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
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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?’
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‘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