72 Hours (A Thriller)

by Moreton, William Casey

  Wife-beater came out of the house and ran toward the SUV like a mad man. He leveled the shotgun at them and a flash of fire bloomed from the end of the barrel.

  Spray from the blast pebbled the windshield and pocked the hood.

  Lindsay kept the pedal to the floor. She glanced briefly over her shoulder, saw the van and the police cruiser. There was no avoiding them. She chose the angle of least resistance and braced for impact.

  “HOLD ON!”

  They clipped the front end of the van, the Escalade spinning, broadsiding the black and white, the front passenger side door of the SUV sheered from its hinges by the force of the collision. She shifted the transmission into drive and plowed forward, tires squealing on the gritty asphalt.

  The Escalade traded paint with the police cruiser all the way down one side. Wife-beater was sprinting, closing the distance to the top of the driveway. He discarded the shotgun and lunged at the moving vehicle, hanging from the open driver side door, his legs dragging the ground. The big V8 roared as the SUV surged forward. Lindsay veered into the iron fence, crushing wife-beater. He relinquished his grip, falling aside and out of sight. The Escalade drove for a hundred feet with two wheels up on the sidewalk. Ten seconds later, they passed two incoming black and whites, lights blazing, sirens wailing.

  Lindsay did not glance back.

  CHAPTER 16

  Phone lines had been strung into a room allocated by the prison administrators for use by the FBI as a temporary base of operations. They were two hours into the fiasco, and already Lindsay Hammond and her children had gone missing. The FBI was screaming at the LAPD, and the governor’s office was screaming at everyone. Things were happening quickly.

  Between conference calls, Kline bummed a cigarette off Sperry and smoked it outside the front doors, staring past the protestors and razor wire to the dark water of the bay, where gulls circled and swooped in pursuit of dinner.

  He squashed out the cigarette under the sole of his shoe and went back inside.

  Kline had tracked down Lindsay’s ex-husband. James Hammond was a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. Kline caught him at home. Hammond told him that Lindsay wasn’t answering her cell. Neither was Ramey. Last time he’d spoken to his ex-wife she was heading to find the kids.

  The shootout at her home had produced three bodies, those of one intruder and two LAPD officers. The dead intruder found inside the house was named Poncho Turo, a smalltime thug with a short but violent list of priors. A second thug, Rico Merez, was hooked to life-support and wasn’t expected to make it through the night. The third known assailant, Hector Suarez, was in custody. He’d already done a stint for armed robbery and another for possession with intent to sell. The LAPD had him in a cell downtown. He knew he was going away for a long time and was thus more than willing to talk. He told them that him and Merez and Turo had spent the afternoon hanging out at the LA River, drinking cheap whiskey, sitting in the shade of the van. They were bored and itching for a little action. They were listening to Johnny Smackdown and got all charged up when he started talking about Dunbar’s money. They lost interest in the whiskey and drove the van to Brentwood. There was not an ounce of impulse control between them. Now, Turo was dead, Merez well on his way, and Suarez looked to pay a heavy price for the murders of two of LA’s finest.

  Thanks to the media attention and the attack on the Hammond home, the situation was gaining momentum. Word was starting to spread like wildfire. Dunbar’s big offer was slowly working its way from one end of the city to the other. Within hours it had taken on a life of its own. Dunbar had planned it perfectly. Five hundred million dollars was an attention grabber in any language, on any continent. The potential for that kind of money would persuade a lot of borderline personalities to do crazy things. Dunbar had presented the world with a once in a lifetime opportunity.

  Leonard Monroe and his team of legal eagles were in the room with their legal pads and cell phones. Monroe remained cool and reassuring. He swore he’d been totally in the dark about his client’s true intentions and was shocked by his behavior. He assured Special Agent Kline and the rest of the law enforcement community and governing bodies involved in the case that he would work tirelessly to persuade his client to hold true to his word and reveal the locations of the missing bodies of his wife and daughter.

  Kline glanced at his watch for the hundredth time in an hour. The clock was ticking. Dunbar had successfully created chaos while locked away deep inside San Quentin. Simply amazing. He knew they had to find Lindsay Hammond before the rest of the world did.

  CHAPTER 17

  The only sound in the garage was the ticking of the engine. The Escalade had pulled straight in. They stared out through the windshield at the silhouette of a workbench with tools hanging from pegboard.

  They had sat totally without movement for an entire hour. They had escaped the horror of intruders inside their home and wanted now to only take solace in the fact that they had survived, unscathed, and were still together as a family.

  When at last it felt safe to even breathe, Lindsay put her face in her hands and trembled. Ramey and Wyatt hugged their arms around her.

  “Can I get out?” Wyatt asked.

  Lindsay was silent a moment. “Stay in the garage. And be quiet.”

  The SUV’s interior light winked on as he opened the back door. The other rear door had been crushed shut in the collision with the police cruiser. He gingerly lowered his feet to the concrete floor and eased away from the Escalade.

  “Dad again,” Ramey said, gesturing with her cell.

  Lindsay sighed, shook her head. “Don’t answer.”

  “Why? Maybe he can help.”

  “I need time to think.”

  The garage was attached to a house in Malibu owned by close family friends currently vacationing in Austria. Lindsay knew the security code and the house had everything they’d need to survive for a few days if necessary. They could hide out, take their time, get some sleep. She planned to simply stay put until Dunbar was executed, and then all the craziness would be over. She was just thankful that no one on the planet knew where to find them.

  * * *

  Soji had followed at a distance. They’d seen his yellow car, so he’d been forced to hang back and struggle to keep them in view. He’d trailed them to Malibu. He saw the street they’d turned down but lost sight of them after that. Thankfully the street ended at a cul-de-sac. So he knew they were nearby. All he had to do was be patient.

  CHAPTER 18

  Santa Cruz, California

  The Land Cruiser was an old model manufactured in the 1970s and looked like a Jeep. The top was had disappeared years before Ryan Archer bought it from one of the old hippies who liked to hang out and trade folklore at the surf shop where Archer worked part-time.

  The sun was red and low on the horizon. The Pacific looked like an oil painting come to life. The muscles of his upper body rippled beneath his bronze skin as he lifted his surf board out of the Land Cruiser. He tucked the fiberglass board under his arm and headed down the beach.

  He paddled out, gliding effortlessly away from shore on a rippled surface that passed beneath him like layers of silk. He stroked the water with both arms, his ropey biceps shimmering. Mild swells gently lifted him. The beach and the bluffs receded in the distance as he pressed further out into open water.

  There was not another surfer in sight. The horizon was a banner of blazing colors. He stared out to sea. He was content. Time spent on the long board was time when the weight of the world simply fell away. For a moment he envisioned unseen predators in the cool blackness of the deep. They were down there. Razor-like teeth capable of pulling a man apart. Archer was not concerned. Predators were everywhere at all times. The trick was being aware. Maintaining full awareness of his environment was his religion. Awareness equaled survival.

  The sea began to roll. The waves were coming. Archer was ready. When the swells began to grow, and he saw his wave, he angled his board toward the sh
ore and paddled hard. The wave lifted him. He could feel its weight and mass and density rising. Archer rose to his knees, and in a second fluid motion had his feet beneath him on the glossy fiberglass plank.

  Suddenly he was standing. The wind in his face, he steered the board across the shoulder to the inside of the pipeline. The wave swept him forward, carrying him back near the shallows, where it finally collapsed, breaking over upon itself, consuming Archer in the soup with a single lush swallow. For a long moment his world became silent and dark. Then his board popped to the surface and he followed it to daylight. He sucked air, muscles burning. He clung to the board and caught his breath.

  The sea was losing color and clarity, altered by the shifting textures of the sky that signaled the arrival of dusk. He felt like a warrior. That was a title he had earned in more than one way, on more battlefields than he cared to remember. He loved the sea because of its grandeur and savage beauty, and perhaps most of all for its truth. He respected it because it would never betray him. It might kill him, but it would never betray him.

  CHAPTER 19

  Johnny Smackdown lit a cigarette and glanced up at the clock on the wall. His show was over but he refused to give up the microphone. He planned to sleep at the studio if necessary. The airwaves of 99.1 FM were his until further notice.

  It would be dark soon. Lindsay Hammond had momentarily fallen off the grid, but the heat was still on. Sooner or later she would turn up. He intended to blow the doors off this thing. It had the potential of turning into a ratings bonanza. He was jazzed at the notion of turning the city into a mad house. The shootout with the three hombres was great stuff, but he wanted more. He wanted a shootout on every street corner. He wanted total chaos.

  Don’t Fear the Reaper was playing when the phone rang in the studio. The call was coming from an outside line. Probably a crazed fan, or a teenage girl requesting some putrid love song.

  “This is Smackdown,” he answered.

  “Yo, Smackdown,” a male voice said.

  “What can I do for you, my man?”

  “I’m calling from Malibu.”

  “Good for you. What’s on your mind?”

  “I’ve got Lindsay Hammond cornered.”

  Johnny Smackdown sat bolt upright and grabbed his smoldering Marlboro from the ashtray. He took a quick hit, then started jotting notes on a scrap of paper on the table – HAMMOND/MALIBU.

  “Well,” he said, “you’ve got my attention, bro. What’s the scoop?”

  “I was at her house in Brentwood when the fireworks went down with the LAPD. Saw everything. Had a front row seat. When she bailed with her brats, I stuck on her tail, man. Followed her. Now I’ve got them pinned down in the hills above Malibu.”

  Smackdown was skeptical. “Quite a story there, man. Maybe I believe you and maybe I don’t. You were there, huh? You with the hombres?”

  “Dude, no way. My weapon is my camera. I’m in the biz. You follow?”

  “Yeah, bro, I follow.”

  “Got them cornered down a dead-end street, but they’ve gone under a rock. So I called you. Thought maybe together we can smoke them out, get them on the move again. That way you get ears and I get pics. What do you say?”

  Smackdown sucked the Marlboro down to the filter. He was ready to get the rabbit on the run again.

  “OK, I’m with you, bro. Get your camera ready. Give me the street name, and I’ll light a fire under her.”

  “Awesome.”

  “What’s your name, bro?”

  “I’m Soji.”

  Smackdown was in no hurry. He intended to savor every second. His boy Soji had hit him with the golden ticket. Not an exact address, but at least a street. Soji was sitting at the top of a residential development somewhere above Malibu, watching and waiting. He had assured Smackdown that it would be impossible for Lindsay Hammond to make a getaway without him noticing. He promised to keep Smackdown updated.

  So Smackdown had the info the world wanted. Hammond had momentarily slipped through the cracks and hidden under a rock. But he now had his foot on that rock. He intended to stretch this out. Build suspense. Fuel anticipation. Create demand. He wanted every ear on the planet tuned to his show, listening to the sound of his voice.

  CHAPTER 20

  A call had come from the LA field office stating that Smackdown claimed to know the current whereabouts of Lindsay and the kids. Said he had a source at the scene, but was keeping the details under lock and key until he was good and ready. Said he might auction her off to the highest bidder.

  Kline sighed. There was a tightness in his chest. He craved a cigarette. If Smackdown’s source really existed, and the insider info was accurate, it could mean serious trouble. Kline was going to have to get Smackdown on the phone and threaten him with big fat legal jargon like obstruction of justice, and aiding and abetting. But Smackdown would treat him like a toy. Turn Kline into a sideshow freak, just another part of his comic routine. But Smackdown would simply scream freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and rant and rave about the First Amendment. The usual dog and pony show.

  Kline decided to focus on Plan B. If the walls closed in and the sky crashed down and Lindsay’s cover was blown, how could he protect her for the next seventy-two hours? If Dunbar was successful in luring out the entire criminal world Kline didn’t have the manpower to hold back the ocean. And he couldn’t afford to patiently sit back and wait to discover whether or not Smackdown was bluffing. He needed to put a plan in motion within the hour. Lindsay and the kids would have to go underground and disappear for three days. He needed someone who could make them invisible. Someone with skills. A master of guerrilla warfare.

  The first name that came to mind was really the only name on the list. The one person guaranteed to keep Lindsay alive. Ryan Archer. But there was bad blood between Kline and Archer, and that might be a problem. Kline had to take the chance and bring back his old friend. If he could find him. The latest rumor had him living in a tiny apartment above a surf shop in Santa Cruz. If he could track down Archer in the next sixty minutes, Plan B might just work. Plan C was simply not an option. It was Archer or nothing.

  CHAPTER 21

  Archer had built a fire using driftwood from the beach. He had gathered the wood into a pile, arranging it in a shallow pit he’d dug in the sand. He lay on his sleeping bag with one knee up and his upper body propped on an elbow. The wood was dry and burned hot. His gray safari shirt was open, ruffled by a breeze off the water, orange light from the dancing flames swirling across the sharp angles of his face. His Beretta 9mm was tucked inside the fold of his sleeping bag. The gun had shed blood and taken lives on multiple continents for multiple reasons.

  The breeze shifted direction and Archer squinted against the smoke. The tide licked at the beach, then receded, leaving a dark stripe on the sand. His eyes scoped his surroundings, monitoring the perimeter. Old, ingrained instincts. He was alone.

  Archer heard the helicopter long before he saw it. Heard the rotors beating the warm evening air. Judged that it was sliding up the coastline in his general direction. His hand glided beneath the fold of the sleeping bag and grabbed the Beretta.

  Then he saw the lights, the chopper sweeping in low, looking for something or someone.

  Archer took up position against a boulder protruding from the sand. The chopper was on a direct path to his campsite, the rotor a gray blur against the night sky. The searchlight drifted upon his campfire and froze.

  The bird was a McDonnell Douglas, hovering at an altitude of about thirty feet, and was close enough for Archer to see the FBI markings painted on the side. He held the Beretta against his lower back.

  The chopper settled onto the beach, rotor wash fanning the flames wildly. Archer shielded his eyes with a raised hand. He fleetingly reflected on the peace and beauty of an evening now shattered. He watched a door open opposite the pilot and Archer immediately recognized Special Agent Kline and turned away. He reengaged the safety on the Beretta and headed up the b
each toward the Land Cruiser. He was securing the surfboard when Kline came up alongside him.

  The rotors of the chopper were slowly whining to a stop.

  “You’re not an easy man to find on short notice,” Kline said.

  “Looks like you managed well enough,” Archer said without turning to face him.

  “We’ve got a big problem, Ryan.”

  “Hmm. I haven’t had a problem in almost exactly five years.” Archer found his towel and began dusting sand off his legs.

  Kline’s tie hung askew down the front of his shirt. He shrugged and nodded. “I’ll clarify. I have a problem. The FBI has a problem.”

  “Then let the FBI deal with its problem and get off my beach.”

  Kline glanced back toward the chopper. “This is public land, Archer. I have every right to stand right here and say anything I damn well please.”

  Archer zipped his duffel bag and pitched it onto the passenger seat of the Land Cruiser. He turned, and for the first time acknowledged the presence of the FBI agent.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “Stand right there and say whatever you like. I’m leaving.” Archer climbed in behind the wheel and turned his key in the ignition.

  Kline shook his head.

  “All I’m asking for is sixty seconds. I need your help. I want to hire you.”

  Archer shut the engine. Offered him a cold stare.

  “That’s ironic coming from the man who fired me.”

  Kline stared down at his own shoes. His short hair was barely disturbed by the fading wash from the rotors. Dealing with Archer had never been a walk in the park. Kline pursed his lips, glanced away. He faced briefly up past the beach toward the highway beyond the tall weeds and the bluff, then his eyes flicked back to Archer.