He certainly made no attempt to stop Stephen when he left to go get a gun. Instead he just moved over to stand by the door, where he could watch Chapel and also be ready if anyone came storming in. He was the smarter of the two, definitely—Michael was one to look out for.
He was also, now, all alone with Chapel.
Time to figure out what he could do with that bit of luck, Chapel thought.
He quietly tested the makeshift rope holding his wrists together. It was surprisingly well knotted. Maybe one of the servants had been a sailor in a former life. Maybe they doubled as crew for the yacht. There was no way Chapel could untie his hands. But maybe he didn’t need to.
Michael watched him with a certain nervous intensity. He kept his eyes moving around the room, as if he expected danger to arise from any corner. There wasn’t a lot Chapel could do while he was being watched like that. For a long time he just fumed and waited, thinking through the angles, wondering if the crazy plan he’d come up with could possibly work. He would have to be silent, perfectly silent, and he would need to move very fast. He was still groggy from being smacked across the back of the head with a wine bottle. He would have to take that into account.
Michael’s eyes kept flicking over at him. The servant knew better than to get complacent, to take his eyes off his charge. He was, in his way, good at this.
Until the second he wasn’t.
Maybe he heard something out in the hall. Maybe he was just willing Stephen to hurry up and come back with the gun. For whatever reason, Michael broke off his careful watching and went to the door, opening it a crack so he could look through.
Chapel had his chance—if Michael didn’t immediately turn around and see what he was doing.
His hands were securely tied, but Chapel still had a way to get free—at the shoulder. Chapel’s artificial arm had been designed to work for just about any kind of amputee, including one with no arms at all. Normally when he removed the arm (at night when he went to bed, or when he went swimming) he would reach around with his good arm and flick a hidden catch to make the clamps release from his shoulder. But a double amputee wouldn’t be able to do that, so the arm’s designers had put in another way to release it. Chapel rolled his left shoulder as far back as it would go. A tiny motor in the arm buzzed against his skin, basically asking him for confirmation. He rolled the shoulder again, twice, and the clamps retracted. He was terrified the arm would fall off onto the billiards table with a thump. It didn’t.
Michael called out into the hallway in a stage whisper, calling for his friend. There was no reply.
Behind him Chapel carefully lowered his feet to the floor. He wanted to be standing up when he untied his hands, just in case.
That turned out to be a smart move. Before he could even begin to work at the knots, Michael turned around again to look at his prisoner. Chapel saw his face start to change when he saw Chapel standing up, one of his arms dangling at his side. He saw Michael start to shout out for help.
He couldn’t let that happen.
The artificial arm Chapel wore cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was a miracle of modern engineering, an incredible marriage of computer controls and tiny servomotors, of negative feedback circuits and incredibly deft actuators. It was one of the most complex and advanced machines in the world.
It also made a surprisingly effective club.
Chapel spun around from his waist, extending his good right arm as he pivoted. His artificial arm flashed out like a medieval flail. The heavy clamps on the artificial shoulder caught Michael in the face and sent the servant flying backward to crash against the wood paneling of the billiard room’s wall.
Instead of shouting for help Michael just made a nasty gasping noise as his breath went out of him. He struggled to find his footing, to come up for a counterattack.
Chapel knew he couldn’t let that happen. He moved in fast, his legs still a little numb. But they remembered their training. He closed the distance between himself and Michael in a fraction of a second. He threw his right arm around Michael’s neck and squeezed as hard as he could, putting pressure on the man’s carotid artery. In his training with the Army Rangers Chapel had performed that move so many times it was second nature.
It was almost impossible to knock someone unconscious by hitting them on the back of the head. However, stopping the blood flow to their brain usually did the trick.
Michael slumped to the floor, his eyes slightly open but failing to track. He looked almost peaceful as he collapsed in a heap.
11
Chapel moved fast, untying his hands and pulling the gag away from his mouth. He pulled his artificial arm back over his shoulder and felt the clamps squeeze into place, then spent a few seconds testing the fingers, the wrist, the elbow. It was made well, designed to take a serious impact, but he’d never used it as a club before and he worried he might have damaged the complex machinery inside. It seemed to work okay, so he bent to his next task.
He searched Michael’s pockets, looking for a weapon or, even more important, a cell phone. A good frisking turned up nothing, however. Michael wasn’t even carrying a wallet. Well, why would he be? Until recently, he’d just been a waiter at Favorov’s table. No reason for him to be carrying a switchblade or a satellite phone. Chapel would have to find the gear he needed someplace else. In the meantime, though, he needed to secure the man he’d knocked out. He used the ripped-up pieces of his shirt to tie up Michael and gag him, because he knew the servant/guard would wake up any minute. He cracked open the door of the billiards room and looked out into the hall. He didn’t see an army of servants coming to kill him, which meant he’d been quiet enough nobody knew he was free. That was good, very good.
But he wasn’t out of the woods yet. He only had a few hours before Favorov’s yacht would arrive. He had to make sure the Russian didn’t get on board. But before he could go hunting down the ex-GRU man, he had to take care of Stephen.
He didn’t like it. It meant lying in wait when he should be springing to action. But if Stephen came back and found Michael tied up in a chair, he would know instantly what had happened and he would alert the rest of the house staff. Every single person in the house would instantly be looking for Chapel, and probably intending him gross bodily harm.
So he propped Michael up in a chair and went to stand by the door, just to the side of where it would open. His nerves pinged and his muscles twitched with the need to move, the need to act. His vision was still a little blurry from his concussion, and his wrist ached where it had been tied. He forced himself to keep absolutely, perfectly, still.
After what felt like hours of waiting but could only have been minutes, he heard footsteps in the hall. They came right up to the door—and stopped. Chapel gritted his teeth. He’d expected Stephen to just come striding in, totally unprepared for what he would find in the billiards room. It looked like that wasn’t going to happen.
Chapel held his breath. He waited. When Stephen knocked on the door and called Michael’s name, Chapel nearly jumped out of his skin. He considered imitating Michael’s voice, but that was far too likely to backfire, so he kept quiet. Nothing for it—but it meant that Stephen was out there now, with a gun, and he knew something was wrong. He’d be expecting an ambush.
After a moment the door’s knob began to turn.
Chapel would never get a better chance. As soon as the door cracked open he shoved his foot into the gap and kicked it wide open, swinging around so he stood face-to-face with a very surprised-looking Stephen.