Once more, I feel compelled to criticise an author who's actually one of my favourite.

On page 351 of my UK edition (ISBN 978-0-553-82556-5), Lee Child tells us of a fuel tank at a bottom of a 200 feet deep well (more than 60m).

Then, at the end of the story, he describes an operation in which the fuel is pumped up to the surface and then back into the well. The action is an integral part of the story, but it is physically impossible.

The problem is that to suck up a liquid from a tank, a pump dips a pipe into the tank and removes air from it, so that the atmospheric pressure on the rest of the liquid pushes it up into the pipe. That is, the liquid moves upward because of the pressure differential between the inside and the outside of the pipe. But the air pressure at sea level is equivalent to the pressure exercised by 10m of water. As a result, even if you were to remove all the air from the top of a pipe, you wouldn't succeed in pulling up water by more than about 10m

And yet, Lee claims that the pump drains a tank 60m below the surface...

The density of jet fuel is about 80% of that of water, but that only means that you can pump it up by about 13m, not 60m.

Now, how far up you can push a liquid only depends on the power of your pump and on the materials involved, but then, the pump must be at the bottom and pushing, not at the top and pulling.

You could also create pools every 10m of height, but that would require at least a handful of pumps to lift fuel by 60m.

However you turn it, Lee screwed up. How disappointing!

For your reference, here are the links to all past “Authors’ Mistakes” articles:

Lee Child: Never Go Back
Lee Child: Personal
Lee Child: Die Trying
Colin Forbes: Double Jeopardy
Akiva Goldsman: Lost in Space
Vince Flynn: Extreme Measures
Máire Messenger Davies & Nick Mosdell: Practical Research Methods for Media and Cultural Studies
Michael Crichton & Richard Preston: Micro
Lee Child: The Visitor
Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak
Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak (addendum)
Donna Leon: A Noble Radiance
007 Tomorrow Never Dies
Vince Flynn: American Assassin
Brian Green: The Fabric of the Cosmos
John Stack: Master of Rome
Dean Crawford: pocalypse
Daniel Silva: The Fallen Angel
Tom Clancy: Locked On
Peter David: After Earth
Douglas Preston: Impact
Brian Christian: The Most Human Human
Donna Leon: Fatal Remedies
Sidney Sheldon: Tell Me Your Dreams
David Baldacci: Zero Day
Sidney Sheldon: The Doomsday Conspiracy
CSI iami
Christopher L. Bennett: Make Hub, Not War
CSI Miami #2 (Robert Hornak)
Jack Greene & Alessandro Massignani
Peter James
P.Warren & M.Streeter
Nigel Cawthorne