Flee, Spree, Three (Codename: Chandler Trilogy - Three Complete Novels)

by J. A. Konrath

  Three of the Hydra sisters, dead.

  That is an incalculable loss. The time, the money it took to train them. The personal investment Hammett made to recruit them. All for nothing.

  Chandler is good. Very good.

  But not as good as I am.

  Hammett tucks the computer away and stretches, arching her back like a cat. Soon Chandler will be under her control, at her mercy.

  Hammett smiles at the thought.

  And I have no mercy.

  She starts up the stairs, remembering an op from two years ago. A French diplomat, some low-level power broker in the confusing, interconnected spider web of international espionage. By all accounts, he was one of the good guys who just happened to have an agenda at cross-purposes with those who gave Hammett orders.

  Hammett sneaked into his suite, to his bed, and did what she’d grown accustomed to doing. She woke him up before she killed him.

  This began as a game for Hammett. She enjoyed watching them squirm. Watching them beg. Sometimes they offered her things. Sometimes they offered her everything. Once she fucked a particularly handsome Arabian prince, riding him even as he trembled with fear, shooting him at the peak of her orgasm.

  Though sadism is one of the baser emotions, that didn’t make it any less of a rush.

  But with the last few jobs, right before she went rogue, Hammett began asking her marks questions. Questions about life, and what they thought the purpose was.

  Profound shit. Especially for those who were about to die. And it interested Hammett, because at that time, she had yet to figure out her ultimate purpose.

  The Frenchman babbled on about love, being a good son to his parents, a good husband to his wife, a good father to his children—Hammett even allowed the poor sap to show her pictures of the little brats while he cried all over them. But she pressed him, pushing further, asking him why, if his precious family was so important, he’d taken a job where he was away from them two hundred days out of each year.

  And that’s when he gave her the real reason for his existence. The real reason for everyone’s existence.

  He said, with elegant simplicity, “I’m trying to get to the top of the food chain.”

  That resonated with Hammett, long after she put the bullet through his eye.

  She smiles with the memory of this epiphany. Human beings are creatures forged by evolution. We exist because natural selection deemed us the strongest. So it makes perfect sense for each of us to attain as much power as we can, to be the strongest of all.

  Hammett has almost everything she wants. A job that pays well and lets her indulge her sadistic streak, nice clothing to wear, expensive toys to play with, and any man she desires, whether he is willing or not.

  But she doesn’t have true power. The power only felt by the heads of state. The power over entire countries, deciding who lives and who dies.

  That is the pinnacle of Darwinian evolution. That’s what drives kings and dictators and presidents. That’s what forges nations and shapes history.

  That’s what Hammett wants.

  And very soon, she’ll have it. The transceiver is the key to ultimate power. All that stands in her way is her sister. A sister who is weaker than Hammett in every possible way.

  Hammett climbs the last few stairs and reaches the door to the apartment. She slips inside, silent as death. Almost immediately, she sees the man on the sofa, his pants undone, his arm handcuffed to the radiator.

  The sight makes her laugh out loud.

  “Well…what do we have here?”

  “At some time, you may encounter intel that is so big, so important, it will be difficult to act,” The Instructor said. “You need to file that away, process it later. Don’t let anything impede your ability to function. If you do, you’re dead.”

  The Instructor studied my reflection in the rear view mirror. “Remember when I said you were my second-best student? Hammett was number one.”

  I shifted in my seat. His voice held a note of awe, something I found almost more disturbing than his words.

  “She’s the perfect operative, the perfect assassin, because she lacks something that you have.” He paused, as if allowing me to soak in what he was saying, or to ask him to continue.

  I didn’t bite. Instead I focused on the whoosh of passing cars, the odor of the sedan’s worn leather seats, a woman strolling by talking on her cell phone.

  “Do you remember the cows?” he eventually asked.

  I offered a slight nod. A day didn’t go by when I didn’t remember those poor cows.

  “The first time I ordered Hammett to kill one, she didn’t shoot it in the head. She shot its legs out, then used my knife to slit its throat.”

  I filed those images away, not letting myself absorb them, not allowing my emotions to react.

  “Hammett isn’t held back by the trappings of humanity. Because of that, she’s willing to do things you’re unable to. She lacks the conscience you have, which makes her a very dangerous opponent. She has all of your training and none of your boundaries.” His eyes bored into mine. “Whatever she’s after, we can’t let her get it. Even if it means our deaths.”

  I watched The Instructor through narrowed eyes. When I was in training, he’d known the answer to every question, understood every motivation, seen through every defense. Where Hammett was concerned, he seemed to be at a loss, as if he was struggling to catch up, like me.

  “So how do I stop her when I don’t even know what she’s after? Kill her?”

  “If you have the opportunity, take it. But she’s smart, and she’s been planning for a long time. She’s also persuasive. When Hammett went rogue, she was able to recruit her sisters to help her. So far, her only mistake has been underestimating you. But she’s learning, fast. Chandler…where is the phone your handler gave you?”

  “My phone?” I had a guess why he was asking. “Can she track it?”

  “No. The transceiver can’t be tracked or traced.”

  I gave my head a little shake and thought back to the many times the assassins were able to locate me. There had to be an explanation. “Hammett has been one step ahead of me the whole time. If she isn’t able to track the phone, how does she keep finding me?”

  “I need to reach into the case on the passenger seat and remove a computer. Will you let me?”

  “Nice and slow.”

  He moved at half-speed, carefully opening up a leather computer satchel and removing a touch screen tablet PC, like the one I’d taken from the assassin up the street after I’d killed her.

  “Each of the Hydra sisters has a tracking chip, attached to the lining of their stomachs. It was implanted to make sure we knew where you were, so we could extract you from a dangerous situation if needed.”

  “Yeah, I bet that was the reason.” I resisted the urge to wrap an arm around my middle. “I’ve got one in me?”

  “All of you do.”

  The only way something could be planted in a person’s stomach lining was through surgery. Yet I didn’t remember having any surgical procedures done. “How?”

  “During the interrogation training. While you were being waterboarded. We implanted it through your belly button when you drowned.”

  I remember the sharp pain in my stomach when I woke up from that hell, being told it was from the punching. The bastards had chipped me like I was a family pet.

  He switched on the screen, and I noticed five blips superimposed over a map of Chicago, condensing the city into the size of a handprint. It looked like a satellite photo, similar to the interface Google Earth used.

  “Why five, not seven?” I asked.

  The Instructor paused, then said, “Fleming died years ago. The other is probably two blips that are close together, reading as one.”

  As outlandish as all of what he was saying seemed, it made a warped kind of sense. But one inconsistency kept nagging at the back of my mind. “Why didn’t Hammett try to recruit me?” I asked. “She recruited the other
s.”

  “All of you had intensive psychological profiles done. Everything you did at the training camp was recorded. Your journals were studied, scrutinized by professionals. Out of all your living sisters, you were the one who tested the highest for ethics. You were the most trustworthy.”

  “Hold on,” I said. Back in training, I’d never been given that kind of information, even about myself. “How did Hammett know that?”

  The Instructor paused for a moment, then said. “The same way Hammett was able to find your sisters. She learned about the tracking devices and read all of your files.”

  “How did she do that?” Even as the words left my mouth, I knew. The clincher was when The Instructor glanced away.

  “Hammett found me,” he said, his voice getting softer. “After training, she smuggled out a spent bullet casing with my fingerprint on it. She was able to find out my name, where I lived. When she went rogue, she sought me out. She…was able to make me talk.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You gave me up.”

  “Everyone has a breaking point. She found mine. She…tortured my wife…my children…in front of me. I told her everything I knew.”

  His tone was still flat, but I didn’t need hysterics to recognize how broken the experience had left him, and I could guess how it ended. “She killed them anyway.”

  “I didn’t talk to save them. I talked to spare them any more pain.” He hadn’t shown half this much emotion in all the time I’d spent with him. I should probably feel more for him, for his family, but something held me back. “So why didn’t she kill you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because she thought I might still be useful. Maybe she knew how much it would hurt me to leave me alive.” He dropped his gaze. He looked tired and much older than I’d previously guessed. “I’m…sorry, Chandler.”

  I knew I was being cold, hard, but after all he’d told me, keeping my emotion at bay was the only way I could continue to function. The Instructor had taught me well. “Is Jacob compromised?”

  “I think so. This blip here,” he pointed to the screen, “is Clancy. She’s an expert sniper. Even better than you. She’s camped outside Jacob’s compound. No doubt she’s cut the power and is jamming communications. Eventually she’ll find a way in.”

  I nodded. Keeping my eyes riveted to his, I dropped my left hand low and shifted my wrist. The syringe slid down to the jacket’s cuff, then stopped.

  “Where’s the phone, Chandler?” he asked.

  Instead of answering, I concentrated on shifting my arm, trying to shake the needle free without moving the rest of my body. The Instructor was sharp. Any hint that I wasn’t fully listening, any tilt of my shoulders, and he would sense my plan. The syringe didn’t move.

  “This is important. We have to make sure it’s safe.”

  “Why?”

  Another shake, and the needle slipped into my palm.

  “There’s information on it. Information that can be used to compromise the security of the United States. There are only two transceivers in existence. The president has one. Based on your Hydra profile, you were entrusted with the other.”

  “Hammett wants the phone.”

  “That might be what she’s after. With the proper encryption decoder, she—”

  I flicked my eyes to the right, out the front windshield, and forced my pupils to widen as if I saw something surprising. He was watching me in the rearview mirror, and his eyes followed mine. In that brief moment, I brought my hand up and jabbed the hypo into his neck. He dropped the PC and reached both hands back. I managed to depress the plunger halfway before I was forced to release it and focus on blocking his flailing wrists.

  It only took a few seconds for the amobarbital to take effect, and The Instructor’s efforts to grab me became slower, sloppier. His head tilted, and he reached to the side, trying to get the car door open. I grabbed him by the collar, pulling him back against the seat. My mind swirled with everything I’d just learned, yet I was still in the moment enough to be disappointed at how easy he was to subdue.

  He slid to the side, his face visible through the space between the bucket seats. Finally he stopped struggling, and his glassy eyes met mine with a look of…fear? Anger?

  No, it was softer than that. In fact, it reminded me of the look Kaufmann had when he said he was proud of me.

  Then his lids closed, and he was asleep.

  I checked his pulse to make sure, giving him a harsh pinch on the side to see if he flinched or his heart rate jumped. I needed for him to be out of commission for a few hours, until I could process everything I’d just learned. A large part of me wondered if I could trust him, and if it would be better just to kill him right now.

  But he’d given me vital intel, and so far was acting like an ally. And I had to face the truth of the matter: my allies were few and far between.

  I climbed out of the backseat and opened the driver’s door. Shoving The Instructor over, I slipped behind the wheel. If I had a locator chip in me, Hammett knew where I was right now. Which meant she could already be on her way to Victor’s. I needed to get Kaufmann to a safe house.

  And The Instructor had provided a convenient way to do that.

  I pulled out from the curb and drove to the parking garage entrance, my senses on high alert. A woman emerged from Victor’s building, and I nearly reached for my gun before she made it to the curb and raised her hand to hail a cab. It wasn’t Hammett. She was too old, too plump.

  A truck’s brakes squealed. Somewhere, a dog barked. Rifling through Victor’s wallet, I located a card with a real estate management company logo emblazoned on the front. I lowered the window, swiped the card, and the garage door opened.

  I found a vacant space near the stairwell. It wouldn’t take me long to wake Kaufmann with something from Victor’s personal pharmacy and help him down to the car. We would be gone long before Victor’s neighbors were likely to arrive home from work.

  I finished hefting The Instructor into the passenger seat. His computer fell off his lap and bounced onto the floor, and I slid it under the seat along with the sedan’s keys. I had given him a big enough dose for him to sleep at least an hour or two. It was doubtful he would wake up, find the keys, and drive away in the time I’d be gone. But if he did, I still had Victor’s car keys in my pocket.

  I got out of the car and scanned the area. I smelled nothing besides the ordinary exhaust fumes and concrete. Nothing, that is, but a faint whiff of stress coming from my own body.

  I closed the door quietly to keep the sound from echoing through the garage and took the stairs to the third floor, bouncing on the balls of my feet, my footfalls like kitten steps on deep carpeting, not making a sound.

  When I finally made it to Victor’s door, I brought up the key and hesitated. Holding my breath, I placed an ear to the wood and listened for any sounds from within. I listened for a whole two minutes, and then let the air leak slowly out of my nose as I turned the doorknob.

  A moment after stepping inside, I sensed something wrong. Movement, to my right, alongside the doorway. I turned but not fast enough.

  I’d been electrocuted before, so I knew a stun gun when I felt it. The pain was instant and agonizing, locking my muscles, forward momentum dropping me to the floor.

  The jolt went on for several seconds, and I was unable to see my attacker, but I felt a knee drive down on my back and hands quickly relieve me of my gun, Victor’s wallet, and his keys. Over the merciless, ongoing jolt of electricity, I heard a familiar male voice purr to me in perfect Russian.

  “You should have gone with your instincts and not trusted me.”

  Victor.

  The pain reached a crescendo, my whole body feeling as if I was being burned alive, and even though I fought it with everything I had, I passed out.

  “Knowing how to interrogate a subject means knowing how to withstand interrogation,” The Instructor said. “Be aware of your body, and what it is revealing. The pain will likely become unbearable,
but once you give up the information they’re after, you will be killed. It will be a fine line between how much you want to live versus how much agony you can endure. Also know that if you give up any secrets related to Project Hydra, past missions, or the US Government, you will be considered an enemy of the State, tried for treason, and executed.”

  When I woke up, I was on my back, secured to a table.

  No, not a table. A backboard, like the ones used by lifeguards on the beach. My wrists were bound to the hand-holes with zip ties, my legs and body secured by Velcro straps. My head was similarly strapped down and held in place by a plastic cervical collar.

  Glancing left, I saw cabinets and realized I was on Victor’s kitchen counter.

  I blinked a few times, trying to determine if I’d been drugged. My head was swimming. My heart rate was also accelerated, unusual for just waking up. Victor must have given me something.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” said a female voice, so recognizable it made me gasp.

  Because it was mine.

  I let my eyes follow it and saw one of my sisters standing next to me. She wore the teal silk blouse from Victor’s closet, the one I’d almost picked out for myself. Her hair was short, like mine. The only difference between looking at her and peering at myself in the mirror was a tiny scar on her chin.

  “You know what’s going to happen,” Hammett said. “Don’t you?”

  I did. There was only one reason to have me trussed up this way. But I refused to let my mind dwell on what she intended to do. Letting my fear build would do nothing to help me. Instead I focused on observing as much as I could around me.

  “You’ve been through it before. Twice, actually. The first time with that psycho you were fucking when you were a kid.” She gave me a knowing smile, rubbing in the fact that she knew all about my past, all about me. “Must have been scary, trapped in the car, the water rushing in on all sides. Let me be honest with you, Chandler, during training I didn’t like drowning at all. I’ll bet you hated it even more.”

  I didn’t say anything. I worked on trying to control my breathing, my heart rate, listening to the flap of pigeons outside the window, and breathing in the neighbor’s slow-cooked beef. So far, I’d managed to keep panic at bay despite Hammett’s mind games and whatever drug I had in my system. But once I sucked that first bit of water into my lungs, I’d lose control over my body. The sensation of drowning is so frightening, and it works on such a base, reptile-brain level, that no amount of meditation was going to stop me from freaking out.