If Chapel had possessed any grenades he might have been able to take them all out at once. But he only had his rifles and pistols, and not a lot of ammunition for either.
Come on, he thought. He needed to get moving. He needed to find Favorov. If the guards would just come storming inside, either he would shoot them all or, far more likely, they would kill him. But as long as they stood out there waiting for him to make a move, he also had to wait for them.
Maybe that was the whole plan. Maybe they were just stalling for time. Maybe—
His train of thought was interrupted as a hand appeared in the doorway, a hand holding something small and round. Chapel could only watch as a grenade arced through the air to clatter on the marble floor, right in front of his improvised cover.
24
Chapel’s breath stuck tight in his lungs as he waited for the grenade to explode, obliterating the table he hid behind and turning it into a million jagged splinters of wood that would shred his body. His brain howled at him to react, to grab the grenade and throw it back, but his muscles refused to move, to do anything in the time he had left.
Then the grenade went off and he nearly laughed in relief. It didn’t explode. A cap on one end popped open and white smoke started pouring out. It wasn’t a fragmentation grenade, after all. He’d assumed it would be the same kind of explosive they’d used to get the door open. But either they were still operating under the orders not to kill Chapel, or they just didn’t want to damage their boss’s expensive marble floor.
Chapel opened his mouth to take a breath—and nearly lost everything. Because it wasn’t a smoke grenade. It was tear gas.
He’d been so surprised by surviving the last two seconds that he hadn’t even considered that. The half of an aborted breath he’d taken burned inside his throat and his eyes began to water. His chest seized up as his lungs clamored for air, even as they spasmed in reaction to the nasty stuff they’d already inhaled.
Chapel had lost his shirt back when he was originally searched in the billiards room. He had nothing to make a bandana out of. Not that a length of cloth would even protect his eyes. He rolled away from the table, knowing he was doing exactly what the guards wanted. They’d thrown the gas grenade to flush him out, to make him leave his cover.
They waited five seconds for the tear gas to take effect, then stormed into the foyer in a tight formation, spreading out just a little as they came. They were all wearing gas masks that hid their faces but it didn’t look like they had any body armor—just immaculate black suits and silk ties. They all carried pistols, Glocks like the ones Chapel had taken from Michael’s crew.
One of them lifted three fingers in the air, then gestured forward. He followed this signal with a fist pumping in the air that meant “hurry up.” These guards were far better trained and more disciplined than the bodyguards who had worked inside the house. They probably didn’t know how to serve soup at the dinner table, but they definitely knew how to take an enemy behind cover. The guards moved around the table, flanking it from either side, their weapons up and ready. Chapel might have gotten one or two of them, but through sheer numbers they would have taken him down before he could achieve anything useful.
That is, if he had still been behind the table.
The funny thing about tear gas was that while it was great at incapacitating an unprotected enemy, it also fouled the air and reduced visibility. In the first few seconds after a tear gas grenade went off it acted like a very effective smokescreen. By the time it dissipated into the air your enemy could be gone.
Chapel had simply run up the stairs, knowing they couldn’t see him. He’d gotten above the worst of the gas and though his eyes were streaming and his throat burned, he had been able to find a new cover spot behind the balustrade at the top of the steps. It was clear right away that the guards were surprised not to find him behind the table, and they had no idea where he’d gone.
Until a coughing fit ripped through him, and they all looked up to see where the noise had come from.
25
There were too many of them. At least a dozen. Even with all of Chapel’s training, even with improvisation and the best luck he’d ever had, there were too many. In a straight-up firefight, they would overwhelm him and he would go down. He couldn’t take many more bullets, not and keep on his feet.
So as they started firing up at the second floor landing, Chapel knew exactly what he had to do. He had to keep his head down, and he had to run.
They would follow, of course. Maybe they would take their time about it, expecting him to lie in ambush. That could give him time. But maybe one of them would decide to be a hero, hoping that Favorov would reward him for initiative. It only took one of them to catch him while he was running and put a bullet in his back.
He needed a strategy and he needed it right away. “Angel—I’m moving, and I’ve got a ton of hostiles on my tail,” he whispered, as he ducked into a hallway on the second floor, away from the shooting. “I need to find Favorov now. If I can capture him I can make him stand down his guards.”
“There are four people on the second floor,” she told him, sounding apologetic. That was never good. If Angel couldn’t help him he was screwed. “Two groups of two. Both groups are in the east wing—not far from your position.”
“Any idea which group includes Favorov?”
“I’m sorry, Chapel. No. You’re going to have to get lucky. I saw him at a window a while back, but he’s moved since then, and my imaging just isn’t good enough to track heat sources.”
Chapel gritted his teeth. “Do you have my twenty?”
“I have you on imaging. I can always tell when it’s you I’m looking at,” she said.
“That’s sweet.”
“Not really,” she told him. “Your artificial arm shows up colder than the rest of your body, so I just look for the orange blob with the blue piece stuck on it.”
Not for the first time Chapel marveled at what she was capable of seeing on her screens, wherever she was. If she’d been there looking with human eyes she would have been as blind as him. But even though she could be anywhere in the country—the world for that matter—she still had a better idea of what was happening inside the house than he did. “What about the guards on the first floor? Are they coming up?”
“Two on the stairs, moving up, taking their time about it,” she told him. “The rest are holding position to offer covering fire.”
Chapel didn’t like what he was going to have to do next. He didn’t see a choice, though. He checked his rifle, then leaned back around the corner, exposing himself to fire from below in the foyer. He had maybe a second before someone saw him up there and took a shot.
He saw the two guards on the stairs right away. They were keeping low so he dropped his rifle a few degrees, depressing his angle of fire. That was good. Think of it as a physics problem.
He pressed the trigger of the rifle and bullets tore up the stair runner, the marble beneath, the bodies of the two guards on the stairs. They jerked wildly as the bullets tore into their flesh. One of them dropped his weapon and clutched at the ruin of his gas mask as he dropped to his knees. The other crumpled and slid down the stairs on his face.
The AK-47 ran dry before Chapel was done shooting. He tossed the empty rifle away and threw himself back around the corner, into the second-floor hallway.