by Lee Child
Reacher turned back and faced south.
The road vehicles were still heading his way. They were moving slowly and carefully along the moonlit two-lane, cautious because of the curves and the ice and the bad surface, but relentless, a miniature convoy with a destination in mind. Their headlight beams swung left, swung right, bounced up, dipped down. The first vehicle was a strange open-frame truck, with a big coil of heavy flexible pipe wrapped over a drum immediately behind the cab, and then a pump built into a square steel frame, and then a second coil of pipe on a second drum. The vehicle right behind it was the same general size and type, but behind the cab it had a big white tank, and a cherry-picker bucket, and a long articulated boom arm folded up and tied down for travel.
The first truck was painted in the colors of the Shell Oil Company.
It had the word Isuzu across its grille.
The statewide BOLO bulletin: an Isuzu N-series pump and a de-icing truck stolen by two absconded employees from a commercial airfield east of Rapid City. Stolen on Plato’s orders, presumably, so that his 737 could be refueled from the underground tank and then flown away safely through bitter night skies.
Reacher pushed off the flank of the car and waited. The pump truck’s headlights hit him, and it slowed, and then its lights flicked up to bright, and then it stopped dead. For a second Reacher was conscious of his dark pants and khaki hat and tan coat. The coat was old, but it still looked like Highway Patrol issue. And the dead Crown Vic was parked crosswise, as if to block access to the runway. And no one uses plain Crown Vics except law enforcement. But the Rapid City guys must have been told that a bent cop would be waiting there to meet them, because after just a brief pause the pump truck moved on again, with the de-icer close behind. Reacher raised his hand, partly like a greeting, partly like a traffic stop, and a minute later he was sitting in the warmth inside the pump truck’s cab, riding up the runway toward whatever was waiting for him at the other end.
Twenty-seven minutes past three in the morning.
Twenty-eight minutes to go.
Chapter 43
The Boeing had taxied and turned and was parked as near as it could get to the first line of huts. Up close, it looked gigantic. A huge plane, high and wide and long, at temporary rest in the middle of nowhere, towering over the silent buildings behind it, hissing and whistling, an active, living presence in a passive, frozen landscape. Its engines were still spooling noisily and its belly light was still flashing red and its forward door was latched wide open. Lights were on inside. An aluminum housepainter’s ladder had been extended down from the cabin to the runway surface below. It looked thin and puny and insubstantial next to the giant plane.
There were seven men on the ground. Or what looked like six men and a boy. There was no mistaking Plato. Four feet and eleven inches tall, but that abstract measurement did not convey the reality. He had a big man’s heft and thickness and muscularity, and a big man’s stiffness and posture and movement, but a small child’s stature. He was not dwarfish. He was not a freak. His limbs and his torso and his neck and his head were all reasonably well proportioned. He was like an NFL linebacker reduced in size by exactly twenty-five percent. That was all. He was a miniature tough guy. Like a toy.
He looked to be somewhere between forty and fifty years old. He was wearing a black goose-down jacket, and a black woolen watch cap, and black gloves. He looked very cold. The six men with him were younger. In their thirties, maybe. They were dressed the same as him. Black down jackets, black hats, black gloves. They were normal-sized Hispanic men, Spanish not Indian, neither short nor tall, and they looked very cold, too.
The pump truck drove around and parked close to the Boeing’s wing and the de-icer parked behind it. Both drivers got out. They had no visible reaction to the abject temperature. They were Rapid City guys. They knew about cold. They had down jackets of their own. They were both white, medium height, and lean. Hardscrabble people, rural roots, worn down to the bare essentials. Arms, legs, heads, bodies. Maybe thirty years old, but they looked forty. Maybe a couple of generations off the farm.
Reacher stayed in his seat for a moment, keeping warm, and watching.
Plato was moving around inside a loose cordon formed by his six guys. No real reason for that. Maybe habit, maybe appearances. And Plato and his six guys were armed. They all had Heckler & Koch MP5Ks slung around their necks on nylon straps. Short stubby weapons, black and wicked. Thirty-round magazines. They rested raised and proud and prominent on the puffy coats. Butts to the right, muzzles to the left. All seven guys were right-handed. All seven guys had backpacks, too. Black nylon. The backpacks looked mostly empty apart from small heavy loads at the bottom. Flashlights, Reacher assumed. For deep underground. And spare magazines, presumably. For the guns. Always good to have. On full auto thirty rounds came out of an MP5 in two short seconds.
Submachine guns. A bullet manufacturer’s very best friends.
Reacher climbed out of the pump truck’s cab. Into the cold and the wind. The Rapid City guys were still doing OK with it, but all seven Mexicans were shivering hard. They had expressions of total disbelief on their faces. They had left a balmy evening knowing they were heading for somewhere cold, but understanding the word and feeling the feeling were two completely different things. Plato’s gun was bouncing a little on his chest because his whole body was trembling. He was walking small tight circles and stamping his feet. But part of that might have been plain annoyance. He was clearly tense. He had a hard brown face and his mouth was set down in a grimace.
The Rapid City guys didn’t read it right.
The guy who had driven the pump truck stepped up and spread his hands and smiled what he clearly hoped was a cunning smile, and he said, “Here we are.”
A self-evident statement. Plato looked at him blankly and said, “And?”
“We want more money.” A plan, obviously. Clearly discussed and pre-agreed with his buddy. Bar talk. Irresistible, over a third beer. Or a fourth. Show the guy the prize, and then yank it back and ask for more.
Can’t fail.
Plato asked, “How much more?”
Good English, lightly accented, a little slow and indistinct because of a cold face and the jet whine in the background.
The pump driver was used to talking over jet whine. He worked at an airport.
He said, “The same again.”
“Double?”
“You got it.”
Plato’s eyes flicked across three of his guys and came to rest on a fourth. He asked in Spanish, which because of the cold was slow enough for Reacher to follow: “Do you know how to work this equipment?”
The fourth guy said, “I think so.”
“Think or know?”
“I’ve done it before. With the fuel, I mean. Many times. The de-icing, not so much. No call for it. But how hard can it be? It’s just a spray, for the wings.”
“Tell me yes or no.”
“Yes.”
Plato turned back to the Rapid City guys. Put his gloved hands on his gun and raised it up and machine-gunned them both in the chest. Just like that. Full auto. First one, and then the other. Two brief bursts of fire, barely separated at all. Nine or ten rounds each. An impossibly fast cyclic rate. Shattering noise. Searing, vivid, foot-long muzzle flash. A hosing stream of ejected brass. The spent cases bounced and skittered away. The two guys went down in a mist of blood from their ripped bodies and a cloud of feathers from their torn jackets, first one, then immediately the other, with ragged bloody holes in their chests big enough to plunge a fist in. They fell side by side, dead before they hit the ground, their hearts torn apart. They thumped down and settled at once, rags and flesh, two small mounds close together.
The gunsmoke whipped away in the wind and the sudden noise faded and the jet whine came back, low and steady.
Twenty feet above them the pilot looked out the Boeing’s door.
Reacher was impressed. Long bursts, tightly grouped. Great trigger control,
great aim, and no muzzle climb at all. With gloves on, too. Plato had done this before. No question about that.
No one spoke.
Plato moved his thumb and tripped the release and the part-used magazine fell out and plinked against the concrete. Then he held his hand palm-up and waited. The guy nearest to him scurried around and dug down in Plato’s own backpack and came out with a fresh magazine. He slapped it into Plato’s waiting palm. Plato clicked it into its housing, and tugged on it once to check it was secure, and then he turned to Reacher.
He said, “You must be Chief Holland.”
Reacher said, “Yes.”
“Finally we meet.”
“Yes.”
“Why isn’t the door open and the equipment set up for me?”
Reacher didn’t answer. He was thinking: What equipment?
Plato said, “Your daughter is still under my direct control, you know.”
Reacher said, “Where is she?”
“She moved on with the rest of them. She’s living her dream.”
“Is she OK?”
“So far. But my threat against her still stands.”
Reacher said, “My car broke down. The equipment is still in the trunk.”
“Where’s your car?”
“At the other end of the runway.”
Plato didn’t answer directly. The sign of a good leader. No sense in fussing about what couldn’t be changed. He just turned to one of his men and said in Spanish, “Take the de-icing truck and fetch the equipment we need from the trunk of Chief Holland’s car.”
The guy headed for the de-icer’s cab and Plato turned back to Reacher and asked, “Where is the key for the stair head door?”
Reacher took it out of his pocket and held it up. Plato stepped through his human cordon. Reacher rehearsed two possible moves. Drive the key through Plato’s eye, or drop it on the ground and drive a massive uppercut through Plato’s chin and snap his puny neck.
He did neither thing. Plato had five MP5Ks right behind him. Within a split second seventy-five nine-millimeter rounds would be in the air. Most of them would miss. But not all of them.
The de-icer truck crunched into gear and moved away.
Plato stepped up next to Reacher. The top of his head was exactly level with Reacher’s breastbone. His chin was exactly level with Reacher’s waistband. A tiny man. A miniature tough guy. A toy. Reacher reassessed the uppercut. Bad idea. Almost impossible to launch a blow from so low down. Better to drive an elbow vertically through the crown of his skull.
Or shoot him.
Plato took the key.
He said, “Now take your coat off.”
Reacher said, “What?”
“Take your coat off.”
“Why?”
“Are you arguing with me?”
Six hands on six submachine guns.
Reacher said, “I’m asking you a question.”
Plato said, “You and I are going underground.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’ve been down there before. None of us have. You’re our local guide.”
“I can go down there with my coat on.”
“True. But you’re in civilian clothing. Therefore, no gun belt. The weather is cold and your coat is closed at the front. Therefore, your guns are in your outer pockets. I’m a smart guy. Therefore, I don’t wish to enter an unfamiliar environment with an armed adversary.”
“Am I your adversary?”
“I’m a smart guy,” Plato said again. “The safe assumption is that everyone is my adversary.”
Reacher said, “It’s cold.”
Plato said, “Your daughter’s grave will be colder.”
Six hands on six submachine guns.
Reacher unzipped his coat. He shrugged it off and dropped it. It hit the ground with a padded clank. The Glocks, the Smiths, the box of rounds, the cell phone. Plastic and metal and cardboard. Thirty degrees below zero. Windy. A cotton sweater. Within seconds he was shivering worse than any of them.
Plato stood still. Not long, Reacher thought, before the de-icer truck got back and the driver described the smashed-up Ford. Therefore not long before someone looked down the row and found the damaged hut. Not long before someone searched the other huts. Not long before someone started asking awkward questions.
Time to get going.
“Let’s do it,” he said.
Twenty-seven minutes to four in the morning.
Twenty-two minutes to go.
Chapter 44
They walked over to the stone building, seven men, single file, a strange little procession. Plato first, four feet eleven, then Reacher, six feet five, then Plato’s five guys, all of them halfway between the two extremes. Plato’s sixth guy was still safely away in the de-icer truck, looting Holland’s dead car. The stone building was standing there waiting for them, quiet and indifferent in the moonlit gloom, the same way it had stood for fifty long years. The stone, the slate, the blind windows, the chimneys, the moldings and the curlicues and the details.
The portico, and the steel slab door.
Plato put the key in the lock. Turned it. The lock sprang back. Then he stood still and waited. Reacher took the hint. He turned the handle down sixty degrees, precise and physical, like a bank vault. He pulled the door through a short arc. The hinges squealed. He stepped in behind it and pushed it all the way open, like pushing a truck.
Plato stood still and raised his hand, palm up. The man behind him stepped up and dug down in his backpack and came out with a flashlight. He slapped it into Plato’s palm, the way an OR nurse feeds tools to a surgeon. Plato clicked it on and transferred it to his other hand and snapped his fingers and pointed at Reacher. The guy behind him swung his own backpack off his shoulder and took out his flashlight and handed it over.
It was a four-cell Maglite. From Ontario, California. The de facto gold standard for man-portable illumination. Alloy construction. Reliable and practically indestructible. Reacher clicked it on. He played the beam around the bare concrete chamber.
No change.
The place was exactly as he and two dead men had left it more than four and a half hours earlier. The circular stair head, the two unfinished ventilation pipes jutting up through the floor. The stale dry air, the stirring breeze, the smell of old fears long forgotten.
“After you, Mr. Holland,” Plato said.
Which disappointed Reacher a little. He had lost his coat, but he still had his boots. He had entertained the idea of letting Plato go first, and then kicking his head off about a hundred feet down.
But, obviously, so had Plato. A smart guy.
So Reacher went first, as awkward as before. Big boot heels, small steps, clanging metal. The sound of the whining jets faded as he went down, and he heard Plato issuing a stream of instructions in Spanish: “Wait until the de-icer gets back, then set up the equipment, then start the refueling. Get the other three doors open on the plane, and get the other three ladders in position. Figure out how the de-icer works and figure out how close to take-off we need to use it. And put a man on lookout a hundred feet south. That’s the only direction we have to worry about. Rotate every twenty minutes. Or more often, if you want. Your call. I want the lookout alert at all times, not frozen to death.”
Then Plato stopped talking and Reacher heard his feet on the stairs above him. Smaller steps, more precise. The metal still clanged, but quieter. The two flashlight beams went down and around, down and around, always clockwise, separated vertically by twenty feet, and not synchronized. Reacher took it slow. He was Holland now, in more than name. He was improvising, and hoping his moment would come.
On the surface the de-icer truck got back with the necessary equipment all piled on and around the passenger seat. The engine hoist, the rope, the garbage bags. The hoist was a sturdy metal thing, with three legs and a boom arm like the jib of a small crane. It was designed to be set up at the front of a car, with the jib leaning in over the engine compartment. The pulley
s would produce multiplication of effort, according to ancient mechanical principles, allowing a lone operator to lift a heavy iron block.
Three of Plato’s guys carried the hoist into the bunker and set it up with the jib leaning in over one of the ventilation shafts. Like fishing from a barrel. They started threading the rope through the pulleys. No free lunch. More weight meant less speed. Pull the rope a yard, and with one pulley in play a light weight would move the same yard, but with two pulleys in play a heavier weight would move just eighteen inches, and with three pulleys in play a heavier weight still would move just twelve inches. And so on. A trade-off.
They chose to thread two pulleys. A balance of speed and capacity.
The guy who had driven the truck said nothing about the Ford.
Two hundred and eighty awkward steps. Reacher completed seventy of them, a quarter of the way down, and then he began to speed up. He saw a window of opportunity ahead. Set up the equipment, then start the refueling, Plato had said. Which meant that there would be some busywork up top before one of his guys came down to connect the pump truck’s hose to the fuel tank. Five minutes, maybe. Possibly ten. And five or ten minutes alone with Plato deep underground could be productive. So he aimed to get to the bottom as far ahead as possible. To prepare. So he sped up as much as he could. Which wasn’t much.
And which wasn’t nearly enough.
Plato matched him step for step. Gained on him, even. For a man of Plato’s stature, the winding stair was broad and palatial. Like something from a Hollywood production. And his feet were dainty. He was nimble and agile in comparison.
Reacher slowed down again. Better to save energy and avoid busting an ankle.
