Minotaur

22

For a second, just a bare second after all that chaos and noise, the cellar was quiet. Chapel was standing on his own two feet, in charge of the situation. His brain must have decided that the crisis was over, because a sudden wave of light-headedness and nausea washed through him.

He was tired. Very, very tired. Blood loss, being shot, having a concussion will do that to you. His hand, his real hand felt so weak it could barely hold his weapon.

Then someone moaned in pain, behind him. He spun around, ready to fight again. But it was only one of the men he’d wounded. “Damn,” he said. “I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t want any of this.”

“You killed Marty,” someone said, very quietly. Not in an accusatory way. More like they couldn’t believe it.

Chapel bent to work. He found the wounded men and bandaged them as best he could, or at least showed them how to put pressure on their wounds so they wouldn’t bleed out. They stared at him as if he’d just fallen out of the moon. But despite what his bosses might think, Chapel’s job wasn’t to kill people. He wasn’t some glorified hit man wrapped in an American flag.

Sometimes he had to remind himself of that, too. So he was kind to the wounded men, even as he ignored the dead bodies and didn’t worry too much about who had killed who. He knew he wasn’t thinking clearly—again, blood loss, etc. — but sometimes you needed fuzzy logic to keep moving.

“How many more of you are there?” he asked one of the wounded.

“Wh—what?”

“How many more guards, servants, whatever—how many more people work on this estate who will be coming for me with guns?”

The man was barely conscious. He wasn’t capable of lying. He seemed like he was just able to get words out. “Just us inside… maybe a dozen more out on the grounds. They’re supposed to watch the… the gate, the fence.”

“What if they hear gunshots inside the house, think their boss is in danger?”

“Might… come in. Maybe.”

It was the best force estimate Chapel could expect. He asked more questions, as many as he thought he had time for, but got no answers that meant anything. None of the conscious guards in that cellar had any idea where Favorov was, or knew anything about possible escape routes from the mansion. They’d been waiting for the yacht to arrive, that was all. Michael might have known something—the guards explained that Michael and Stephen had been Favorov’s personal bodyguards and heads of staff. But Stephen had fled, and Michael was very dead.

He searched one of the dead men and came up with a cell phone and a hands-free unit. Standard equipment for an executive bodyguard. The phone still had half its charge. Chapel wiped some blood off the hands-free unit and, with only a little distaste, stuck it in his ear. He switched on the phone and dialed a number he’d memorized a long time ago.

“Chapel,” Angel said. Nobody else had that number. “Chapel—you’re alive!”

“About half dead, I’d say,” Chapel told her. Maybe he was more woozy than he thought. “Never mind. I’m alive, and armed, and I’ve neutralized about a third of the forces here. Some of them are going to need medical attention. Others can… wait. I’m sure this isn’t a safe line but I don’t very much care at this point. I need intel, Angel. I need you sitting on my shoulder.”

“You know you’ve got me,” she said. “I’ll always be here for you.”

“I know. And I appreciate it. I’m in the cellar right now. Do you have floor plans for this house?”

“I’m afraid not. They were never entered into the public record.”

Chapel frowned. “They should have been, right? To get the permits to build this place, Favorov would have had to file something.”

“Or he would have had to bribe a county clerk,” Angel suggested.

“Sure.” Chapel ran his good hand through his short hair. “So what do you have?”

“Satellite and thermal imaging. I can give you a rough idea of where people are in the house. But I can just tell you how close you’re getting to a human being, not who they are or what weapons they’re carrying. I can tell you, because I know it’s your next question, that Favorov is still inside. I saw him peek out of a window not three minutes ago, maybe looking for any sign that he was about to get raided by SWAT teams.”

Chapel nodded. “He’s probably wondering why it hasn’t happened already. Interesting…”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Chapel said. “Like I said, this isn’t a safe line. I’m going to move now. I don’t have a lot of time left. You’ve got my six, all right?”

“I’m always watching out for you.”

Well, at least that was something.

Chapel still had no idea what waited for him upstairs. He had no illusion that Favorov was as uninformed. There might be security cameras anywhere, even in the cellar. Favorov would know Chapel was still alive, and that he was armed, and that he was coming to capture him.

Chapel was absolutely certain the Russian wouldn’t go quietly. Not now.

He did one more thing before he left the cellar. He loaded up a pile of AK-47 clips and stuffed them in a sack he could tie to his belt. Slung a pair of assault rifles over his shoulder. Took two pistols—they were Glocks, pretty standard for executive security types—and all the pistol ammo he could find. It made his pockets bulge and clank but he didn’t care.

By the time he was ready to climb the stairs, he had enough firepower on him to knock over a Third World government. Well, he thought, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement. There were places in the Third World where AK-47s outnumbered the people. But Monaco or Luxembourg? No problem.