72 Hours (A Thriller)

by Moreton, William Casey

  Kline nodded. “Do it.”

  The tail of the chopper came around as the nose dipped slightly east. Archer felt his stomach sink as they dropped in altitude.

  Archer’s brain was on autopilot. “Drop me on a roof,” he said.

  The pilot nodded.

  Archer caught a glimpse of a small grouping of dark silhouettes moving quickly between long shadows in the street. His stomach tightened. He touched the pistol grip of the Beretta for reassurance. An instant later he had unfastened his lap harness and came up out of his seat. He pulled the door handle, stepping out the door and down onto the chopper’s landing skid.

  “Just get me as close as you can,” he shouted at the pilot over the roar of the turbine.

  The chopper rocked and teetered momentarily as it hovered over the roof of a hillside home. Archer could tell that the pilot was nervous. They were in hostile surroundings and gunfire could come from any direction at any moment. When the chopper was within about ten feet of the red terra cotta shingles, Archer released his grip and dropped.

  CHAPTER 28

  He hit the roof off-balance, his footing less than stellar, and rolled out of control halfway down the length of the steep pitch. He righted himself and sat up, surveying the swath of lawn beneath the overhang. Then he stood with care and cautiously approached the edge of the roof. Below the overhang was shadow. It was a fifteen-foot drop with nothing down there to buffer his fall.

  Archer glanced up, saw the FBI helicopter rising into the night sky, the surrounding treetops swaying in the wake of the rotor wash. The chopper hovered for a moment at a safe altitude before pivoting north to south and streaking off back toward the coast. The beating of the rotors quickly faded.

  Archer took the Beretta in hand and then jumped from the roof. He took the landing like a paratrooper, letting his knees flex, and rolling to one side. Then he sprang up into a crouch and assessed his surroundings.

  An elderly man holding a small dog in his arms had come out of his house onto the lawn to investigate the ruckus. “Excuse me, fellow, but this is private property. What are you – ”

  Archer gestured with the gun, cutting him off. “Sir, please go back inside your home where it’s safe.”

  Archer ran in a crouch along a hedgerow to the street. He had gotten his bearings while on the roof, calculating distance and direction, gauging the line of travel he’d need to follow to reach the area where Lindsay Hammond and the kids were likely hiding. He found her number listed in the cell phone’s call history and dialed it. The line began ringing in his Bluetooth earpiece.

  It rang without answer until he heard the voicemail prompt.

  Archer remained frozen in a crouch at the edge of the street and immediately redialed. There could have been a dozen different reasons she hadn’t answered. If she had a brain in her head she had the ringer turned off.

  This time he heard the line click. Someone had answered but did not speak.

  “Lindsay, are you there?”

  Still only silence.

  “Lindsay, if you can hear me, just listen for a minute. My name is Archer. Special Agent Kline sent me to help you. I’m on the ground in the hills of Malibu not far from you. I’m going to get you and your children out of here and take you someplace safe. But I can’t do that until I find you. So as soon as you can, I need for you to talk to me, to give me some indication of where you are hiding. If you need to call me back, that’s fine. Just remember I’m here to help.”

  Archer listened to the continuing silence for a full two minutes before finally ending the call. Lindsay had taken the call so she was obviously still alive, but had clearly been in no position to speak. Most likely there were thugs all around her and she was scared out of her mind.

  Archer began threading his way between homes and through wooded vegetation, moving quickly and cautiously in their assumed general direction. It was impossible to follow a straight line up the hill. Too much development. Homes everywhere. Archer chose a star in the night sky to use as a reference point. He crossed a street and dropped down the steep incline of a drainage ditch, hurrying up the other side and into the cover of nearby trees. He peered out from the shadows of a copse of oaks toward a knot of commotion up ahead.

  A Dodge Ram pickup was patrolling a residential street with several armed thugs riding in the payload bed. Archer watched. The truck stopped at the top of the street, the headlights falling across the asphalt to the weeds and undergrowth beyond. There were gunshots further uphill. The thugs in the truck turned to look, and after a moment, the Dodge turned at the intersection and drove toward the sounds of the gunfire.

  Archer could smell the smoke from the neighborhoods burning. He started to move, then froze as headlights approached. A Malibu PD cruiser eased past his position. The officer riding shotgun wore a Kevlar vest and was packing serious firepower. Archer couldn’t envision soft Malibu cops deciding to tangle with the kind of outlaws who had amassed on that mountainside. They were outnumbered and outgunned no matter how you counted.

  Archer watched the red taillights fade. He advanced along the tree line for nearly a hundred yards before again crossing down through the drainage channel and then crossing the street, crouching beside an ivy-covered stone wall at the street corner. He felt the cell phone vibrate and he touched a hand to the Bluetooth earpiece.

  “Can you hear me?” he said, barely above a whisper.

  A brief silence. Then a voice whispered, “Mr. Archer, this is Lindsay Hammond. We need help.”

  “Okay. Where are you?”

  She spoke with a tremor in her voice. “We fell into a ravine. It was dark, and we were running. We never saw it. My daughter is with me. I managed to grab hold of a tree and held to her hand with my other arm. But my son fell down below. We can hear him but can’t see him. I’m not sure exactly where we’re at.”

  “You were hiding in a house before that?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far from the house is the ravine?”

  “Not far. We went over the fence in back and ran. I don’t know how far we ran before we fell into the ravine, but we couldn’t have gone far.”

  “More than a quarter mile?”

  “No, definitely not.”

  Archer processed the information. They had hidden on Vista Verde Drive. They went over the fence in back. Would have run downhill to the ravine. The aerial perspective from the FBI helicopter had provided him with a decent layout of the terrain from the top down, and he believed he could trace his way from his current position back toward Vista Verde. Surely somewhere between here and there he’d bump into Lindsay and the kids.

  Archer said, “Lindsay, I’m not too far from you. I should be there in a few minutes. The three of you sit tight. Don’t move a muscle and don’t make a sound. I’ll have you out of there in no time.”

  It was very late now. Into the early morning hours of Friday. Perhaps just after midnight. Archer sprinted across a wide lawn to a low brick wall and vaulted over it by planting one hand on top of the structure and kicking his legs over. He landed among a row of thistly bushes. Ribbons of fog hung low to the ground, floating like apparitions.

  Nearly everywhere he looked he saw evidence of the ongoing hunt for Lindsay Hammond. He smelled the tang of smoke and the nearby cough of small-arms gunfire.

  A Mustang rumbled to a stop in the middle of the street. The car looked like it had consistently been in and out of body shops with little good to show for it. A stocky white guy with a shaved head and full beard stood in the open door, glancing around. He wore ripped jeans that sagged in the crotch nearly to his knees. He left the Mustang running, the door open, lights on. He looked nervous and twitchy.

  Archer was all of forty feet from him.

  The thug with the bald head and beard rounded the front end of the car onto a piece of undeveloped property. His arms were beefy but not heaping with muscle. He snapped open a long lock-blade knife and stared into the trees.

  Archer stepped into the
street and stood beside the Mustang.

  “Yo, this your car?”

  The thug spun around fast. Narrowed his eyes. Raised the blade in front of him.

  “What did you say?”

  “This your ride, man?”

  The thug’s face twisted in rage. “Touch it, you die!”

  Archer stood with one hand on the open door and one hand flat on the roof of the cab.

  “You’re a dead man,” the thug growled, charging toward the car with the knife.

  Archer didn’t care a thing about the car. He wanted the knife.

  The thug reached the open door and lunged, plunging the blade at Archer’s throat. Archer could tell by the man’s posture and by the clumsiness of the attack that he wasn’t much of a street fighter. He was just big and meaty enough to look intimidating flashing the lock-blade around.

  Archer had used the car door to reduce the thug’s target area. He understood fully what was coming and the mechanics of how to confront the attack.

  The knife thrust was strong but clumsy. Archer ducked away from the blade, and in the same motion brought his right hand around and down in a clockwise movement, driving the thug’s arm down between the open door and the interior of the car. Then, like a flash, he took a single step back and slammed the door shut, crushing the arm at the elbow. The thug cried out, but only briefly. He was writhing in pain, his body twisting against the door, when Archer delivered a devastating blow to his larynx. The thug’s head buckled forward and he fell silent. His body fell limp, and he hung from his arm.

  Archer opened the door and allowed the body to crumble to the greasy blacktop. He retrieved the big lock-blade knife and sprinted into the trees. The episode had lasted all of twenty seconds.

  He dropped down off the top edge of a retaining wall that had been constructed to build up and level off the back lawn of a multimillion dollar estate. The terrain extending out beyond the retaining wall into the woods was much more rugged. Trees were uprooted and boulders had been plowed up out of the earth and lay exposed. Remnants of the days when the land had been razed to create space for development. Archer made his way through the wrecked timber and the debris field of massive rocks.

  He ducked behind a curtain of foliage as he heard heavy footsteps tromping through the nearby underbrush. Moonlight streamed through the treetop canopy. Archer saw movement. He readied the knife. A shape moved between trees. Archer’s vision had acclimated to the darkness well enough for him to clearly make out a human form. The man was angling across his path, making an effort to move stealthily but failing miserably.

  Archer silently lifted his foot and took a long stride forward, reducing the distance between them by half. The guy pushed past vines and saplings, snapping twigs and leafy plants underfoot. Archer could hear the man’s heavy breathing.

  Archer pounced like a leopard, taking the man off his feet with a leg sweep and catching him from the opposite direction with an elbow driven into the soft flesh beneath his chin. The only sounds were a gush of air and the impact of the body with the forest floor. Then Archer was on top of him, hand to his throat, the blade of the knife held to the bridge of his nose.

  Archer squinted in the dim moonlight. He saw no weapon. Only a camera strung from the man’s neck.

  Soji blinked away sweat and stared wide-eyed up at the man who had blindsided him. He was convinced he was about to die and couldn’t believe this was how it would all end. But instead of cutting his throat from ear to ear, the man clubbed him with a backhanded fist, and Soji’s world went black.

  A minute later, Archer came to the lip of a steep clay embankment. The ground at the edge of the slope was dry and brittle. It sloped dramatically down and away. This was the ravine.

  Through the darkness and gloom he could make out only vague dark shapes and silhouettes. There were fallen trees, their root systems upturned and thick with dirt clods. Dead, dry vegetation sprouted at random from the clay embankment.

  Archer sent a call to Lindsay’s cell.

  She answered, “Mr. Archer?”

  “I’m above the ravine. Do you see me?”

  “I think so. I think I see someone. Maybe raise an arm over your head.”

  Archer lifted his left hand, waved it side to side.

  “Yes, I definitely see you,” she sighed with relief.

  “Good. Now, help me locate you.”

  “I’m on the opposite side. About fifty feet to your left,” she whispered.

  He squinted in the darkness, studying the opposite slope of the ravine. Then he saw a flash of movement and was able to pick out the vague human forms of mother and daughter huddled together. He had found them. And for the moment at least, they were alive.

  CHAPTER 29

  Falling into the ravine had probably saved their lives. The sides were steep. The footing treacherous. Tough to get down. Nearly impossible to climb back up. The roving bands of thugs would have come right up to the edge, taken a good long look, then turned away to search elsewhere. A few might have tumbled in, then quickly scrambled back up one side or the other. But by some stroke of incredible fortune, no one had noticed Lindsay or Ramey clinging to a sturdy sapling that had grown up through the hardened clay. They hunkered together, partially camouflaged by the brittle, barren skeletal structure of a dead bush.

  Archer dropped down on his hip and made a controlled slide down the slope. Dust kicked up and the brush among the undergrowth rattled and crunched. It was even steeper than he had estimated. He reached the bottom and crossed to where he was looking up at them. He began clawing his way toward them.

  A small white face glanced up at him from a tangle of brush. Wyatt had come to rest two-thirds of the way down the slope, his fall arrested by the dense foliage. He looked terrified the way any twelve-year-old would in his shoes.

  “You OK?” Archer whispered.

  Wyatt swallowed. Trembling. Then he nodded, “Yeah. Just all scratched up.”

  “I’m going to get you out of here. All three of you. Okay?”

  Wyatt nodded.

  Archer could hear shouting in the near distance and plenty of commotion. There wasn’t much time.

  “Let’s get you on your feet. We’ve got to hurry.”

  Archer grabbed the boy under the arm and lifted him out of the brush. Wyatt was covered in dirt and leaves. He was trembling.

  “Thanks,” Wyatt said.

  “Stay here and keep out of sight,” Archer told him. “I’m going to climb up to your mother and sister.”

  Wyatt nodded, then obediently shrank away into the shadows as best he could, watching as Archer clawed his way up the slope of dirt and roots.

  Archer shoved the Beretta down the back of his pants so he could work with both hands and angled up the slope toward them.

  He was within arm’s reach when they heard heavy footfalls pounding through the trees above them. Archer had one hand clasped around a thick, partially exposed root, and he froze. The footfalls hurried closer, the sounds of men rushing to the edge of the ravine.

  Archer was in a precarious position, clinging to the tree root with one hand, the toes of his shoes digging into in the clay of the steep slope. With his free hand he grabbed for the Beretta. Sweat trickled into the corner of one eye. He raised the gun above his head, sighting it along the lip of the ravine, waiting.

  Suddenly they appeared. Four men, halting at the edge, breathing hard. Small men. Short and slender. Young, barely out of their teens. At least one of them carrying a gun.

  The man with the gun spotted Archer. Raised his arm to aim, but too late.

  Archer put two rounds in his forehead without hesitation.

  The man folded to his knees and them tumbled over the edge of the ravine, sliding headfirst halfway down the slope before some part of his body snagged on a natural formation protruding from the clay.

  The Beretta ejected the 9mm shell casing, and within a fraction of a second Archer had aligned the sights on the next man in line. No time to think or as
sess. He pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 30

  The gun bucked. The blast caught the second man in the chest and punched him onto his back. The remaining two thugs turned to run. Archer fired two more shots but heard the frantic sounds of both survivors retreating into the night.

  The four shots sounded like enormous explosions in the dark amphitheater formed by the slopes. Both mother and daughter flinched, losing their hold and coming loose, sliding on their backsides past Archer to the floor of the ravine. Archer turned and followed them down.

  “Can everyone walk?” he said without preamble.

  They nodded.

  He glanced up one end of the ravine, then down the other. North or south? He had to make a choice.

  Archer pointed north. “That way. Go!”

  They moved single file along the trough at the bottom of the ravine. The ravine was a fold in the mountain between two ridges. Archer knew it would wind around through the hills for a good distance and eventually spit them out at a road. They would follow it for as long as they could. Like tunneling to freedom.

  They ran as best they could. Tripping, stumbling blindly through the near total darkness. A massive fallen tree blocked the path. Roots upturned from the earth on one end, a sprawl of dead branches on the other. Archer had no real idea how far they had traveled on foot, or how much distance they had put between themselves and the mob. Then he heard the sounds of voices. The mob was coming.

  Archer assessed the fallen tree.

  “Kids, can you go under?” he asked, kneeling to clear away leafy clutter from beneath the trunk. There was a maximum of ten inches of clearance.

  Wyatt didn’t hesitate. He fell flat on his belly and began squirming his way to the other side.

  “Don’t get stuck, sweetie,” Lindsay called after him.

  They could hear him grunting.

  Archer turned to Ramey. “You’re next.”

  She nodded at him.

  A moment later Wyatt called to them from the other side, “We both made it.”