Without Fail

was a small thrill of anticipation, and each time it was disappointed. But the regular physical movement helped against the cold. They started stretching in place, to keep loose. They did push-ups, to keep warm. The spare rounds in their pockets jingled loudly. Battle rattle , Neagley called it. From time to time Reacher pressed his face against the louvers and stared out at the snowfall in the west. The clouds were still low and black, held back by an invisible wall about fifty miles away.
    “They won’t come back,” Neagley said. “They’d have to be insane to try anything here.”
    “I think they are insane,” Reacher said.
    He watched and waited, and listened to the clock. He had had enough just before four o’clock. He used the blade of his knife to cut through the accumulation of old white paint and lifted one of the louvers out of the frame. It was a simple length of wood, maybe three feet long, maybe four inches wide, maybe an inch thick. He held it out in front of him like a spear and crawled over and pushed it into the clock mechanism. The gear wheels jammed on it and the clock stopped. He pulled the wood out again and crawled away and slotted it back in the frame. The silence was suddenly deafening.
    They watched and waited. It got colder, to the point where they both started shivering. But the silence helped. Suddenly, it helped a lot. Reacher crawled over and checked his partial view to the west again and then crawled back and picked up the map. Stared at it hard, lost in thought. He used his finger and thumb like a compass and measured distances. Forty, eighty, a hundred and twenty, a hundred and sixty miles. Slow, faster, fast, slow. Overall average speed maybe forty. That’s four hours .
    “Sun sets in the west,” he said. “Rises in the east.”
    “On this planet,” Neagley said.
    Then they heard the staircase creak below them. They heard feet on the ladder. The trapdoor lifted an inch and fell back and then crashed all the way open and the vicar put his head up into the bell chamber and stared at the submachine gun pointing at him from one side and the M16 rifle from the other.
    “I need to talk to you about those things,” he said. “You can’t expect me to be happy about having weapons in my church.”
    He stood there on the ladder, looking like a severed head. Reacher laid the M16 back on the floor. The vicar stepped up another rung.
    “I understand the need for security,” he said. “And we’re honored to host the Vice President–elect, but I really can’t permit engines of destruction in a hallowed building. I would have expected somebody to discuss it with me.”
    “Engines of destruction?” Neagley repeated.
    “What time does the sun set?” Reacher asked.
    The vicar looked a little surprised by the change of subject. But he answered very politely.
    “Soon,” he said. “It falls behind the mountains quite early here. But you won’t see it happen today. There are clouds. There’s a snowstorm coming in from the west.”
    “And when does it rise?”
    “This time of year? A little before seven o’clock, I suppose.”
    “You heard a weather report for tomorrow?”
    “They say much the same as today.”
    “OK,” Reacher said. “Thanks.”
    “Did you stop the clock?”
    “It was driving me nuts.”
    “That’s why I came up. Do you mind if I set it going again?”
    Reacher shrugged. “It’s your clock.”
    “I know the noise must be bothersome.”
    “Doesn’t matter,” Reacher said. “We’ll be out of here as soon as the sun sets. Weapons and all.”
    The vicar hauled himself all the way up into the chamber and leaned over the iron girders and fiddled with the mechanism. There was a setting device linked to a separate miniature clock that Reacher hadn’t noticed before. It was buried within the gear wheels. It had an adjustment lever attached to it. The vicar checked his wristwatch and used the lever to force the exterior hands around to the correct time. The miniature clock hands moved with them. Then he simply turned a gear wheel with his hand until the mechanism picked up the momentum for itself and started again on its own. The heavy thunk, thunk, thunk came back. The smallest bell rang in sympathy, one tiny resonance for every second that passed.
    “Thank you,” the vicar said.
    “An hour at most,” Reacher said. “Then we’ll be gone.”
    The vicar nodded like his point was made and threaded himself down through the trapdoor. Pulled it