Myrmidon

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Chapel woke to feel hands dragging him, pulling him through a narrow opening. Sunlight flickered across his eyelids, and he opened his eyes, not without some effort. His arms felt sore, so he wriggled them and found he couldn’t move them at all.

“Stop squirming,” Belcher said. It was Belcher who was dragging him, pulling him out of a car door. His belt snagged on something, but then it pulled free, and he felt himself falling, tumbling into the dirt.

He was bound. Belcher hadn’t just tied his hands—Chapel knew a way to get out of that kind of restriction, using his artificial arm. Instead, he’d been tied up cowboy style, with a rope wrapped around and around his torso, pinning his arms to his sides. It had been done well, and Chapel knew he couldn’t wriggle out of it.

“What the hell are you thinking?” Chapel asked. “You can’t tell me you’ve really thought this through.”

“You’d be surprised.”

Chapel rolled over on his side, trying to get his bearings. He’d been driven out into the desert maybe a quarter mile from the town—he could see the white houses off in the distance. He was on top of a low rise on the far side of the town from the road, a place with a good view of a lot of nothing. A single tree stood out from the top of the rise, and in its wavering shade stood a block of granite that looked like a gravestone.

Chapel doubted very much that he’d been brought up here to be buried. Belcher had said he needed Chapel alive, and Chapel had no reason to doubt it. But what, in fact, they were doing up on the rise he had no idea.

Belcher reached down and grabbed the rope that bound Chapel. He grunted and swore as he dragged Chapel a few feet farther through the dust. Then he lifted Chapel’s shoulders and helped him sit up.

“You were only out a little while. Long enough for us to get ready.” Belcher pointed over at the town, and Chapel saw cars and trucks moving between the white houses. It looked like every single person in town was out and moving, loading up the vehicles with long boxes or steel drums, or just running from one place to another. Chapel could see a bunch of children being herded into one of the warehouses by a blond woman, while other women headed over to the clinic building.

“You’re evacuating?” Chapel asked. “Getting everyone to safety before the troops arrive?”

Belcher grinned. “Not exactly. I want to thank you, Agent. I’ve been waiting a real long time for somebody like you, somebody to come along and give me the kick in the backside I needed. The somebody who would tell me my time had come.”

Chapel had no idea what Belcher was talking about, and he had no interest in riddles. “You plan on going down fighting?” he asked.

“How about you worry a little less about what I have planned?” Belcher asked. “I would think you’d have more important things to worry about. Like what’s going to happen to you.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Chapel said.

“No? Given your current predicament—”

“Not as long as my drone is still up there,” Chapel interrupted. The Predator was still circling the town, giving no sign it had seen anything out of the ordinary. It didn’t need to. Chapel was certain Angel had already spotted him and knew he was in trouble. She would already have put out the call for help.

“Huh,” Belcher said. “Yeah, I guess that thing’s served its purpose.” He took a cell phone out of his pocket and sent a quick message.

Down in the town someone—it might have been Andre, but at that distance Chapel couldn’t see the mustache tattoo—stood up in the bed of a pickup. Then he hefted a big tube onto his shoulder and pointed it at the drone. A line of smoke jumped out of the tube’s mouth, and, a moment later, the drone exploded in midair, bits of it pinwheeling in every direction and seeming to hang in midair for a moment before they started to rain back down to earth.

Chapel knew that wasn’t Angel up there—the drone had just been a machine—but he couldn’t help wincing as if it were his operator who had been blown up, not just some very expensive military hardware.

“Was that a Stinger missile?” he asked.

“Favorov wasn’t the only arms dealer I bought from,” Belcher explained.

Chapel shook his head. “You really think that helps anything?”

Belcher came and squatted next to Chapel, so they could speak face-to-face. “You seen anything since you got here makes you think I’m an idiot?” he asked. Chapel didn’t answer, but Belcher didn’t seem to need a reply. “I was army, just like you. I know how this works. Your bosses in Washington, DC, saw that, sure. They probably saw me haul your heavy ass out of that warehouse fifteen minutes ago. But I figure they weren’t expecting this.”

“Oh?”

“You came out here thinking you could talk me into just handing the rifles over if you talked tough enough. But I could tell—the reason you came alone was you wanted to do it quietly. I don’t know why you need those guns back now, but you do, very badly, and you need to make sure nobody finds out they were ever here. Don’t bother telling me if I’m right, I know I am. That means you don’t have an infantry battalion waiting just over the next hill. I’m sure now that things have gone sideways, your people will start mobilizing everything they’ve got to get you back. In fact, I’m counting on their doing just that—I hope they send every goddamned soldier in Colorado after me. But I also know how long it takes the army to do anything. They’ll have to get orders from DC. Then they’ll have to send those orders down the chain of command. Then they’ll have to muster the troops, arrange transportation for them, issue them weapons… it’s gonna be an hour or two before they can even get a helicopter out here to take a look. I’ve got time to do what I need to do. Just.”

Chapel knew Belcher was pretty much right. The need for complete secrecy on this mission had meant Hollingshead couldn’t let the local armed forces bases in Colorado even know that Chapel was in their state, much less give them orders to stand by in case they were needed. Help would be slow in coming, indeed.

“What if you’re wrong?” Chapel asked. “What if they move faster than expected?”

Belcher waved a hand in front of his face as if Chapel’s protestations were flies that merely annoyed him. “Then I die early, and everything I’ve built over the last fifteen years will have been for nothing.” He shrugged. “You can plan for everything, you can plan for anything, but sometimes planning isn’t enough. I’ll take my chances.”