72 Hours (A Thriller)

by Moreton, William Casey

  They brought out a red Maglite and Archer clamped it between his teeth as he slid under the rear of the Hummer on his back.

  “He wouldn’t have had much time to hide it,” Raj said. “Should be obvious. Look for something about the size of a wallet.”

  Archer grabbed the Maglite from his mouth and shined it onto the undercarriage. It smelled of gasoline and road grit and heat. The beam of the small flashlight glistened across dust and sand. It took him less than a minute.

  “Damn it,” he sighed.

  They heard a small metallic clank as he removed the magnetic device and flung it out across the concrete floor. He pushed himself out and sat up, hooking his arms around his knees. He shook his head.

  Raj retrieved the device and pulled the tracking unit free of the power supply. The wires popped away and dangled loosely. The power light on the unit dimmed and then went completely dead.

  “Destroy it,” Archer said.

  The color drained from Lindsay’s face. She looked like she’d seen a ghost. “They know where to find us now,” she said, voice quaking. “They’ll come after us again, won’t they?”

  Archer nodded.

  CHAPTER 52

  Noella Chu was a master at intelligence gathering. Her skills as an assassin meant nothing if the information leading to the kill was flawed, so she had spent most of the previous night and early morning conducting extensive research via the usual tools of her trade.

  She cross-referenced several names she found in Reuters and the AP with a lengthy article on CNN.com. The CNN website offered several nice color photos, with quotes from a number of officials involved in the story. She wrote down the names of two FBI Special Agents. Kline and Sperry.

  There was a photo of them together. Noella Chu studied their faces. Kline was clearly the senior agent. Sperry was younger and fresh-faced. She didn’t have to labor long to discover what she needed to know about Sperry. He would be the key to locating Lindsay Hammond.

  She Googled him. He was married and she quickly discovered that his wife’s name was Julie Sperry. She skimmed an article from the LA Times where Julie’s name was mentioned several times on the topic of working with deaf children. Julie Sperry was on the faculty of the Brinkler-Lanz School for the Deaf in Los Angeles. She was young and pretty, and had done her graduate studies at Stanford.

  Noella Chu was impressed by Julie Sperry’s education, her credentials, and by her devotion to children with special needs. She knew that it would absolutely kill Julie Sperry’s husband to see his lovely little wife in pain. Noella Chu would make certain he got the message. One of the most valuable and productive tools of intelligence gathering was the black art of torture, and Noella Chu was supremely confident in her skills.

  The Brinkler-Lanz School for the Deaf stood on a corner opposite a Unitarian church. It was a single story building on beautiful, lush grounds. A paved walkway led from the street to the front steps. A brass plaque hung beside the door, with BRINKLER-LANZ in ten-inch lettering.

  A taxi dropped Noella Chu on the opposite side of the street, near the big doors of the Unitarian church. She crossed the street at a pedestrian crossing and followed the walk up to the front steps of Brinkler-Lanz.

  She presented herself at the front office as a potential donor, and requested a brief tour of the campus. A small, enthusiastic administrator quickly obliged her. Noella Chu introduced herself as Wendy Cohen and stated that a friend of a friend had praised the school and its work, and had gone on at length about Mrs. Sperry in particular.

  The administrator nodded vigorously. “By all means, you should meet her yourself. I’ll take you to her classroom right now, if you have time.”

  “Splendid,” Wendy Cohen replied. She wore tortoise shell horn-rimmed glasses, her long black hair pinned up in a bun.

  The administrator knocked on the classroom door, interrupting the lesson. A petite redhead slipped out the door into the hallway. She was quickly introduced to Wendy Cohen.

  “I apologize for the interruption,” Noella Chu said.

  Julie Sperry smiled warmly. “Not at all. Welcome to Brinkler-Lanz.”

  The administrator offered a brief overview of the fine work Mrs. Sperry had accomplished over the past few years.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you,” Julie Sperry said, radiating genuine warmth and compassion. Then she ducked back inside her classroom to resume the lesson.

  The administrator offered his business card and she promised to be in touch. Then she excused herself.

  She left through the front door and hurried stealthily down a shaded brick pathway toward the rear of the campus grounds. There was an even dozen cars slotted side-by-side on the narrow asphalt strip. A Bentley, a handful of BMW’s, a big Lincoln Navigator, a Jaguar, an old Chrysler, and a VW Passat.

  Noella Chu sent a text message to a computer hacker friend living in Belgium and within minutes received a reply telling her that the Passat was registered to Jason and Julie Sperry. She used a slender tool to pop the lock on the backdoor. She eased inside, ducked out of view, made herself as comfortable as possible to wait. Julie Sperry had no idea this would be the last day of her life.

  CHAPTER 53

  The ten men arrived separately but within minutes of one another. They had been summoned by Mr. Jupiter. They arrived promptly at the time he had told them, and then they were ushered into a windowless room on the second level of a privately owned aircraft hanger to receive their orders.

  Mr. Jupiter was familiar with each of the ten. He knew their skills, personal histories, and military records. They were elite killers, and for this mission he assigned them code names pulled from the military alphabet: Alpha, Bravo, Echo, Foxtrot, Kilo, India, November, Oscar, Sierra, Tango.

  Metal folding chairs were arranged facing a plain painted-gray wall. The men gathered in the room and sat in the chairs. Lots of quick, brief eye contact. They waited in silence. Mr. Jupiter entered through a door in the rear and began a slide presentation that lasted ten minutes, followed by a few questions from the gathered mercenaries.

  By the end of the presentation, they knew where they were going, when they were leaving, how they would get there, and whom they had been hired to kill.

  CHAPTER 54

  Somewhere above them, through dozens of feet of concrete and hardened earth and clay, iron struts and sand, the sun was beating down. Up where the air was fresh the temperature hovered near a hundred and twenty degrees.

  Down inside the concrete bunker, however, the air was cool. The walls were three feet thick and soundproof. The living quarters were housed within an octagon-shaped shell. The library, camera monitoring room, kitchen, bedrooms, and the common area, were on the upper level. A steep stairway with metal handrails led to the lower level. There were no lights on below. Only a faint, ominous, throbbing orange glow. Wyatt stood on the first step of the stairway and looked down into the darkness. He stood with one hand on the rail, staring without blinking.

  “Nothing down there to bite you.”

  Wyatt nearly jumped out of his skin. He wheeled around and hopped off the step.

  Raj grinned down at the boy as he placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Didn’t mean to put the spook in you, son,” he said. “Be careful where you go and what you touch around here. Remember, curiosity killed the cat.” Then Raj hurried away.

  Wyatt’s heart was in his throat. He had no interest in investigating further. The past twenty-four hours had provided adventure enough to not have to go looking for more. He moved away from the handrail, giving only a quick, sideways glance back toward the throbbing orange glow.

  Ramey had found the kitchen. She was at the small round dining table with a jar of generic-looking peanut butter, layering it with lumpy jelly between slices of wheat bread. She took a tentative bite and wrinkled her nose.

  Wyatt dropped into a chair beside her.

  “Looks good,” he said.

  “Define good.”

  He shrugged. �
�I’m hungry. Pass me that knife.”

  Ramey pushed the loaf of bread toward him.

  Lindsay peeked in at them, mostly just checking to see that they were staying out of trouble. She was chilled. She hugged her arms around herself. She explored room to room. One hallway led to another, meandering endlessly. Locked doors. Low ceilings. Flickering fluorescent light. She was scared and tired.

  It was her suspicion that Raj and Simeon had not built the place. They had somehow adopted it as home, but it had clearly been designed with some radically different purpose in mind. The low ceilings and narrow hallways made her feel mildly claustrophobic. She couldn’t help wondering how the structure had come to be there and why the Egyptian brothers had decided to call it home. She raised her chin, turning her eyes to the concrete ceiling, envisioning the wind and heat and blinding sunlight, wondering what could possibly be happening up there.

  CHAPTER 55

  Archer was sitting backward in a swivel chair staring up at a diagram framed behind glass on the wall. It was the schematics layout of the underground compound. A blue dot denoted the room he was sitting in now. It was labeled the Chart Room. The compound was deceptively enormous. Its tunnels and rooms and interconnecting passageways sprawled out for hundreds of yards. North, south, east, west. He could see the wiring schematics. Heating and cooling systems. Air flow. The primary power unit. Auxiliary power. Every entrance. Every exit.

  A second chart showed the topographical layout of the surrounding landscape. The majority of the compound was set beneath the flat desert floor. A branch of the tunnel system, though, ran west beneath the mountain ridges. There was at least one exit somewhere among the mountains. The engineers had had to blast through some serious rock strata to get the thing in the ground.

  Archer stood, pushing away the chair. He studied the charts. Tracing his index finger from passage to passage, room to room. It was a clumsy design. Inefficient, but it would do. It was suitable for waiting and watching. The place had been built to withstand much more than they were likely to face in the days to come.

  Electrical conduit, ductwork, heating and air shafts, were all visible overhead. The place was sloppy, like it was half-finished, like living in a subbasement. Archer could hear the hum of electricity, the rattle of plumbing. He could feel puffs of cool air coming through gaps in the cinder blocks where the air ducts ran from the walls.

  Simeon poked his head into the Chart Room, slapped his hand on the doorframe to get Archer’s attention. “Follow me,” he said.

  Archer fell in step behind him. Simeon had a long torso with short legs and took quick strides. He worked hard when he moved.

  They walked past the camera monitoring room where Raj was seated at the long table, keeping an eye on activity outside their self-contained world.

  They stopped at a locked door and Simeon pulled out a heavy keyring. He opened the door and swatted at a light switch on the wall. Rows of fluorescent bars slowly flickered to life, pitching the room into a pale white glow.

  The walls were lined with green metal lockers, each locker secured by a chunky padlock. Simeon stepped forward, turned a key and popped a lock. The locker housed a row of Bushmaster gas operated carbine semiautomatic assault rifles. Simeon pulled one off the rack and pitched it to Archer.

  Archer caught it. Turned it in his hands. Admired it. Raised it to a horizontal position and sighted down the barrel.

  “Nice toy,” Archer said.

  Simeon nodded. “I take my constitutional rights very seriously.”

  Simeon pulled down two more Bushmasters from the rack, leaning them against the wall, then he shut the door and slapped the padlock through the hasp. A second locker housed an assortment of small arms. He flung the door open and stood aside for Archer to have a look.

  Archer whistled and shook his head. “When the revolution begins, I want to make sure I’m on your team.”

  Simeon grinned like a proud father.

  Archer pulled out the Beretta from the back of his pants and handed it to his friend.

  Simeon turned it over in his hands.

  “Still carrying the old girl, eh?” he said.

  Archer replied, “Till death do us part.”

  Simeon handed him a walkie-talkie. “It’s got a full charge,” he said.

  Archer nodded, “Good.”

  They returned to the Chart Room. Simeon snapped a loaded magazine into a .45 Glock and holstered the handgun under his arm. He looked hard at Archer and gestured at the maps on the wall.

  “Okay, this is your baby, Archer. Tell me what you need.”

  Archer stood back from the topo map and studied it with the eyes of a soldier. “The nearest highway is to the west, the way we came in. The mountains provide good cover, a good vantage point for glassing the horizon. To the south is nice and flat. We’ll be able to see anything coming from that direction for miles and miles, even after dark. I’m not too concerned about the south. Are there any secondary roads you know of?”

  “Nothing to worry about. Nothing that comes within even ten miles of us.”

  “I want to stay a step ahead of them. We need to be able to see them long before they’re in rifle range. If we see them coming we can blindside them. For that, I don’t want to depend solely on your cameras.”

  Simeon nodded.

  “So how do you want to do this?”

  “The three of us will rotate three hour shifts. One will take the lookout, one will watch over Lindsay and the kids and monitor the video cameras, and one will sleep. I’ll take the first shift outside. I want a chance to look around, get a feel for the terrain.”

  “Anything in particular you’re watching for?”

  Archer nodded. “Basically anything with less than four legs.”

  Simeon led Archer to the kitchen and handed him a fanny pack.

  “Put a box of shells in there. And here’s a bottle of water. You’ll need it.”

  Archer snapped the heavy Nylon belt around his waist. He zipped the shells and the water bottle inside, then spun the pouch around to his backside.

  “Put this around your neck.” Simeon produced a pair of thick binoculars coated with rubber armor. “Get up high enough and you can see forever with those things.”

  Lindsay found them. Raj had given her a light jacket to put on. It was several sizes too big and the arms were too long. She looked childlike wearing it.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, eyes filled with surprise and concern at the sight of the rifles.

  “I’m going to take a look around outside,” Archer said, shouldering the Bushmaster by the leather sling.

  Her lips parted slightly. She shook her head.

  “I’d rather you stay here with us.”

  “You’ll be fine. Nothing can happen to you down here. I’m just going to go for a little walk. I’d like to stretch my legs after those hours on the highway.”

  Lindsay clearly didn’t like the idea. She frowned. The presence of the assault rifles brought the reality of the threat against them back to the forefront. It confirmed that they were still in serious danger.

  “But it’s still daylight. What if someone sees you?”

  “They won’t. And if they do, I’ll kill them.”

  He moved past them in the narrow hallway. He turned to speak to Simeon. “Take care of them. I’ll have the radio on if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll be back in three hours.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Archer had no way of knowing how far he’d traveled but ran out of light after about ten minutes of walking and had to use the flashlight. He continued on and the tunnel turned abruptly to his left. He followed the passage until he noticed a faint glow in the distance. It grew brighter as he approached and he saw that the light was coming from a vertical shaft where the tunnel abruptly ended at a wall. He glanced up into the open shaft. Daylight was coming through an iron grate high above him. He gauged that the shaft was at least a hundred feet tall. A steel ladder was bolted to the wall. The concrete fl
oor was stained where rainwater had pooled.

  Archer started up the ladder. He climbed hand over hand and reached the top rung in a matter of minutes. The grate was heavy. He strained to lift it. The iron hinges groaned. The grate opened up and away, finally falling back on its hinges with a dull clang. Archer hoisted himself out of the shaft and out into the blazing desert sunlight.

  The tunnel had led him from the cool, musty subterranean world to the mountains. It was rugged, steep terrain. The hillsides were thick with desert brush. The shaft had been cut into the base of a bluff. A crude footpath led away from the bluff and down a ridge. From where he stood Archer could see the series of switchbacks that had been gradually worn into the dirt and grass as they fell away from view down the slope.

  He took the opposite tack, traveling uphill. He found the sun, considered its position in the afternoon sky. Got his bearings. Faced north. He needed to find an accessible route to the top of the bluff.

  The desert floor opened up before him. The horizon was a hazy, featureless blur. Archer raised the binoculars. The barrenness and serenity of the desert floor was quite a contrast to the chaos and violence of the previous night in Malibu.

  The mob from Malibu had been disorganized chaos. A strategic, calculated assault was always the biggest challenge to defend against. Archer had seen no evidence of such a threat last night, but as time marched on, certain strategic alliances and partnerships would be formed. Certain factions of the mob would begin to see the value of collaboration. After all, five hundred million was a lot to go around. Archer gazed through the lens of the binoculars at the calm and silence and knew the peaceful conditions wouldn’t last. The enemy was coming. He could sense it in that deep-down part of him that had been trained to sense such things. He was certain of it. They were coming. It was just a matter of time.