Minotaur

by David Wellington

  “There’s movement outside,” Angel told him. “I’m watching through the FLIR camera on a police helicopter loitering just outside the perimeter. I’ve got a dozen heat signatures streaming toward the house.”

  Chapel nodded to himself. He tried to think like his enemy, like Favorov. Those heat signatures would be the security guards normally stationed around the grounds. Most likely they’d been told to stay at their posts even when the shooting started—­someone needed to be on hand to repel the SWAT teams when they arrived. If they were heading inbound, that meant Favorov or someone else had called them back, which meant that whoever was running the shots didn’t care about the police anymore.

  They just wanted Chapel.

  “I was hoping it would take longer,” Chapel told Angel. “I guess Favorov is smarter than that. He’s been waiting to make his escape until the SWAT teams attack, probably hoping to sneak out in the confusion. Now he knows we’re holding off, which means he’ll change his plans.”

  “That’s good, right?” Angel asked. “You have about thirty seconds before the first guard reaches the front door, by the way. They’re taking their time moving in, being careful. It’s good Favorov had to change his strategy. That means you’re making him sweat.”

  “Maybe, but it’s bad because it means he’s capable of improvising on the fly. He was GRU, one of their best. He’s going to have some surprises for us yet.” Chapel loaded one of his AK-­47s and set the fire selector to full automatic. “It’s also bad because it means he’s already started to run away. I’m going to have to make this fast.”

  “ETA on the guards, fifteen seconds now,” Angel said. “They’re headed for the front door. Head left out of the kitchen, then take your first right.”

  Angel and Chapel had been working together for a while now. She knew how he thought, how he would act in most situations. She knew that if the guards were headed for the front door, Chapel meant to be there to meet them.

  He hurried down a narrow servants’ hallway, then around a bend and into the massive foyer where he’d first seen Fiona coming down the stairs. There wasn’t much furniture in the foyer, but he found a big ornamental table. He kicked it over and ducked behind it just as the doors exploded.

  The noise and the light were intense. The guards must have had some kind of breaching explosive, either C-­4 or some kind of grenade. They hadn’t wanted to take the chance that Chapel was standing right inside the doors, waiting for them to open. These weren’t just rent-­a-­cops from the local security temp agency. They’d been trained for combat.

  Well, that could actually work in Chapel’s favor. If they were ex-­military, or at least trained by somebody ex-­military, they would understand the concept of suppressive fire. Chapel lifted his rifle over the top of the overturned table and fired a long burst toward the doors, not even aiming. He heard shouting and ­people running away from his fire. That was good. Rent-­a-­cops might have just stormed inside, right into his gunfire, and some of them might even have gotten hit. Chapel didn’t need any more bodies on his conscience.

  Chapel moved to the edge of his improvised shield and took a quick look. He could see almost nothing through the now open front doors. It was nighttime out there, but there was enough light to show the driveway and the start of the gardens beyond. He couldn’t see any of the guards, though—­yeah. There. He saw the tip of a rifle barrel just sticking out past the door frame. The guards were hanging back, standing to either side of the door.

  If Chapel had possessed any grenades he might have been able to take them all out at once. But he only had his rifles and pistols, and not a lot of ammunition for either.

  Come on, he thought. He needed to get moving. He needed to find Favorov. If the guards would just come storming inside, either he would shoot them all or, far more likely, they would kill him. But as long as they stood out there waiting for him to make a move, he also had to wait for them.

  Maybe that was the whole plan. Maybe they were just stalling for time. Maybe—­

  His train of thought was interrupted as a hand appeared in the doorway, a hand holding something small and round. Chapel could only watch as a grenade arced through the air to clatter on the marble floor, right in front of his improvised cover.

  24.

  Chapel’s breath stuck tight in his lungs as he waited for the grenade to explode, obliterating the table he hid behind and turning it into a million jagged splinters of wood that would shred his body. His brain howled at him to react, to grab the grenade and throw it back, but his muscles refused to move, to do anything in the time he had left.

  Then the grenade went off and he nearly laughed in relief. It didn’t explode. A cap on one end popped open and white smoke started pouring out. It wasn’t a fragmentation grenade, after all. He’d assumed it would be the same kind of explosive they’d used to get the door open. But either they were still operating under the orders not to kill Chapel, or they just didn’t want to damage their boss’s expensive marble floor.

  Chapel opened his mouth to take a breath—­and nearly lost everything. Because it wasn’t a smoke grenade. It was tear gas.

  He’d been so surprised by surviving the last two seconds that he hadn’t even considered that. The half of an aborted breath he’d taken burned inside his throat and his eyes began to water. His chest seized up as his lungs clamored for air, even as they spasmed in reaction to the nasty stuff they’d already inhaled.

  Chapel had lost his shirt back when he was originally searched in the billiards room. He had nothing to make a bandana out of. Not that a length of cloth would even protect his eyes. He rolled away from the table, knowing he was doing exactly what the guards wanted. They’d thrown the gas grenade to flush him out, to make him leave his cover.

  They waited five seconds for the tear gas to take effect, then stormed into the foyer in a tight formation, spreading out just a little as they came. They were all wearing gas masks that hid their faces but it didn’t look like they had any body armor—­just immaculate black suits and silk ties. They all carried pistols, Glocks like the ones Chapel had taken from Michael’s crew.

  One of them lifted three fingers in the air, then gestured forward. He followed this signal with a fist pumping in the air that meant “hurry up.” These guards were far better trained and more disciplined than the bodyguards who had worked inside the house. They probably didn’t know how to serve soup at the dinner table, but they definitely knew how to take an enemy behind cover. The guards moved around the table, flanking it from either side, their weapons up and ready. Chapel might have gotten one or two of them, but through sheer numbers they would have taken him down before he could achieve anything useful.

  That is, if he had still been behind the table.

  The funny thing about tear gas was that while it was great at incapacitating an unprotected enemy, it also fouled the air and reduced visibility. In the first few seconds after a tear gas grenade went off it acted like a very effective smokescreen. By the time it dissipated into the air your enemy could be gone.

  Chapel had simply run up the stairs, knowing they couldn’t see him. He’d gotten above the worst of the gas and though his eyes were streaming and his throat burned, he had been able to find a new cover spot behind the balustrade at the top of the steps. It was clear right away that the guards were surprised not to find him behind the table, and they had no idea where he’d gone.

  Until a coughing fit ripped through him, and they all looked up to see where the noise had come from.

  25.

  There were too many of them. At least a dozen. Even with all of Chapel’s training, even with improvisation and the best luck he’d ever had, there were too many. In a straight-­up firefight, they would overwhelm him and he would go down. He couldn’t take many more bullets, not and keep on his feet.

  So as they started firing up at the second floor landing, Chapel knew exactly what he h
ad to do. He had to keep his head down, and he had to run.

  They would follow, of course. Maybe they would take their time about it, expecting him to lie in ambush. That could give him time. But maybe one of them would decide to be a hero, hoping that Favorov would reward him for initiative. It only took one of them to catch him while he was running and put a bullet in his back.

  He needed a strategy and he needed it right away. “Angel—­I’m moving, and I’ve got a ton of hostiles on my tail,” he whispered, as he ducked into a hallway on the second floor, away from the shooting. “I need to find Favorov now. If I can capture him I can make him stand down his guards.”

  “There are four ­people on the second floor,” she told him, sounding apologetic. That was never good. If Angel couldn’t help him he was screwed. “Two groups of two. Both groups are in the east wing—­not far from your position.”

  “Any idea which group includes Favorov?”

  “I’m sorry, Chapel. No. You’re going to have to get lucky. I saw him at a window a while back, but he’s moved since then, and my imaging just isn’t good enough to track heat sources.”

  Chapel gritted his teeth. “Do you have my twenty?”

  “I have you on imaging. I can always tell when it’s you I’m looking at,” she said.

  “That’s sweet.”

  “Not really,” she told him. “Your artificial arm shows up colder than the rest of your body, so I just look for the orange blob with the blue piece stuck on it.”

  Not for the first time Chapel marveled at what she was capable of seeing on her screens, wherever she was. If she’d been there looking with human eyes she would have been as blind as him. But even though she could be anywhere in the country—­the world for that matter—­she still had a better idea of what was happening inside the house than he did. “What about the guards on the first floor? Are they coming up?”

  “Two on the stairs, moving up, taking their time about it,” she told him. “The rest are holding position to offer covering fire.”

  Chapel didn’t like what he was going to have to do next. He didn’t see a choice, though. He checked his rifle, then leaned back around the corner, exposing himself to fire from below in the foyer. He had maybe a second before someone saw him up there and took a shot.

  He saw the two guards on the stairs right away. They were keeping low so he dropped his rifle a few degrees, depressing his angle of fire. That was good. Think of it as a physics problem.

  He pressed the trigger of the rifle and bullets tore up the stair runner, the marble beneath, the bodies of the two guards on the stairs. They jerked wildly as the bullets tore into their flesh. One of them dropped his weapon and clutched at the ruin of his gas mask as he dropped to his knees. The other crumpled and slid down the stairs on his face.

  The AK-­47 ran dry before Chapel was done shooting. He tossed the empty rifle away and threw himself back around the corner, into the second-­floor hallway.

  He’d just killed two men to scare the others and make them take their time about following him. Hopefully it would turn out in the end to have been worth it.

  The second-­floor hallway was lined with doors, all of them shut. The lighting up there was more subdued than it had been on the ground floor. Chapel didn’t waste time looking at all the charming architectural details.

  “Give me a door,” Chapel said. “Just pick one.”

  “Two down on your left,” Angel told him.

  He raced to the door she’d indicated and threw it open, a pistol up and ready in his good hand.

  26.

  The room beyond was dark, save for a strange green glow coming down from the ceiling. Chapel didn’t have time to wonder what that meant. He slipped inside and shut the door behind him. He considered locking it, but he knew that would only delay his pursuers a few seconds—­the door was made of soft wood, and anyone could kick it down—­while it would also mean trapping him inside a room with no other exits. That was always a bad idea.

  “Favorov,” he called out. “Favorov, it’s over. You can’t get away now. You waited too long.”

  There was no response. As Chapel’s eyes started to adjust to the strange glow in the room he started to make out details—­a pair of single beds on the far side of the room, a dresser, a desk with two laptop computers sitting on top of it.

  Toys.

  The floor was strewn with toys—­action figures, toy trucks, a ­couple of robots.

  No. No, Chapel thought, oh no, I’ve picked the wrong room.

  He looked up and saw that the ceiling was covered in stars. Decals of stars that glowed in the dark. That was the source of the dim lighting. This was the room where Favorov’s boys lived. He could even see one of them—­Ryan, the younger of the two, he thought—­huddled in his bed. He wasn’t asleep. One eye glinted with terror as it looked at Chapel over bunched-­up blankets.

  He put a finger to his lips and tried to think of something reassuring to say. He couldn’t think of anything. The best he could do for the kid would be to get out of the room immediately and lead the guards as far away from his part of the house as possible. The mansion’s walls were sturdy and thick, but there was no telling where stray bullets could end up. Chapel knew that if one of the kids was hurt in the firefight he would never forgive himself.

  He turned to go, putting his free hand out to reach for the doorknob.

  That was when the closet door flew open and banged against the wall, startling Chapel so much he barely noticed when something small and fast moving charged right at him and sank the inch-­long blade of a pocketknife into his thigh.

  “Jesus!” Chapel gasped, as the pain reached him.

  He stared down at Daniel, who must have been hiding in the closet the whole time. Smart kid. He had what looked like a Cub Scout knife in his hand and he was bringing it back to strike at Chapel’s leg again.

  “We never did anything to you!” the boy shouted. “Leave us alone!”

  Chapel was so surprised he couldn’t stop the boy from stabbing him a second time. The wounds weren’t deep enough to seriously injure him but he could feel blood running down inside his dress pants.

  “Kid, kid,” Chapel said, trying to grab at the knife without getting his hand slashed. “Kid, come on! Stop it!” He felt absurd—­he’d just fought his way through a cadre of bodyguards, and here he couldn’t do more than ask a child politely to stop trying to kill him. But he couldn’t risk hurting the child, even in self-­defense. His training had focused on debilitating and crippling attackers, not calming them down.

  But then a female voice called out from another room, calling Daniel’s name. It was Fiona, the boy’s mother. “Daniel! Run away! Just run, baby!”

  Chapel had no choice. He brought his left hand down just as the boy was going to stab him a third time. The knife blade sank deep into the silicone flesh of Chapel’s artificial hand. With a good hard yank Chapel pulled his hand back and the knife came with it.

  “Daniel!” Fiona called again.

  Chapel folded up the knife and put it in his pocket, just to keep it away from the child. Daniel’s eyes had gone very wide and he looked like he expected to be shot at any second. Silently Chapel cursed Favorov for putting his children at risk like this.

  “Daniel! Run away!”

  The boy turned and screamed and ran back into the closet. “You,” Chapel said to Ryan, who was still curled up in a ball on his bed. “Get in there with him. It’s the safest place.”

  He expected the younger boy to scream, or throw a tantrum, or just freeze in place, paralyzed by fear. Instead he jumped up and ran for the closet, dragging a stuffed dog in after him.

  Maybe Favorov had trained his sons at the same time he’d trained his bodyguards. Or maybe the kid was just smarter than he looked.

  “Daniel! Ryan!” Fiona wailed. It sounded like she was just outside in the
hall.

  27.

  Chapel yanked the door open and found himself looking Fiona right in the face. Her features were writhing with panic. “My boys,” she whispered.

  Behind her, the door across the hall was open. It looked like a master bedroom lay beyond.

  “If you hurt my boys—­”

  “They’re fine,” Chapel said. He grabbed her arm and hauled her to one side. Through the door of the master bedroom he was sure he saw someone moving. It had to be Favorov. “They’re in the closet. You need to get them out of here, as fast as possible,” Chapel whispered. He checked the pistol in his hand. “I’m going in there. Do not call out or try to warn him.”

  Fiona’s eyes snapped to his. “Who?” she asked.

  There was definitely movement down the hall. The guards from the first floor were coming and they were moving faster now. Chapel had no time left. He pushed past Fiona and dove into the master bedroom, locking the door behind him.

  The room was well lit. Chapel saw a king-­size bed flanked by low tables, a larger table off to one side, a ­couple of chairs. Expensive-­looking paintings hung on the wall. A second door led to what he presumed was a bathroom.

  “Angel,” he whispered.

  “One heat source in there with you. You’re close,” she told him.

  Chapel lifted his pistol. He saw no sign of Favorov. No movement at all. Clothing and papers were piled up on the bed. Stacks of hundred-­dollar bills, neatly banded. Looked like fifty thousand dollars or so. Three passports. A revolver. Chapel picked that up and stuffed it in his pocket, keeping his own weapon leveled on the bathroom door. On the far side of the room from the bed stood a massive dresser, but the drawers were too small to hide a human being. Over by the bathroom door stood an upright wardrobe—­Favorov could easily be hiding in there, but the door hung open revealing nothing inside but shirts and dresses on hangers. It looked like someone had torn through the wardrobe in a hurry. Favorov had been packing, getting ready to make his escape on his yacht. Except Hollingshead was sure the yacht was just a ruse.