Myrmidon

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The quadrotor buzzed down the street, then stopped in midair and waggled back and forth for a second. Chapel wished he knew what Angel was trying to tell him. “There’s no time,” he told it, but he didn’t know if it had microphone pickups or not—maybe Angel could hear him, or maybe she could only watch his lips move. He wished he knew whether or not she could read lips.

His seething frustration didn’t last very long. After a second, the quadrotor slipped sideways through the air, toward a building near the end of the road. Chapel chased after it and, when he saw it hovering in front of the door, turned the knob and pulled the door open for it. The drone whirred inside the building and toward a flight of stairs beyond. It looked like the building was used for office space. Chapel saw desks and chairs and filing cabinets, anyway. He followed the drone—then stopped in his tracks because he heard someone speak.

“That buzzing,” someone asked. “You hear that?”

“Could be anything,” came a reply. “After all that shelling—who knows what they knocked loose?”

“Sure.” But then Chapel heard boots moving on the floor above his head.

It had to be neo-Nazis up there—the soldiers hadn’t made it this far yet.

The quadrotor ducked back down the stairs and landed on a desk, its rotors spinning quickly to a stop. Chapel squatted even though the movement made his stab wound open up again. He crab-walked around the side of the staircase until anyone coming down wouldn’t see him.

He heard someone come to the top of the stairs, but no farther. Chapel scowled to himself—if he’d come all the way down, he could have taken him out silently, then crept upstairs and handled whoever else was up there.

“It’s stopped,” someone said. Then Chapel heard the sound of boots shuffling around, as if whoever it was had turned his back on the stairs.

It was the best chance he was going to get. Chapel dashed around the side of the stairs and stomped up the risers, taking them two at a time. There was no way he could do it silently, so he didn’t worry how much noise he was making.

The neo-Nazi on the landing, a middle-aged guy in a fawn-colored jacket, spun around and started to lift a pistol so he could aim at Chapel.

Chapel didn’t give him a chance. He barreled into the man’s chest, throwing up one forearm to strike the man in his throat. Before the neo-Nazi could call for help, he dropped to the floor, clutching at his injured neck.

Just beyond the landing was an open door, and a room beyond filled with daylight from a broad row of windows. Chapel dove through the doorway, keeping his head down and lifting Andre’s revolver to cover the room. He saw two men sitting on desks, looking out the windows. One of them was half-turned toward Chapel and would be the first one to see him.

Chapel had no time for nonlethal takedowns. He fired right at the man’s face and saw his cheekbone explode in a cloud of blood. Andre’s revolver was big and clunky, but it had plenty of stopping power.

The second man dropped behind a desk before Chapel could line up a second shot. He fired three rounds into the wooden desk. He couldn’t see if he’d hit his target or not, but he heard the man cry out in pain or surprise.

Getting to his feet he strode toward the desk, keeping it covered at all times with the revolver. He had to know if the man was down. He saw a shadow on the floor that might be a pool of spreading blood, but he had to make sure.

Then he heard the last thing he ever wanted to hear, a footstep directly behind him. There must have been another man in the room, maybe standing next to the doorway when he’d come in. And now the guy had the drop on him.

He spun around on his heel and saw a kid wearing a black T-shirt come running at him, an AK-47 in his hands. He was already lifting it to point in Chapel’s direction. With an assault rifle like that, the kid wouldn’t need to aim very well—he could just point the gun at Chapel and spray bullets until he hit.

Before the kid could get the gun up, though, Chapel heard a buzzing noise and saw the quadrotor come into the room, streaking right at the kid’s face. Panicking, the kid took one hand off the rifle to bat away the flying drone. The quadrotor’s blades were made of plastic and wouldn’t do any real damage, but the look of terror on the kid’s face indicated he didn’t know that.

Chapel fired twice into the kid’s center mass, trying not to hit the quadrotor in the process. The kid fell down in a groaning heap, dropping his rifle. Chapel ran over and kicked it away.

He looked directly at the quadrotor and nodded his thanks. It wiggled in the air to acknowledge, then buzzed over toward the desk Chapel had already perforated.

The man behind that desk was dead. When Chapel edged around the side of the desk, revolver steady in his hands, he saw that he’d gotten lucky. One of the bullets he’d fired through the desk had gone right through the man’s heart.

The quadrotor buzzed around the room as if looking to see if anyone else was hiding up there.

“You knew these guys were here,” Chapel said. “If I’d just run past this building, out in the street, they could have cut me down with no trouble.”

The quadrotor did not respond. It completed its circuit of the room, then buzzed back out into the hall—and up another flight of stairs.

It seemed Angel had something more to show him.