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

  I thrust from a modified splits position back to both feet, keeping my head low. Noting I was completely surrounded, I watched Fleming’s ambulance vanish into Chicago traffic.

  No time to pause, I cut left onto the lawn. Sprinting alongside the hospital building, I took aim at the two agents cutting me off, each of them already firing.

  I went John Woo, diving forward, making myself a smaller target while giving me a chance to aim without having to compensate for the beat of my own footfalls.

  For two full seconds I was Supergirl, flying straight at them, both arms outstretched, pointing the barrel at one and firing, seeing the back of his neck blowing out, adjusting my aim, squeezing the trigger a second time as I slammed onto the grass, chin and chest first, followed by my lower body.

  Gunfire blasted in my ears. I didn’t know if I’d hit the second agent, but the sod around me was getting chewed up by bullets, and I had to press forward or die. Scrambling up to my feet, I felt the tug on my shoulder, then the accompanying burn, and realized I’d been shot. I sighted ahead of me, leading with the Glock. The second agent clutched his bleeding gut with one hand, still firing with the other.

  I ran straight at him, not willing to risk my final bullet unless I was guaranteed a kill shot.

  He continued to fire, missing over and over, until I got close enough to see his frustration morph into fear, and the fear become disbelief as a blood flower blossomed out of his forehead.

  I should have paused to scoop up his gun as I ran past, but the bulletstorm behind me had become a Category 5 hurricane. I turned the corner, and window glass and bits of brick from the building rained down on me so heavily I had to put my hands in front of my eyes and peek through split fingers.

  I’d reached the rear of the hospital. A train platform stretched one story above me, attached to the building so any sick or injured Chicagoan with a transit pass could ride the El to health and well-being. I considered running up the stairs and hopping the train, but quickly dismissed the idea, instead ducking through the automatic doors to the ER just as the bad guys caught up and began to shoot at me again.

  Incredibly, there were no agents in the emergency room lobby. Recalling the floor plan, I raced for the stairs, glass crunching underfoot, gunfire and screams drowning out my ability to hear myself think. Once in the stairwell, I started for the second floor, knowing I’d made the clichéd horror-movie mistake of going up, where I would likely become trapped. But I didn’t have a choice. Fleming was gone, and the only chance I had of finding her was getting my hands on one of these agents and making him talk. Then, and only then, would I worry about escaping.

  Still burning adrenaline, I charged up six flights of stairs, back to Orthopedics. When I reached the floor, I paused to get my breathing under control and do a body inventory.

  Legs OK, except for a skinned knee. Feet OK. Hands OK. I was still holding the empty Glock, which I tucked into the back of my pants. Arms OK. Shoulders—

  My one shoulder burned. I took a quick look, probing the wound with my finger. Just a graze, already beginning to clot.

  Torso OK. Head OK. I took a deep breath, and did a quick inventory of my internal organs, finding all of them still working properly.

  It was a miracle that I’d gone through that barrage and only sustained a few superficial injuries. Adrenaline could be useful in dealing with life-or-death situations, but it could also be hard to control, causing agents who are crack shots under normal circumstances to miss wildly. As luck and intensive training would have it, I was better at controlling the adrenaline rush than the men who were after me.

  Regulating my heart rate and breathing, I let myself tune in to the surroundings. No one seemed to be coming up the stairs after me—which made sense because only a fool would have gone up. There were also no unusual smells or sounds—no sounds at all—which made me wary.

  I opened the door fast, entered the ward in a crouch. The place seemed deserted, nurses and patients gone. Made sense. After the gunshots, they’d been evacuated.

  A man was sprawled on the floor in the center of the corridor, a pool of blood beneath him. I recognized his uniform as hospital security. His hand was on his utility belt, reaching for his nightstick. He hadn’t even been able to draw it before someone shot him in the heart.

  I took the baton and stayed low, creeping around the nurses’ station, heading for the cordoned-off hallway.

  When I got within three yards, I paused, listening.

  There was grunting going on beyond the blue tarp. Male, with accompanying heavy breathing.

  I pressed my back against the wall and peeked through the slight opening in the side. An agent was lifting up a body bag—no doubt one of the men I’d killed—and muscling it onto a gurney.

  I poured through the opening like liquid, fast and silent. Nightstick raised, I cracked down on the man’s knee before he even noticed I was there.

  The agent cried out, and although he’d missed my approach, he had enough training to draw his weapon as he crumpled to the floor on his good knee. I swung the stick two-handed, connecting with his gun, hitting a line drive down to the end of the hall. Then I followed up with a knee to his nose, and a tight spin kick to the side of his head.

  He fell onto his ass. I hit his broken kneecap with the baton once more, making him scream. Like the other agents I’d encountered, he was white, midthirties, enough scars on his face and hands to indicate combat experience.

  “You know the drill. Tell me where they took her, I let you live. Don’t, and I keep bashing.”

  “Fuck you,” he said, teeth clenched.

  I hit his bad leg again, twice in rapid succession. He screamed.

  “Where is she?”

  He grunted something unintelligible.

  I whacked him again. “Right now you’re looking at six months physical therapy. I keep this up, you’ll never walk again. Where is she?”

  His face was a rictus of sweat, pain, and fear. “OK! OK! She’s—”

  Movement, behind me.

  I spun just in time to get an elbow to the side of my face. I turned with it, and then backpedaled while raising the baton. I was stunned, not by just the blow, but by the fact someone had snuck up on me. I’m not an easy girl to surprise.

  It was another agent in a black suit, with the broad shoulders of a bodybuilder. He had four inches on me, and at least seventy pounds. Bald, black, his tie tucked inside his button-down shirt just below the Windsor knot.

  I noticed the bulge in his jacket, indicative of a shoulder holster, but his hands were empty. I was confused as to why he hadn’t drawn on me, and then I noticed his face.

  The man was smiling, eyes crinkled in obvious enjoyment.

  Big mistake, fella.

  I moved fast, stepping close and swinging the nightstick at his head using a hapkido dan bong technique.

  He raised both arms, somehow catching the baton between his right hand and left elbow, and then dropped to one knee, pulling me down with him.

  As I shifted weight, he skipped from one knee to another, keeping me off balance, and then spun on one knee, pulling my baton in close to his face—kissing my hand—and then bringing his other fist around and connecting with my chin.

  I staggered back, releasing the baton, not sure what had just happened. I was familiar with many different martial arts, and had earned black belts in half a dozen, but had never seen someone move like that.

  I fell into a tae kwon do back stance, feet perpendicular to each other, palms flat, on the defense. My jaw was aching, and my ears rang from the blow.

  He kept bouncing from one knee to the other, tossed the baton behind him, and then began to move his hands and elbows so quickly he looked like he was break dancing.

  I struck with a palm, and he nudged away the blow with his elbow, extending the arm and punching me in the ribs.

  I pivoted my hips, bringing up a knee; but he leaned backward, and I missed.

  His smile got wider.

/>   I switched my stance to Wing Chun, finding my centerline, throwing a fast vertical punch and stepping into it.

  But as I extended, throwing my body weight behind the blow, he thrust a forearm at my wrist and deflected it. Then he tucked both hands against his face, his smile never fading, and began to bob and weave in an erratic, exaggerated way, practically impossible to hit.

  I switched to muay Thai, jumping up, aiming a cobra punch at the top of his moving skull. He again blocked with his hand and elbow, stopping my forward momentum, then extending his elbow and snapping it against my temple.

  I fell backward onto my ass, motes swirling through my vision. As I regained the ability to focus, I saw that my opponent was slapping his own forearms, beating out a rhythm that increased in speed until it sounded like a room of people applauding.

  It wasn’t capoeira. It wasn’t Krav Maga. It wasn’t pradal serey or Choi Kwang Do or any type of kung fu I’d ever seen. But whatever it was, he was so confident in his ability he didn’t even bother to draw his gun.

  I’d killed bigger men than this one with my bare hands, and his arrogance pissed me off.

  I kicked out a leg, and one of his hands slapped at my ankle, gripping it tightly. I saw a black tattoo across his knuckles—the three letters JHR—and then he was throwing me against the wall. I got up fast, keeping my hands on the floor and lashing out with my right heel in a meia-lua de compasso.

  It should have been a knockout kick. Instead he tucked his head into his shoulders so my foot glanced off, and then he dropped a knee onto my waist, knocking the air out of me.

  “The Instructor didn’t teach you these moves, did he?” the man said with a big grin. His voice was deep, with an accent I’d peg as Caribbean.

  He lifted up one palm, then brought it down hard against my cheek, then the other, then the first one again, increasing in speed until he was hitting me as quickly as he’d been slapping his own forearms.

  I tucked my chin into my chest, then scissored my leg around his and went for the knee lock, but he had weight and leverage on me. The punishing blows had begun to draw blood from my nose and mouth, the taste overwhelming, my head dizzy, and they were coming so fast I couldn’t grab hold of my thoughts.

  I reached behind the small of my back, grabbing the Glock, bringing it around and giving him something to focus on other than beating me to death. As expected, he deflected the weapon with his elbow, and I made a fist and crunched it between his legs, arching my back, trying to put my whole body into it.

  He rolled with the punch, keeping a grip on my gun hand, and I let him have the weapon. Making my free hand into a claw, I raked it across his eyes, then pulled away in the opposite direction and scrambled out from under him.

  I crawled on all fours, disoriented from the slapping, and scurried away, slamming my head into the wall before regaining my bearings and scuttling down the hallway as fast as I could move.

  “Awww, don’ go, sweet thing. Ol’ Rochester ain’t done playing with you yet.”

  Yeah? Well, I was sure as hell done playing with Ol’ Rochester. I rounded the corner, the tile hard on my skinned knee, and smacked at the call button for the service elevator. My head throbbed.

  Behind me, a beat thumped the walls and echoed down the corridor, a distinct Latin rhythm, reminiscent of a Gloria Estefan song from the 1990s.

  Following me. Coming closer. Growing louder.

  “Here I come, sweet thing.”

  I checked the call lights. The elevator was stopped on the fourth floor.

  The drumming grew faster and crescendoed as he neared, the pounding echoed by my too-quick pulse.

  Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t a standard operative material. Not some Blackwater independent contractor hired for wet work. Not some military spook. This was a specialist. And if he knew about the Instructor, I could guess the exact reason he was brought in.

  Me.

  His fighting style rendered mine useless.

  He was here to neutralize me.

  “Chandler, baby. Don’ you run from me, girl.” He stretched out the girl like he was singing calypso.

  I checked the elevator. On four, moving up to five. I peered through the open doors, down the shaft. The car was still too far to jump.

  The tapping stopped. I turned to face Rochester.

  His head peered around the corner, his smile wide and teeth gleaming.

  My palms grew clammy.

  “You’re afraid, aren’t you, girl? I like that.”

  His hands slapped the wall, and despite my best efforts, I flinched.

  “I heard you were such a little badass,” he said, increasing the tempo. “You’re disappointing me, Chandler.”

  I wanted to pull myself to my feet, to run, but I was still too dizzy to manage it.

  “They told me, if I bring you in alive, I can spend some quality time with you as a bonus.”

  He took another step closer. I checked the elevator. Still too far.

  “I like a little spice in my girls. They always die on me too quick.”

  I glanced back at Rochester. He was two meters away, his fists up alongside his head.

  “Ain’t no sweeter sound than a woman makin’ love, after I break her legs and hips.”

  He took another step forward. I decided there would be no lovemaking between us, ever, especially with broken bones.

  I tucked my knees into my body, letting myself drop down the elevator shaft face first into the darkness.

  Hammett

  “When operations fail,” the Instructor said, “don’t spend time licking your wounds. Begin planning your next move. A lost battle doesn’t mean a lost war.”

  After ditching the boat at the marina in Chicago Harbor, Hammett had taken an expensive cab ride to a hole-in-the-wall bar on Roosevelt and Pulaski, which she’d scoped out weeks earlier. As far as Hammett knew, the bar had no name, and it was only identifiable by the faded Old Style sign hanging in the storefront—a trait shared by at least fifty other local taverns in the city. This one boasted cheap domestic beer (though Old Style was conspicuous in its absence), an assortment of regulars in various stages of inebriation depending on the time of day, and four television sets, including a forty-inch flat screen that was always tuned to CNN.

  Her nerves still frayed from her near-death experience with her sister Chandler, she settled into a booth with a large gin and tonic and put out a silent don’t fuck with me vibe as she watched TV, waiting for the inevitable news that London had been destroyed in a nuclear attack.

  But instead of glorious high-definition pictures of mushroom clouds and burning babies, the vacuous talking heads spoke with great gravitas about a missile launch malfunction over London airspace and how the warhead had been safely disarmed prior to detonation.

  Hammett wasn’t sure what happened. While on the boat, she’d been responsible for launching a US Trident missile using a sophisticated encrypted device, which had then fallen overboard. Her do-gooder twin sisters, Chandler and the cripple Fleming, had jumped into Lake Michigan after the device, which both annoyed and amused Hammett. Annoyed her because she didn’t have the chance to kill those bitches herself, and amused her because there was absolutely no way they’d be able to find the sinking transceiver and call off the strike.

  Hammett was no longer amused. And her annoyance level was at an all-time high. She’d had plans to celebrate her success by taking her recently purchased Harley Softail up to Toronto, finding some biker boy toy along the route, and spending a few days drinking and fucking and living like a queen.

  But London hadn’t been destroyed. No glorious mushroom cloud. No one burning, babies or otherwise. Just talking head after talking head, some looking apologetic, some looking stern, not a single one of them suffering from severe radiation sickness.

  It was enough to make a grown operative cry.

  “This seat taken?”

  Hammett pulled her eyes away from the screen long enough to size up the local standing next
to her table. Flabby, unshaven, dirty fingernails suggesting some unappealing blue-collar job.

  “Not on my drunkest day, or your luckiest,” she said.

  Her gaze flitted back to the TV, and she watched absently while her mind puzzled out what could have possibly gone wrong. Fail-safe switch? Satellite laser defense? An override she hadn’t known about?

  Or had her goddamn sisters actually saved the day?

  “Don’t be rude to me, you dumb skank. I’m just trying to—”

  Hammett lashed out, jamming her stiff fingers into the lothario’s neck, feeling a small measure of satisfaction when she heard the sharp snap! of his trachea breaking. He clutched his throat, unable to breathe, and then fell to his knees as Hammett tossed five dollars onto the table and left the bar.

  The safe house was a few blocks away, on the northwest corner of Keeler and Fourteenth. Lawndale was among her least favorite neighborhoods in Chicago. She would have preferred lodging in Lincoln Park, or Bucktown, or Roscoe Village, or pretty much anywhere else. But this was the first landlord she’d been able to find who hadn’t required a credit check, and Hammett only had two current fake identities and chose not to burn either of them on a rental that she hadn’t ever planned to use.

  But Plan A had gone to shit. Now she had to regroup and begin the B game.

  Which meant she had to call her boss.

  He wasn’t going to be pleased.

  She walked west on Roosevelt, feet pounding against a filthy, cracked sidewalk, anger coming off her like heat waves. Her jaw, chin, and nose still hurt from where Chandler had hit her, and she had a deep gash on her calf that she’d sloppily sealed with superglue prior to the cab ride. Hammett wanted two more drinks, some Demerol, and a long bubble bath, but instead she had to clean up this mess. A mess she’d no doubt be blamed for.

  “Dammit, dog, piss already.”

  Ahead, an elderly man smoking a cigarette kicked a short-statured, off-white basset hound whose only apparent offense was sniffing the curb for too long. The dog yelped, and then limped away as far as the leash allowed. The man gave the lead a vicious tug, jerking the dog off its front legs.