Without Fail (21 page)

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 to her.

"The Spock just got here," he said. "They'll be into Spying 101 by now."

"Should be 201 by now, surely," Froelich said. "He's been doing it long enough."

"No, CIA stuff is awful complicated," the guy said. "For plain folks, anyway."

Froelich smiled and the guy walked away. Took up station again on the sidewalk. Froelich buzzed her window up and half turned to face Reacher and Neagley equally.

"Foot patrol?" she said.

"Why I wore my coat," Reacher said.

"Four eyes are better than two," Neagley said.

They got out together and left Froelich in the warmth of the car. The street side of the house was quiet and well covered so they walked north and turned right to get a view of the back. There were cop cars top and bottom of the alley. Nothing was happening. Everything was buttoned up tight against the cold. They walked onward to the next street. There were cop cars there, too.

"Waste of time," Neagley said. "Nobody's going to get him in his house. I assume the police would notice somebody hauling in an artillery piece."

"So let's get breakfast," Reacher said. They walked back to the cross street and found a doughnut shop. Bought coffee and crullers and perched on stools in front of a long counter built inside the store window. The window was misted with condensation. Neagley used a napkin and wiped crescent shapes to see through.

"Different tie," she said. He glanced down at it. "Different suit," she said.

"You like it?"

"I would if we still lived in the 1990s," she said. He said nothing. She smiled. "So," she said.

"What?"

"Ms Froelich collected the set."

"You could tell?"

"Unmistakable."

"Free will on my part," Reacher said.

Neagley smiled again. "I didn't think she raped you."

"You going to be all judgemental now?"

"Hey, your call. She's a nice lady. But so am I. And you never come on to me."

"You ever wanted me to?"

"No."

"That's the point. I like my interest to be welcome."

"Which must limit your options some."

"Some," he said. "But not completely."

"Apparently not," Neagley said.

"You disapprove?"

"Hell no. Be my guest. Why do you think I stayed on in the hotel? I didn't want to get in her way, is all."

"Her way? Was it that obvious?"

"Oh please," Neagley said.

Reacher sipped his coffee. Ate a cruller. He was hungry and it tasted great. Iced hard on the outside, light in the middle. He ate another and sucked his fingertips clean. Felt the caffeine and the sugar hit his bloodstream.

"So who are these guys?" Neagley asked. "You got any feelings?"

"Some," Reacher said. "I'd have to concentrate hard to line them up. Not worth starting with that until we know if we're staying on the job."

"We won't be," Neagley said. "Our job ends with the cleaners. And that's a waste of time in itself. No way will they have a name for us. Or if they do, it'll be phony. Best we'll get is a description. Which is bound to be useless."

Reacher nodded. Finished his coffee.

"Let's go," he said. "Once round the block for form's sake." They walked as slowly as they could bear to in the cold. Nothing was happening. Everything was quiet. There were cop cars or Secret Service vehicles on every street. Their exhaust fumes clouded white and drifted in the still air. Apart from that absolutely nothing was moving, They turned corners and came up on Armstrong's street from the south. The white tent was ahead of them on the right. Froelich was out of her car, waving to them urgently. They hurried up the sidewalk to meet her.

"Change of plan," she said. "There was a problem on the Hill. He cut the CIA thing short and headed up there."

"He left already?" Reacher asked. Froelich nodded. "He's rolling now."

Then she paused and listened to a voice in her earpiece. "He's arriving," she said.

She lifted her wrist and spoke into her microphone. "Situation report, over," she said, and listened again. There was a wait. Thirty seconds. Forty. "OK, he's inside," she said. "Secure."

"So what now?" Reacher said.

Froelich shrugged. "Now we wait. That's what this job is. It's about waiting." They drove back to the office and waited the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. Froelich received regular situation reports. Reacher built up a pretty good picture of how things were organized. Metro cops were stationed outside the Senate Office buildings in cars. Secret Service agents held the sidewalk. Inside the street doors were members of the Capitol's own police force, one officer manning each metal detector, plenty more patrolling the hallways. Mingled in with them were more Secret Service. The transition business itself took place in upstairs offices with pairs of agents outside every door. Armstrong's personal detail stayed with him at all times. The radio reports spoke of a fairly static day. There was a lot of sitting around and talking going on. Plenty of deals being made. That was clear. Reacher recalled the phrase smoke-filled rooms, except he guessed nobody was allowed to smoke any more.

At four o'clock they drove over to Neagley's hotel, which was being used again for the contributor function. Start time was scheduled for seven in the evening, which gave them three hours to secure the building. Froelich had a pre-planned protocol that involved a squeeze search starting in the kitchen loading bay and the penthouse suites simultaneously. Metro cops with dogs were accompanied by Secret Service people and worked patiently, floor by floor. As each floor was cleared three cops took up permanent station, one at each end of the bedroom corridor and one covering the elevator bank and the fire stairs. The two search teams met on the ninth floor at six o'clock, by which time temporary metal detectors were in place inside the lobby and at the ballroom door. The cameras were set up and recording.

"Ask for two forms of ID this time," Neagley said. "Driving licence and a credit card, maybe."

"Don't worry," Froelich said. "I plan to."

Reacher stood in the ballroom doorway and glanced around the room. It was a vast space, but a thousand people were going to crowd it out to the point of discomfort. Armstrong took the elevator down from his office and turned a tight left in the lobby. Pushed through an unmarked door that led to a rear exit. He was wearing a raincoat and carrying a briefcase. The corridor behind the unmarked door was a plain narrow space that smelled of janitorial supplies. Some kind of strong detergent cleaner. He had to squeeze past two stacks of cartons. One of the stacks was neat and new, made up from recent deliveries. The other was unsteady and ragged, made up of empty boxes waiting for the trash collector. He turned his body sideways to get past the second pile. Held his briefcase out behind him and led with his right forearm. He pushed open the exit door and stepped out into the cold.

There was a small square internal courtyard, partly open on the north side. It was an unglamorous space. Tin sheeting for the building's ventilation system was clipped to the walls above head height. There were red-painted pipes and brass-collared valves at shin level, feeding the fire sprinklers. There was a line of three trash containers painted dark blue. They were large steel boxes the size of automobiles. Armstrong had to walk past them to get to the back street. He got past the first one. He got past the second one. Then a quiet voice called to him.

"Hey," it said. He turned and saw a man cramped into the small space between the second and the third container. He registered a dark coat and a hat and some kind of brutal weapon. It was short and fat and black. It came up and coughed.

It was a Heckler & Koch MP5SD6 silenced sub-machine gun, set to fire three-round bursts. It used standard nine-millimetre Parabellums. No need for low-powered versions, because the SD6's barrel has thirty holes in it to bleed gas and reduce muzzle velocity to subsonic speeds. It fires at a cyclic rate of eight hundred rounds per minute, so that each three-round burst was complete in a fraction over a fifth of a second. The first burst hit Armstrong in the centre of his chest. The second hit him in the centre of his face.

The basic H&K MP5 has a lot of advantages, including extreme reliability and extreme accuracy. The silenced version works even better because the weight of the integral suppressor mitigates the natural tendency that any sub-machine gun has towards muzzle climb during operation. Its sole drawback is the vigour with which it spits out its empty cartridge cases. They come out of the side almost as fast as the bullets come out of the front. They travel a long way. Not really a problem in its intended arenas of operation, which are confined to the necessary operations of the world's elite military and paramilitary units. But it was a problem in this situation. It meant the shooter had to leave six empty shell cases behind as he stuffed the gun under his coat and stepped over Armstrong's body and walked out of the small courtyard and away to his vehicle. By six forty there were almost seven hundred guests in the hotel lobby. They formed a long loose line from the street door to the coat check to the ballroom entrance. There was loud excited conversation in the air, and the heady stink of mingling perfumes. There were new dresses and white tuxedos and dark suits and bright ties. There were clutch purses and small cameras in leather cases. Patent shoes and high heels and the flash of diamonds. Fresh perms and bare shoulders and a lot of animation.

Reacher watched it all, leaning on a pillar near the elevators. He could see three agents through the glass on the street. Two at the door, operating a metal detector. They had its sensitivity set high, because it was beeping at every fourth or fifth guest. The agents were searching purses and patting down pockets. They were smiling conspiratorially as they did so. Nobody minded. There were eight agents roaming the lobby, faces straight, eyes always moving. There were three agents at the ballroom door. They were checking ID and inspecting invitations. Their metal detector was just as sensitive. Some people were searched for a second time. There was already music in the ballroom, audible in waves as the crowd noise peaked and died.

Neagley was triangulated across the lobby on the second step of the mezzanine staircase. Her gaze moved like radar, back and forth across the sea of people. Every third sweep she would lock eyes with Reacher and give a tiny shake of her head. Reacher could see Froelich moving randomly. She looked good. Her black suit was elegant enough for evening, but she wouldn't be mistaken for a guest. She was full of authority. Time to time she would talk to one of her agents face to face. Other times she would talk to her wrist. He got to the point where he could tell exactly when she was hearing messages in her earpiece. Her movements lost a little focus as she concentrated on what she was being told.

By seven o'clock most of the guests were safely in the ballroom. There was a small gaggle of latecomers lining up for the first metal detector and a corresponding number waiting at the ballroom door. Guests who had bought an Overnight package at the hotel were drifting out of the elevators in couples or foursomes. Neagley was now isolated on the mezzanine staircase. Froelich had sent her agents into the ballroom one by one as the lobby crowd thinned out. They joined the eight already in there. She wanted all sixteen prowling around by the time the action started. Plus the three on the personal detail, and three on the ballroom door, and two on the street door. Plus cops in the kitchen, cops in the loading bay, cops on all seventeen floors, cops on the street.