Without Fail

of the ex-military, right? In which case you’ve seen MP5s before. As I have. They’re military and paramilitary weapons. Police and federal SWAT teams use them.”
    Then he went quiet and looked around the assembled faces, like there was more to his point than he had actually articulated.
    “What about Minnesota?” Neagley asked.
    “We found the bullet,” Bannon said. “We swept the farmyard with a metal detector. It was buried about nine inches deep in the mud. Consistent with a shot from a small wooded hillside about a hundred and twenty yards away to the north. Maybe eighty feet of elevation.”
    “What was the bullet?” Reacher asked.
    “NATO 7.62 millimeter,” Bannon said.
    Reacher nodded. “You test it?”
    “For what?”
    “Burn.”
    Bannon nodded. “Low power, weak charge.”
    “Subsonic ammunition,” Reacher said. “In that caliber it has to be a Vaime Mk2 silenced sniper rifle.”
    “Which is also a police and paramilitary weapon,” Bannon said. “Often supplied to antiterrorist units.”
    He looked around the room again, like he was inviting a comment. Nobody made one. So he pitched it himself.
    “You know what?” he said.
    “What?”
    “Put a list of who buys Heckler & Koch MP5s in America side to side with a list of who buys Vaime Mk2s, and you see only one official purchaser on both lists.”
    “Who?”
    “The United States Secret Service.”
    The room went quiet. Nobody spoke. There was a knock at the door. The duty officer. He stood there, framed in the doorway.
    “Mail just arrived,” he said. “Something you need to see.”

    They laid it on the conference room table. It was a familiar brown envelope, gummed flap, metal closure. A computer-printed self-adhesive address label. Brook Armstrong, United States Senate, Washington D.C. Clear black-on-white Times New Roman lettering. Bannon opened his briefcase and took out a pair of white cotton gloves. Pulled them on, right hand, left hand. Tightened them over his fingers.
    “Got these from the lab,” he said. “Special circumstances. We don’t want to use latex. Don’t want to confuse the talcum traces.”
    The gloves were clumsy. He had to slide the envelope to the edge of the table to pick it up. He held it with one hand and looked for something to open it with. Reacher took his ceramic knife out of his pocket and snapped it open. Offered it handle-first. Bannon took it and eased the tip of the blade under the corner of the flap. Moved the envelope backward and the knife forward. The blade cut the paper like it was cutting air. He handed the knife back to Reacher and pressed on the sides of the envelope so it made a mouth. Glanced inside. Turned the envelope over and tipped something out.
    It was a single sheet of letter-size paper. Heavyweight white stock. It landed and skidded an inch on the polished wood and settled flat. It had a question printed over two lines, centered between the margins, a little higher than halfway up the sheet. Five words, in the familiar severe typeface: Did you like the demonstration? The last word was the only word on the second line. That isolation gave it some kind of extra emphasis.
    Bannon turned the envelope over and checked the postmark.
    “Vegas again,” he said. “Saturday. They’re real confident, aren’t they? They’re asking if he liked the demonstration three days before they staged it.”
    “We have to move out now,” Froelich said. “Lift-off at ten. I want Reacher and Neagley with me. They’ve been there before. They know the ground.”
    Stuyvesant raised his hand. A vague gesture. Either OK or whatever or don’t bother me , Reacher couldn’t tell.
    “I want twice-daily meetings,” Bannon said. “In here, seven every morning and maybe ten at night?”
    “If we’re in town,” Froelich said. She headed for the door. Reacher and Neagley followed her out of the room. Reacher caught her and nudged her elbow and steered her left instead of right, down the corridor toward her office.
    “Do the database search,” he whispered.
    She glanced at her watch. “It’s way too slow.”
    “So start it now and let it compile all day.”
    “Won’t Bannon do it?”
    “Probably. But double-checking never hurt anybody.”
    She paused. Then she turned and headed for the interior of the floor. Lit up her office and turned on her computer. The NCIC database had a complex search protocol. She entered her password and clicked the cursor into the box and typed thumbprint