Minotaur (6 page)

18.

“J
esus, he’s armed!” someone screamed. The guards in the cellar dashed for cover, opening fire even as they scurried. Bullets whizzed around the cellar, striking chips of concrete off the walls, tearing through the wood of the crates. Chapel dove back into the maze of crates as bullets spun past his head and arms. The noise and the confusion were enough of a distraction. He hoped.

Working fast he kicked one of the crates over and then slammed the heel of his shoe against its lid until it popped open. Rifles packed in shredded newsprint spilled out onto the floor, their wooden stocks shiny with oil, their barrels dull with grease. He scooped one up and ducked low—­the guards were still firing—­as he headed for a row of shelves at the far end of the crate maze.

His luck ran out before he could get there. One of the guards, braver than the others, came skidding around the side of the crate maze, gun in hand. The man looked terrified but resolute as he started to raise his weapon.

Without thinking, Chapel lifted his AK-­47 and pointed it at him. There was no clip in the gun. No bullets. The trigger wouldn’t even pull, but still he pointed the rifle as if he was going to spray the guard with lead.

He hadn’t even planned on bluffing like that. It had just been an instinctual motion, to raise one’s weapon in the face of an enemy. The Army had drilled that into him until it was a basic reflex.

The guard did what any smart person would do in that situation. He dropped his guns and held up his hands.

Chapel squinted at him, forcing eye contact. If the guard even glanced at Chapel’s weapon he would see it wasn’t loaded. Chapel couldn’t let that happen. He twitched the barrel of his rifle to the side, indicating that the guard should move away, out of the firing line. And the guard, mercifully, did, running back around the side of the crate maze and out of Chapel’s vision.

Chapel would have laughed if a half dozen ­people weren’t currently trying to kill him. He bent forward, straining against the improvised bandage on his midriff, and grabbed up the guard’s pistol. He checked the magazine and found it still had two rounds left. Better than what Chapel had had before. Still, he could improve his odds. He shoved the pistol in his belt and went back to the shelves he’d seen.

Just as he’d hoped, they were loaded down with small boxes, so heavy the shelves bowed under their weight. He grabbed a ­couple of boxes and sat down hard behind a row of crates, even as bullets stitched holes in the wall over his head.

Training was everything, Chapel thought. A civilian in this situation would not be able to concentrate. The noise and the stink of expended gunpowder and the shouts of the guards and the fear of death—­all these things could destroy focus. Chapel had a relatively intricate procedure to complete, and if he’d had to fight down his own panic he never could have done it.

The guards were coming closer. Some of them would be braver than others. Some would be more observant. At least one of them, he knew, would notice what he was doing and what it meant. At least one of them would have the brains to stop him. Assuming they got to him before he finished.

He worked as quickly as he could. One of the boxes held empty clips, plastic reinforced with steel in the iconic curved shape of the AK magazine. The clips were empty, of course. The other box Chapel had grabbed contained the rounds that went into the clips. He had to feed them in one at a time, pressing them down hard against the spring inside. One after another, each one resisting a little more as the spring compressed . . .

“Just get in there,” Michael shouted, urging his men on. One of them told him to go fuck himself. That made Chapel grin. But he could hear footsteps pounding on the cement floor of the cellar, he could hear men climbing up on top of the maze of crates to get to him. He had maybe a few seconds, maybe less, before they were on him.

One more round. He pressed it down hard. Another. There were thirty total bullets in a standard AK-­47 clip. He had to count to make sure he got them all in. One more. Push down. Another. He reached in the box and grabbed a bullet, brought it toward the clip. Pushed it down.

Done.

He slid the clip into the receiver. Felt it click into place. Now all he had to do was—­

“Freeze, asshole,” someone said, off to his left.

Chapel didn’t even look up. Instead he grabbed the charging handle and yanked it back, then let it go.

“I said—­”

Chapel turned to face the man. He saw a middle-­aged guy in a suit, a pistol clutched in both his hands. He saw the barrel pointing at his face. The guards would have orders not to kill Chapel if it could be avoided, he knew. He had no idea how this guard would interpret those orders.

There are rare times in life when you just have to act, and not consider the consequences. Chapel grabbed the pistol grip of his rifle and fired three rounds at the guard, pulling the trigger three times. One, two, three.

19.

R
ed spots appeared on the guard’s forearm, shoulder, and waist. He dropped his gun and spun around, clutching at his arm as he tumbled to the floor. “Oh God!” he screamed. “Oh God, I’m going to die!”

None of those wounds was fatal, by the look of it, but Chapel didn’t disillusion the man. If he was scared enough to make him stay down, good. He scuttled sideways, never quite standing up, and grabbed the guard’s pistol. He was getting a decent collection of weapons, now.

He moved over toward the crates again, because they would give him better cover. Edged around the sides of them so that he was almost, but not quite, exposed. “Hold your fire,” he shouted over the noise of the guns.

Surprisingly, it worked. The guards stopped shooting, though Chapel could still hear them moving around, their shoes squeaking on the floor.

He didn’t want to have to kill or even injure these men. Maybe they could be reasoned with, he thought. “Michael!” he called out. “Michael, I know it’s you leading this bunch.”

“How the hell do you know my name?” Michael replied. Chapel couldn’t see the man’s face. He couldn’t read his body language, and his voice wasn’t giving away anything. He didn’t know if he was scared or resolute or who knew what. “Whatever. Are you giving up, now?”

“Nope,” Chapel said. “Not tonight. I hope your boss won’t be offended that I borrowed some of his arsenal.”

“I’m sure he’s got other things on his mind,” Michael said. “Listen, we aren’t going to hurt you if you just drop your weapons and come out. I promise. Maybe I owe you an ass-­kicking for what you did back in the billiards room. But that would be worth my job, so you get a free pass.”

Chapel smiled to himself. “I was about to make you the same offer.”

“Ha ha. Listen, guy. I talked to Stephen. I know you’re hurt bad. You’ve probably lost some blood, you’re probably not thinking straight—­”

“One of the first things,” Chapel interrupted, “that they taught me in the Rangers was that a wounded man with a gun is still a man with a gun.”

“Okay. I hear you. Maybe you get one or two of us before we take you down. But in that case you’re going to die, buddy. We’re supposed to bring you in alive but none of us here is stupid. If you come out of there guns blazing, we’re going to shoot back. And there’s a lot more of us.”

Chapel leaned his head back against a crate. He suddenly felt very tired. He didn’t like how this was shaping up, not at all. But he would do what he had to do. “You know you’re already out of a job, right? If your boss gets out of here alive, he’s never coming back. And I doubt there’s room for all of you on his yacht.”

“Have you seen it, man? It’s pretty big.”

So much for reason. “Okay. This is how you want to play it, I guess. A big showdown. Last man standing walks out of here. Your guys all agree with you?”

“I’m afraid so. This is on you, Ranger.”

“I kind of had a feeling,” Chapel said.

He adjusted his grip on the rifle. Checked the fire selector, moved it into the middle position for full auto. Shifted the pistols in his belt around where he could grab them easily.

And then he stepped around the side of the crate, already firing.

20.

C
hapel had no idea what kind of training Michael had, or whether he’d ever led men into combat. Somewhere along the line he’d gotten a few basics down.

As Chapel came around the corner, rifle blaring and jumping in his hand, he saw immediately that the guards were all behind cover, keeping their heads down. He had expected as much—­mostly he was just laying down suppressing fire as he sprayed bullets over their heads. But now he knew where they were. Two were hiding behind a shelf over by the stairs. One was crouching behind the side of the workbench. A fourth had his back up against the maze of crates, facing away from Chapel.

That one nearly killed him. The guard had been creeping up on his position, probably intending to get the drop on him while he was still talking to Michael. When Chapel came out from behind the crates he was nearly behind Chapel, flanking him, and he didn’t waste time on being surprised. He lifted his pistol and fired even before Chapel had taken his finger off his own trigger.

The bullet tore through the silicone flesh of Chapel’s artificial bicep. He felt it tug him around, to the side, but he threw himself the other direction and rolled onto his back on the floor. The flanking guard shifted his aim, lowering his arm to hit Chapel where he lay. Chapel didn’t give him the chance. He lit up the guard with a quick burst from his rifle and saw the man dance like a marionette on strings.

He didn’t wait to see the man go down. Instead he rolled over on his side and dashed back behind the crates.

Back in the relative safety of his previous position, he listened to the man moan and try to scream. He was pretty sure the flanking guard wasn’t going to survive.

He closed his eyes and tried to think.

You couldn’t think of them as human beings in a situation like this. It had been years since Chapel had fought in real combat but he remembered how it was done. They weren’t ­people with lives and families and maybe children out there. They were obstacles, deadly hazards strewn in your path, and you removed them from play as quickly and efficiently as possible.

It was a logistics problem, where if you forgot to add things up right or carry the one, you were dead. You had to work it through like that.

Chapel had expended more than half of his rifle’s magazine. He had an unknown number of pistol bullets as well. He could collect more ammunition, but only once the six men in the cellar had been accounted for. So far he had disarmed one, wounded one, probably killed one. That left the two behind the shelves, and the one by the workbench.

Assuming there had been exactly six of them to start with, and not seven. Or more. Underestimating the number of opponents you faced was the absolute best way to get killed.

The second best way was to assume your opponents would stay put while you came and took them out one by one. If Chapel had some backup, someone to lay down suppressive fire while he moved in, that would be one thing. In this situation he had to accept that his targets would keep moving, that he was going to have to adapt and respond on the fly. Which meant the faster he moved, the more likely he was to live through this.

But they’d already seen him come around the corner, once. Their weapons would be trained on that position as they waited for him to show himself again. They might also logically expect him to go behind the crates to the far side, and come out guns blazing from that position. Appearing in either of those locations would get him shot. He needed a third option.

Time to head for higher ground.

21.

“D
id you see that?” someone whispered. “Marty winged him! He definitely hit him!”

“Yeah, and look what he got,” someone else said, in a panicked voice. “Jesus, Michael—­let this guy go! Just—­just do whatever he wants, get us out of here!”

“Shut up!” Michael this time. “You think he can’t hear you?”

“I don’t fucking care! I don’t want to die!”

The panicked voice was shut up by a nasty slapping sound. In his hiding place Chapel winced to hear it.

“That way,” Michael said, and Chapel heard the guards moving, coming toward him. Michael was smart enough to send them around both sides of the crate maze, so they could pin him in a crossfire. In a second they would come around the sides, shooting as they came, hoping to kill him before he could even react to a simultaneous attack from two directions.

It was a good plan, if you were thinking in two dimensions.

Wait for it
, Chapel told himself.
Wait . .
 .

He saw them coming, two from one side, one from the other. He saw them from so close he could make out the look of bafflement on Michael’s face, when he came around the side of the maze and there was no sign of Chapel. He waited a split second longer, then
pushed
.

Chapel had climbed up on top of the crate maze, getting as high up as he could. Then he’d braced himself against one crate while putting both feet on another. With all the strength in his back he pushed the second crate right off the top of the maze.

An AK-­47 weighs more than ten pounds, and there were twenty of them in each of the crates. Add in the weight of the crate itself and you had more than enough mass to knock somebody down. Hit them in the head or neck with a weight like that, falling from a height of, say, three yards, and they won’t get back up.

One man went down, flattened by the crate. The guy next to him managed to jump back in time, to throw himself out of the way. But that left him exposed, his weapon pointing at the floor. Chapel had plenty of time to line up two shots—­one, two—­that left his arms useless as he fell to his knees, screaming.

The third man, the one who’d come from the opposite direction, looked up. Lifted his weapon. Aimed.

Chapel snaked forward, chest on top of the crates, and shoved the barrel of his rifle right into the man’s nose. He was holding it in his left hand, his artificial hand, while the pistol remained in his right. He had limited control of the artificial hand at the best of times and he was not at his best. Still. “I think if I pull this trigger, I’m not going to miss,” he said.

Michael—­it was Michael—­dropped his pistol and slowly raised his hands. “Pretty good,” he said. “Ranger, you said?”

“Yes,” Chapel said.

Michael nodded—­carefully, as a man does when he has the barrel of an assault rifle in his face. “Sure. I was in the Air Force. They never taught us any of this stuff. Just how to fix planes.”

“So you’re military. It shows. You’re loyal, I’ll give you that. Not a lot of ­people would have stuck by Favorov, not through all this.”

“They taught us, you can be smart, or you can follow orders. And smart guys ended up peeling potatoes. So I made a point of following orders.” Michael shrugged. Again, carefully. “KP duty doesn’t sound so bad, right now.”

“You going to tell me where your boss is?” Chapel asked.

“Maybe, but—­”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence. At that exact moment another guard came running around the corner, his gun already firing.

Crap
, Chapel thought. It was the one he’d disarmed, the one he’d bluffed with the empty AK-­47. Somewhere he’d gotten another pistol.

“No!” Michael shouted. Maybe he expected Chapel to shoot him on principle.

Instead Chapel clubbed Michael across the neck with his assault rifle. But only because he was standing in the way. The re-­armed guard below was shooting up, blind, not even bothering to aim. Chapel took his time, even as bullets tore up the wooden crates all around him, and put a tight burst of rifle fire right in the man’s center mass.

The guard kept shooting for a half second after he was already dead, but eventually, he went down.

“Now,” Chapel said, looking back down at Michael, “we were talking about—­”

Then he grimaced, and maybe cursed a little. The re-­armed guard had managed to put a hole in the back of Michael’s head and his brains were all over the floor.