72 Hours (A Thriller)

by Moreton, William Casey

  Kline dropped the Glock. The gun rattled down against the door where Blackwell lay dead. Then he closed his eyes and pushed away his fear of the inevitable.

  But the gunman simply cracked him in the side of the head with the rock hard muzzle of the shotgun, Kline’s head whipping ferociously to one side. There was a millisecond of horrific, mind-bending pain, and then there was only blackness.

  CHAPTER 115

  The Chevy pickup rattled up alongside the open door of the white Kia minivan. Noella Chu shut the engine and heaved open her door. A swell of dust swept past her. She held the Walther at her side. She stood among the triangle formed by the parked vehicles.

  Noella Chu stood still a moment, studying the scene of carnage she had created. Her eyes flicked from the body of the kid with the greasy hair to the body of Ryan Archer. She approached the bodies.

  Most of the kid’s head was gone. A direct hit. He never felt a thing. The lights simply went out and he was sent surfing through the crazy waters of the afterlife.

  Archer was sprawled facedown on the packed dirt. Blood from his head had turned the ground black. She sighted down the Walther at him, kicked at his leg. Pressed the heel of her shoe into his kidney. Crouched down near his head. Noticed that the blood had come from his nose. Probably broke it when he hit the ground, she guessed.

  She remained unimpressed by Ryan Archer. She had expected more. More of a fight. More of a challenge. She shook her head in disappointment.

  Then she stood and turned her gaze toward the church a hundred yards out. Took one step away from Archer’s head.

  Something stopped her. Something had clamped around her ankle.

  In the next instant she felt her legs jerk out from under her. She hit the ground hard, the Walther clattering away and out of reach. Felt the big hands clawing up her legs. She twisted onto her back and saw Archer’s blood-smeared face looming over her.

  Noella Chu gasped, manically kicking at him with both her legs. She hissed at him.

  “GETOFFME!”

  Archer drilled a fist into her ribs.

  She clawed at him, digging her fingernails into the soft flesh of his face.

  “Get OFF!” she hissed again.

  Archer pounded her with another blow from his fist. Then he lunged for her throat.

  She twisted out from beneath him and scrambled across the dirt on her hands and knees, clawing toward her gun. She reached out and touched the barrel.

  Archer pounced again. He crashed down on top of her from behind and hooked the crook of his arm around her throat and clamped down against her windpipe.

  Noella Chu pulled a knife from a sheath strapped to her lower leg and slashed into Archer’s thigh. Then she bucked him off and got to her feet. She twisted to one side and spun, catching him in the side of the head with a roundhouse kick.

  Archer went down on his shoulder. Blinked blood from his eyes and raised his head.

  Noella Chu had already reset and was coming at him from the opposite direction with a similar move.

  This time, Archer blocked the kick with his forearm and brought her down hard onto the road.

  She sprang up to grab him, but he slammed her in the larynx with a hard right.

  Noella Chu collapsed, coughing, holding her throat.

  Archer staggered to his feet, spotted her knife in the dirt and scooped it up.

  Noella Chu was floundering about on her back, wheezing, desperate to catch her breath.

  Archer pinned her to the ground by pressing his knee down on her chest. Then he cut her throat wide open with the blade of her knife, slicing her ear to ear. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she quickly began the tortuous process of suffocating, drowning in her own blood.

  “Suck on that awhile,” he said.

  She clutched both hands to her ruined throat, sucked for breath that wouldn’t come. A moment later she grew still, her mouth gaping like a fish swept onto dry land by the cruel tide, eyes staring vacantly up at the sky.

  Archer pitched the Walther and the knife out across the withered desert scrub, and then retrieved his Beretta. He rested his weight against the fender of the Hummer and took a moment to get his wind back. He pressed a hand to the gash in his thigh.

  He staggered to the white van and opened the rear door. No sign of Penny. The van was empty. He turned for the Chevy truck. Approached it on foot with caution. Glanced through the side glass smudged with dust. No one inside. Then he spotted the lumpy blue tarpaulin in the back.

  Archer dropped the tailgate and lifted himself into the bed. He threw the tarp aside. Penny Lockwood lay slumped facedown before him. She groaned. She was alive.

  “Penny, can you hear me?”

  She groaned again. Her eyelids fluttered. She managed to squint up at him against the stark morning light.

  “It’s over,” he told her.

  She was clearly in a lot of pain, but she still managed to produce a small smile.

  “Archer?” she whispered.

  He nodded. “That’s right.”

  He carried her to the Hummer and placed her gently inside.

  “Where are my brothers?” she asked.

  Archer ducked the question.

  “You’re going to be fine,” he assured her.

  He shut the door and climbed in behind the wheel.

  Archer drove the Hummer up to the steps of the church and limped inside.

  Lindsay was cowering in a corner of the building, the furthest point from the open front door. She rushed into his arms.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “I thought you were dead.”

  Archer pulled open his shirt. Revealed the Kevlar vest underneath. Showed her the deep impression on the vest where the rifle bullet had struck him.

  “A few more inches toward my head and I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you,” he said.

  “Where is she, the assassin?” Lindsay asked.

  “She’s dead.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Archer nodded. “Most definitely,” he said.

  CHAPTER 116

  Almost exactly thirty-six hours before his scheduled execution, Gaston Dunbar was a free man. He was pulled from the wreckage by one of the men in jumpsuits and directed to a waiting truck. Already sirens could be heard wailing in the distance.

  Dunbar pulled the door open and climbed in. The man behind the wheel wore a jumpsuit and crash helmet, with an AK47 resting on the seat between them.

  “Go!” Dunbar said.

  As the big truck passed into the shadows beneath the Hollywood Freeway, Dunbar spotted his next ride – a Mercedes idling alongside the flow of traffic. The truck slowed to a stop beside the German sedan and Dunbar dropped to the street and scrabbled into the backseat of the car. The truck rumbled away.

  The Mercedes tooled through several intersections before sliding onto West Sunset Boulevard.

  Dunbar unzipped a garment bag and removed an Armani suit. He dressed quickly, and in a matter of minutes he had been transformed yet again. He tore off the wig and the beard and snipped off his ponytail with a pair of scissors. Dunbar completed his ensemble with a pair of dark designer sunglasses.

  “Is the plane ready?” he asked.

  The driver nodded.

  There was a thick oversize envelope on the seat beside him. He briefly rifled through the cache of forged documents and passports, credit cards and currency from a dozen different countries. For the indefinite future he would be traveling under numerous aliases.

  Dunbar took great pleasure in the memory of the the final expression on Special Agent Kline’s face. What a bitter pill to swallow. Dunbar allowed himself a small smile. He would be in the air and out of the country in half an hour. He was never going back because he would make certain they never found him. No matter how hard the looked, and no matter how much money they spent searching the far reaches of the globe, he would never let them catch him. Never.

  * * *

  A dozen LAPD cruisers rolled onto the scene three m
inutes after the ambush had begun. All three cars were still burning.

  Ambulances screamed through the city streets.

  Police officers scrambled to the scene, surrounding the burning wreckage, weapons drawn. The only thing clear to them was that something terrible had happened. They began frantically pulling bodies from the twisted metal and someone spotted an FBI badge lying in the middle of the street.

  There appeared at first to be no survivors. But then one of the FBI agents they had pulled from the wreckage began showing vague signs of life. Unconscious but breathing. When the first ambulance arrived, they loaded Special Agent David Kline into the back and rushed him to the nearest ER.

  * * *

  The Mercedes slowed to a stop outside a hurricane fence at the perimeter of the airport and parked alongside a black limousine.

  The rear window of the limo buzzed down.

  “So you made it,” Leonard Monroe said. “Congratulations.”

  “You did well,” Dunbar answered.

  “Half the four hundred million dollars you promised me is in an account in Nassau. You are a free man now, so I expect to receive the remainder of the payment to be made immediately.”

  Dunbar looked bored by the lawyer’s greed. Dunbar nodded.

  “It will be deposited into your account within the hour.”

  “Make it happen.”

  “I’m going far away now.”

  “I didn’t believe you could really pull it off. You’ve done the impossible. I tip my hat.”

  “I’d suggest you forget you ever knew me,” Dunbar said.

  “Done,” Monroe replied.

  Neither man had made eye contact. Heat shimmered up off the asphalt between the cars.

  “Enjoy the money,” Dunbar said.

  Monroe nodded. “Enjoy life as a fugitive.”

  Dunbar offered no reply.

  * * *

  The jet was a silver Gulfstream. It had been hired for forty-eight hours, paid for in cash through a dummy corporate account. The pilots didn’t ask questions. They were there to simply do their job. The flight plan was nonstop to Tokyo.

  Dunbar stared out a window and watched the ground drop away. He said goodbye to the city of Los Angeles. He was seeing the last of it. He was never coming back. There was no other choice. His days in America were over.

  CHAPTER 117

  About the time the Gulfstream jet carrying the man formerly known as Gaston Dunbar had turned away from the coast and headed out across the Pacific Ocean, Special Agent David Kline began to slowly regain consciousness.

  He was on his back on a table in a room full of faces looking down at him. The sights and sounds and smells of a hospital. One side of his face was badly swollen. He could feel that he was bruised and cut and burned.

  He tried to open his mouth to speak but there was a plastic oxygen mask strapped over his face. His breath fogged the plastic mask.

  “…umb….urr…” he said, but it came out as a gravelly whisper.

  “He’s awake,” one of the nurses looming over him said.

  “Ummm….haaaaarr…”

  The nurse pushed her face down near to his.

  “Please don’t try to speak,” she said.

  “Werr….es…heee,” Kline grunted, breathing hard into the mask.

  “Sir, please,” she told him. “You’re going to be OK, but you need to lie still and relax.”

  Kline attempted to raise his arm but it was secured to the table by a strap.

  “….ere…iz…unbar…”

  She shook her head, frowning with confused, kind eyes. She adjusted an IV tube taped to his arm and marked something on his chart.

  He grunted into the plastic mask.

  “Say again,” she said.

  Pain rippled through him. He stared at her with intensity, the whites of his eyes amplifying his desperation. He concentrated to enunciate his words so that she would understand, but his words were muffled by the plastic mask.

  “Where…is…Dunbar?” he said, or believed he’d said.

  The nurse smiled, patted his arm, and drew away from him. She shook her head. She looked at him with pity like he was delusional from the pain meds.

  “I’m sorry,” she replied. “All I hear is gibberish.”

  * * *

  They sat in the darkness of the motel room and waited. The lights were off and the drapes were drawn shut. The only illumination came from the flickering screen of the small television and the muted glow through the drapes.

  Lindsay sat on the bed with her arms around her children.

  Archer stood in a corner next to the front door, thinking.

  They waited through the long hours of the afternoon. Waited for the day to pass.

  The Hummer was parked behind the hotel, out of sight. Only two vehicles drifted into the hotel parking lot over the entire afternoon. Dirt devils of dust and grit swirled across the highway. Clouds came and went.

  They stared at the news.

  Archer left them at the motel and went to sit with Raj and Penny. Raj was still asleep. He’d slept for hours. Dr. Fay sat at his cluttered desk with his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose, itching for conversation but understanding that neither Archer nor Penny was in any real mood to talk.

  Archer stared at the floor. Stared at his watch. Stared at Raj and Penny. Penny refused to leave Raj’s side. She had been crushed by the news of Simeon’s death. She blamed herself. She was in a lot of pain. Her shoulder was heavily bandaged where Noella Chu had shot her. The .22 bullet had hit nothing vital, and Dr. Fay had been able to easily remove the slug. Dr. Fay insisted that she was a very lucky woman, that if Archer hadn’t been there to find her when he did, she would have bled to death. She sat very still, holding her brother’s hand, her eyes glassy and vacant.

  Archer stood at the back door and stared out through the window blinds.

  The doctor’s telephone rang off and on throughout the day. Dr. Fay came and went. Late in the afternoon he answered it and held the handset out for Archer.

  “It’s your lady friend,” the doctor said.

  Archer nodded as she answered the line.

  “Archer, you’ve got to come back to the motel,” Lindsay said.

  “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “I think it’s over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s over.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “CNN is reporting that Dunbar is dead. He committed suicide. We don’t have to hide anymore!”

  Archer glanced down at Dr. Fay, then flicked his eyes across the room toward Penny and Raj.

  “OK, stay put,” he told her. “I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  Archer sat at the end of the bed, staring at the television screen. Every network had interrupted their regularly scheduled programming to break the news. They all said the same thing. Dunbar was dead.

  Archer stared in disbelief.

  Lindsay hugged her kids and cried.

  It was a miracle. The nightmare was over. No more running. No more hiding. No more living in fear. No more mobs or trained killers tracking them across hundreds of miles of mountains and desert.

  Archer could only shake his head in disbelief. Something about the news didn’t add up. He found the cell phone Kline had given him and dialed a number in the cell’s call log.

  He was forwarded directly to Kline’s voicemail. He left a message.

  “Kline, this is Archer. We’ve seen the news on TV. What’s going on? Is Dunbar really dead? Get back to me as soon as you can.”

  The room darkened as the sun went down. They stared at the TV late into the night. They had survived another day. They had made it safely through to the other side. Tonight maybe they would get some real sleep for the first time since the nightmare had begun. Then in the morning they would rise with the sun to find out the truth, to find out whether or not the nightmare was truly over.

  * * *

&nbs
p; The call came in the middle of the night. Archer answered his cell after the first ring. It was Kline. He had finally checked his voicemail.

  “Tell me Dunbar is really dead?” Archer said immediately.

  “That’s the official word,” Kline replied. “It’s over. The money is off the table. You can bring them in.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it as soon as you return to the city.”

  “You’re hiding something, Kline,” Archer said. “What is it you’re not telling me?”

  The motel room was quiet and still. The TV was off. All three of the Hammond’s were sound asleep, piled together on one of the beds. The faint glow of the moon was visible around the edges of the drapes over the windows. Archer was seated on the floor against a wall across from the bathroom. He was watching the front door. As far as he was concerned it was still not safe to let down his guard.

  “I’m not hiding anything,” Kline replied. “I’m telling you it’s safe enough now for Lindsay to return to LA.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow. Just get back here.”

  “OK.”

  “How are Lindsay and the kids?”

  “They are alive. All of them. Exactly as promised.”

  “Bring them in.”

  “We’ll be there,” Archer said.

  * * *

  The mansion in Bel Air was dark. Every light was off. Johnny Smackdown wandered the halls of his huge home in his robe and bare feet, a big Smith and Wesson .45 held in one trembling hand. He had watched the news on TV. He had seen that Dunbar was dead. The bounty money had been rescinded. Mr. Jupiter would come looking for him. Smackdown was losing his mind.

  Smackdown hadn’t been sober in two days. He had taken his first shot of heroin when he could no longer get in touch with Soji. And he freaked when he heard the news about Dunbar. By midnight he was stoned out of his mind. Now he was hallucinating badly. Seeing things. Hearing voices. Talking to the walls. Having three and four and five separate conversations with himself at once.

  He didn’t hear the bullet blow out the lock on the patio door downstairs, because the gun had a silencer and his home was sprawling. He didn’t hear the door open. Too many voices filling his head, drowning out the sounds of his environment. And he didn’t hear the soft footsteps creeping slowly up the stairs.