Part 50 (1/2)

'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 pa.s.senger 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, Plato on his feet.

'I don't think so,' Reacher said.

I'll have plenty of time to read after all this fuss is over.

Reacher unleashed the uppercut from his knees. A colossal, primitive, primeval blow, driven all the way from the centre of the earth, pulsing through the wet concrete, through his knee, his thigh, his waist, his upper body, his shoulder, his arm, his wrist, his fist, every muscle and every fibre twitching just once, rippling fast in perfect propulsive sequence and harmony.

Plato's jaw shattered and his head snapped back like a rag doll. He hung motionless for a split second and then he splashed down, hard and vertical.

Reacher was pretty sure he was dead when he hit the floor.

Then he made absolutely certain of it.

He clamped his hands on Plato's ears and jerked his head one way and then the other until he felt the vertebrae pull apart and then he kept on doing it until he was sure the spinal cord was torn all the way to mush.

The deluge kept on coming, rus.h.i.+ng, sheeting, torrential. The round chamber, once still and dry and ancient, was soaked with chemical stink and boiling with fumes, the fuel suddenly close to an inch deep, with small urgent waves racing outward from a frothing maelstrom directly under the roaring pipe.

Surely everyone's afraid of death, Janet Salter had said.

Depends what form it takes, he had answered.

He ran.

He splashed across the floor on his knees and ducked his shoulders down and got his head up inside the stair shaft and crawled and clawed and scrabbled to his feet. He leaned in towards the centre pole and took the stairs three at a time, galloping madly, his left hand sliding up over the steel, his right hand pawing crazily at the wall, batting and clutching and grasping at every extra second. The sound of his feet on the metal was drowned out by the waterfall roar of the fuel from below. He charged on, three at a time, four at a time, not breathing, anaerobic, up and up and up, round and round and round, not counting, just running, running, running, climbing, churning, hammering, straining, hurling himself towards the surface.

The de-icer truck jammed to a stop and K-turned and backed up and straightened. Directly behind it, the stone building. Directly ahead of it, the runway. The guy from 4A got out and ran crouched with his arm straight and the flare in his hand. He stopped in the doorway and turned and held the flare behind him and paused for a second and then swung his arm and lobbed it in. The flare tumbled end over end, a bright pink firework hissing through the air. It hit the unfinished lip of the ventilation shaft and kicked up and turned over once more and then dropped straight down and out of sight.

Five minutes to four in the morning.

Sixty-one hours gone.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

IT WAS FOUR DAYS BEFORE THE SITE WAS COOL ENOUGH TO INSPECT. By that point there was a long line of agencies waiting to join the hunt. First on the scene were Homeland Security, the air force, the FBI, the Highway Patrol, and a group of specialist arson investigators drafted in by the government. The incident had attracted intense interest. The North American Air Defense Command had been the first to spot it. Their satellites had seen a bloom of amazing heat and their computers had interpreted it as either a missile launch or a missile strike. Their Russian equivalents had seen the same thing. Within seconds the White House had been on the phone, rea.s.suring, and receiving matching rea.s.surances. There were launch silos in South Dakota, yes, but not at that location. And in turn, no Russian missile had been fired at America.

The National Guard was sent in to secure a wide perimeter. Through it crept the waiting agencies, one by one. They set up forward operating bases five miles out. They sent patrols forward, as close as they dared. Then came news from the nearby town of Bolton of a strange toxic cloud borne on the westerly wind. The patrols were pulled back. Hazmat gear was issued. Doctors were dispatched to Bolton. Reported symptoms were confusing. It was as if a light dose of a psychostimulant drug had been administered to the entire population. Temporary euphoria and excitement were reported, as was difficulty in sleeping and enhanced s.e.xual appet.i.te. The air was tested. No conclusion was reached. The wind had been blowing strongly for days, all the way from Wyoming. No symptoms were reported further east in the state.

The patrols crept inward again.