61 Hours

the Rapid City guys must have been told that a bent cop would be waiting there to meet them, because after just a brief pause the pump truck moved on again, with the de-icer close behind. Reacher raised his hand, partlylike a greeting, partly like a traffic stop, and a minute later he was sitting in the warmth inside the pump truck’s cab, riding up the runway towards whatever was waiting for him at the other end.
    Twenty-seven minutes past three in the morning.
    Twenty-eight minutes to go.

FORTY-THREE
    T HE B OEING HAD TAXIED AND TURNED AND WAS PARKED AS NEAR as it could get to the first line of huts. Up close, it looked gigantic. A huge plane, high and wide and long, at temporary rest in the middle of nowhere, towering over the silent buildings behind it, hissing and whistling, an active, living presence in a passive, frozen landscape. Its engines were still spooling noisily and its belly light was still flashing red and its forward door was latched wide open. Lights were on inside. An aluminum housepainter’s ladder had been extended down from the cabin to the runway surface below. It looked thin and puny and insubstantial next to the giant plane.
    There were seven men on the ground. Or what looked like six men and a boy. There was no mistaking Plato. Four feet and eleven inches tall, but that abstract measurement did not convey the reality. He had a big man’s heft and thickness and muscularity, and a big man’s stiffness and posture and movement, but a small child’s stature. He was not dwarfish. He was not a freak. His limbs and his torso and his neck and his head wereall reasonably well proportioned. He was like an NFL linebacker reduced in size by exactly twenty-five per cent. That was all. He was a miniature tough guy. Like a toy.
    He looked to be somewhere between forty and fifty years old. He was wearing a black goose-down jacket, and a black woollen watch cap, and black gloves. He looked very cold. The six men with him were younger. In their thirties, maybe. They were dressed the same as him. Black down jackets, black hats, black gloves. They were normal-sized Hispanic men, Spanish not Indian, neither short nor tall, and they looked very cold, too.
    The pump truck drove around and parked close to the Boeing’s wing and the de-icer parked behind it. Both drivers got out. They had no visible reaction to the abject temperature. They were Rapid City guys. They knew about cold. They had down jackets of their own. They were both white, medium height, and lean. Hardscrabble people, rural roots, worn down to the bare essentials. Arms, legs, heads, bodies. Maybe thirty years old, but they looked forty. Maybe a couple of generations off the farm.
    Reacher stayed in his seat for a moment, keeping warm, and watching.
    Plato was moving around inside a loose cordon formed by his six guys. No real reason for that. Maybe habit, maybe appearances. And Plato and his six guys were armed. They all had Heckler & Koch MP5Ks slung around their necks on nylon straps. Short stubby weapons, black and wicked. Thirty-round magazines. They rested raised and proud and prominent on the puffy coats. Butts to the right, muzzles to the left. All seven guys were right-handed. All seven guys had backpacks, too. Black nylon. The backpacks looked mostly empty apart from small heavy loads at the bottom. Flashlights, Reacher assumed. For deep underground. And spare magazines, presumably. For the guns. Always good to have. On full auto thirty rounds came out of an MP5 in two short seconds.
    Sub-machine guns. A bullet manufacturer’s very best friends.
    Reacher climbed out of the pump truck’s cab. Into the cold and the wind. The Rapid City guys were still doing OK withit, but all seven Mexicans were shivering hard. They had expressions of total disbelief on their faces. They had left a balmy evening knowing they were heading for somewhere cold, but understanding the word and feeling the feeling were two completely different things. Plato’s gun was bouncing a little on his chest because his whole body was trembling. He was walking small tight circles and stamping his feet. But part of that might have been plain annoyance. He was clearly tense. He had a hard brown face and his mouth was set down in a grimace.
    The Rapid City guys didn’t read it right.
    The guy who had driven the pump truck stepped up and spread his hands and smiled what he clearly hoped was a cunning smile, and he said, ‘Here we are.’
    A self-evident statement.