72 Hours (A Thriller) (29 page)

“But Mom, I hear something.
 
Some kind of beeping or ringing noise.”

“I don’t care, Wyatt.”

“You’d hear it too if you just came out here where I’m standing.
 
Please, just for a second.”

“Archer told us to stay in here, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Wyatt extended up on tiptoes, most of his weight shifting to the handrail, straining to peek around the corner of the wall toward whatever was making the curious sound.

“Wyatt, I said now!”

“Huh…”
 
He ignored her.

“Wyatt, I’m not going to tell you again.”

“I think it’s a telephone.”

She sighed, not really listening to him.
 

“What?
 
You think what is what?”

“That beeping.
 
It’s like a phone, like a ringing phone.
 
They have phones down here, you think?

“I don’t know, but you need to get back in here with us where it’s –
 
” but she bit off her thought.
 
Wyatt had disappeared.
 
Lindsay took four long strides into the open doorway, staring up the stairs into the upper lever of the bunker.

“Wyatt!”

Ramey sighed.

“Just let him go, Mom.”

But Lindsay clamored quickly up the steps, the metal clanking underfoot.
 
She reached the landing and craned her neck around.
 
She didn’t see him but she heard the beeping sound for the first time.
 
It was a sequence of digital chirps like a cell phone ringing.
 
She frowned.

“Wyatt?”

The sound was coming from down the corridor, past the kitchen and beyond the library.
 
Lindsay’s impatience was ratcheting up.

“Wyatt?” she said again.

“In here.”

She found him in the camera monitoring room.
 
Wyatt was standing at the long table holding a black cordless telephone in his hands.
 
He was staring at it, inspecting it.

“What is that?”

He glanced up at her.

“It’s like…I don’t know, some kind of funky telephone,” he said.

The ringing had suddenly stopped.

“Give it to me,” she said.

He handed it to his mother.

She’d never seen anything quite like it.
 
Kind of bulky, like a primitive mobile phone circa the 1980s.
 
It was clunky and ugly, with a thick six-inch antennae extending out the top.

“I think it’s a satellite phone,” Wyatt said.
 

Lindsay pursed her lips and gave a small shrug.
 
She set the satellite phone down on the table.

“Is this where you found it?”

Wyatt nodded.

“Yup.”

“OK, then.
 
Leave it alone and let’s get back downstairs.”

“Oh, whatever,” Wyatt said.

She motioned him out of the room.

Then it rang again.

Lindsay froze and glanced back down at the table.
 
Wyatt spun around to face her, the rubber soles of his sneakers squeaking on the concrete floor, his facing brightening.

“See, I told you,” he said.
 
“Somebody’s trying to call.”

“I…do…not…care.
 
I said leave it.”
 
She pointed at the door.
 
“Go back downstairs.”

She stood in the doorway and watched him slink back toward the secure room.
 
Then she turned back, standing at the table, staring at the satellite phone as it continued to ring.

Lindsay picked it up.
 
Pressed the TALK button and raised it to her ear.

“Hello?” she said.

“Who is this?” a woman’s voice asked.

Lindsay hesitated to respond.

“Where are they?
 
Where are Raj and Simeon?” the voice asked.

Lindsay pushed a hand through her hair, glanced at the door.

“They aren’t here,” she said.

“Where is Archer?”

Lindsay frowned, stunned to hear Archer’s name mentioned in such peculiar context.

“Who am I speaking to?” she asked.

Then Lindsay heard a rustling sound, like the phone was changing hands.
 
She heard muted voices.

“Hello?” Lindsay said again.

A new voice came on the line, again female.

“Are you Lindsay Hammond?” the voice asked.

Lindsay felt her chest fill with ice.
 
She stopped breathing.
 
She couldn’t bring herself to answer.

“Lindsay?” came the question again.

“But…how could you have…” Lindsay stuttered, her thought trailing away into utter mystification.

“Lindsay, please listen very carefully to me.
 
I need you to give Raj and Simeon a message.
 
Tell them their sister is in great danger.
 
I need to speak to them.
 
They can save her.
 
I need to speak to them or she will die,” Noella Chu said.
 

Lindsay stood frozen, paralyzed by confusion and indecision.

“What is your name?”

“Tell them Penny is trying to reach them.
 
That’s all that matters.
 
I will call back.
 
Tell them to be ready when I do.”
 
The line went dead.

CHAPTER 92

They stood in the glare of bold overhead lights outside a gas station on the outskirts of the Las Vegas city limits.
 
Noella Chu hung up the phone.
 
It was an ancient payphone mounted to the crumbling brick on the exterior of the building.

Penny Lockwood was trembling.
 
She was tired and confused and terrified.
 
She simply couldn’t wrap her brain around what was happening, why this small woman was holding her at gunpoint and what she could possibly want from her brothers.
 
Ryan Archer had contacted her only once.
 
It had to be for a reason, and it had to be serious.
 
Penny couldn’t imagine what sort of circumstance had put their lives on this collision course.

Noella Chu glanced at her Rolex.
 
She stood for a moment, thinking, calculating.
 
Then she glanced over at Penny.

“Get back in the car,” she said.

*
   
*
   
*

Lindsay stared numbly at the satellite phone, held it briefly away from her body as if it might be radioactive.
 
Then she quickly dropped it on the table and she stepped away.

Both Simeon and Raj were outside the bunker.
 
She had to find a way to reach them, to let them know that their sister was in some kind of danger.
 
She remembered the rucksack Simeon had left for them in the secure room.
 
She hurried back through the maze of low-ceilinged corridors and dropped down the metal stairs into the pulsing orange light.
 
She nearly collided head-on with Wyatt who was standing lookout in the doorway.

“What the hell, Mom?” he said.

“Watch your mouth,” she scolded, rushing toward the stacked crates against the wall.
 

“What are you doing?” Ramey asked.
 
She hadn’t moved an inch.

“Just…nevermind.”
 
Lindsay tore back the canvas flap and dumped the contents, letting them spill out onto the wooden lid of the top crate.
 
She grabbed the walkie.
 
Then she grabbed the gun with her other hand and glared at it a short moment.
 
She decided maybe she’d be better off with it than without it.
 
She took a breath, then turned to her children.
 
“I’ll be right back, okay?”

“I’m coming with you,” Wyatt said.
 

“Stay with your sister.
 
I’ll be gone five minutes, tops.
 
Do not set foot outside this door.”

He shrank away, leaned against a wall and stared at the floor.

“OK,” Lindsay said.
 
“Sit tight.”

Wyatt cut his eyes toward his sister.
 
She hadn’t moved.
 
She sat on the floor with her knees pulled up, arms crossed over her chest, the pulse of the orange light radiating over her neck and face.
 
She looked at him, expressionless, met his glare with her own, and shrugged.

*
   
*
   
*

Tango opened his eyes.
 
He tried to estimate how long he’d been out.
 
A few seconds?
 
A minute?
 
Ten minutes?
 
One guess was as good as another.
 
He lifted his arm from the mud at his side.
 
His hand peeled up out of the muck with a wet sucking sound.
 
He could feel the pain drilling through his chest.
 
The pain pulsed.
 
He raised his head off the ground a couple of inches, glanced down at his torso.
 
No blood.
 
The bullet had not penetrated the Kevlar vest.

Tango rose up on his elbows.
 
He groaned as the pain stirred.

He guessed that the blow had knocked him out for about one minute, maybe less, maybe a little more.
 
Hadn’t been long, though.
 
He ignored the pain and focused on clawing his way up out of the mud.
 
He got to his feet, staggering backward a few steps in the slop.
 
Glanced up and remembered the big metal doors.
 
Saw his grenade held fast to the gray seam and remembered his unfinished task.
 
He touched a hand to the noticeable indentation on the Kevlar vest.
 
The silly thing had saved his life.
 
He wiped some mud and grit from his unshaven, grizzled face, and scowled.
 
He was ready to kill somebody.

*
   
*
   
*

Simeon put the crosshairs back on him.
 
He traced the tip of his tongue across his upper lip.
 
The first shot hadn’t finished the job.
 
This one was going through the skull.

Simeon concentrated.
 
His finger rested gently on the trigger.
 
He relaxed and let out a calming, focusing breath.
 
He watched through the lens of the scope as the man staggered toward the entrance of the tunnel.

“Smile for me, sweetheart,” he whispered under his breath, settling the reticle onto the bridge of Tango’s nose.

Simeon had nestled himself in along the crest of the ridge at an overlook that offered a generous view across the open plain.
 
In the three minutes since the first shot, he had advanced to a better vantage point, using a flat, eroded rock the size of a small car tire as a rifle rest.
 
He watched Tango again approach the door.
 
He eased down on the trigger, his touch little more than a loving caress.

“Sayonara,” he breathed, prepared to propel the 55 grain bullet across four hundred yards of desert terrain.
 
He applied pressure to the trigger with the infinite patience of a Buddhist monk.

“Simeon?”
 
The voice crackled through the earpiece of his handheld radio.

The sound of her voice broke Simon’s concentration and he jerked the trigger, pulling the shot wide.

“Bloody hell!”

*
   
*
   
*

The bullet struck the upper right corner of the big panel door, near a hinge, the shot ringing loudly off the metal.
 
The led slug glancing off the metal produced a spark, sheering off a small sample of the desert camo paint.

Tango flinched and fell to his face, pressing his body flat against the mud.
 
His eyes flicked to the gray silhouette of the mountains.
 
He could see nothing.
 
There was still no clear evidence of which direction either shot had come from.

He glanced at the panel doors.
 
He needed to get inside.

He crawled like a crab the fifteen feet to the mound of earth where the door was and took shelter behind it.
 
He sat with his back to the mound and checked his rifle.
 
He broke radio silence to tell his team he was pinned down by enemy fire.

*
   
*
   
*

“Simeon,” she called again.
 
“Can you hear me?”