colour of his sweater and the brightness of the daylight.
‘It’s OK up there,’ Reacher said. ‘Hell of a firing platform, but
as long as your guys hold it we’re safe enough.’
Stuyvesant nodded and turned round and scanned upward.
All five warehouse roofs were visible from the yard. All five
were occupied by sharpshooters, Five silhouetted heads,
five silhouetted rifle barrels.
‘Froelich is looking for you,’ Stuyvesant said.
Nearer the building staff and agents were hauling long
trestle tables into place. The idea was to form a barrier with
them. The right-hand end would be hard against the shelter’s
wall. The left-hand end would be three feet from the yard wall
opposite. There would be a pen six feet deep behind the line of
tables. Armstrong and his wife would be in the pen with four
agents. Directly behind them would be the execution wall. Up
259
close it didn’t look so bad. The old bricks looked warmed by the
sun. Rustic, even friendly. He turned his back on them and
looked up at the warehouse roofs. Crosetti waved again. I’m still
awake, the wave said.
‘Reacher,’ Froelich called.
He turned round and found her walking out of the shelter
towards him. She was carrying a clipboard thick with paper.
She was up on her toes, busy, in charge, in command. She
looked magnificent. The black clothes emphasized her litheness
and made her eyes blaze with blue. Dozens of agents and
scores of cops swirled all around her, every one of them under
her personal control.
‘We’re doing fine here,’ she said. ‘So I want you to take a
stroll. Just check around. Neagley’s already out there. You
know what to look for.’
‘Feels good, doesn’t it?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Doing something really well,’ he said. ‘Taking charge.’
hink I’m doing well?’
‘You’re the best,’ he said. if’his is tremendous. Armstrong’s a
lucky man.’
‘I hope,’ she said.
‘Believe it,’ he said.
She smiled, quickly and shyly, and moved on, leafing through
her paperwork. He turned the other way and walked back out to
the street. Turned right and planned a route in his head that
would keep him on a block-and-a-half radius.
There were cops on the corner and the beginnings of a
ragged crowd of people waiting for the free lunch. There were
two television trucks setting up fifty yards down the street from
the shelter. Hydraulic masts were unfolding themselves and
satellite dishes were rotating. Technicians were unrolling cable
and shouldering cameras. He saw Bannon with six men and a
woman he guessed were the FBI task force. They had just
arrived. Bannon had a map unrolled on the hood of his car and
his agents were clustered around looking at it. Reacher waved
to Bannon and turned left and passed the end of an alley that
led down behind the warehouses. He could hear a train on the
tracks ahead of him. The mouth of the alley was manned by a
260
D.C. cop, facing outward, standing easy. There was a police
cruiser parked nearby. Another cop in it. Cops everywhere. The
overtime bill was going to be something to see.
There were broken-down stores here and there, but they
were all closed for the holiday. Some of the storefronts were
churches, equally closed. There were auto body shops nearer
the railroad tracks, all shuttered and still. There was a pawnbroker
with a very old guy outside washing the windows. He
was the only thing moving on the street. His store was tall
and narrow and had concertina barriers inside the glass. The
display space was crammed with junk of every description.
There were clocks, coats, musical instruments, alarm radios,
hats, record players, car stereos, binoculars, strings of Christmas
lights. There was writing on the windows, offering to buy
just about any article ever manufactured. If it didn’t grow in the
ground or move by itself, this guy would give you money for it.
He also offered services. He would cash cheques, appraise
jewellery, repair watches. There was a tray of watches on view.
They were mostly old-fashioned wind-up items, with bulging
crystals and big square luminescent figures and sculpted
hands. Reacher glanced again at the sign: Watches Repaired. Then he glanced again at the old guy. He was up to his elbows