Myrmidon

by David Wellington

  Inside the thick-­walled bunker, he hadn’t heard a thing. If he listened closely now, though, he could hear the constant pop-­pop-­pop of a battle under way, the stuttering chatter of assault rifles firing in burst mode. He thought he could even tell the difference between the sound of the army’s M4 carbines and the AK-­47 assault rifles of the neo-­Nazis.

  Belcher had gotten his wish. The army had arrived.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­FIVE

  “Angel,” Chapel said, “Angel—­”

  “I’m here, Chapel. Tell me what to do.”

  Chapel’s brain was overloaded for a second by the enormity of what was about to happen. He had no idea what to tell her—­no way to fix things from a distance.

  “Try—­try to get Hollingshead to recall these troops.” It was too late for that, of course. By the time the order went down the chain of command, Belcher would already have triggered his bombs. And even if somehow the soldiers could withdraw on a moment’s notice, there was no way they could retreat faster than the poison cloud could spread.

  He thought about the civilian population, then. He imagined them in the towns to the east, going about their business, having no idea what was coming for them. He saw them in their offices, or mowing their lawns, or picking up their kids from school. He saw them look up and wonder what the strange yellow cloud was doing blowing in from the west. He saw them start to choke, saw their skin blistering, saw them die.

  “Get—­get the right ­people to . . . to evacuate every town east of here in Colorado.” A good plan, maybe—­if it was handled precisely right, which it wouldn’t be. On such short notice, an evacuation could only lead to chaos and futility. Most likely a last-­minute evacuation would flood the roads with ­people who would end up just trapped in their cars when the gas cloud came, when they might have been safer holed up in their homes. “I just don’t know, Angel.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” she said, though even she didn’t sound very hopeful. “But what about you, Chapel? What are you going to do?”

  Chapel stared at the screens on the walls. More soldiers were flooding into the base with every second that passed. Had Belcher already set off the bombs?

  No. No, one of the screens showed the igloos. No yellow cloud was billowing out of those open doors. Not yet.

  There was no time to explain things to Angel. He put down the phone, even as he heard her call his name again and again, trying to get his attention.

  He had Andre’s weapons, the hunting rifle, the pistol—­a big, clumsy revolver—­and the combat knife. He looked at the gas mask and knew it would just slow him down, hamper his breathing.

  He grabbed up the weapons and kicked open the bunker’s door. He half expected to see a hundred soldiers out there, with orders to kill anyone who showed his face and who wasn’t wearing an army uniform. But instead, the door just opened on a stretch of paved road running deeper into the base.

  He set off running.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­SIX

  It didn’t matter if there was no chance, if he couldn’t do anything. It didn’t matter if he’d already failed.

  Jim Chapel wasn’t the kind of guy who just lay down and died. He had to do something—­anything—­no matter how pointless it looked.

  He ran down the narrow road between two administrative buildings, his head swinging from side to side as he looked for threats and hazards. The fighting seemed to be happening behind him, back near the depot’s main gate. Soldiers there were taking their time, clearing out one building after another as the neo-­Nazis took up positions where they could snipe and harass the oncoming troops. None of them, however, had been committed to defending the central part of the camp. Chapel could imagine Belcher’s plan—­put some of his forces near the front to make the army think it was meeting real resistance. Then, when they reached the administrative buildings, let them sweep in unopposed. It was a trap, of course. The idea was to get as many soldiers as possible inside the depot’s fences, where they would have a hard time running away.

  The section of the depot nearest the command bunker looked like a ghost town. As he ran through it, Chapel didn’t see another living person, just a few bodies—­most likely the bodies of the guards who had fallen in the first assault. He saw plenty of destruction, though. The road had been torn up in large circular craters by mortar fire. Smoke still rose from some of the craters. Some of the buildings around him had been damaged by artillery fire as well, and one building had been completely demolished, reduced to a pile of twisted rebar and broken bricks.

  The army must have decided that the center of the depot was deniable territory. If they could clear out the middle of the base, then flood it with their own men, they could set up a beachhead and push the neo-­Nazis out, toward the periphery of the camp, where they could be picked off by snipers and machine guns. It was a good strategy, Chapel supposed, if you didn’t know what Belcher had planned, that he wanted the army to concentrate in the middle of the camp in close proximity to the igloos.

  Overhead, a dozen drones circled like crows, their camera eyes seeing everything, searching for targets. They must have seen Chapel. And it wasn’t Angel watching him from up there. Whoever it was would only have seen a heavily armed man in civilian clothes running between the buildings. They must have assumed he was one of Belcher’s neo-­Nazis, unwisely showing his face in that denied territory.

  Because before he’d covered half the distance to igloos, they started firing on him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­SEVEN

  He heard the whistling sound first, a noise he knew all too well. A mortar shell was aloft and coming right for him. Cursing under his breath, Chapel just had time to throw himself to one side as the shell hit the road ahead of him, blasting him with flying debris—­chunks of concrete, clods of dirt. He heard the whistle again even as he jumped back up to his feet. The next round hit the building nearest to him, and its front wall exploded outward in a storm of broken window glass and pinwheeling boards. Something swiped across Chapel’s face, and he felt blood roll down his cheek to spatter on his shirt. The noise and force of the blast made his teeth ache and his head pound. He desperately wanted to just drop to the ground, roll up into a ball, and wait for it to stop.

  But his only chance was if he kept moving. He tried to run in a broken pattern, zigzagging left and right, juking like a quarterback trying to reach the end zone as shell after shell came down all around him. One went off so close behind him, it knocked him forward and sent him sprawling, but he recovered before his face hit the road surface, stumbled upward, and kept moving.

  Deafened by the noise, dazed by the constant waves of pressure, half-­blinded by the flashes of light, Chapel kept moving, kept running. Up ahead, he could see where the administrative buildings ended and the wide area of empty ground opened up. Out there lay the igloos and Belcher. If he could just make it in time, if he could—­

  A fountain of dirt erupted right under his face. Bits of concrete, accelerated to near the speed of sound, cut into his legs and his chest, and as the blast turned his head to the side, he saw strips of silicone torn right off his artificial arm. The ground buckled underneath him, and Chapel couldn’t keep his footing, couldn’t take another step because there was no solid ground to stand on. He twisted to one side as he fell, throwing his good arm over his face just as another shell landed a few dozen feet away. A dozen pinpricks of agony lit up along his forearm as shrapnel dug through his skin. He could think just clearly enough to realize that if he’d kept running, if he’d stuck to his course, that second shell would have hit him square in the back.

  He forced himself to move, to turn over, to get one knee underneath him. There was no way he was going to make it. They’d found his range, and the next shell was going to hit him, he knew that in the way he knew his multiplication tables—­as a cold, rational fact. It didn’t scare him—­everything was happening too fast for fear—­but it coul
dn’t be denied, either.

  He put one hand down on the ground. The shell didn’t hit in the time it took him to push upward, to get a foot squarely planted on solid earth. He started to extend his knee, thinking—­this is it, this is the moment, the time of my death—­

  It didn’t come. The shell didn’t land, the ground beneath him didn’t explode. He pushed himself upright, tottering on his feet.

  And still the shell didn’t come for him.

  His ears were ringing so loudly he couldn’t comprehend at first how quiet the street had become. The silence that had descended.

  Nothing was exploding. No peals of thunder shocked his senses, no blasts of earth and broken pavement thudded against his body.

  For a second, he just stood there, because it was all he could do. He tilted his head backward a few degrees and looked up at the drones banking high overhead. Looked for the artillery shell that was going to come for him, that had to be coming.

  Then, through the rush of blood in his head, he heard a new sound. A buzzing sound like a mosquito might make. Or four mosquitoes, to be exact.

  A drone came buzzing up the street, headed in his direction. Chapel squinted at it, wondering what the hell was happening now. It wasn’t a Predator or a Global Hawk like the ones up in the sky. This was a little quadrotor, a spindly thing of plastic arms and four whirling helicopter blades that floated on the air like a plastic bag caught in an updraft. It had a single camera slung under its center of gravity but no weapons at all.

  It drifted toward him, dancing on its four rotors. It stopped a few feet away, just hanging there in the air. And then it waggled back and forth, like a friendly robot trying to get his attention.

  Chapel licked his lips. “Angel?” he asked.

  The quadrotor waggled again, more excitedly this time.

  He couldn’t believe it. She must have followed him, seen him running up the street, watched as the mortar shells burst around him. And somehow she had convinced the mortar crews to stop firing on him. For the hundredth or maybe the thousandth time, she had saved his life.

  “Thanks,” he said, because he didn’t know any bigger words that made sense to use at that moment.

  The drone waggled happily. Then it swiveled around him and headed off down the street, off toward the igloos.

  He knew enough to follow it, as fast as he could.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­EIGHT

  The quadrotor buzzed down the street, then stopped in midair and waggled back and forth for a second. Chapel wished he knew what Angel was trying to tell him. “There’s no time,” he told it, but he didn’t know if it had microphone pickups or not—­maybe Angel could hear him, or maybe she could only watch his lips move. He wished he knew whether or not she could read lips.

  His seething frustration didn’t last very long. After a second, the quadrotor slipped sideways through the air, toward a building near the end of the road. Chapel chased after it and, when he saw it hovering in front of the door, turned the knob and pulled the door open for it. The drone whirred inside the building and toward a flight of stairs beyond. It looked like the building was used for office space. Chapel saw desks and chairs and filing cabinets, anyway. He followed the drone—­then stopped in his tracks because he heard someone speak.

  “That buzzing,” someone asked. “You hear that?”

  “Could be anything,” came a reply. “After all that shelling—­who knows what they knocked loose?”

  “Sure.” But then Chapel heard boots moving on the floor above his head.

  It had to be neo-­Nazis up there—­the soldiers hadn’t made it this far yet.

  The quadrotor ducked back down the stairs and landed on a desk, its rotors spinning quickly to a stop. Chapel squatted even though the movement made his stab wound open up again. He crab-­walked around the side of the staircase until anyone coming down wouldn’t see him.

  He heard someone come to the top of the stairs, but no farther. Chapel scowled to himself—­if he’d come all the way down, he could have taken him out silently, then crept upstairs and handled whoever else was up there.

  “It’s stopped,” someone said. Then Chapel heard the sound of boots shuffling around, as if whoever it was had turned his back on the stairs.

  It was the best chance he was going to get. Chapel dashed around the side of the stairs and stomped up the risers, taking them two at a time. There was no way he could do it silently, so he didn’t worry how much noise he was making.

  The neo-­Nazi on the landing, a middle-­aged guy in a fawn-­colored jacket, spun around and started to lift a pistol so he could aim at Chapel.

  Chapel didn’t give him a chance. He barreled into the man’s chest, throwing up one forearm to strike the man in his throat. Before the neo-­Nazi could call for help, he dropped to the floor, clutching at his injured neck.

  Just beyond the landing was an open door, and a room beyond filled with daylight from a broad row of windows. Chapel dove through the doorway, keeping his head down and lifting Andre’s revolver to cover the room. He saw two men sitting on desks, looking out the windows. One of them was half-­turned toward Chapel and would be the first one to see him.

  Chapel had no time for nonlethal takedowns. He fired right at the man’s face and saw his cheekbone explode in a cloud of blood. Andre’s revolver was big and clunky, but it had plenty of stopping power.

  The second man dropped behind a desk before Chapel could line up a second shot. He fired three rounds into the wooden desk. He couldn’t see if he’d hit his target or not, but he heard the man cry out in pain or surprise.

  Getting to his feet he strode toward the desk, keeping it covered at all times with the revolver. He had to know if the man was down. He saw a shadow on the floor that might be a pool of spreading blood, but he had to make sure.

  Then he heard the last thing he ever wanted to hear, a footstep directly behind him. There must have been another man in the room, maybe standing next to the doorway when he’d come in. And now the guy had the drop on him.

  He spun around on his heel and saw a kid wearing a black T-­shirt come running at him, an AK-­47 in his hands. He was already lifting it to point in Chapel’s direction. With an assault rifle like that, the kid wouldn’t need to aim very well—­he could just point the gun at Chapel and spray bullets until he hit.

  Before the kid could get the gun up, though, Chapel heard a buzzing noise and saw the quadrotor come into the room, streaking right at the kid’s face. Panicking, the kid took one hand off the rifle to bat away the flying drone. The quadrotor’s blades were made of plastic and wouldn’t do any real damage, but the look of terror on the kid’s face indicated he didn’t know that.

  Chapel fired twice into the kid’s center mass, trying not to hit the quadrotor in the process. The kid fell down in a groaning heap, dropping his rifle. Chapel ran over and kicked it away.

  He looked directly at the quadrotor and nodded his thanks. It wiggled in the air to acknowledge, then buzzed over toward the desk Chapel had already perforated.

  The man behind that desk was dead. When Chapel edged around the side of the desk, revolver steady in his hands, he saw that he’d gotten lucky. One of the bullets he’d fired through the desk had gone right through the man’s heart.

  The quadrotor buzzed around the room as if looking to see if anyone else was hiding up there.

  “You knew these guys were here,” Chapel said. “If I’d just run past this building, out in the street, they could have cut me down with no trouble.”

  The quadrotor did not respond. It completed its circuit of the room, then buzzed back out into the hall—­and up another flight of stairs.

  It seemed Angel had something more to show him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-­NINE

  Chapel grabbed a ­couple new guns from the floor, then hurried up the stairs after the drone. The building was only two stories tal
l, and the next stair landing opened onto its roof, a flat expanse of tar paper baking in the sun. A stray mortar shell had clipped one corner of the building clean off, leaving a jagged hole, where the roof sagged down into a roomful of office furniture and plaster dust. Otherwise, the roof was intact—­and it gave an excellent view of the surrounding depot.

  On one side were all the administrative buildings and the front gate. Soldiers crawled everywhere across that zone, setting up overwatch positions and advancing doorway by doorway. A line of tanks was rumbling its way down the main street between the administrative buildings, their big main guns swinging side to side, looking for targets. Behind them came a convoy of troop carriers and mobile artillery. The army had moved on the depot as if it were invading a foreign country. They weren’t taking any chances, and Chapel could understand why—­the men he’d just killed or incapacitated, the ones on the floor below, had been set up in that room specifically to snipe at anyone who tried to get too close to the igloos. He was sure there would be other nests designed to provide similar resistance.

  The army was advancing slowly, with a grim deliberation. There was no question that, given enough time, they would overpower the neo-­Nazis and take back the depot. But that wasn’t the point, of course. As the troops inched through the base, they were always getting closer and closer to the trap. Chapel wasn’t sure exactly what Belcher had meant when he said he wouldn’t blow the igloos until he could see the whites of the army’s eyes, but every step a soldier took down there would bring that time closer. “You can’t get them to fall back?” Chapel asked.

  The quadrotor dipped a little in the air, like someone lowering their head in apology. Then it buzzed over to the far side of the roof. Chapel ran over there and saw that he’d come to the end of the administrative buildings. Beyond lay the vast open ground where the igloos huddled on the desert floor.