14 61 Hours

by Lee Child

‘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

  THE 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. T
he 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.’