61 Hours

nose down half in and half out of the hut in a tangle of bent iron frames and tumbling plywood sheets. Both headlights were out and there was all kinds of grinding and rattling coming from under the hood. There was hissing and wheezing and ticking from stressed components. There was dust and splinters all around and frigid air was pouring in through the shattered front glass like liquid.
    The Smith’s muzzle was still hard in Holland’s ear.
    Reacher was still upright in his seat, still braced easily against the back of Holland’s chair. The passenger airbag had inflated against his squared shoulder, and then it had collapsed again.
    He said, ‘I told you, Holland, you can’t compete.’
    Holland didn’t answer.
    Reacher said, ‘You damaged the car. How am I going to get back to town?’
    Holland asked, ‘What are you going to do with me?’
    Reacher said, ‘Let’s take a walk. Keep your hands where I can see them.’
    I’ll have plenty of time to read
, Janet Salter had said,
after all this fuss is over
.
    You reap what you sow
.
    They climbed out of the wrecked car into the cold and the wind and stepped away into the narrow lane that separated the first row of huts from the second. Holland walked ahead and Reacher followed ten feet behind with the old .38 six-shooter held low and easy. It was the one Janet Salter had cradled through so many hours.
    Reacher said, ‘Tell me about Plato.’
    Holland stopped and turned around and said, ‘I never met him. It was all on the phone, or through the bikers.’
    ‘Is he as bad as he sounds?’
    ‘Worse.’
    ‘What’s supposed to happen tonight?’
    ‘Like you figured. He’s going to take the jewellery out and steal back some of the meth.’
    ‘And you were supposed to help?’
    ‘I was supposed to be here, yes. I have some equipment for him, and the key to the door.’
    ‘OK,’ Reacher said. Then he raised the .38 and pulled the trigger and shot Holland between the eyes. The gun kicked gently in his hand and the sound was the same as a 158-grain .38 always was outdoors in quiet cold air, a fractured spitting
crack
that rolled away across the flat land and faded fast, because it had nothing to bounce back from. Holland went down with a loud rustle of heavy nylon and the stiffness of his coat pitched him half sideways and left him lying on one shoulder with his face turned up to the moon. Thirty-eight hundredths of an inch was mathematically a little larger than nine millimetres, so the third eye in his forehead was a little larger than Janet Salter’shad been, but his face was a little larger too, so overall the effect was proportional.
    Chief Thomas Holland, RIP.
    His body settled and his blood leaked out and his cell phone started ringing in his pocket.

FORTY-TWO
    R EACHER GOT TO THE PHONE BY THE THIRD RING . I T WAS IN Holland’s parka, in a chest pocket. It was faintly warm. Reacher hit the green button and raised it to his ear and said, ‘Yes?’
    ‘Holland?’ Practically a yell. A bad connection, very loud background noise, a Spanish accent, nasal and not deep.
    A small man.
    Plato.
    Reacher didn’t answer.
    ‘Holland?’
    Reacher said, ‘Yes.’
    ‘We’re fifteen minutes out. We need the landing lights.’
    Then the phone went dead.
    We?
How many?
Landing lights?
What landing lights? Reacher stood still for a second. He had seen no electricity supply out to the runway. No humped glass lenses along its length. It was just a flat slab of concrete. It was possible the Crown Vic’s headlights were supposed to do the job, in which case Plato was shit out ofluck, because the Crown Vic’s headlights were both busted. But then, headlights couldn’t stretch two miles. Not even halogen, not even on bright.
    Fifteen minutes.
    Now fourteen and change.
    Reacher put the phone in his own pocket and then checked through the rest of Holland’s pockets. Found the T-shaped key to the stone building’s door, and a scuffed old Glock 17. The throw-down pistol. There were fourteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber.
    His round.
    He put the key and the Glock in his pocket and took another Glock out of Holland’s holster. His official piece. It was newer. Fully loaded. He put his gloves back on and bunched Holland’s shirt collar and jacket collar and parka collar all together in his fist and dragged the body to the nearest hut and all the way inside. Left it dumped in the centre of the floor. Then he hustled back to the car.
    Thirteen minutes