“Angel?” he whispered.
“You’re facing him, no more than ten feet away—he’s low, down on the ground, he…”
She went silent, which always worried Chapel. It meant something had happened that she hadn’t expected. And Angel’s job was to always be one step ahead of everybody else.
“He’s gone,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“His heat signature… it just disappeared. He vanished. Chapel, I’ll admit I’m mystified here—”
Chapel didn’t wait for her to finish her sentence. He rushed forward into the bathroom. Nobody was in there. He threw open the shower door but it was empty. Only then did he notice that one of the cabinet doors under the two sinks was slightly ajar.
He kicked it open and jumped back, expecting to find Favorov curled around a U-bend. Instead what he saw made him swear out loud.
The usual shaving cream and spare toothbrushes and rolls of toilet paper you expected to find under a sink were all shoved to one side. Favorov had gone under the sinks, all right, but he hadn’t stopped there. Bending low Chapel could see that the back of the cabinet was actually a hidden door. It led into a crawl space behind the bathroom wall. He could see the top rungs of a ladder leading down.
Favorov had been smart enough to know that one day he might be trapped in his own house. So he’d built in a secret passage, one that might lead anywhere.
28
Sticking your head down an escape tunnel that has just been used by a paranoid ex-GRU agent is never a good idea.
Chapel did it anyway. He peered down into utter darkness. Judging by the movement of the air around his face he could only guess the tunnel went down for some distance. He could hear nothing—not the sound of Favorov climbing down the rungs, not even breathing.
The worst idea Chapel could think of was climbing down after his quarry. No. Scratch that. He could think of one equally terrible idea—going back out into the hallway and facing nearly a dozen armed guards. Either way he was very, very likely to get shot. He hadn’t forgotten he was seriously wounded, either. Adrenaline and determination had carried him so far but he was going to need to collapse, soon, and probably sleep for days.
He had no choice, though. Favorov had betrayed his adopted country, the country Chapel had sworn to defend.
The tunnel opening was narrow enough he would need to squeeze through, scraping his shoulders in the process. The remaining AK-47 he carried was too unwieldy to take with him, so he just threw it away. He shoved his various pistols into his pockets as best he could, then shoved his legs into the opening and started to wriggle in.
He could hear people in the hallway. A lot of them. They would storm the master bedroom in short order. He doubted any of them knew about the tunnel. As he slipped down onto the top rungs of the ladder he pulled the cabinet door closed behind him, leaving himself in pitch darkness. He would just have to climb down by feel.
“Angel,” he whispered. “Angel, can you hear me?”
There was no response. Her signal was blocked by the walls of the mansion, just as Favorov’s heat signature had been blocked when he seemed to disappear. He was on his own.
He climbed down for what seemed far too long, until he was sure he was below the level of the house and even the cellar where Favorov had kept his rifles. He heard nothing from above or below. Hand over hand, foot over foot, he kept going down, wondering the whole time if Favorov had been smart enough to leave booby traps behind to dissuade any pursuit. Hopefully the Russian hadn’t had time to arm anything particularly nasty.
As he climbed in the darkness his eyes were useless and his other senses had to fill in. He could hear nothing but the sound of his own feet on the rungs, feel little except how close the tunnel walls were on every side of him. He could feel the wall behind him scraping against his back and he knew the tunnel had been carved out of the bedrock under the house.
Visions of an entire subterranean labyrinth down there, of some kind of medieval dungeon packed with horrors and the skeletons of Favorov’s previous enemies came to him, almost making Chapel smile. Most likely he would reach the bottom and find nothing but a panic room, or a fallout shelter—and Favorov waiting for him, of course, armed to the teeth.
Except that didn’t make sense. Why would Favorov retreat to a spider hole with no way out? The man was far too smart for that.
Then Chapel reached the bottom—his foot striking solid ground beneath him, the wall behind him opening out into a larger space. He dropped down from the ladder and twisted around, already reaching for a pistol, senses tuned to any stimulation at all. Still, he heard nothing. But one thing did reach him—he smelled the ocean.
“No,” he whispered, because he knew, finally, where the tunnel led.
29
A little gray light leaked down the horizontal tunnel, enough for Chapel to move toward. He loped along the rough floor, all the time feeling an ocean breeze on his face, smelling the salt of the waves.
He hurried as fast as he could, even though his injuries were catching up with him. Even though he knew he’d probably already lost.
There had been three passports sitting on Favorov’s bed. Though Chapel hadn’t bothered to check them, he was pretty sure he knew already whose they were. One for Fiona and one each for the boys. Favorov had taken his own passport with him.
Up ahead at the end of the tunnel lay a natural cave, the ceiling thick with stalactites, the floor crunchy with an accumulation of salt. Big round shapes loomed around Chapel as he burst through into the starlit cave, shapes which resolved themselves into barrels. Fuel barrels. The far end of the cave let out onto a silvery beach under a looming seaside cliff. A deep channel had been dug through the sand and a metal dock erected there so a small watercraft could be brought in where no one could see it from above. Only the boat wasn’t there at the moment.
Chapel dashed forward toward the breakers, his dress shoes sinking into wet sand. Out on the water he could just make out the shape of a speedboat, sleek and shark-like in its lines. A single human figure, no doubt Favorov himself, was hunched over the controls. Even as Chapel watched in utter desolation the boat’s engines spun up a great flume of water and it raced for the horizon.
Favorov had made good his escape.
He lifted his pistol and took a shot at the retreating vessel, but he knew he would never hit a moving target in the dark like that. He didn’t even see where his bullet struck the water. It was over.
30
“He’s in a small boat, headed west by southwest,” Chapel told Angel. Now that he was out of the tunnels he was getting reception again. “Could be going anywhere. Please make my night and tell me you can track him.”
Angel didn’t answer for a while. Maybe she was busy consulting satellite data and surveillance footage and all the other arcane sources of information she was privy to. Maybe she just didn’t want to admit defeat any more than Chapel.
“I’ll do what I can,” she said, finally. “Don’t get your hopes up.” A small boat, no lights on a moonless night. There was only so much satellites could see.
Chapel hung his head. He was trudging across the sand, looking for a way back up the cliff. He estimated he was right below the house, or at least underneath some part of its extensive grounds. He had no desire to climb back up the ladder into the master bedroom, especially given how tired he was. There was no real point in hurrying, either.
“The SWAT teams and the ATF task force are ready to converge on the house,” Angel told him. “They can mop up the guards in there.”
“Are Fiona and the boys clear of the mansion?” he asked.