The elevator dumped them into an underground parking structure. There were three identical dark unmarked sedans lined up and ready to roll. The cars were staffed with a full detail of federal agents. They loaded Dunbar into the middle car, with Kline seated on one side of him, and Blackwell on the other.
“Are the choppers in the air?” Kline said to Blackwell.
Blackwell nodded. “Affirmative.”
Kline took a deep breath. He glanced at Dunbar who had not opened his mouth since they left the ground in Marin County.
“Here we are, Dunbar. In the heart of LA. So let’s do it. Tell me where they are. Give me an address,” Kline said.
For a long moment, Dunbar appeared to be lost deep in thought. He pressed the tips of his index fingers together, then touched them to his lips. A faint grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. Then his eyelids fluttered open.
“I was just remembering the last time I saw their lovely faces,” he said, not much above a whisper.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, Sidney and Robin, of course. On the night I killed them.”
Kline burned with rage from the inside out.
“Just give me the damn address!” he hissed.
Dunbar nodded.
“Take the 405 to the 10. Then turn east,” Dunbar said.
* * *
The Hummer stopped a hundred yards out from the church as instructed.
“What were her instructions?” Lindsay asked.
“Told us to sit and wait.”
“In the road?”
Archer nodded. “Yeah. In the road.”
“How long do we wait?” she asked.
“As long as it takes.”
They waited an hour. They saw nothing but clouds and dust.
Archer watched the church. Watched the shadows shift as the sun traveled its patient arc across the sky. Watched the horizon. Flicked his eyes from mirror to mirror.
Another hour passed.
“Are you sure this is what she told you to do?” Lindsay shifted in her seat.
“Be patient.”
Halfway through the third hour, he caught a flash of movement in the rearview mirror. Turned to look out the back window. A cloud of dust was visible rising off the road back toward town.
“OK, here we go,” Archer said, instinctively touching a hand to the Beretta.
“What is it?”
“Someone is coming.”
A white minivan approached slowly down the dirt lane. It drew to within fifty yards and then rocked to a stop, the desert breeze tugging away the cloud of dust that had trailed behind the vehicle.
The minivan sat in silence, fifty yards out.
“Can you see anyone?” Lindsay asked.
“No.”
“What is she doing?”
Archer shook his head. “I don’t know.”
The Kia minivan sat in the glare of morning light with its engine off.
Then the satellite phone rang.
Archer answered it.
“I’m here with Lindsay,” he said. “Now what?”
“This is very simple,” Noella Chu said. “Follow my instructions very carefully and we will both get what we came for.”
“I’m listening.”
“I want Lindsay to open her door and step clear of the vehicle with her hands raised in the air. She will turn where she stands so that I can see that she is unarmed. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Tell her.”
The passenger door of the Hummer rocked open on its hinges. Lindsay pivoted in her seat. Swung one leg out and then the other, and dropped to the packed dirt surface. She raised her arms over her head to display both empty hands.
“Good,” Noella Chu said. “Now tell her to walk slowly to the church. Tell her to go inside and stand in the doorway with her back to the open door.”
Archer swallowed hard, then looked at Lindsay. He repeated the instructions to her.
Lindsay began the long march down the dirt lane. She reached the three warped steps and opened the old wooden door. The hinges groaned. She stood in the doorway, facing in at the rows of darkened pews.
“Very good,” Noella Chu said.
Archer stared out across the dirt and weeds. He could see Lindsay silhouetted against the dark interior beyond the open doorway of the church.
“Now, Mr. Archer, you are next,” Noella Chu said. “Step away from the vehicle and let me see your hands.”
Archer pushed open his door and raised his hands into the dry breeze.
“Move to the rear of the vehicle.”
He did.
“Turn around, slowly,” she said.
His feet crunched over the dirt as he pivoted.
“Lift your shirt,” she said.
Archer hesitated a beat.
“Do it now, Mr. Archer.”
He reluctantly hoisted the tail of his shirt, but only enough to expose the pistol grip of the Beretta.
“Nice try, Mr. Archer. Take it out and drop it on the ground.”
Archer slowly withdrew the gun from his waistband and pitched it into the dirt.
“Now, walk very slowly toward the van.”
Archer eased forward with his hands in the air. He still couldn’t make out the person seated at the wheel of the van. He stared hard at the windshield, hoping for a glimpse of Penny, some sign that she was in there and that she was alive. When he was midway from the Hummer to the van, she ordered him to stop.
“Where is she? Where is Penny?” Archer said.
Noella Chu did not answer his question.
Instead, the telephone line went dead.
Archer watched, listened, waited.
He never heard the gunshot. Did not see the distant muzzle flash. Was not aware of anything wrong until the bullet struck him square in the chest. The impact of the big lead slug lifted him off his feet and spun him around. He crashed facedown onto the road. Pain rippled out across his body in a great wave. He lay on the ground with his eyes closed, his blood turning black as it soaked into the dirt.
* * *
Noella Chu worked the bolt action and fired a second bullet into the air toward Archer. It missed but he wasn’t moving, which pleased her. The first shot had been expertly placed.
The shots had been fired from the rooftop of the apartment building half a mile away. Archer had made a nice big clear target.
“One down,” she said to herself.
The muzzle of the rifle was fitted with a noise suppressor and had thus not made a sound that could be heard beyond the rooftop. No crack of gunfire rolling out across the flat desert landscape. Lindsay Hammond would not have heard a thing.
She jinked the scope’s field of view from the dirt road to the front steps of the church where Lindsay Hammond was still clearly visible standing in the open doorway. Noella Chu had never felt such exhilaration. She was one bullet away from the five hundred million dollars. She settled herself and placed the reticle in the center of Lindsay Hammond’s back. Took a deep breath. Squeezed gently down on the trigger.
The rifle bucked against her shoulder as the shot blasted out across the desert landscape.
Noella Chu held the scope steady, watching, waiting. Through the field of view she saw the bullet shatter the wooden doorframe into a cloud of splinters six inches above Lindsay Hammond’s head. A miss.
She operated the bolt action, ejecting the spent cartridge and chambering another round. She jinked the reticle back to the open doorway of the church to place the next shot. But the doorway was empty. Lindsay Hammond was gone.
* * *
She lay in the shadows made by the muted light filtering through the stained glass, facedown on the wooden planks of the church floor between two rows of wooden pews. She lay with the one side of her head pressed to the floor, hands flattened at either side of her head. There were wood particles in her hair, dust spiraling in the air in motes of light slanting in through the open doorway. Her head spun
with confusion as to what exactly had happened. Lindsay tried to catch her breath but was afraid to breathe.
“Archer!” she called, but her voice came out as a constricted croak.
She stared through the gap beneath the pews, waiting to see Archer appear in the church doorway, to see him rushing forth to save her. But there was no sign of him.
* * *
Noella Chu waited.
Clearly, Lindsay Hammond had taken shelter inside the church.
She panned back to Archer. Still no movement. He was dead.
She panned the scope to the white Kia minivan. Saw the driver’s door flinch open. A kid with greasy hair got out and stood in the open door, glancing furtively around. He cautiously approached Archer’s body.
She settled the crosshairs of the reticle on the back of his head and squeezed the trigger. A second later his head exploded. He folded to the ground next to Archer like a rag doll.
She jinked the scope back to the open doorway of the church. Lindsay Hammond was still somewhere inside. She abandoned her rifle on the roof of the building and took the fire escape ladder down three stories to the alley. She had spotted the kid with the greasy hair putting ten bucks worth of gas in his pickup truck at the rinky dink gas station down the street. He was by himself and had gaped at her through half-open vacant eyes. She cornered him at the pumps and flashed some cash in his face. The conversation was brief. She had shoved two hundred bucks into his pocket. All he had to do was drive the white minivan to the dirt road and stop fifty yards from the Hummer. She told him the guy in the Hummer would get out and give him another two hundred. It was that simple. And then he was free to go.
The pickup was now parked in the alley.
Penny Lockwood was unconscious but alive in the bed of the truck from a blow to the head. Noella Chu had draped a tarp over her. But Noella Chu no longer had need of Penny Lockwood. She squirreled a silencer onto her Walther and lowered the tailgate at the rear of the pickup. Pointed the gun at the shape beneath the blue tarp and pulled the trigger. The bullet punched a hole through the plastic.
She banged the tailgate shut.
She sat briefly at a stop sign, then rumbled across the highway under the power of the old straight-six. In half a minute she was off the pavement and onto gravel, then dirt, speeding toward the church.
CHAPTER 114
The procession of government sedans took Wilshire towards Sepulveda and merged onto the 405 headed south. FBI helicopters drifted overhead. Kline tipped his head against the glass to see the gray blur of the rotor blades in the sky high above the power lines.
They exited onto the Santa Monica Freeway and accelerated hard into the stream of traffic. They floated for ten minutes down the massive spread of asphalt lanes amid commuters and delivery trucks and buses packed with tourists.
Kline growled at Dunbar. “Now what?”
“Exit onto the 5,” Dunbar said.
“Do it,” Kline said over the seat to the driver.
The driver nodded, then radioed the instructions to the other cars.
The caravan drifted onto the Santa Ana Freeway.
“Take the 101 south,” Dunbar said. “Then take Exit 3A, and take West Temple to North Boylston.”
Kline glanced at Blackwell. Kline touched the Glock under his jacket. He could feel his anxiety rising. For four years he had dreamed of recovering the bodies, but now he dreaded actually uncovering the macabre physical remains. Mother and daughter, after sixty-plus months of decomposition. The thought of it turned his stomach.
“Tell me what you did with them,” Kline said.
Dunbar sighed. “We will be there soon.”
“Did you bury them? Are they in the ground?”
Dunbar seemed impatient with the questions. He pursed his lips, staring out through the glass at the road ahead.
“No, Special Agent Kline. They are not in the ground. I guess it’s not giving away much of the surprise to tell you that.”
“Where did you put them?”
“In a place you would have never thought to look.”
Kline could feel sweat down his back, even with A/C blasting from the vents.
“Turn right at Boylston. It will take us under the freeway to Bellevue Avenue,” Dunbar directed.
The driver glanced at Kline in the mirror.
Kline nodded.
The first car stopped at the light at the intersection of West Temple and North Boylston. Signaled for a right turn. The second and third cars queued up behind it. The choppers buzzed overhead.
The light changed and the first car jinked through the intersection. They drove into the massive shadow lurking beneath the Santa Ana Freeway.
“It won’t be long now,” Dunbar said.
* * *
Rydel had waited on the flat roof of the building for most of the morning. His perch overlooked the intersection of West Temple and North Boylston. Other members of his team were sprinkled among the rooftops of other nearby buildings. They had the intersection surrounded. The FBI choppers buzzing over the city was the signal they had waited for. Leonard Monroe had said there would be choppers. Monroe had been right about everything so far. Rydel had brought a heavy case with him up the service elevator to the roof. He knelt on the concrete roof and unfastened the metal latches. Opened the lid of the case and lifted a rocket-propelled grenade launcher out from the foam molding. He radioed his men to tell them to prepare for attack, to move on his command.
He strode to the corner of the roof with the clearest view of the intersection. He spoke again into the radio and ordered the trucks to move into position.
* * *
Two of the big trucks rolled in from opposite directions down Bellevue Avenue, steaming toward the intersection of North Boylston. The big rigs ignored the rules of the road, powering forward through the lanes of traffic, rumbling as they shifted into higher gears, the massive ironwork that had been welded onto the front of each truck gleaming in the brilliant Southern California sunshine.
* * *
Two more trucks roared up North Boylston from the rear, doing fifty as they shot through the red light at the intersection of West Temple.
* * *
Rydel watched the choppers circle and hover as the procession of government sedans disappeared from view beneath the span of the freeway. Saw the big rigs roar through the intersection. He hoisted the rocket launcher. Balanced it on his shoulder. Flipped up the sights. Aimed at the nearest chopper, which had pivoted around broadside to him. He waited until the big trucks were at the intersection, plowing into the shadows beneath the freeway.
“Now!” he called into the radio mike. And then he pulled the trigger.
* * *
The rocket hit the chopper squarely broadside. The machine erupted into a fireball, spinning crazily in the air, out of control. It fell rapidly toward the city streets, trailing a column of dense black smoke as it spiraled down. It crashed onto the freeway structure, the burning hulk tipping over the edge of the overpass, fiery debris raining down onto the streets below.
* * *
At that same instant, the first two trucks sandwiched the lead government sedan as it sat at a red light at the intersection. The sheet metal of the big sedan was crushed like a ball of foil inside a fist. The impact of the big trucks compressed the four-door car down to a single brick of scrap metal, reducing it to half its former dimensions.
The trucks recoiled away upon the shock of the impact, skidding in opposite directions, the drivers secured inside by heavy harnesses and reinforced iron safety cages. They wore helmets and fire retardant jumpsuits.
The passengers inside the sedan had been crushed to death instantly upon impact. Then the fuel tank exploded.
* * *
“IT’S AN AMBUSH!” Kline shouted.
The driver yelled into his radio to the driver of the third car, “REVERSE! GO! NOW!”
The heat from the fireball rolled over the hood to the cab of the second car as the lead car
burned.
“MOVEMOVEMOVE!” Kline yelled, turning to look out the rear window of the car. Then he saw more trucks speeding toward them from the rear. By the time a single reactive thought could form inside his brain it was too late.
The big trucks rammed the third car from behind, lifting the rear wheels off the ground, squashing it into the second car. The third car in the caravan immediately exploded, the intense heat pulsing against the window of the car carrying Kline, Dunbar, and Blackwell.
The impact upturned the second car onto its side, the driver-side wheels lifting of the ground, the car spinning, Blackwell’s door grinding against the asphalt of the street, showering sparks in an arc. The glass in the door shattered and Blackwell fell against the hole where the window had been, his right arm getting sucked beneath the metal doorframe, the force of the movement torquing the bone and flesh free of its socket. Blackwell screamed out in agony and horror.
Kline was belted in, suspended by his restraints above Dunbar.
Kline struggled to grab for his Glock but his arms were pinned. He turned his head so that he could see Dunbar.
Dunbar twisted around to face him, blood streaming down his face where a gash had opened up on his forehead. He licked blood off his lip with a flick of his tongue and smiled up at Kline.
“Hell of a day to be you, Kline,” Dunbar said.
The driver was struggling to free himself from his seatbelt. But suddenly the car quit spinning and the window above the driver’s head imploded, the barrel of a shotgun being smashed through it.
The driver had only enough time to close his eyes in anticipation of death before his brains were sprayed all over the interior of the car.
Kline fought to release the catch on his seat belt. Finally got a hand on his Glock. Pulled it from the holster under his coat. Too late.
“Drop it now!” a voice above him shouted.
Kline twisted his face up to look. The muzzle of the shotgun was half an inch away from the bridge of his nose. He could smell the hot stench of cordite. Realized this was the moment his entire life had led up to. Realized he had indeed failed to fulfill his promise to Sidney and Robin. Realized that Dunbar had found a way to beat him.
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