The nine, p.1
The Nine, page 1
THE NINE
After former Chicago Cop Tom Mankowski found out the incredible truth behind his birth, he discovered others with the same secret.
Some of them want to stay hidden.
Some of them are fighting to make the world better.
And some of them are trying to destroy all life on Earth.
Tom, and friends he’s made in the Jack Daniels Thrillers series and the Konrath Dark Thriller Collective, have reunited to take down this dangerous government experiment… one engineered historical figure at a time.
Even if it sets them on a crash course with the worst villains mankind has ever known.
THE NINE by J.A. Konrath
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it…
AUTHOR NOTE
The Konrath Dark Thriller Collective is part of a larger world.
When my first thriller novel, WHISKEY SOUR, was published in 2003, I hoped to write dozens of novels, all interconnected, with characters that appear in each other’s books.
Now, in 2021, I have over a hundred published stories, and they all tie-in together.
Besides Tom Mankowski, who is one of the main protagonists in The Nine (and who also features in THE LIST, HAUNTED HOUSE, WEBCAM, RUM RUNNER, and CHASER), this book also involves characters who appear in ORIGIN, TRAPPED, WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI, and the Jack Daniels series, among other surprise cameos.
If you’d like to see how I’ve fit my fictional universe together, please visit my website character database, https://jakonrath.com/character-appearances.php.
Also, a quick word about diples. The diple dates to ancient Greek writing. It has been a staple of computer language, and Internet communication, for over forty years. In Fabler’s point of view I sometimes use diples, which references a character in my previous novel, WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI.
That said, knowledge of my other work isn’t necessary to enjoy this book. It stands alone.
I hope you have as much fun reading this one as I did writing it.
As always, thanks for reading!
Joe Konrath
CONTENTS
About THE NINE
Author Note
Begin reading THE NINE
Joe Konrath’s Complete Bibliography
Other Recommended Titles
Sign up for the J.A. Konrath newsletter
Copyright
BERT
Area 57 – 63 Kilometers Northeast of Bakersbad, New Mexico
February 21, 2020
For a guy with Einstein’s brain, I’m baffled.
Bert wiped sweat off his neck and stared down at the rusty, circular, iron door. Camouflaged by scrub brush, it stuck three inches out of the dirt, smack dab in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert. His two female companions appeared equally perplexed.
Far as I can see; nothing but rocks, yucca, an occasional cactus, and signs saying to keep away.
Middle of nowhere. Nothing should be here.
But something is.
“Did they bury a submarine?” Weejy asked, hands on her hips.
Bert had never seen a submersible hatch, but this had the look. About three feet in circumference, with a hand wheel on top that could apparently be turned to open it.
But do we really want to do that?
The noonday sun beat on them, the silence eerie. Overhead a brown bird of prey rode the thermals, circling.
“These are the exact coordinates?” Bert spoke just to break the quiet.
SoJo squinted at the handheld Garmin GPS. “X marks the spot, right on the money, honey.”
Weejy squatted next to the portal, pulled a red bandana out of the rear pocket of her jeans, and tied it around her forehead, pinning back her long, black braids. She reached out to touch the hatch, and Bert almost told her not to go near it, irrational fear pinging him.
Or maybe my fear is completely rational.
“It’s not rust.” Weejy ran her fingers along the hand wheel. “That’s rust-colored paint.”
“And these bushes ain’t real,” SoJo, also on her haunches, pinched a twig in her fingers, her droopy dashiki sleeves brushing the ground. “Silk and plastic. Fake as a porn star’s boobs.”
I don’t like this. Not at all.
Weejy turned to look at Bert, and his heart melted a little. “This is your show. Do we try to open it?”
Bert considered how many hours he spent looking for Number 15. All the research, both online and at brick and mortar libraries. Plus bribes to shady people who might be involved in off-the-books contract work for the US government. Or might be lying pieces of shit. Or both. All to get this specific longitude and latitude.
“You guys are in this, too.” Bert crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you think?”
Weejy frowned. “This is weird.”
“Very,” SoJo agreed. “But the guy we’re looking for is notoriously weird. Or at least he was. Previously. I mean, his donor was weird. You guys know what I’m talking about.”
‘Donor’ was as good a term as any.
“This has all been surreal,” Weejy said.
SoJo nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t know anything about who I was, what my donor did, until Bert told me. Thank God for Wikipedia.”
“I know, right? I did the exact same thing. And I bought ebooks. Did you buy ebooks?” Weejy asked.
“Of course I bought ebooks.” SoJo stuck out her jaw. “In the last two weeks I’ve read so much I could get a doctorate in African American history. Maybe I’ll apply at Rutgers.”
Bert continued to worry over the problem at hand. “My ranch is a five hour drive away. We can go back, talk it over, come up with a plan.”
The ladies both nodded. But no one moved. Everyone stayed put, staring at the hatch.
Overhead, the prey bird screeched. Bert felt his bladder tighten.
“Or we can just open it now, take a quick peek,” Weejy suggested. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
Bert’s mouth got even drier. “I’ve actually seen the worst that can happen. It’s pretty terrible.”
“But this isn’t one of the bad ones you told us about.”
“Bad ones?” SoJo put her hands on her hips. “Number 13 wasn’t one of the bad ones, either. But he was a real dick. We should have skipped his nasty ass.”
Weejy, Number 14, hadn’t been around for the whole Number 13 incident. But it didn’t seem like SoJo wanted to let it go.
“They can get much worse than just a bad personality,” Bert said.
A whole lot worse. Bert vividly remembered Number 8. And Number 9. And worst of them all, Number 10.
My photographic memory won’t allow me to forget. These ladies have no idea how terrible some of these people can be.
“So what do you want to do, Bert?”
“Let’s vote.” With group decisions, Bert always defaulted to democracy. “All in favor of opening the secret, scary, mystery hatch in the middle of the desert, raise your hands.”
SoJo raised hers. Bert’s hope shifted to Weejy.
We should wait, he tried to silently tell her.
She raised her hand.
Makes sense. Both of these women are renowned for their bravery.
Me? I’m supposed to be the smart one.
And there doesn’t seem to be anything smart about opening up a secret door on government land with No Trespassing signs every hundred meters.
Weejy grinned at Bert, her smile flawless, and he felt his resolve wither away.
This is a bad idea…
This is such a bad idea…
But Bert raised his hand anyway.
“So it’s unanimous. SoJo, you and Bert want to do the honors? I’ll cover you.” Weejy patted the Glock in her hip holster.
Bert didn’t like guns. They invited an element of chaos into any party. Bert liked order. Organization. Predictable outcomes. Though he wasn’t a scientific genius, like his donor had been, Bert had a talent for problem solving, and memorization, and spotting patterns, and thinking outside the box.
It was obvious to him that this hatch was meant to be hidden.
Logic followed that whoever created it didn’t want anyone messing around with it.
Intuition followed that secrecy is never the only defense.
I don’t see any cameras. But there are always cameras. Maybe hidden in that yucca over there. Maybe drones.
Bert looked up, past the circling hawk, up into the blue New Mexico sky.
Are satellites watching us right now?
If so, who is watching the satellite feed?
And how will they react to their secret door being opened?
“I changed my mind,” Bert said.
Weejy frowned at him, which made Bert die inside a little. “Seriously?”
“Call it a hunch. I think we’re under surveillance, and I think we need to leave.”
SoJo narrowed her eyes. “You’re the one who led us here, Bert. What did you expect to find?”
“Honestly? I was hoping for a gas station, with Number 15 as a happy-go-lucky mechanic, oblivious to who he is. We go in, explain our number tattoos, go out for drinks, and become lifelong friends.”
SoJo didn’t back down. “Google Earth showed nothing on the map. You insisted we come here anyway.”
“And now I’m insisting we leave.” He glanced from SoJo to Weejy. “Please.”
Weejy stood up, her nose wrinkling. “If we don’t try to open this, we’re going to spend the rest of our lives wondering what’s in there.”
“Okay, let
“Like Area 51?” SoJo said. “Where they supposedly brought the alien craft that crashed at Roswell?”
Bert shrugged. “I guess.”
“So where are Areas 52 through 56?” Weejy asked. “How many times has the US recovered UFOs?”
“Better question,” SoJo folded her arms, “How many times has the government lied to us and covered shit up?”
“They covered up the experimental program that resulted in us,” Weejy squatted again, staring at the hatch. “There have to be other secrets. Bigger secrets. If they have a flying saucer in there, I want to see it.”
“Me, too,” SoJo agreed.
Bert nodded. “We don’t know this is about UFOs. But for the sake of argument, let’s say this misplaced submarine hatch leads to a bunch of aliens. Or some other sci-fi trope. It’s a time machine. It’s a portal to hell. It’s filled with dinosaurs.”
SoJo snorted. “Dinosaurs. That’d be redic.”
“Let’s go under the assumption that anything’s possible,” Bert insisted. “Say we open this portal and Jesus Christ himself pops out and starts turning water into wine—”
Weejy interrupted. “I could use a cold glass of prosecco.”
“—is that worth any of us getting hurt? Or worse? Is satisfying our curiosity, even if the outcome is good, is that more important than our lives if the outcome is bad? Let’s vote on that.”
SoJo raised her hand. “I vote to open it and free Submarine Desert Jesus.”
Weejy also raised hers, “And I vote to see the time-travelling alien dinosaurs from hell.”
When they say it, it sounds pretty far-fetched.
Shit.
Bert didn’t consider leaving without them; they were in this together, and being afraid didn’t mean he was a coward. But he gave it one last try.
“This thing isn’t going anywhere. Why don’t we come back at night?”
SoJo made a face. “At night? When it’s dark and scary and wild animals are running around? Hell no. If we open the hatch right now and see a T-rex, we can close the hatch. I don’t want to try to outrun a Chupacabra sneakin’ up on my ass at night.”
“We could have satellites watching us right now.” Bert felt stupid and paranoid the moment the words left his mouth.
“And those satellites can’t see in the dark? Space is dark as hell.” SoJo shook her head. “My ass that would be better.”
Weejy put a hand on Bert’s forearm, giving him tingles. “There’s no one around, Bert. We’ve prepared for this, haven’t we? Thought it through. Planned for contingencies. A quick peek, then we’ll leave. It’s probably locked anyway.”
“Only one way to find out.” SoJo put her hands on the wheel.
My head and gut say no.
But a vote is a vote…
Bert, not wanting to appear as cowardly as he felt, crouched next to SoJo and also grabbed ahold.
“Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.” Bert tried to hide his worried wince with a crooked smile. “On three. One… two… three!”
They turned the hand wheel counter-clockwise—
—and it moved with a creak of metal-on-metal.
Shit. It works.
SoJo spun it faster. “If Submarine Desert Jesus is Black, I’ll put in a good word for you fairer folks.”
“I’m almost as dark as you, SoJo,” Weejy said.
“Girl, you’re red.”
“That’s racist.”
“Seriously?” SoJo cranked faster. “You’re calling me racist? Me? That’s like me saying you need a map to get to the corner store.”
“It’s not that at all. Redskin is pejorative to Native Americans. Plus, I’m not actually red.”
“And I’m not actually black. I’m chocolate brown. You’re sort of a suede color. Maybe mahogany. And white boy over there ain’t actually white. He’s milky pink.”
Weejy squinted at Bert. “More like a pinkish beige.”
The ladies’ argument didn’t distract Bert from the fact that the wheel was moving quickly now, and the hatch would soon be open.
I began this quest to find The Nine like a tourist going sightseeing. I wanted to look, and to gain an understanding.
I didn’t want to rock any secret government boat.
And I really don’t want to see alien hellspawn dinosaur Jesus, no matter how much melanin he has in his skin.
The wheel stopped turning with a faint PING.
SoJo tried to tug the hatch upward, but Bert put his weight on it, pausing her efforts.
“You have to lift it to open it, Bert.” Weejy’s eyes crinkled when she smiled.
Shit shit shit.
“Are we really sure we want to do this?” he tried, one last time.
The women gave him blank stares.
Okay. Here goes nothing…
He and SoJo pulled, and the heavy, round door raised on its hinges.
Inside the hole…
A metal ladder, descending into darkness. And a smell of—
“Ozone,” SoJo sniffed the air. “Smells like right after a thunderstorm.”
Bert had a tactical flashlight clipped inside the front pocket of his khakis. He gripped it tight in sweaty fingers, and flicked on the light.
Weejy whistled. “Long way down.”
The high-intensity LED beam barely made out the bottom, at least twenty meters below.
“Okay, we opened it,” Bert said. “Let’s go back to the ranch, discuss our next move.”
“We should check it out.”
“Not a good idea, SoJo.”
“Albert…” she spoke like he was a naughty child.
Bert copied her tone. “Sojourner…”
“Why don’t we vote?” Weejy suggested.
Bert didn’t like that idea. “How about we skip Number 15 for the moment, and look for Number 16? I’ve tracked her to California. We can meet up with Number 3 and Number 5, Joan and Tom.”
“I do want to meet Joan,” Weejy said. “Big fan of her donor.”
SoJo narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sure about Number 5. You sure he’s cool? Not gonna try any Sally Hemings bullshit on me?”
“Tom’s a good man and one of my best friends and he’s married and not a racist hypocrite who wrote all men are created equal while still owning slaves,” Bert told SoJo. Then he looked at Weejy. “So we’re leaving? No descending down the scary ladder?”
Weejy nodded. “Smarter to talk it over before we proceed.”
Bert stood and reached for Weejy’s hand. Her non-gun hand. She gripped it in return, and her touch brought Bert back to the previous night, and the kiss they shared.
So much promise. So much potential.
First woman I’ve kissed in years.
I feel like a schoolboy with a crush.
“Unfair you guys teaming up,” SoJo told them. “I know y’all got busy yesterday.”
“It was just a kiss, SoJo.” Weejy smiled. “But I wanted to get busy.”
Bert’s ears got hot. “You did?”
“I asked you into the bedroom, remember?”
“Sure. You wanted me to check if the bed was creaking. I just bought that bed. And I checked it. It wasn’t creaking and… oh shit, that wasn’t what you meant.” Bert flushed even redder. “Seriously, you meant we… that we could make the bed creak? I seriously thought I was having furniture malfunctions. Shit, I’m an idiot.”
“You are an idiot,” SoJo agreed.
Weejy leaned in, gave him a quick kiss behind his hot ear. “We have all the time in the world. But first, let’s close this up and boogie.”
Bert nodded, but the scary portal in the desert didn’t seem quite as scary anymore.
Then Weejy gave him a real kiss. Her mouth so soft, so sweet.
This is the coolest, hottest, sexiest, smartest woman to ever live, and we’re kissing.
I don’t want this to ever end.
“Someone’s coming.”
They broke the embrace, and both glanced at SoJo. Bert followed her gaze to the west, a speck of a vehicle on the horizon, kicking up dust as it beelined toward them.
“Black SUV.” Weejy peered through her raised binoculars. “Tinted windows. No front license plate. Maybe a kilometer away, hauling ass.”
Bert again reduced it to democracy. “Quick vote, who wants to stick around and see what they want?”
This time no one raised their hand.
They hurried to his Land Rover. When Bert opened the back door, he was greeted by Stosh, who went, “Dooo-dooo!” It sounded like a pigeon going cooo-coooo, but with Ds and a deeper voice.
