about waiting.’
They drove back to the office and waited the rest of the
morning and most of the afternoon. Froelich received regular
situation reports. Reacher built up a pretty good picture of how
things were organized. Metro cops were stationed outside the
Senate Office buildings in cars. Secret Service agents held the
sidewalk. Inside the street doors were members of the Capitol’s
own police force, one officer manning each metal detector,
plenty more patrolling the hallways. Mingled in with them were
more Secret Service. The transition business itself took place
in upstairs offices with pairs of agents outside every door.
Armstrong’s personal detail stayed with him at all times. The
radio reports spoke of a fairly static day. There was a lot of
sitting around and talking going on. Plenty of deals being made.
That was clear. Reacher recalled the phrase smoke-filled rooms, except he guessed nobody was allowed to smoke any more.
At four o’clock they drove over to Neagley’s hotel, which was
being used again for the contributor function. Start time
was scheduled for seven in the evening, which gave them three
hours to secure the building. Froelich had a pre-planned
protocol that involved a squeeze search starting in the kitchen
loading bay and the penthouse suites simultaneously. Metro
cops with dogs were accompanied by Secret Service people
and worked patiently, floor by floor. As each floor was cleared
three cops took up permanent station, one at each end of the
bedroom corridor and one covering the elevator bank and
the fire stairs. The two search teams met on the ninth floor at
six o’clock, by which time temporary metal detectors were in
place inside the lobby and at the ballroom door. The cameras
were set up and recording.
‘Ask for two forms of ID this time,’ Neagley said. ‘Driving
licence and a credit card, maybe.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Froelich said. ‘I plan to.’
Reacher stood in the ballroom doorway and glanced around
the room. It was a vast space, but a thousand people were going
to crowd it out to the point of discomfort.
166
Armstrong took the elevator down from his office and turned a
tight left in the lobby. Pushed through an unmarked door that
led to a rear exit. He was wearing a raincoat and carrying a
briefcase. The corridor behind the unmarked door was a plain
narrow space that smelled of janitorial supplies. Some kind of
strong detergent cleaner. He had to squeeze past two stacks of
cartons. One of the stacks was neat and new, made up from
recent deliveries. The other was unsteady and ragged, made up
of empty boxes waiting for the trash collector. He turned his
body sideways to get past the second pile. Held his briefcase
out behind him and led with his right forearm. He pushed open
the exit door and stepped out into the cold.
There was a small square internal courtyard, partly open on
the north side. It was an unglamorous space. Tin trnnking for
the building’s ventilation system was clipped to the walls above
head height. There were red-painted pipes and brass-collared
valves at shin level, feeding the fire sprinklers. There was a line
of three trash containers painted dark blue. They were large
steel boxes the size of automobiles. Armstrong had to walk past
them to get to the back street. He got past the first one. He got
past the second one. Then a quiet voice called to him.
‘Hey,’ it said. He turned and saw a man cramped into the
small space between the second and the third container. He
registered a dark coat and a hat and some kind of brutal
weapon. It was short and fat and black. It came up and coughed.
It was a Heckler & Koch MP5SD6 silenced sub-machine gun,
set to fire three-round bursts. It used standard nine-millimetre
Parabellums. No need for low-powered versions, because the
SD6’s barrel has thirty holes in it to bleed gas and reduce
muzzle velocity to subsonic speeds. It fires at a cyclic rate of
eight hundred rounds per minute, so that each three-round
burst was complete in a fraction over a fifth of a second. The
first burst hit Armstrong in the centre of his chest. The second