72 Hours (A Thriller) (11 page)

The chopper banked to the east, making another sweep of the area.
 
Each pass revealed greater numbers of the growing multitude.

Archer took a deep breath to center himself.
 
He would be dropping into hostile territory.
 
It was a battlefield down there.
 
He had to let his old instincts take over.
 
Instincts that had kept him alive in jungles and deserts and the crowded streets of cities from Hong Kong to Tokyo to Washington, D.C.

Archer had been plucked from a beach in Santa Cruz and was being delivered immediately into the eye of the storm.
 
There had been no time to plan.
 
No time to strategize.
 
No opportunity to study the situation and formulate the best approach.
 
The mission had been simply thrust upon him without a moment’s notice.
 
As his eyes analyzed the chaos passing beneath him, his hand moved to the Beretta and his thumb bumped the safety off.

“Like what you see?” Kline asked.

“I’ve seen worse in far worse places,” Archer answered.

“Set this thing down,” Kline instructed.

The pilot frowned.
 
“Too much hostile fire.
 
We’ll have to drop away a half mile or so to avoid being hit.”

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.