Without Fail

“Time?” she screamed.

He fought to keep his wrist still and stared at his watch. He was breathing too hard to speak. He just shook his head. They were at least ten minutes behind. And it was a crucial ten minutes. The Tahoe would arrive back at its starting point about two minutes into it and Armstrong would touch down after another five. Neagley drove on. She hurtled up the rises and took off and plunged hood-deep into the drifts and battered her way through and did it all over again. Without the wheel to hold on to Reacher was thrown all over the place. He fought the alternate weightlessness and physical pounding and caught blurred glimpses of the time on his watch. He stared through the windshield at the sky in the east. The sun was in his eyes. He dropped his gaze to the terrain. Nothing there. No Tahoe. It was long gone. All that remained were its tracks through the snow, deep twi

Then they changed. They swooped a tight ninety-degree left and disappeared into a north-south ravine.

“What?” Neagley shouted.

“Follow,” Reacher gasped.

The ravine was narrow, like a trench. It ran steeply downhill. The Tahoe’s tracks were clearly visible for fifty yards and then they swerved out of sight again, a sharp right behind a rock outcrop the size of a house. Neagley braked hard as the grade fell away. She stopped. She paused a beat and Reacher’s mind screamed, An ambush now? a split second after her foot hit the gas again and her hands turned the wheel. The Yukon locked into the Tahoe’s ruts and its two-ton weight slid it helplessly down the icy slope. The Tahoe burst out of hiding, backward, directly in front of them. It jammed to a skidding stop right across their path. Neagley was out of her door before the Yukon stopped moving. She rolled in the snow and floundered away to the north. The Yukon slewed violently and stalled in a snowdrift. Reacher’s door was jammed shut by the depth of the snow. He used all his strength and forced it half-open and scraped out through the gap. Saw the driver spilling from the Tahoe, slipping and falling in the snow. Reacher rolled away and pulled his Steyr from his pocket. Thrashed around to the back of the Yukon and crawled forward through the snow along its other side. The Tahoe driver was holding a rifle, rowing himself through the snow with its muzzle, slipping and sliding. He was heading for cover in the rock. He was the guy from Bismarck. No doubt about that. Lean face, long body. He even had the same coat on. He was bulling through the snowdrift with the coat flapping open and small snowstorms kicking outward from his knees at every step. Reacher raised the Steyr and steadied it against the Yukon’s fender and tracked the guy’s head. Tightened his finger on the trigger. Then he heard a voice, loud and urgent, right behind him.

“Hold your fire,” the voice called.

He turned and saw a second guy ten yards north and west. Neagley was stumbling through the snow directly ahead of him. He had her Heckler amp; Koch held low in his left hand. A handgun in his right, jammed in her back. He was the guy from the garage video. No doubt about that, either. Tweed overcoat, short, wide in the shoulders, a little squat. No hat this time. He had the same face as the Bismarck guy, a little fatter. The same graying sandy hair, a little thicker. Brothers.

“Throw the weapon down, sir,” he called.

It was a perfect cop line and he had a perfect cop voice. Neagley mouthed I’m sorry. Reacher reversed the Steyr in his hand. Held it by the barrel.

“Throw down the weapon, sir,” the squat guy called again.

His brother from Bismarck changed direction and plowed forward through the snow and moved in closer. He raised the rifle. It was a Steyr too, a long handsome gun. It was all covered with snow. It was pointing straight at Reacher’s head. The low morning sun made the shadow of the barrel ten feet long. Reacher thought: What happened to that lonely motel bed? Snowflakes swirled and the air was bitter cold. He pulled his arm back and tossed his pistol high in the air. It arced lazily thirty feet through the falling snow and landed and buried itself in a drift. The guy from Bismarck fumbled in his pocket with his left hand and pulled out his badge. Held it high in his palm. The badge was gold. It was backed by a worn leather slip. The leather was brown. The rifle wavered. The guy fumbled the badge away again and brought the rifle to his shoulder and held it level and steady.

“We’re police officers,” he said.

“I know you are,” Reacher said back. He glanced around. The snow was falling hard. It was whipping and swirling. The crevasse they were in was like a cave with no roof. It was probably the loneliest place on the planet. The guy from the garage video pushed Neagley nearer. She stumbled and he caught up with her and pushed her off to one side and kept his handgun hard in her back.

“But who are you?” the Bismarck guy asked.

Reacher didn’t answer. Just checked the geometry. It wasn’t attractive. He was triangulated twelve feet from either guy, and the snow underfoot was slick and slow.

The Bismarck guy smiled. “You here to make the world safe for democracy?”

“I’m here because you’re a lousy shot,” Reacher said. “You got the wrong person on Thursday.” Then he moved very cautiously and pulled his cuff and checked his watch. And smiled. “And you lose again. It’s too late now. You’re going to miss him.”

The Bismarck guy just shook his head. “Police sca

Reacher said nothing.

“Because we don’t like you,” the Bismarck guy said. He spoke along the rifle stock. His lips moved against it. “You’re poking around where you’re not welcome. In a purely private matter. In something that doesn’t concern you at all. So consider yourselves under arrest. You want to plead guilty?”

Reacher said nothing.

“Or you just want to plead?”

“Like you did?” Reacher said. “When that ball bat was getting close?”

The guy went quiet for a second.

“Your attitude isn’t helping your cause,” he said.

He paused again, five long seconds.

“The jury is back,” he said.

“What jury?”

“Me and my brother. That’s all the jury you’ve got. We’re your whole world right now.”

“Whatever happened, it was thirty years ago.”

“A guy does something like that, he should pay.”

“The guy died.”

The Bismarck cop shrugged. The rifle barrel moved. “You should read your Bible, my friend. The sins of the fathers, you ever heard of that?”

“What sins? You lost a fight, is all.”

“We never lose. Sooner or later, we always win. And Armstrong watched. Snot-nosed rich kid, all smiling and gri

Reacher said nothing. The silence was total. Each snowflake felt separately audible as it hissed and whirled through the air. Keep him talking, Reacher thought. Keep him moving. But he looked into the crazed eyes and couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“The woman goes in the truck,” the guy said. “We’ll have a little fun with her, after we deal with Armstrong. But I’m going to shoot you right now.”

“Not with that rifle,” Reacher said. Keep him talking. Keep him moving. “The muzzle is full of slush. It’ll blow up in your hands.”

There was a long silence. The guy calculated the distance between himself and Reacher, just a glance. Then he lowered the rifle. Reversed it in his hands, in and out fast, long enough to check. The muzzle was packed with icy snow. The M16 is on the Yukon’s backseat, Reacher thought. But the door is blocked shut by the drift.