Without Fail

not one chance in a million they’re going to make a traceable call to the main office of the United States Secret Service, for God’s sake. They would have cut the call short. I didn’t want to let them have the satisfaction. They need to know if they’re tangling with me, then I take the upper hand, not them.”
    “You blew it because you think you’re in a pissing contest?”
    “I didn’t blow anything,” Reacher said. “We got all the information we were ever going to get.”
    “We got absolutely nothing.”
    “No, you got a voice print. The guy said thirteen words. All the vowel sounds, most of the consonants. You got the sibilant characteristics, and some of the fricatives.”
    “We needed to know where they were, you idiot.”
    “They were at a pay phone with caller ID blocked. Somewhere in the Midwest. Think about it, Stuyvesant. They were in Bismarck today with heavy weapons. Therefore they’re driving. They’re on a four-hundred-mile radius by now. They’re somewhere in one of about six huge states, in a bar or a country store, using the pay phone. And anybody smart enough to use faucet water to seal an envelope knows exactly how short to keep a phone call to make it untraceable.”
    “You don’t know they’re driving.”
    “No,” Reacher said. “You’re quite right. I don’t know for sure. There is a slight possibility that they were frustrated about today’s outcome. Annoyed, even. And they know from the website that there’s another chance tomorrow, right here. And then nothing much for a spell. So it’s possible they ditched their weapons and aimed to fly in tonight. In which case they might be at O’Hare right now, waiting for a connection. It might have been worthwhile putting some cops in place to see who’s using the pay phones. But I only had eight minutes. If you had thought about it earlier it might have been practical. You had a whole half hour. They gave you notice, for God’s sake. You could have arranged something easily. In which case I would have talked their damn ears off, to let the cops get a good look around. But you didn’t think about it. You didn’t arrange it. You didn’t arrange anything. So don’t talk to me about sabotage. Don’t be telling me I’m the one who blew something here.”
    Stuyvesant looked down. Said nothing.
    “Now ask him why he wanted the weather report,” Neagley said.
    Stuyvesant said nothing.
    “Why did you want the weather report?” Froelich asked.
    “Because there might still have been time to get something together. If the weather was bad the night before Thanksgiving in Chicago the airport would be so backed up they’d be sitting around there for hours. In which case I would have provoked some kind of a call-back later, for after we got some cops in place. But the weather was OK. Therefore no delays, therefore no time.”
    Stuyvesant said nothing.
    “Accent?” Froelich asked, quietly. “Did the thirteen words you granted them give you a chance to pick anything out?”
    “You made a recording,” Reacher said. “But nothing jumped out at me. Not foreign. Not Southern, not East Coast. Probably one of those other places where they don’t have much of an accent.”
    The room was quiet for a long moment.
    “I apologize,” Stuyvesant said. “You probably did the right thing.”
    Reacher shook his head. Breathed out.
    “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We’re clutching at straws here. Million to one we were ever going to get a location. It was a snap decision, really. Just a gut thing. If they’re puzzled about me, I want to keep them puzzled. Keep them guessing. And I wanted to make them mad at me. I wanted to take some focus off Armstrong. Better that they focus on me for a spell.”
    “You want these people coming after you personally?”
    “Better than have them coming after Armstrong personally.”
    “Are you nuts? He’s got the Secret Service around him. You haven’t.”
    Reacher smiled. “I’m not too worried about them.”
    Froelich moved in her chair.
    “So this is a pissing contest,” she said. “God, you’re just like Joe, you know that?”
    “Except I’m still alive,” Reacher said.
    There was a knock at the door. The duty officer put his head into the room.
    “Special Agent Bannon is here,” he said. “Ready for the evening meeting.”

    Stuyvesant briefed Bannon privately in his office about the telephone communications. They came back into the conference room together at