The Smith's muzzle was still hard in Holland's ear.
Reacher was still upright in his seat, still braced easily against the back of Holland's chair. The passenger airbag had inflated against his squared shoulder, and then it had collapsed again.
He said, 'I told you, Holland, you can't compete.'
Holland didn't answer.
Reacher said, 'You damaged the car. How am I going to get back to town?'
Holland asked, 'What are you going to do with me?'
Reacher said, 'Let's take a walk. Keep your hands where I can see them.'
I'll have plenty of time to read, Janet Salter had said, after all this fuss is over.
You reap what you sow.
They climbed out of the wrecked car into the cold and the wind and stepped away into the narrow lane that separated the first row of huts from the second. Holland walked ahead and Reacher followed ten feet behind with the old.38 six-shooter held low and easy. It was the one Janet Salter had cradled through so many hours.
Reacher said, 'Tell me about Plato.'
Holland stopped and turned around and said, 'I never met him. It was all on the phone, or through the bikers.'
'Is he as bad as he sounds?'
'Worse.'
'What's supposed to happen tonight?'
'Like you figured. He's going to take the jewellery out and steal back some of the meth.'
'And you were supposed to help?'
'I was supposed to be here, yes. I have some equipment for him, and the key to the door.'
'OK,' Reacher said. Then he raised the.38 and pulled the trigger and shot Holland between the eyes. The gun kicked gently in his hand and the sound was the same as a 158-grain.38 always was outdoors in quiet cold air, a fractured spitting crack that rolled away across the flat land and faded fast, because it had nothing to bounce back from. Holland went down with a loud rustle of heavy nylon and the stiffness of his coat pitched him half sideways and left him lying on one shoulder with his face turned up to the moon. Thirty-eight hundredths of an inch was mathematically a little larger than nine millimetres, so the third eye in his forehead was a little larger than Janet Salter's had been, but his face was a little larger too, so overall the effect was proportional.
Chief Thomas Holland, RIP.
His body settled and his blood leaked out and his cell phone started ringing in his pocket.
Chapter Forty-Two
REACHER GOT TO THE PHONE BY THE THIRD RING. IT WAS IN Holland's parka, in a chest pocket. It was faintly warm. Reacher hit the green button and raised it to his ear and said, 'Yes?'
'Holland?' Practically a yell. A bad connection, very loud background noise, a Spanish accent, nasal and not deep.
A small man.
Plato.
Reacher didn't answer.
'Holland?'
Reacher said, 'Yes.'
'We're fifteen minutes out. We need the landing lights.'
Then the phone went dead.
We? How many? Landing lights? What landing lights? Reacher stood still for a second. He had seen no electricity supply out to the runway. No humped glass lenses along its length. It was just a flat slab of concrete. It was possible the Crown Vic's headlights were supposed to do the job, in which case Plato was shit out of luck, because the Crown Vic's headlights were both busted. But then, headlights couldn't stretch two miles. Not even halogen, not even on bright.
Fifteen minutes.
Now fourteen and change.
Reacher put the phone in his own pocket and then checked through the rest of Holland's pockets. Found the T-shaped key to the stone building's door, and a scuffed old Glock 17. The throw-down pistol. There were fourteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber.
His round.
He put the key and the Glock in his pocket and took another Glock out of Holland's holster. His official piece. It was newer. Fully loaded. He put his gloves back on and bunched Holland's shirt collar and jacket collar and parka collar all together in his fist and dragged the body to the nearest hut and all the way inside. Left it dumped in the centre of the floor. Then he hustled back to the car.
Thirteen minutes and change.
The car was canted down at the front, half in and half out of the hut. He squeezed along its flank and in through the hole in the shattered wall and stood where the stove had been and opened the trunk.
All kinds of stuff in there. But three basic categories: normal car stuff where the Ford Motor Company had planned it to be, regular cop gear neatly stowed in plastic trays, and then other things thrown in on top of everything else. In the first category: a spare tyre and a scissor jack. In the second category: a fluorescent traffic jacket, four red road flares, three nested traffic cones, a first-aid kit, a green tackle box for small items, two tarps, three rolls of crime scene tape, a bag of white rags, a lockbox for a handgun. In the third category: a long coil of greasy rope, an engine hoist with pulleys and tripod legs, unopened boxes of big heavy-duty garbage bags.
Nothing even remotely resembling a landing light.
Twelve minutes and change.
He pictured the scene from a pilot's point of view. An airliner, a Boeing 737, descending, on approach, dim blue-grey moonlit tundra ahead and below. Visible to some degree, but uniform, and featureless. The guy would have GPS navigation, but he would need help from the ground. That was clear. But he wouldn't be expecting any kind of mainstream FAA-approved bullshit. That was clear, too. Nothing was going to be done by the book.
What would he need?
Something improvised, obviously.
Fire, maybe?
World War Two bomber pilots landing in East Anglian fog were guided in by long parallel trenches pumped full of gasoline and set ablaze. Small planes landing secret agents in occupied Europe looked for fields with three bonfires arranged in an L-shape.
Was Holland supposed to have set fires?
Eleven minutes and change.
No, not fires.
Reacher slammed the trunk lid and kicked away debris from behind the car. He squeezed around to the front and hauled away tangled bed frames from under the fenders and dragged splintered plywood off the hood. The engine was still running. It smelled hot and oily and the bearings were knocking loudly. He squeezed back and opened the driver's door and dumped himself in Holland's seat and put the transmission in Reverse. Hit the gas and the car jerked and sputtered and dragged itself backwards the way it had come. In through the hole in the far wall, across the floor, out through the hole in the near wall. It thumped down tail first and Reacher spun the wheel and jammed the lever into Drive and headed for the northeastern corner of the runway. The top right corner, from the Boeing's point of view. He braked to a stop and slid out and opened the trunk again and grabbed the four red road flares from the plastic tray. He tossed three into the passenger seat as he passed and spiked the fourth into the concrete. It ignited automatically and burned fiercely. A bright crimson puffball. Visible from a long way on a road, presumably even further from the air.
He got back in the car and headed for the opposite corner. The top left. He had no headlights, but the moonlight was enough. Just. A hundred yards. He used the second flare. Then he set off down the length of the two-mile stretch. No fun at all. The windshield glass was gone and the wind was biting. And the car was slow. And getting slower. It felt close to stalling out. It smelled of burning oil. The engine was knocking and vibrating. The temperature gauge in the dash was climbing steadily towards the red.
Not good.
Nine minutes and change.
Two miles should have taken two minutes, but the wounded car took more than four. Reacher used the third flare in the southwestern corner. The bottom left, from the pilot's point of view. He got back in the car. Backed up, turned the wheel, headed out. The car started juddering uncontrollably. It started losing all its power. The temperature needle jammed hard against its end stop. Steam and black smoke started coming out from under the hood. Thick clouds of it.