Myrmidon

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Chapel crossed one last dirt road and came to the first of the warehouses, a tall, brick building that dwarfed the white houses. A real road led up to its loading bays, presumably so trucks could come in and take on shipments of machine parts. Chapel hurried across the pavement and climbed up onto a waist-high platform in front of a rolling door. “Open this up,” he said.

“All right,” Belcher said. He climbed up beside Chapel and pressed a button on the side of the door. “It’s never locked. No thieves here in Kendred, after all.”

Chapel shook his head and waited for the door to open. Beyond lay the interior of the warehouse, a shadowy, cool space lined with row after row of shelves. A wide space in the middle of the room was more open but still partially filled, with big wooden crates.

Chapel recognized those crates. They were big enough to hold twenty rifles each. Stamped on the side of each one in Cyrillic characters was the legend AVTOMAT KALASHNIKOVA. He’d seen crates exactly like them in Ygor Favorov’s basement. They were the crates he’d come to find.

“This is it, Belcher. This is where we make our deal. Or I leave here, and I don’t come back—but a couple hundred of my friends, those jackbooted thugs that scare you so much, come in my place.”

“All right,” Belcher said.

“All right? You’re ready to hear my terms?”

“I am.” Belcher looked surprisingly calm.

Chapel tried not to let it ruffle him. “Fine. Then here’s the deal. We take all the guns out of here and destroy them. We’ll try to do it in a polite fashion, but there will have to be inspectors in here verifying we got every last rifle, and that’ll take some time. You agree not to harass or deter our people, and you don’t hold out on us.”

“That’s fine,” Belcher said. “What do I get in return?”

Chapel shook his head. “Much as I don’t like it, you get a free pass.”

“I’m sorry?”

“No prosecution. At least, not for gun charges—we don’t send you to jail for illegally obtaining the rifles. We pretend like you never bought them, and they were never here.”

Belcher lifted his free arm and let it fall again to his side. “Doesn’t seem much in the way of compensation. Those guns weren’t cheap.”

“You must have known where they were coming from when you bought them. We’re not going to pay you back for them,” Chapel told him. “That’s ludicrous.”

“Maybe not fair market value, I understand,” Belcher said, nodding. “But I should get at least a little something for my cooperation, shouldn’t I?”

“I’m not here to bargain. I’m here to tell you how it’s going to happen, that’s all. Either you let me take those crates out of here quietly, or we blow them to smithereens.”

Belcher rubbed his chin as if he were thinking it over. “Those crates? You can have those crates. I’ve got no use for the crates, now.”

Chapel’s heart sank in his chest. He ran over to the stack of crates and pushed back its lid. As he’d thought, the crate was empty. He went to the next crate over and lifted its lid. Empty.

“Very funny,” Chapel said. “Where are the rifles? In another warehouse? Or no—I get it now. The reason you showed me the children. You’ve got the guns stashed in all those houses, don’t you? So we can’t destroy them without putting your children at risk. That’s a pretty lousy move.”

Belcher shook his head. “No, not there, either. You can look if you like. You can look inside any building in Kendred, and I guarantee you won’t find any AK-47 rifles.”

Chapel bit back the first words that came to mind, most of which were obscene. “You knew it would come to this. That we would come looking for the rifles. You thought this would be your chance for a big payday. Am I right?”

“Afraid not,” Belcher said. “Now, I’ve heard you out. I’ve heard what you’re selling. You want to hear my counteroffer?”

Someone moved behind Chapel—he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He spun around and saw Andre and Charlie back there, standing between him and the door of the loading dock. Andre had his hunting rifle up, the barrel pointed right at Chapel’s face. Charlie was down in a fighter’s crouch, ready to grab Chapel if he tried to make a run for it.

He heard a metallic click behind him and turned again, this time to see Belcher loading shells into the shotgun he carried.

“My offer is this,” Belcher said. “You take out your sidearm and lay it carefully on the floor, or we fill you full of holes right here.”