“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
He 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.