Myrmidon
Page 8
Chapel glared at the man. “You going to save one of those for me?” he asked. “I can’t be much of a witness if I die in your cloud.”
Belcher laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve got some protection for you, Agent.” A couple of his men laughed along, as if they got the joke. One of them had a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He took something dark and flexible out of it and handed it to Belcher, who brought it over to Chapel. “See? You’ll be nice and safe.”
Chapel couldn’t figure out what he was holding for a second. Then he saw the heavy, drooping canisters and small round eyeshields of a gas mask. The kind one of those World War I soldiers might have worn in the trenches.
“Very funny,” Chapel said. “You know as well as I do those were useless against mustard gas.”
“That’s not true. This is going to keep you from breathing the stuff. So you won’t choke to death on your own burned lung tissue. It’ll keep you from being blinded as well, so you can see everything.”
Chapel shook his head. “But the gas will seep right through my clothes. I’ll be burned all over the rest of my body.”
Belcher shrugged. “I said you would live through this day. I didn’t say you wouldn’t wish you were dead.” He lifted the mask and pulled it down over Chapel’s head, then pulled the straps tight to hold it in place.
With it on, Chapel’s visual field was reduced to two small circular windows that cut all of his peripheral vision and made it impossible to look down. The heavy canisters pulled at his chin, making it hard to even lift his head. The mask stank of old rubber and someone else’s dried spit. He could hear almost nothing but his own heavy breathing.
“It’s about to get too dangerous for you out here in the open,” Belcher told him. “It’s time for you to bunker up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Andre shoved Chapel toward a small building near the center of the depot, shielded on all sides by various administrative buildings. It didn’t look like much, and it was smaller on the inside, but that fact alone was important. The walls were made of concrete at least a foot thick, enough to keep out bullets and even small artillery rounds. There were no windows in the little building, but it was lined with television screens receiving a live feed from every side of the base. Clearly, it was a command post, from which the depot’s commanding officer could keep tabs on everything that happened around him without having to stick his head out the door and look.
It looked like that hadn’t been enough, though. A wide swath of blood painted the threshold of the door—apparently whoever had been on duty in here had stepped outside when the attack started but hadn’t made it very far. He’d left a coffee cup sitting on a control panel just to the right of the door. Whoever he’d been, Chapel uttered a silent prayer for his soul, by way of apology. He couldn’t help but think he was responsible for the attack. Belcher probably would have stormed the depot eventually, but Chapel’s arrival had prompted him, and for that he was distinctly sorry. How many men had already died? How many more would be lost before the day was over?
He hadn’t given up hope—he was too stubborn to ever do that—but he had to admit the situation looked grim. He could see little through the eyeholes of the gas mask, and he was having trouble breathing through the heavy filters. The rope that bound him wasn’t getting any looser. He was unarmed, and Andre, with his rifle and pistol, was standing between Chapel and the door.
And even if he could get away, if he somehow spontaneously developed the strength to break his bonds, what could he do? There were two thousand armed neo-Nazis outside that door, all of them ready to shoot at the slightest provocation. And then there was Belcher. One quick phone call, and Belcher could unleash Armageddon on the state of Colorado and points east. Even if Chapel possessed a tank battalion to play with, he didn’t know if he could stop the terrorist in time.
Chapel was, to put it one way, royally screwed.
As if to drive the point home, Andre slammed the door shut. He drew his pistol and leaned up against the doorframe, his eyes securely fixed on Chapel. “Might as well have a seat,” he said.
Chapel looked around the room for a chair. Without any peripheral vision, he’d taken in only a few details of his new prison cell. He found the chair almost right away, tucked neatly under the control panel, but while he was looking for it, he spotted something else. There was a telephone, a plain old-fashioned handset receiver, mounted on the control panel. It had a keypad and looked like it was perfectly capable of making calls outside the base.
If he could only get in touch with Angel, his operator—if he could tell her what was going on, get word to Director Hollingshead and tell him to pull back his troops, to not attack the depot, that would buy some time.
Of course, if he tried that, Andre would just shoot him.
“I don’t suppose,” he said, “that this is the point where you tell me you’re an undercover ATF agent, and this whole time you’ve been waiting to help me.”
Something suspiciously like a smile twisted the corner of Andre’s mouth.
“Good one,” he said.
Yeah, Chapel thought. That would have been too easy. “No,” he said, “you strike me as the genuine article. A purebred Nordic warrior type. The kind of guy who would have been in the front rank of a Viking raid, biting his shield and frothing at the mouth. A berserker.”
“You don’t know shit about what that means,” Andre snarled.
“You think I didn’t do my homework before I came out here? I know that most of those guys out there are just posers. They liked the look of the tattoos, or maybe they even thought Belcher was onto something with his talk of separatism. But they’re not really committed, not like you. They don’t feel it in their bones. They don’t feel the need to fight for their heritage. When the time comes, you think they’ll even fire their weapons? Or will they toss them down and put their hands up and say, ‘please, Daddy, I was just playing!’ ”
Andre shook his head, but there was a sort of faraway look in his eyes. Chapel knew he’d touched on something there. Andre came from a macho culture that valued how hard a man was over all else. How well a man could hit, and how well he could take a hit in return. Men like that needed to constantly prove themselves. Guard duty wasn’t going to sit well with him.
“Shame you’re stuck here babysitting me, while the real action is outside,” Chapel said, choosing his words carefully. “You could be on the front lines, making a difference. Instead, you’re here watching me, your biggest enemy, and making sure I don’t get hurt like a bitch.”
“I’ve got my orders,” Andre told him.
“I guess Belcher figured he knew what you were worth,” Chapel said.
That did it. Andre was on him in a second, throwing him down on the floor and jumping on top of him. He rammed his fist three times into Chapel’s stomach, knocking the breath out of him and making Chapel suck for air inside the stinking gas mask.
“You know nothing,” Andre howled. “You got no idea what it means to be a soldier of the white race!”
He reached down to his belt and drew a long, thin knife, something like a medieval dagger. He brought it up to tap the point on one of the gas mask’s eyeshields. “I should mark you,” he said. “I should carve a swastika right on your chest, so you never forget who you fucked with.”
For the first time, Chapel wondered if he should have gone with the tattoos.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Chapel could see the doubt in Andre’s eyes. The kid with the Hitler-mustache tattoo wanted so badly to skin Chapel alive, but he knew he shouldn’t. He had his orders. Belcher must have really gotten through to him, to give a violent punk like this some sense of discipline—but then, Belcher had been trained in leadership by the army, and Chapel knew how effective their lessons could be.
Andre pulled the knife away from Chapel’s face and started to ge
t back on his feet. If Chapel didn’t push him again, the kid was just going to go back to guard duty, and Chapel would have achieved nothing but getting himself punched in the stomach.
Of course, if he pushed the kid too hard, Andre would just kill him.
When the Rangers had taught him this kind of psychological manipulation, they’d been very clear that it would backfire sometimes. But Chapel didn’t see any other way to move forward.
“Huh,” Chapel said. “I see it, now.”
Andre squinted at him.
“It’s subtle. I guess maybe just half.”
“What the hell are you jawing about?” the kid demanded.
“Your nose. I didn’t really notice it before, but yeah, definitely. You’re a little bit Jewish, aren’t you?”
“Shut up.”
Chapel laughed. “Wow. Talk about overcompensating. Was it your mother or your father? If you tell me it was one of your grandparents, I’ll believe you, but—”
“Shut up!” Andre howled. “It just looks that way because it’s been broken so many times!”
Ah. Chapel had hit a nerve. It had been a wild guess—the kid’s nose was a little bent, and for all Chapel knew, the explanation was correct. But in a group like Belcher’s, such minor differences would always be observed and commented on. “If it was your mother, that technically makes you a Jew,” Chapel said. “If it was your father, then—”
“I swear to God I will cut you open if you say one more word,” the kid shouted.
Chapel nodded. “I get it. You’re no berserker after all. No wonder Belcher put you in here with me. Keep the untrustworthy types all in one place, right? It makes—”
The kid was fast. He twirled around and fell right on top of Chapel and the knife went into Chapel’s guts.
He had intended to get Andre to leave the room, to leave him alone so he could work on his bonds. If that didn’t work he’d figured he would taunt Andre into fighting him, certain the kid’s code of honor would mean Chapel had to be untied so it was a fair match. He had definitely not intended to be stabbed.
The pain was incredible. He felt like he was being sawed in half. Hot blood sluiced down his side toward the floor, and his lungs seized as his chest constricted, and for a second all he could see was red light. The knife came out of his body, and it was almost worse, the serrated edge tearing open whole new parts of him, and Chapel felt dizzy and nauseous and like he was going to die.
But then he felt something else. A strange looseness in his chest, as if he were falling to pieces. As if pieces of him were falling away. Maybe as if he were shedding his skin. His right arm, his good arm, felt sudden prickly and numb as blood coursed through its veins.
The knife, he realized, had cut more than his flesh. It had cut the ropes holding him, too.
Above him, Andre lifted the knife for another strike.
If he’d been anybody else, if he hadn’t been Jim Chapel, that would have been it—his death. He wouldn’t have been able to fend off that blow. His right arm had fallen asleep long ago, losing all feeling where it was held against his torso.
But Chapel had a left arm that was made of servomotors and silicone and wires. That arm never went numb or got sore from being cramped in one position. That arm worked just fine.
The ropes twisted and fell away from his arm as he shot his artificial hand upward, trying to grab Andre’s wrist. Instead, the point of the knife went right through the silicone flesh that covered the hand, grating as it slid between two metal fingers. For a nasty second, Chapel and Andre both stared at the knife impaling Chapel’s hand. There was no blood, but Chapel could clearly see the point sticking through his artificial skin, and his brain immediately processed that information just one way: He’d been impaled. That was supposed to hurt. There were no pain receptors in his artificial arm, but his brain refused to be put off so easily.
He screamed. So did Andre.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A little strength was returning to his right arm as fresh blood seeped through its capillaries. Chapel reached up with clumsy fingers and grabbed the hilt of the knife away from Andre. The boy was too shocked to resist. Chapel nearly dropped the knife as he pulled it free of his left hand, but somehow he held on to it.
“No,” Andre said. “No, you’re some kind of a—a—”
There was no time to waste. Chapel turned the knife around in his hand and struck out hard, catching the kid across the temple with the knife’s pommel. Andre howled in pain and threw himself to one side, off Chapel’s body. Chapel threw the knife away and grabbed for the kid’s neck with both hands. He knew exactly where to push, and soon he’d cut off the blood flow to Andre’s brain. The neo-Nazi’s eyes rolled up in his head, and his eyelids fluttered shut as he dropped like a stone into unconsciousness.
When it was done, when Andre was passed out and no longer a threat, Chapel let himself breathe. Just breathe, just pant for oxygen. The wound in his stomach was bad, and he was losing blood at an alarming rate.
He had to move. He had to keep going. He couldn’t just lie there and die.
First things first. Andre wouldn’t be out for long, he knew. He used the bloodstained rope that had bound him before and hog-tied the kid. He pulled off Andre’s boots and socks and used one of the socks to gag him.
The neo-Nazi was already starting to wake up by the time Chapel was finished. When he opened one bleary eye, Chapel squatted down and stared into it.
“That’s got to be the world’s stupidest tattoo,” he said.
Andre struggled, but he couldn’t escape his bonds. Good. That had been the point of taunting the kid. Chapel didn’t want him getting loose and alerting Belcher to the fact Chapel was free.
He went through Andre’s pockets and found a cell phone. For a second, he considered what to do with that, then he just pulled out the battery and smashed the screen with the pommel of the knife. If Belcher called Andre to find out what had happened, the call wouldn’t go to voice mail now—which Belcher would certainly take as a sign something had gone wrong. Instead, the call would just fail, which might mean anything.
Next, Chapel had to tend to himself. There was nothing he could do for the pain or the shock, but he had to stop the blood loss. He tore up his own shirt and made bandages he could wrap around his abdomen, pulling them so tight he nearly made himself pass out. He shoved Andre’s other sock against the wound to add pressure. He might get an infection from that, but there was nothing for it.
He got up off the floor of the command bunker and pulled himself upright, using the console for leverage. He was having trouble breathing, so he pulled off the gas mask and put it aside. He had no intention of needing it.
Next thing was the phone.
He picked up the handset and put it to his ear. He reached to dial a number he’d memorized a long time ago, but it turned out he didn’t need to.
“Chapel?” Angel asked, her sweet voice like music to him. She must have been monitoring all the base’s phone lines, hoping he would pick one up.
“I’m here,” he said. “Alive and mobile.”
“Oh, thank God!” she said. “When you went into that building, then when they blew up my drone and—”
“Angel, just listen! You need to hear me right now. Belcher’s taken control of the Pueblo Depot. I’m sure you’ve figured that part out.”
“Yes,” Angel said. “I tracked your movements by satellite after he blew up the drone. When we saw where you were headed, the director put through the order for a full assault. We’ve got units from Fort Carson and Buckley Air Force Base converging on your position—nobody’s taking any chances.”
Chapel’s blood was turning cold in his veins. It wasn’t quite ice water yet, but it was getting there. Fort Carson was only forty miles north of Pueblo. “How many troops, Angel? How many infantrymen?”
Chapel closed his eyes. That could mean three thousand men, or even more. Hollingshead had pulled out all the stops—he must be working with the Joint Chiefs, and maybe even the president, to commit that many men to one operation. It made sense, of course. The chemical weapons stored at Pueblo Depot needed to be contained, and fast, and that was going to take manpower.
But it also meant those men wouldn’t all be wearing NBC suits. There just weren’t enough units trained in chemical warfare to fill those ranks.
“You need to pull them back,” Chapel said. “Get them to fall back and take up siege positions. This place is a trap—Terry Belcher is in here sitting on a mustard-gas bomb big enough to wipe out Colorado. As soon as he has those soldiers where he wants them, he’s going to set it off.”
“Chapel,” Angel said, “I . . . I saw them take you into a little building in the middle of the camp. Doesn’t it have windows?”
“No, no, it doesn’t, but that doesn’t matter,” Chapel told her, “you have to—”
But something in her voice made him look up, at the television screens on the walls of the command bunker. The screens that showed views of every part of the depot and the surrounding area.
While he was struggling with Andre, it looked like the army had been busy.
Every screen showed troops in desert-camouflage uniforms, clustering around the depot’s fences, setting up mortar positions and machine-gun nests, shouting orders he couldn’t hear. The base was surrounded. They had already cleared the front gate, and soldiers were already streaming into the depot. Wave after wave of them, covering each other as they stormed the base.