72 Hours (A Thriller) (28 page)

Noella Chu hissed something under her breath.
 
She couldn’t afford a miscalculation.

“If you’re lying to me, trying to stall, I’ll kill you.
 
Don’t test me.”

“Oh my God, no, I swear,” Penny insisted.
 

“Take me to your car.”

Penny fumbled with her keys and then unlocked the doors to a white Kia minivan.
 
Noella Chu climbed in on the passenger side and ordered her to drive.

“Where are we going?” Penny asked, backing the Kia from the parking space.

“We are going to find your brothers.”

Penny looked incredulous.
 
“But I told you, I don’t know where they are.”

“Sooner or later they will answer the satellite phone, and when they do, they will tell me exactly where to find them or their sister will die.”

CHAPTER 87

After the disappearance of Sidney and Robin, Gaston Dunbar had realized it was only a matter of time before they came for him.
 
Only a matter of time before they grabbed him, locked him in a cell and threw away the key.
 
He’d known they were watching, that his every move was monitored.
 
He should have run immediately, but he waited too long.
 
He should have disappeared while he had the chance.

Because of his hesitation he was forced to plan for the inevitable.
 
He had to look into the future and analyze his options.

The most important thing was to hide the money.
 
His precious five hundred million dollars.
 
Stash it somewhere.
 
Somewhere far from the eyes and hands of the Feds.
 
Someplace where he could easily retrieve it, if and when the opportunity arose.
 

He hid it well, outside the country, buried deep in the databases of foreign banks in numbered accounts.
 
With the touch of a button his millions had raced across thousands of miles of fiber optics, leaving Los Angeles and scattering around the globe.
 

And then, just as he had foreseen, they caught him and locked him away.

His master plan had come to him in a dream, in the darkness of his cell.
 
It came to him like a vision, clear and real and fully formed.
 
In the dream he watched the layers of the plan unfolding.
 
All the players were present, their roles clearly defined.
 
It had unspooled in his subconscious like a Shakespearian drama.
 
Perfectly calculated, from beginning to end, like a gift from God.

Dunbar had awakened in a state of euphoria.
 
The smells and sounds of San Quentin had fallen away.
 
His eyes had fluttered open.
 
He could remember every detail, every face, every nuance of the plan.
 
He knew it would work, and he knew it would require tremendous patience and discipline.
 
All he had to do was wait for the perfect moment.
 
Wait for all the pieces to fall into place.
 

And now, finally, the time had come.

Gaston Dunbar was scheduled to be executed by means of lethal injection in less than forty-eight hours, yet he was sleeping like a baby.

CHAPTER 88

A few hundred miles to the northwest of Las Vegas, Archer crawled on his knees through the mud and brush, making his way forward an inch at a time.
 
Through the night-vision goggles he could see movement in the distance.
 
He was trying to get a better look without giving himself away.
 
He saw two men heading east with automatic weapons.
 

Rain pattered around him.
 
He folded the bipod down from the barrel of his rifle but couldn’t get a lock on them with the scope.
 
He raised his head, gazed out through the green field of view of the night-vision goggles, and momentarily lost track of them.
 
Then he saw a flash of movement and again spotted the dark forms moving through the gnarled trees and scrub.
 

Archer didn’t want to let them get ahead of him.
 
He didn’t want to waste his energy playing catch-up.
 
He needed to get close to them and get the job done while he was still between them and the bunker.
 
He pushed up off the ground into a crouch and swung the rifle out of his way on its sling.
 
He moved low to the ground through the shadows and rain.

The Motorola he’d stolen from the dead mercenary crackled as the storm raged.
 
Communication between the remaining nine was sparse.
 
Archer listened carefully.
 
He was picking up names.
 
They were using the military alphabet to identify one another.
 
They were calling to someone named Echo, but Echo wasn’t responding.
 
Archer quickly came to the conclusion that he had blown Echo’s head off.
 
From the sounds of things, Alpha was the team lead.
 
Archer filed that away.

He traversed down the slope of a ridge, closing the distance to them.
 
They were angling to cross his path.
 
He settled in against the landscape.
 
They came toward him.
 
He raised the Beretta and aimed it.
 
Echo had been wearing a Kevlar vest, so Archer had to go with the assumption that they all were.
 
It had to be a headshot, which was not an easy thing in the dark and in the rain.
 

The first shot was dead on.
 
A single bang.
 
The muzzle flash popping between flashes of lightening.
 
He caught the mercenary nearest him in the throat, blood spouting into the gloom.
 
The man dropped to his back on the ground like dead weight.
 
He groaned and coughed, making a wet gagging sound.

Archer made an instantaneous adjustment, reset his aim, moving the gun two clicks to the right.
 
Pulled the trigger again.
 
A second bang.
 
A good solid shot that ripped open the second man’s shoulder, squirreling him around but not taking him down.
 
The second man then dropped to find shelter.
 

Archer did not move.
 
He could hear the first man gagging for breath, dying a painful death by suffocation.
 
The two blasts had lit up the night-vision goggles with blinding flashes.
 
Archer blinked rapidly, desperate to clear his vision.

Suddenly the rat-tat-tat of automatic gunfire seared through the rain, bullets pocking the mud around him.
 
The second man was engaging him, firing blindly.
 
Archer could see only the blur of the muzzle flashes.
 
Archer fired toward the light.
 

The clatter of gunfire faded into the rain.
 
Thunder rolled.
 
Lightening banged in the distance.
 
Archer was nearly deaf from the huge bang of his Beretta.
 
He could smell the tang of the spent rounds.
 
Silence returned.

Archer listened, straining to pick up any sounds of movement, but heard nothing.
 
He carefully rose to his feet and approached the first man down.
 
The mercenary lay on his back.
 
His head lay in a pool of blood, his throat destroyed.
 
He had suffocated, his mouth open, a hand clutching at his wrecked windpipe.

The second man was nearby among the bushes.
 
He’d slumped onto his side, his forehead peeled open.

Archer staggered several steps away.
 

Three down.

CHAPTER 89

Archer listened to them talk.
 
They had heard the shots.
 
He listened to the discussion as each of the men reported in.
 
He learned what he could, and applied that to what he already knew, but he wasn’t prepared for what Tango had to say.

“Tango to Team Lead.”

“This is Team Lead,” Alpha said.
 
“Go ahead, Tango.”

“I’ve exited the mountains.
 
I’m at the desert floor and I’ve come across a metal panel that I believe is some kind of door.”

“What kind of door?”

“Not sure.
 
Appears to lead underground.”

“Will it open?” Alpha said.

“Negative.
 
I’ll have to use a grenade and blast my way in.”

“Copy that,” Alpha said.
 
“Proceed and use whatever force necessary.”
 

CHAPTER 90

“Raj?
 
Simeon?
 
Do you copy?”

Both men responded.

“One of them has reached the doors to the bunker,” Archer said.
 
“Can you see him?”

“Negative,” Simeon answered.
 
“The storm is killing visibility.
 
I will have to move down off this ridge to get a better view.”

“Do it!
 
Hurry!”

“From my position I can’t see anywhere near the doors,” Raj said.
 

“How did he get around you guys?”

“I don’t have a good answer to that,” Raj said.
 
“He must have landed to the south of us.”

“Somebody get over there!” Archer said.

“I’m on my way,” Simeon answered.

*
   
*
   
*

Simeon put his arms out for balance.
 
The rifle shifted against his back as he edged carefully around a protruding rock escarpment.
 
His trek up the ridge in search of a satisfactory perch had placed him in a saddle with a poor view of the outlying desert plain.
 
It was going to take a few minutes to make his way back.
 
He groped along the muddy slope.
 
The intersecting ridgelines were like a maze, and the storm was disorienting.
 
He realized he was getting turned around.

He stood in the rain, studying his compass.
 
He couldn’t have traveled far.
 
He slapped the compass shut and scrabbled toward the crest of the ridge before him.

CHAPTER 91

Tango set his Heckler & Koch MP5 aside and leaned it against the mound that the metal panel doors were set into.
 
He studied the doors as he probed his fingers down the middle seam.
 
The metal was slick with rain and grit.
 
He hammered on one of the panels with the back of a gloved fist to get some idea of the density of the steel.
 

Tango inspected the seam running down the centerline again, heaved against it, the ropy muscles of his arms bulging through his wet shirt.
 
Thick veins stood out from his neck.
 
His fingers probed the outer edges.
 
The door measured perhaps ten feet from top to bottom, and fifteen across.
 
It was set into the earth at a forty-five degree angle.
 
It looked like it had been there awhile.

He pulled a grenade from a pouch on his hip and rested his bodyweight against the rain-slicked surface where the seam split it in two.
 
He unwrapped a stick of stiff brown putty and molded the lump onto the rounded shell of the grenade.
 
He then pressed the putty side of the grenade against the door at the seam.
 
He eased his hand away.
 
The explosive remained adhered in place.
 
All he had to do was pull the pin and stand clear.

But he didn’t get the chance.

The shot hit him high in the chest and spun him around.
 
It rocked him backward off the door and off his feet.
 

*
   
*
   
*

Simeon didn’t move.
 
He was an old pro.
 
Kept his eye to the scope, his finger on the trigger, ready to take a follow-up shot.
 
He watched through the gloom and rain, confident that he had made the kill.

*
   
*
   
*

“There it is again,” Wyatt said.
 
“Hear it?”
 

He was standing on the fourth step up, one hand on the rail.
 
He listened again to the ringing sound, then turned to glance back into the secure room for reactions from his mother and sister.

Ramey was still seated on the floor, her arms hugged over her chest.

Lindsay stood several steps safely back from the open door, glaring sourly at her son.

“Come back inside.
 
I don’t want to tell you again,” she said.