Without Fail (47 page)

"They sure are. And we're brain dead for not spotting it on Tuesday."

"But cops would have heard of Armstrong long ago, wouldn't they?"

"Why would they? Cops know about their own little world, that's all, same as anybody else. If you worked in some rural police department in Maine or Florida or outside San Diego you might know the New York Giants" quarterback or the Chicago White Sox centre fielder but there's no reason why you would have heard of North Dakota's junior senator. Unless you were a politics junkie, and most people aren't."

Neagley drove on. Way to the right, far to the east, a narrow band of sky was a fraction lighter than it had been. It had turned the colour of dark charcoal against the blackness beyond it. The snow was no heavier, no lighter. The big lazy flakes drifted in from the mountains, floating level, sometimes rising.

"So which is it?" she asked. "Maine or Florida or San Diego? We need to know, because if they're flying in they won't be armed with anything they can't pick up here."

"California is a possibility," Reacher said. "Oregon isn't. They wouldn't have revealed their specific identity to Armstrong if they still lived in Oregon. Nevada is a possibility. Or Utah or Idaho. Anywhere else is too far."

"For what?"

"To be on a reasonable radius from Sacramento. How long does a stolen cooler of ice last?"

Neagley said nothing.

"Nevada or Utah or Idaho," Reacher said. "That's my guess. Not California. I think they wanted a state line between them and the place they went for the thumb. Feels better, psychologically. I think they're a long day's drive from Sacramento. Which means they're probably a long day's drive from here, too, in the other direction. So I think they'll be coming in by road, armed to the teeth."

"When?"

"Today, if they've got any sense."

"The bat was mailed in Utah," Neagley said.

Reacher nodded. "OK, so scratch Utah. I don't think they wanted to mail anything in their home state."

"So Idaho or Nevada," Neagley said. "We better watch for licence plates."

"This is a tourist destination. There are going to be plenty of out-of-state plates. Like we've got Colorado plates."

"How will they aim to do it?"

"Edward Fox," Reacher said. "They want to survive, and they're reasonable with a rifle. Hundred and twenty yards in Minnesota, ninety in D.C. They'll aim to get him in the church doorway, somewhere like that. Maybe out in the graveyard. Drop him right next to somebody else's headstone."

Neagley slowed and turned right onto Route 220. It was a better road, wider, newer blacktop. It ran with a river wandering next to it. The sky was lighter in the east. Up ahead was a faint glow from the city of Casper, twenty miles north. The snow was still blowing in from the west, slow and lazy.

"So what's our plan?" Neagley asked.

"We need to see the terrain," Reacher said.

He looked sideways out of the window. He had seen nothing but darkness since leaving Denver. They stopped on the outer edge of Casper for gas and more coffee and a bathroom. Then Reacher took a turn at the wheel. He picked up Route 87 north out of town and drove fast for thirty miles because Route 87 was also 1-25 again and was wide and straight. And he drove fast because they were late. Dawn was in full swing to the east and they were still well short of Grace. The sky was pink and beautiful and the light came in brilliant horizontal shafts and lit the mountainsides in the west. They were meandering through the foothills. On their right, to the east, the world was basically flat all the way to Chicago and beyond. On their left, distant in the west, the Rocky Mountains reared two miles high. The lower slopes were dotted with stands of pine and the peaks were white with snow and streaked with grey crags. For miles either side of. the ribbon of road was high desert, with sagebrush and tan grasses blazing purple in the early sun.

"Been here before?" Neagley asked.

"No," he said.

"We need to turn," she said. "Soon, east towards Thunder Basin."

He repeated the name in his head, because he liked the sound of the words. Thunder Basin. Thunder Basin. He made a shallow right off the highway onto a narrow county road. It was signposted up to Midwest and Edgerton. The land fell away to the east. Pines a hundred feet tall threw morning shadows a hundred yards long. There was endless ragged grassland interrupted here and there by the remains of old industrial enterprises. There were square stone foundations a foot high and tangles of old iron.

"Oil," Neagley said. "And coal mining. All closed down eighty years ago."

"The land looks awful flat," Reacher said. But he knew the flatness was deceptive. The low sun showed him creases and crevices and small escarpments that were nothing compared to the mountains on his left but were a long way from being flat. They were in a transition area, where the mountains shaded randomly into the high plains. The geological tumult of a million years ago rippled outward all the way to Nebraska, frozen in time, leaving enough cover to hide a walking man in a million different places.

"We need it to be totally flat," Neagley said.

Reacher nodded at the wheel. "Except for one little hill a hundred yards from where Armstrong's 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 in to 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 strokes of the letter met at the bridge.

"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 birdwatcher'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-storey buildings made of weathered cedar. They were set at random angles to each other. 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 centre 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 pick-ups 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 pre-service 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 round 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 centre 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 pick-up bed.