Jack Kilborn & Ann Voss Peterson & J. A. Konrath

by Flee - a Thriller

  Fleming pulled into the hospital’s rear parking lot and up to the double doors. After offering to help my sister into her wheelchair—which apparently was akin to spitting in her face—we headed toward the morgue entrance. This chair was manual, not electric, and had angled wheels and a lower profile.

  “Does this model also have the guns in the armrests?” I asked.

  “Among other modifications. I don’t like being unarmed.”

  We both signed in with the attendant, a sleepy-eyed doughboy with greasy hair. The morgue was off limits to the public, but cops, doctors, and morticians were granted entrance. Our fake credentials said we were doctors, and we were dressed appropriately in white lab coats.

  I kept my head down so the attendant didn’t notice we were twins, but it didn’t matter because his eyes were glued to a television showing, of all things, an Animal Planet special on otters.

  I let Fleming deal with the paper work—a bogus autopsy order—while I used one of the morgue’s stainless steel gurneys to fetch Clancy and wheel her inside. When I returned, Fleming was waiting for me at the entrance to the cooler. She went in first, and I followed.

  There are not many smells worse than the stench of the morgue. Underneath the bleach and antiseptic was a sickly-sweet odor akin to rotting carnations. It coated the insides of my nostrils and clung to my skin, and I knew from experience it would stick with me long after I had left the building.

  In the massive walk-in cooler, the dead were stacked four high on wire racks, many of them leaking fluids onto the sticky floor. They were naked, bluish-colored regardless of race, and many were still stuck in the odd positions they’d died in; on their sides, arms and legs akimbo, curled up as if in sleep. Cook County Morgue was one of the biggest in the nation, and it was operating at full capacity, which meant over three hundred bodies. We were the only two live ones in the place.

  Fleming picked up a stray bottle of bleach and began spritzing down Clancy’s body bag, destroying our prints. I ducked into the autopsy room—which was devoid of any medical examiners as Jack Daniels had promised—and found two of my sisters on the cutting tables. Follett, whom I’d putted the grenade at, was missing a good portion of her legs. The other, whose head wound indicated she was Ludlam from Stretchers, already had the standard Y incision on her chest. Luckily, she hadn’t been opened up yet. I swallowed the bad taste in my mouth and took the hand clippers out of my lab coat.

  “Forsyth is missing,” I called over my shoulder to Fleming, “so check the racks. She’ll have on liquid body armor.”

  “I’m on it. You know, this may sound stupid, but it feels good to be in the field again. Nice to get out of the bunker and stretch my legs. Figuratively speaking.”

  I might have enjoyed the small talk with my sister more if I hadn’t been snipping off my other sister’s fingertips. We needed to get rid of all fingerprint evidence, or both Fleming and I were in deep shit.

  Well, deeper shit. Things were pretty dire already.

  I finished up with Ludlam, then got to work on Follett. She only had seven fingers, the explosion apparently having taken care of the other three.

  “Found her,” Fleming called out. Less than a minute later it was followed by, “Someone’s coming.”

  I snipped off the last digit and placed it in a plastic baggie. Then I scanned the nearby table, looking for paperwork. Jack had said one of my sisters had been printed. I needed to find the card and—

  “Well… look at what we have here.”

  I spun, looking at the cop who had just walked into the autopsy suite. He was mid-forties, unshaven, his uniform a bit too tight around his belly and badly in need of ironing. He wore a leer normally reserved for striptease venues.

  “Can I help you, Officer?” I asked, using my polite voice.

  “You’ve got to be one of the cutest doctors I’ve ever seen. I may have to call heaven, see if Jesus filled an MAR.” He winked. “A Missing Angel Report.”

  Normally I didn’t tolerate the loud, obnoxious type. But seeing as how I was impersonating a doctor, it wasn’t in my best interest to piss off a cop.

  “Looks like we’re both working late,” I said. “You here for take-out or delivery?”

  He smiled wide. “Neither. Just needed to check up on a case.”

  “Don’t let me keep you.” I gave him a quick, saccharine grin, then stuck a scalpel into Ludlam’s Y incision with more verve than I felt.

  Horny Cop didn’t take the hint. “Say, that’s some hottie you got there on the table. You know who she looks like?”

  I tensed, waiting for the obvious, pre-thinking my next move.

  “That chick who played in Tomb Raider,” he continued. “Smaller tits, though. And paler. And not nearly as active. You don’t mind if I observe, do you?”

  “Be my guest.” I offered a crocodile smile and yanked out Ludlam’s stomach by the esophagus.

  “Hey, lookie here, another cutie. Nice wheels, Doc.”

  I glanced up and noticed Fleming had her hands on her armrests, right on top of the rifle barrels. I gave her a discreet head shake, imploring her not to shoot him.

  “You guys related? You look kinda alike. Except for the wheelchair thing.”

  “We’re sisters,” I said, palpating Ludlum’s duodenum.

  “Sisters. That’s hot. So would it be out of line if I asked you guys out?”

  Is he serious?

  “Are you serious?” Fleming asked.

  “Yeah. It would be like a double date, but just me and you two. I’ve always wanted to date sisters. It’s on my checklist of things to do before I die.”

  “I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to check that one off,” Fleming said, eyes mean and hands squeezing her rails.

  I needed to diffuse this fast, before we had to dispose of another body.

  “You’re ten kinds of sexy,” the cop said to Fleming. “I like a woman who can’t run away.”

  Then again, a morgue was a pretty good place for body disposal.

  “You are the biggest, rudest—”

  “Let’s cut the crap here, ladies,” the cop said, interrupting her. “I know you two aren’t doctors. You, Wheels, were snipping off someone’s fingers when I came in. And you, Dr. Incompetent, you’re apparently practicing for the movie World’s Worst Autopsies. You hold that scalpel like it’s some guy’s johnson. Which, I admit, is arousing, but not very effective.”

  Shit. Now we probably had to kill him.

  “But all that is none of my business,” he went on, “and I certainly wouldn’t use my authority to force you both to go out with me. On Thursday night, say eightish. I have tickets to the game. Box seats. That means I give you the seat, you show me the box.”

  “Look, Officer…” I squinted at the name on his shirt, “McGlade. We really have a lot of work to do here and—”

  “Your badge is plastic,” Fleming said.

  McGlade nodded. “Yeah. They took my real one when they kicked me off the force. The uniform still fits, though. Mostly. I’m in the private sector now.” He gave me what he probably thought was his serious face. In reality, he looked constipated. “I’m here to check on a teenager. Suicide. Parents suspect foul play. I snuck in to take a look. So what’s your story? Some sort of creepy, sister-on-sister necrophilia stuff? Because that’s hot.”

  I glanced at Fleming, who mouthed, Let me shoot him.

  “Here’s the thing, McGlade…”

  “Call me Harry.”

  “…I know I speak for both me and my sister when I say we don’t find you attractive.”

  “I’m also rich. They made a TV series about me.”

  “And we’re so very happy for you. But we’ve got some shit that needs to get done, you’ve got that suicide thing to work on, and the chances of us ever hooking up are less than zero.”

  “That’s cool,” he said. “So how about I pay you each two hundred bucks to French kiss?”

  “You can leave now, McGlade.”

/>   He threw a salute. “Message received. And if you change your mind, just Google me. Reference this morgue thing, though, so I remember. I ask a lot of women out.”

  He shot me with his index finger, did the same to Fleming, and then strutted out of there like a delusional peacock.

  “I almost killed him about four different times,” Fleming said. “You know, I actually saw his TV show. Fatal Autonomy. I don’t even know what that title means.”

  “Did you get the chip from Forsyth?” I asked, getting us back on track.

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll do Follett and meet you there.”

  When I was finished, I tucked both trackers in the plastic bag, then helped Fleming remove the third from Forsyth. We dodged a winking Harry McGlade and got the hell out of the morgue.

  Our next stop was the Hancock Building, to retrieve my phone.

  But…

  I checked my PC and saw two blips. Me, Fleming, and my dead sisters constituted one of them. The other, Hammett, was a mile distant and heading this way. If she was still after me, it was a good indicator she hadn’t found the transceiver yet. I guessed she was with Victor, and who knew how many of his men.

  Fortunately, I had a plan to throw them off our trail.

  “Have you ever been to Buckingham Fountain?” I asked Fleming.

  “When defeating the enemy isn’t possible,” The Instructor said, “confusing the enemy is the next best thing.”

  Hammett stares at the screen of her tablet PC, unsure of what is happening. Normally, depending on how closely she zooms into the map, there are anywhere from five to seven blips, each representing one of the sisters.

  But now there are only two. Hers, and another.

  Hammett has no idea what this means. But she’s about to find out. Driving in a cargo van with Victor and his thugs, she’s closing in on the mysterious second blip. “Turn here,” she orders.

  When she gets within ten blocks, the blip begins to move east. They fall into pursuit.

  So far, this op has been a catastrophe. One fuck-up after another. It had all been so eloquently planned, too. Thought-out down to the smallest detail. The only wild card was Chandler.

  And what a wild card that turned out to be.

  Hammett hasn’t heard from Clancy, and can only assume she’s the latest casualty.

  It’s a shame. The Hydra Project had been a wonderful idea, and might have still had a few good years left. Hammett easily imagined controlling a crime syndicate with her sisters. Or staging a coup and running a small country. But their deaths put an end to any future plans.

  Fortunately those plans paled in comparison to acquiring the transceiver.

  Victor believes his people will have access to the phone. He even has a team of scientists lined up to reverse-engineer it. They care less about its nuclear capabilities and more about its encryption, which is supposedly unbreakable. At least that’s his story. Hammett assumes Victor will kill her as soon as the transceiver’s delivery is assured.

  She assumes this, because she plans to do the same to him. Him and his tiny prick.

  Hammett allows herself a smile. For now she and Victor are the best of allies, joining forces to reach a mutually beneficial end.

  Victor takes the PC from her. He is so keyed up, he’s nearly vibrating.

  “It appears they’ve stopped,” he says. “At the Buckingham Fountain.”

  “Let me see.”

  He tilts the screen toward her, offering a glimpse. She grabs the PC from his hands, eyes on the now stationary blip.

  Victor orders his man to turn onto Columbus Avenue, the street flanking Grant Park. The night is cool and only a couple dozen people mill around the fountain to watch its nightly light show. Classical music jangles through the air, accompanying the dance of water lighted from all sides, turning the fountain into a rainbow of color. Vapor rises into the cold night, giving the Chicago landmark a dream-like quality.

  “What’s happening?” Victor asks, leaning close to Hammett and eyeing the tablet PC.

  In front of their eyes, the single blip becomes four distinct blips, separating in different directions.

  Victor gestures to the driver. “Pull over.”

  They pull the van up onto the sidewalk and quickly pour out onto the park grounds, guns concealed in jackets, eyes alert for anyone who looks like Hammett. The gravel on the path around the fountain crunches under combat boots, pigeons scattering at their approach, and Hammett holds the PC in front of her like a talisman, tracking the nearest blip. It’s close, moving slowly, erratically. The other three have dispersed, fleeing to other parts of the city.

  Hammett zooms in to the maximum resolution of the tracking map, wondering why the powers that be, in their infinite wisdom, gave each of the Hydra sisters an identical chip, rather than a unique one that could be linked to a specific identity. Of course, that was years ago, and technology wasn’t as advanced as—

  “There!”

  Victor, the fool, whips out his gun in public. Several spectators turn and stare at them with wide eyes. Hammett combs the small crowd, trying to focus into the darkness and pick out the familiar shape of a sister. But there’s nothing there. Nothing but—

  “Pigeons,” Hammett says. She checks the tablet, then confirms it with a forward glance. There’s a loft of pigeons ahead, dozens of them, feasting on what appears to be small, bloody pieces of steak.

  Correction. She spies a bird with something in its beak. Something that is quite obviously a piece of a human finger.

  Hammett laughs, so loudly and profusely that she disturbs the loft, which takes flight and spreads out over Chicago.

  “What’s going on?” Victor asks.

  “This bird has flown,” Hammett says.

  “What?”

  “Your piece of ass. She played us. Played us good.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Hammett realizes her laughter has attracted even more attention, people backing away as if afraid she has lost her mind. She turns to Victor, her mood suddenly souring. “Put your gun away, you idiot.”

  He tucks it back inside his jacket. Hammett folds her arms, tries to concentrate, but anger clouds her thoughts. Staring at the PC again, she resists the urge to throw it into the dancing waters of Buckingham Fountain. Instead she looks at the blip moving north on the screen, and then gazes in at the Magnificent Mile, all lit up along Michigan Avenue. Chandler had been telling the truth about the Hancock Building. They hadn’t found the transceiver, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  “Call your men. We’re going back to the 96th Floor.”

  Victor’s brow furrowed. “My superiors—”

  “Fuck your superiors,” Hammett said. “You either come with me, or you go back to them empty-handed. Now move your ass, comrade.”

  Hammett strides back to the van, indulging in a private smile. It has been so long since she’s faced any sort of challenge. Tragic as the current events have been, she has to admit, she’s having fun.

  Almost as much fun as it will be to launch one of those nukes on some unsuspecting country, once she gets the transceiver.

  After all, what’s the point of having ultimate power, unless you exercise it?

  “Always prepare for the worst,” The Instructor said. “Because the worst is usually what happens.”

  #bq

  When I was growing up, my wicked stepfather used to call pigeons rats with wings. While I didn’t share that sentiment, pigeons were undeniably scavengers, and they had made quick work of the fingertips and the tracking devices, gobbling them up with rat-like efficiency.

  “You know what you just did?” Fleming said, pulling the Hummer onto Columbus and heading north.

  “What?”

  “You killed two birds with one stone.”

  I allowed myself a small smile, then turned my attention to the substantial armory Fleming had in the back of the truck. I packed a rucksack with two Sig Arms P220 Combat Pistols, loade
d, and four eight-round magazines. I also added an M18 green smoke grenade, and a Taser M26.

  “Is this Tec-9 converted?” I asked, holding up a submachine gun slightly bigger than one of the Sigs.

  “Full-auto,” Fleming said. “Squeeze the trigger and it fires a thousand rounds a minute.”

  I didn’t see any 1000 round magazines, but I found some thirty-round sticks. I put the Tec-9 and the mags in the sack. I also strapped a wicked-looking Mercworx VORAX double-edged combat knife to my right calf under my pants leg, using a Velcro holster. On my left leg went a retractable police asp. It weighed about half a kilogram, and when fully extended was over two feet long.

  “You’ve got a full case of M67s back here,” I said, eyeing a crate of hand grenades.

  “Leave them. If one explodes on the 96th floor, it would blow out windows, and the cross breeze could sweep us outside. Or worse, it might cause some structural damage.”

  I left them. A moment later, Fleming hit a pothole, making the crate bounce. I winced.

  “You sure it’s safe to drive like that when you’ve got all of this ordnance back here?”

  “If you’re worried, you could sit up here where it’s safe.”

  If the Humvee blew up, I doubted anywhere within a hundred meters would be safe. But I climbed into the passenger seat just the same.

  “Maybe I can drive on the way back?”

  “Sure. And there’s an extra key in the trailer hitch in back, under the tow ball, just in case.”

  I knew what just in case meant. Just in case Fleming didn’t make it.

  I didn’t like that scenario at all.

  We arrived at the Hancock Center a few minutes later. As we drove up the spiral ramp to the parking levels, my thoughts drifted to Kaufmann. Earlier that day, we’d escaped the men in the black SUV on this ramp. It seemed so long ago.

  So much had changed since then.

  And yet, everything remained the same.

  The Instructor once told me that the game never changes, only the players.