Lee Child - 61 Hours

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.

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, like 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.