14 61 Hours

by Lee Child

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Just my opinion.’

  ‘What kind of thing will happen?’

  ‘The siren will sound. It’s their only way to get at Mrs Salter.’

  ‘How can a lawyer make the siren sound?’

  ‘He can’t. But maybe they can together.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘What happens up there at eight o’clock? Are they eating? Feeding time at the zoo is always a good time for a riot.’

  ‘They eat earlier.’

  ‘TV time? An argument about CBS or NBC?’

  ‘You said another riot won’t happen.’

  ‘Something is going to happen. That lawyer is talking about a future event with a fairly high degree of confidence.’

  Peterson went pale. Papery white, under his reddened winter skin.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Eight o’clock is head-count time. They lock them in their cells for the night and check them off. Suppose that guy got out this afternoon and they don’t know it yet? They’re going to be one short. One minute past eight, they’re going to hit the panic button.’

  They drove straight back to Janet Salter’s house. Dinner was almost ready. About ten minutes away. Spaghetti and sauce and cheese, with salad in the old wooden bowl. Janet Salter offered to set an extra place for Peterson. Peterson said yes. But nothing more. He just accepted the invitation and then stepped away from the kitchen activity and took Reacher by the elbow and dragged him into the parlour. He said, ‘I’m staying right here when the siren goes off.’

  Reacher said, ‘Good.’

  ‘Two are better than one.’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Are you armed?’

  ‘Yes. And so is Mrs Salter.’

  ‘How will their guy arrive?’

  ‘From the front, in a car. Too cold for anything else.’

  ‘Anything we can do ahead of time?’

  Reacher said, ‘No.’

  Peterson said, ‘We could warn the prison, I suppose. If the siren went off right now, their guy might be out of position.’

  ‘We don’t want him out of position,’ Reacher said. ‘We want him walking up the driveway at two minutes past eight. Exactly when and where we expect him. You said it yourself, we need this thing to be over.’

  Seventeen hundred miles south Plato came out of his house and found the three idling Range Rovers parked in a neat nose-to-tail line. The six men who had come with them were standing easy in pairs, heads up, sunglasses on, hands clasped behind their backs. Plato looked at them carefully. He knew them. He had used them before. They were solid but unspectacular performers. Competent, but uninspired. Not the best in the world. Second-rate, B-students, adequate. There were a lot of words with which to describe them.

  He looked at the trucks. Three of them, all identical. British. Each the cost of a college education. Maybe not Harvard. He counted them from the front, one, two, three. Then from the back, three, two, one. He had to choose. He never occupied the same relative position in a convoy two times in a row. Too predictable. Too dangerous. He wanted a two-in-three chance of surviving the first incoming round, if there was to be one. He figured a second round would miss. The supercharged engines had great acceleration. Better than turbocharged. No lag.

  He chose car number three. A double bluff, in a way. Slightly counterintuitive. If number one or number two was blown up, number three might get trapped by the flaming wreckage. He would be expected to expect that. He would be presumed to be in car number one, for that very reason. Which burnished his two-in-three chances a little. Convoys opened up at speed. Rack and pinion steering, fast reactions, number three’s driver could swerve with plenty of time to spare.

  He inclined his head, towards the third car. One of the men standing next to it stepped up smartly and opened the rear door. Plato climbed in. There was a step. Which was necessary, given his stature. He got settled on the rear seat. Cream leather, piped with black. An armrest on the door to his right, an armrest pulled down in the centre of the bench. Air conditioning, set low. Very comfortable.

  The two men climbed into the front. Doors closed, a forward gear was engaged. The convoy moved off. The gate was grinding back as they approached it. They slowed, slipped through, sped up. They cruised through the first dusty mile.

  Plato looked at the men in front of him.

  Many words to describe them.

  The best was: disposable.

  Janet Salter’s kitchen table was cramped for seven people. Peterson and the four women cops had guns on their hips, which made them wide. Reacher himself was not narrow, elbow to elbow. But perhaps as a consequence the atmosphere was cosy. At first Janet Salter was tense, as were Reacher and Peterson for other reasons. The four women cops were happy to talk. Then Janet Salter began to relax, and Reacher and Peterson took a mutual unspoken decision to save it for when it was going to count. They joined in. Everyone told stories. Janet Salter had attended a small local elementary school, a long time ago. The farm boys had been sewn into their winter underwear in November and not released until March. By January the smell was awful. By February it was unbearable.

  Peterson’s experience had been different. He was half Janet Salter’s age. His school was exactly the same as he saw in all the TV shows he watched. He felt part of America, until he looked at a map. Seven hundred miles from the nearest Major League team. A long way from anywhere. Something timid in his head had told him he would never leave. He confessed it quite openly.

  Two of the women cops were from North Dakota. They had come south for jobs. And for warmer weather, one said with a smile. Their educations had been similar to Peterson’s. Reacher didn’t say much. But he knew what they were talking about. Lockers, the gym, the principal’s office. He had been to seven elementary schools, all of them overseas on foreign bases, but all of them imported direct from the U.S. as standardized kits of parts. Outside he had been in the steamy heat of Manila or Leyte, or the damp cold of Germany or Belgium, but inside he could have been in North Dakota or South Dakota or Maine or Florida. At times he had been twelve thousand miles from the nearest Major League team. Something in his head had told him he would never stay still.

  They had fruit for dessert and coffee and then they cleared the table and washed the dishes, all of them together, part professional, part collegial. Then the day watch women went off duty, and went upstairs. The night watch women headed for the hallway and the library. Janet Salter picked up her book. Reacher and Peterson went to the parlour to wait.

  Five minutes to seven in the evening.

  Nine hours to go.

  THIRTY

  PETERSON KEPT CHECKING HIS WATCH. REACHER KEPT TIME IN his head. Seven o’clock. Five past. Ten past. A quarter past. No activity on the street. The view out from under the lip of the porch stayed the same. Snow, ice, wind, Peterson’s parked car, the lookout police cruiser, its vigilant driver. Peterson took the Glock out of his holster and checked it over and put it back. Reacher had the Smith & Wesson in his trouser pocket. He didn’t need to check it was there. He could feel its weight.

  Peterson was at the window. Reacher sat down, in Janet Salter’s chair. He was thinking about the runway, and the old stone building, and the wooden huts.

  The first wooden hut, in particular.

  He asked, ‘Does Kim have a sister?’

  Peterson said, ‘No.’

  ‘A niece or a cousin?’

  ‘No nieces. Some cousins. Why?’

  ‘That girl I saw in the hut, sitting on the bed. She looked familiar. At first I thought I had seen her before. But I don’t see how. So now I’m trying to pin it down. Either she was just a local type, or she looks like someone else I saw.’

  ‘There’s no real local type here.’

  ‘You think? You and Chief Holland look the same.’

  ‘He’s older.’

  ‘Apart from that.’

  ‘A little, maybe. But there’s no local type.’

  ‘Then that girl looked l
ike someone I saw. On my first night here, I think. And the only woman I saw on my first night here was Kim.’

  ‘And the old ladies on the bus.’

  ‘No resemblance.’

  ‘The waitress in the restaurant?’

  ‘Not her.’

  ‘Kim doesn’t have sisters. Or nieces. And I think all her cousins are boys.’

  ‘OK,’ Reacher said.

  ‘Maybe you saw a guy. Brothers and sisters can look alike. Lowell has a sister who looks just like him. Remember him? The officer you met?’

  ‘Tough on her,’ Reacher said.

  ‘What did this mystery girl look like anyway?’

  ‘Tall and thin and blond.’

  ‘We’re all tall and thin and blond.’

  ‘My point exactly.’

  ‘But you can tell us apart.’

  Reacher said, ‘If I concentrate.’

  Peterson smiled briefly and turned back to the window. Reacher joined him there. Twenty past seven. All quiet.

  Far to the east and a little to the south Susan Turner dialled her phone again. Her guy in the air force answered on the first ring. He said he had been about to pick up the phone and call her himself. Because he had news. The relevant file had just come through.

  ‘So what’s down there under the ground?’ Susan asked.

  He told her. ‘That’s vague,’ she said. ‘Is there any way you can get more detail?’

  ‘You told me this was private and off the record.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘You sound like your next promotion depends on it.’

  ‘I’m trying to help someone, that’s all. And vagueness won’t do it.’

  ‘Who are you trying to help?’

  Susan Turner paused.

  ‘A friend,’ she said.

  ‘How good of a friend?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘How good do you want him to be?’

  ‘Good enough to be worth checking some more.’

  Her guy said, ‘OK, I’ll check some more. I’ll get back to you.’

  At seven thirty Janet Salter started moving around. Reacher heard her in the hallway. He heard the cop on the bottom stair say that dinner had been great. He heard Janet Salter reply politely. Then she came into the parlour. Reacher wanted to put her in the basement, but he decided to wait until the siren sounded. That would be the time she would be most likely to comply, he thought, when she heard that banshee wail again.

  She asked, ‘What is about to happen?’

  Peterson asked, ‘Why do you think something is about to happen?’

  ‘Because you’re here, Mr Peterson, instead of being home with Mrs Peterson and your children. And because Mr Reacher has gone even quieter than usual.’

  Peterson said, ‘Nothing is going to happen.’

  Reacher said, ‘There’s an eight o’clock head count up at the jail. We think they’re going to come out one short. They’re going to hit the panic button.’

  ‘At eight o’clock?’

  ‘Maybe one minute past.’

  ‘An escape?’

  Peterson said, ‘We think it might have already happened. They’ll find out when they count heads.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I won’t leave,’ Peterson said.

  ‘I’m grateful for your concern. But I shall make you leave. You’re our next chief of police. For the town’s sake, nothing must stand in the way of that.’

  ‘That’s crazy.’

  ‘No, it’s how good decisions are made. One must take oneself out of the equation.’

  ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘A deal is a deal, even if Chief Holland didn’t stick to his with me.’

  ‘I won’t go.’

  ‘You will.’

  The United States Air Force Security Forces were headquartered at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. They had no direct equivalent of the army’s MP Corps 110th Special Unit. The closest they came was the Phoenix Raven programme, which was an integrated set of specialized teams. One of those teams was led by a guy who had just gotten off the phone with Susan Turner in Virginia, and gotten back on the phone with a file clerk a thousand miles away in a records depository.

  The clerk said, ‘What I gave you is all I have.’

  ‘Too vague.’

  ‘It is what it is.’

  ‘There has got to be more.’

  ‘There isn’t.’

  ‘How hard have you looked?’

  ‘Staring at a piece of paper won’t make words appear on it.’

  ‘Where did the delivery originate?’

  ‘You want me to trace one particular cargo flight from fifty years ago?’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Not a hope. I’m sorry, major. But we’re talking ancient history here. You might as well ask me what Neanderthal Man had for lunch a million years ago last Thursday.’

  By ten to eight Janet Salter’s house had gone absolutely silent. Some kind of drumbeat of dread had passed between one inhabitant and the next. The cop in the hallway had gotten up off the bottom stair and was standing behind the door. The cop in the library had stepped closer to the window. Peterson was watching the street. Janet Salter was straightening books on the parlour shelves. She was butting their spines into line. Small, nervous, exact movements with the knuckles of her right hand.

  Reacher was lounging in a chair. Eyes closed. Nothing could happen before the siren sounded.

  The clock ticked on.

  Five to eight in the evening.

  Eight hours to go.

  THIRTY-ONE

  THE CLOCK IN REACHER’S HEAD HIT EIGHT EXACTLY. NOTHING happened. The world outside stayed icy and quiet. Nothing to hear except the sound of the wind, and the brush and rattle of frozen evergreens, and the creaking and stirring of tree limbs, and the primeval tectonic shudders as the earth itself got colder.

  One minute past eight.

  Nothing happened.

  Two minutes past eight.

  Nothing happened.

  No sound.

  No siren.

  No one came.

  Peterson glanced at Reacher. Reacher shrugged. Janet Salter looked out the window. No action on the street. The cop in the hallway moved. Reacher heard the boards creak under her feet.

  Three minutes past eight.

  Nothing happened.

  Four minutes past.

  Five.

  Six.

  Seven.

  Nothing happened.

  No sound, no siren.

  Nothing at all.

  At a quarter past eight they gave it up and stopped worrying. Peterson was certain the head count could not have been delayed. Prisons ran on strict routines. If the cells weren’t locked for the night at eight exactly, there would be entries to be made in operational logs, and reports to be filed in triplicate, and supervisors called upon to explain. Way too much trouble for any reason short of a riot in progress, and if a riot was in progress the siren would have sounded anyway. Therefore the bid had failed. Or the lawyer had been blowing smoke.

  All clear.

  ‘You sure?’ Reacher asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Peterson said.

  ‘So prove it. Put your money where your mouth is.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Go home.’

  And Peterson did. He spun it out until twenty past, and then he put his coat on and crunched down the driveway and climbed in his car and drove away. Janet Salter stopped straightening books and started reading one instead. The cop in the hallway went back to her perch on the bottom stair. The cop in the library stepped back from the glass. Reacher sat in the kitchen and tried to decide whether to disturb Janet Salter by asking permission, or whether just to go ahead and make more coffee himself. He knew how to work a percolator. His mother had had one, even though she was French. In the end he went ahead and fired it up unbidden. He listened to it gulp and hiss and when it quieted down he poured himself a mug. He raised it in a mock salute to his reflection i
n the window and took a sip.

  At eight thirty the phone rang in the hallway. The cop got up from the bottom stair and answered it. It was for Reacher. The voice from Virginia. The cop put two forked fingers under her eyes and then pointed them at the door. You watch the front, and I’ll give you some privacy. Reacher nodded and sat down and picked up the phone.

  The voice said, ‘Forty tons of surplus aircrew requirements left over from World War Two.’

  ‘That’s vague.’

  ‘Tell me about it. My guy did his best for me, but that’s all he knows.’

  ‘What kind of surpluses did they have after World War Two?’

  ‘Are you kidding? All kinds of things. The atom bomb changed everything. They went from having lots of planes carrying small bombs to a few planes carrying big bombs. They could have had forty spare tons of pilots’ underwear alone. Plus they changed from prop planes to jets. They got helmets. It could be forty tons of those old-style leather hats.’

  ‘I wish I had one of those right now.’

  ‘Quit whining.’

  ‘What’s the temperature here?’

  A pause. ‘Minus fourteen degrees.’

  ‘Feels worse.’

  ‘It’s going to get worse. The Weather Channel radar looks horrible.’

  ‘Thanks for sharing.’

  ‘Hey, you asked.’

  ‘Hats and underwear?’

  ‘Got to be something to do with a generational change of equipment or a reduced number of aircrew. Or both.’

  ‘Anything on the size or architecture of the place itself?’

  ‘That stuff disappeared a long time ago.’

  ‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘My guy talked. From Fort Hood. Like you said he would.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘I owe you.’

  ‘No, we’re even.’

  ‘No, I do. It’s my first major score.’

  ‘Really? How long have you been in the job?’

  ‘Two weeks.’

  ‘I had no idea. You sound like you’ve been there for ever.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a compliment.’