Hostage Run Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR ANDREW KLAVAN

  “Edgar Award–winning Klavan’s well-orchestrated fantasy thriller features . . . an imaginative mix of gaming action with real-life stakes. With just the right cliff-hanger ending, this trilogy opener shows promise.”

  —BOOKLIST (ON MINDWAR)

  “. . . the focus is on action, and there’s just enough left unresolved to tempt readers onward.”

  —KIRKUS REVIEWS (ON MINDWAR)

  “A fantastic read. Fast-paced and wildly imaginative, MINDWAR is a cinematic cyber thriller with more twists than a circuit board.”

  —JOHN DIXON, AUTHOR OF PHOENIX ISLAND (INSPIRATION FOR THE CBS-TV SHOW INTELLIGENCE)

  “Klavan retains his James Patterson–like gift for keeping pages turning, and the mystery behind it all . . . is a juicy one, and well handled.”

  —BOOKLIST (ON NIGHTMARE CITY)

  “This book will appeal to anyone who is looking for a fast-paced adventure story in which teens must do some fast thinking to survive.”

  —SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL (ON IF WE SURVIVE)

  “Klavan turns up the heat for YA fiction . . .”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (ON IF WE SURVIVE)

  “The original plot is full of twists and turns and unexpected treasures. Klavan’s writing is quick, tight, exciting, and intense. The adrenaline-charged action will keep you totally immersed.”

  —RT BOOK REVIEWS, 4 1/2 STARS (ON CRAZY DANGEROUS)

  “A thriller that reads like a teenage version of 24 . . . an adrenaline-pumping adventure.”

  —THEDAILYBEAST.COM REVIEW OF THE LAST THING I REMEMBER

  “Action sequences that never let up . . . wrung for every possible drop of nervous sweat.”

  —BOOKLIST REVIEW OF THE LONG WAY HOME

  “[Klavan] is a solid storyteller with a keen eye for detail and vivid descriptive power . . . The Long Way Home is something like ‘The Hardy Boys’ crossed with the ‘My Teacher Is an Alien’ series.”

  —WASHINGTON TIMES

  “I’m buying everything Klavan is selling, from the excellent first person narrative, to the gut-punching action; to the perfect doses of humor and wit . . . it’s all working for me.”

  —JAKE CHISM, FICTIONADDICT.COM

  “Through it all, Charlie teaches lessons in Christian decency and patriotism, not by talking about those things, or even thinking about them much, but through practicing them . . . Well done, Andrew Klavan.”

  —THE AMERICAN CULTURE (ON HOMELANDERS)

  OTHER BOOKS BY ANDREW KLAVAN

  THE MINDWAR TRILOGY

  MindWar

  Hostage Run

  Game Over (Available January 2016)

  Nightmare City

  If We Survive

  Crazy Dangerous

  THE HOMELANDERS SERIES

  The Last Thing I Remember

  The Long Way Home

  The Truth of the Matter

  The Final Hour

  © 2015 by Andrew Klavan

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

  Scripture quotations are also taken from the KING JAMES VERSION is in the public domain.

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-4016-8896-7 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Klavan, Andrew.

  Hostage run / Andrew Klavan.

  pages ; cm. -- (The mindwar trilogy ; Book 2)

  Summary: “Rick Dial is faced with an impossible choice: save the life of his best friend Molly. or save the free world. Rick Dial’s career as a superstar quarterback ended when a car accident left him unable to walk. But his uncanny gaming ability caught the attention of a secret government organization trying to stop a high tech terrorist attack on America. He’s been to the fantastical cyber world called the MindWar Realm. and returned to Real Life victorious. But the stakes have just gone up. Another attack is imminent and Rick is the only one who can stop it. How can he, though, when terrorists have kidnapped his best friend Molly and are threatening to kill her if Rick returns to the Realm? As Molly uses every resource of mind and body to outwit her brutal captors, Rick races against time inside a nightmare video game where a fate worse than death may bewaiting for him. Hundreds of milesapart, both will have to test the power of their faith and the strength oftheir spirits. They are being forced to a moment of sacrifice. one thatcould cost them everything”-- Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-4016-8895-0 (hardcover)

  I. Title.

  PS3561.L334H67 2015

  813’.54--dc23

  2014037034

  15 16 17 18 19 RRD 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  LEVEL ONE: THE GAME BEGINS AGAIN

  1. GIRL FIGHT

  2. MANHUNT

  3. TEST-DRIVE

  4. PRISONER OF WAR

  5. MISSION CRITICAL

  6. OUTLAW VOLLEYBALL

  7. THE SECRET OF SPACE OCTOPUSES

  8. WARPATH

  LEVEL TWO: THE ENERGY WRAITHS

  9. SWORD 2

  10. WRAITHS

  11. DARK FALL

  12. LORDS OF THE REALM

  13. ESCAPE PLAN

  14. HUNTER

  15. RUN!

  16. THE FOREST

  17. POOL

  18. WARCRAFT

  LEVEL THREE: RL

  19. SINS OF THE FATHERS

  20. FOREST SURVIVAL

  21. HISTORY

  22. THE DARKNESS

  23. GEARS OF WAR

  LEVEL FOUR: TIME RUNS OUT

  24. BATTLE BEAST

  25. COLD FEAR

  26. VELOCITY

  27. RESCUE

  28. BAD PIGGIES

  29. DUEL

  30. WHEN PIGS FLY

  31. ALONE

  32. SNAKE WARRIORS

  33. KISS

  34. BEHIND ENEMY LINES

  35. FIREFIGHT

  36. WATERSLIDE

  37. FIRE ESCAPE

  38. WARBIRDS

  39. WHITE KNIGHT CHRONICLES

  40. FINAL FANTASY

  LEVEL FIVE: AFTERMATH

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  AN EXCERPT FROM THE LAST THING I REMEMBER

  CHAPTER ONE: THE TORTURE ROOM

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  LEVEL ONE:

  THE GAME BEGINS AGAIN

  1. GIRL FIGHT

  MOLLY WAS JUST finishing up her jog when the killers came for her.

  It was finals week. Five days until the Christmas break began. A quiet had fallen over the university. Students were at their tests during the day or grinding away at the books in their dorms and in the library at night. The undaunted party crews were now confined to Greek Row and a few venues off campus where no one would complain about their loud music. A lot of kids had already headed home. B
y five or so every evening, when the last dusk light had faded and the winter night came down, there was no one walking on the lamplit pathways and the majestic stone buildings were dark.

  That was when Molly liked to hit the gym. The other athletes had cleared out by that time and the after-dinner amateurs hadn’t shown up yet, so she usually had the place to herself. She used the locker room to change into her black workout outfit. Pulled on a black elastic band to keep her hair out of her eyes and clipped it in place with a couple of bobby pins. Took her phone, headset, and key card and headed into the workout room.

  It was a long room with ellipticals and treadmills lining one wall and weight machines and free weights against the other. Molly was a volleyballer, the setter on the school team. Her workout was tough. She ran through a brutal hour-long weight routine to keep her core and upper body strong. Coach Nasty—an iPhone workout app—shouted encouragement in her earbuds as she sweated through the reps. When she was done, she paused only long enough to switch over to her JogHard app. Then she pushed out through the gym’s metal side door and took off running into the chilly darkness.

  She did five miles, out to the edge of the campus, up Library Hill, through the residential streets of NorthSide, then along College Avenue until she cut into the campus and followed the winding paths back to the gym. All the while she was running, her jogging mix was slamming jock-beat music into her ears, interrupted only by the occasional location, speed, and distance stats droned at her by JogHard: “You’re at College Avenue and Fourth Street. You have run 3.5 miles east at a pace of 5.2 miles per hour!” Very little of this noise broke through into her consciousness, though. Mostly, as her sneakers slapped the pavement, as her breath came out of her in short bursts of wintry steam . . . mostly, she was thinking about Rick Dial.

  He’d been gone two months now. She didn’t know where. His whole family had left town. He e-mailed her now and then, but he never told her much, never told her where he was or what he was doing. It was all hush-hush, some secret government thing his dad had gotten him involved in. Rick’s father and hers were close friends, both professors here in the Physics Department her father ran—but even Molly’s dad didn’t know what Professor Dial was doing or where he’d gone. It seemed no one did.

  Slowly, Molly was beginning to accept what she already knew in her heart of hearts: Rick wasn’t coming back.

  What did that mean to her? Was she in love with Rick? If she had a dollar for every time she had asked herself that question during one of these evening jogs, she’d have a whole lot of dollars by now. She probably could’ve bought a Porsche outright with singles alone. Rick and she had been friends since they were kids. They were just starting to become more than friends when Rick’s car was broadsided by a panel truck. His legs were smashed up. His career as a football quarterback was over. His college scholarship was gone. He locked himself away in his room to play video games for hours on end—his way to avoid accepting the bitter change that had come into his life.

  And he wouldn’t talk to Molly anymore. He wouldn’t answer her calls or return her e-mails. So she never really got to find out how far their romance was going to go. It was as if she had started falling for him—and then been frozen in midfall. And then, before she could break through his depression and get him to talk to her, it was all over. He was gone.

  She cried when he came to her house to say good-bye. She cried off and on for a few days after that. She still cried sometimes in bed at night when she thought about him. But was she brokenhearted or just disappointed? Had something irreplaceable been lost forever, or was it just one of those things you forgot about over time? Was she in love with him? Congratulations, Mol: another dollar.

  So that’s what she was thinking about when the killers came. She never saw them until it was too late. With some Kelly Clarkson survival anthem drilling into her brain through her earbuds and the computer voice of JogHard offering up her final stats, with her body exhausted from her workout and her mind returning obsessively to the same old memory—that sweet, sweet moment when Rick had kissed her and everything had changed—(I never expected this, Molly!)—she really didn’t have a chance.

  She was just reaching the gym again. Slowing down to a walk as she came up on the PE Building’s side door—the one that led straight into the workout room. She had her key card out of her tracksuit’s pants pocket. She swiped it through the slot with one hand while she pulled her earbuds off with the other. She shouldered the door open—and the first thug barreled into her, shoving her through.

  Molly was a big girl. Her face was elegant, even delicate—with light brown hair framing gentle brown eyes and a small nose dotted with faint freckles—but she was almost six feet tall and broad-shouldered, and her legs, belly, and arms were hard with muscle. As the surprise blow sent her stumbling into the workout room, she turned on her attacker, ready to fight. Then she got a look at him. The sight made her sick with fear. She could tell at a glance he wasn’t just some street thug. Dressed head to foot in black—black jeans, black T-shirt, black windbreaker—he was rangy and graceful. His head was thin, pointed top and bottom like a diamond. His smile was tight and confident. And there was death in his eyes.

  She knew at a glance she couldn’t fight him. She had to run. But even as the thought came to her, the other thugs grabbed her.

  There were two of them, waiting in the gym. They came up behind her and locked her arms in theirs. At the same time, the first thug, the smiling Death’s Head, drew a syringe from inside his windbreaker and stepped toward her.

  In high school Molly had taken classes on self-defense for women. They’d been taught by a gruff female ex-Marine named Stella. Stella told the class: the first rule of girl-on-guy fighting is that the girl’s going to lose in a straight-up brawl. Those scenes in the movies where the lead actress punches some guy in the jaw and he goes somersaulting backward across the room—doesn’t happen this side of reality. Hit a guy like that offscreen, and you’ll break your hand and then he’ll kill you. Best bet: hit the guy once, somewhere where it counts—in the throat, in the eye, in the groin—then run like your butt’s on fire, screaming as loud as you can.

  Good plan—except the two thugs who had hold of her arms were stronger than strong, their grips like steel bands that locked her helplessly in place. And here came Smiley McDeath with that syringe. Another second and he was going to stick that thing into her neck and knock her out. And what then? Cart her off into slavery like one of those girls she sometimes saw on the news? Or worse: use her and kill her so that her dad had to identify her body at the morgue?

  Well, it might go down like that, she thought. But win or lose, it wasn’t going to happen without a fight.

  Fear and determination gave her strength. She lifted her right leg high and drove the edge of her sneaker down hard into the ankle of the man beside her. He cried out and staggered, loosening his hold on her arm. She used the moment to drive her elbow into him, knocking him back. Then, with her right arm free, she let out a high yell and drove her palm into the other thug’s nose.

  The blow struck home hard. Thug Two’s face was covered with a splat of blood as his nose broke, flattened under her palm. He fell back, and Molly spun away. She staggered across the gym, trying to escape the man with the syringe. If she could make it into the locker room, she thought, she might be able to break out of here . . .

  But there was no way. The three men had already recovered and were coming after her. The first thug—the one she’d kicked—wasn’t hurt at all. He was moving toward her in a low, fighting crouch, ready for anything. Thug Two—the guy whose former nose was now just a fond nose memory—was swiping the blood off his face with the back of his hand and stalking her with eyes that had gone white with rage.

  As for Smiley McDeath, he had paused to put the protective cap back on the syringe needle. In fact, he was doing this with such deliberate calm and confidence that it sent a chill through Molly’s heart. A moment later, he, too, was clos
ing in on her, cutting off the path to the locker rooms, backing her up against the wall.

  Molly had seen scenes like this on television shows, but nothing like this had ever happened to her in real life. She was shocked by the fear she felt. So much fear. It seemed to sap the energy right out of her muscles, seemed to drain the will out of her heart. Still short of breath from her run, she almost wanted to surrender right then and there, just to get it over with, just to end the terrible suspense.

  Almost.

  But she couldn’t help noticing that the wall the thugs were backing her up against was the wall with the free weight shelves. And hey, if they were going to give her something to fight with, well, then she was going to fight until the fight was over.

  She turned fast, grabbed a dumbbell—five pounds—and flung it at the Nose Guy with a whipping twist of her wrist. She was so quick, Nosey never saw it coming. The dumbbell hit the dumbbell smack in the center of his face, right in his ouchie, poor thing. His childish squeal of agony would have made Molly laugh in triumph if she hadn’t been busy fighting for her life. But even as Nose Man reeled backward, gripping his face with both hands, the other two kept coming at her.

  Molly grabbed a second dumbbell off the wall—another five-pounder. She didn’t throw it this time. They were too close. She swung it back and forth in the air, so that the two thugs had to duck out of reach to keep from getting brained. That gave her a second to think.

  She thought: Scream!

  She kept swinging the dumbbell at one thug then another as she let out the sort of shriek she hadn’t shrieked since her fifth birthday party. A silent prayer flew from her heart to heaven: Let there be some football guys in the locker room. And Lord, if you could make them defensive linemen weighing about 280 pounds apiece, so help me, I will give, like, every penny I have to charity.

  The thugs ducked her wild swings and cursed. Her screaming was getting to them.

  “Shut her up!” shouted Smiley McDeath, no longer smiling.

  “I can’t reach her!” the other thug shouted back.

  For that one moment, Molly began to hope she was going to get out of this.