Child, Lee – Without Fail

trucks carrying five department sharpshooters and fifteen

general-duty agents. Froelich parked on the sidewalk tight

against the base of the warehouse wall. Normally she might

have just blocked the street beyond the shelter entrance, but

she didn’t want to reveal the direction of Armstrong’s intended

approach to onlookers. He was actually scheduled to come in

from the south, but that information and ten minutes with a

map could predict his route all the way from Georgetown

She assembled her people in the shelter’s yard and sent the

sharpshooters to secure the warehouse roofs. They would be

257

up there three hours before the event started, but that was

normal. Generally they were the first to arrive and the last to

leave. Stuyvesant pulled Reacher aside and asked him to go up

there with them.

¢I’hen come find me,’ he said. ‘I want a first-hand report about

how bad it is.’

So Reacher walked across the street with an agent called

Crosetti and they ducked past a cop into a damp hallway full of

trash and rat droppings. There were stairs winding up through

a central shaft. Crosetti was in a Kevlar vest and was carrying a

rifle in a hard case. But he was a fit guy. He was half a flight

ahead of Reacher at the top.

The stairs came out inside a rooftop hutch. There was a

wooden door that opened outward into the sunlight. The roof

was flat It was made of asphalt. There were pigeon corpses

here and there, and dirty skylights made of wired glass and

small metal turrets on top of ventilation pipes. The roof was

lipped with a low wall, set on top with eroded coping stones.

Crosetti walked to the left edge, and then the right. Made visual

contact with his colleagues either side. Then he walked to the

front to check the view. Reacher was already there.

The view was good and bad. Good in the conventional sense

because the sun was shining and they were five floors up in a

low-built part of town. Bad because the shelter’s yard was right

there underneath them. It was like looking down into a shoe

box from a distance of three feet up and three feet away. The

back wall where Armstrong would be standing was dead ahead.

It was made out of old brick and looked like the execution wall

in some foreign prison. Hitting him would be easier than shooting

a fish in a barrel.

‘What’s the range?’ Reacher asked.

‘Your guess?’ Crosetti said.

Reacher put his knees against the lip of the roof and glanced

out and down. ‘Ninety yards?’ he said.

Crosetti unsnapped a pocket in his vest and took out a range

finder. ‘Laser,’ he said. He switched it on and lined it up.

‘Ninety-two to the wall,’ he said. ‘Ninety-one to his head. That

was a pretty good guess.’

‘Windage?’

258

‘Slight thermal coming up off the concrete down there,’

Crosetti said. ‘Nothing else, probably. No big deal.’

‘Practically like standing right next to him,’ Reacher said.

‘Don’t worry,’ Crosetti said. ‘As long as I’m up here nobody

else can be. That’s the job today. We’re sentries, not shooters.’

‘Where are you going to be?’ Reacher asked.

Crosetti glanced all round his little piece of real estate and

pointed. ‘Over there, I guess,’ he said. flight in the far corner.

I’ll face parallel with the front wall. Slight turn to my left and I’m

covering the yard. Slight turn to my right, I’m covering the

head of the stairwell.’

‘Good plan,’ Reacher said. ‘You need anything?’

Crosetti shook his head.

‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Try to stay awake,

OK?’

Crosetti smiled. ‘I usually do.’

‘Good,’ Reacher said. ‘I like that in a sentry.’

He went back down five flights through the darkness and

stepped out into the sun. Walked across the street and glanced

up. Saw Crosetti nestled comfortably in the angle of the corner.

His head and his knees were visible. So was his rifle barrel. It

was jutting upward against the bright sky at a relaxed forty-five

degrees. He waved. Crosetti waved back. He walked on and

found Stuyvesant in the yard. He was hard to miss, given the

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