy pulsed outward through brain tissue and was reflected back by the inside of the skull bones like a big wave in a small swimming pool. The resulting damage was catastrophic. All brain function ceased before gravity dropped the body.

One hundred and twenty-six yards away the man with his eye to the scope lay perfectly still for a second. Then he cradled the rifle flat against his torso and rolled away until it was safe to stand. He racked the rifle’s bolt and caught the hot shell case in his gloved hand and dropped it into his pocket. Moved backward into cover and then walked away, completely shielded from view.

Neagley was uncharacteristically quiet in the car. Maybe she was worried about the day ahead. Maybe she could sense the altered chemistry. Reacher didn’t know, and either way he wasn’t in a hurry to find out. He just sat quiet while Froelich battled the traffic. She looped northwest and used the Whitney Young bridge across the river and drove past the RFK football stadium. Then she took Massachusetts Avenue and stayed away from the congestion around the government part of town. But Mass. Ave. was slow itself, and it was nearly nine o’clock before they arrived in Armstrong’s Georgetown street. She parked behind another Suburban near the mouth of the tent. An agent stepped off the sidewalk and rounded the hood to talk with her.