61 Hours (14 page)

Reacher said, ‘Or both.’

‘Whichever, I’m about ready to give up on you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the place you’re pestering me about doesn’t exist.’

Five to seven in the evening.

Thirty-three hours to go.

EIGHTEEN

R
EACHER MOVED ON THE HALLWAY CHAIR AND SAID
, ‘T
HE PLACE
exists. For sure. I’d believe stone and eyewitness reports before I believed army paperwork.’

The voice said, ‘But you haven’t actually seen the stone for yourself.’

‘Not yet. But why would anyone invent a story like that?’

‘Then the place must have been unbelievably secret. They built it but never listed it anywhere.’

‘And then they let a construction camp get built right over it? How does that work?’

‘Everything changed, that’s how. It was top secret fifty years ago, and it was totally defunct by five years ago. Typical Cold War scenario. Probably declassified in the early nineties.’

‘I don’t care when it was declassified. I just want to know what it is.’

‘I could get on a plane. But you’re closer.’

Reacher asked, ‘How’s your case?’

‘Still waiting. Which doesn’t encourage me. It will probably fall apart by morning.’

‘You working all night?’

‘You know how it is.’

‘So use the down time. Check Congressional appropriations for me. The purpose will be redacted, but the money will be listed. It always is. We can make a start that way.’

‘You know how big the defence budget was fifty years ago? You know how many line items there were?’

‘You’ve got all night. Look for South Dakota involvement, House or Senate. I don’t see any real strategic value up here, so it could have been a pork barrel project.’

‘Checking those records is a lot of work.’

‘What did you expect? A life of leisure? You should have joined the navy.’

‘We have a deal, Reacher. Remember? So tell me about the one-star general.’

‘You’re wasting time.’

‘I’ve got time to waste. Sounds like you’re the one who hasn’t.’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘The best stories always are. Summarize if you like, but make sure you hit all the main points.’

‘I’m on someone else’s phone here. I can’t run up a big bill.’

The voice said, ‘Wait one.’ There was a click and a second of dead air and then the voice came back. ‘Now you’re on the government’s dime.’

‘You could be working the money for me.’

‘I am. I already put a guy on it thirty-five minutes ago. I maintain standards here, believe me. However good you were, I’m better.’

‘I sincerely hope so.’

‘So, once upon a time, what happened?’

Reacher paused.

‘I went to Russia,’ he said. ‘Well after the fall of communism. We got a weird invitation to go inspect their military prisons. Nobody had the faintest idea why. But the general feeling was, why not? So we flew to Moscow and took a train way east. It was a big old Soviet-era thing with bunks and a dining car. We were on it for days. The food was awful. But awful in a way that felt familiar. So one night I went for a stroll up and down the train and stopped in at the kitchen. They were serving us American MREs. Our very own meals, ready to eat.’

‘U.S. Army rations? On a Soviet train?’

‘A Russian train by then, technically. They had coal-fired stoves in the kitchen car. Samovars and everything. They were heating pans of water and ripping open MRE packs and mixing them together. They had boxes and boxes of them.’

‘Did they try to hide them?’

‘The cooks didn’t know what they were. They couldn’t read English. Probably couldn’t read anything.’

‘So how had our MREs gotten there?’

‘That’s tomorrow’s instalment. You need to get back to work.’

‘I’m just waiting on a call.’

‘From where?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘You know you want to tell me.’

‘Fort Hood.’

‘What about?’

‘An infantry captain killed his wife. Which happens. But this wasn’t any old wife. She had a job with Homeland Security. It’s possible the guy has ties overseas. It’s possible he was stealing documents from her and killed her to cover it up.’

‘Where overseas?’

‘What we call non-state actors.’

‘Terrorists?’

‘Terrorist organizations, anyway.’

‘Nice. That’s a Bronze Star right there.’

‘If I get the guy. Right now he’s in the wind.’

‘Tell me if he heads for South Dakota.’

She laughed. ‘How old are you, anyway?’

‘Younger than your desk.’

Five miles away in the prison mess hall all traces of the evening meal had been cleared away. But more than fifty men were still seated on the long benches. Some were white, some were brown, and some were black. All wore orange jumpsuits. They were sitting in three segregated groups, far from each other, like three island nations in a sea of linoleum.

Until a white man got up and walked across the room and spoke to a black man.

The white man was white in name only. His skin was mostly blue with tattoos. He was built like a house. He had hair to his waist and a beard that reached his chest. The black man was a little shorter, but probably heavier. He had biceps the size of footballs and a scalp shaved so close it gleamed.

The white man said, ‘The Mexicans owe us two cartons of smokes.’

The black man didn’t react in any way at all. Why would he? White and brown had nothing to do with him.

The white man said, ‘The Mexicans say you owe them two cartons of smokes.’

No reaction.

‘So we’ll collect direct from you. What goes around comes around.’

Which was a technically acceptable proposition. A prison was an economy. Cigarettes were currency. Like dollar bills earned selling a car in New York could be used for buying a TV in Los Angeles. But economic cooperation implied the existence of laws and treaties and détente, and all three were in short supply between black and white.

Then the white man said, ‘We’ll collect in the form of ass. Something tender. The youngest and sweetest you got. Two nights, and then you’ll get her back.’

In Janet Salter’s house the four women cops were handing over. The day watch was going off duty, and the night watch was coming on. One of the night watch came out of the kitchen and took up her post in the hallway. The other headed for the library. The day watch climbed the stairs. Janet Salter herself said she was headed for the parlour. Reacher guessed she wanted to spend some time on her own. Being protected around the clock was socially exhausting for all parties concerned. But she invited him in with her.

The parlour was different from the library in no significant way at all. Similar furniture, similar décor, similar shelves, thousands more books. The window gave a view across the porch to the front. It had almost stopped snowing. The cop in the car on the street had gotten out from time to time to scrape his windows. There was a loaf of snow a foot high on the roof and the hood and the trunk, but the glass was clear. The cop was still awake and alert. Reacher could see his head turning. He was checking ahead, in the mirror, half left, half right. Not bad, for what must have been the twelfth hour of twelve. The good half of the Bolton PD made for a decent unit.

Janet Salter was wearing a cardigan sweater. It was long on her and the pockets were bagged. By, it turned out, a rag and a can of oil. She took them out and put them on a side table. The rag was white and the can was a small old green thing with
Singer
printed on it.

She said, ‘Go get the book I showed you.’

The night watch cop in the library turned around when Reacher came in. She was a small neat round-shouldered person made wider by her equipment belt. Her eyes flicked up, flicked down, flicked away.
No threat
. She turned back to the window. Behind her Reacher took the fake book off the shelf and hefted it under his arm. He carried it back to the parlour. Janet Salter closed the door behind him. He opened the leather box on the floor and lifted out the first revolver.

The Smith & Wesson Military and Police model had been first produced in 1899 and last modified three years later in 1902. The average height of American men in 1902 had been five feet seven inches, and their hands had been proportionately sized. Reacher was six feet five inches tall and had hands the size of supermarket chickens, so the gun was small for him. But his trigger finger fit through the guard, which was all that mattered. He pressed the thumb catch and swung the cylinder out. It was empty. He locked it back in and dry fired. Everything worked. But he felt the microscopic grind and scrape of steel that had been greased in the factory many decades earlier and never touched since. So he went to work with the rag and the can and tried again five minutes later and was much happier with the result. He repeated the process on the second gun. He capped the oil and folded the rag. Asked, ‘Where is the ammunition?’

Janet Salter said, ‘Upstairs in my medicine cabinet.’

‘Not a logical place, given that the guns were in the library.’

‘I thought I might have time, if it came to it.’

‘Lots of dead people thought that.’

‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

‘This is a serious business.’

She didn’t answer. Just got up and left the room. Reacher heard the creak of the stairs. She came back with a crisp new box of a hundred Federal .38 Specials. Semi-wadcutters with hollow points. A good choice. She had been well advised by somebody. The 158-grain load was not the most powerful in the world, but the mushrooming effect of the hollow points would more than make up for it.

Reacher loaded six rounds into the first gun and kept the second empty. He said, ‘Look away and then look back and point your finger straight at me.’

Janet Salter said, ‘What?’

‘Just do it. Like I’m talking in class.’

‘I wasn’t that kind of teacher.’

‘Pretend you were.’

So she did. She made a good job of it. Maybe undergraduate students at Oxford University hadn’t been exactly what the world imagined. Her finger ended up pointing straight between his eyes.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now do it again, but point at my chest.’

She did it again. Ended up pointing straight at his centre mass.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘That’s how to shoot. The gun barrel is your finger. Don’t try to aim. Don’t even think about it. Just do it, instinctively. Point at the chest, because that’s the biggest target. Even if you don’t kill him, you’ll ruin his day.’

Janet Salter said nothing. Reacher handed her the empty gun.

‘Try the trigger,’ he said.

She did. The hammer rose, the cylinder turned, the hammer fell. Nice and easy. She said, ‘I suppose there will be a certain amount of recoil.’

Reacher nodded. ‘Unless the laws of physics changed overnight.’

‘Will it be bad?’

Reacher shook his head. ‘The .38 Special is a fairly friendly round. For the shooter, I mean. Not much bang, not much kick.’

She tried the trigger again. The hammer rose, the cylinder turned, the hammer fell.

‘Now do it over and over,’ he said.

She did. Four, five, six times.

She said, ‘It’s tiring.’

‘It won’t be if it comes to it. And that’s what you’ve got to do. Put six rounds in the guy. Don’t stop until the gun is empty.’

‘This is awful,’ she said.

‘It won’t be if it comes to it. It’ll be you or him. You’ll be surprised how fast that changes your perspective.’

She passed the gun back to him. He asked her, ‘Where are you going to keep it?’

‘In the book, I guess.’

‘Wrong answer. You’re going to keep it in your pocket. At night you’re going to keep it under your pillow.’ He loaded six rounds into it. Locked the cylinder in place and passed it back. He said, ‘Don’t touch the trigger until you’re ready to kill the guy.’

‘I won’t be able to.’

‘I think you will.’

She asked, ‘Are you going to keep the other one?’

He nodded. ‘I’ll be sure to turn it in before I leave.’

Five to eight in the evening.

Thirty-two hours to go.

The prison siren started to wail.

NINETEEN

T
HE SIREN WAS FIVE MILES AWAY TO THE NORTH, BUT ITS SOUND
came through the frigid night very clearly. It was somewhere between loud and distant, somewhere between mournful and urgent, somewhere between everyday and alien. It shrieked and howled, it rose and fell, it screamed and whispered. It rolled across the flat land and down the silent snowy streets and shattered the crystal air it passed through.

The cops in the house reacted instantly. They had rehearsed, probably physically, certainly mentally. They had prepared themselves for the tough choice. The woman from the hallway ducked her head into the parlour. Conflict was all over her face. There was the sound of footsteps from the floor above. The day watch was scrambling. The woman from the library ran straight for her parka on the hat rack. Outside on the street the nearest cop car was already turning around. Broken slabs of snow were sliding off its roof and its hood and its trunk. The car from the mouth of the road was backing up fast. There were running feet on the stairs.

The woman from the hallway said, ‘Sorry.’

Then she was gone. She grabbed her coat and spilled out the door, the last to leave. The cop cars had their doors open. Reacher could hear furious radio chatter. The cops from the house threw themselves into the cars and the cars spun their wheels and slewed and churned away down the street. Reacher watched them go. Then he stepped back and closed the front door. His borrowed coat had fallen to the floor in the scramble. He put it back on a hook. It hung all alone on the rack.

The siren wailed on.

But the house went absolutely silent.

The house stayed silent for less than a minute. Then over the sound of the siren Reacher heard the patter of chains on snow and the grind of a big engine revving fast and urgent in a low gear. He checked the parlour window. Bright headlights. A Crown Vic. Unmarked. Black or dark blue. Hard to say, in the moonlight. It crunched to a stop at the end of the driveway and Chief Holland climbed out. Parka, hat, boots. Reacher tucked his gun in his waistband at the back and draped his sweater over it. He stepped out to the hallway. He opened the front door just as Holland made it up on the porch.

Holland looked surprised.

He said, ‘I didn’t know you were here.’

Reacher said, ‘It made more sense. There are empty beds here and Kim Peterson doesn’t need protection.’

‘Was this Andrew’s idea or yours?’

‘Mine.’

‘Is Mrs Salter OK?’

‘She’s fine.’

‘Let me see her.’

Reacher stepped back and Holland stepped in and closed the door. Janet Salter came out of the parlour. Holland asked her, ‘Are you OK?’

She nodded. She said, ‘I’m fine. And I’m very grateful that you came. I appreciate it very much. But really you should be on your way to the prison.’

Holland nodded. ‘I was. But I didn’t want you to be alone.’

‘Rules are rules.’

‘Even so.’

‘I’ll be fine. I’m sure Mr Reacher will prove more than capable.’

Holland glanced back at Reacher. Wretched conflict in his face, just like the cop from the hallway. Reacher asked him, ‘What’s happening up there?’

Holland said, ‘Blacks and whites having at it. A regular prison riot.’

‘First ever?’

‘Correct.’

‘Great timing.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Bottom line, what happens if you don’t go?’

‘The department is disgraced, and I get fired. After that, no one really knows.’

‘So go.’

‘I don’t want to.’ A simple statement. The way Holland said it and the way he stood there afterwards made Reacher think he had more on his mind than his duty to Mrs Salter. He wanted to stay indoors, comfortable, in the warm, where he was safe.

Holland was scared.

Reacher asked him, ‘Have you ever worked a prison before?’

Holland said, ‘No.’

‘There’s nothing to it. You’ll be on the fence and in the towers. Anyone tries to get through, you shoot them dead. Simple as that. They know the rules. And they won’t try, anyway. Not at a moment’s notice in this kind of weather. They’ll stay inside, fighting. They’ll burn out eventually. They always do. You’re going to get cold and bored, but that’s all.’

‘Have you worked prisons?’

‘I’ve worked everything. Including personal protection. And with all due respect, I can do at least as good a job as you. So you should let me. That way everyone wins.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I can look after the situation here, you can take care of your people up there.’

‘It could last for hours. Even days.’

‘Actually it could last for weeks. But if it looks like it’s going to, then you can regroup.’

‘You think?’

Reacher nodded. ‘You can’t work around the clock for days on end. Not all of you. No one could expect that. You can establish some flexibility after the first panic is over.’

Holland didn’t answer. Outside the siren suddenly died. It just cut off mid-wail and absolute silence came crashing back. A total absence of sound, like the air itself was refreezing.

Reacher said, ‘That probably means you’re all supposed to be up there by now.’

Holland nodded, slow and unsure, once, then twice. He looked at Janet Salter and said, ‘At least come with me in the car. I need to know you’re safe.’

Janet Salter said, ‘That’s not permitted, Chief Holland. Rules are rules. But don’t worry. I’ll be safe here, with Mr Reacher.’

Holland stood still a moment longer. Then he nodded a third time, more decisively. His mind was made up. He turned abruptly and headed out the door. His car was still running. A thin cloud of exhaust was pooling behind the trunk. He climbed in and K-turned and drove away and out of sight. White vapour trailed after him and hung and dispersed. The small sound of his chains on the packed snow died back to nothing.

Reacher closed the door.

The house went quiet again.

Tactically the best move would have been to lock Janet Salter in the basement. But she refused to go. She just stood in the hallway with her hand on the butt of the gun in her pocket. She looked all around, one point of the compass, then the next, as if she suddenly understood that the four walls that were supposed to protect her were really just four different ways in. There were doors and windows all over the place. Any one of them could be forced or busted in an instant.

Second best would have been to stash her in her bedroom. Second-floor break-ins were much less common than first-floor. But she wouldn’t go upstairs, either. She said she would feel she had nowhere to run.

‘You won’t be running,’ Reacher said. ‘You’ll be shooting.’

‘Not while you’re here, surely.’

‘Twelve holes in the guy are better than six.’

She was quiet for a beat. She looked at him like he was an alien.

She asked, ‘Shouldn’t you be patrolling outside?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘It would take me far too long to get from front to back, if I had to. And my finger wouldn’t fit in the trigger guard with gloves on. And it’s too cold to go out without gloves.’

‘So we just wait in here?’

Reacher nodded. ‘That’s right. We wait in here.’

They waited in the parlour. Reacher figured it was the best choice. It overlooked the front, and given the snow on the ground, frontal approach was the most likely. And even if an actual approach was not attempted, the parlour was still the best room. The way it looked out under the lip of the porch roof and across the whole of its depth meant that a potential sniper would have to line up front and centre to get a shot. He would be spotted twenty paces before he even raised the rifle to his eye.

There were many other possible dangers. Bombs or fire bombs were top of the list. But if that kind of thing was coming their way, it didn’t really matter which room they were in.

The clock ticked past nine and marked the end of their first hour alone. The street outside was deserted. Reacher made a careful sweep of the interior perimeter. The front door, locked. The first floor windows, all closed. The French doors in the library, locked. The back door, locked. Second storey windows, all good. Most of them were inaccessible without a ladder. The only viable possibility was a bedroom window at the front, which had the back edge of the porch roof directly under its sill. But there was a lot of snow out there. The porch roof itself would be slippery and treacherous. Safe enough.

The weather was changing. A light wind was getting up. The night sky was clearing. The moon was bright and stars were visible. The temperature felt like it was dropping. Every window Reacher checked had a layer of air in front of it that was pulsing with cold. The wind didn’t help. It found invisible cracks and made invisible draughts and sucked heat out of the whole structure.

The wind didn’t help safety, either. It made strange sounds. Rustling, cracking, crackling noises, the brittle chafing of frozen foliage, hollow clicks and clonks from frozen tree limbs, a faint keening from the weird shapes on the power lines. In absolute terms the sounds were quiet, but Reacher could have done without them. He was depending on hearing the soft crunch and slide of feet on snow, and the chances of doing that were diminishing. And Janet Salter was talking from time to time, which made things worse, but he didn’t want to shut her up. She was nervous, understandably, and talking seemed to help her. He got back from a circuit of the house and she asked him, ‘How many times have you done this kind of thing before?’

He kept his eyes on the window and said, ‘Once or twice.’

‘And clearly you survived.’

He nodded. ‘So far.’

‘What’s your secret of success?’

‘I don’t like getting beaten. Better for all concerned that it just doesn’t happen.’

‘That’s a heavy burden to carry, psychologically. That kind of burning need for dominance, I mean.’

‘Are there people who enjoy getting beaten?’

‘It’s not black and white. You wouldn’t have to enjoy it. But you could be at peace with whatever comes your way. You know, win some, lose some.’

‘Doesn’t work that way. Not in my line of work. You win some, and then you lose one. And then it’s game over.’

‘You’re still in the army, aren’t you?’

‘No, I’ve been out for years.’

‘In your head, I mean.’

‘Not really.’

‘Don’t you miss it?’

‘Not really.’

‘I heard you on the phone, with the woman in Virginia. You sounded alive.’

‘That was because of her. Not the army. She’s got a great voice.’

‘You’re lonely.’

‘Aren’t you?’

She didn’t answer. The clock ticked on. Nobody approached the house.

After an hour and a half Reacher had made four security sweeps and felt he knew the house pretty well. It had been built for an earlier generation, which had been in some ways tougher, and in some ways gentler. The windows had catches and the doors had locks, all solid well-machined pieces of brass, but nothing like the armour on sale at any modern hardware store. Which meant that there were forty-three possible ways in, of which fifteen were realistically practical, of which eight might be anticipated by a solo opponent of normal intelligence, of which six would be easy to defeat. The remaining two would be difficult to beat, but feasible, made harder by Janet Salter’s wandering presence. Lines of fire were always complicated. He thought again about insisting she lock herself downstairs, but she saw him thinking and started talking again, as if to head him off. He was at the parlour window, craning left, craning right, and she asked, ‘Was it your mother or your father who was a Marine?’

He said, ‘Excuse me?’

‘You told me you grew up on Marine Corps bases. I was wondering which of your parents made that necessary. Although I suppose it could have been both of them. Was that permitted? A husband and wife serving together?’

‘I don’t imagine so.’

‘So which one was it?’

‘It was my father.’

‘Tell me about him.’

‘Not much to tell. Nice guy, but busy.’

‘Distant?’

‘He probably thought I was. There were a hundred kids on every base. We ran around all day. We were in a world of our own.’

‘Is he still alive?’

‘He died a long time ago. My mother, too.’

‘It was the same for me,’ Janet Salter said. ‘I made myself distant. I was always reading.’

He didn’t reply, and she went quiet again. He watched the street. Nothing happening. He moved to the library and checked the yard. Nothing happening. The last of the cloud was moving away and the moon was brightening. It was a blue, cold, empty world out there.

Except that it wasn’t empty.

But nobody came.

Hide and seek. Maybe the oldest game in the world. Because of ancient thrills and fears buried deep in the back of every human’s brain. Predator and prey. The irresistible shiver of delight, crouching in the dark, hearing the footsteps pass by. The rush of pleasure in doubling back and wrenching open the closet door and discovering the victim. The instant translation of primeval terrors into modern-day laughter.

This was different.

There would be no laughter. There would be short seconds of furious gunfire and the stink of smoke and blood and then sudden deafened silence and a world-stands-still pause to look down and check yourself for damage. Then another pause to check your people. Then the shakes and the gulps and the need to throw up.

No laughter.

And this wasn’t hide and seek. Nobody was really hiding, and nobody was really seeking. Whoever was out there knew full well where Janet Salter was. An exact address would have been provided. Maybe turn-by-turn directions, maybe GPS coordinates. And she was just sitting right there, waiting for him. No art. Just brutality. Which disappointed Reacher a little. He was good at hide and seek. The real-world version, not the children’s game. Good at hiding, better at seeking. His former professional obligations had led him in that direction. He had been a good hunter of people. Fugitives, mainly. He had learned that empathy was the key. Understand their motives, their circumstances, their goals, their aims, their fears, their needs. Think like them. See what they see.
Be
them. He had gotten to the point where he could spend an hour with a case file, a second hour thinking, a third with maps and phone books, and then predict pretty much the exact building the guy would be found in.