Without Fail - Lee Child [164]
“Ranch land,” Neagley said.
The ranches themselves were clearly miles away. Fragments of the road were visible as it rose and fell over gentle contours into the distance. Reacher turned the truck around and headed back and turned down the short southeast leg. It had more houses and they were closer together, but it was otherwise similar. It narrowed after the same distance and ran on toward nothing visible. There was more barbed wire and an inexplicable wooden shed with no door. Inside the shed was a rusting pickup truck with pale weedy grass growing up all around 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 flat. There were crevices and crevasses worn smooth by ten thousand years of winds and weather. They undulated calmly, up and down to 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 toward 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 weather vane and a flag, and a lightning rod. It was white, but not as bright. Reacher glanced west to the horizon and saw gray 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.
“They 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 toward 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 toward the church, setting down. He imagined Armstrong climbing out. Crossing the road. Approaching the church. The vicar would probably greet 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