72 Hours (A Thriller) (33 page)

Archer jerked the knife out and away.
 
The mercenary wasn’t prepared for the move.
 
His arm went forward hard.
 
Archer swung the blade wide, then brought it up with a quick pull.
 
Alpha couldn’t recover.
 
In the next half second it was too late.
 
Archer thrust the blade with all the power left in his right arm, shoving it deep into Alpha’s ear.
 
The entire length of the blade sank into the soft tissue of his brain.
 
And suddenly the struggle was over.

The mercenary’s body relaxed, arms falling slack in the strong current, blood pluming out from his ear, his nostrils, his mouth, the crimson ribbons trailing out into the shadowy water.

Archer held firm to the corpse.
 
He didn’t hear the burst of automatic gunfire but saw the blur of muzzle flash light up the chasm between the limestone walls.
 
A quintet of bullets pocked across the water alongside him in a perfectly straight row, like buttons down the front of a shirt.

Archer instinctively rolled onto his back, shielding himself with the corpse of the dead mercenary.
 
He sucked in a quick breath and went back under.
 
A second burst stitched across the water, slicing diagonally across the torso of the corpse.
 

Archer unwrapped his arm from around the man’s throat and grasped the body instead by the back of the shirt collar.
 
Then he swung an arm behind his back and drew out the Beretta.
 
He brought the gun up between the dead man’s slack right arm and his lifeless body, firing once, then twice, the first shot ringing off the limestone.

Archer brought his head to the surface, sighted down the Beretta, and ripped off two more consecutive rounds, drilling Foxtrot once in the chest and once in the meat of his left shoulder.

Foxtrot pin-wheeled with the force of the hits, spun to his right, his HK417 discharging a burst of half a dozen rounds at nothing in particular.

Archer heard him cry out, even as the bang of the Beretta rang in his ears.

Foxtrot had fallen away from the gap at the top of the canyon.

Archer used the window between exchanges of gunfire to his advantage.
 
He ran his hand over the dead man’s Kevlar vest and tore a single grenade from a pouch of heavy nylon webbing.
 

An instant later the mercenary stitched a barrage of bullets in a zigzag pattern across the surface of the rushing water.

Archer pulled the pin with his teeth, then leaned out over the water current and heaved the grenade straight up between the walls.

The grenade sailed up through the rift in the rock, grazed the limestone at the rim of the wall, and rose up about six inches above the canyon opening before stalling in midair.
 
At the instant its momentum ceased, it detonated.
 

Foxtrot never saw it coming.
 
The grenade exploded less than four feet from his legs.
 
He was blown apart.
 
Archer turned his head and shielded his face with his arms.
 
Falling rock and debris splashed all around him, sharp, fragmented corners and razor-like angles catching him, cutting and bruising.
 
Archer pushed off the limestone wall with his legs and allowed the current to haul him downstream.
 
He drifted through the winding canyon, soaked and cold.
 
At the mouth of the canyon he hauled himself up into the dirt and brush.
 
He was banged up and bleeding but alive.
 
Two more dead, he thought.

Five down.

CHAPTER 98

The metal button depressed with a stiff pop.
 
Ramey held her fist against it, not daring to let up.
 
The ominous orange light continued to pulse.
 
She cut her eyes toward the metal staircase leading up out of the room.

Wyatt looked on in wide-eyed wonder and fear.

For two long seconds nothing happened.

Ramey’s stomach dropped.

Then they heard the electric motor bang and hum.
 
There was a loud squeal as gears and pumps rattled to life.
 
There was a chill-inducing shudder that jolted through the entire room.
 
And then a massive slab of steel dropped smoothly into place, slamming down, covering the doorway, sealing them off from the rest of the world.
 
The bottom edge of the slab door sank down several inches below floor-level so that nothing could be used to leverage it open.
 
The electric motor groaned like a banshee, then fell silent.
 

The orange light dimmed and then ceased pulsing so that children were bathed in its steady orange glow.
 
Silence settled over them.
 
They stared at the door for what seemed like forever.

Neither of them spoke.

*
   
*
   
*

Lindsay heard the steel door crash into place.
 
A burst of gunfire raked across a wall a few feet from her face.

She screamed and instinctively raised the Kimber and pulled the trigger.
 
The gun bucked in her hand.
 
She fired the shot blindly.
 
The blast rang boldly through the corridor.
 
She screamed again, the pistol quaking wildly in her trembling hand.

Then she turned and ran.
 
Ran hard through the stark blackness.
 
Ran without thinking.

She slammed from wall to wall, dodging blindly from one corridor to the next, bursts of automatic gunfire pulverizing the walls and ceiling five or six steps behind.
 
She collided hard with the corner of a wall and the Kimber jolted loose from her hand, skittering out of sight and out of reach into the darkness.
 
She’d lost the radio and now the gun.
 
Her only remaining defense was to run.

She spun away from the hard edge of the concrete corner and flung herself into the next dark open space.

“Stop!” the man shouted somewhere behind her.
 
“You can’t escape!
 
It’s over!”

Lindsay screamed involuntarily, a desperate yelp.
 
She didn’t dare slow down.

He fired again.
 
A burst of muzzle flash briefly lighting the low ceiling of the corridor.

“There’s nowhere to run!” his huge voice roared.
 
“It’s time for you to die, Lindsay!”

Oh my God, they know my name!

“It’s over!” he said.
 
“You can’t win!”

She sprinted through the darkness, lost inside the maze of corridors and rooms.
 
She clipped a doorjamb with her right shoulder and spun through the open doorway.
 
She scrambled on her hands and knees and pushed the door closed behind her.
 
It banged shut.
 
She slapped the doorknob where she believed a lock should be and heard it click.
 
Then she scrambled away from the door on her backside, out of breath, heart racing, tears streaming down her face.

Tango’s heavy boots pounded down the corridor and stopped outside the door.

Lindsay clamped her hands over her mouth to keep from screaming.
 

“Lindsay?” he said.

He tested the doorknob.
 
Locked.

“It’s over, Lindsay.
 
There’s nowhere left to run.”

Lindsay backpedaled, silently propelling herself across the room on her rear-end.
 
She felt a rug beneath her bunch up and slide as she pushed against it.
 
It occurred to her that she was in the library.
 
She vaguely remembered the big rug sprawled on the floor in front of the cheap sofa and the stacks of books.
 
It gave her some frame of reference but did her very little good.

She heard a burst of gunfire outside the door, the bullets ringing against the metal sheathing.
 
Sooner or later he would blow the lock off.
 
And all she could do was sit and wait.

She pushed the rug further out of the way and the floor suddenly felt hollow beneath her.
 
She patted it with the palm of her hand.
 
There was a metal plate beneath her.
 
A rectangle of cool metal cut into the concrete floor.

She scrambled onto her knees and brushed the rug aside.
 
She felt along the surface of the plate, probing with her fingertips.
 
Toward the center of one end she found what she’d been hoping for.
 
A narrow groove intended as a hand pull.

Tango shot the door again, kicking at it with the sturdy heel of his boot.

Lindsay knew the door couldn’t hold for much longer.

She lifted the panel, praying it was more than just an access to the power grid or storage or a weapons cache.
 
The panel opened easily enough, but she couldn’t see a thing.
 
There was nothing beneath her but empty space.
 
She sat at the edge of the drop and extended her legs down.
 
There seemed to be no evidence of a ladder or handholds.
 
Cool air hissed up from the dark, open cavity.
 
It smelled of fiberglass insulation and dust.

The commotion outside the library door suddenly fell silent.
 
An eerie moment of stillness.
 
She sat with her legs dangling into the open hatch and turned her head.
 
She could see only a thin strip of illumination from the tactical light on his gun glowing in the gap beneath the door.
 
She couldn’t hear him but knew he was still there.

Her stomach twisted.
 
She held the hatch panel with the flat of her hand as she cautiously lowered herself into the hole.
 
Her feet didn’t touch bottom.
 
As far as she knew, she could be about to drop into the center of the earth.

Then she heard Tango press something against the outside of the library door, and heard the stomping of his heavy boots retreating down the corridor to take cover.
 
Her time had run out.
 
She ducked her head and let go of the edge.
 
The hatch panel clanged shut above her as she dropped into darkness.

Then the library door exploded.

CHAPTER 99

Archer knew that the remaining mercenaries surely had to have heard the grenade explode at the slot canyon.
 
They would want to know what had happened and who was involved.
 
He heard one of them calling over the radio to their team lead.
 
The team lead didn’t answer.

“Team Lead – Alpha, do you copy?” the call went out again, and again no reply.

“Foxtrot, do you copy?” the same voice said.

Foxtrot didn’t answer.

Archer filed two more names into memory.
 
Alpha and Foxtrot.

He was pleased.
 
The team lead was apparently among the dead.
 
Either from a knife in the ear or a grenade in the face.
 
He wanted them to panic as their numbers dwindled.
 
He wanted insecurity to set in.
 
He wanted each of them to come to the realization that as long as they continued to pursue the individual he was charged with protecting, they were going to die, one by one.

*
   
*
   
*

Oscar and Kilo had indeed seen the flash from the explosion at the slot canyon from their positions along the meandering route up the ridgeline.
 
It stopped them cold.
 
They hunkered down in the brush and got on the radio for a head count.
 
No report from Alpha or Foxtrot.
 
They glassed the folds between the ridges and observed no movement.
 
They had seen the flash, heard the rumble, felt the slight tremor.
 
But now there was only the rain and crackle of thunder.
 
So they continued the uphill march toward the sniper’s nest.

CHAPTER 100

The first few drops of rain had begun to fall at the roadside motel on a lonely stretch of Nevada interstate.
 
The sign by the roadside advertised vacancies, and judging by the sparse half-dozen vehicles sprinkled across the parking lot, the vacancies were plentiful.
 
The rain moved in slowly, patiently.
 
The first few drops fell on the dusty windshield of the little Kia minivan and lazily streaked down the slope of the glass.

The Kia was parked in the last slot at the far end of the motel, the furthest point from the office.
 
It sat in the cool stillness of the early morning.
 
The engine was still ticking.