works. They were in the business. They’ll have understood his
statement was a trap. So they won’t show up.’
Reacher nodded. ‘Won’t be the first trip I ever wasted.’
‘I’m warning you against independent action.’
I’here won’t be any action, according to you.’
Bannon nodded. ‘Ballistics tests are in,’ he said. The rifle we
found in the warehouse is definitely the same gun that fired the
Minnesota bullet.’
‘So how did it get here?’ Stuyvesant asked.
‘We burned more than a hundred man-hours last night,’
Bannon said. ‘All I can tell you for sure is how it didn’t get here.
It didn’t fly in. We checked all commercial arrivals into eight
airports and there were no firearms manifests at all. Then we
traced all private planes into the same eight airports. Nothing
even remotely suspicious.’
‘So they drove it in?’ Reacher said.
Bannon nodded. ‘But Bismarck to D.C. is more than thirteen
hundred miles. That’s more than twenty hours absolute
minimum, even driving like a lunatic. Impossible, in the time
frame. So the rifle was never in Bismarck. It came in direct from
Minnesota, which was a little more than eleven hundred miles
in forty-eight hours. Your grandmothercould do that.’
‘My grandmother couldn’t drive,’ Reacher said. ‘Still figuring
on three guys?’
Bannon shook his head. ‘No, on reflection we’re sticking at
two. The whole thing profiles better that way. We figure the
team was split one and one between Minnesota and Colorado
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on Tuesday and it stayed split afterwards. The guy pretending
to be the Bismarck cop was acting solo at the church. We figure
he had the sub-machine gun only. Which makes sense, because
he knew Armstrong was going to be buried in agents as soon as
the decoy rifle was discovered. And a sub-machine gun is better
than a rifle against a cluster of people. Especially an H&K MP5.
Our people say it’s as accurate as a rifle at a hundred yards
and a lot more powerful. Thirty-round magazines, he would
have chewed through six agents and gotten to Armstrong easy
enough.’
‘So why was the other guy bothering to drive here at the
time?’ Stuyvesant asked.
‘Because these are your people,’ Bannon said. qhey’re realistic
professionals. They knew the odds. They knew they couldn’t
guarantee a hit in any one particular place. So they went through
Armstrong’s schedule and planned to leapfrog ahead of each
other to cover all the bases.’
Stuyvesant said nothing.
‘But they were together yesterday,’ Reacher said. ‘You’re
saying the first guy drove the Vaime here and I saw the guy
from Bismarck on the warehouse roof.’
Bannon nodded. ‘No more leapfrogging, because yesterday
was the last good opportunity for a spell. The Bismarck guy
must have flown in, commercial, not long after the air force
brought you back.’
‘So where’s the H&K? He must have abandoned it in
Bismarck somewhere between the church and the airport. You
find it?’
‘No,’ Bannon said. ‘But we’re still looking.’
‘And who was the guy the State trooper saw in the subdivision?’
‘We’re discounting him. Almost certainly just a civilian.’
Reacher shook his head. ‘So this solo guy hid the decoy rifle
and legged it back to thee church with the H&K all by himself?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘Have you ever hidden out and lined up to shoot a man?’
‘No,’ Bannon said.
‘I have,’ Reacher said. ‘And it’s not a lot of fun. You need to be
comfortable, and relaxed, and alert. It’s a muscle thing. You get
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there well ahead of time, you settle in, you adjust your position,
you figure out your range, you check the wind, you assess the
angle of elevation or depression, you calculate the bullet drop.
Then you lie there, staring through the sight. You get your
breathing slow, you let your heart rate drop. And you know
what you want at that point, more than anything else in the
whole world?’
‘What?’
‘You want somebody you trust watching your back. All of
your concentration is out there in front Of you, and you start
to feel an itch in your spine. If these guys are realistic professionals
like you say they are, then no way would one of them