61 Hours

launch a blow from so low down. Better to drive an elbow vertically through the crown of his skull.
    Or shoot him.
    Plato took the key.
    He said, ‘Now take your coat off.’
    Reacher said, ‘What?’
    ‘Take your coat off.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Are you arguing with me?’
    Six hands on six sub-machine guns.
    Reacher said, ‘I’m asking you a question.’
    Plato said, ‘You and I are going underground.’
    ‘Why me?’
    ‘Because you’ve been down there before. None of us have. You’re our local guide.’
    ‘I can go down there with my coat on.’
    ‘True. But you’re in civilian clothing. Therefore, no gun belt. The weather is cold and your coat is closed at the front. There-fore, your guns are in your outer pockets. I’m a smart guy. Therefore, I don’t wish to enter an unfamiliar environment with an armed adversary.’
    ‘Am I your adversary?’
    ‘I’m a smart guy,’ Plato said again. ‘The safe assumption is that everyone is my adversary.’
    Reacher said, ‘It’s cold.’
    Plato said, ‘Your daughter’s grave will be colder.’
    Six hands on six sub-machine guns.
    Reacher unzipped his coat. He shrugged it off and dropped it. It hit the ground with a padded clank. The Glocks, the Smiths, the box of rounds, the cell phone. Plastic and metal and cardboard. Thirty degrees below zero. Windy. A cotton sweater. Within seconds he was shivering worse than any of them.
    Plato stood still. Not long, Reacher thought, before the de-icer truck got back and the driver described the smashed-up Ford. Therefore not long before someone looked down the row and found the damaged hut. Not long before someone searched the other huts. Not long before someone started asking awkward questions.
    Time to get going.
    ‘Let’s do it,’ he said.
    Twenty-seven minutes to four in the morning.
    Twenty-two minutes to go.

FORTY-FOUR
    T HEY WALKED OVER TO THE STONE BUILDING, SEVEN MEN, SINGLE file, a strange little procession. Plato first, four feet eleven, then Reacher, six feet five, then Plato’s five guys, all of them halfway between the two extremes. Plato’s sixth guy was still safely away in the de-icer truck, looting Holland’s dead car. The stone building was standing there waiting for them, quiet and indifferent in the moonlit gloom, the same way it had stood for fifty long years. The stone, the slate, the blind windows, the chimneys, the mouldings and the curlicues and the details.
    The portico, and the steel slab door.
    Plato put the key in the lock. Turned it. The lock sprang back. Then he stood still and waited. Reacher took the hint. He turned the handle down sixty degrees, precise and physical, like a bank vault. He pulled the door through a short arc. The hinges squealed. He stepped in behind it and pushed it all the way open, like pushing a truck.
    Plato stood still and raised his hand, palm up. The man behind him stepped up and dug down in his backpack and came out witha flashlight. He slapped it into Plato’s palm, the way an OR nurse feeds tools to a surgeon. Plato clicked it on and transferred it to his other hand and snapped his fingers and pointed at Reacher. The guy behind him swung his own backpack off his shoulder and took out his flashlight and handed it over.
    It was a four-cell Mag-lite. From Ontario, California. The de facto gold standard for man-portable illumination. Alloy construction. Reliable and practically indestructible. Reacher clicked it on. He played the beam around the bare concrete chamber.
    No change.
    The place was exactly as he and two dead men had left it more than four and a half hours earlier. The circular stair head, the two unfinished ventilation pipes jutting up through the floor. The stale dry air, the stirring breeze, the smell of old fears long forgotten.
    ‘After you, Mr Holland,’ Plato said.
    Which disappointed Reacher a little. He had lost his coat, but he still had his boots. He had entertained the idea of letting Plato go first, and then kicking his head off about a hundred feet down.
    But, obviously, so had Plato. A smart guy.
    So Reacher went first, as awkward as before. Big boot heels, small steps, clanging metal. The sound of the whining jets faded as he went down, and he heard Plato issuing a stream of instructions in Spanish: ‘Wait until the de-icer gets back, then set up the equipment, then start the refuelling. Get the other three doors open on the plane, and get the other three ladders in position. Figure out how the de-icer works and figure out