Minotaur

25

There were too many of them. At least a dozen. Even with all of Chapel’s training, even with improvisation and the best luck he’d ever had, there were too many. In a straight-up firefight, they would overwhelm him and he would go down. He couldn’t take many more bullets, not and keep on his feet.

So as they started firing up at the second floor landing, Chapel knew exactly what he had to do. He had to keep his head down, and he had to run.

They would follow, of course. Maybe they would take their time about it, expecting him to lie in ambush. That could give him time. But maybe one of them would decide to be a hero, hoping that Favorov would reward him for initiative. It only took one of them to catch him while he was running and put a bullet in his back.

He needed a strategy and he needed it right away. “Angel—I’m moving, and I’ve got a ton of hostiles on my tail,” he whispered, as he ducked into a hallway on the second floor, away from the shooting. “I need to find Favorov now. If I can capture him I can make him stand down his guards.”

“There are four people on the second floor,” she told him, sounding apologetic. That was never good. If Angel couldn’t help him he was screwed. “Two groups of two. Both groups are in the east wing—not far from your position.”

“Any idea which group includes Favorov?”

“I’m sorry, Chapel. No. You’re going to have to get lucky. I saw him at a window a while back, but he’s moved since then, and my imaging just isn’t good enough to track heat sources.”

Chapel gritted his teeth. “Do you have my twenty?”

“I have you on imaging. I can always tell when it’s you I’m looking at,” she said.

“That’s sweet.”

“Not really,” she told him. “Your artificial arm shows up colder than the rest of your body, so I just look for the orange blob with the blue piece stuck on it.”

Not for the first time Chapel marveled at what she was capable of seeing on her screens, wherever she was. If she’d been there looking with human eyes she would have been as blind as him. But even though she could be anywhere in the country—the world for that matter—she still had a better idea of what was happening inside the house than he did. “What about the guards on the first floor? Are they coming up?”

“Two on the stairs, moving up, taking their time about it,” she told him. “The rest are holding position to offer covering fire.”

Chapel didn’t like what he was going to have to do next. He didn’t see a choice, though. He checked his rifle, then leaned back around the corner, exposing himself to fire from below in the foyer. He had maybe a second before someone saw him up there and took a shot.

He saw the two guards on the stairs right away. They were keeping low so he dropped his rifle a few degrees, depressing his angle of fire. That was good. Think of it as a physics problem.

He pressed the trigger of the rifle and bullets tore up the stair runner, the marble beneath, the bodies of the two guards on the stairs. They jerked wildly as the bullets tore into their flesh. One of them dropped his weapon and clutched at the ruin of his gas mask as he dropped to his knees. The other crumpled and slid down the stairs on his face.

The AK-47 ran dry before Chapel was done shooting. He tossed the empty rifle away and threw himself back around the corner, into the second-floor hallway.

He’d just killed two men to scare the others and make them take their time about following him. Hopefully it would turn out in the end to have been worth it.

The second-floor hallway was lined with doors, all of them shut. The lighting up there was more subdued than it had been on the ground floor. Chapel didn’t waste time looking at all the charming architectural details.

“Give me a door,” Chapel said. “Just pick one.”

“Two down on your left,” Angel told him.

He raced to the door she’d indicated and threw it open, a pistol up and ready in his good hand.