Without Fail - Lee Child [168]
“It’s heading out,” he called.
He watched it in the scope all the way. It bounced and swayed and grew smaller and smaller. It took ten whole minutes to drive all the way out of his field of vision. It rose up over the last hump in the road and then disappeared with a last flash of sun on gold paint.
“Anything more?” he called.
“Clear to the south,” Neagley called back.
“I’m going down for the map. You can watch both directions while I’m gone. Do some limbo dancing under this damn clock thing.”
He crawled to the trapdoor and got his feet on the ladder. Went down, stiff and sore and cold. He made it to the ledge and down the winding staircase. Out of the tower and out of the church into the weak midday sun. He limped across the graveyard toward the car. Saw Froelich’s father standing right next to it, looking at it like it might answer a question. The old guy saw his approach reflected in the window glass and spun around to face him.
“Mr. Stuyvesant is on the phone for you,” he said. “From the Secret Service office in Washington D.C.”
“Now?”
“He’s been holding twenty minutes. I’ve been trying to find you.”
“Where’s the phone?”
“At the house.”
The Froelich house was one of the white buildings on the short southeastern leg of the K. The old guy led the way with his long loping stride. Reacher had to hurry to keep up with him. The house had a front garden with a white picket fence. It was full of herbs and cottage plants that had died back from the cold. Inside it was dim and fragrant. There were wide dark boards on the floors. Rag rugs here and there. The old guy led the way into a front parlor. There was an antique table under the window with a telephone and a photograph on it. The telephone was an old model with a heavy receiver and a plaited cord insulated with brown fabric. The photograph was of Froelich herself, aged about eighteen. Her hair was a little longer than she had kept it, and a little lighter. Her face was open and innocent, and her smile was sweet. Her eyes were dark blue, alive with hopes for the future.
There was no chair next to the table. Clearly the Froelichs came from a generation that preferred to stand up while talking on the telephone. Reacher unraveled the cord and held the phone to his ear.
“Stuyvesant?” he said.
“Reacher? You got any good news for me?”
“Not yet.”
“What’s the situation?”
“The service is scheduled for eight o’clock,” Reacher said. “But I guess you know that already.”
“What else do I need to know?”
“You coming in by chopper?”
“That’s the plan. He’s still in Oregon right now. We’re going to fly him to an air base in South Dakota and then take a short hop in an Air Force helicopter. We’ll have eight people altogether, including me.”
“He only wanted three.”
“He can’t object. We’re all her friends.”
“Can’t you have a mechanical problem? Just stay in South Dakota?”
“He’d know. And the Air Force wouldn’t play anyway. They wouldn’t want to go down in history as the reason why he couldn’t make it.”
Reacher stood and looked out the window. “OK, so you’ll see the church easy enough. You’ll land across the street to the east. There’s a good place right there. Then he’s got about fifty yards to the church door. I can absolutely guarantee the immediate surroundings. We’re going to be in the church all night. But you’re going to hate what you see farther out. There’s about a hundred-fifty-degree field of fire to the south and west. It’s completely open. And there’s plenty of concealment.”
Silence in D.C.
“I can’t do it,” Stuyvesant said. “I can’t bring him into that. Or any of my people. I’m not going to lose anybody else.”
“So just hope for the best,” Reacher said.
“Not my way. You’re going to have to deliver.”
“We will if we can.”
“How will I know? You don’t have radios. Cell phones won’t work