“You look tired, chica. Why don’t you let me—”
I’d had enough of Javier’s obnoxious jabbering, so I tugged the Ghost Hawk off my pinkie and threw it at his head. It wasn’t big or sharp enough to kill, but it did what I’d intended it to do; knocked the bailador off balance and onto his ass.
He swore in rapid-fire, near-hysterical Spanish, all four limbs a blur as he tried to stay on top of the blades, and I leaped to the wall and chinned myself to the top. I turned back at Javier.
“So now we know,” I said, “which one of us is left standing.”
He screamed, “Puta!” as the grinder grabbed his right foot.
I climbed out of the hopper and headed toward the rendezvous point, hoping Tequila was still alive, hoping Lund hadn’t been discovered, hoping it wasn’t too late to save Fleming.
Javier had thought I was Hammett. That meant Hammett was close.
And that bitch scared the crap out of me.
Hammett
“Sun Tzu was only partially right,” the Instructor said. “All war is based on deception. But so is everything else.”
After Jersey blew open the door, Hammett checked with her men.
Isaiah was still in position, guarding the rear entrance of the prison.
“A little guy got inside. Moves like the Road Runner, shoots like Wild Bill Hickok.”
She told him to stay dug in, then tried Javier and got no reply.
Hammett didn’t like to assume things. She preferred her intel to be black and white. But if Javier was as good as he thought he was, guards wouldn’t have taken him out.
So who did it? Her boss?
Hammett didn’t trust her employer, because she didn’t trust anyone. Human beings were liars, cheaters, double-crossers, and operated primarily out of self-interest. If Hammett could have cloned herself, she wouldn’t trust the clone.
But taking out Javier didn’t make any sense. As far as Hammett knew, her boss had the same agenda that she did: get Fleming. He wouldn’t have any tactical reason to take out her men before that goal was reached.
Which meant he already had Fleming, or…
There was another player in the game.
Once again, Hammett looked at her tablet computer, searching for the blips to find her sisters. Fleming was still nearby, in the prison. Chandler was still in Baraboo. Neither appeared to have moved.
Hammett drummed her fingers along her belly, where her own GPS tracking chip was located. She zoomed in on herself as tight as the satellite allowed. Then she began to walk around the room.
Her blinking dot moved. It was such a slight distance that it was tough to notice. But Hammett noticed.
Next she magnified Fleming. Her dot was also moving, barely a snail’s pace, but movement nonetheless.
Something to do with the geosynchronous orbit of the satellite? Some software malfunction? Some sort of delay?
Hammett stayed perfectly still.
Her dot didn’t move. But Fleming’s still did.
Next she focused on Chandler.
She watched for movement. She watched closely.
Chandler’s dot stayed in the exact same place. So she was either sleeping, or dead, or…
Or she’d managed to cut out her tracking chip.
Hammett felt a pleasurable warmth radiate out of her body. Though it didn’t happen often, she recognized the emotion as happiness. She got on the radio.
“One of the enemy looks like me,” she told her men. “She’s in the area, attempting to grab the target before we do. She is armed and extremely dangerous. If she’s taken alive, you will all get a bonus equal to double the agreed-upon pay.”
Tequila
No guards had come to greet him. Tequila stayed put, waiting for something to happen. Eventually, something did.
The explosion came from the south, large enough to kick up the dust in the hallway and get in Tequila’s eyes. He wiped it off.
Chandler had some explosives in her pack. Was that her? Or was it the party who had been shooting at him? Either way, it no longer made much sense to crouch in the corner, waiting for action. The action, whatever it might be, was ahead of him. So Tequila moved forward.
The iron door had been blown off one hinge, the other twisted and fused by Tequila’s Semtex. He used both hands and all of his strength, and it still took almost a full minute to pry it open wide enough to slip through. It lead to another dimly lit hallway, this one lined with cell doors, complete with waist-high slats for meal delivery.
He went to the nearest one, found it unlocked. AR-7 at the ready, he sidled up next to it and pushed it open, peeking around the jamb. Too dark to see far inside, he dug a mini Maglite from his pocket and swept the interior. The cell was empty except for a dirty cot and a flimsy, plastic bucket.
Tequila eyed the hallway again. One down. Eleven to go, then a bend in the hallway.
He moved on to the second cell.
Fleming
“There are no heroes on the battlefield,” the Instructor said. “Only those who survive, and those who die.”
“It’s me,” Fleming said, dragging herself across the floor to the familiar voice. “Are you injured?”
“Been better. You?”
“That makes two of us.” She got to the correct door and stabbed the key into the lock. As with the previous door, the key turned. And as with the previous door, it was too heavy and she was too weak to open it.
“Can you help me? I’ve got the key, but it won’t budge.”
“It’s a magnetic lock. Needs a card.”
For the first time, Fleming noticed the protruding gizmo alongside the doorjamb. It looked like a swiper for credit cards. How could she have missed that?
“You either need to find the card, or kill the power.”
“Is Chandler here?” Fleming asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been here long. Are you alone?”
Fleming hesitated a moment before giving in to trust. “Yes.”
“You need to get out of here.”
“I won’t leave Chandler. Or you.”
“Think, Fleming. You’re smart. Be smart about this.”
“You didn’t leave me.”
“No offense, but I don’t see that there’s much you can do. Are you in a chair?”
Fleming bit her lower lip. “No.”
“I heard engines when they brought me here. ATVs. Could you ride one?”
“Maybe.”
“Find one. Get out. Are you armed?”
Fleming had a fillet knife, a scalpel, and a pack of razor blades. Was that armed? Maybe those weapons were formidable in Chandler’s deadly hands. But in hers?
“I may know where the card is.”
“Fuck the card. Save yourself.”
But Fleming was already pulling herself back to Malcolm, her body flapping behind her like a broken sea lion, so near the point of total exhaustion that halfway there she passed out, only to revive when her head bounced off the floor.
Finally at Malcolm’s side once again, the smell of burned meat choking her throat, she forced a hand into his scorched pants pocket, causing him to moan in unconscious pain. Her fingers locked on to something warm and flat, and she tugged out the magnetic key card—
—warped and partially melted from the fire.
She knew it wouldn’t work. It was so bent, it wouldn’t even swipe through the card reader. To prove it, she went back to her own cell and gave it a try.
The card got stuck halfway in the slot. When she put more pressure on it, the plastic snapped in half.
Peering back into that terrible cell, Fleming’s eyes zeroed in on the guard. Unlike Malcolm’s, the guard’s injuries had proved fatal; the prodigious pool of blood around his cracked skull was testimony to that. Much as she didn’t want to go back in there, one hand followed the other, and soon she was patting down the dead man’s uniform, searching for another key card.
He didn’t have one.
Fleming bit h
er lower lip, fighting the urge to scream. Even if Chandler were here, Fleming wouldn’t be able to save her. It was doubtful she could even save herself.
“I was hoping to find you here.”
A shot of pure terror took the express route up Fleming’s spine, making her yelp, and she turned to face the menacing figure blocking the doorway.
Chandler
“Everyone has a limit,” the Instructor said. “Eventually, we all shut down. Part of my job is to extend your limit beyond that of anyone else.”
I ran as best I could. I was exhausted, light-headed and heavy-footed, aching in so many places that they all blended together. I pressed on, fighting all the signals my brain and body were sending me, demanding I rest.
Marathon runners call it “hitting the wall.” Spies call it survival.
My first instinct was to go for the ATV I’d flipped. But Javier could have radioed in those coordinates, which would make it a likely ambush spot. So instead I headed for the rendezvous point with Tequila. If he was still alive and still had weapons, we could always fight our way to the four-wheeler.
I went west, toward the setting sun, keeping my knees high so my toes didn’t catch on underbrush. If I tripped and went down, I might not be able to get back up.
Breathing through my mouth, filling my lungs with each intake of air, my concentration wandered to my lousy childhood and lousy young adulthood. From the middle of elementary school on, I was what school shrinks called “antisocial.” I didn’t play well with others, so they said. They confused my inability to form long-lasting relationships with some sort of internal defect. In reality, it was a survival mechanism. After my parents died, I couldn’t find anyone worth having a relationship with. I’d gotten burned a lot, to the point where I equated kindness with deception. So instead of meaningful friendships with generous people, I hung out with losers because it made things easier when they inevitably betrayed me.
I wasn’t a sociopath. I was just extremely unlucky.
My pace slowed, eyelids drooping, and I bit the inside of my cheek to stay on task. Battling fatigue, I tried to get my muscles to work using sheer will, since the glycogen reserves were gone.
But will only took me another twenty meters, and then my foot caught a root and I face-planted onto the ground.
I lay there for a moment, breath rasping.
The moment stretched.
I tried to get up, but my arms and legs wouldn’t work right. I’d never been so tired. Crazy as it sounds, my brain tried to convince me that it would be OK to take a little nap.
I closed my eyes, my will depleted. In my mind’s eye, I saw Kaufmann.
Kaufmann was my parole officer. He was the only person I’d ever been able to trust, to love. Too recently, too soon, he died. And on the heels of losing him, I’d discovered that my long-time handler, Jacob, was really my sister, Fleming. We’d worked together for years, and even before we met face-to-face, before we knew we were sisters, we’d shared a bond.
But for me it was more than that.
I’m sure the shrink I’d been court-ordered to see as a teen would say I was projecting the guilt and anger and pain of my recent loss onto Fleming, but that wasn’t all of it.
When I looked into Fleming’s eyes, I didn’t just see my sister. I saw myself. The self who could love and trust others. The self who was loved and trusted in return. The self I had once buried along with my parents, who had died again with Kaufmann.
The self I wanted so desperately to be.
I wasn’t just here to save my sister. I was here to save me, too.
I opened my eyes.
I pushed up against the ground.
I got my feet underneath me.
I started running again. And I wasn’t going to stop until I’d saved us both.
Tequila
The woman on the cell floor was naked, dirty, bleeding. Her ruined legs told horror stories Tequila couldn’t even imagine. When she turned around, he realized it was Fleming—her face was a carbon copy of Chandler’s.
Fleming’s expression of surprise quickly morphed into fierce determination, and a blurred moment later Tequila felt a sharp sting in his belly.
He looked down to see an ice pick sticking in his abs, and felt an overwhelming respect for this woman. Respect on a deep, core level. Fleming was a fighter, and he immediately identified with that. Even more, he was impressed by it. The measure of a human being is what finally makes them give up.
Tequila saw the burned man in the hallway, and the dead man in the cell. It appeared this woman didn’t know how to give up.
He quickly spread out his hands, letting the AR-7 swing to his side on a strap. “I’m with Chandler. We’re here to rescue you.”
Fleming’s hard expression remained. Tequila noticed she had a fillet knife in her hand, and he didn’t want that sticking in him too.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Tequila. I met your sister through a mutual friend. You’re at the Badger Ammo plant in Baraboo, Wisconsin, at a black site. Chandler and I had different entry points. I lost communication with her a while ago. Please don’t stab me again.”
Her expression didn’t change. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“Chandler said you were her handler. She knew you as Jacob.”
“I need more.”
Tequila considered it, then said, “She’s a stubborn pain in the ass, and almost didn’t take my help because she thought I was too old and too short.”
“Why did she change her mind?”
“My hand-to-hand is better than hers.”
Fleming nodded, apparently coming to a conclusion. “Your ear is bleeding.”
“Sniper. Apparently we’re not the only party here for you. I’m going to take out this ice pick, OK?”
Tequila slowly pulled the weapon from his belly, where it hadn’t penetrated his hard abdominal muscles more than an inch. He gave it a slow, underhanded toss back to Fleming, who managed to snatch it out of the air with her bandaged hand.
“We have to get out of here, Fleming.”
“I can’t walk.” She said it as a statement, not as a complaint.
“You can ride on my back. If I do anything you don’t like, you can stab me again.”
“It didn’t do much good before.”
“If it makes you feel better, I’ll probably have a scar.”
Fleming’s face softened slightly.
“I’m taking off my coat,” Tequila said, carefully slipping it off his shoulders. “Please put it on. Your nudity is…distracting me.”
It must have been the right thing to say, because Fleming reached her hand out for it. Tequila watched her struggle into it, not bothering with snapping up the front.
“There’s a man, a few cells over—we need to take him with us,” she said. “But there’s no key card.”
“I have explosives in my pack.” He shrugged it off and gave it to her. “Put it on. I can’t wear both of you.”
This time Tequila saw a small smile pass over Fleming’s face, and for the first time he realized why he was there. It wasn’t for the money, or because he owed Jack Daniels a favor, or because he saw a kindred spirit in Chandler.
He was there to rescue Fleming, because this woman was worth rescuing.
Fleming
“Trust your gut,” the Instructor said. “It usually knows better than you do.”
Fleming dug into the pack and removed a chunk of plastic explosive, expertly inserting a blasting cap. She placed it and the remote detonator to the side as Tequila knelt next to her, resting his butt on his heels.
“Your name is really Tequila?”
He nodded, handing her the AR-7. She slung it, and the backpack, over her shoulders.
“Sorry I stabbed you, Tequila.”
Tequila glanced around the cell. “I’d say I got off easy. Why didn’t you aim for my throat?”
Fleming wondered that as well. When he appeared in the doorway, she’d
had every reason to believe he was a threat, and had reacted accordingly. But some bit of instinct had deterred her from a killing blow.
She was grateful for that foresight.
As he helped her onto his back, she was also grateful her stubborn pain-in-the-ass sister had agreed to allow Tequila to help. Hopelessness had become possibility.
Fleming wrapped her arms around his throat—jeez, the guy had a neck like a tree trunk—and he gently folded Fleming’s legs around his waist and held her ankles locked together in a single, callused hand. Then he stood up as if she weighed nothing. Tequila smelled like sweat and gunpowder and blood and a tiny trace of sandalwood soap, and he looked like a GI Joe doll come to life. Fleming thought back to an elementary school Halloween party where she’d dressed up as a princess because it used to be a fantasy of hers to someday be rescued by a knight in shining armor. That fantasy ended during Hydra training, when she was taught to rescue herself. But now, riding on Tequila’s muscular back, a very tiny, minuscule, infinitesimal, teensy-weensy, girlish part of her felt like swooning.
“Am I hurting you?” he asked.
“Just my pride.”
“We’ve just met, but I’m pretty sure nothing hurts your pride.”
“If you’re trying to smooth-talk me out of my pants, you’re too late.”
Tequila bent over, scooping up the Semtex and detonator. “Which cell is he in?”
“Three doors to the right.”
She pulled up the AR-7, checked the magazine, and brought it to bear over Tequila’s shoulder. He walked to the cell doorway, then stopped.
Fleming was going to ask what the problem was, but then she felt it, too. Someone was in the hallway.
He silently handed Fleming the plastic and detonator, then drew one of his pistols from his shoulder rig. Feeling him tense, Fleming hooked her elbow around his throat, holding on to him and the explosives she carried with one hand, her other hand extending the AR-7.
Tequila bolted into the hallway and immediately began to backpedal. At the end of the hallway were three men and a woman. All were armed.
Flee, Spree, Three (Codename: Chandler Trilogy - Three Complete Novels) Page 43