I held my breath, listening for the jingle to grow louder, the sound of panting, anything that would warn me the animal was getting close. One minute dragged by, then another, then too many for me to count. The hum of male voices reached me, my smuggler’s voice and that of border patrol, but I could only catch a word now and then.
I felt the transmission shift into gear, and the truck started moving.
I let out a long breath. Soon the hollow sound of tires moving over a bridge reverberated through the pickup’s frame. Then solid ground.
I’d made it into Mexico.
The truck kept going for several miles, and I tried to note each upward grade, each turn, so I could find my way back to Nuevo Laredo’s center. Precisely what had made my impromptu coyote a good bet to sneak past border security might come back to bite me now that I was essentially his prisoner in his country, and I was on high alert. Judging from the uninterrupted speed and kidney-punching bumps in the road, we were on the outskirts of town, and as the truck finally slowed and then came to a stop, I slid my finger to the trigger. Breathing slowly, I waited.
Again the shifting of cardboard scraped and shuffled over me and then the murmur of men’s voices speaking Spanish. Finally the panel covering me lifted, cold, fetid air washed over my sweaty skin, and I was staring up at a star-filled night.
And into the barrel of an AK-47.
Julie
A knock sounded on the door.
Julie switched off the inane reality TV show she’d been watching, sank deeper into the love seat, and hugged the throw pillow to her chest. Since she’d been imprisoned in this room, the only people she’d seen were Derek Fossen, who brought her meals on a tray, and the nasty woman with the bug mole, who took her blood.
But she’d already had blood drawn, and Derek had brought dinner over an hour ago, and that meant this visit was different. And the thought of what it must be about made her feel sick to her stomach.
The knock came again. “Julie? Are you OK?”
Derek’s voice, not The Instructor.
Julie let out a shaky breath. “Come in, Derek.”
The door swung wide, and Derek stepped into the room. Dressed in his hazmat suit as usual, he looked at her for a moment without speaking, the concern on his face obvious even through his face shield.
She clutched the pillow tighter. “What is it?”
“The Instructor sent me.”
She nodded. “I have to come with you?”
“He ordered me to deliver the invitation. You don’t have to accept.”
“But I will have to eventually.”
“I suppose so. Yes.”
Julie forced herself to stand. She gave the pillow one more hug, then tossed it into the chair. Since she’d been brought to this room, she’d been given real clothes to wear, not the hospital gown. Now she was dressed in a light sweater and jeans, comfortable, but not exactly date material.
If you could even call this a date.
She stretched her arms out from her sides. “Am I supposed to wear something specific? Or is this OK?”
“I don’t think it matters.”
Because she wouldn’t be wearing anything. Of course. How stupid of her.
“All right,” she managed to choke out. “Let’s go.”
“You don’t have to do this, Julie.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I can tell him you’re not ready yet.”
Tears misted her eyes. She didn’t know anything about Derek Fossen, but she’d seen the concern on his face and heard it in his voice, and it felt good to know someone besides Chandler cared about what happened to her.
“Thanks, Derek. But…”
“What is it?”
“He has my friend in custody. If I put him off too long…”
“You’re afraid he’ll take it out on her.”
She nodded.
He frowned. “Who is your friend?”
“Her name is Chandler. If it wasn’t for her, my life would have ended years ago.”
“So you owe her?”
It was more than that. So much more. “She’s like my big sister.”
“You love her.”
She nodded. “She’s all I have.”
The tears were flowing now, so many tears. She would think that one of these days her eyes would cry themselves dry, but the tears just kept coming.
Derek raised a gloved hand to her face and wiped her cheeks. “I’ll tell him you aren’t ready yet.”
Julie shook her head. “But Chandler…”
“And I’ll see what I can find out about your friend.”
“Why…” Julie’s voice broke. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Because you remind me of someone.”
“The Instructor said that you needed extra persuasion to work on this…thing.”
Derek shook his head, his bio suit crackling with the sudden movement. “That’s not important.”
“It must be important to you.”
“You have enough to deal with right now. You don’t need to take on my burdens, too.”
“But, I want—”
“I’ll tell The Instructor and see what I can find out about Chandler.” He turned away, then stopped, his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Fleming
“The mission can’t be personal,” The Instructor said. “Once it gets personal, abort.”
According to the chip tracker on Hydra’s webpage, Rhett and Scarlett were in Worcester, Massachusetts. Fleming wasn’t prepared to deal with them. Not yet. But the thought of them continuing to hurt Bradley made Fleming’s stomach ache.
So she pulled over to the side of the road and made the call. Rhett answered.
“I was wondering if we’d be hearing from you. So has your boyfriend. A virgin, huh? You rascal.”
“I’ll make a trade. Me for Bradley. But you have to stop hurting him.”
“Dunno if I can promise that. My partner is all riled up, itching to have a go at him.”
“Then have fun with him, because you won’t get me.”
Fleming forced herself to hang up. Then she forced herself not to call back.
A very long ten minutes later, the cell rang.
“Tomorrow. One p.m.,” Rhett said. “Boston.”
“I can’t get there fast enough.”
“Every minute you’re late, Bradley loses another body part.”
“I don’t have a vehicle, and I can’t fly.”
“You have sixteen hours to get it together and figure it out.”
Rhett hung up.
Little did he know, Fleming had been driving all day and was already in Providence. Boston was a little over an hour away.
But that still might not be enough time for Fleming to prepare. She got on Google to look for a custom motorcycle shop, and after ten minutes of browsing found two likely candidates.
Hopefully at least one of them would be closed and unoccupied. Bradley’s life, and hers as well, depended on it.
Julie
This time, the knock woke Julie out of a deep sleep.
She had no idea what time it was. Propping herself up on the couch, she stared at the blank television screen, the movie she’d been streaming over.
“Julie? You awake?” Fossen called through the door.
She scrambled to her feet, smoothed her hair down, and tried to appear presentable. “Come in.”
Derek stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
“He wants to see me?” Julie said. It felt like she’d been living under The Instructor’s threat for a long time, even though when she added up the hours it had to be only a couple of days. Still every hour grated, taking its toll. She was almost ready to just go to him and get it over with. She might have done that already, if not for Derek’s insistence earlier in the evening that he tell The Instructor she wasn’t yet ready.
“He’s lying to you, Julie.�
�
“The Instructor?”
“Yes.” Circles cupped under Derek’s eyes, and deep creases framed his mouth and lined his forehead. She knew he was under a lot of stress—“a bit of extra persuasion to do the right thing” is how The Instructor had put it. Even The Instructor had told her that much, although Derek had refused to explain the first time she’d asked him about it.
“What is The Instructor lying about?”
“A lot of things.” Through the face shield, she could see Derek lick his lips, as if nervous, as if scared. “I looked for your friend, and I found out something.”
“About Chandler?” Julie was afraid to ask what that meant, but she suspected she knew. “She’s already dead?”
“Not that I know of.” He put his hand on her shoulder, softly, gently. “I think you should sit down, though.”
Julie didn’t want to sit down. She’d been sitting for days. But the intensity in Derek’s eyes and the wobble that already registered in her legs made her lower herself to the edge of the couch. “What is it?”
Derek sat beside her, the cushion dipping with his weight. “Your friend is in trouble.”
Julie knew it. She clasped her hands together and pressed them between her knees. “Tell me.”
“She killed the president, Julie.”
She shook her head. His words didn’t make sense, not one bit.
“It’s true. The president was assassinated last week, and it was your friend Chandler who did it.”
A hum rose in Julie’s ears. It was impossible. Chandler had saved her, taken care of her. Chandler was a good person.
Memories of how they’d met raced through her mind. Chandler jumping out of a helicopter. Chandler shooting guns. Chandler killing.
But those had been bad guys she’d shot at, bad guys she’d killed. Not the president of the United States.
“I don’t believe it.”
“There’s video of her doing it, Julie. Other proof, too.”
She looked into Derek’s eyes, searching for lies, but there was nothing that she could see. He seemed to be telling the truth.
She stared at the floor, her throat dry. “Then if she did it, she had good reason.”
“There’s a good reason to kill the president? I don’t think so.”
Julie braced her head with her hands. “Maybe not. I don’t know. I just know Chandler. She’s a good person. There’s not a lot I know anymore, but I know that.”
“She’s the subject of the biggest manhunt in history, that’s what they’re saying on television.”
“I’ve been watching TV all the time. I never saw anything.”
“That’s because yours is closed circuit. Just reality shows, sitcoms, dramas, and the movies you stream.”
Of course. The Instructor had been controlling what she knew to gain her cooperation…and not only that. “There is a manhunt for Chandler?”
“Across the nation. Maybe across the world.”
“But that means The Instructor doesn’t have her.”
“That’s right. He was lying.”
And if he didn’t have Chandler…
“He can’t hurt me.” Relief poured over her in waves.
“He can, Julie. And he will.”
He was right, of course. The Instructor could beat her and drug her and do all sorts of things short of killing her. But that wasn’t what was keeping Julie in line. “You don’t understand. He can’t kill Chandler if he doesn’t know where she is. The rest I don’t care about.”
Derek shook his head. “Don’t talk that way. You need to hold on. Just a little longer. Give me a chance to get you out of here.”
“You can do that?”
“Well, not on my own. But maybe if I have help.”
“Help? What kind of help?” Julie wasn’t sure there was any help for her.
He rested his hand on hers. “Listen, I’m not sure what’s going to happen. But I know a reporter I can talk to. If what The Instructor is doing gets out, maybe the new president will shut him down.”
He slipped an arm around her shoulder and squeezed her close, just for a moment.
It had been so long since Julie had been hugged by a man—a nice man—that once again she had to fight to keep from crying. “I don’t want you to get in trouble, Derek.”
“I won’t. I’ll make sure of it.”
He was so kind, so sweet. Julie had never met a man like him. Of course, in the last few years, she hadn’t met any men at all. “Why are you helping me like this?”
“Why do you keep asking me that?”
“Because I need you to answer.”
“It’s not right, what he’s doing. Threatening you. Keeping you prisoner. Taking your blood and forcing you…” He looked away, as if he couldn’t meet her eyes while thinking about The Instructor’s plans.
“Please tell me.”
He turned to her, his eyes glassy. “My sister. She’s been sick a long time. Kidney disease. She’s spent half her life in hospitals, being poked and prodded and treated like a thing, not a person. Her latest transplant…Well, she needs another one. But she’s too far down the list.”
“The Instructor can get her a kidney.”
Derek nodded.
“And that’s who I remind you of.”
Another nod. “He’ll keep you here. Forever. But maybe, if we tell someone, we can stop him, and get you some real medical help.”
Julie’s throat felt thick. She wished she could do more than hug Derek. She wished she could touch him, kiss him, but those things could never happen. Not with her. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me until you’re free.”
She would never be truly free, but she didn’t have the heart to remind Derek of that. If he and his reporter friend managed to get her out of this, she would have what she needed.
The chance to make things right.
Chandler
“When you are faced with death, it is hard to look past the immediate threat,” The Instructor said. “But to survive, you must train yourself to gather information about your enemy and your surroundings, recall what you’ve learned, and use logic to think through various solutions. The operative with the coolest head under threat is the operative who will come out alive.”
At first, the rifle barrel was all I could see, the thrum of my heart was all I could hear. I didn’t have to do much thinking to know I was in deep shit. My problem was figuring out what I was facing and how to get out of it.
I forced myself to focus on the faces behind the gun. Three men in Kevlar vests stared at me, two young enough to show acne under their struggling goatees, one with a touch of gray working into the five o’clock shadow on his cheeks. All wore their hair short and had the hard eyes of men who could pull the trigger without thinking twice.
The Gulf drug cartel dominated this part of the border, and a Z tat on one’s neck, combined with ink depicting Santa Muerte dressed in military garb on another’s bare upper arm suggested Los Zetas. Originally a group of former military men and police officers, Los Zetas functioned as an enforcement arm of the Gulf cartel, although rumor had it they were planning an attempt to take the territory for themselves. They were well armed and trained, and known for drug running, extortion, kidnapping, murder, and generally not messing around.
They sure didn’t look like they intended to mess around tonight.
“Please don’t hurt me!” I said, injecting desperation into my voice. I hugged my arms around my middle, using the movement to stuff the Jericho under my shirt and into the side of my waistband, so they wouldn’t see that I was armed, at least for a few seconds.
“Get out.” The graying soldier with the Santa Muerte tat waved the rifle at me and snatched my backpack from the compartment.
I unfolded my body from the cocoon, muscles stiff. No matter how much training I had, having a gun pointed in my face never felt good, and my body trembled a little, a result of a healthy amount of adrenaline dumping into my bloodstream.
I played up the shaking as I climbed from the truck bed. Keeping my eyes canted downward in a submissive angle, I sized the men up in order of threat. The leader was every bit as nasty as he looked. In addition to the tattoos, he boasted several scars, and I judged him to be in his later thirties, capable and lethal. The second was young, mid-twenties, and had a bottom-heavy face—twice as wide at the jaw as at the forehead. He’d probably been living the drug soldier life for a decade or more, and although the Zetas weren’t as known for their skin art as many of the gangs south of the border, this guy had seen enough action to earn an impressive amount of ink. The third was a kid, fifteen if he was lucky, but as young as he was, his eyes already held the dead stare of a predator, and I’d bet he’d taken many lives.
The cartonero who’d acted as my coyote stood a distance away, smoking a cigarette and pretending as if he was casually surveying the land. Although the constant flick of his eyes suggested he wasn’t feeling quite as relaxed as he pretended.
Greedy bastard.
Apparently he’d seen an opportunity to keep my shotgun in addition to whatever kind of cut the Zetas gave him, so he’d sold me. Nice.
Of course, I couldn’t be too judgmental. I’d planned on taking the shotgun back once we’d crossed the border, after all.
I shifted my attention to my surroundings. A late-model Ford pickup in forest green was parked in front of the cartonero’s truck, obviously belonging to my Zetas’ entourage. Moonlight glowed on hill after hill of barren earth scattered with plastic bags, stained paper, scraps of cardboard and wood. From here, the lights of Nuevo Laredo twinkled dully over the hills of trash and rutted dirt, overtaken by the more brilliant light cascading from the American side of the river.
A landfill was a good place to bury a body, but I didn’t think that’s what these men had in mind. Killing me immediately wouldn’t do them any good. Even rape would be amateurish, a few minutes of pleasure and little else. Some gangs might opt for a night of fun, but Los Zetas didn’t have that kind of frivolous, undisciplined reputation. If everything I knew about them was accurate, they had bigger and more lucrative plans.
Flee, Spree, Three (Codename: Chandler Trilogy - Three Complete Novels) Page 87