“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 others.”
“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 rear view 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 half way 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 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 back seat 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 Vict
or’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 self-meditation was going to stop me from freaking out.
No one could resist waterboarding. That’s why it was such an ineffective method of gathering intel. Victims would lie like devils, agree to anything, make up insane stories, just to get it to stop. There was no way to be sure if what they were spilling was truth or what they thought the interrogator wanted to hear.
I looked my sister straight in the eye. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” I said, working to keep my voice even.
“I know,” cooed Hammett, rubbing her index knuckle cross my cheek. “But let’s have a bit of fun first.”
She reached behind me, and I heard the sink go on. I closed my eyes and felt a towel go over my face. I wondered if Kaufmann was dead. If not, maybe there was a slim chance they’d leave him out of this. At least I could tell myself that, and hope that they didn’t realize how much he meant to me.
I thought of how much I wanted to say to him, how I’d failed to form the words before he’d slipped into drug-induced unconsciousness, how I might never have the opportunity now.
I heard footsteps, someone else coming in.
“I thought you were going to wait for me.”
Victor.
“How’s the old man?” Hammett asked.
“Just gave him something to wake him up. He’ll be around soon.”
My throat closed. I’d told Victor that Kaufmann was like a father to me. In my need to open up, to trust Victor, to forge what I thought might grow into some kind of bond, I’d betrayed the only person I had in the world.
I felt Victor’s hand on my thigh, travelling up between my legs. I flinched, trying to twist away. Except for a small twitch, I couldn’t move.
He chuckled. “Wow, you go from hot to cold pretty quick. A little while ago, you couldn’t get enough of me.”
I thought I might be sick.
“How was she?” Hammett asked, shooting me a taunting smile.
“Adequate,” he said, pinching my left breast. “But too needy.”
“What I needed was a bigger cock,” I said. “Rather than child-size.”
I sensed the punch before it came, and was able to clench my stomach muscles as his fist hit. Even so, the blow shuddered through my body and made me gasp for air. Before I had a chance to recover, I was slid, table and all, under the kitchen faucet. My hips lifted, tilting my shoulders downward, making blood rush to my head. Tepid water soaked the towel. Victor punched my belly again and again, and I fought not to breathe, squeezing my eyes shut, keeping my air passages closed.
I lasted maybe a minute before my body betrayed me, and I had to take a breath. The water rushed into my lungs. I coughed and gasped and choked on more water. A roar rose in my ears, blotting out all sound. My body convulsed against the restraints.
Then I went away. No more Chandler. No more memories. No more humanity. I was a blind, panicked animal, struggling for survival. The fear of dying, the pain of my lungs sucking in liquid, the blackness of death clawing at me, reduced me to nothing but pure, terrible sensation.
When they finally pulled off the towel, I couldn’t stop coughing. My nose and throat were raw. My lungs felt like I’d inhaled fire. My whole body trembled. I couldn’t control my weeping, but managed through raw, brute force not to beg.
Not that begging would do
any good.
“Do you know what we’re looking for, Chandler?” Hammett asked.
I continued to cough, gasping in air like I’d never get enough.
“This must be so terrible for you. The memories it brings back. I’d really hate to be you right now, dear sister. Your pain and fear must be unimaginable.”
“Nice… scar,” I sputtered. “Your pimp do that to you?”
Hammett’s eyes got big, and she cracked a smile. “You’re feisty. You’ll be fun to break.”
I went under the faucet once more, no towel this time, the water running directly up my nostrils. I coughed and gagged and eventually retched all over myself before they pulled me back.
Victor leered down at me. “What, no more jokes about my cock?”
“What… cock?” I managed. “I thought you… finger banged me.”
He jammed the wet towel against my face and shoved me under the water again. This time, rather than punches raining down on my stomach, the stun gun zapped my side.
I really had a lousy track record when it came to men.
The pain went on until I couldn’t take anymore. And then it kept going.
Choking, gasping, and then drowning. The water pulling me down, closing over my head, filling my lungs, like I was in the car again with Cory. No… not with Cory… with Kaufmann. And this time, I was the one who had driven into the water. It was my fault. All my goddamn fault. And yet there he was anyway, kind, beautiful Kaufmann, looking at me with that softness in his eyes, saying he was proud of me, that he cared for me, giving me more than any human being ever had.
And it still wasn’t enough.
I must have died, because next thing I knew, warm lips were on mine, blowing air into me. I tried to bite down, but they pulled away too fast. Coughing took hold of me, vomiting, spitting out water. Bile seared the back of my throat. But the rest of me felt like I was floating.
“Bitch,” Victor said, jolting me back to earth.
“Easy!” Hammett commanded. “You want to kill her again? We need information, dummy.”
Jack Kilborn & Ann Voss Peterson & J. A. Konrath Page 12
