Codename Chandler.
Of course, if the world ever found out what I’d done, I wouldn’t be remembered by my codename. My real name would be discovered. The US wasn’t going to let a presidential assassin get away with it. I’d be hunted to the ends of the earth, executed by the country I’d sworn to serve, and be the source of debate, conspiracy theories, and hatred for as long as human beings lived.
If the world found out.
“You just killed him?” Lund asked.
“I did what I had to do to save you,” I said. “This country will always have a president. But you…you’re irreplaceable.”
Lund stared at me with an expression I couldn’t read, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open. I hoped it was relief or gratitude and not disgust.
Hammett had her tablet PC out, tapping at the touch screen.
“CNN.com,” she said. “President was just pulled out of a press conference. They think he was shot.” Hammett tapped the screen a few more times. “I just bought a slew of stock options this morning. Think the Dow will crash? If so, I’m rich, bitches. Cha-ching!”
“What now?” Fleming asked the Instructor. She hadn’t looked at me since I’d punched in the code.
“Now, provided the fireman can keep his mouth shut, you’re free to go,” the Instructor said. He took the phone and note I hadn’t realized I was still holding, slipped them into a small bag and stuffed it in a satchel slung around his shoulder. “Everyone take a week off. I’ll call you soon with your next assignment.”
“You’re letting us leave?” I asked.
The Instructor pointed up at a nearby tree. I noticed the video camera, hidden in the branches. “I got your speech on tape. You’ll work for me again, or I leak it to the press, and your face will be on every television station and website on the planet.”
I blinked. The bastard had me. I glanced at my two identical sisters. He had all of us. I had just started dreaming of a normal life, and now those hopes were gone, held hostage by a man who would never, ever let me go.
Hammett’s eyebrows crinkled. “That’s my face, too.”
“It’s all your faces.” He tapped the bag. “And your fingerprints.”
I stared at his hand, the bag, then back to the camera. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. I’d actually handed him half his evidence.
Hammett made a growling noise deep in her throat.
The Instructor gave her a shake of his head. “You already work for me, so I don’t need any leverage. This is just an insurance policy for Chandler and Fleming, so they stay in line.”
“You can take that video and shove it up your ass,” Fleming said.
Hammett raised her rifle, aiming at Fleming. “Then I guess it’s game over for you, Sis.”
The Instructor took a step toward Hammett. “We need her. She’s still got the encryption code in her head.”
Hammett shot him a mean glance. “Then give me the recording. Find some other way to control her.”
The Instructor spread out his hands. “Hammett…”
Hammett swung the rifle barrel from Fleming to the Instructor. “I’m not kidding. Give me the goddamn video. I’m not spending the rest of my life as Public Enemy Number One.”
The Instructor raised his hands over his head as if surrendering, but I saw him touch his index finger to his thumb.
A signal, for whoever was watching the camera.
I had a feeling things were about to go from bad to worse.
Hammett’s radio crackled. “It’s Santiago…there are troops fucking everywhere! I surrender! I surrender!”
“You son of a bitch,” Hammett said, putting her rifle barrel to the Instructor’s forehead. “You set me up.”
The Instructor shook his head. “Just a precautionary measure. We’re partners, Hammett.”
“I’m bouncing,” the black guy said. “Too much heat.”
“Later, chica,” Javier said, winking at me. The two took off. Jumping on two ATVs hidden behind a swell of earth, they headed south.
I looked to the west, saw half a dozen armed men converging. They were in ghillie suits—camouflaged so we hadn’t noticed them earlier. More came from the east.
Tequila, so fast he was a blur, came up behind the Instructor and pulled his sidearm, aiming it at Hammett. Half a second later, Hammett was behind me, gun pressed to my back.
“Let her go, or I kill him,” Tequila said. “Then you don’t get your video.”
“You have until three to let him go, then Chandler dies. One…”
I tried to make a move, and Hammett clubbed me in the side of the head with the rifle stock.
Pain rattled through my skull. I dropped to my knees, the world wobbly, and she crouched behind me.
“Two…”
“Chopper coming in,” Fleming said.
I heard it, flying in from the south, fast.
“Three!”
But it wasn’t Hammett who’d said it. It was Lund.
Hammett crumpled, slumping against my back and sliding to the ground. I peered over my shoulder to see Lund holding a broken piece of tombstone in his hands.
Above, the chopper swept in. It was a war bird, an Apache, opening fire with its front-mounted barrel gun.
Tequila pushed the Instructor aside and dove onto Fleming. Lund tackled me, covering my body with his, as large-caliber gunfire tripped the cemetery to shreds.
Tequila returned fire, his pistol rounds pinging off the copter’s reinforced fuselage. I searched for a fallen machine gun, saw one ten meters away, then crawled out from beneath Lund to go for it. Wind stirred from the Apache pummeled my face. The bird lowered a ladder.
The Instructor.
I raced for the weapon, scrambling on hands and knees. I grabbed it, brought it to my shoulder, and turned just in time to see the chopper sweep away over the prairie, the Instructor clinging to the ladder beneath.
“We’re being surrounded,” Tequila said. “At least two dozen men.”
Fleming had crawled over to Hammett, and I saw her pressing something to Hammett’s chest. A gun?
No. A handful of syringes. I noticed Hammett’s pack was open and contained a few more.
“It’s what she drugged us with,” Fleming said. “I upped the dosage. I’m guessing she’ll be out at least an hour, unless Lund put her in a coma.”
I glanced at Lund, who looked deathly pale.
“We should kill her,” I said.
Fleming slung Hammett’s pack over one shoulder. “We can discuss that later.”
“OK, let’s move,” I said. “Tequila?”
“Got her,” he said, kneeling next to Fleming.
“Lund, can you…?”
He nodded, scooping up Hammett in his long arms.
I grabbed my other weapons and took point, leading the group back to Lund’s truck on Burma Road. The troops were closing in on foot, but we had a two-hundred-meter head start.
Hopefully it would be enough.
Lund
Lund had always liked to believe he was good at compartmentalizing emotion and doing what needed to be done, but at this point he felt like a marathon runner hitting the wall.
A limp Hammett swinging over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, Lund concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. The forest was quiet, at least as much as he could discern. His ears were still ringing from gunfire, his body aching from the long trek to the tree line carrying Chandler’s evil look-alike, but he wasn’t close to depletion yet.
Chandler jogged ahead, then Tequila, carrying Fleming. The two of them moved like rabbits through the trees and brush, quick and silent. He felt loud and clumsy as an elephant, trying to keep up.
Only a few hundred yards, and they’d reach his truck.
Once they reached his truck, they could drive out of here.
And as soon as they were out of here, they’d be safe.
He still couldn’t wrap his mind around what had happened back at the cemetery. On
some level, he didn’t believe that the president was dead, that Chandler had actually killed him. He couldn’t make sense of that. Especially the fact that she’d done it to save him.
He forced his feet to keep moving. They were almost to the truck. Just through this thicket and they would—
Chandler held up a hand, signaling him to stop.
Lund froze midstride, then he smelled it.
Cigarette smoke.
Someone was close.
Chandler waved her hands, indicating without words that she planned to circle around and approach from the other side. Tequila and Fleming nodded. Lund wasn’t sure he understood exactly, but he nodded too.
She set off to the east, her steps silent.
Hunkering down behind a thicket of brush, Lund spotted his truck and a man wearing camo standing near the front fender, a cigarette stub clenched between his lips. He held an assault rifle, but his casual body language suggested that he hadn’t sensed their approach. Taking one last drag on his smoke, he flipped the butt to the ground and stomped it out.
Lund detected movement behind the man. It was only a subtle shift of the bushes, barely discernible, but then he spotted Chandler creeping low, moving up behind the man like a tigress stalking her prey.
She inched closer. Closer. Until she was just inches behind.
Her move was fast, perfunctory. Her left hand clapped over the guy’s mouth and yanked back his head. Her arm moved in a flash, her knife blade opening his throat before Lund was sure she’d moved at all.
And as blood flowed and the body slumped to the ground, Lund looked into Chandler’s eyes. And in them he saw nothing at all.
Chandler
“When God closes a door,” said the Instructor, “blow a hole through the damn wall.”
I slipped behind the wheel of Lund’s truck and started the engine while the others piled inside. The radio came on with the turn of the key, and a frantic voice launched into speculation about the president’s condition. I left it on, letting the clueless commentator’s words wash over me like the lash of a whip. But instead of feeling the sting of what I’d done, I felt nothing at all.
It took only minutes to drop Lund at a sweet-looking Harley. We decided to leave Tequila’s truck for the time being. Fleming and I stripped Hammett of all clothing while Tequila dug into his duffel and produced a pair of handcuffs to secure her wrists—the one item left of Harry McGlade’s we hadn’t lost or destroyed.
I was sure Hammett would properly appreciate the faux fur lining when she woke.
The plan was to circle country highways until we were each sure we weren’t being followed, then we’d meet back at the old farm to pick up Fleming’s chair and a few supplies, and figure out our next move.
A few miles into our drive, I switched off the radio. Fleming didn’t say a word. Fine with me. The last thing I wanted to discuss was how I’d betrayed everything we were sworn to uphold and had screwed her, Hammett, and myself in the process. I’d rather listen to the newscaster’s ill-informed blather.
I spent the miles mulling over the first time I’d met Hammett, a particularly unpleasant experience back at my ex’s apartment in Chicago. I wondered how Lund had come up with the red Harley Panhead. I even contemplated the possibility of offering Hammett to Harry McGlade, naked and bound with fur-lined handcuffs, to cover my debt.
But despite my best efforts at distraction, sometime before we reached the farm my thoughts wormed their way back to the Instructor and the president, and every muscle in my body started shaking. It was all I could do to steer the truck into the farm’s drive and park it near the house.
Tequila raised an eyebrow at me, and Fleming said, “Give us a minute.”
He got out of the truck. Then I was alone with my sisters.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, gripping the wheel, staring through the bug-spotted windshield, before I regained some semblance of control.
“Chandler?” Fleming called from the backseat. “She’s not going to be unconscious forever.”
I forced myself out of the truck and opened the back door. Avoiding my conscious sister’s gaze, I heaved Hammett’s limp body over my shoulder and held on to her legs.
“Are you OK?” Fleming asked.
“Are you?”
“Don’t turn this on me.”
“Why not? After what the Instructor did, I’ll bet you’re pretty upset.”
She shook her head as if disgusted with me. “I think there are more important things happening now.”
“Like the president’s assassination? Exactly what I don’t want to talk about.” Not now. And especially not with someone who knew me as well as Fleming did. “I’ll come back for you after I have Hammett secured.”
Fleming nodded, but I knew it wouldn’t end there.
“Listen,” I said. “I did what I had to.”
“I know. We both did. I just wish you could have made your choice before this.”
“My choice? You were there. I had no choice.”
Her eyebrows arched. “There’s always a choice.”
“You think I should have let Hammett kill Lund? Then she would have killed Tequila. Then you. The Instructor would have had her kill everyone until I made that call, until I punched in the code, and you know it.”
“Yes.” She looked injured by the reminder.
I wished I could take it back. Hell, I wished I could change everything that had happened. “Then why are you busting my chops?” I could feel Hammett shift her weight and groan, the sound more a vibration through my back and shoulder than a sound.
Fleming shook her head. “I’m not.”
“Then why am I standing here?”
“I just think you should decide what you want, Chandler. Really decide, instead of putting it off and letting circumstances steer your life for you.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“Who are you trying to kid? I’ve been watching you for years.”
Since she was my handler, I couldn’t exactly argue with that one. “And I’ve been an exemplary operative.”
“The best.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“For starters? Let’s discuss what you did with Lund.”
“You’re judging me? I don’t sleep with half the men you do. Not one-tenth of the men.”
“I don’t shy away from having a good time. And up until this moment, it’s been the same for you. But Lund is different, and you know it.”
I couldn’t argue. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“You care about him. It’s obvious. And he cares about you.”
“So?”
“So, do you love him?”
My throat felt tight. “Maybe. I don’t know. We’ve only known each other for—”
“Chandler, dammit, answer the question.”
“I think I might,” I whispered.
Fleming’s expression didn’t change, not discernibly, but something about her eyes softened. “Then why did you push him away this morning? Why not give him the number of your new cell phone?”
She told me about the warning Lund had received from Kasdorf. How he’d risked his life to reach me. How if I’d only been less obstinate, the events in the cemetery wouldn’t have had to turn out the way they did.
How I really could have changed everything that had happened.
“You’ve been looking for a way out, Chandler. I think I knew this about you before you did. But when it’s right in front of you, you’re too damn stubborn or suspicious or selfish to take the leap.”
I could feel my sinuses burn, and for a moment I thought I’d cry. When I finally found my voice, it sounded rusty, as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. “I… I was afraid.”
“Of what? Lund would never betray you.”
“No. He wouldn’t.” That had been my fear in the past, with Cory, with Victor, both of whom betrayed me in every way they possibly could. But Fleming was right. Lund would never bet
ray me. Lund would never hurt me. Lund would die to protect me.
So what was my problem?
Tequila appeared next to the house. He watched, leaning against the railing with his arms folded.
“Listen, Chandler, I don’t agree with what you did, and I don’t know what’s possible and what’s not for any of us now that you did it. But if you want to change who you are, I can guarantee there’s no better time than now.”
Another groan from Hammett tickled my shoulder. Not certain my voice would work, I nodded to Fleming and headed into the house. I carried my psychotic sister upstairs to one of the bedrooms. Not only did the rooms have locks on the outsides of the doors, but the closets did as well. I dumped her into one and removed the dozen storage boxes stacked inside. I was not about to underestimate Hammett.
As I locked my sister in the closet, I heard the deep boogada boogada boogada of a Harley engine drive up the road and turn into the farmyard. By the time I’d secured the bedroom door behind me, heavy footfalls were climbing the steps.
My pulse spiked, and I slowed my breathing, trying to regulate my heart rate. It was no use. By the time Lund reached the top of the stairs, it was thumping hard enough to break a rib.
“Hey,” I said.
“I’m leaving, Chandler.”
“We’re all leaving.”
“I know. But I’m not going with you. I just came in to say good-bye.”
I shook my head. “I have to tell you something.”
“There’s nothing to tell. There’s nothing to say.”
All my thoughts, my explanations, my feelings, caught in my throat, as if too many words were trying to get out at once. “This morning…I was wrong, Lund. You and me…the farmhouse, the long showers…I want that. More than anything.”
He stared at me as if I was speaking gibberish.
“I’m sorry. I need to slow down. I can explain.”
“It’s too late for that, Chandler.”
“Too late?” He couldn’t be saying this. “I know this day hasn’t gone well, but—”
“Hasn’t gone well? You’re kidding, right?”
“This morning I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. This whole thing was a mistake.”
Flee, Spree, Three (Codename: Chandler Trilogy - Three Complete Novels) Page 57
