72 Hours (A Thriller) (17 page)

Wes held up a handwritten sign.
 
LINE 3 – SERIOUS!!!

Smackdown sighed.
 
“Soji, I ever told you about my producer Wes?”

“What about him, dude?”

“He’s a punk.”

“Sorry, man.”

Smackdown put Soji on hold.
 
The red light on Line 3 was flashing.
 
He took the call.

“This is Smackdown,” he said.

A voice said, “I have a business offer for you.
 
Tell Soji to shut his mouth.
 
Give me your cell phone number and I’ll call you back in three minutes.”

Smackdown swallowed.
 
“Who is this?”

“Call me Mr. Jupiter.”
 

CHAPTER 49

They met face to face on the fourth level of a massive parking structure located amid the high-rise buildings of downtown Los Angeles.
 
It was only seventeen minutes since Mr. Jupiter’s call to Johnny Smackdown’s cell phone.

Smackdown roared up the ramp in his silver Porsche Spyder 550, the same make and model of the car James Dean had died in when he crashed in 1955.
 
The tires squealed as he took the corners.
 
He parked beside a black Mercedes S-class.

The rear window of the Mercedes buzzed down.
 
Smackdown approached the window with trepidation.
 
Inside was a dark-skinned man in a stark white suit.
 

Smackdown was nervous.
 
“What’s this about, man?”

“I’ve come to buy Lindsay Hammond.”
 
Mr. Jupiter passed a thick manila envelope through the opening in the window.
 
Smackdown folded back the flap and looked inside.
 

“This is a lot of cash,” Smackdown said, pretending to be unimpressed.

“One hundred thousand dollars.
 
It’s yours.
 
All you have to do is tell me where she is.”

Smackdown closed the flap on the envelope.
 
“Not interested.”
 

Mr. Jupiter was unfazed.
 
“What is your price?”

“One hundred million.
 
Take it or leave it.”
 
The corners of his mouth turned up, proud of his tough negotiation skills.

Mr. Jupiter wanted to laugh.
 
He would have doubled the price without blinking.
 
One hundred million dollars was a bargain.

“Done,” he said.
 
“The money will be deposited into a numbered account as soon as I receive the bounty from Dunbar’s attorney.
 
You will be contacted at that time.”

Smackdown felt his knees go weak.
 
He’d just made a hundred million for doing nothing but answering the phone.

“Call him now,” Mr. Jupiter said.
 
“Tell him to contact you only on your cell.
 
Find out her exact location.
 
Then the money will take care of itself.
 
But if your friend Soji is wrong, and we cannot find her, or someone else finds her first, I will kill both of you.”

CHAPTER 50

Noella Chu took a taxi from LAX to a strip mall located next to an overpass on 43
rd
Street.
 
At a small Copies & Stuff franchise, she used her key to open a rented postal box.
 
Inside was a yellow slip of paper notifying her that she had received an oversized delivery.
 
She presented the notice to a kid standing behind the counter and he promptly retrieved the FedEx parcel she had shipped from New York.

The same taxi delivered her to her hotel of choice, where she locked the door to her room and discarded the cardboard shipping carton and opened the metal flight case.
 
Everything was as she’d left it.
 
The assembled pieces would produce a SIG SG550 Sniper rifle.

Her carryon from the flight from New York was an empty book pack.
 
She unzipped it and transferred the disassembled rifle from the flight case to the backpack.
 
She stowed the flight case under the bed and put her arms through the straps of the pack, shrugging it onto her shoulders.
 
She locked the door behind her and took an elevator to the lobby.

On the street she headed south on foot.
 
Noella Chu was intimately familiar with LA.
 
She had conducted business assignments in the city on many occasions.
 
The hotel was a frequent stop.

She was in fantastic shape and walked briskly.
 
Nine blocks from the hotel she came to a self-storage facility and stopped at the door to unit 118.
 
She turned a key in the pad lock and lifted the door.
 
The storage unit was ten feet by twelve and mostly empty.
 
Two metal file cabinets stood against the back wall.
 
A plastic tarp had been draped over something bulky in the corner.

Noella Chu stripped off the tarp.
 
Before her stood a jet-black Kawasaki Ninja 1198cc motorcycle.
 
She inspected it with lust in her eyes.
 
She straddled the bike and fired the ignition, revving the throttle, listening to it howl.
 
The growl of the engine was like a symphony to her ears.

She pulled her Buell helmet down over her head and walked the bike out onto the asphalt beyond the door, sunlight gleaming off its every curve.
 
She dropped the storage unit door and locked it.
 
She adjusted the shoulder straps of the backpack so that it rode snuggly against her.
 
Then she gunned the throttle and released the clutch, riding a wheelie through the narrow alley to the street.

CHAPTER 51

Archer brought Lindsay Hammond into the camera monitoring room and sat her down in the chair with the wooden seat where Raj had been seated at the computer a few minutes earlier.

“I want you to take a look at something,” Archer told her.

Lindsay nodded.
 
“OK.”

“There is a car at the gate where we came in.
 
Take a look.
 
Tell us if you recognize it at all.”

Raj was standing beside the chair where she was seated.
 
He worked the mouse, moving windows around to bring up the one they needed.
 
He found a static image of the Toyota Prius, black and white and slightly grainy.
 
He left-clicked the mouse and maximized the size of the window onscreen.

“It’s one of those hybrid things,” she said, shrugging.
 
“I see them everywhere these days.”

Ramey and Wyatt had wandered down the low-ceilinged hallway and crowded together in the narrow doorframe of the monitoring room.

Lindsay turned to them and frowned.

“Kids, you don’t need to be in here.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Simeon said.

Archer motioned them in.
 
Gestured at the computer.

“Either one of you recognize this car?”

Archer stepped aside so the kids could bunch in behind their mother.

Wyatt screwed up his face, his eyebrows scrunching together.
 
“That Chinese dude yesterday had one, didn’t he?
 
The dude with the camera.”
 
He glanced over at his sister.

Ramey nodded again.
 
“Oh my God, yeah.
 
He’s right.
 
The paparazzi.”

Lindsay gasped, remembering the trauma of him jumping out of his car and trespassing on their property.
 
She pressed a hand to her chest and took a deep breath.
 
She glanced up at Archer.

Archer looked to Raj, then over at Simeon.
 
“What color was the car?”

The kids said in unison, without a beat of hesitation, “Yellow.”

Lindsay nodded agreement.

Wyatt spoke up.
 
“He was taking pictures of us to sell to magazines!
 
Smackdown was telling everybody where we live!”

“Pull up the other one,” Archer said.

Raj opened a new window.
 
A static image of the small man in the Lakers jersey.

“Oh…my…gawd!” Ramey gasped.

“That’s him,” Lindsay confirmed.
 
“He’s here?
 
How did he find us?”

“Archer said there was a yellow Prius way in the distance in the rearview mirror this morning,” Raj said.

Wyatt glanced up at Archer.
 
“Seriously?”

“Today?” Ramsey said.

Archer nodded.

Then something pinged in Ramey’s brain.
 
Her mouth dropped open.
 
She backed away from the chair and the long table and stood with her back against the wall, eyes growing big and round.

“Oh my God oh my God oh my God,” she stammered, slightly above a whisper.
 
She started blinking rapidly, shaking her head.
 
“That…that was him.”

“What are you talking about?” Lindsay asked.

“I saw someone at the truck stop this morning.
 
As I was coming out after using the restroom.
 
I was walking back toward the pumps and I saw someone hurrying away from the Hummer.
 
I saw him for a few seconds, then he disappeared behind the big trucks.
 
Mr. Archer came out and we drove off.”

Archer stared at her.

“You’re certain he was near the Hummer?”

She shrugged.
 
“The sun was in my eyes, but that’s what it looked like from a distance.”
 
She shrugged again, as if punctuating her thought.

Simeon frowned at his brother.
 
Then he said to Archer, “I’d suggest you inspect the Hummer.”

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.