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

by J. A. Konrath

  “You got the reference, so you’re a nerd, too. And Han shot first.”

  “Hell yeah, he did. Make sure you shoot first as well.”

  “Roger, and out.”

  The White House

  “It’s all under control, Mr. President. We’ve got them where we want them.”

  “Is the plan to take them alive?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  The president gripped his encrypted cell phone so hard his knuckles turned white. “You recognize the security leak they represent.”

  “I do, Mr. President.”

  “That leak needs to be plugged.”

  “I understand, sir. We’ll make sure it is.”

  “These women…they’re heroes. This country owes them.”

  “They understand the risks, Mr. President. All soldiers do.”

  “My veep, he’d say we’re going to hell for making this decision.”

  His contact didn’t reply.

  “Make sure their families are provided for,” the president said.

  “They have no family, sir.”

  At least that much, he supposed, was good news.

  Chandler

  “Don’t go seeking revenge,” the Instructor said. “But if the opportunity for revenge presents itself, take it.”

  We approached the reclamation plant at its northeast corner. Tequila and I circled the perimeter in different directions, looking for the entrance. I went left, keeping my AR-15 at my side, finger resting on the trigger guard. I didn’t sense anyone nearby. In fact, I hadn’t sensed anyone since we’d breached the fence. That was odd. Where were the workers? Had everyone, including Hammett, abandoned the place? If so, what were the odds the Instructor would still be here? And if he’d been taken elsewhere, were Fleming and I supposed to track him down no matter how long it took? I didn’t want my last mission to drag on for weeks or months. I wanted out of this life, and it couldn’t come fast enough.

  I reached the front of the building. There was a shallow, elongated pond alongside a dirt path, which led up to a metal door that had been blown off its hinges. I smelled traces of explosives, and something underneath it. BBQ?

  “I’m at a doorway,” I said into my radio.

  “I lost sight of Tequila, but I can still see you,” Fleming said. “Tequila, you there?”

  “I’ll catch up in a minute. Checking out a retention pool.”

  “I’m going in.”

  The doorway opened into a dilapidated office. What little furniture remained was twenty years out of date and beyond repair. There were holes in the walls and ceiling where pipes and lighting fixtures had been ripped out. It was dark, ten degrees warmer than outside.

  I listened, hearing no unusual sounds, but I got a little spike of adrenaline, like I’d leaned too far back on a chair before catching myself. It was a feeling I was familiar with, and one I’d learned to trust.

  Someone was in the room with me.

  I knew due to a combination of things. Feeling eyes on me, smelling the pungent odor of someone who’d been sweating for a while, sensing the ambient heat of a fellow human being nearby. I wasn’t alone. And whoever was watching me was close.

  I pulled the night-vision monocular from my pocket and powered it on. It worked by amplifying ambient light, and in the viewfinder the room lit up bright green. I did a slow 360, finger on the trigger of my rifle, holding my breath so I could hear better. I saw a desk with an old phone on it, a bookcase, another blown door leading to an empty hall, the remains of a couch. But there was no one in the room.

  After I’d turned a complete circle, I pocketed the monocular and saw one of the scariest things a spy could see; a red pinpoint of light over my heart.

  A laser gun sight. My butt clenched in something I called the pucker effect.

  “Move and die,” a male voice said.

  I chose not to move. I couldn’t see where the shooter was standing, couldn’t locate him by his voice. There wasn’t anyone in the room, but he sounded close. In the floor? The ceiling?

  “Drop the rifle. Nice and slow.”

  The alternative was getting my heart blown out the back of my chest. I unslung the AR-15 and let it drop to the floor.

  “Now the machine gun, and the sidearm.”

  Something about the voice. Something familiar. I eased the Skorpion off my shoulder. As I did, I passed it in front of the laser light, to see if I could determine its point of origin. The shooter responded to my unsubtle attempt by aiming the light into my left eye, temporarily blinding me. I closed the eyelid and let go of the Skorpion. My Beretta was next. And though I still had the KA-BAR knife strapped to my calf, I felt practically naked.

  “Knife, too. Hurry now.”

  I unstrapped the KA-BAR, letting it fall.

  “Been waitin’ for you, my pretty girl.”

  Ah, hell. This guy.

  “Did you miss Ol’ Rochester?”

  Noise, to my right, and I squinted into the dark and saw the bookcase move, swinging out on hinges to reveal a hidden closet. My good buddy Rochester stood there, grinning ear to ear. The weapon with the laser sight was a magnum of the Dirty Harry variety.

  “A gun?” I said, louder than necessary, hoping Tequila was close. “I thought you were more hands-on than that.”

  “I am, Miss Chandler. I’m going to put my hands on you like you never felt before, girl.”

  He holstered his gun under his shoulder as if it embarrassed him, then began to pat his chest and elbows, bobbing and weaving in a steady, unsettling rhythm. It was the same pattern that had freaked me out so much the first time we met, and led to him kicking my ass.

  “You remember this, girl? I bet it gave you nightmares.”

  I let him approach, keeping my hands at my sides, waiting for his attack.

  It came in the form of a jab, fast and hard.

  I clocked with skull and crossbones, then extended the elbow and clipped him in the chin.

  Rochester staggered back, confused. Then he smiled again, his white teeth streaked with blood.

  “I see you been practicin’. Rocking the jailhouse, huh, sweet thing?”

  He moved in again, the tempo of his palms on his body increasing, and lashed out a roundhouse.

  I caught it.

  Kissed it.

  And sent it back with enough force to break his nose.

  Rochester staggered a step back, but as I was crouching to grab one of many weapons, any of my weapons, he caught me in the chest with his boot, sending me sliding across the dirty floor on my ass. I turned, getting on all fours, and then I was on my feet as he closed the space between us.

  “I got something nice for you, girl. Nice and sharp.”

  Nice and sharp? I tensed, guessing what was going to happen next.

  I saw his cheeks bulge out, his mouth open up, and just as he spit my hand sprang out and snatched the razor blade from the air, grabbing it before he could. A millisecond later he was clutching his throat, blood pumping through his fingers, because I’d opened up a slit in his neck down to the trachea. His eyes went wide with shock, and probably pain.

  I tossed the razor blade to the floor, wiped my fingers on my shirt, then stared at Rochester as he tried to speak.

  “You got something to say, sweet thing?” I asked. “I know. You think you’re going to die from that big, nasty cut in your throat. But don’t fret. Ole Chandler won’t let you go out like that.”

  I snatched up my 9mm, drilled two into Rochester’s face, and then got on the radio.

  “That shooting was me. I think I found the entrance.”

  I squatted, patting down Rochester’s body. A few hundred in cash. ID in the name of Jules Blech—maybe his name had a lot to do with his sadistic streak. More razor blades, a bag of weed, a brass key, and a key card. I took it all, plus the laser sight on his magnum, which I was trying to fit onto my Skorpion when Tequila arrived.

  “Won’t fit,” Tequila said. “Different rail size.”

&
nbsp; “I noticed,” I said, pocketing it anyway.

  “I see your 52 Blocks buddy doesn’t scare you anymore.”

  I wondered how Tequila knew this was the man I’d mentioned, but he either saw Rochester’s JHR tattoo or the bloody razor blade, and made a correct assumption.

  “I’ve got a friend,” I said, “who taught me how to deal with him.”

  “A friend?”

  “He’s a good guy, but he talks too much.”

  Tequila, predictably, didn’t reply.

  I picked up my weapons. Then I stood, gave Tequila a clap on the shoulder, and headed for the open door. It led into a hallway, and then down some concrete stairs. At the bottom were a bank of rooms: security center, locker room, toilet, another office, kitchen. It was the kitchen where the BBQ smell originated, but my stomach did cartwheels when I figured out it wasn’t food making the odor, but some dead burned guy. I didn’t look too closely, but his arms and legs were bound with wire, and the expression on his face revealed he hadn’t died peacefully.

  We continued our search, coming to yet another steel door blown off its hinges by explosives. Didn’t anyone pick locks anymore?

  Through that doorway into a hall. Stone walls, concrete floor, dirt ceiling held at bay with wooden supports, single bare bulbs strewn up every few meters. The hall was lined, both sides, with cells. We turned a corner, finding an open door and another dead guy who smelled as if he had been there a little while.

  “This was Fleming’s room,” Tequila said.

  I saw the instrument tray, upended on the floor, all the torture implements, and wanted to kill the dead guard a second time.

  “Anyone here?” I yelled, my voice echoing down the hall.

  “Who’s there?” a man called back.

  We followed the voice, used the brass key and the keycard, and opened the correct cell door.

  There, sitting on the floor, filthy clothes stained with blood, was the Instructor. He stared up at me, his eyes clear and bright.

  “Chandler. Jesus Christ, it’s good to see you.”

  Lund

  Lund glanced at the motorcycle parts Tequila had found in the barn. Pulse thrumming in his ears, he made a beeline across the yard. The barn’s door needed lubrication, but with a hard tug, it squealed over the runners, sliding wide.

  There were many things about Lund’s father-in-law that he’d actively tried to forget, mostly how he’d beaten his wife and heaped unspeakable abuse on his daughter, Lund’s deceased wife. But there was one thing he wished he’d remembered before now.

  He slipped into the barn. The place hadn’t seen activity for years, and now both he and Tequila had entered in the past few hours. As a result, dust hung thick in the air, and he had to squint to see through the interior gloom.

  The smell of cow manure still permeated the place, although the acrid bite had long since faded in intensity. A center aisle stretched the length of the barn and a row of stanchions lined each side a quarter of the way in, providing capacity for four rows of cows. By the time Lund first saw the place, the milking itself had been moved to the more modern barn behind the old barn, and this one had been relegated to housing cows in bad weather. Later, the front of the barn was converted to storage.

  He eyed the jumble of stuff that choked either side of the aisle now.

  Tractor parts, a pair of aluminum trash cans, and one of those pop-up campers. A dozen calf hutches, and a western saddle so old and dry that one stirrup fender had snapped in half.

  It couldn’t be here. Not the item he was looking for.

  He walked through the junk until he reached a ladder made of two-by-fours and nailed to the wall. Above the ladder, a hole led up into the haymow.

  As he climbed, birds fluttered and sailed through the cavernous space overhead. The mow smelled of dusty hay, old but still slightly sweet. Less than fifty bales piled at one end, the rest long since fed to cows or sold to nearby farmers. Bird droppings covered much of the floor not strewn with loose hay, white against the dark wood.

  Lund spotted the tarp immediately, crossed the floor with urgent strides, grabbed the edge of the tarp, lifted it off—

  —and stared at a Harley-Davidson FL Panhead.

  The bike seemed to be in nearly perfect condition. The fenders and gas tank were cherry red, only a few dings in the paint. Even the tires were the classic whitewalls, in solid shape despite needing air. Lund had never been a huge motorcycle fanatic, mainly because the hobby was too costly for his bank account. But with a bike like this, he was more than willing to learn.

  The thing he needed from it most now, though, was basic transportation.

  He yanked open the haymow’s big slider and walked the bike down the earthen ramp. He found a tire pump in the barn, topped off gas and oil, and soon he was ready to roll.

  Besides a certain lack of comfort in the old seat, the Harley handled like a dream. A heavy bike, it was pretty stable, and he was grateful Wisconsin had few helmet laws, since he didn’t have one.

  The road leading to his cabin and the park beyond was closed. Luckily he knew the deputy babysitting the roadblock, and with a flash of his driver’s license to prove his address, he was on his way.

  After a quick stop at his cabin to get his deer rifle, he retraced the path they’d taken in their escape from Badger the day before. When the pavement ended, he parked the bike, hoping it wouldn’t end up on the impound lot like Tequila’s, and covered the rest of the distance at a brisk jog.

  He stopped when he spotted his truck parked near the fence.

  The forest was quiet, unusually so, and an uneasy tension gripped the back of his neck and shoulders. Standing still, he scanned the trees, sniffing the air like a deer checking for danger, realizing that danger had likely already found him.

  Fleming

  “Field work is equal parts waiting and watching,” said the Instructor. “Those who stay awake and alert are the ones who live to see the excitement. Those who snooze, die.”

  It wasn’t right.

  Fleming focused on the compound through her scope. Fifteen minutes had passed since she’d taken up her position, and in all that time she hadn’t seen one hint of movement down below. The demolition crews Chandler had told her about were nowhere to be found. Idle dump trucks were parked in rows, front-end loaders scattered at various worksites unmoving, not a rumble of engines or a cloud of kicked-up dust in the whole place.

  Still as a graveyard.

  She didn’t see anything at the entrance guard tower, either. No movement in the booth. No cars in the front parking lot. Fleming wasn’t even sure if the gate was locked. Security seemed to be tight in the park and the orchard and everywhere in between, but at the ammunition plant itself, it was nonexistent.

  Then she heard the shuffle of footsteps tromping through leaves.

  Fleming slowed her breathing to counteract her natural spike in adrenaline. Tracking the sound, she pivoted in her chair and brought the rifle around.

  One set of steps, one person. A man, she knew from the heaviness of the tread, then a slight smell reached her, riding the wind.

  The fragrance of roses.

  She slipped her finger to the trigger.

  Lund

  Lund wasn’t sure what made him look up into the trees. Not a sound—there was none. Not a scent—all he smelled were leaves, pine, and a hint of wood fire. The only way he could explain it was a change in the pressure of the air.

  But whatever the reason, when he did look up, he peered straight into the barrel of one nasty-looking assault rifle.

  “Don’t shoot.” He dropped his deer rifle and raised his hands like he was in some old western, his heart pumping out of his chest.

  “Lund?”

  That voice. He knew it. “Chandler?”

  “Close. Fleming.”

  The rifle lowered, and he could finally focus on the face behind it.

  “I almost shot you,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  L
und still couldn’t quite breathe. Here he’d brought a weapon, only to drop it at the first indication of trouble. But he wasn’t going to beat himself up about it. Yesterday he’d seen the people he was up against in action. He was no match for any of them. He was trained to save people, not kill them. He probably shouldn’t have even brought the damn gun.

  “Why are you here? Wait, how are you here?”

  “I got a call. Can you warn Chandler?”

  “Warn her? What’s wrong?”

  “A guy called me. The guy who sold us the guns. He watches this place pretty carefully, and he saw helicopters flying in earlier today. Lots of them.”

  Even from the ground, Lund could see alarm widen Fleming’s eyes.

  “How many?” she asked.

  “He wasn’t sure. But he mentioned seeing soldiers.”

  “Here?” She brought the rifle to her shoulder and scanned the ammo plant through the scope.

  “You don’t see them?”

  “I don’t see anyone. That’s what has me worried. Is this guy reliable?”

  “Depends on how you define reliable.”

  Fleming glanced down at the laptop he’d given her. “Unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless they don’t want to be seen. Meaning it’s a trap.”

  Lund was just about to panic when Fleming whirled to the side, focusing the rifle at something in the forest behind him.

  He followed the trajectory of her aim and found himself looking into yet another rifle barrel focused on him. Then, from the other side of Fleming’s perch, he heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun racking.

  Chandler

  “Trust no one,” the Instructor said.

  “Where are you hurt?” I asked.

  The Instructor’s face was a mask of dried blood, his clothing caked with the clotting stuff. He coughed, spat between his legs onto the cell floor.

  “All over,” he said. “Can you help me up?”

  I moved to do so. Though I was unsure if I could trust him, I had relied on him many times in the past. This was the man who had trained me, and in doing so had held my life in his hands countless times. Much of what I was today, both good and bad, could be attributed to the Instructor. I may not have known his real name, but without a doubt he was the most influential, and important, person to have ever been in my life.