Lee Child - 61 Hours

Plato said, ‘Move.’

Reacher ducked way down and got his shoulders under the ceiling and waddled forward, painfully, his legs hurting, his neck bent at ninety degrees. He dropped to his knees and folded himself sideways and sat down. He shuffled through half a turn and scooted away backwards, undignified, slow and awkward and claustrophobic, heels and knuckles and ass, once, then twice.

Plato stepped off the bottom stair and just walked straight into the chamber.

He took three confident strides and then stopped and looked around, erect, upright, with four clear inches between the top of his head and the concrete.

He said, ‘So where’s my stuff?’

Reacher didn’t answer. He was adrift. The world had flipped underneath him. All his life, to be taller had been to be better. More dominant, more powerful, more noticed, more advantaged. You got credibility, you got treated with respect, you got promoted faster, you earned more, you got elected to things. Statistics bore it out.

You won fights, you got less hassle, you ruled the yard.

To be born tall was to win life’s lottery.

Born small, two strikes against.

But not down there.

Down there to be tall was a losing ticket.

Down there was a world where the small guy could win.

‘Where’s my stuff?’ Plato said again, with his hand on his gun.

Reacher took his own hand off the floor and started to point, but then there were twin ragged thumps behind him, and a slap, and another thump. He shuffled around and saw that three packs of garbage bags had been dropped down the ventilation shaft, plus the tail end of a greasy coil of rope. Things he had seen before, in the trunk of Holland’s car.

Plato said, ‘We have work to do. It’s not exactly rocket science. We put the stuff in the bags, we tie the bags to the rope, they haul them up.’

Reacher asked, ‘How much stuff?’

‘The plane will carry sixteen tons.’

‘You’ll be here all week.’

‘I don’t think so. I have about ten hours. The biker will come out of his little hidey-hole in the jail just after lunch time. And I arranged with the warden that he will keep your whole department on station right up to that point. So we’ll be undisturbed. And a ton and a half an hour should be possible. Especially with you down here to help. But don’t worry. The hard work will be done on the surface.’

Reacher said nothing.

Plato said, ‘But we’ll do the jewellery first. Where is it?’

Reacher started to point again, but then a brass collar on the end of a thick black hose dropped through the other ventilation shaft, right next to him. It thumped down on the floor and excess hose came tumbling down after it and coiled all around it. Then he heard feet on the steps way above. Distant tinkling and pattering in the stair shaft, getting louder, getting nearer. A man on his way down.

Refuelling was about to begin.

Plato asked, ‘Where’s the jewellery?’

Reacher didn’t answer. He was estimating time. Two hundred and eighty steps. Somewhere between two and three minutes before the refuelling guy arrived, however fast he moved. And two or three minutes should be enough. It was a long time since Reacher had been in a fight that had lasted longer than two or three minutes.

A window of opportunity.

‘Where’s the jewellery?’ Plato said again.

Reacher said, ‘Find it yourself.’

The sound of feet on the stairs got a little louder.

Plato smiled. He pushed back his cuff and made a show of checking the time on the watch on his wrist, slow and nonchalant. Then he darted forward, fast and nimble and agile, and he aimed a kick at Reacher’s side. From a sitting position Reacher swatted Plato’s foot aside and came up on his knees and Plato stumbled away and Reacher pivoted up and lunged after him.

And hit his head hard on the ceiling, and scraped his knuckles, and collapsed back to his knees. Plato righted himself after a step and danced in and delivered the belated kick, a decent hard blow to the ribs on Reacher’s back.

Then he stepped away and smiled again.

He said, ‘Where’s the jewellery?’

Reacher didn’t answer. His knuckles were bleeding and he was pretty sure his scalp was torn. The ceiling crowded down on him.

Plato put both hands on his gun.

He said, ‘You get one free pass. And that was it. Where’s the jewellery?’

So Reacher used his flashlight beam and found the right corridor. Even from a distance the reflection came back bright and lurid. Plato walked towards it, fast and jaunty, no problem at all, right up on his toes, like he was outside on the street with just the sky above him.

He called over his shoulder, ‘Bring some bags.’

Reacher shuffled over and grabbed a pack of bags, and then he shuffled after Plato, hobbled, restricted, constrained, humiliated, following the little man like a giant caged ape.

Plato was in the right corridor. He was doing what Holland had done. He was playing his flashlight beam the length of the shelf and back again, over the gold and the silver and the platinum, and the diamonds and the rubies and the sapphires and the emeralds, and the clocks and the paintings and the platters and the candlesticks. But not with greed or wonderment in his face. He was assessing the size of the packaging task, that was all.

He said, ‘You can start bagging this shit up. But first show me the powder.’

Reacher led him across the chamber, heels and knuckles and ass, low and deferential, all the way to the third of the three tunnels packed with meth. Still a staggering sight. Bricks stacked ten high, ten deep, a whole solid wall of them a hundred feet long, undisturbed for fifty years, old yellowing glassine glowing dull in the flashlight beams. Fifteen thousand packs. More than thirteen tons.

‘Is this all of it?’ Plato asked.

‘A third of it,’ Reacher said.

The feet on the staircase grew louder. The fuel guy was hustling.

Plato said, ‘We’ll take what’s here. Plus more. Until the plane is full.’

Reacher said, ‘I thought you sold it to the Russian.’

Plato said, ‘I did.’

‘But you’re going to take it anyway?’

‘Only some of it.’

‘That’s a double-cross.’

Plato laughed. ‘You killed three people for me and now you’re upset that I’m stealing? From some dumb Russian you never met?’

‘I would prefer you to be true to your word, that’s all.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I want my daughter to be OK.’

‘She’s with those guys out of choice. And ten hours from now I’ll have no further use for her, anyway. I’m never doing business here again.’

‘You’ll have no further use for me, either,’ Reacher said.

‘I’ll let you live,’ Plato said. ‘You did well for me. Slow, but you got there in the end.’

Reacher said nothing.

‘I am true to my word,’ Plato said. ‘Just not with Russians.’

Behind them they heard the last loud footstep on the last metal stair and then the first quiet footstep on the concrete floor. They turned and saw one of Plato’s men arrive, like all of them about five seven in height, therefore stooped but not too much. He had his gun on his chest and a flashlight in his hand. He was looking all around. Not curious. Just a guy getting the job done. He found the fuel line and picked it up one-handed and pulled it out straight and jerked it and heaved serpentine waves into it to work out the kinks. He asked in Spanish where the tank was and Reacher waited until Plato translated the question and then he pointed his flashlight beam at the relevant corridor. The guy hauled the heavy hose after him and disappeared.

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.