The Treadstone Resurrection Read online

  THE BOURNE SERIES

  Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Nemesis (by Eric Van Lustbader)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Initiative (by Eric Van Lustbader)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Enigma (by Eric Van Lustbader)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Ascendancy (by Eric Van Lustbader)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Retribution (by Eric Van Lustbader)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Imperative (by Eric Van Lustbader)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Dominion (by Eric Van Lustbader)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Objective (by Eric Van Lustbader)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Deception (by Eric Van Lustbader)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Sanction (by Eric Van Lustbader)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Betrayal (by Eric Van Lustbader)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Legacy (by Eric Van Lustbader)

  The Bourne Ultimatum

  The Bourne Supremacy

  The Bourne Identity

  THE COVERT-ONE SERIES

  Robert Ludlum’s The Patriot Attack (by Kyle Mills)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Geneva Strategy (by Jamie Freveletti)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Utopia Experiment (by Kyle Mills)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Janus Reprisal (by Jamie Freveletti)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Ares Decision (by Kyle Mills)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Arctic Event (by James H. Cobb)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Moscow Vector (with Patrick Larkin)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Lazarus Vendetta (with Patrick Larkin)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Altman Code (with Gayle Lynds)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Paris Option (with Gayle Lynds)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Cassandra Compact (with Phillip Shelby)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Hades Factor (with Gayle Lynds)

  THE JANSON SERIES

  The Janson Directive

  Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Equation (by Douglas Corleone)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Option (by Paul Garrison)

  Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Command (by Paul Garrison)

  ALSO BY ROBERT LUDLUM

  The Bancroft Strategy

  The Ambler Warning

  The Tristan Betrayal

  The Sigma Protocol

  The Prometheus Deception

  The Matarese Countdown

  The Apocalypse Watch

  The Scorpio Illusion

  The Road to Omaha

  The Icarus Agenda

  The Aquitaine Progression

  The Parsifal Mosaic

  The Matarese Circle

  The Holcroft Covenant

  The Chancellor Manuscript

  The Gemini Contenders

  The Road to Gandolfo

  The Rhinemann Exchange

  The Cry of the Halidon

  Trevayne

  The Matlock Paper

  The Osterman Weekend

  The Scarlatti Inheritance

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2019 by Myn Pyn LLC

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hood, Joshua, author.

  Title: Robert Ludlum’s the Treadstone resurrection / Joshua Hood.

  Other titles: Treadstone resurrection

  Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2020.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019036505 (print) | LCCN 2019036506 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525542551 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525542568 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Adventure fiction. | Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3608.O5574 R63 2020 (print) | LCC PS3608.O5574 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019036505

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019036506

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  CONTENTS

  Also by Robert Ludlum

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  PROLOGUE

  BUENA VISTA, VENEZUELA

  Nick Ford sat in the back of the filthy pickup, his body racked with fever, pain radiating from the bullet hole in his leg. He was exhausted, and his body screamed for sleep. But every time he closed his eyes, he found himself back in the jungle.

  Caught in the kill zone. Machine guns chattering from the shadows, the caustic fog of fresh gunpowder, and the screams of his dying teammates.

  Dead. All of them.

  Ford still couldn’t wrap his mind around what had happened. How he’d managed to lose an entire team on what was supposed to be an easy recon. There was only one answer that made any sense.

  We were be
trayed.

  The truck rattled to a halt and Ford pulled himself to his feet and climbed down to the muddy street. He limped to the driver’s-side window, tugged a sweaty wad of bills from his pocket, and passed them to the man behind the wheel.

  “No, no, señor,” the man protested, “I can’t take that, not after—”

  Ford was quick to cut him off. “José, you take this,” he said, shoving the cash into the man’s callused hand. “You take this and get your family the hell out of here.”

  “Gracias, Señor Ford. I wish—”

  “José, you need to go, before it’s too late.”

  “Vaya con dios.” He nodded before shoving the truck into gear and pulling away in a cloud of exhaust.

  Ford stood on the street and considered his options. He knew SEBIN—the dreaded Bolivarian National Intelligence Service—was looking for him, and he knew what they would do when they found him. There was a part of Ford that wished they’d hurry up and find him. Put a bullet in his head and get it over with.

  There will be time for that later, he told himself. Right now, you have a job to do.

  Ford hobbled across the street. The pain was unbearable. Each step more painful than the last, but he forced himself to keep moving. March or die, he ordered himself. Just put one foot in front of the other.

  By the time he made it to the alley that smelled of piss and rotted garbage his shirt was soaked with sweat. He fell against the stone wall. Dug the bottle of Percocet from the pocket of the jeans José had gotten for him and thumbed the cap free.

  The bottle had been full on Monday; now there were only two pills remaining. Enough to get him through the night. After that, Ford knew it wouldn’t matter.

  This had always been a one-way trip.

  He shook the Percs into his mouth and dry-swallowed. The pills left a bitter taste in the back of his throat, and then he was moving again. Down the alley, heading north, toward the faded white sign perched atop the Hotel Bolívar.

  The Bolívar was an ugly pillbox of a building, with pallid stucco walls and sagging razor wire. It was not the kind of hotel you found on TripAdvisor, but Ford trusted the owner, which made it the safest place in the city.

  By the time he staggered into the dingy lobby, the pills had kicked in and muted the pain in his leg to a dull roar.

  “Señor Ford,” Miguel greeted him in broken English. The smile on his face crumbled when he saw Ford’s condition, and he came around the desk. “You look like the shit. Should I call for the doctor?”

  “No.” Ford winced. “Just a room—and a bottle.” He leaned against the counter and dug the last of his cash from his pocket, slapping it on the scarred surface. The effort left him out of breath.

  “Of course.” Miguel nodded.

  He retrieved a bottle of Santa Teresa rum from the shelf and a key from the wallboard, and placed them both on the counter.

  “Thank you, my friend,” Ford said.

  He took the stairs to the second floor, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

  The room reminded him of the shitty double-wide where he’d grown up: same cigarette-scarred table, yellowed blinds, and musty beer-cooler smell. Ford closed the door behind him and set his assault pack on a chair.

  He cracked the rum and took a deep pull from the bottle. The liquor burned the back of his throat and settled hot into his gut. Properly fortified for the job ahead, he unzipped the pack and spread its contents on the table: a laptop, two shim cameras, a dirt-encrusted camera, and an M18 Claymore mine.

  The rumble in his stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in nine hours, and he retrieved a can of pineapple that he’d picked up in a market outside of El Nula. He popped the ring and carefully peeled the lid free.

  Three years ago when he first came to Venezuela the fruit would have cost him four dollars. But with the economy in free fall and the country gripped in hyperinflation, it cost three times that amount in Caracas.

  Money. That’s what all of this was about, he thought, spearing the fruit with his knife and placing it in his mouth before picking up the shim cams and stepping out into the hall.

  The shim cams were a holdover from his time in Special Forces. Each camera was the size of a tube of ChapStick, with a lens on one end and a flat tail on the other. They were old tech—massive compared to the micro–surveillance cameras on the market today. But Ford trusted them, and like the name implied, they could be emplaced anywhere.

  He wedged the first camera into a crack at the end of the hall and angled the lens so it covered the stairwell leading up from the lobby. He used a strip of tape to stick the second camera to the top of the flickering Coke machine and pointed the lens at his door.

  Back inside the room, he tried to pull the bed against the door, but when he tugged on the box spring, the bed refused to move. He pulled harder, and when it still didn’t budge, Ford dropped to his knees.

  When did Miguel start bolting the beds to the floor?

  Ford knew it didn’t matter and got to his feet. He retrieved a plastic wedge from his assault pack, remembering the words of the man who’d trained him: “Ford, always remember, one is none, and two is one.”

  Hayes, still saving my sorry ass, he thought, kicking the wedge under the frame and returning to the assault pack for a roll of hundred-mile-an-hour tape, the military’s version of duct tape, and the Claymore.

  He used the tape to secure the Claymore mine to the headrest of the chair, and once he was sure that it would hold, he dragged the chair across the room and checked the angle. When he was sure that it was out of the door’s path, Ford screwed the blasting cap into the mine, plugged the free end of the firing wire into the detonator, and carried it into the bathroom.

  Ford set the detonator on the toilet and turned on the faucet.

  He splashed water over his face, his mind turning to the café outside of Bogotá and the last time he saw Hayes.

  * * *

  —

  “Nick, I’m leaving.”

  “Leaving?” Ford laughed. “Where the hell you going?”

  “No, I’m leaving Treadstone. I’m done.”

  “Done?” Ford frowned. “What do you mean, ‘done’?”

  “I’m out. Finished.”

  “Can you do that? I mean, are they going to let you . . . ?”

  The change in the man’s expression was instantaneous. His face went flat, eyes hard and pregnant with the threat of violence.

  It was a look Ford had seen many times before—one that usually ended with someone bleeding out on the floor—and despite himself, Ford took an involuntary step back.

  The two men had first met in Special Forces and had forged a tight bond during multiple deployments. They were on the same team in Afghanistan when the CIA plucked them from their firebase and sent them to Treadstone.

  But it was the fact that they remained close after the government-sanctioned mind job that was supposed to have ripped them down to the studs—robbed them of the ability to maintain any relationships outside of the missions assigned to them—that surprised the docs at Treadstone. The whole point of the program was to create unstoppable independent operatives.

  “No one is letting me do shit,” Hayes snapped, his legendary temper on full display.

  “Easy, brother, I didn’t mean any harm,” Ford said, holding up his hands.

  Hayes’s face softened and a hint of a smile appeared at the corner of his lips.

  “This isn’t about you, bro. This is for me.”

  Something had happened to Hayes on his last mission, and while Ford didn’t know the details, he knew that it had changed him.

  “But I think you should do the same.”

  “Man, I don’t know how to do anything else,” Ford said.

  “If you ever need anything, all you have to do is ask,” Hayes said, and then he was gone.r />
  * * *

  —

  Ford turned the water off and reached for a towel, catching his reflection in the mirror. He was shocked by what he saw.

  The three months he’d spent in the Orinoco Delta had taken their toll, and the man looking back at him was thirty-seven going on sixty. Lean and hard, with don’t-fuck-with-me eyes and the half-moon scar that covered half of his neck before disappearing into his shirt.

  I should have listened to him.

  Back at the table he turned on the monitor connected to the cameras and booted up the computer. He logged on and connected the mobile WiFi to the laptop. Accessed the IP anonymizer and adjusted the settings so it would bounce the laptop’s Internet protocol address to a different server every ninety seconds.

  He pulled out the camera that he was using for the recon before the ambush, plugged it into the computer, and, while he waited for the pictures to upload, opened an email and typed the subject.

  By the time you get this I’ll be dead

  He saw the first photo pop up on the screen and decided they would speak for themselves. Ford was just dragging the images into the body of the email when the computer monitor flashed to life.

  “Oh, shit.”

  He grabbed the computer and the Glock 19 and rushed into the bathroom. Slamming the door behind him, Ford set the computer on the sink and picked up the detonator. His eyes never left the spinning progress wheel.

  C’mon, c’mon, he begged, willing the files to upload faster.

  * * *

  —

  Ten miles to the north, a pair of eighteen-wheelers turned off the road. The lead Peterbilt slowed with a hiss of its air brakes and made a wide turn onto a cracked asphalt road.

  Felix Black climbed down from the cab, a loaded H&K 416 slung against his chest. He marched to the rear trailer through the dust kicked up from the gravel lining the abandoned airfield and popped the access door.

  The inside of the trailer was packed with blinking monitors, a bank of processors, and a satellite uplink—the price of each setup was more than twice the cost of the Peterbilt and trailer combined.

  “Who has the lock?” Black asked, stepping inside.