Without Fail

“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 sca

“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 pla

There were cops on the corner and the begi

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.”