Minotaur (5 page)

15.

C
hapel stumbled over to the phone and reached for the handset with one bloodstained hand. Before picking it up he studied the buttons, noticing there were no numbers on the keypad. The keys connected the phone with other rooms in the house, but there seemed no way to get an outside line. Maybe Favorov didn’t want his cook making expensive calls while she was working. The phone was basically just an intercom system, and it shouldn’t allow him to communicate with the outside world.

Still. In his time working for Director Hollingshead, Chapel had come to expect miracles when it came to telecommunications. And a miracle was what he needed. He picked up the handset, at first saying nothing. There was no dial tone, no hiss of an unconnected line. Someone was listening.

“Angel?” he said.

He heard a series of clicks and then the sexiest, most welcome voice in the world answered him, though the connection was fuzzy and the volume was low. “Chapel! I’ve been trying to reach you for so long now. Please tell me you’re free and you’re all right.”

Chapel looked down at the seeping wound in his abdomen. “I’m free,” he said. “For the moment. I was able to get away from the guards. How are you able to access this line?” he asked. “It’s in-­house only.”

“True—­you can’t call out on this line, not if you’re a person. But it’s patched electronically into the house’s security system, and it needs to be able to contact the police or the fire department if there’s a problem. I’m piggybacking on a dedicated 911 connection, duplexing the signal through the voltage line so the call monitors don’t pick us up. Real old-­school phone phreaking. It would be fun if I wasn’t so worried about you, baby.”

Chapel didn’t really care about the details. He had a far more important question. “Can anyone else in the house hear us? Say, if they pick up another handset?”

“I’m afraid so. This is the best I can manage for now—­I could encrypt the signal so well the NSA couldn’t listen in, but that won’t stop anyone on the same line.”

Chapel nodded to himself. “I heard clicks on the line just before you picked up. I think we have to assume everything we say is being overheard. Well, there’s nothing for it. I need to deliver a sitrep and I very, very badly need some advice. I’m sure you know by now that Favorov tried to take me hostage, but I’m at large in the house now. I can’t leave the grounds—­there’s at least a dozen men outside in the yard waiting for me to poke my head out the door. I’m wounded, though for now I’m still mobile.”

“Oh, Chapel!”

Chapel shook his head. “I can see a doctor later, get patched up. That’s not important. Favorov has his yacht coming in to the dock here. That’s his escape route. Can you scramble the Coast Guard and cut him off?”

“I already have an armed cutter en route. It’ll be there in twenty minutes and it can blockade the dock. But the director has given orders for it to stand off until he personally authorizes the interception.”

That made sense. Hollingshead still thought Chapel was a hostage and was still playing along with Favorov. If Favorov managed to recapture Chapel, the deal would still be in place.

“What about land units? Do we have any ground-­based assets in the area?”

“I have two local SWAT teams and a posse of ATF agents standing by just outside the gates. They’re ready to swarm on the director’s orders. We can come down on that house like the hammer of Thor, frankly, if—­”

“No!” Chapel said. “No, you can’t raid this place. There are kids in this house! And at least some of the servants are strictly civilian. One of them’s already dead, a cook, just because she was standing next to me when a guard lost his cool. No, Angel, there’s too big a risk of collateral damage.”

Angel was silent for a moment. Chapel knew what that meant—­she was about to tell him something he didn’t want to hear.

“Chapel, the director’s orders are clear. Favorov is a high-­value target. He wouldn’t let you sacrifice yourself, but only because he thought you could probably get free and have a chance at fixing this. But if you can’t complete this mission on your own, if we need to level that house to get Favorov, we’re going to do it.”

“Understood.” Chapel bit back the protest that sat on the end of his tongue. He didn’t believe that getting Favorov was worth the life of even one innocent, much less that of a child. But he wasn’t the one making decisions at that level. “I’m still in play. Nobody moves until you’re sure I’m compromised, okay?”

“You mean until you’re dead,” she replied. “Chapel, I think this is a terrible idea. You could just exfiltrate now, I can have an ambulance standing by, and other ­people can finish this. ­People who aren’t wounded!”

Sure. Somebody else could fix Chapel’s screwup. He didn’t like that at all. But he had an even better reason to stay on mission. ­“People who will start shooting the moment they see a gun. That’s not how we’re supposed to operate, Angel. We’re supposed to be intelligence operatives. We’re supposed to keep things quiet. It’s me. Just me, for now. How much time do I have?”

“Just before the yacht arrives, the order will go through to blockade the dock. Then the ground units will have to move in. I’ll
have
to give the order, whether you like it or not. That’s . . . a little less than two hours from now.”

“Understood,” Chapel said again. He needed to get this situation under control and isolate Favorov, before that happened. Or a lot of ­people might die—­­people who didn’t deserve it.

Frankly, he’d be surprised if he could keep himself alive that long. But he had to try.

“Chapel, the director is playing this by the book. He doesn’t have a lot of choices. But he’s also told me something you should know. He doesn’t think Favorov is going to play fair.”

“I kind of assumed as much. Hostage taking isn’t exactly in the Geneva Convention.”

“No,” Angel said. “No, I mean . . . the director knows Favorov, or at least, he knows how ­people like Favorov think. He thinks the yacht is a ruse. That Favorov has some other way out of there—­maybe an escape tunnel, maybe he’s going to be airlifted out. Even if we blockade the yacht and storm the house, the director doesn’t think it’s going to be enough. We need to find the real escape route. And you’re the only asset we have for that.”

The only man who could do the job. And he was slowly bleeding to death, concussed, most likely about to go into shock. This job kept getting better and better.

“All right, Angel, let’s talk about what I need to do that. Do you have floor plans for this house? And I’ll need a rundown on everyone here, how many guards there are likely to be, what kind of weaponry they carry, their locations if you can—­”

He stopped because he was sure he’d heard something.

“Chapel?” Angel asked.

“Gotta go,” Chapel told her, and hung up the phone.

He had definitely heard ­people in the hall outside the kitchen—­a lot of them, and their footsteps were getting closer.

16.

H
e could hear their voices out in the hall. At least three men, and from the noise they were making, probably more. They were arguing, trying to come up with a plan for how to take the kitchen. They didn’t know Chapel was all but defenseless, and they didn’t want to just come racing into an ambush. At least somebody out there had half a brain, and that was a problem as far as Chapel was concerned.

He moved as far back from the door to the hall as he could get. He scanned the kitchen, looking for defensive positions, and saw that the counter was the best cover he would get. Not that it would make much difference. Unarmed as he was he could only hide, and that would only buy him a few seconds. He looked around for weapons, and found plenty of them—­an entire block of sharp kitchen knives, a cleaver, even a rolling pin that would make a good club.

The men coming for him would have guns. There was no question about that.

He grabbed a good long carving knife anyway—­he refused to go down without a fight. As he was reaching for it he saw there was a third door in the kitchen, partially hidden in an alcove. It looked like it led further into the house. He rushed over and pulled it open and found a dark stairway leading down into a cellar.

Except in the case of an artillery barrage, going underground was rarely a good idea when you were trying to evade capture. It was unlikely there would be any other exits from the cellar, so he would just be backing himself into a corner. And the cellar door would be the first place his pursuers looked after they stormed the kitchen and found it deserted.

There comes a time, however, in any operation, when you realize you’re out of options. Chapel had definitely reached that point. He hurried down the cellar stairs, trying not to make too much noise about it. Instantly he was plunged into darkness so profound he couldn’t see his artificial hand in front of his face. Taking just enough care to make sure he didn’t fall and break his neck, he dashed to the bottom of the stairs and tried to think of what to do next.

The cellar wasn’t completely lightless. A little bit of light from outside streamed in through a narrow window at the far end—­just enough for Chapel to make out basic shapes. He saw rows of shelves, all of them laden down with things he couldn’t identify. He saw what looked like a workbench, covered in what he imagined were probably power tools. Nearly half the basement, though, was crammed full of big boxy shapes that were the right size for shipping crates. There were several dozen of them and they stood in towering stacks, some five and six high, and if you crawled in between them they would make an excellent, if rudimentary, maze.

The cellar door burst open even as Chapel was feeling his way over to the crates. Light burst down from above, blinding him again—­a situation that only got worse when someone switched on the overhead lights.

Scurrying like a rat, Chapel shoved himself in between some of the crates, worming his way into the maze while making as little sound as he dared.

The stairs creaked and groaned as a whole squad of men came tromping down into the cellar. At least six of them, Chapel thought, though it was hard to tell. He did not poke his head around the side of the crates to find out.

“I’m not cleared to be down here,” someone said.

“Shut up,” came the reply. “He must be here. Right?” Chapel recognized that voice. It was Michael, the guard he’d knocked out and tied up in the billiards room. Apparently he’d been let loose. “He’s here,” Michael said. “I can feel it.”

“If he is, we can just wait him out,” a third voice suggested. This voice sounded hopeful, as if its owner really, really didn’t want to go rummaging around in the basement looking for Chapel.

“Spread out,” Michael said. “I want every corner of this place under constant observation. This guy’s got stealth training—­if he slips past us while we’re down here, we’re all toast.”

He heard them shuffling about, then taking up positions. It sounded like they weren’t going anywhere.

Chapel tried very hard to control his breathing. His chest wound made him want to gasp for air. He didn’t think the gunshot had punctured his lung—­if it had he would have been coughing up blood—­but it had made every muscle in his chest contract in agony and squeeze against his rib cage. There was no way he could take on six men with just a carving knife. As wounded as he was, if even one of them got him with a lucky shot he would be down for the count.

If only he had some realistic way to fight back.

If only . .
 .

Sometimes God answers prayers, Chapel thought. Even if they aren’t submitted in the correct format.

He was wedged in between two wooden crates, with lettering stenciled on the side of one of them. He’d barely registered the Cyrillic before, and his Russian was a little rusty, but now he recognized the words painted right in front of his face:

AVTOMAT KALASHNIKOVA

The official Russian name for the world’s most popular assault rifle, more commonly known as the AK-­47.

17.

D
ozens of crates—­each one filled with assault rifles. It was more than Chapel could possibly have hoped for. For one thing it was additional proof that Favorov was smuggling guns. He hardly needed this many AK-­47s to teach his son how to shoot. But it might also mean that Chapel didn’t have to just surrender and be taken hostage again.

Not, of course, that fate had made things easy on him. He could hardly open one of the crates without making any noise. And guns were never shipped already loaded—­there would probably be crates full of bullets in the cellar as well, but getting two crates open, unpacking a rifle, unpacking a clip of ammo, and loading the rifle would take far more time and make a lot more noise than he dared. He had maybe a few seconds before his pursuers would be on him as soon as he made the slightest noise.

So he was just going to have to improvise.

Chapel studied the maze of crates around him, hoping he would get just one more lucky break and find a crate that was already open. No luck with the crates of rifles—­each one he could see was nailed tightly shut, and it would take a crowbar to open it. He pulled himself carefully between two more crates, worming his way back toward the cellar wall, but each crate he examined was still factory sealed. He’d achieved nothing more than splinters for his trouble by the time he reached the far end of the maze and the end of the crates.

From that position, though, he could see more of the cellar. Now that it was lit up he could make out more than just shapes. The workbench was covered in tools, like he’d thought, but not woodworking tools or the kind of power tools you’d use to do repairs on the house. The bench was set up for small-­scale gunsmithing—­for assembling assault rifles and working with bullets, changing out their loads of gunpowder or replacing their casings with special materials. A complete cartridge was loaded into a vise there, where someone must have been working on it recently. One bullet, ready to go, if Chapel could reach it. No use at all, of course, without a rifle to load it into. Although—­

“I can hear him wriggling around back there,” Michael called out. Chapel cursed silently as he heard men fanning out across the cellar, taking up firing positions, pinning him down. “There,” Michael said. “Behind those crates!”

There was no time left to lose. Chapel needed to move fast and fluid, just as he’d been trained. Even as he jumped up out of cover he was visualizing his moves, planning out exactly what he was about to do. The guards would have orders not to kill him. They would be jumpy, though, ready to shoot at the slightest provocation.

He was counting on it.

A row of conventional tools hung on hooks above the vise, including a standard ball peen hammer. Even as he ran forward, even as he heard the guards shouting and raising their weapons, he grabbed up the hammer and started to swing. If he missed—­

The bullet in the vise was pointing toward the wall. The rear end of its casing was in front of him, a tiny little bull’s-­eye of metal. The outer ring was the true casing, while the circle inside it was the primer, the initial explosive that would ignite the gunpowder propellant inside the casing. The primer was designed to explode when it was struck by the firing pin of a rifle.

In a pinch, a sharp blow from a hammer did just fine.

Chapel hit the bullet square on. The primer ignited the gunpowder and the bullet shot out of the casing, straight into the wall, harming no one. It did have the effect Chapel had intended, however. It made a sound exactly like a gunshot.