Myrmidon

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Andre shoved Chapel toward a small building near the center of the depot, shielded on all sides by various administrative buildings. It didn’t look like much, and it was smaller on the inside, but that fact alone was important. The walls were made of concrete at least a foot thick, enough to keep out bullets and even small artillery rounds. There were no windows in the little building, but it was lined with television screens receiving a live feed from every side of the base. Clearly, it was a command post, from which the depot’s commanding officer could keep tabs on everything that happened around him without having to stick his head out the door and look.

It looked like that hadn’t been enough, though. A wide swath of blood painted the threshold of the door—apparently whoever had been on duty in here had stepped outside when the attack started but hadn’t made it very far. He’d left a coffee cup sitting on a control panel just to the right of the door. Whoever he’d been, Chapel uttered a silent prayer for his soul, by way of apology. He couldn’t help but think he was responsible for the attack. Belcher probably would have stormed the depot eventually, but Chapel’s arrival had prompted him, and for that he was distinctly sorry. How many men had already died? How many more would be lost before the day was over?

He hadn’t given up hope—he was too stubborn to ever do that—but he had to admit the situation looked grim. He could see little through the eyeholes of the gas mask, and he was having trouble breathing through the heavy filters. The rope that bound him wasn’t getting any looser. He was unarmed, and Andre, with his rifle and pistol, was standing between Chapel and the door.

And even if he could get away, if he somehow spontaneously developed the strength to break his bonds, what could he do? There were two thousand armed neo-Nazis outside that door, all of them ready to shoot at the slightest provocation. And then there was Belcher. One quick phone call, and Belcher could unleash Armageddon on the state of Colorado and points east. Even if Chapel possessed a tank battalion to play with, he didn’t know if he could stop the terrorist in time.

Chapel was, to put it one way, royally screwed.

As if to drive the point home, Andre slammed the door shut. He drew his pistol and leaned up against the doorframe, his eyes securely fixed on Chapel. “Might as well have a seat,” he said.

Chapel looked around the room for a chair. Without any peripheral vision, he’d taken in only a few details of his new prison cell. He found the chair almost right away, tucked neatly under the control panel, but while he was looking for it, he spotted something else. There was a telephone, a plain old-fashioned handset receiver, mounted on the control panel. It had a keypad and looked like it was perfectly capable of making calls outside the base.

If he could only get in touch with Angel, his operator—if he could tell her what was going on, get word to Director Hollingshead and tell him to pull back his troops, to not attack the depot, that would buy some time.

Of course, if he tried that, Andre would just shoot him.

“I don’t suppose,” he said, “that this is the point where you tell me you’re an undercover ATF agent, and this whole time you’ve been waiting to help me.”

Something suspiciously like a smile twisted the corner of Andre’s mouth.

“Good one,” he said.

Yeah, Chapel thought. That would have been too easy. “No,” he said, “you strike me as the genuine article. A purebred Nordic warrior type. The kind of guy who would have been in the front rank of a Viking raid, biting his shield and frothing at the mouth. A berserker.”

“You don’t know shit about what that means,” Andre snarled.

“You think I didn’t do my homework before I came out here? I know that most of those guys out there are just posers. They liked the look of the tattoos, or maybe they even thought Belcher was onto something with his talk of separatism. But they’re not really committed, not like you. They don’t feel it in their bones. They don’t feel the need to fight for their heritage. When the time comes, you think they’ll even fire their weapons? Or will they toss them down and put their hands up and say, ‘please, Daddy, I was just playing!’ ”

Andre shook his head, but there was a sort of faraway look in his eyes. Chapel knew he’d touched on something there. Andre came from a macho culture that valued how hard a man was over all else. How well a man could hit, and how well he could take a hit in return. Men like that needed to constantly prove themselves. Guard duty wasn’t going to sit well with him.

“Shame you’re stuck here babysitting me, while the real action is outside,” Chapel said, choosing his words carefully. “You could be on the front lines, making a difference. Instead, you’re here watching me, your biggest enemy, and making sure I don’t get hurt like a bitch.”

“I’ve got my orders,” Andre told him.

“I guess Belcher figured he knew what you were worth,” Chapel said.

That did it. Andre was on him in a second, throwing him down on the floor and jumping on top of him. He rammed his fist three times into Chapel’s stomach, knocking the breath out of him and making Chapel suck for air inside the stinking gas mask.

“You know nothing,” Andre howled. “You got no idea what it means to be a soldier of the white race!”

He reached down to his belt and drew a long, thin knife, something like a medieval dagger. He brought it up to tap the point on one of the gas mask’s eyeshields. “I should mark you,” he said. “I should carve a swastika right on your chest, so you never forget who you fucked with.”

For the first time, Chapel wondered if he should have gone with the tattoos.