Free 72 Hours (A Thriller) by William Casey Moreton Page A

Myers said.
    “Did you get a trace?”
    “Give me a second.”
    Archer was replaying her frail, frightened voice in his head.   That was the voice of the woman he would be responsible for keeping alive for the next seventy-two hours.  
    Myers was suddenly back on the line.
    “Okay.   We’ve got a rough location.   She’s in Malibu and it looks like all hell has broken loose up there.   How far out are you?”
    “From downtown?”
    “Affirmative.”
    Kline glanced at the pilot.
    The pilot said, “Ten minutes.”
    Kline nodded.   He glanced over his shoulder at Archer.   “What do you think?”
    Archer was breaking it down by time, distance, and speed.   “I want to be on the ground in fifteen minutes.   She won’t last long on foot on her own, and she can’t protect her kids.   From the talk coming over the radio, those hills are turning into a parking lot.   The sooner you dump me up there the better.   Any deviation is a waste of time.”
    “How do you plan to get them out of there?”
    Archer glared at him.   “Let me worry about that.”
    “If that’s the way you want it, I won’t argue.”   Kline gestured at the pilot.   “Okay, Jimmy, turn it around.”   He pinwheeled his index finger in the air.
    The pilot acknowledged his orders with a nod of his head.   He manipulated the controls, and the McDonnell Douglas banked hard, changing course and buzzing away from the city.
    The radio squawked with reports of random gunfire and bodies on the ground in Malibu.   The Malibu 911 system was going crazy.   Home owners had been shot and homes were on fire.   Kline thought it would be a miracle if Lindsay Hammond was still alive by the time Archer got on the ground and found her.
    “Seven minutes,” the pilot said.
    Kline turned in the forward seat and handed Archer a cell phone.   “This has Lindsay Hammond’s cell number already programmed into memory.   You’ll have to maintain contact with her to locate her because both of you will likely be constantly on the move.   And here,” he said.   “Hook this on your ear.”   He handed Archer a Bluetooth earpiece.   “So you can communicate handsfree.”
    Archer frowned at the cell.  
    Kline said, “The cell will also provide me a way to contact you, and vice versa.”
    “The instant I drop from this chopper, I’m a ghost.   For three days I don’t exist, so don’t waste your time.   The woman and the two kids are my only priority.”
    Lights from the interior of the cockpit highlighted Kline’s silhouette.   He moved on to his next thought.   “What about money?”
    “What about it?”
    “For expenses.”
    “There won’t be a lot of expenses where we’re going.”
    Kline reached a hand over his shoulder, offering Archer a fold of cash.   “A few hundred bucks.   Just in case.”
    Archer took the money without response and without breaking eye contact.   He slid the cash into a pocket of his shirt and buttoned the flap.
    “Three minutes,” the pilot said.
    Kline stared out the front glass of the chopper.
    Archer tilted his head to see out the side.   The hills of Malibu rolled into focus to his right, the infinite blue-gray of the Pacific to his left.   Ribbons of low-hanging cloud brushed past his window in the slate-colored night.   Lights from homes among the lush vegetation dappled the mountainside like stars twinkling in the sky.
    They sailed inland a few miles, riding a thermal, following the rise of the mountains.   And nearly all at once the spectacle unfolded beneath them.   Smoke rose up in twisted columns, carried westward by coastal winds.   The chopper dove through a curtain of smoke and made a wide sweep above the treetops that towered over a maze of winding and intersecting streets.
    “Good God Almighty,” Kline said under his breath as they thundered over rooftops.   “They’re everywhere.”
    The streets were alive with movement.   Knots of activity silhouetted against the mundane