Reacher's 'summary' of what happened at the end of 61 Hours can be found here: Worth Dying For by Lee Child, Chapter 23, near end, (reported to be Pg. 130), audio CD 4, Track 6, 3:01 – 3:39. It's not a complete explanation, but can be put together with all the other information about the underground site to come up with your own understanding.
61 Hours, p.33
Part #14 of Jack Reacher series by Lee ChildHe saw her a hundred yards away in the moonlight. She was a tall woman, dishevelled after hasty dressing, hurrying, slipping and sliding on the ice, gloved hands out like a tightrope walker, wild hair spilling from under a knitted cap. She came right to left along the road, a pale face glancing anxiously at the Peterson house, arms and legs jerky and uncoordinated by treacherous conditions underfoot. Reacher moved away from the door, into the cold, down the path, to the split in the Y, and on towards the street. He met her at the bottom of the driveway. Asked, ‘Don’t you have a car?’
She said, ‘It wouldn’t start.’
He glanced left, towards the road to town.
She glanced ahead, at the house.
She asked, ‘How’s Kim?’
He said, ‘Bad.’
‘What happened?’
‘Andrew was shot and killed. Some guy in a vacant lot.’
‘That’s awful.’
‘You better go in. It’s going to be a long night.’
‘It will be longer than a night.’
‘You OK with that?’
‘I’ll have to be.’
‘Call her dad. She said he sometimes comes to visit.’
‘I will.’
‘Good luck.’
She moved on up the driveway.
He headed left down the street.
I know what to do, Janet Salter had said.
A minute later Reacher was a hundred yards short of the corner that would put him on the main east–west county two-lane. To his right, the centre of town. To his left, the boondocks. He wanted a cop to be living way out there. The maximum ten minutes. Someone he could trust. Not Kapler or Lowell or Montgomery. He wanted one of the majority. He wanted the guy at home, off duty, asleep, then waking up, getting dressed, stumbling out into the cold, firing up his cruiser, heading west.
He wanted to flag the guy down and demand a ride.
He got part of what he wanted.
When he was still seventy yards short of the turn he saw lights in the east. Pulsing red and blue strobes, a mile away, coming on fast. The reflectivity of the snow made it look like there was a whole lit-up acre on the move. Like a UFO gliding in to land. A huge bright dancing circle of horizontal light. He hustled hard to meet it. His feet slipped and skated. His arms thrashed and windmilled. His face was already frozen. It felt like it had been beaten with a bat and then anaesthetized by a dentist. The cop car was doing sixty miles an hour, on chains and winter tyres. He was doing three miles an hour, on legs that were stiff and slow and unresponsive. He was slipping and sliding, like running in place. Like a slapstick movie. The corner was still fifty yards away.
He wasn’t going to make it.
He didn’t need to make it.
The cop saw him.
The car slowed and turned into Peterson’s street and came north towards him. Bright headlights, electric blue flashers, deep red flashers, painful white strobes popping right in his eyes. He came to a stop and planted his feet and stood still and raised his arms and waved. The universal distress semaphore. Big overlapping half circles with each hand.
The cop car slowed.
At the last minute he sidestepped and the car slid to a stop alongside him. The driver’s window came down. A woman at the wheel. Her face was pale and swollen with sleep. Her hair was a mess. Her eyes were red. He didn’t know her.
He said, ‘I have to get to the Salter house.’ His words were unclear. His lips were numb. The upper part of his face was a frozen slab. The lower half was just as bad. The hinge in his jaw was hardly working at all.
The cop said, ‘What?’
‘I need a ride.’
‘Where?’
‘Janet Salter’s house.’
Five miles away the prison siren howled on. There was radio chatter in the car. A dispatcher’s voice, low and fast, trying not to sound urgent. Probably the old guy already back at the police station desk. There was alcohol on the woman’s breath. Maybe bourbon. A nightcap. Maybe two or three of them.
She asked, ‘Who the hell are you?’
Reacher said, ‘I’ve been working with Holland and Peterson.’
‘Peterson’s dead.’
‘I know that.’
‘Are you the MP?’
‘Yes. And I need a ride.’
She said, ‘Can’t do it.’
‘So why did you turn in for me?’
‘I didn’t. I’m heading for my position.’
‘The prison isn’t this way.’
‘We make a perimeter a mile out. I get the northeast corner. This is how I’m supposed to get to it.’
‘What happened?’
‘The biker escaped. His cell is empty.’
‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘What do you mean, no?’
‘Not possible. It’s a fake. It’s a decoy.’
‘He’s either in there or not, pal. And they say not.’
‘He’s hiding out in there. In a broom closet or something. It’s a fake.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘I’ve seen it before. Two problems with escaping. Getting out, and then beating the manhunt. The smart ones hide first. Inside. Until the manhunt dies. Then they go. But this guy isn’t going anywhere. He’s doing the first part only. As a decoy.’
The cop didn’t answer.
‘Think about it,’ Reacher said. ‘Escaping is harder than it looks. I promise you, he’s still in there. Tomorrow he’ll get hungry and come on out from wherever he holed up. Big smile on his face. Because it will be too late by then.’
‘You’re nuts.’
‘He’s still in there. Believe me. Take a chance. Be the one.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘OK, suppose I am. Suppose the guy really is out. He was gone more than five hours ago. You know that. So what the hell is the point of a one-mile perimeter now?’
The cop didn’t answer.
The siren howled on.
‘Five minutes,’ Reacher said. ‘Please. That’s all I need from you.’
The cop didn’t answer. Just hit the button and the gas and her window thumped back up and the car moved off. He leaned towards it and it accelerated and the rear three-quarter panel smacked him in the hip and spun him around and dumped him down hard on his back. He lay breathless in the frozen snow and watched the acre of lights move away into the distance.
I know what to do, Janet Salter had said.
Reacher got up and struggled onward to the corner and the siren died. It cut off mid-wail and tiny brittle echoes of its last howl came back off the ice and then night-time silence swarmed in. Not the dull padded silence of fresh snowfall, but the weird keening, crackling, scouring, rustling hiss of a deep-frozen world. The thump of his footsteps ran ahead of him through veins and sheets of ice. The wind was still out of the west, in his face, hurling tiny frozen needles at him. He looked back. He had made it through a hundred and fifty yards. That was all. He had two miles ahead of him. There was nothing on the road. He was completely alone.
He was very cold.
He half walked, half ran, in the wheel ruts, his heels sliding wildly after every step until they locked into the next broken fissure, where a tyre chain had cracked the surface. He was breathing hard, freezing air burning down his windpipe and searing his lungs. He was coughing and gasping.
Two miles to go. Maybe thirty whole minutes. Too long. He thought, surely one of them had the balls to stay with her. One of the seven. One of the women. Damn the rules. Damn the plan. Peterson was dead. Still warm. Enough justification right there. Surely one of them would gut it out and tell the feds to go to hell. At least one. Maybe more. Maybe two or three.
Maybe all of them.
Or maybe none of them.
I know what to do, Janet Salter had said.
Did she?
Had she done it?
Reacher pounded on. One step, and another, and another. The wind pushed back at him. Ice fragments pattered against his coat. All the feeling had gone out of his feet an
d his hands. The water in his eyes felt like it was freezing solid.
Dead ahead was a bank. It stood alone in a small parking lot. The edge of town. The first building. It had a sign on a tall concrete pillar. Red numbers. Time and temperature. Twenty past one in the morning. Minus thirty degrees.
He struggled on, faster. He felt he was getting somewhere. Left and right there was one building after another. A grocery store, a pharmacy, party favours, DVD rental. Auto parts, UPS, a package store, a dry cleaner. All with parking lots. All spread out. All for customers with cars. He hurried on. He was sweating and shivering, all at the same time. The buildings closed in. They grew second storeys. Downtown. The big four-way was a hundred yards ahead. Right to the prison, left to the highway. He cut the corner on a cross street. Turned south at the police station. The wind was howling through the forest of antennas on its roof.
A mile to go.
He ran alone down the centre of the main drag. A solitary figure. Ungainly. Short, choppy steps. He was bringing his feet up and dropping them down more or less vertically. It was the only way to stay upright. No fluid, loping stride. The ice didn’t allow it. His vision was blurring. His throat burned. All around him every window was dark and blank. He was the only thing moving, in a white empty world.
Reacher passed the family restaurant. It was closed up and quiet. Dark inside. Ghostly inverted chairs were stacked on tables like a silent anxious crowd all with upraised arms. Four hundred yards to Janet Salter’s street. Forty seconds, for a decent athlete. Reacher took two minutes. The roadblock car was long gone. Just its ruts remained. Empty, like a railroad switch. Reacher picked his way over them. Headed on down the street. Past one house, past the next. The wind hissed through evergreens. The earth creaked and groaned under his feet.
Janet Salter’s driveway.
Lights in the house.
No movement.
No sound.
Nothing out of place.
All quiet.
He rested for a second, his hands on his knees, his chest heaving.
Then he hurried up towards the house.
THIRTY-NINE
REACHER STEPPED UP ON JANET SALTER’S PORCH. HER DOOR WAS locked. He pulled the handle for the bell. The wire spooled out of the little bronze eye. It spooled back in. The bell bonged, a second later, quiet and polite and discreet, deep inside the silent house.
No response.
Which was good. She wouldn’t hear it in the basement. And even if she did, she wouldn’t come out to answer it.
He hoped.
I know what to do, she had said. The basement, the gun, the password.
He peered in through a stained glass panel. The hallway lights were still on. He got a blue distorted view of the room. The chair. The telephone table. The stairs, the rug, the paintings. The empty hat stand.
No movement. No one there. No sign of disturbance.
All quiet.
Forty-three possible ways in, according to his earlier calculation, fifteen of them practical, eight of them easy. He backed away from the door and recrossed the porch. Stepped down and floundered through deep crusty snow alongside foundation plantings, around the side of the house, to the rear. He knew from his earlier inspection that the lock on the kitchen door was a sturdy brass item with a tongue neatly fitted into a heavy escutcheon plate. The plate was set into the jamb, which was a strip of century-old softwood. It was painted, whereas the front door’s jamb was a piece of lacquered chestnut, fine-grained and milled and exquisite. Harder to replace. All things considered, breaking in at the rear would be the considerate thing to do.
He stepped back and took a breath and raised his boot and smashed his heel into the wood directly under the lock. No second attempt necessary. He was a big man, and he was anxious, and he was too cold for patience. The door stayed whole, but the escutcheon plate tore out of the jamb and clattered to the floor and the door swung open.
‘It’s me,’ he called. ‘Reacher.’ She might not have heard the bell, but she might have heard the splintering wood. He didn’t want her to have a heart attack.
‘It’s me,’ he called again.
He stepped into the kitchen. Pushed the door shut behind him. It hung within an inch of fully closed. All the familiar sounds and smells came back to him. The hissing of the pipes. The percolator, now cold. He stepped into the small back hallway. He clicked on the light. The door at the bottom of the stairs was closed.
‘Janet?’ he called. ‘It’s me, Reacher.’
No response.
He tried again, louder. ‘Janet?’
No response.
He went down the back stairs. Knocked hard on the basement door.
He called, ‘Janet?’
No response.
He tried the handle.
The door opened.
He took off his glove and got his gun out of his pocket. He stepped into the basement. It was dark. He listened. No sound, except the roar of the furnace and the squeal of the pump. He fumbled his left hand across the wall and found the switch and clicked on the light.
The basement was empty. Nothing but sudden shadows from the vertical baulks of timber jumping across a bare expanse of floor. He walked through to the furnace room. Empty. Nothing there, except the old green appliance loudly burning oil.
He walked back to the door. Stared back up the stairs over the front sight of his gun. No one there. No movement, no sound.
He called, ‘Janet?’
No response.
Not good.
He climbed back up to the kitchen. Walked through it to the hallway. It was the same as he had seen it through the stained glass panel from the front. All quiet. The chair, the table, the rug, the paintings, the hat stand. No movement. No disturbance.
He found her in the library. She was in her favourite chair. She had a book in her lap. Her eyes were open. There was a bullet hole in the centre of her forehead.
Like a third eye.
Nine millimetre, almost certainly.
Reacher’s mind stayed blank for a long, long time. It was his body that hurt. From thawing. His ears burned like someone was holding a blowlamp on them. Then his nose, then his cheeks, then his lips, then his chin, then his hands. He sat in the chair in the hallway and rocked back and forth and hugged himself in agony. His feet started hurting, then his ribs, then the long bones in his arms and his legs. It felt like they were all broken and crushed.
Janet Salter had not had a thick skull. The back of it was blown all over her favourite chair, driven deep into the split the exiting bullet had made in the stuffing.
I’ll have plenty of time to read, she had said, after all this fuss is over.
Reacher cradled his head in his hands. Put his elbows on his knees and stared down at the floor.
I am privileged, she had said. Not everyone gets the opportunity to walk the walk.
Reacher rubbed his eyes. His hands came away bloody. The ice spicules driven on the wind had peppered his face with a thousand tiny pinpricks. Unnoticeable, when his flesh had been frozen. Now they were raising a thousand tiny beads of blood. He rubbed both palms over every inch of his
61 Hours by Lee Child / Mystery & Detective / Thrillers & Crime have rating
Publication Order of Jack Reacher Books
Killing Floor | (1997) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Die Trying | (1998) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Tripwire | (1999) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Running Blind / The Visitor | (2000) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Echo Burning | (2001) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Without Fail | (2002) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Persuader | (2003) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
The Enemy | (2004) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
One Shot | (2005) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
The Hard Way | (2006) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Bad Luck And Trouble | (2007) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Nothing To Lose | (2008) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Gone Tomorrow | (2009) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
61 Hours | (2010) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Worth Dying For | (2010) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
The Affair | (2011) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
A Wanted Man | (2012) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Never Go Back | (2013) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Personal | (2014) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Make Me | (2015) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Night School | (2016) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
The Midnight Line | (2017) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Past Tense | (2018) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Blue Moon | (2019) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Publication Order of Jack Reacher Short Stories
Second Son | (2011) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Deep Down | (2012) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
High Heat | (2013) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Not a Drill | (2014) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Small Wars | (2015) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
The Christmas Scorpion | (2018) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Publication Order of Jack Reacher Collections
![Reacher Reacher](/uploads/1/2/5/1/125197277/949571760.jpg)
No Middle Name | (2017) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Publication Order of Harold Middleton Books
The Chopin Manuscript | (2007) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
The Copper Bracelet | (2010) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
Inherit the Dead | (2013) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
Like A Charm | (2005) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Greatest Hits: Hitmen, Hired Guns and Private Eyes | (2006) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Thriller Stories To Keep You Up All Night | (2007) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
The Best British Mysteries IV | (2007) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
The Dark End of the Street | (2010) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
The Cocaine Chronicles | (2011) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Publication Order of Anthologies
Killer Year: A Criminal Anthology | (2008) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
The Best American Mystery Stories 2010 | (2010) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
First Thrills | (2011) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Vengeance | (2012) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
MatchUp | (2017) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
Jack Reacher's Rules | (2012) | Beschreibung bei Amazon |
Chronological Order of Lee Child Books:
1: Second Son (Short Story)
2: High Heat (Short Story)
3: The Enemy
4: Night School
5: The Affair
2: High Heat (Short Story)
3: The Enemy
4: Night School
5: The Affair
Then read it in publication order.
Lee Child Biography:
#1 New York Times Bestselling Author, Lee Child is best known for his main character, Jack Reacher. In fact, Lee Child has written 17 “Jack Reacher” books. These are best described as thrillers and in 2012, Tom Cruise starred as the main character in a movie titled, simply, “Reacher.” Lee Child has also been the recipient of several awards including the Anthony and the Barry awards for Best First Mystery for his first Jack Reacher novel, “Killing Floor.” Another Reacher novel, “The Enemy”, won the Barry and the Nero awards for Best Novel. With all of these accolades one would think Lee Child was born to be an author. But as usually is the case, his success story has many twists and turns that lead him on the path to writing his best selling novels and to ultimately create this alluring character.
Born Jim Grant on October 29, 1954 in Coventry England, Child and his family moved to Birmingham when he was four years old. At the age of 20, in 1974, Child entered Law School in Sheffield, England. It is said that he never intended to actually practice law. Upon graduation, he decided instead to get a job in commercial television and joined Granada TV in Manchester. Child would end up working there for 18 years before being fired as a result of “corporate restructuring.” During that time he wrote countless commercials, news stories and trailers. It was 1995 and Child was 40 years old. After purchasing six dollars worth of paper and pencils, he decided to try his hand at writing. Lee Child then wrote his first Reacher novel, “Killing Floor.” Reacher novels are not the only works that Lee Child has published. He has also written the short stories, “Second Son” and “Deep Down.” These are now available as eBooks.
Child moved to New York in the summer of 1998. This is where he met his wife, Jane. It is to her that his 2012 book, “A Wanted Man” is dedicated. Together they have a grown daughter, an apartment in Manhattan and a home in the south of France. Child also counts his numerous plane rides between his two domiciles as his “third home.” His brother, Andrew Grant is also a thriller novelist.
In his spare time, Child likes to read, listen to music and watch the New York Yankees. He was elected President of the Mystery Writers of America in 2009. He is also available for speaking engagements and has his own website, www.leechild.com.
Never before has one character – especially from a book – become such an enigma. As one reads these novels, an immediate image of who Jack Reacher is and what he looks like can be visualized. Jack Reacher has his own biography and statistics. He was born on October 29th with no middle name. This is referenced a few times throughout the books. Reacher frequently tells people his name on his birth certificate is “Jack None Reacher.” He is a large man – extremely large and ominous – weighing between 220 and 250 pounds and standing 6 and a half feet tall. His chest is 50 inches across and he wears a size 3XL coat and the inseam on his pants measures 95 centimeters. Born on an Army base in Berlin, Jack Reacher and his brother Joe moved around a lot as kids. Now both his mother and his father and his brother are all deceased. Reacher left home at the age of eighteen and then graduated from West Point. He served 13 years in the Army bouncing from Major down to Captain and finally back up to Major before leaving the service in 1997. Reacher has no drivers license, receives no Federal Benefits and will not file taxes. It is often wondered what he does for money. He is a decorated military serviceman. Reacher buried his Silver Star with his Mother and has also received the Defense Superior Service Medal, Bronze Star and Purple Heart, to name a few. To say he has special “skills” is probably an understatement.
In many of the novels, Reacher is in the wrong place at the wrong time but ends up using his skills to solve even the most perilous situations. In “Killing Floor”, for example, the first of the Reacher novels, Reacher is arrested for murder shortly after arriving in Margrave, Georgia. The victim happens to be his own brother who he has not seen in seven years. It does not help that the main eyewitness happens to be the police chief who claims to have seen Reacher at the scene. Reacher knows he was boarding a bus in Tampa at the time. With the help of a Harvard-graduate chief detective and a female officer, Reacher traces his brother’s steps to solve the mystery. Of course this all happens in a span of only three days. This superb adventure easily captivates the reader and creates a relationship with Reacher that is hard to forget.
In the second Reacher novel, “Die Trying,” a Chicago dentist is attacked and thrown into the trunk of his own car. Coincidentally, Reacher and a woman he does not even know are taken hostage in the light of day. Ever the gentleman, Reacher was only “with” this woman because she was limping and struggling on her crutches and of course he stopped to help her. Turns out she is an FBI agent. They are taken hostage for ransom. Together, Reacher and this woman must work together and act as a team to get out of their predicament. As only Reacher can do, he relates to this woman and uses his charm and wit, not to mention his incredible intelligence and skills, to not only get them out safely, but also take down the criminals.
The good thing about Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels is that they can be read in any order. Lee Child provides enough background in each book to bring the reader current without sounding repetitive and redundant.
With all of these thrilling, often crazy and sometimes unimaginable situations that Jack Reacher finds himself in just during the course of his every day life, it is easy to see how a reader can get sucked in, and really not mind. It is what makes each and every novel special. It is what makes Lee Child a truly gifted master at story-telling.
Book Series In Order » Authors »