72 Hours (A Thriller) (23 page)

“I’m tired, Soji.
 
Tired of dealing with you.
 
I’m in the habit of eliminating problems, and I see you as a big problem.
 
So why don’t you tell me the truth and save me a bullet.”

“Dude, I’m telling you!”

“The coyotes and buzzards and ants will have your body picked clean by sunup.
 
Is that what you want?”

Soji closed his eyes, feeling the hundred grand slipping from his grasp.
 
Even that kind of dough wasn’t worth taking a bullet for.

“It’s Smackdown, man,” he sighed.
 
“The dude on the radio.
 
I don’t know what he’s up to, but he’s cut some sort of deal.
 
He’s paying me to track you, to sit here and make sure Lindsay Hammond doesn’t slip away.”

Archer reached up and raked the laptop off the roof of the car.
 
It fell to the ground and hit hard.
 
The screen shattered on impact.
 
He sighted down the Beretta and put three bullets through the plastic assembly.

“Whoa!”
 
Soji jumped back.

Then Archer pivoted and shot out both tires on the driver side of the car.
 
The tires quickly deflated, the aluminum rims coming to rest on the ground.
   

Soji stared in disbelief.

Archer ducked back inside the car and pulled the keys from the ignition and grabbed Soji’s cell phone.

“You won’t be needing these anymore,” he said.
 
Then he turned and chucked them both as hard as he could out across the dark desert scrub.
 
They fell away out of sight in the darkness.

Archer spotted the white earbud cords from the iPod, snatched them off the seat,
 
and turned them over in his hands.

“Turn around,” he said.

Soji reluctantly pivoted on the sandy ground where he stood.

Archer used the thin white cord to tightly bind his wrists.

“Start walking back the way you came.
 
Sooner or later you’ll find the highway.”

Soji gawked at him with his mouth wide open.

“Dude, you’ve got to be yanking my chain.
 
No way I can walk out of here!”

“Better hurry while it’s still cool.”

“You’re insane, man!”

“You look like you could use the exercise.”

“Dude, please!”

“Walk.”

“Dude, I’m begging you.”

“Go.”

Soji pivoted and began to slowly move away.
 
He followed the narrow track and was soon a vague bump on the horizon.
 

Archer left the yellow Toyota Prius abandoned at the gate.
 
He found the Polaris where he’d ditched it a few hundred yards away on the other side of the fence.
 
He had a long ride back to the compound.
 
He turned the knobby tires in the desert dirt and goosed the throttle.
 
Then he saw something in the sky that made his stomach drop.

 
It was the blinking light of an airplane, cruising west to east in the night sky high above the desert landscape.
 
As it passed over the mountains in the distance, directly above the approximate location of the underground compound miles away, it appeared to Archer’s eyes that something dropped from the airplane.
 
Small dark objects falling toward the earth.
 

CHAPTER 68

The prop-driven Twin Otter rumbled through ribbons of cloud at an altitude nearing twelve thousand feet.
 
The pilot called over his shoulder through the open door of the cockpit.

“Two minutes!” he shouted.

The ten men rose from the jump seats and shuffled single file toward the jump door.
 
As the plane neared the drop zone, the first man in line, Echo, slid the door open on its track and stood in the wind, peering down into the shifting darkness passing beneath them.
 
The remaining nine men queued up behind him: Alpha.
 
Bravo.
 
Foxtrot.
 
India.
 
November.
 
Sierra.
 
Kilo.
 
Tango.
 
Oscar.
   

They jumped in five-second intervals, dropping through the roar of the propellers into the cool night air.
 
When the last man had jumped, the pilot checked his watch and glanced at his gauges.
 
He radioed ahead to Mr. Jupiter to report the successful deployment of troops.

CHAPTER 69

Archer was flying through the dust and darkness, trying to get close enough to get some sense of what it was he had seen drop from the airplane.
 
He was still out of range to reach Raj or Simeon by radio yet.
 

After covering several miles at an insane speed, Archer brought the ATV to a sudden shuddering stop.
 
The Polaris slewed sideways in the ruts.
 
He was enveloped by a rolling cloud of dust.
 
He pushed the goggles up to his forehead and swung the night-vision field glasses up and pressed the lenses to his face and worked them into focus.
 
The dark shapes drifted into the green viewing field.
 
He counted ten of them and they would be on the ground in a matter of minutes.
 
No way he could make it back that fast.
 
He knew it could all be over by the time he got there.

CHAPTER 70

Noella Chu had all the information she’d be able to squeeze out of Special Agent Jason Sperry.
 
It wasn’t much, but there would be no more.

She fired one shot.

The bullet was a .22 caliber hollow point shot from a Walther P22 handgun fitted with a silencer.
 
She had pressed the muzzle of the pistol against the back of the driver’s seat inside the Passat and pulled the trigger.
 

Julie Sperry jerked once against the piano wire pinning her neck to the headrest post.
 
She moaned as she grew still.
 
Then there was silence.

The Passat was parked in the long-term lot at LAX.
 
Noella Chu exited the car and walked casually to the nearest terminal beneath the glare of the light poles.
 
Earlier in the afternoon she had left the motorcycle in short-term parking at the airport and taken a taxi into the city.
 
Now she found the bike and pulled the black helmet over her head.
 
She left rubber on the blacktop as she turned out of the parking lot and sped like a flash toward the nearest freeway.

Noella Chu’s final conversation with Jason Sperry had netted three names and addresses that corresponded with the three phone numbers the cellular service provider had produced for the cell Special Agent Kline had given Archer.
 
The first two numbers had billing addresses in or near Los Angeles attached to them.
 
One was a cell phone number belonging to Lindsay Hammond in Brentwood.
 
The second was a landline registered to someone named William Douglas Reynolds with an address in Simi Valley.
 
And the third number was a landline registered under the name P. Lockwood in Las Vegas, Nevada.

She could automatically cross Lindsay Hammond’s cell number off the list as an avenue of pursuit.
 
She could not think of any angle in which Lindsay’s cell number could be of value at this point.

So she turned her attention to the remaining two.

William Douglas Reynolds and P. Lockwood.
 
Just a couple of names attached to landlines a few hundred miles apart in separate states.
 
She had to connect them.
 
Make them the stepping stones that would lead her to Archer and then to Lindsay Hammond.
 
Lindsay was the first of the three Archer had called.
 
P. Lockwood was the last.
 
She wondered what that might mean, if anything.

The call to William Douglas Reynolds was made in the predawn hours of Friday morning.
 
The call to P. Lockwood had been made a few hours later, shortly after 7 AM.
 
There had to be some significance to the numbers called and to the time of day the calls were made.

Noella Chu was convinced she was getting close to that one important detail that would shrink the entire world down to one tiny spot on the map.
 
The spot that contained Lindsay Hammond.
 

Her first stop would be in Simi Valley, at the address registered to someone named William Douglas Reynolds.
 
The Ninja motorcycle shot through the late night traffic like a bullet from a gun.
 

CHAPTER 71

William Douglas Reynolds no longer existed.
 
Not officially.
 
The name was nothing more than a formality stamped on a birth certificate and a Social Security card.
 
But the name had been dropped when he dropped out of high school and became known only as Zero.

William Douglas Reynolds died from a small caliber bullet through his skull, shot from the same small caliber gun that had killed Julie Sperry earlier that evening.
 
When the petite woman with dark hair entered his shop late that night, he’d thought nothing of it.
 
He’d been working late, grinding a gas tank for a custom chopper.
 
Noella Chu banged on the window.
 
Zero opened the door.
 
He spotted the Ninja outside and invited her in.

Noella Chu pulled the gun and demanded to know where Archer had taken the woman named Lindsay Hammond.
 
Zero told her she could to go hell.
 
A mist of blood and brains sprayed the cinder block wall behind him.
 
Zero staggered back a step.
 
The blast had come suddenly.
 
He buckled to his knees and came to rest against the corner where the walls intersected.
 
He died with his eyes open.

She dialed a number on the telephone in Zero’s dirty little office and Leonard Monroe told her that the five hundred million dollars was still available.
 

Noella Chu walked out of Zero’s office and crossed the narrow strip of pavement to her bike.
 
She had one more address.
 
One more chance.
 
She was going to visit P. Lockwood in Las Vegas.

CHAPTER 72

Noella Chu was not naïve.
 
She existed in a world of villains.
 
Bloodsuckers.
 
Violent, skilled, greedy killers.
 
She was perfectly aware that she was not the only person chasing the money.
 
There wasn’t time to waste.
 
She regretted the few minutes she had invested in Simi Valley on the man formerly known as William Douglas Reynolds.
 
It was best now to focus her energy on P. Lockwood.
 

Noella Chu’s instincts were sharp.
 
She was born to track people and kill them.
 
Something in her gut told her she would not be disappointed by what she found in Las Vegas.
 
The drive would take several hours but she was confident that the trip would be worth her time.
 
She was confident that P. Lockwood was the final stepping stone to Lindsay Hammond and the five hundred million.
 
This was the opportunity of a lifetime.
 
She had a bullet with Lindsay Hammond’s name on it.

CHAPTER 73

Mr. Jupiter’s business associate owned the mansion outside Burbank and the private aircraft hanger at the airport where the Twin Otter had lifted off on its sojourn into the night sky.
 
Unlike Mr. Jupiter, his associate was as American as baseball and apple pie.
 
He ran an empire, owned politicians and heads of state, paid few taxes.
 
He had built his fortune by burying the competition.
 
He was nearly ninety but stayed fit and had more energy than most men half a century younger.
   

His name was known by few.
 
Mr. Jupiter was one of them.

Mr. Jupiter stood beside a fountain in the rear of the estate, cigar in one hand, glass of bourbon in the other.
 
He was alone.
 
His associate had been in bed for hours.
 
Mr. Jupiter had been left in charge of the operation.
 
His forces had been deployed.
 
They would be on the ground at any moment.
 
He had given them orders to spare to no one.
 
Seek and destroy.
 
Kill on sight.
 
Kill without mercy.
 
Get in and get out.

He told them he would accept no excuse for failure.
 
He told them not to return without Lindsay Hammond’s body.