72 Hours (A Thriller) (42 page)

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Noella Chu worked the bolt action and fired a second bullet into the air toward Archer.
 
It missed but he wasn’t moving, which pleased her.
 
The first shot had been expertly placed.

The shots had been fired from the rooftop of the apartment building half a mile away.
 
Archer had made a nice big clear target.

“One down,” she said to herself.

The muzzle of the rifle was fitted with a noise suppressor and had thus not made a sound that could be heard beyond the rooftop.
 
No crack of gunfire rolling out across the flat desert landscape.
 
Lindsay Hammond would not have heard a thing.

She jinked the scope’s field of view from the dirt road to the front steps of the church where Lindsay Hammond was still clearly visible standing in the open doorway.
 
Noella Chu had never felt such exhilaration.
 
She was one bullet away from the five hundred million dollars.
 
She settled herself and placed the reticle in the center of Lindsay Hammond’s back.
 
Took a deep breath.
 
Squeezed gently down on the trigger.

The rifle bucked against her shoulder as the shot blasted out across the desert landscape.

Noella Chu held the scope steady, watching, waiting.
 
Through the field of view she saw the bullet shatter the wooden doorframe into a cloud of splinters six inches above Lindsay Hammond’s head.
 
A miss.

She operated the bolt action, ejecting the spent cartridge and chambering another round.
 
She jinked the reticle back to the open doorway of the church to place the next shot.
 
But the doorway was empty.
 
Lindsay Hammond was gone.
 

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She lay in the shadows made by the muted light filtering through the stained glass, facedown on the wooden planks of the church floor between two rows of wooden pews.
 
She lay with the one side of her head pressed to the floor, hands flattened at either side of her head.
 
There were wood particles in her hair, dust spiraling in the air in motes of light slanting in through the open doorway.
 
Her head spun with confusion as to what exactly had happened.
 
Lindsay tried to catch her breath but was afraid to breathe.
 

“Archer!” she called, but her voice came out as a constricted croak.

She stared through the gap beneath the pews, waiting to see Archer appear in the church doorway, to see him rushing forth to save her.
 
But there was no sign of him.

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Noella Chu waited.

Clearly, Lindsay Hammond had taken shelter inside the church.
 

She panned back to Archer.
 
Still no movement.
 
He was dead.

She panned the scope to the white Kia minivan.
 
Saw the driver’s door flinch open.
 
A kid with greasy hair got out and stood in the open door, glancing furtively around.
 
He cautiously approached Archer’s body.

She settled the crosshairs of the reticle on the back of his head and squeezed the trigger.
 
A second later his head exploded.
 
He folded to the ground next to Archer like a rag doll.

She jinked the scope back to the open doorway of the church.
 
Lindsay Hammond was still somewhere inside.
 
She abandoned her rifle on the roof of the building and took the fire escape ladder down three stories to the alley.
 
She had spotted the kid with the greasy hair putting ten bucks worth of gas in his pickup truck at the rinky dink gas station down the street.
 
He was by himself and had gaped at her through half-open vacant eyes.
 
She cornered him at the pumps and flashed some cash in his face.
 
The conversation was brief.
 
She had shoved two hundred bucks into his pocket.
 
All he had to do was drive the white minivan to the dirt road and stop fifty yards from the Hummer.
 
She told him the guy in the Hummer would get out and give him another two hundred.
 
It was that simple.
 
And then he was free to go.

The pickup was now parked in the alley.

Penny Lockwood was unconscious but alive in the bed of the truck from a blow to the head.
 
Noella Chu had draped a tarp over her.
 
But Noella Chu no longer had need of Penny Lockwood.
 
She squirreled a silencer onto her Walther and lowered the tailgate at the rear of the pickup.
 
Pointed the gun at the shape beneath the blue tarp and pulled the trigger.
 
The bullet punched a hole through the plastic.

She banged the tailgate shut.

She sat briefly at a stop sign, then rumbled across the highway under the power of the old straight-six.
 
In half a minute she was off the pavement and onto gravel, then dirt, speeding toward the church.
 

CHAPTER 114

The procession of government sedans took Wilshire towards Sepulveda and merged onto the 405 headed south.
 
FBI helicopters drifted overhead.
 
Kline tipped his head against the glass to see the gray blur of the rotor blades in the sky high above the power lines.

They exited onto the Santa Monica Freeway and accelerated hard into the stream of traffic.
 
They floated for ten minutes down the massive spread of asphalt lanes amid commuters and delivery trucks and buses packed with tourists.
 

Kline growled at Dunbar.
 
“Now what?”

“Exit onto the 5,” Dunbar said.

“Do it,” Kline said over the seat to the driver.

The driver nodded, then radioed the instructions to the other cars.

The caravan drifted onto the Santa Ana Freeway.

“Take the 101 south,” Dunbar said.
 
“Then take Exit 3A, and take West Temple to North Boylston.”

Kline glanced at Blackwell.
 
Kline touched the Glock under his jacket.
 
He could feel his anxiety rising.
 
For four years he had dreamed of recovering the bodies, but now he dreaded actually uncovering the macabre physical remains.
 
Mother and daughter, after sixty-plus months of decomposition.
 
The thought of it turned his stomach.

“Tell me what you did with them,” Kline said.

Dunbar sighed.
 
“We will be there soon.”

“Did you bury them?
 
Are they in the ground?”

Dunbar seemed impatient with the questions.
 
He pursed his lips, staring out through the glass at the road ahead.

“No, Special Agent Kline.
 
They are not in the ground.
 
I guess it’s not giving away much of the surprise to tell you that.”

“Where did you put them?”

“In a place you would have never thought to look.”

Kline could feel sweat down his back, even with A/C blasting from the vents.

“Turn right at Boylston.
 
It will take us under the freeway to Bellevue Avenue,” Dunbar directed.

The driver glanced at Kline in the mirror.

Kline nodded.

The first car stopped at the light at the intersection of West Temple and North Boylston.
 
Signaled for a right turn.
 
The second and third cars queued up behind it.
 
The choppers buzzed overhead.

The light changed and the first car jinked through the intersection.
 
They drove into the massive shadow lurking beneath the Santa Ana Freeway.

“It won’t be long now,” Dunbar said.

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Rydel had waited on the flat roof of the building for most of the morning.
 
His perch overlooked the intersection of West Temple and North Boylston.
 
Other members of his team were sprinkled among the rooftops of other nearby buildings.
 
They had the intersection surrounded.
 
The FBI choppers buzzing over the city was the signal they had waited for.
 
Leonard Monroe had said there would be choppers.
 
Monroe had been right about everything so far.
 
Rydel had brought a heavy case with him up the service elevator to the roof.
 
He knelt on the concrete roof and unfastened the metal latches.
 
Opened the lid of the case and lifted a rocket-propelled grenade launcher out from the foam molding.
 
He radioed his men to tell them to prepare for attack, to move on his command.

He strode to the corner of the roof with the clearest view of the intersection.
 
He spoke again into the radio and ordered the trucks to move into position.

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Two of the big trucks rolled in from opposite directions down Bellevue Avenue, steaming toward the intersection of North Boylston.
 
The big rigs ignored the rules of the road, powering forward through the lanes of traffic, rumbling as they shifted into higher gears, the massive ironwork that had been welded onto the front of each truck gleaming in the brilliant Southern California sunshine.

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Two more trucks roared up North Boylston from the rear, doing fifty as they shot through the red light at the intersection of West Temple.

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Rydel watched the choppers circle and hover as the procession of government sedans disappeared from view beneath the span of the freeway.
 
Saw the big rigs roar through the intersection.
 
He hoisted the rocket launcher.
 
Balanced it on his shoulder.
 
Flipped up the sights.
 
Aimed at the nearest chopper, which had pivoted around broadside to him.
 
He waited until the big trucks were at the intersection, plowing into the shadows beneath the freeway.

“Now!” he called into the radio mike.
 
And then he pulled the trigger.

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The rocket hit the chopper squarely broadside.
 
The machine erupted into a fireball, spinning crazily in the air, out of control.
 
It fell rapidly toward the city streets, trailing a column of dense black smoke as it spiraled down.
 
It crashed onto the freeway structure, the burning hulk tipping over the edge of the overpass, fiery debris raining down onto the streets below.

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At that same instant, the first two trucks sandwiched the lead government sedan as it sat at a red light at the intersection.
 
The sheet metal of the big sedan was crushed like a ball of foil inside a fist.
 
The impact of the big trucks compressed the four-door car down to a single brick of scrap metal, reducing it to half its former dimensions.
 

The trucks recoiled away upon the shock of the impact, skidding in opposite directions, the drivers secured inside by heavy harnesses and reinforced iron safety cages.
 
They wore helmets and fire retardant jumpsuits.

The passengers inside the sedan had been crushed to death instantly upon impact.
 
Then the fuel tank exploded.

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“IT’S AN AMBUSH!” Kline shouted.

The driver yelled into his radio to the driver of the third car, “REVERSE!
 
GO!
 
NOW!”

The heat from the fireball rolled over the hood to the cab of the second car as the lead car burned.

“MOVEMOVEMOVE!” Kline yelled, turning to look out the rear window of the car.
 
Then he saw more trucks speeding toward them from the rear.
 
By the time a single reactive thought could form inside his brain it was too late.

The big trucks rammed the third car from behind, lifting the rear wheels off the ground, squashing it into the second car.
 
The third car in the caravan immediately exploded, the intense heat pulsing against the window of the car carrying Kline, Dunbar, and Blackwell.

The impact upturned the second car onto its side, the driver-side wheels lifting of the ground, the car spinning, Blackwell’s door grinding against the asphalt of the street, showering sparks in an arc.
 
The glass in the door shattered and Blackwell fell against the hole where the window had been, his right arm getting sucked beneath the metal doorframe, the force of the movement torquing the bone and flesh free of its socket.
 
Blackwell screamed out in agony and horror.