Minotaur

30

“He’s in a small boat, headed west by southwest,” Chapel told Angel. Now that he was out of the tunnels he was getting reception again. “Could be going anywhere. Please make my night and tell me you can track him.”

Angel didn’t answer for a while. Maybe she was busy consulting satellite data and surveillance footage and all the other arcane sources of information she was privy to. Maybe she just didn’t want to admit defeat any more than Chapel.

“I’ll do what I can,” she said, finally. “Don’t get your hopes up.” A small boat, no lights on a moonless night. There was only so much satellites could see.

Chapel hung his head. He was trudging across the sand, looking for a way back up the cliff. He estimated he was right below the house, or at least underneath some part of its extensive grounds. He had no desire to climb back up the ladder into the master bedroom, especially given how tired he was. There was no real point in hurrying, either.

“The SWAT teams and the ATF task force are ready to converge on the house,” Angel told him. “They can mop up the guards in there.”

“Are Fiona and the boys clear of the mansion?” he asked.

“I saw three heat signatures climb out of the window of the boys’ bedroom and down to the ground. It looked like they made a rope out of tied-together bedsheets. They moved away from the house at speed, but I figured I had more important people to track. There are no heat signatures in the boys’ room right now.”

Chapel nodded to himself. “See if you can get a better twenty on them. I just want to make sure that if the guards inside decide to go down shooting we won’t catch them in the crossfire. There’s no rush now.”

“Favorov might have left something behind—a computer, an address book… something.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Except Chapel knew perfectly well that the Russian had never left any written account of his gunrunning. All of the pertinent information would be locked up in just one place: Favorov’s head. They would never know, now, whether he had been acting as a triple agent working for the Russian government or if he was just the middleman for the Russian mafia, stealing guns from his former employers to sell to homegrown American terrorists.

Chapel had failed in his mission.

At least he was still alive.

Another hundred yards down the beach he found a narrow staircase of old and weathered wood that led up to the mansion’s gardens. It was covered in signs saying that this was a private beach and that trespassers would be shot. Chapel ignored the warnings and climbed up to the ground level, just as the SWAT teams made their big entrance.