Without Fail

Service convoy and the second hung back well behind it. They lit up their light bars to hold the traffic. There wasn’t much. A blue Chevy Malibu and a gold Lexus SUV waited to get by. Reacher had seen neither vehicle before. Neither had been out cruising the area. He looked at the tent and tried to guess when Armstrong was passing through it. Impossible. He was still gazing at the house end when he heard the faint thump of an armored door closing and the four agents stepped back to their Suburban and the whole convoy took off. The lead cop car leapt forward and the Suburban and the Cadillac and the Town Car fell in behind it and moved fast up the street. The second police cruiser brought up the rear. All five vehicles turned east right in front of Reacher’s coffee shop. Tires squealed on the pavement. The cars accelerated. He watched them disappear. Then he turned back and watched the small crowd in the street disperse. The whole neighborhood went quiet and still.

    They watched the motorcade drive away from a vantage point about eighty yards from where Reacher was sitting. Their surveillance confirmed what they already knew. Professional pride prevented them from writing off his commute to work as actually impossible , but as a viable opportunity it was going to be way down on their list. Way, way down. Right there at the bottom. Which made it all the more fortunate that the transition website offered so many other tempting choices.
    They walked a circuitous route through the streets and made it back to their rented red Sable without incident.

    Reacher finished his last mouthful of coffee and walked down toward Armstrong’s house. He stepped off the sidewalk where the tent blocked it. It was a white canvas tunnel leading directly to Armstrong’s front door. The door was closed. He walked on and stepped back on the sidewalk and met Neagley coming up from the opposite direction.
    “OK?” he asked her.
    “Opportunities,” she said. “Didn’t see anybody about to exploit any of them.”
    “Me neither.”
    “I like the tent and the armored car.”
    Reacher nodded. “Takes rifles out of the equation.”
    “Not entirely,” Neagley said. “A .50 sniper rifle would get through the armor. With the Browning AP round, or the API.”
    He made a face. Either bullet was a formidable proposition. The standard armor-piercing item just blasted through steel plate, and the alternative armor-piercing incendiary burned its way through. But in the end he shook his head.
    “No chance to aim,” he said. “First you’d have to wait until the car was rolling, to be sure he was in it. Then you’re putting a bullet into a large moving vehicle with dark windows. Hundred-to-one you’d hit Armstrong himself inside.”
    “So you’d need an AT-4.”
    “What I thought.”
    “Either with the high-explosive against the car, or else you could use it to put a phosphorous bomb into the house.”
    “From where?”
    “I’d use an upper-floor window in a house behind Armstrong’s. Across the alley, in back. Their defense is mostly concentrated on the front.”
    “How would you get in?”
    “Phony utility guy, water company, electric company. Anybody who could get in carrying a big toolbox.”
    Reacher nodded. Said nothing.
    “It’s going to be a hell of a four years,” Neagley said.
    “Or eight.”
    Then there was the hiss of tires and the sound of a big engine behind them and they turned to see Froelich easing up in her Suburban. She stopped alongside them, twenty yards short of Armstrong’s house. Gestured them into the vehicle. Neagley got in the front and Reacher sprawled in the back.
    “See anybody?” Froelich asked.
    “Lots of people,” Reacher said. “Wouldn’t buy a cheap watch from any of them.”
    Froelich took her foot off the brake and let the engine’s idle speed crawl the car along the road. She kept it tight in the gutter and stopped it again when the nearside rear door was exactly level with the end of the tent. Lifted her hand from the wheel and spoke into the microphone wired to her wrist.
    “One, ready,” she said.
    Reacher looked to his right down the length of the canvas tunnel and saw the front door open and a man step out. It was Brook Armstrong. No doubt about it. His photograph had been all over the papers for five solid months and Reacher had spent four whole days watching his every move. He was wearing a khaki raincoat and carrying a leather briefcase. He walked through the tent,