61 Hours

Plato was snarling and biting, curling and rearing. Reacher jammed the heel of his hand under Plato’s nose and smashed his head down on the concrete,
one
,
two
,
three
. Then
four
.
    No result.
    Plato started kicking for Reacher’s groin, bucking, thrashing, like he was swimming backstroke. Reacher pinned the H&K and clambered off and smashed a right to Plato’s ribs. Plato coughed once, coughed twice, and blood foamed on his lips. He jerked up from the waist and tried to get Reacher with a head butt. Reacher clamped a giant palm over Plato’s moving teeth and smashed his head back down on the floor.
    Plato’s eyes stayed open.
    Then suddenly: sloshing, gushing, pouring liquid. Loud, forceful, relentless. Like a fire hose. Like ten fire hoses. Like a hundred. Like a waterfall. Roaring. The stink of kerosene. Reacher kept his left hand on the gun and scrabbled with his right and found Plato’s flashlight and jammed his elbow in Plato’s throat and played the beam towards the sound.
    Liquid was sheeting out of the nearer ventilation shaft. A flooding, drenching, torrential flow. Hundreds of gallons. A deluge. It hammered on the concrete and bounced and spattered and pooled and raced across the floor. Like a lake. Like a tide. Within seconds the floor was soaked. The air was full of fumes. The flashlight beam danced and shivered and swam through them.
    Kerosene.
    Jet fuel.
    And it kept on coming. Like a giant faucet. Unstoppable. Like a burst dam. Gushing, sheeting, rushing, pouring, drenching. Plato bucked and jerked and twisted and got his throat out from under Reacher’s elbow and said, ‘What the hell is it? A leak?’
    ‘Not a leak,’ Reacher said.
    ‘Then what?’
    Reacher watched the flow. Relentless and powerful. And pulsing. It was the pump on the surface, running hard. Twohoses in the same shaft. One up, one down. One emptying the tank, the other wide open and dumping the contents straight back underground.
    ‘What is it?’ Plato said.
    ‘It’s a triple-cross,’ Reacher said. His head was already aching from the fumes. His eyes were starting to sting.
    ‘What?’ Plato said.
    ‘The Russian bought some of your guys. You’re out of business.’
    ‘They think they can drown me?’
    ‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘They’re not going to drown you.’
    There was no possibility of drowning. There was too much floor area. Five thousand gallons would level out less than two inches deep.
    He said, ‘They’re going to burn you to death.’
    ‘Bullshit,’ Plato said.
    Reacher said nothing.
    ‘How?’ Plato said. ‘They’re going to drop a match down the stairs? It would go out on the way.’
    Reacher said nothing. Plato wrenched away. Got to his knees. His nose was broken and leaking blood. Blood was coming out of his mouth. His teeth were smashed. One eye was closed. Both eyebrows were cut.
    He put his hands on the H&K.
    Then he took them off again.
    Reacher nodded.
    ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said. ‘The muzzle flash on that thing? With these fumes in the air? You want to do their work for them?’
    Plato said, ‘How are they going to do it?’
    Reacher said nothing. He was thinking. Picturing the scene on the surface, running options through his head.
    See what they see.
    Be them
.
    Not a match.
    Plato was right.
    A match would go out.

    The guy from 4B gunned the de-icer truck and spun the wheel and took off east towards the top right corner of the runway. Fifty yards. Forty. Thirty. Twenty. He spun the wheel again and slewed through a tight circle and the guy from 4A jumped out of the passenger seat and ducked down and grabbed the burning flare at its base and pulled its spike out of the concrete. He held it away from his body and climbed back in the truck and kept the door open and held the flare at arm’s length in the slipstream. It burned brighter and it smoked and flickered. But it didn’t go out. The truck raced back. Fifty yards. Forty. Thirty.
    The deluge kept on coming. It was never-ending. It poured and sheeted and hammered. The ventilation shaft was like a bathtub faucet increased in size by a factor of a hundred. Reacher was on his knees. His pants were soaked. The fuel was already a good half-inch deep. The fumes were thick. Breathing was hard.
    Plato said, ‘So what do we do?’
    Reacher said, ‘How fast can you run up a flight of stairs?’
    Plato got to his feet.
    ‘Faster than you,’ he said.
    They were face to face, nose to nose, Reacher on his knees,