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

by Flee - a Thriller

  When she sees the blips on the screen, every muscle in her body tenses.

  You crafty little bitch. How did you get away?

  Hammett watches the blip move south, and quickly figures out where Chandler is headed. She redials her cell.

  “Clancy, it’s Hammett. Chandler is on her way. She’ll be there within half an hour.”

  “Shall I kill her?”

  “Don’t kill her. We still need information.” Hammett smiles, thinking of Clancy’s Hydra report. Clancy could shoot the legs off a butterfly at two thousand yards during a hurricane on a starless night. “Shoot to wound,” she orders her sister. “And make it hurt.”

  “In a fight between two snipers, the outcome is predetermined,” The Instructor said. “The higher ground always wins. Always.”

  The wind carried the scent of oak leaves, wood fire and Lake Michigan. Driving The Instructor’s car, I passed a handful of McMansions stuck into rustic settings, and wound my way closer to the lake. Here gigantic homes dotted multi-acre lots forested with oak and maple, most nestled so far off the narrow, twisting road that they couldn’t be seen, even though tree branches were half bare. I checked the tablet PC and continued. The road flanked a forest preserve, and houses fell away to forest and wetlands. A private road turned off and I took it.

  The sun was showing off as it went down, throwing spectacular pinks and oranges across the trees, turning the horizon into a Monet painting. Soon it would be dark.

  The only thing worse than a firefight during the daylight was a firefight in the dark.

  I ditched the sedan in a turn off about a mile from the three blips on my tablet PC. I’d zoomed in enough to get a topical layout of the area. One was me. The other was Clancy. The third was unknown. It might be Hammett, though I guessed the blip at the Hancock Center was hers. There was also a blip at the Cook County morgue, which could indicate Forsyth, or Ludlam, or Follett. Or a combination of all three.

  So why was there an extra nearby? Could one of my dead sisters be back in play somehow? Or were there more of these tracker things than The Instructor had indicated?

  Hefting my rifle case, I started through the woods. Clouds scutted across the sky, dark on one side, pastel on the other as the sun dipped down. Night had its own smell, crisp and cool and dangerous.

  Dry leaves skittered and skipped along the dirt. I moved slowly, watching my footing, keeping low. It wouldn’t be easy to spot a sniper through the trees, especially a pro like Clancy supposedly was. I would need all my senses and a liberal dose of luck.

  Make that an extraordinary dose of luck. Matching the blip to the terrain, I saw that my sister had taken the highest point in the area, on a ridge two kilometers to the northwest. From that vantage point, she was the master of this entire domain. My only hope was to lay low and try to sneak up on—

  The shot missed my foot by only a few inches, kicking up a clot of dirt. A millisecond later the report echoed through the trees, a thunderous boom coming from the ridge.

  I dove behind a fallen tree, rolling onto my back, clutching the rifle case to my chest. I wondered how exposed I was, but didn’t dare check. Since the bullet arrived before the sound, I knew Clancy was firing supersonic rounds. If I peeked my head over the rotting log, chances are I’d have it shot off before I even heard the bullet coming.

  Although I’d excelled at long distance shooting during training, the sniper mindset was never a good fit for me. The best snipers were almost supernatural with their patience. In a full ghillie suit—a mesh covering woven with camouflage fabric and often actual leaves, weeds, and moss until the wearer looked like a swamp monster—it might take a sniper an entire day to cross a single acre of land, creeping an inch at a time, blending perfectly into the foliage. While waiting for a shot, it wasn’t unusual for a sniper to bivouac for a week or more in a single area, never moving more than a few feet.

  I opened the clasps on my rifle case. Working quickly, while there was still a sliver of light left, I began to assemble my M24. It was a modified, takedown version of the Remington 700 rifle, upgraded for military use. This one was rebarreled for .300 Winchester Magnum ammo, had a muzzle flash hider, a Leupold day scope, and a AN/PVS-26 night vision device. I finished putting the rifle together by feel just as the sun made its exit, all the while holding my breath and waiting for Clancy’s next shot. Though an excellent weapon, the M24 had a maximum effective range of 800 meters. I could maybe hit her at 1000 meters, but that would be pushing it.

  Unfortunately, Clancy was at least 1800 meters away. Not only did she have the eagle-eye vantage point, but she was no doubt using a more powerful weapon than mine. She probably had a ghillie suit as well, rendering my night vision practically useless for spotting her.

  I put my chances at survival under ten percent. As for actually killing Clancy, the odds were too astronomical to even bother calculating. Add the fact that my whole body hurt and my thoughts felt sluggish after the hellish day I’d had, and I had to admit that Jack Daniels was probably right. I was going to get killed.

  But I had one thing going for me.

  I had nothing to lose.

  And the world should fear the angry assassin with nothing to lose.

  Holding the starlight scope to my eye, I took in my surroundings, deciding where to go next, wondering if it even mattered. My training dictated the best course of action would be to draw her fire, then quickly run southwest, which provided brush cover and a gradual elevation, which would put us on more even footing.

  But Clancy had the same training I did. So I looked for the worst direction to go. That would be straight ahead, into forty meters of open meadow. Flat terrain, no cover at all. Suicidal, but she wouldn’t expect it. If I sprinted fast enough, I could get to the copse of trees across the meadow before she could line up a shot. It was particularly tricky to hit a moving target at long distance, so I had a minute chance of making it. Maybe.

  I rolled onto my stomach, my rifle on the ground in front of me, an extra magazine of ten rounds in my pocket, and I gradually spread out my legs, straddling the dirt. Staying flat, I brought my knees up until I must have resembled a bullfrog.

  Then I jumped like one, springing forward over the log, feeling then hearing the shot pass under my spread-eagled leap. As soon as I hit the ground, I was tearing ass across the meadow, a full out sprint in the dark, my rifle in one hand and my scope in the other, counting my steps until I was sure I was near the tree line, then sliding like a baseball player as another shot cracked, so close I felt it breeze by my hip.

  I rolled into the tree cover, pulse pounding in my ears, amazed I was still alive. I was perhaps fifty meters closer. If I did that seven more times, and my luck held, I might get a chance to defend myself.

  I stayed in the thicket, surrounded by trees, and gained another fifty meters before coming to a second clearing. This one was wider than before. It had two routes through it, neither very promising. One path had high weeds that I could perhaps crawl through, but if Clancy had a thermal camera I might as well be strolling across a football field in broad daylight. The other was a lengthy zig-zag through thorn bushes.

  I didn’t want to die tangled up in thorn bushes, so I went for the weeds. The first ten strides were straight, then I cut left, then right, then right again, then left, not thinking about direction so much as trying to be random. If I didn’t know my next move, neither would Clancy.

  Just as I reached another tree line, I felt a tug at my leg and heard the rifle report. I put my back to a big oak, scooted onto my butt, and used the scope to check my injury.

  The bullet had cut through my pants and lightly grazed my thigh, leaving a streak that looked, and felt, like a burn. It was such a minor wound I didn’t even need to dress it, but it made me think.

  Four shots fired, and all at my legs. Legs are much harder to hit than center mass.

  Which meant my sister wasn’t trying to kill me. Only disable me.

  That perked up my spirits a bit.
If they needed me alive, they couldn’t risk a lethal hit. Which meant more careful shot selection. Which meant fewer shots. Which meant drastically increased odds of me surviving.

  In an odd sort of way, it made me invulnerable.

  I didn’t think about my next route. I just ran like hell, straight into the thin trees, up the gradual incline, feeling completely exposed and yet bulletproof at the same time. Either my mad dash confused Clancy, or she’d lost me in the darkness, because she didn’t fire again for the entire length of my sprint. By the time I came to rest beside an outcropping of dirt and rocks, panting like a dog, I was unable to prevent the incredulous smile that had formed on my face. As far as I could tell, I was within 1000 meters of the ridge.

  I checked the tablet PC to make sure, covering it with my shirt so the glow didn’t attract attention. Sure enough, Clancy’s blip was only 730 meters away. She hadn’t moved. Neither had the other, unknown blip, which was 510 meters due east. I attached my night vision to the rail in front of the scope and sighted east, through crooked, green-hued trees. I saw what appeared to be the corner of a stone house, recessed into the side of a hill. If I had to take a guess, the house, and the source of the blip, was Jacob’s stronghold, and Clancy was keeping watch on it.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  I tugged back the bolt and loaded a round, then flopped onto my belly and set up my bipod. I was still panting from the run, and I took several deep breaths in an effort to slow my respiration and counter the rise in my heart rate. Then I assumed the standard sniping position. Body in line with the weapon. Heels flat on the ground. Elbows comfortable. The butt of the weapon resting on the fist of my non-firing hand. My face against the cheek plate. Then I adjusted the eyepiece focus ring, and the range focus ring, and tried to locate my sister.

  She helped me by firing once again, the round burying itself into the dirt between my calves. My pulse spiked, and I fought the urge to roll away, instead zooming in on the tiny barrel flash I’d seen.

  Clancy fired once more, shooting off the tip of my right shoe. That’s when I saw her in the scope, an amorphous mound of green moss draped over a gigantic rifle barrel, so far away she was barely visible. It was a calm night, with a slight northeast wind, and the elevation and bullet drop were hard to judge on the fly. I couldn’t make out Clancy’s features, but aimed where her head would be and exhaled while I gently squeezed the trigger.

  My shot fell short by at least ten meters.

  Steady. Stay calm.

  I worked the bolt and relaxed my fist, raising the barrel a hair to account for the incline and gravity—like all projectiles, bullets moved in an arc and were pulled downward toward the earth. I hissed out a breath and squeezed another round off a bit too soon. It sailed harmlessly over Clancy’s head.

  Breathe in, breathe out.

  Relax, stay calm, don’t rush it.

  Don’t think about getting shot.

  Don’t worry about missing again.

  I’m ice, and my blood is antifreeze.

  Clancy returned fire, but my shot must have unnerved her, because her round hit a few feet to my right. That’s the biggest danger in a sniper firefight. You want so badly to kill before you get killed that you don’t take your time.

  But she recovered quickly, firing less than a second later, grazing my left thigh with another searing burn.

  That’s when I decided to cheat. She might have been the better shot than me, but technology had improved since we’d been trained by Hydra.

  I tugged out the tablet PC, and saw Clancy was 728.5 meters away. I zeroed out my scope, adjusted for elevation, then hit the DUAL HIGH buttons on my side mounted AN/PEQ-2. This was an infrared illumination system, only visible through night vision. The narrow beam was a laser dot, for pinpointing targets. The wide beam was like a flashlight, illuminating a cone of visibility.

  No doubt Clancy was equipped with this as well, but she hadn’t used it because it was ridiculously easy to spot by the opposition, almost like a signal flare. But in this case, we both knew where the other person was. I just needed to be able to hit the bitch.

  Letting out a slow breath through clenched teeth, I centered the tiny laser dot alongside her scope, right at her closed eye—my closed eye—and fired.

  Clancy’s head erupted in a brilliant green explosion of brain matter and bone.

  Adios, Sis.

  I had nothing in my stomach, but retched bile onto the dirt next to me.

  That was the fourth lookalike I’d killed today. Four suicides by proxy. Four sisters I desperately wanted and never got the chance to know. I’d never met Clancy. She’d been my enemy. I shouldn’t care that she was dead. But the thought that there were only two of us now—me and that psycho, Hammett—made me feel almost as alone as I had after Kaufmann’s death.

  Freud would have loved me.

  But there was no time for distractions. I couldn’t allow myself to be anything but senses, reflexes and training. No thought. No feelings. It took less than a minute to pull myself together, to get my breathing and heart rate under control, to get my head back in the game and my emotions buried. When I finished compartmentalizing everything, I scrambled to my feet and headed east through the forest, toward the other blip on the screen, trying not to think about my sister’s face.

  The murmur of wind through branches was now joined by the plaintive hooting of an owl. Darkness cloaked the forest, moon and stars only visible in brief flashes between the clouds. The terrain sloped upward, and I entered a clearing and caught another glimpse of the low hulk of a house, a shadow behind the trees.

  The place was expansive, a block of stone and glass built into the side of the hill. Only the east side had a view, windows peering across sloped paths. The rest of the house burrowed into the earth, like the hobbit homes in Lord of the Rings, but without charm. I had no idea if this was Jacob’s personal home or some kind of Hydra Project safe house, but clearly whoever paid the bills had cash to spare and a serious need for security.

  I scooped in a deep breath of night air. If that blip was a hostile and had infiltrated Jacob’s defenses, I might be too late.

  Dropping to a knee, I brought my rifle to my shoulder and peered through the starlight scope. From this angle, I could see through the windows. Even though the room was dark, I could make out furniture, a few plants, a dark hall presumably leading to other rooms.

  No light. No movement.

  Time for me to see who was home.

  I swung away from the home’s interior and scanned the grounds. A path sloped upward to an entrance just to the south of the window bank. I could see scorch marks from here, along with the mangled steel that used to be the doorknob and deadbolt mechanism. The remnants of a destroyed camera hung down from under the eave.

  I thrust to my feet and moved quickly through the forest. My footsteps were quiet, although I was more worried about surveillance cameras than sound. As I grew nearer, I spotted two additional cameras hidden in trees. Both were out of commission, like the one I’d noticed on the house—no doubt the fault of the bullet that had drilled a hole through each lens.

  I approached the south entrance. Keeping low, I crept up the sloping path and stopped to the side of the scarred door. I paused outside, listening for movement, scanning for any unusual scents. The memory of stepping through Victor’s apartment door and getting zapped with the stun gun was still fresh in my mind, and I waited an additional two minutes and stole another glance at the computer to be sure the blip wasn’t awaiting my entrance. Finally I shoved open the disabled door and surged inside, leading with my rifle.

  I moved into the living area, clearing each corner as I went. Satisfied no one was in the front room, I mentally logged my surroundings. A gleaming hardwood floor was broken up by two cream rugs. A cream sofa and contemporary styled chairs dotted the living area. A formal dining room complete with buffet and silk flowers on the table occupied the other side of the long room. A simple and small kitchen nestled along t
he back wall. Generic prints hung on beige walls and silk greenery popped here and there. All in all, the place looked more like a furniture showroom than a home, impractical and unlived in. I noticed two more cameras, these looking as if they’d been clubbed instead of shot, then turned my attention to the dark hallway leading deeper into the house.

  Four doors led off the hall, one on the left, two on the right and one at the end. The farthest door was slightly open. A broken diamond bit drill littered the hardwood floor at its foot. A small monitor nestled in the wall, its screen shattered.

  Gun at the ready, I walked to the door and swung the wooden portal wide. Behind the oak hid the type of door commonly seen at the mouth of a bank vault. Explosion burns scorched the steel, but except for cosmetic damage, the door appeared unbreached.

  I could guess what had happened. Clancy had tried to penetrate Jacob’s defenses. Unable to, she had taken up her position outside, waiting for Jacob to emerge or for someone like me to try to help. But that explanation didn’t answer one important question.

  Since the source of the blip was beyond those doors, what was it?

  “Is that Xena?”

  The familiar electronic male voice made me jump. Jacob! Following the sound to the side of the door, I spotted a small speaker and intercom control under the shattered monitor. I hit the speak button. “I’m sorry, she’s in Oklahoma. At the baseball game.”

  “I prefer basketball myself.”

  After verifying our identities, the sports references were code that each of us was alone.

  I was so relieved to hear his voice, my throat felt thick.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “Clancy cut the power. I got the back-up generator working, but it doesn’t supply power to the entire grid. Let me reroute it to the door.”

  A loud clack echoed through the hall, and the thick steel door swung open.

  “Come inside,” Jacob said.

  A chill worked over my skin. Leading with the gun, I slipped through the door and found myself in a long, sloped tunnel. Steel girders reinforced the textured concrete walls and floor. The air smelled surprisingly fresh and dry and carried a hint of bacon.