14 61 Hours

by Lee Child

  Reacher nodded in turn. ‘Which is why you’re pussyfooting. Why you’re not confronting the bikers. Because an all-out war right now would stretch you too thin.’

  ‘And because we have to sell this thing to a jury. We can’t let defence counsel make out it’s all part of a harassment campaign. Plus, the bikers aren’t dumb. They keep their noses clean. Technically as individuals they haven’t done anything wrong yet. At least not in public.’

  ‘In fact the opposite seems to be true. I saw the photographs.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Peterson said. ‘It looks like one of our good citizens beat one of theirs to death.’

  The clock on the refrigerator ticked on and hit five to midnight. Fifty-two hours to go. Outside the window the moon had crept higher. The fallen snow was bright. The air was still. No wind. The cold was so intense Reacher could feel it striking through the farmhouse walls. There was a buffer zone about a foot deep, where the cold came creeping in before the heat from the iron stove overwhelmed it and beat it back.

  Reacher asked, ‘Is Chief Holland up to the job?’

  Peterson said, ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘First impressions. He looks a little overmatched to me.’

  ‘Holland is a good man.’

  ‘That’s not an answer to my question.’

  ‘Did you discuss your superiors when you were in the army?’

  ‘All the time. With people of equal rank.’

  ‘Are we of equal rank?’

  ‘Approximately.’

  ‘So what were your superiors like?’

  ‘Some of them were good, and some of them were assholes.’

  ‘Holland’s OK,’ Peterson said. ‘But he’s tired. His wife died. Then his daughter grew up and left home. He’s all alone, and he feels a little beaten down.’

  ‘I saw the photograph in his office.’

  ‘Happier days. They made a nice family.’

  ‘So is he up to the job?’

  ‘Enough to ask for help when he needs it.’

  ‘Who’s he asking?’

  ‘You.’

  Reacher finished his Miller. He was warm, and comfortable, and tired. He said, ‘What could I possibly do for him?’

  Peterson said, ‘There was an old army facility where they built the construction camp.’

  ‘You told me that already.’

  ‘We need to understand exactly what it was.’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  Peterson shook his head. ‘It was put in a long time ago. There’s a single stone building, about the size of a house.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  Peterson nodded. ‘A long straight road leading to a single small building all alone on the prairie.’

  ‘And it’s the size of a house?’

  ‘Smaller than this one.’

  ‘What shape?’

  ‘Square. Rectangular. Like a house.’

  ‘With a roof?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Because I’m wondering if it was a missile silo. There are plenty of them in the Dakotas.’

  ‘It’s not a silo.’

  ‘Then it could be anything. Could be something they started and didn’t finish.’

  ‘We don’t think so. There’s a kind of folk memory with the older people. They say there were hundreds of engineers out there for months. And a security cordon. And a lot of coming and going. That’s a lot of effort for a thing the size of a house.’

  ‘I’ve heard of stranger things.’

  ‘We need to know. Chances are we’re going to need to go out there and make a hundred arrests. We need to know what we’re dealing with.’

  ‘Call somebody. Call the Department of the Army.’

  ‘We have. We’ve called, the county board has called, the state government has called.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nobody ever got a reply.’

  ‘How old are your older people?’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘I’m asking when the place was built. Did they see all these engineers for themselves? Or just hear stories about them from their parents or grandparents?’

  ‘The place is about fifty years old.’

  ‘How long since soldiers were seen out there?’

  ‘Never. The place was never used.’

  Reacher shrugged. ‘So it’s an abandoned Cold War facility. Maybe never even completed. One day it seemed like a good idea, the next day it didn’t. That kind of thing happened all the time, way back when, because strategy was fluid. Or because nobody had the faintest idea what they were doing. But it’s no big deal. A stone house is going to be more resistant to small-arms fire than a hut or a trailer, but I’m assuming you’re not planning on a shooting war out there anyway.’

  ‘We need to know for sure.’

  ‘I can’t help you. I never served here. Never heard any talk.’

  ‘You could make some back-channel calls. Maybe you still know people.’

  ‘I’ve been out a very long time.’

  ‘You could go west and take a look.’

  ‘It’s a stone building. Army stone is the same as anyone else’s.’

  ‘Then why the hundreds of engineers?’

  ‘What’s on your mind?’

  ‘We’re wondering if it’s an underground facility. Maybe the stone building is just a stair head. It could be a warren down there. Their lab could be down there. Which would explain the lack of fires and explosions in the trailers. They could have turned the whole place into a fortress. There could be food and water and weapons down there. This whole thing could turn into a siege. We don’t want that.’

  Peterson stood up and stepped over to the desk and took two fresh bottles from the refrigerator. Which told Reacher they were only halfway through their conversation. Maybe only a third of the way through, if there was a six-pack in there.

  Peterson said, ‘There’s more.’

  ‘No kidding,’ Reacher said.

  ‘We’ve got their top boy locked up, but command and control is still happening. They’re still functioning.’

  ‘So he’s got a deputy.’

  ‘Gangs don’t work like that.’

  ‘So he’s still communicating. Cell phone or smuggled notes.’

  ‘Not happening.’

  ‘You know that for sure?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Then it’s through his lawyer. A private conference every day, they’re pretending to discuss the case, your guy is really issuing verbal instructions, his lawyer is passing them on.’

  ‘That’s what we guessed. But that’s not happening either.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because they have concealed video and audio in the conference rooms.’

  ‘For privileged discussions between lawyers and clients? Is that legal?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s a brand-new prison. And there’s a lot of fine print in some of the new federal legislation.’

  ‘He’s not a federal prisoner.’

  ‘OK, so no, it’s probably not entirely legal.’

  ‘But you’re doing it anyway?’

  ‘Yes,’ Peterson said. ‘And we haven’t heard a single instruction or business detail. No notes passed, nothing written down.’

  ‘You ever heard of the Fourth Amendment? This could screw your case.’

  ‘We’re not planning on using anything we hear. The prosecutor doesn’t even know we’re doing it. We just want advance warning, that’s all, in the police department, in case they decide to move against the witness.’

  ‘She’ll be OK. You’ve got her buttoned up tight. It’s only a month. You’re on the hook for a little overtime, but that’s all.’

  ‘We competed for that prison.’

  ‘Holland told me. Like a Toyota plant. Or Honda.’

  ‘It was a give and take process.’

  ‘It always is.’

  ‘Correctional staff get tax breaks, we built houses, we expanded the school.’

  ‘And?’r />
  ‘Final item was we had to sign on to their crisis plan.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘If there’s an escape, we have a preassigned role.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘The whole of the Bolton PD moves up to a prearranged perimeter a mile out.’

  ‘All of you?’

  ‘Every last one of us. On duty or off. Awake or asleep. Healthy or sick.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘It’s what we had to agree. For the good of the town.’

  ‘Not good,’ Reacher said. ‘Not good at all,’ Peterson said. ‘If that siren goes off, we drop everything and head north. All of us. Which means if that siren goes off any time in the next month, we leave Janet Salter completely unprotected.’

  NINE

  REACHER FINISHED MOST OF HIS SECOND BEER AND SAID, ‘THAT’S insane.’

  ‘Only in reality,’ Peterson said. ‘Not on paper. The Highway Patrol is theoretically available to us as back-up. And the feds offered us witness protection for Mrs Salter. But the Highway Patrol is usually hours away all winter long, and Mrs Salter refused the protection. She says the bikers are the ones who should be locked up miles from home, not her.’

  ‘Problem,’ Reacher said.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Peterson said.

  Reacher glanced at the moonlit view out the window and said, ‘But it’s not exactly ideal escaping weather, is it? Not right now. Maybe not for months. There’s two feet of virgin snow on the ground for five miles all around. If someone gets through whatever kind of a fence they have out there, they’ll die of exposure inside an hour. Or get tracked by a helicopter. Their footsteps will be highly visible.’

  Peterson said, ‘No one escapes on foot any more. They stow away on a food truck or something.’

  ‘So why form a perimeter a mile out?’

  ‘Nobody said their crisis plan makes any sense.’

  ‘So fake it. Leave some folks in place. At least the women in the house.’

  ‘We can’t. There will be a head count. We’ll be audited. We don’t comply to the letter, we’ll get hit with federal supervision for the next ten years. The town signed a contract. We took their money.’

  ‘For the extra cars?’

  Peterson nodded. ‘And for housing. Everyone lives within ten minutes, everyone gets a car, everyone keeps his radio on, everyone responds instantaneously.’

  ‘Can’t you stick Mrs Salter in a car and take her with you?’

  ‘We’re supposed to keep civilians away. We certainly can’t take one with us.’

  ‘Has anyone escaped so far?’

  ‘No. It’s a brand-new prison. They’re doing OK.’

  ‘So hope for the best.’

  ‘You don’t get it. We would hope for the best. If this was about random chance or coincidence, we wouldn’t be sweating it. But it isn’t. Because the same guy who wants us out of Janet Salter’s house has the actual personal power to make that happen, any old time he wants to.’

  ‘By escaping on cue?’ Reacher said. ‘I don’t think so. I know prisons. Escapes take a long time to organize. He would have to scope things out, make a plan, find a truck driver, build trust, get money, make arrangements.’

  ‘There’s more. It gets worse.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Part two of the crisis plan is for a prison riot. The corrections people move in off the fence and we take over the towers and the gate.’

  ‘All of you?’

  ‘Same as part one of the plan. And prison riots don’t take a long time to organize. They can start in a split second. Prisons are riots just waiting to happen, believe me.’

  There was no third bottle of beer. No more substantive conversation. Just a few loose ends to tie up, and a little reiteration. Peterson said, ‘You see? The guy can time it almost to the minute. The wrong thing gets said to the wrong person, a minute later a fight breaks out, a minute after that there’s a full-blown riot brewing, we get the call, ten minutes after that we’re all more than five miles from Janet Salter’s house.’

  ‘He’s in lock-up,’ Reacher said. ‘The county jail, right? Which is a separate facility. Nobody riots in lock-up. They’re all awaiting trial. They’re all busy making out like they’re innocent.’

  ‘He’s a biker. He’ll have friends in the main house. Or friends of friends. That’s how prison gangs work. They look after their own. And there are lots of ways of communicating.’

  ‘Not good,’ Reacher said again.

  ‘Not good at all,’ Peterson said. ‘When the siren sounds, we leave the old-timer civilian on the desk, and that’s it. He’s supposed to call us back if there’s a terrorist alert, but short of that, our hands are tied.’

  ‘You expecting a terrorist alert?’

  ‘Not here. Mount Rushmore has symbolic value, but that’s Rapid City’s problem.’

  Reacher asked, ‘Did you expand the police department too? Like the schools?’

  Peterson nodded. ‘We had to. Because the town grew.’

  ‘How much did you expand?’

  ‘We doubled in size. By which time we were competing with the prison for staff. It was hard to keep standards up. Which is a big part of Chief Holland’s problem. It’s like half of us are his from the old days, and half of us aren’t.’

  ‘I can’t help him,’ Reacher said. ‘I’m just a guy passing through.’

  ‘You can make those calls to the army. That would help him.

  If we get through the next month, we’re going to need that information.’

  ‘I’ve been out too long. It’s a new generation now. They’ll hang up on me.’

  ‘You could try.’

  ‘I wouldn’t get past the switchboard.’

  ‘Back when I came on the job we had a special emergency number for the FBI office in Pierre. The system changed years ago, but I still remember the number.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’m guessing there’s a number you remember, too. Maybe not for a switchboard.’

  Reacher said nothing.

  Peterson said, ‘Make the calls for us. That’s all, I promise. We’ll handle the rest, and then you can get on your way.’

  Reacher said nothing.

  ‘We can offer you a desk and chair.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the police station. Tomorrow.’

  ‘You want me to come to work with you? To the police station? You don’t quite trust me yet, do you?’

  ‘You’re in my house. With my wife and children sleeping in it.’

  Reacher nodded.

  ‘Can’t argue with that,’ he said.

  But Kim Peterson wasn’t sleeping. Not right then. Ten minutes after Andrew Peterson left him alone Reacher got tired of the stale hop smell from the four empty beer bottles, so he trapped their necks between his knuckles and carried them two in each hand out to the kitchen, hoping to find a trash bin. Instead he found Kim Peterson tidying her refrigerator. The room was dark but the light inside the appliance was bright. She was bathed in a yellow glow. She was wearing an old candlewick bathrobe. Her hair was down. Reacher held up the four bottles, as a mute inquiry.

  ‘Under the sink,’ Kim Peterson said.

  Reacher bent down and opened the cabinet door. Lined up the bottles neatly with six others already there.

  ‘Got everything you need?’ she asked him.

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘Did Andrew ask you to do something for him?’

  ‘He wants me to make some calls.’

  ‘About the army camp?’

  Reacher nodded.

  ‘Are you going to do it?’

  Reacher said, ‘I’m going to try.’

  ‘Good. That place drives him crazy.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Promise me, if he asks, would you help him any way you can? He works too hard. He’s responsible for everything now. Chief Holland is overwh
elmed. He barely knows half his department. Andrew has to do everything.’

  There was a tiny bathroom off the den and Reacher used it to take a long hot shower. Then he folded his clothes over the back of the chair that Peterson had used and climbed under the covers. The sofa springs creaked and twanged under his weight. He rolled one way, rolled the other, listened to the loud tick of the clock, and was asleep a minute later.

  Five to one in the morning.

  Fifty-one hours to go.

  TEN

  REACHER WOKE UP AT TEN TO SEVEN, TO A SILENT SEPULCHRAL world. Outside the den windows the air was thick with heavy flakes. They were falling gently but relentlessly on to a fresh accumulation that was already close to a foot deep. There was no wind. Each one of the billions of flakes came parachuting straight down, sometimes wavering a little, sometimes spiralling, sometimes sidestepping an inch or two, each one disturbed by nothing except its own featherweight instability. Most added their tiny individual masses to the thick white quilt they landed on. Some stuck to fantastic vertical feathered shapes on power lines and fence wires, and made the shapes taller.

  The bed was warm but the room was cold. Reacher guessed that the iron stove had been banked overnight, its embers hoarded, its air supply cut off. He wondered for a moment about the correct protocol for a house guest in such circumstances. Should he get up and open the dampers and add some wood? Would that be helpful? Or would it be presumptuous? Would it upset a delicate and long-established combustion schedule and condemn his hosts to an inconvenient midnight visit to the woodpile two weeks down the road?

  In the end Reacher did nothing. Just kept the covers pulled up to his chin and closed his eyes again.

  Five to seven in the morning.

  Forty-five hours to go.

  Seventeen hundred miles to the south the day was already an hour older. Plato was eating breakfast in the smaller of his two outdoor dining rooms. The larger was reserved for formal dinners, and therefore little used, because formal dinners meant business dinners, and most of his current business associates were Russians, and Russians didn’t much care for the evening heat a hundred miles from Mexico City. They preferred air conditioning. Plato supposed it was a question of what they were accustomed to. He had heard that parts of Russia were so cold you could spit, and the saliva would freeze and bounce off the ground like a marble. Personally he didn’t believe it. He was prepared to accept that parts of Russia recorded very low temperatures, and certainly some of the extreme numbers he had seen in almanacs and weather reports might indeed freeze a small volume of organic liquid in the space and time between mouth and ground. But to survive in such an environment he was sure a human would have to wear a ski mask, possibly made from silk or a more modern synthetic material, and spitting was categorically impossible while wearing a ski mask. And he understood that in general extremely low temperatures went hand in hand with extremely low humidity, which would discourage spitting anyway, maybe even to the point of impracticability. Thus the anecdote was illustrative without being functionally true.