What had been empty ground once was now an armed camp. Belcher was ready for a fight, and he meant to make it one the army would remember for years to come. A row of low structures faced Chapel, like a rank of shields set up against an advancing cavalry charge. It looked like they’d taken the doors off all the igloos and set them up as shooting blinds, propping them up with dirt and debris so that a couple of men could hide behind each of them. Smart, Chapel thought. Those doors were made of heavily reinforced steel, designed to hold tight even if every shell in an igloo went off at once. They would easily repel small-arms fire and maybe even light explosives like grenades or mortar shells. Heavier artillery would flatten them, but Chapel knew the army wouldn’t dare fire howitzers or tank guns so close to the igloos, for fear of setting off the chemical shells.
If Chapel had kept running down the street toward the igloos, he wouldn’t just have been picked off by the men in the room under his feet. He would have been running straight into the free-fire zone of every one of those blinds. When the army did finally get that far, they were going to be met with incredible firepower. It wouldn’t stop the infantry advance, but it would slow it down by a considerable margin.
Somehow, Chapel was going to have to get through that line. The only chance he had—the only chance Colorado and maybe Kansas had—was if he could get to Belcher before the man set off his bombs.
For the life of him, he couldn’t see how he would do it.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Down in the street, a line of tanks and Stryker vehicles advanced over the shell-pocked asphalt. Behind the vehicles, a whole parade’s worth of infantrymen were moving as fast as they could, keeping their heads down and covering every building with their weapons. Chapel kept low, so they wouldn’t see him. Maybe Angel had warned them he was up on top of the building, but maybe not—they might shoot him as soon as he popped his head over the edge of the roof.
Over by the igloos, Belcher’s men were ready and waiting. They’d gathered behind their blinds, and although they couldn’t stand up for long against the combined might headed their way, they didn’t need to. They were simply the bait for Belcher’s trap. He’d thrown away the lives of every one of his private army just to get the soldiers into the bottleneck of the administrative buildings.
Chapel crawled to the edge of the rooftop closest to the igloos, being very careful not to give away his position. An apocalyptic battle was about to begin, and he didn’t want to be the first casualty.
From where he lay on the hot tar paper, he could just see Belcher, several hundred yards away. The leader was at the back of his neo-Nazi troops, standing between two of the igloos, where he was essentially immune to artillery strikes. Standing next to him was Charlie, the tattooed giant. The two of them were talking with their heads down. Charlie made some kind of expansive gesture that Chapel couldn’t quite make out, then Belcher reached into a pocket of his denim jacket.
And took out a cell phone.
This was it, then. This was the moment when Belcher felt that he’d seen the whites of the army’s eyes. This was his Bunker Hill moment. He was about to unleash the mustard gas and end his fifteen-year plan.
Chapel was far too far away to stop him. He’d failed.
Unless . . .
Belcher took a few steps forward, past the cover of the igloos. He shouted something at his troops. Some motivational comment, some last encouragement, perhaps. The wind took the words before Chapel could hear them.
Belcher lifted the phone so he could see its screen. His index finger moved toward the screen, as he started to tap in the text message that would detonate his bombs.
Chapel brought the hunting rifle’s scope to his eye. Zoomed in perfectly.
Chapel was no sniper. He was a good shot with a pistol or an assault rifle, but he had never been a marksman. But he would only get one shot, and it was going to have to count.
Belcher tapped the screen once. Twice. Through the rifle’s scope, Chapel could see Belcher squint at the screen. He hesitated before he lifted his finger again. Was he doubting what he was about to do?
No. He lifted his finger. Started moving it toward the screen.
Chapel held his breath. Lined up his shot. Squeezed the trigger.
The cell phone, and Belcher’s ring finger, disappeared in a red mist. Through the scope, Chapel could see Belcher scream though he heard nothing.
Chapel could hardly believe it.
It had worked.
Belcher was the only one who could set off the bombs and the plume of mustard gas. The only way he could do that was with his cell phone. Somehow, Chapel had made the shot of his life and saved the day.
He set the hunting rifle down next to him on the roof. Breathed deeply the unpoisoned air. He could stop, now. He could lie there and wait for evac, for Angel to send a stretcher to take him to a medic. The army would mop up the neo-Nazis and either shoot Belcher or take him into custody. It was all over, all complete—
Except down by the igloos, it didn’t look that way at all. Belcher wasn’t shaking his fist at the sky. He hadn’t dropped to his knees in a posture of defeat.
No. Charlie was in front of him, shielding Belcher with his tattooed body. But Belcher was moving, running now—headed straight for one of the igloos.
What the hell was Belcher up to?
Shit, Chapel thought. He thought he knew.
The maniac wasn’t done. He had some kind of contingency plan. Of course he had a contingency plan—he’d been waiting for this day for fifteen years. There was no chance he would let Chapel steal his apotheosis so easily. Maybe he would just go in the igloo and set off one of the bombs directly—maybe that would be enough. Even if only one igloo’s worth of gas shells was detonated, the resulting cloud of poison gas would still wipe out his neo-Nazis and a big chunk of the United States Army forces. Or maybe Belcher had some way to set them all off that didn’t require a cell phone.
Chapel had to stop him. He grabbed the hunting rifle and started lining up a second shot.
But his first shot had given away his position. Down behind their blinds, the entire army of neo-Nazis turned their gazes upward and saw him on the rooftop and started firing back.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Bullets pranged and skimmed off the metal lip of the roof, so close Chapel could hear them snarling all around him. He shoved himself backward, away from the edge, even as a bullet tore through the silicone flesh on his artificial arm. He rolled over and looked around the rooftop for any kind of cover. The stairwell he’d come up was enclosed in a small structure that might provide some cover, but the nearest thing he could see was the hood of an air-conditioning vent, but even as he crawled toward it, a launched grenade arced over the roof and smashed into the tar paper, sending up a great plume of smoke and debris. Chapel threw his good arm over his face to protect his eyes. When he dared to look again, the air-conditioning hood was just a tangle of warped and distorted metal. It would offer no cover at all.
He had to get down there, had to get into the igloo where Belcher had taken refuge. It seemed impossible, but there had to be a way. He looked around for the quadrotor that Angel had commandeered. If he could communicate with her somehow, if he could get a message through to the advancing army troops, maybe they could send him a Stryker vehicle that could plow through the neo-Nazi lines. Maybe he could—
He looked up just in time to see the quadrotor buzz away, up the street, and away from all the gunfire.
He barely had time to curse before another grenade came sailing over his head. This one didn’t explode on impact, which was a damned good thing—it landed not two feet from his leg. Chapel kicked it and watched it roll across the roof to fall down through the broken corner of the building, into the offices below. A moment later, he felt like the whole building had been picked up, then dropped from a height as the ro
of shook under him.
His only hope for survival—achieving anything else was little more than a pipe dream—was to get back inside the building, where he would have some cover. Maybe he could find a working phone down there, maybe he could communicate with Angel that way. He started crawling toward the stairwell that led back down into the building, even as bullets rained all around him.
Then, down in the street, one of the tanks opened fire with its main gun. Chapel had forgotten how loud those weapons were and he threw his hands over his ears to keep them from bursting. He couldn’t see what was happening, but he understood what that shot meant. When the neo-Nazis opened fire on Chapel’s position, the army must have taken that as their sign to begin their main assault. The sound of AK-47s firing in short bursts from Belcher’s line was joined by a constant chatter of machine-gun and M4 fire from down in the street. He heard people screaming, and others shouting for assistance, while the building underneath him thrummed with all the noise and the constant explosions. The building wasn’t going to last very long—it was still taking the brunt of the neo-Nazi fire, and the return fire from the army was probably going to collapse it at any second. Chapel redoubled his efforts to get to the stairwell, knowing it was probably hopeless.
Behind him, a grenade struck the metal lip on the edge of the roof, and it came off all in one piece, a bright ribbon of semimolten metal twirling in the air. The concrete wall of the building started to crumble away, calving off great sheets of debris. The building was disintegrating behind Chapel. He got up, no longer caring about whether he was in the line of fire or not, and started running for the stairwell.
Behind him, something a lot bigger than a grenade hit the building. The tar-paper roof cracked open in two halves, caving in down the middle. Chapel threw himself forward and grabbed for the doorway of the stairwell as the tar paper beneath him sloped downward over a great rift of debris and sparking wires. If he fell down into that pit, he would probably get impaled on a length of broken rebar, if he wasn’t electrocuted first.
His artificial hand just grabbed the doorknob. His good hand was still holding the hunting rifle. He had no choice but to drop it and flail for something to hold on to.
Underneath him, the building started to collapse once and for all. The walls were rumbling, bulging outward as they could no longer hold up their own weight. The tar paper on what was left of the roof peeled away as jagged cracks ran through the concrete underneath. The stairwell was still upright, but it wouldn’t last much longer.
Chapel could only wonder how he was going to die. There was no more if.
Except just then a new drone rose over the crumbling lip of the building, hovering in the air on three huge rotors. It was a prototype design Chapel had only ever seen before in photographs, similar to the quadrotor but a much bigger model designed for civilian use. Its powerful ducted propellers were precise enough to let it maneuver inside buildings and large enough to carry firefighting equipment or SWAT gear.
It also had a loudspeaker built in.
“Chapel, jump on!” Angel said, the words bellowing in his ears.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Chapel didn’t have time to worry if the drone would support his weight. He didn’t have time to worry about whether he could run safely across the top of the building, or whether a sniper had his back in his crosshairs, or anything else.
He swung his feet up to get them on tar paper, and he ran, leaping as the roof shifted underneath him, ignoring the bullets that whizzed all around his head and neck. At least one of them grazed his back like a hot wire being dragged through his skin, but either it didn’t hit anything vital or adrenaline just kept him going. He reached the edge of the roof and jumped.
His body collided with the top of the drone, hard enough to make it bounce in the air. He started to slip off its top and reached out with both hands to find anything to grab for purchase, anything at all.
“Careful!” Angel squeaked, just as one of Chapel’s hands grabbed the edge of a ducted propeller. He heard a sickening squelching noise as the fingertips of that hand were sheared off instantly by the whirling propeller.
It took him a second to realize that those fingertips were just made of silicone, that it was his artificial left hand that had grabbed the duct. Those fingertips could be replaced.
His good hand found a nylon loop mounted on the top of the drone. He weaved his living fingers through the loop like a cowboy holding on to a bucking bronco.
The drone’s propellers whined and protested at having to hold up his weight, but the machine stayed airborne, and soon Angel had leveled it out so Chapel wouldn’t slip off. He saw that the top of the drone was covered in some kind of lightweight padding. Of course—it was designed to carry a survivor out of a burning building.
“Angel, you’re incredible,” Chapel said. “Where did you find this thing?”
“It was up at the airport, being tested by the local fire department.” Angel’s voice through the speakers was loud enough to be heard over the chaos down at street level. It was loud enough to make Chapel’s teeth vibrate in his mouth. “I can fly you out of here now, Chapel. I’ll get you someplace safe, then—”
“No,” Chapel said. “Belcher’s not finished. He can still set off some of the gas shells. I have to stop him.”
“You may not realize this,” Angel said, “but World War III just broke out down there.”
As if to illustrate her point, the building behind Chapel sagged, then collapsed in a heap of broken bricks and a vast cloud of dust. Through the mess, Chapel could see the igloos in the distance. A lot of the neo-Nazis were dead now, their metal blinds chewed to scrap by tank rounds, but there were still more than a thousand of them firing away. One of them had a LAW, a light antitank weapon, and as Chapel watched, a horizontal streak of smoke lanced out toward the advancing army position and knocked a tank over on its side. Infantrymen all around it shrieked and ran as the tank rolled over on its top, crushing anything in its way.
“Jesus,” Chapel said. “Angel—does the army even know I’m here?”
“They do, but they can’t guarantee your safety,” she told him. “Belcher and his men are their priority, not covering your cute butt.”
Chapel shook his head. “As long as they’re not actively trying to kill me. I don’t think Belcher has any more Stinger missiles down there. You need to fly me over there, to the igloos. This thing isn’t bulletproof, is it?”
“No! One good shot to any of its propellers, and it turns into the world’s most expensive unmanned aerial brick.”
“So you’ll just have to try to serpentine and hope that doesn’t happen.”
“Chapel,” she said, “if you do get shot down, if you get killed trying to do this—”
“Then I won’t have to live with the fact that I’ve failed,” he told her.
She didn’t waste any more time arguing. They’d worked together long enough that she understood him and his moods. She knew that when Chapel was this desperate, there was no time to try to talk him out of his plan.
Without another word, she sent the drone rising above the fray and angling straight toward the igloos.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
It wasn’t a lot of ground to cover, just a few hundred yards. The drone moved at full speed, nearly twenty miles an hour, through perfectly clear air, the wind right on its tail. Chapel curled up into the smallest ball he could, keeping his body completely on top of the drone, with nothing sticking out, where it could be shot off.
He had never had such a wild ride in his life. The second the drone popped into the air over the ruin of the building, the neo-Nazis started trying to shoot it down. A storm of bullets came racing up to meet it, skidding off its round propeller ducts, smashing up the advanced optics mounted on its undersides, chewing through its body. Chapel saw one bullet come screaming through one
of its fans and thought he was a goner, but the bullet was moving fast enough that it managed to pass through the propeller without actually touching any of the blades.
Below him, on the ground, hell had broken loose. The army was pouring every explosive round it had into the blinds, and neo-Nazis were flying up in the air, twisting around on broken limbs as orange mushroom clouds spat up out of the soil. Chapel saw a Stryker vehicle come racing through the blinds, its plow nose smashing through anyone who stood in its way, its top-mounted machine gun blazing with fire as it cut through Belcher’s ranks. But before it could even smash through the last of the blinds, it was met with grenade and rocket fire, and half its wheels came up, bouncing and spinning across the battlefield, and its cockpit lit up as a molten-copper antitank round burst in among its crew and burned them alive in their seats.
Army infantrymen came pouring onto the battlefield, their body armor almost useless against the sustained fire of so many AK-47s. They spun and fell and died even as more of them came on from behind, stamping through the dust like a human river. A whole squad of them overwhelmed a blind and trampled the neo-Nazis behind it, then dropped to the ground on top of the bodies and started firing prone, taking any target they could find.
A faulty antitank round rose from the blinds, and Chapel could actually watch it as it twisted around in a spiral in the air. Too late, he saw it coming right for him, and he just managed to duck behind a propeller duct as it glanced off the drone’s body. It exploded a fraction of a second later in midair, showering him with burning shrapnel that he used his artificial hand to brush away. He whooped, not in exultation but in the sheer adrenaline rush of realizing he’d survived such a close call, but the shout of joy died in his throat as Angel’s amplified voice drove every thought from his head.
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