14 61 Hours

by Lee Child

  Plato said, ‘Go start bagging the jewellery.’

  Reacher left him communing with his stock in trade and shuffled the long way around. Five thousand gallons in a homemade tank. He wanted to be sure the connection was secure. He was going to be down there until Plato died, which was a minimum of a few more minutes and a maximum of ten more hours, and he preferred one thing to worry about at a time.

  He found Plato’s guy finishing up. The brass end of the hose was neatly socketed into a matching brass fitment brazed into the end wall of the tank. The guy was nudging it one way, nudging it the other, feeling for looseness or play. He seemed to find none, so he opened a tap on the tank side of the joint. Reacher heard the fuel flow into the hose. Not much of it. Three gallons, maybe four. That was all. Gravity only, into the length of hose that lay on the floor at a lower level than the tank itself. For the rest, the pump would have to prime itself and then suck hard and haul it all up and out.

  Reacher watched the joint. A single fat drop of kerosene formed where two fibre washers were compressed. It beaded large and waited and then fell to the floor and made a tiny wet stain.

  That was all.

  No more.

  Safe enough.

  Plato’s guy crouched a little and duck-walked back to the stairs and headed upward. Reacher shuffled on around the perimeter of the circular chamber and disappeared into a corridor far from the jewellery and far from the meth.

  FORTY-FIVE

  D O IT. SHORT SIMPLE WORDS, A SHORT SIMPLE COMMAND. OR A short simple plea, or a short simple request. Or a short simple half of a bargain. A very attractive bargain. Do it, and get extremely rich, and live happily for ever with respect and veneration from your whole community. They would be the men who took down Plato. Saints. Heroes. Songs would be sung, tales would be told.

  The guy from seat 4A looked at the guy from seat 4B. They both swallowed hard. They were getting very close to doing it. Dangerously close. A hundred feet south a new sentry had just rotated into position. He was facing away, alert and on guard. Way far beyond him the flares still burned at the distant end of the runway. Fifty yards the other side of the Boeing’s tail the third flare still burned. Fifty yards beyond the de-icer truck in the other direction the fourth flare was still a bright crimson puffball. Blue moon, white snow, red flame.

  The other three guys were working in the plane. Opening the doors, setting the ladders, working out a system for hauling the stuff hand-to-hand along a human chain and then getting it up into the plane and stacking it safely on the floor of the old economy section.

  The guy from seat 4A hoisted the end of the second hose on his shoulder. The guy from seat 4B hit the switch and the drum began to unwind.

  Sixteen minutes to four in the morning.

  Eleven minutes to go.

  Reacher heard Plato moving about. Heard him step out of the corridor into the round chamber. Reacher was sitting on the floor in the first of the curved connecting tunnels. In what he was calling the B-ring. Like a miniature Pentagon, but round and underground. The central chamber was the A-ring. Then came the B-ring, and then the C-ring, and around the outside was the D-ring. All partially interconnected by the eight straight spokes. More than seventeen hundred linear feet of tunnel. Twenty-four separate junctions. Twelve random left turns, twelve random right turns. Plus a total of ten hollowed-out bathrooms and kitchens and storage chambers.

  A warren.

  A maze.

  Reacher had been in it before, and Plato hadn’t.

  No cell signal, his guys all busy on the surface, no possibility of reinforcement.

  Reacher waited.

  Plato called, ‘Holland?’

  The sound of the word boomed and echoed and took unpredictable paths and seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

  Reacher waited.

  Plato called, ‘Holland? Get your ass over here. Our deal isn’t finished yet. Remember, I’ll cripple her and mutilate her and let her live for a year before I finish her off.’

  Reacher said nothing.

  Plato called, ‘Holland?’

  No response from Reacher. Five seconds. Ten.

  ‘Holland?’

  Reacher said nothing. The big gamble came right then. Right at that exact moment in time. Fifty-fifty. Live or die. A smart guy with a dawning problem would hustle straight up the stairs and send foot soldiers down in his place. A dumb guy would stay to fight it out.

  But so might a smart guy overcome by ego, and arrogance, and a sense of superiority, and a need never to appear weak because he was only four feet eleven inches tall.

  Fifty-fifty.

  Live or die.

  Plato stayed.

  He called, ‘Holland? Where are you?’

  A trace of worry in his voice.

  Reacher put his mouth close to the curved concrete and said, ‘Holland’s dead.’

  The sound rode the walls and went all around and came back to him, a quiet-spoken sentence, everywhere and nowhere, conversational, but full of menace. Reacher heard Plato’s feet scuffling on the concrete floor. He was spinning in place, trying to locate the voice.

  Plato’s feet went quiet and he called out, ‘What did you say?’

  Reacher moved along an empty spoke into the C-ring. A slow, silent shuffle. No sound at all, except the whisper of fabric when the seat of his pants hit the floor. Which didn’t matter anyway. All sounds were everywhere. They hissed and sang and branched and travelled.

  Reacher put his mouth to the wall and said, ‘I shot Holland in the head. Now I’m coming for you.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I was a friend of Janet Salter’s.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The witness. Didn’t you even know her name?’

  ‘Are you the military cop?’

  ‘You’re about to find out who I am.’

  A smart guy would have run for the stairs.

  Plato stayed.

  He called out, ‘Do you think you can beat me?’

  Reacher called back, ‘Do you think bears shit in the woods?’

  ‘You think you can beat me down here?’

  ‘I can beat you anywhere.’

  A long pause.

  ‘Where are you?’ Plato called.

  ‘Right behind you,’ Reacher said. Loud voice, booming echo. Fast feet scuffling on concrete. No answer. Reacher moved on, in the dark, his flashlight off. He heard Plato enter a corridor. A straight spoke. The sound of his feet narrowed and then bloomed and the tap of his heels came back from the right and the left simultaneously. Reacher scooted left, then right. Into a straight spoke of his own. Adjacent to Plato’s, apparently. He saw the glow of Plato’s flashlight as it passed the mouth of the C-ring. He moved on and stopped and lay down on his side, curled like a letter S, in the mouth of the straight spoke, just three feet from the main chamber. Down on the floor, to show a small target. Away from the vertical surfaces, because bullets rode walls, too. Not just sound. Any combat veteran would say the same. Narrow alleys, confined spaces, near-misses didn’t ricochet at gaudy angles. They buzzed and burrowed close to the brick or the stone. Flattening yourself against a hard surface did the other guy a favour, not you. Counterintuitive, and difficult to resist, but true.

  He heard Plato stop in the mouth of his corridor. Saw the glow from his light. He was facing into the main chamber. Two possibilities. One, he would turn right, away from the tunnel where Reacher was waiting. Or two, he would turn left, towards it.

  Hide and seek. Maybe the oldest game in the world.

  The guy from seat 4A walked the second hose into the stone building. He wrestled it across the floor and around the stair head and pulled it over to the same ventilation shaft the first hose was in. He put it up on his shoulder again and faced the void and kicked with his knee until the nozzle fell into the shaft.

  Then he fed the hose down after it, yard by yard, ten feet, twenty, thirty, forty, l
ike he was chinning himself backward along an endless monkey bar. When he had a good sixty feet in the shaft he ducked out from under it and laid it down against the lip. He kicked it straight on the floor and checked it for kinks.

  All good.

  Up the shaft from the tank, through the pump, and straight back down the same shaft again.

  A simple, linear proposition.

  Do it.

  He walked back out to the cold and found his friend. Asked him, ‘Can you hit the sentry from here?’

  The guy from seat 4B looked down at his H&K. A four and a half inch barrel. A great weapon, but no more accurate than a fine handgun. And he was shivering hard. And not just from the cold.

  He said, ‘No.’

  ‘So sneak up on him. If he sees you, tell him you’re there to relieve him. Keep him talking. I’ll hit the others as soon as they come this way out of the plane. Wait until you hear me fire, and let him have it.’

  The guy from seat 4B said nothing.

  ‘For your mother. And your sisters. And the daughters you’ll have one day.’

  The guy from seat 4B nodded. He turned around. He headed south. Slowly at first, and then faster.

  Plato turned right. Away from where Reacher was waiting. A disappointment. Or perhaps not. Perhaps just a delay, and then eventually a benefit. Because the flashlight glow was dimming and brightening, then dimming and brightening, slowly and regularly and rhythmically. Which told Reacher that Plato was walking slowly around the circumference of the chamber, counterclockwise, playing the beam into one corridor at a time, pausing, checking carefully, and then moving on. No net loss. After all, in a circular space, turning right was ultimately the same thing as turning left. And counterclockwise was better than clockwise. Much better. For a number of reasons, which were about to be made plain.

  To Plato, especially.

  Reacher waited.

  The flashlight beam moved on.

  Then: from far above Reacher heard tiny sounds. Brief muted purrs. Four of them. Quiet enough to be close to the point of not being audible at all. Maybe the pump truck’s starter motor turning over. Maybe the de-icer. Maybe something to do with the plane.

  Maybe anything.

  But if Reacher had been forced to guess worst case, he would have pegged them as triple taps from fast sub-machine guns.

  Of which there were six on the surface.

  Plato heard them too. His flashlight beam stopped dead. Silence.

  Nothing more.

  A long wait.

  Then the flashlight beam moved on.

  Reacher saw Plato from the back through the circular lattice of steel that was the bottom five and a half feet of the staircase. He was twenty feet away. A hundred and eighty degrees opposite. His flashlight beam was horizontal in the corridor directly across from Reacher’s.

  Reacher moved his right arm. He cocked it behind him, ready.

  Plato moved on, still counterclockwise, still slow. His body was facing forward, walking a perfect circuit. His head was turned. He was looking to his right at a square ninety degree angle down each of the radial spokes. The flashlight was in his left hand, the beam across his body. Which meant that the gun was in his right hand. The gun was still strapped around his neck. Which meant that the muzzle was facing left, which was fundamentally the wrong way, for a right-handed guy walking a counterclockwise circle. It was facing inward, not outward. A bad mistake. It would take a fast awkward flex of the elbow and a complicated tangle in the strap to correct in a hurry.

  Reacher smiled.

  Not such a smart guy after all.

  Plato kept on coming.

  A quarter-turn to go. Two more spokes.

  One more spoke.

  Then: vibration in the hose that led away from the fuel tank. The pump had started, way up there on the surface. Reacher heard the swish and rush of liquid as the pump primed itself and sucked air and created a vacuum and fuel moved in to fill it. He heard a hiss of air from the tank as it began to empty, quiet at first, then louder.

  The flashlight beam moved on.

  It arrived.

  It played down the long tunnel, concentrated just above Reacher’s curled form. But scatter from the lens picked him up. Plato froze, a yard away. Just a split second. Reacher sensed it. And used it to whip his right arm forward. Like a desperate throw from the outfield, bottom of the ninth, the opposition’s winning run heading for the plate. The Mag-lite was a foot and a half long. Heavy alloy, four D cells. Cross-hatching on the body. Great grip. Ferocious acceleration. Tremendous leverage. Muscle, fury, anger. Geometry and physics.

  Reacher’s flashlight hit Plato butt-end-first square on the forehead. A solid punch. Reacher spun on his hip and scythed with his legs and kicked Plato’s feet out from under him. Plato crashed down, flat on the floor. Reacher rolled on to his back, rolled on to his other side, rolled right on top of Plato.

  And the world flipped again. Now the horizontal was vertical and the vertical was horizontal. No disadvantage in being tall. In fact, just the opposite. On the floor, the big guy always wins.

  Reacher started hammering heavy blows into Plato’s face, one, two, three, hard and vicious. Then he scrabbled for the H&K and got his hand on it just as Plato did. The two of them started a desperate tug of war. Plato was strong. Unbelievably, phenomenally strong for a man of his size. And impervious to pain. Reacher had his left hand on the gun and was using his right to hammer more blows to Plato’s head. Four, five, six, seven. Plato was bucking and writhing and tossing left, tossing right. Reacher was on top of him, smothering him, all two hundred and fifty pounds, and he was in danger of getting thrown off. Plato was snarling and biting, curling and rearing. Reacher jammed the heel of his hand under Plato’s nose and smashed his head down on the concrete, one, two, three. Then four.

  No result.

  Plato started kicking for Reacher’s groin, bucking, thrashing, like he was swimming backstroke. Reacher pinned the H&K and clambered off and smashed a right to Plato’s ribs. Plato coughed once, coughed twice, and blood foamed on his lips. He jerked up from the waist and tried to get Reacher with a head butt. Reacher clamped a giant palm over Plato’s moving teeth and smashed his head back down on the floor.

  Plato’s eyes stayed open.

  Then suddenly: sloshing, gushing, pouring liquid. Loud, forceful, relentless. Like a fire hose. Like ten fire hoses. Like a hundred. Like a waterfall. Roaring. The stink of kerosene. Reacher kept his left hand on the gun and scrabbled with his right and found Plato’s flashlight and jammed his elbow in Plato’s throat and played the beam towards the sound.

  Liquid was sheeting out of the nearer ventilation shaft. A flooding, drenching, torrential flow. Hundreds of gallons. A deluge. It hammered on the concrete and bounced and spattered and pooled and raced across the floor. Like a lake. Like a tide. Within seconds the floor was soaked. The air was full of fumes. The flashlight beam danced and shivered and swam through them.

  Kerosene.

  Jet fuel.

  And it kept on coming. Like a giant faucet. Unstoppable. Like a burst dam. Gushing, sheeting, rushing, pouring, drenching. Plato bucked and jerked and twisted and got his throat out from under Reacher’s elbow and said, ‘What the hell is it? A leak?’

  ‘Not a leak,’ Reacher said.

  ‘Then what?’

  Reacher watched the flow. Relentless and powerful. And pulsing. It was the pump on the surface, running hard. Two hoses in the same shaft. One up, one down. One emptying the tank, the other wide open and dumping the contents straight back underground.

  ‘What is it?’ Plato said.

  ‘It’s a triple-cross,’ Reacher said. His head was already aching from the fumes. His eyes were starting to sting.

  ‘What?’ Plato said.

  ‘The Russian bought some of your guys. You’re out of business.’

  ‘They think they can drown me?’

  ‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘They’re not going to drown you.’

  There was
no possibility of drowning. There was too much floor area. Five thousand gallons would level out less than two inches deep.

  He said, ‘They’re going to burn you to death.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Plato said.

  Reacher said nothing.

  ‘How?’ Plato said. ‘They’re going to drop a match down the stairs? It would go out on the way.’

  Reacher said nothing. Plato wrenched away. Got to his knees. His nose was broken and leaking blood. Blood was coming out of his mouth. His teeth were smashed. One eye was closed. Both eyebrows were cut.

  He put his hands on the H&K.

  Then he took them off again.

  Reacher nodded.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said. ‘The muzzle flash on that thing? With these fumes in the air? You want to do their work for them?’

  Plato said, ‘How are they going to do it?’

  Reacher said nothing. He was thinking. Picturing the scene on the surface, running options through his head.

  See what they see.

  Be them.

  Not a match.

  Plato was right.

  A match would go out.

  The guy from 4B gunned the de-icer truck and spun the wheel and took off east towards the top right corner of the runway. Fifty yards. Forty. Thirty. Twenty. He spun the wheel again and slewed through a tight circle and the guy from 4A jumped out of the passenger seat and ducked down and grabbed the burning flare at its base and pulled its spike out of the concrete. He held it away from his body and climbed back in the truck and kept the door open and held the flare at arm’s length in the slipstream. It burned brighter and it smoked and flickered. But it didn’t go out. The truck raced back. Fifty yards. Forty. Thirty.

  The deluge kept on coming. It was never-ending. It poured and sheeted and hammered. The ventilation shaft was like a bathtub faucet increased in size by a factor of a hundred. Reacher was on his knees. His pants were soaked. The fuel was already a good half-inch deep. The fumes were thick. Breathing was hard.

  Plato said, ‘So what do we do?’

  Reacher said, ‘How fast can you run up a flight of stairs?’

  Plato got to his feet.

  ‘Faster than you,’ he said.