Without Fail

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 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 ru

Reacher said nothing. They walked past Ba

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 fu

“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 fu

“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 a

“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.