Jack Kilborn & Ann Voss Peterson & J. A. Konrath

by Flee - a Thriller

  “Is Wanda there?’ Jacob asked. I could barely hear him.

  I’d already used the Milan code phrase, so I used the follow-up. “She’s visiting her cousin in Nebraska. Can I take a message?”

  “Are you out of the building yet? The Carmen Sawyer ID is burned. Word from the Chicago PD is that there are state and federal warrants out on you. I count at least ten squad cars heading toward your apartment. Two of them are pulling up right now.”

  Standard operating procedure. Someone higher-up trumped up some fake charges so the feds and local law enforcement brought me in. But were they trying to save me, or bury me?

  I shook my head. Think. I needed to think. Kaufmann first.

  “I need you to triangulate that call made to my home phone. It’s a…” I groped for the word, “friend’s cell. Cory kidnapped him. I also need a DoD backdoor and a direct uplink to an ICU satellite in sync orbit over Chicago.”

  “Opening backdoor…now. Diciassettesimo papa. You don’t have time to mess around with Cory right now, Chandler. Wait…what the hell?” Jacob paused, then said, “How did they find me?”

  My heart rate jumped up an extra twenty beats per minute, and it was already hovering around 130. “Who found you? What’s happening there?”

  “Chandler, they’re blowing the main…”

  The phone went dead. Jacob. I let out a breath. Nothing I could do about it at the moment. I hopped over the corpse, tucked away the cell, and stepped into the hallway. My house handset rang. Cory.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” I said, trying to keep my breathing steady. “This damn phone connection.”

  Kaufmann’s voice was faint, and my hearing still hadn’t fully returned, but his words felt as if they were fired into my head with a machine gun.

  “He cut off one of my fingers.”

  Everything I’ve been taught—all of my training, all of my experience—slipped away. For a second, I couldn’t breathe. I shuddered, rooted to the spot, alone and afraid. “Kaufmann? Talk to me!”

  Cory came on. “Do your best not to lose the connection again, Carmen. Next time I’m not going to bother with a finger. I’ll take the whole hand. You know I’ll do it. Shit, I’ll enjoy doing it.”

  Ice, I reminded myself. I was ice. So cool I had antifreeze for blood. I unbunched my jaw, forced back the tears and looked around the stairwell.

  Focus.

  No heat in there, making it at least ten degrees cooler than the hallway. Brick walls, metal stairs, eight steps per flight, two flights between floors. Below, I heard footfalls. At least five sets, coming up in a hurry. “I’ll give you the money. Whatever you want. Just don’t hurt him again.”

  “Listen closely, babe. I’ll only say this once.”

  If that many cops were coming in after me, they must have the exits covered. Getting arrested meant Kaufmann would die. No doubt Cory was planning on killing him even if I paid—Cory wasn’t known for leaving survivors. But I couldn’t help Kaufmann if I was in custody.

  Assuming whoever set me up would let me live long enough to be taken into custody.

  Down wasn’t an option. So I had to go up.

  “I’m listening,” I said, controlling my breathing. The steps were cold under my feet, and I took them two at a time. I could smell stale beer and vomit, probably courtesy of the college kids from the floor below, and the lemon-scented bleach John the custodian used to clean it up. The footsteps got louder, more numerous. Eight cops…no, nine…coming up fast. I increased my pace.

  “The sidewalk at eight seventy…”

  The phone hissed static at me.

  I’d gone out of range.

  I stopped, went back down a few steps.

  “Please repeat that. I couldn’t hear you.” My voice went up an octave, a little acting but also some real emotion getting out. “Please don’t hurt him again, Cory This goddamn phone—”

  “Eight-seventy-five North Michigan Avenue,” he said, irritation in his tone.

  I didn’t want Cory to be irritated. I knew what he was capable of.

  The cops were less than three floors down from me. They’d check my apartment first. But it wouldn’t take long to search, and when they didn’t find me they’d send a team upstairs. Could I kill innocent police officers to save Kaufmann?

  “Got it,” I whispered. “Eight-seventy-five North Michigan. What time?”

  “You’ll have the money in a yellow shoulder bag. Wait there for—”

  Static again. I wanted to smash the phone against the wall, but instead crept down five more stairs until his voice returned.

  “—exactly three hours from now. If you go to the police, I’ll kill him.”

  Less than fifteen vertical feet separated me from the police. I could smell the aftershave on one of them—Lagerfeld—and their body heat and movement had raised the stairwell temperature two or three degrees.

  “Don’t hurt him again,” I said, low and firm.

  Yelling, from my floor below. They’d discovered the bodies.

  “Miller! Casey! Check the stairwell!”

  Their footsteps tap-tap-tapped up the stairs, about to round the corner and see me.

  “That’s up to you, babe.” Cory disconnected.

  I wiped the phone off with my shirt, dropped it, and bolted, moving fast as I could, bouncing on the balls of my feet, ascending four flights in seven seconds, coming to the roof access door. I tried the knob. Locked, as expected, and no time to pick it. On the wall was a fire alarm. I pulled it, the siren filling the stairwell, then fired my Glock three times at the lock mechanism.

  The door swung outward. I lunged through. My foot snagged a cable—something that hadn’t been there previously—and my body kept going. I pitched forward and threw out my hands, my gun skittering across the flat concrete rooftop just as a supersonic bullet parted my hair and dug a burning trail across my scalp; a shot that would have killed me a millisecond sooner.

  I’d made a huge mistake. With everything going on, I’d forgotten about the sniper.

  “Use all of your senses, all the time,” The Instructor said. “The brain is a parallel processor, but it dismisses most sensory input as redundant, irrelevant. You must teach your brain to stop ignoring what seems normal, obvious, or mundane. Hyper-awareness can often be the difference between a live operative and a dead operative.”

  I tucked my arms into my chest and rolled sideways, coming to rest behind a metal chimney roughly the size and shape of a street corner mailbox. My Glock was ten feet away. Might as well have been a mile. The cable that saved my life snaked across the roof to a new satellite dish.

  A bullet punched through the aluminum like a finger through soggy bread, making a hole only a few inches from my nose. I flattened myself against the tar paper, my cheek resting on dried pigeon droppings. Another shot, two seconds later, perforated the chimney five inches lower than the first, burying itself into the rooftop ten meters behind me. The wind whipped through my hair, but the short length kept it out of my face. These were Chicago winds, snaking around buildings, blowing eddies left, then up, then back.

  “There’s a sniper up here!” I yelled, hoping it would make the police stay back.

  My breath came fast, my heart pumping like a cardio workout, but my mind was focused and clear. The time between shots told me the sniper was using a bolt action rifle. Calculating the hypotenuse of the trajectory told me he was in the apartment building to the west, roughly one floor above me. He’d either been on the fire escape facing my apartment, or in one of the rooms. When the police arrived, he must have deduced my only way out was the roof, so he’d gone up as well. His building was seven stories taller than mine. The higher the sniper ascended, the better his angle, the easier his shot.

  I needed to get off the roof.

  Since the sniper was in motion, I assumed he hadn’t any time to secure his mount. That meant each time he fired, he’d have to load another bullet, which would cause an unmoored rifle to jiggle a bit. On a telescopic l
ens, the slightest jiggle would force him to readjust after every shot. The high wind would make hitting a moving target even tougher.

  “This is the Chicago Police Department! Put down your weapon and put your hands above your head!”

  I glanced back at the doorway, saw the cops standing there like paper targets, and yelled, “There’s a sniper on the opposite building!”

  They followed my voice, training their guns my way. I got up on my fingers and toes, hopped to get my feet under me, and sprinted east.

  I registered my mistake immediately, when the tar paper around my feet erupted in weapon fire. The sniper had a fully automatic rifle, not a bolt action as I’d assumed. He was a pro, and he’d played me.

  But he underestimated how fast I could move, and where I would go. I didn’t bother zig-zagging or back-tracking, which were standard sniper counter-measures. I beelined for the roof’s edge, feet slapping hard for maximum traction.

  Ready or not…

  Stretching out my hands, I dove off the side of the building.

  I soared through the air, bullets cracking the sound barrier all around me. Heights weren’t my strongest suit, and as I caught a glimpse of the street ten stories below—the cars and trees and people looking like toys—every part of me wanted to scream.

  Use the adrenaline. Use the adrenaline.

  Arms open and reaching, I waited for the fire escape I prayed was still there, the fire escape I hadn’t checked since my long-ago roof reconnaissance when I first moved into the apartment.

  My memory was a bit off.

  The fire escape was still on the side of the building, but my angle was wrong by about a foot. The railing blurred as I passed over it and out into open sky.

  Shit shit shit.

  I adjusted, bending into a pike, reaching back around. My elbow hooked onto the iron railing, jerking me backward. I felt sharp pain and heard a pop—my shoulder had dislocated or broken. I clung to the side of the fire escape, my feet dangling above the alley two hundred feet below.

  Pain ripped through my arm and down my side. No time to dwell on it now. I had precious few seconds to get my footing and get down to the ground level before the various people after me figured out where to look. I’d have to file the pain away, deal with it later. I reached up with my good hand, did a one-armed pull-up to disengage my elbow, and sought out the rusty iron grating with my toes. Then I flipped myself over the railing and scurried to the first ladder, trying to process my situation.

  The sniper would be vacating. He’d seen the cops and given away his position. I had a whole building between him and me, so he was off my worry list for the moment. The cops were another story. The ones on the roof would take cover, radio for back up. Any units on the ground would be moving into position beneath me.

  The breeze was considerable. I had to use my injured arm just to make sure I didn’t blow off the ladder. My muscles screamed at me for relief, but I made them work anyway, pushing my way down the first three floors fast as I could. I chanced a look down, my mind swirling, vertigo tugging at me. A quick flash of memory invaded my brain, a training exercise where The Instructor had made me climb a forty foot high pole and traverse a rope leading to another pole. The height had paralyzed me until he’d drawn his sidearm and shot at me to force me to do it.

  Goddamn heights.

  I swallowed the dizziness and pressed onward. The scent of garbage drifted up from the alley, malted barley from a nearby brewpub, and now there were sirens in the distance, approaching fast.

  I descended another ladder—only five more to go. The metal on the fire escape was old and sharpened by years of bad weather. My feet were starting to numb from the cold, but I could still feel the scrapes on the soles of my feet. I took a quick look. Some blood, but not enough to make me slip. I kept going.

  The sirens had almost reached my building. The garbage stench grew stronger. I glanced down. The ground was about forty feet below, this part of the alley still clear of police vehicles. Roosting pigeons flapped into the air to my right, cooing their objections. My heart rate shot up at the surprise, and I lost precious seconds prying my fingers off the ladder to continue the descent.

  With two floors left to go, a police truck pulled around the corner. A Chevy, white with blue trim, shaped like an ambulance. It moved slowly down the alley. I could see the driver through the windshield, which meant he could see me.

  There were still twenty feet between my feet and the asphalt, a fatal distance, but the truck was at least eight feet high. A twelve foot drop was dangerous but survivable. Dropping onto a moving truck would be tough. The high wind made the odds worse. My stomach clenched, fear and adrenalin, and I wondered if I’d be able to force myself to act.

  Just do it.

  I launched myself off the fire escape, calculating as I fell. Ankles pressed tight together, knees slightly bent, I figured I had a forty percent chance of surviving when I hit the truck’s roof.

  My feet struck hard enough to dent the aluminum, and I immediately bent my legs and dropped onto my back, both hands slapping down to disperse the energy of my fall as if I were on a judo mat.

  The truck hadn’t been moving fast, and I’d jumped in the direction of travel, so for a millisecond it seemed like I might actually stay on top.

  Then the driver hit the brakes.

  I tucked in best I could, rolling off the roof, bouncing off the hood, and spinning onto the alley like an angry god spat me out.

  Someone said, “Holy shit.” One of the cops from the truck.

  I came to a stop on my side, perhaps ten feet in front of it. My one arm was worthless, and I instantly counted three more scrapes to add to my other injuries, but I was miraculously alive.

  Should have given myself better odds.

  I got a leg under me, did a trick with my ears to bring my balance back quicker, and then took four unsteady steps east before launching into a full sprint.

  The alley let out onto Clybourn. I noted four police cars, two unmarked sedans that I IDed as Feds, and seven cops milling about on the sidewalk. The cops in the alley would be contacting others. But none had looked in my direction yet, and I chugged onto the sidewalk, sidestepping two gawkers, and turning north onto Sheffield. My bare feet slapped the pavement, but I could barely feel them now due to cold and the pain of all my other injuries. I cut through another alley. When I reached the next street, I doubled back. The cops were certainly on my trail by now, but it would be a tough trail to follow.

  Two blocks later I slowed down to a walk. My heart rate was hovering around a hundred eighty beats per minute, and I got my breathing under control while triaging my body.

  The shoulder was the worst injury, and now that I had time for examination I determined it was dislocated, hanging two inches lower than it was supposed to. It felt hot to the touch, and the fingers of that arm were numb from the bone pressing against the axillary nerve.

  I knew basic anatomy, knew combat medicine, knew where the ball of the humerus was supposed to connect to the socket of the scapula. Trying not to think too hard about what was coming, I grabbed my biceps, jerked upward hard as I could, and felt it slip into place. A wave of agony took me, among the worst I’d ever felt.

  I fought to focus past the pain and tune into my surroundings. The street was moderately busy, five cars heading north, seven going south. Two women waiting for the bus. A homeless guy sitting on the sidewalk, his back to a burger restaurant. I smelled exhaust, old vegetable oil, and pigeon shit. My tee was covered with bird poop, rust, and grime. After a few seconds, I managed to control my whimper. But nothing could stop the tears streaming down my face.

  I continued to walk, slowing my heartbeat, managing my breathing. I tried not to think too hard about Kaufmann, about Jacob, about everything that had just gone down. I couldn’t afford emotion. Not yet. Survival came first.

  I inventoried the rest of my body. The gash in my scalp where the bullet grazed me was already scabbing over, although my hair
was sticky with blood. My feet were cut up, but superficially and not requiring immediate attention. Some tenderness in my right ankle, probably from when I landed on the truck. Both elbows scraped, and a sore spot on my hip. That made me reach for the spot and dig out the encrypted cell.

  It turned on, no problem. I wasn’t surprised. This thing was made to stop a bullet if it had to. I wondered if I actually needed it anymore. If Jacob had been compromised, the next call I received could be suspect, even if it came from him. But I’d been told, in no uncertain terms, that I was to never ditch the phone, not even in dire circumstances. I tucked it away again.

  Again I steered my thoughts to more immediate matters. My beat-up state was certain to gain notice from passersby, and my description, including clothing, would be on the airwaves by now. I needed to change my appearance. I took a casual look around, didn’t spot anyone paying attention, and ducked inside a discount store.

  Like most dollar shops, this one sold discontinued junk that the owner bought by the pallet. Generic sundries, cheap foreign tools, no-name make-up and hair care supplies, sad-looking silk plants, and an astonishing variety of clocks featuring images of Jesus.

  I walked past an aisle filled with obsolete magazines and worked at the seam on my tee, tugging it open and removing the rolled fifty dollar bill. My sweat pants, underwear, bra, as well as every piece of clothing and every shoe I owned, each had a hidden fifty. That made my wardrobe worth several thousand dollars more than I paid for it. The hours of sewing proved worthwhile at that moment, and the two hundred dollars I had on me should be enough until I could reach one of my lockers.

  I made quick work of the store, grabbing some cheap gym shoes, khakis, a dark green blouse, a box of baby wipes, a bottle of aspirin, a box of decongestant, and a straw sunhat. A three dollar pair of sunglasses rounded out the ensemble. After paying, I walked into the burger joint next door and spent four minutes in the washroom, cleaning away the dirt and blood with the wipes and dressing in my discount clothing. I threw away my tee and sweat pants, first removing the two pieces of metal hidden in the waistband and using the drawstring to tie them around my neck.