Myrmidon

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Chapel could see little from his position near the rear of the convoy, but he could guess what was happening from the noise and the shouts and the flashes of light.

Pueblo Depot had been a significant army base once, a munitions storage-and-maintenance facility that had supplied half the country with ammunition from bullets to guided missiles. It covered more than twenty-four thousand acres, and had been one of the major dumping grounds for equipment coming back from World War II. The vast majority of the depot had been shut down over the ensuing decades, though—it was so reduced in usage that big parts of it had been leased out to civilians as warehouse space, and what the military still owned was scheduled to be closed in less than five years. Now it was only lightly guarded, definitely not up to a concerted attack by two thousand neo-Nazis. Belcher’s men were overwhelming the gate guards and whatever reinforcements they could call up. The shooting was over in a few minutes, with what looked like only minimal casualties on Belcher’s side.

Once it was clear, Belcher took his truck off the road and headed up toward the gate. Chapel got a good view of the gatehouse, a little booth enclosed in now-shattered glass. An SAF guy in a leather jacket and Doc Martens boots had climbed up on top of the gatehouse and was firing his rifle in the air, while two others pulled the bodies of dead soldiers out of the way of the oncoming vehicles. Someone inside turned off the folding-tire-spike barrier, and pickups and SUVs moved quickly through the opening, spreading out among the buildings just past the fence. Belcher waved vehicle after vehicle through while he studied the road behind them, occasionally glancing at his watch.

“Your friends should be here soon, Agent,” Belcher said. “We’re going to have to move quickly. But we’ve run enough drills we should be okay. My people know the layout of this base like the backs of their hands.”

“Those soldiers never did anything to hurt you,” Chapel insisted, watching a body get dragged up to the fence surrounding the base. A skinhead propped the dead man up to look like he was sitting, then slapped the dead face playfully. Chapel felt his stomach turn over. “You hated the brass in your unit in Kuwait? Fine, go get revenge on them. These were just kids, doing their job.”

“Nice speech,” Belcher said. “You have any more like that, why don’t you save it for the media when this is all over? If you live through this, you’re going to be a star. Every news outlet in the country’s gonna want to hear your story.”

Chapel shook his head but said nothing.

Belcher got the last of his vehicles inside the fence, then pulled his own truck up to the gate. He waved at a neo-Nazi in the gatehouse, and Chapel heard the sound of a hydraulic system starting up. Looking out his window, he saw the vehicle-deterring spikes rise from the gateway, directly under Belcher’s truck. A row of steel spikes on a hinge, they were designed to shred the tires of any vehicle stupid enough to try to charge the gate. They hadn’t stopped Belcher’s men, but now Belcher intentionally drove over them, first forward, then back, until all four tires of his truck popped with a noise like low-caliber gunshots. The truck sank a few inches, one corner at a time.

Chapel knew what he was doing. Belcher didn’t need the truck anymore—he didn’t plan on driving out of here—so he had turned it into an obstacle. When the army arrived to retake the Pueblo Depot, they would find the truck sitting there on its rims, blocking the gate. It would take a real effort to tow it out of the way, especially if the tow truck was under heavy fire the whole time.

“We walk from here,” Belcher said. He jumped down from the driver’s seat and ran around to Chapel’s side to help him out of the car. Belcher kept a pistol in his hand the whole time as he gestured for Chapel to move forward, into the base.

He saw more bodies as he walked in, and bloodstains across the concrete. Up ahead, Belcher’s private army were moving through a cluster of small buildings, checking every angle, breaching every door to make sure they’d gotten all of the base’s soldiers. Belcher prodded Chapel down a wide thoroughfare with disused barracks buildings on either side. Before they’d gotten very far, though, he grabbed Chapel’s shoulder to make him stop. Andre and a skinhead in a black polo shirt came running up, dragging another man between them. The man was balding, maybe fifty years old, wearing a short-sleeved button-down shirt and chinos. He didn’t look like a soldier, in other words. He was weeping openly as he was pushed forward to fall on his knees in front of Belcher.

“Please,” he begged. “Please.” He couldn’t seem to say anything else.

Andre smacked him across the back of the head, and he shut up. “We found him in one of the civvy warehouses, hiding under a forklift.” Andre laughed. “Picked the wrong day to do inventory, huh?”

“What’s your name?” Belcher asked the man.

The balding man was too scared to answer. He put his hands together like he was praying and stared up at Belcher with hopeful eyes.

Chapel had to do something. “Come on, Belcher, he’s nothing to you. Let him go.”

“He’s in my way,” Belcher said, and pressed the barrel of his pistol against the man’s forehead. “That’s reason enough. I’m on too tight a timeline for any kind of distractions.”

“You said you needed witnesses,” Chapel pleaded.

“I’ve already got you.” He pulled the trigger. Chapel had seen enough men die in his lifetime. He turned his head and didn’t look as the body fell to the concrete.

“Come on,” Belcher said when it was done. “I want you to see something real special.” He grabbed Chapel’s shoulder and shoved him hard to get him moving again.