by Lee Child
‘How much did they get through?’
‘Way more than we can guess. The air force in Europe was hundreds of thousands strong back then. And demand was pretty strong, too. It was a tough gig. I’m sure I would have snorted my body weight before my first tour was half done.’
‘And this much was left over?’
‘This could have been a month’s supply. Suddenly not needed any more. Shutting down production was pretty haphazard at the end.’
‘Why is it here?’
‘Couldn’t just junk it. Couldn’t sell it. Certainly couldn’t burn it. The whole of Europe would have gotten high as kites off the smoke.’
They went quiet. Just stared.
Then Holland said, ‘Let’s find the rest.’
The rest was shared between the next two tunnels to the left. The same hundred-foot shelves, the same meticulous stacks of packets, the same dull flashlight reflections off the yellowed glassine. A full fifteen thousand bricks in the second tunnel, another full fifteen thousand in the third.
Holland dropped to his knees. Clenched his fists. Smiled wide.
‘Close to ninety thousand pounds, all told,’ he said. ‘The damn DEA will have to listen to us now. This has got to be the biggest drug bust in history. And we did it. Little old us. The Bolton PD, in South Dakota. We’re going to be famous. We’re going to be legends. No more poor relations. The damn prison staff can kiss my ass.’
‘Congratulations,’ Reacher said.
‘Thank you.’
‘But it’s not all good. Plato found it a year before you did.’
‘How?’
‘Rumour and logic, I guess. He knew it had been used in the war, and he knew there was likely to be surplus stock somewhere, so he tracked it down. He’s probably got guys in the air force. That’s probably why we found the cargo manifest. It was on top of a pile somewhere, because someone else had been looking for it already.’
Peterson said, ‘I can’t believe the bikers left it all sitting here. The temptation to take some with them must have been huge.’
Reacher said, ‘I get the impression that if Plato tells you to leave something, you leave it.’ He shuffled a little further into the tunnel, picturing a long line of sweating men fifty years ago passing the two-pound packets hand to hand to hand and then stacking them neatly like craftsmen. Probably the shortest guys had been detailed for the work. He didn’t know what the air force’s height requirement had been fifty years earlier. But probably some of the guys had been standing straight, and some of them hadn’t. They had probably roped the packs down the ventilation tubes in kitbags. Five or ten at a time, maybe more. Trestles and pulleys on the surface. Some kind of an improvised system. Too laborious to carry them all down the stairs one by one. Probably the bikers had brought them back up the same way. The fact that the ventilation pipes were unfinished and open at both ends must have been too obvious to ignore.
He shuffled a little further in and made another discovery.
There was a lateral link feeding sideways off the main tunnel. Like part of a circle’s circumference butting up against its radius. He squeezed down it and came out in the next tunnel along. He shuffled deeper in and found two more lateral links, one to the left, one to the right. The whole place was a warren. A maze. There was a total of eight spokes, and three separate incomplete rings. Each ring had its own curved shelf. Lots more linear feet for sleeping children. Lots of corners. Some turned only left, some turned only right. There were no four-way junctions. Everything was a T, upright at the far end of the spokes, rotated randomly left or right at the other turns. A bizarre layout. The plan view on the blueprint must have looked like a Celtic brooch. Maybe there had been more construction compromises than just the ceiling height. Possibly the whole thing was supposed to be like an odd truncated underground version of the Pentagon itself, but rounded off, not angular, and with some of the links between rings and spokes not made.
The wedges of solid rock separating the spokes and the rings had been hollowed out in ten separate places. Bathrooms, maybe, never installed, or kitchens, never installed, or storerooms for subsistence rations, never supplied. Everything was faced with smooth crisp concrete. It was dry and dusty. The air smelled old. The whole place was absolutely silent.
Peterson called, ‘Take a look at this.’
Reacher couldn’t locate his voice. It came through all the tunnels at once, from everywhere, humming and singing and fluttering and riding the walls.
Reacher called, ‘Where are you?’
Peterson said, ‘Here.’
Which didn’t help. Reacher threaded his way back to the main circular hall and asked again. Peterson was in the next tunnel along. Reacher scooted over and joined him there. Peterson was looking at a fuel tank. It was a big ugly thing that had been welded together out of curved sections of steel small enough to have been dropped down the ventilation shafts. It was sitting on a shelf. It was maybe forty feet long. It was big enough to hold maybe five thousand gallons. It was sweating slightly and it smelled of kerosene. Not original to the place. The welds were crude. Technically unacceptable. Air force mechanics would have done better work.
Peterson stooped forward and rapped it with his knuckles. The sound came back dull and liquid. Reacher thought back to the fuel truck that had nearly creamed him in the snow at the bottom of the old county two-lane.
‘Great,’ he said. ‘We’re two hundred feet underground with five thousand gallons of jet fuel in a home-made tank.’
‘Why jet fuel? It smells like kerosene.’
‘Jet fuel is kerosene, basically. So it’s one or the other. And there’s way more here than they need for the heaters in the huts. And they just got it. After they already knew they were leaving. And after ploughing the runway. So a plane is coming in. Probably soon. It’s going to refuel. Holland needs to tell the DEA about that. They’re going to need to be fast.’
‘It won’t come in the dark. There are no runway lights.’
‘Even so. Time is tight. How far away is the nearest DEA field office?’
Peterson didn’t answer. Instead he asked, ‘How did they fill a tank all the way down here?’
‘They backed the fuel truck to the door and dropped the hose down the air shaft.’
‘That would need a long hose.’
‘They have long hoses for houses with big yards.’
Then Holland called out, ‘Guys, take a look at this.’
His voice reached them with a strange hissing echo, all around the circular room, like a whispering gallery. He was in a tunnel directly opposite. Reacher scooted and Peterson stooped and scuffled and they made their way over to him. He was playing his flashlight beam close and then far, all the way down the hundred-foot length and back again.
It was like something out of a fairy tale.
Like Aladdin’s cave.
THIRTY-FOUR
HOLLAND’S FLASHLIGHT BEAM THREW BACK BRIGHT REFLECTIONS off gold, off silver, off platinum. It set up glitter and refraction and sparkle off brilliant diamonds and deep green emeralds and rich red rubies and bright blue sapphires. It showed old muted colours, landscapes, portraits, oils on canvas, yellow gilt frames. There were chains and lockets and pins and necklaces and bracelets and rings. They were coiled and piled and tangled and tossed all the way along the shelf. Yellow gold, rose gold, white gold. Old things. New things. A hundred linear feet of loot. Paintings, jewellery, candlesticks, silver trays, watches. Small gold clocks, tiny suede bags with drawstrings, a cut-glass bowl entirely filled with wedding bands.
‘Unredeemed pledges,’ Peterson said. ‘In transit, from Plato’s pawn shops.’
‘Barter,’ Reacher said. ‘For his dope.’
‘Maybe both,’ Holland said. ‘Maybe both things are the same in the end.’
They all shuffled down the tunnel. They were unable to resist.
The shelf was a hundred feet long and maybe thirty-two inches wide. More than two hundred and fifty square feet of
real estate. The size of a decent room. There was no space on it large enough to put a hand. It was more or less completely covered. Some of the jewellery was exquisite. Some of the paintings were fine. All of the items were sad. The fruits of desperation. The flotsam and jetsam of ruined lives. Hard times, addiction, burglary, loss. Under the triple flashlight beams the whole array flashed and danced and glittered and looked simultaneously fabulous and awful. Someone’s dreams, someone else’s nightmares, all secret and buried two hundred feet down.
A hundred pounds’ weight, or a thousand.
A million dollars’ worth, or ten.
‘Let’s go,’ Reacher said. ‘We’ve got better things to do. We shouldn’t waste time here.’
The climb back to the surface was long and hard and tiring. Reacher counted the steps. There were two hundred and eighty of them. Like walking up a twenty-storey building. He had to take each step on his toes. Good exercise, he guessed, but right then he wasn’t looking for exercise. The air got colder all the way. It had been maybe thirty degrees underground. It was about minus twenty on the surface. A fifty-degree drop. One degree every five or six steps. Fast enough to notice, but no sudden shock. Reacher zipped his coat and put on his hat and his gloves about a third of the way up. Holland surrendered next. Peterson made it halfway up before he succumbed.
They rested inside the stone building for a minute. Outside the moonlight was still bright. Peterson collected the flash-lights and shut them down. Holland stood with his hand on the stair rail. He was red in the face from exertion and breathing hard.
Reacher said to him, ‘You need to make a call.’
‘Do I?’
‘The siren could have come and gone while we were downstairs.’
‘In which case we’re already too late.’ Holland pulled out his cell and dialled. Identified himself, asked a question, listened to the reply.
And smiled.
‘All clear,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you gamble and win.’
Then he waited until Peterson left to carry the flashlights back to the cars. He watched him go and turned back to Reacher and said, ‘You and I figured out the key. You knew the meth was there. But I want to give Andrew the credit. He’s going to be the next chief. A thing like this, it would help him with the guys. And the town. A thing like this, it would set him up right.’
‘No question,’ Reacher said.
‘So would you be OK with that?’
‘Fine with me,’ Reacher said.
‘Good.’
Reacher pushed the door closed against the yowling hinges and Holland locked it up and pocketed the key. They walked together back to the cars and Holland pulled his right glove off in the freezing air and offered his hand to Peterson. Peterson snatched his own glove off and shook.
‘Now listen up,’ Holland said.
He leaned into his car and unhooked his radio mike from the dash and pulled it out all the way until the cord went straight and tight. He thumbed the key and called in an all-points code and spoke.
He said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, tonight Deputy Chief Peterson broke open what I’m sure will prove to be our country’s largest ever drug bust. Start of business tomorrow he’ll be calling the DEA in Washington with the details and about thirty seconds after that this department will be among the most celebrated in the nation. He has my congratulations. As do you all. Just another fine night’s work in a long and distinguished tradition.’
He clicked off and tossed the mike on his seat.
Peterson said, ‘Thank you, chief.’
Holland said, ‘You’re welcome. But you still shouldn’t have come.’
Five minutes to eleven in the evening.
Five hours to go.
Seventeen hundred miles south Plato’s three-car convoy waited at an inconspicuous gate in a hurricane fence around an airfield. The gate was a battered, saggy affair, chained and padlocked. The fence was matted with trash and weeds at its base. But the airfield itself was fit for its purpose. It had been military, then civilian, then military again, then civilian again. It had a long runway and hangars and offices and apron parking for hobby planes. They were all lined up neatly, hooded and blinded in the dark by canvas covers.
Plato’s was not a hobby plane. It was a Boeing 737. The largest craft on the field by far. It was twenty years old and Plato was its third owner. Not that anyone knew. Only geeks could date planes, and geeks knew better than to broadcast their conclusions. Plato told the world it had been custom built for him a year ago, up there in Washington state. In reality it had been flown to a facility in Arizona and stripped back to its aluminum skin and the paint had been replaced by a grey-tinted wash that made the bare metal look dark and shiny and evil. People who owed him services regularly spent days and weeks going over it with clay bars and carnauba wax. It was polished like a show car. Plato was proud of it. He was the first in his family to own a Boeing.
A dusty pick-up truck with one headlight drove around the perimeter track inside the fence and stopped short of the gate. A guy got out and clicked open the padlock and clattered the chain out of the way. He lifted and pulled and swung the gate open. The three-car convoy drove through.
Plato was Plato and Range Rovers were Range Rovers, so they didn’t stick to the perimeter road. Instead they drove in a straight line, across bumpy grass, across smooth taxiways, across the runway, across the apron. They held a wide respectful curve around the Boeing and parked side by side between two Cessnas and a Piper. The six men climbed out and formed a loose cordon. Plato got out into it. He was in no danger, but it helped to appear as if he was, in terms of both caution and reputation. There was an old-fashioned set of rolling stairs set next to the Boeing’s forward door. The word Mexicana was still visible on it, peeled and fading. Three men went up. After a minute one stuck his head back out and nodded. All clear.
Plato went up and took his seat, which was 1A, front row on the left. Leg room against the bulkhead was not an issue for him. The old first class cabin was intact. Four rows of four wide leather seats. Behind them economy class had been removed. There was just empty space back there. The plane was rated for a hundred and eighty passengers, and twenty years ago an average passenger was reckoned to weigh two hundred pounds including checked bags. Which gave a total lift capacity of thirtysix thousand pounds, which was about sixteen tons.
Plato sat while his men inspected their equipment. It had been supplied and loaded on to the plane by a guy who owed Plato a favour. Therefore it was all present and correct, on pain of death. But his guys checked anyway. Cold-weather clothing, aluminum ladders, flashlights, automatic weapons, ammunition, some food and water. Anything else necessary would be supplied at the destination.
The pilots had finished their pre-flight checks. The first officer stepped out of the cockpit and waited in the aisle. Plato caught his eye and nodded. Like a guy telling a butler when to serve the soup. The first officer went back to the flight deck and the engines started up. The plane taxied, lined up with the runway, paused, shuddered against the brakes, rolled forward, accelerated, and then rose majestically into the night.
Reacher rode back to town in Peterson’s car. Holland followed them in his own car. Reacher got out at the end of Janet Salter’s street and waved them both away. Then he eased past the parked cruiser and walked through the snow to the house. Janet Salter was still up when he walked in. She looked him up and down and side to side like she was inspecting him for damage. Then she asked, ‘Successful?’
Reacher said, ‘So far so good.’
‘Then you should call the girl in Virginia and tell her. You were awfully abrupt before. You hung up on her, basically.’
‘She’s probably off duty. It’s late.’
‘Try her.’
So Reacher wrestled his way out of his coat and hung it up and sat down in the hallway chair. He dialled the number he remembered. Asked for Amanda.
She was still on duty.
He said, ‘N06BA03 is clearly a pharmaceuti
cal code for methamphetamine.’
She said, ‘Forty tons?’
‘Almost intact.’
‘Jesus.’
‘That’s what we thought.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Nothing. The local cops are on it.’
‘What does forty tons look like?’
‘Repetitive.’
‘How the hell can forty tons of methamphetamine get lost in the system?’
‘I don’t know. Stuff gets lost all the time. Shit happens. Maybe they weren’t very proud of it. Values change all of a sudden, wartime to peacetime. Maybe that’s why they hid it behind the code. And as soon as everyone forgot what the code meant, they forgot the stuff was there. Out of sight and out of mind.’
She didn’t reply.
He said, ‘Thanks for your help, Susan.’
‘You’re most welcome.’
‘Tell your buddy at Lackland there are records clerks taking money for combing the archives. That stuff wasn’t found by accident. Maybe you can pay off the favour that way.’
‘Bronze Stars all around. Anything else?’
‘Nothing on Kapler?’
‘He resigned for no reason. That’s all there is. Which is strange, I agree, but there’s no hard data anywhere. Either he’s clean, or someone cleaned up after him.’
‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Anything else?’
Reacher said, ‘No, I guess we’re all done here.’
She said, ‘So this is goodbye?’
He said, ‘I guess it is.’
‘It’s been nice talking to you.’
‘For me too. Stay lucky, Susan. And thanks again.’
‘You bet.’
She hung up. He sat in the chair for a moment with his eyes closed and the receiver on his lap. When it started beeping at him he put it back in the cradle and got up and walked to the kitchen.