similar. It narrowed after the same distance and ran on towards
nothing visible. There was more barbed wire and an inexplicable
wooden shed with no door. Inside the shed was a
rusting pick-up truck with pate weedy grass growing up all
round it. It looked like it had been parked there back when
Richard Nixon was vice president.
‘OK, go south,’ Neagley said. ‘Let’s see the church.’
The south leg led seventy miles to Douglas, and they drove
the first three miles of it. The town’s power and telephone lines
came in from that direction, strung on tarred poles, looping on
into the distance, following the road. The road passed the
church and the graveyard, then the cluster of cedar buildings,
then a couple of abandoned cattle barns, then maybe twenty or
thirty small houses, and then the town finished and there was
just infinite grassland ahead. But it wasn’t flaL There were
crevices and crevasses worn smooth by ten thousand years of
winds and weather. They undulated calmly, up and down to
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maximum depths of ten or twelve feet, like slow ocean swells.
They were all connected in a network. The grass itself was a
yard high, brown and dead and brittle. It swayed in waves under
the perpetual breeze.
‘You could hide an infantry company in there,’ Neagley said.
Reacher turned the car and headed back towards the church.
Pulled over and parked level with the graveyard. The church
itself was very similar to the one outside Bismarck. It had the
same steep roof over the nave and the same blocky square
tower. It had a clock on the tower and a weathervane and a flag,
and a lightning rod. It was white, but not as bright. Reacher
glanced west to the horizon and saw grey clouds massing over
the distant mountains.
‘It’s going to snow,’ he said.
‘We can’t see anything from here,’ Neagley said.
She was right. The church was built right in the river valley
bottom. Its foundation was probably the lowest structure in
town. The road to the north was visible for maybe a hundred
yards. Same in the south. It ran in both directions and rose over
gentle humps and disappeared from sight.
Fhey could be right on top of us before we know it,’ Neagley
said. ‘We need to be able to see them coming.’
Reacher nodded. Opened his door and,climbed out of the car.
Neagley joined him and they walked towards the church. The
air was cold and dry. The graveyard lawn was dead under their
feet. It felt like the beginning of winter. There was a new grave
site marked out with cotton tape. It lay to the west of the
church, in virgin grass on the end of a row of weathered
headstones. Reacher detoured to take a look. There were four
Froelich graves in a line. Soon to be a fifth, on some sad day in
the near future. He looked at the rectangle of tape and imagined
the hole dug deep and crisp and square.
Then he stepped away and looked around. There was flat
empty land opposite the church on the east side of the road. It
was a big enough space to land a helicopter. He stood and
imagined it coming in, rotors thumping, turning in the air to
face the passenger door towards the church, setting down.
He imagined Armstrong climbing out. Crossing the road.
Approaching the church. The vicar would probably greet
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him near the door. He stepped sideways and stood where
Armstrong might stand and raised his eyes. Scanned the land to
the south and west. Bad news. There was some elevation there,
and about a hundred and fifty yards out there were waves and
shadows in the moving grass that must mean dips and crevices
in the earth beneath it. There were more beyond that distance,
all the way out to infinity.
‘How good do you think they are?’ he asked.
Neagley shrugged, q’hey’re always either better or worse
than you expect. They’ve shown some proficiency so far. Shooting
downhill, thin air, through grass, I’d be worried out to about
five hundred yards.’
‘And if they miss Armstrong they’ll hit somebody else by