The Cyclops Initiative (22 page)

It found nothing. Chapel's feet slid out from under him and the ground just seemed to give way.

The creek he'd heard had dug a narrow but deep ravine through the soil of the forest, and Chapel had blundered right over the edge of a steep slope. He could do nothing to stop or even slow his fall—­he could only curl into a ball as he bounced off rocks and exposed tree roots, hurtling down into the defile. Above him he heard Wilkes cry out, “Holy shit,” and the only thought in Chapel's head was,
That about sums it up
.

Sliding down the loose dirt of the slope, he came up very short as a fallen log caught and stopped him. His head bounced off the rotten wood hard enough that his vision lit up with a bright light. He felt skin come off his cheek as it rasped against the rough log. Icy water filled his shoe and his mouth was full of mud.

Okay, that sucked,
he thought—­when his brain was capable of anything but silent shrieks of pain and fear.
Now get up
.

Get up
.

His body refused to obey. He couldn't even lift his head. Chills ran up and down his spine, but he felt too weak to even shiver.

“Chapel?” Wilkes called out, from high above. “Jimmy? You down there? I know I heard you fall down there. You want to just give up now?”

Chapel couldn't have replied, even if he wanted to.

“I just want to talk. Honest.”

He couldn't tell if Wilkes was being sarcastic or not. He
was
pretty sure that talking wasn't the only thing on the marine's agenda.

“Come on, Jim. I could just start shooting in the dark down there. I could just hose you down with bullets. I mean, it would be a waste of good lead. But I bet I could hit you at least once. And I'm guessing one more would finish you off. Why don't you just talk to me, instead?”

Chapel realized suddenly that his eyes were closed. His injuries had exhausted him to the point where he could have gone to sleep right there on the edge of the creek.

Talking was out of the question.

It was possible that he did pass out. It was hard to tell the difference between unconsciousness and the dark, cold place he was in. He was certain time got away from him, drifting through his awareness like smoke. An hour? Thirty seconds? Who knew how long it was before he heard something else.

When the sound did come, it was a scatter of pebbles and twigs raining all around him, as if Wilkes had gotten frustrated and just chucked a handful of the forest itself down at him. One rock hit his leg hard enough to sting, but still Chapel made no sound.

“Well, shit,” Wilkes said.

And then Chapel heard boots crunching through leaves, and the sound was moving away from him. Receding.

Wilkes was just walking away.

Maybe he thought Chapel was already dead. Maybe he thought Chapel had crawled off, out of his reach. Chapel had no idea what the marine was thinking.

He didn't much care, either.

He waited a while longer—­not that he had much choice. Marshaling his energy, conserving his strength. Sure.

When he did finally move, his first attempt was pretty feeble. He just rolled over onto his back. That didn't achieve much, but it let him take an inventory of his various injuries. He felt like he had a lot of new bruises, but nothing had broken in the fall. That was good.

His gunshot wound was still bleeding. That was pretty bad.

Staying down, keeping out of sight might be a good way to avoid being shot again. But if he did that, he was just going to bleed to death. He needed to move. His body was adamantly against the idea, and it had a pretty firm veto to work with, since he wasn't going anywhere on sheer brain power. But he had to move.

Damn it, he had to move.

His body disagreed.

It was his foot that cast the lone dissenting vote. It was freezing in the stream and it really wanted to get out of the water. Eventually it twitched enough that his whole leg moved and pulled the foot free.

It was something. It was something to work with. Chapel forced himself to move his other leg as well, and then to roll up into a sitting position, leaning against the fallen log. He sat there panting for a while, after so much exertion.

He had another ally. His artificial arm didn't recognize that his body was in shock or that it wanted to shut down. It had its own energy supply and it moved when he wanted it to, damn it, not when it felt like it. With his legs and his prosthetic arm he forced himself to lunge upright, to get on his feet.

Good,
he thought.
Better
. Maybe—­maybe he had a chance.

Then he realized what he was going to have to do next, and it made him want to break down and cry.

He was at the bottom of the stream. He had no idea where the stream went or how far he would have to walk along its course to get anywhere. Looking back, he saw the slope he'd fallen down. Cliff might be a better term. Climbing back up there was way beyond his capacities.

That just left the other side of the stream. There was a slope there, too. It looked a lot gentler than the one he'd fallen down, a lot more climbable. But that was a relative concept considering the state he was in.

When life gives you a lot of bad choices,
he told himself,
take the lesser evil, right?
He tried to convince himself of that as he splashed across the stream and more or less fell against the far slope. He reached up with his artificial hand and tried to find something to grab, something he could use to haul himself upward. He found an exposed root that would make an excellent handhold. He grabbed it in both hands and
pulled
.

If he hadn't know there was an armed assassin somewhere nearby, he might have screamed. It felt like he was being torn in half. The wound in his side blared with agony, and blood spurted from the neat hole in his skin.

Before he could let himself think about it, he scrabbled to get his legs under him, to find anything solid in the slope that he could use as a foothold. A big rock gave him a little purchase. He used it. He would use anything he could get.

He reached up. Found another root.
Pulled
—­

“Jesus,” he whimpered. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” The pain was so bad he couldn't keep quiet.

He reached for another handhold. No way he was stopping now.

Little by little he pulled himself up. Kicked his shoes into the mud, grabbed handfuls of grass, pressed himself against the slope every time he started to slide back down. Inch by inch he climbed.

And then somehow he reached the top. He pulled himself up onto ground that was firm enough to hold his weight and he was there, he was at the top.

On the far side of the defile stood more trees. More dark woods for him to grope his way through, with no indication they would ever end.

He'd come too far to give up. He kept moving, his head bobbing, both arms waving in front of him to ward off branches and tree trunks. He stumbled, he staggered, but he kept moving, kept fighting for another step, another.

One of his feet kicked something very hard and unyielding. He dropped to all fours and felt it. It had the pebbly, rough texture of asphalt.

He'd found a road. He couldn't see it, couldn't tell where it went, there was no light to make anything out, but—­

Then, suddenly, there was far too much light, and the screaming noise of a car horn going off right next to his ear.

It was all he could do to lift his artificial arm in the air and wave it, to try to get the driver's attention, to make them stop in time.

 

WASHINGTON, D.C.: MARCH 23, 09:57

Wilkes got some stares as he walked into the little restaurant. He had some visible bruises, but he didn't think that was it. This was some kind of upscale place with folded linen napkins and chairs that looked like they would collapse if you sat down in them too hard. The tables were covered in shiny goblets of orange juice and ice water, and the ­people were all dressed in suits or business skirts and they all had great haircuts.

It was pretty tough for the marine not to plunk himself down, put his boots up on one of the tiny tables, and order a cheap domestic beer.

Instead he walked up to where Charlotte Holman sat with another man—­Arnold Grauen, the director of the whole NSA. Her boss and, just then, his. He came up to the table and saluted, even though they were both civilians.

There was an almost audible sigh from the other tables. They'd had trouble figuring out what a roughneck like Wilkes was doing in their fancy eating establishment, but this was, after all, D.C. You saw soldiers in D.C. all the time. Once they'd put him in the right pigeonhole, the fancy ­people could all forget that he existed and go back to enjoying their fancy lives.

“Please,” Holman said, “sit down. This is just an informal meeting.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Wilkes said. He took one of the empty chairs—­careful to make sure it would support his weight—­and put one of the starched white napkins in his lap.

The two of them, the subdirector and the honest-­to-­god director, both had plates of fruit and brown bread in front of them. Holman was drinking orange juice or maybe a mimosa and Grauen had a Bloody Mary. Wilkes wondered if he could get some good, plain coffee. It had been a long night.

“I was just bringing the director up to speed,” Holman explained. “I've told him that you secured the remaining hard drive of the Angel system and that you made contact with Captain Chapel.”

“Winged him, did you?” Grauen asked, dabbing at his lips with a napkin. He didn't look like much, even if he was one of the top spymasters in the country. Weedy and thin, with a receding hairline and wire-­framed glasses. Wilkes had heard Holman talk about him before and he knew she thought Grauen was worse than useless. A presidential appointee who had almost no experience in real intelligence work, and no great desire to learn how things were done. The man was an impediment to her work.

Still, sometimes you had to play nice. Even though the secretary of defense had put Holman in charge of this mission, she still had to report to her boss on her progress. Wilkes had been called in from the field to brief the man. A bullshit job, but it had to be done. He folded his hands in his lap. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Were you trying to kill him?” Grauen asked, his eyes blank. As if he'd just asked for the time.

“No, sir,” Wilkes said. “It was my intention to detain him for questioning. However, he assaulted my person and I was forced to defend myself. He evaded capture, but when I last saw him he had lost a great deal of blood. It's possible he died in those woods. I requested assistance from local law enforcement this morning and they are right now searching the area, looking for his body.”

“You think they'll find it?” Grauen asked.

He was asking if Chapel was dead. “I believe so, sir. Until they do I wouldn't like to assume anything, however.”

The director took a sip of his drink. “What about the hard drive?”

Wilkes opened his mouth to answer, but Holman beat him there. “We have it at a secure location, sir,” she said. “I have my best man, Paul Moulton, working on it right now. He's already given me a preliminary report, and I'm afraid the news isn't good.”

Intelligence ­people were trained to be pretty good at telling lies, but this woman was a pro. It was hard for Wilkes not to crack a nasty grin as he listened to her spin out her line of nonsense.

The director bought it, of course. He sighed deeply. “We've inherited quite a jackpot, haven't we? All right, spit it out. What's gone wrong now?”

Holman pursed her lips. “We found concrete evidence that rogue elements of the DIA—­namely, Rupert Hollingshead's working group—­were behind the attacks in both New Orleans and California. It's helpful to be sure about that. Unfortunately we also discovered that while the Angel system is no longer operational, there are other systems. Other neural networks, scattered around the country. Still online and ready to carry out more attacks.”

“Fuck,” Grauen said, his eyes going wide as if he was choking on his cantaloupe. “How many? When? Where?”

“That remains to be determined. My analyst is working on it nonstop. He'll have more soon. The main thing right now is that we need to make sure that Chapel is dead. And then we need to start thinking about bringing in Hollingshead for . . . questioning. It will of course have to be done quietly, perhaps under the National Defense Authorization Act provisions.”

The director stared at her. He put his fork down very carefully.

“Am I hearing you correctly?” He asked. “You want me to bring in a subdirector of military intelligence under a secret NDAA warrant? You understand what that means, I'm sure. They'll stick him in front of a military tribunal without any due process. Jesus, Charlotte. You know I can't do that without presidential approval. You really have enough evidence for that?”

“We do—­it's all on that hard drive. And I think we need to move on this right away. The NSA is already monitoring all his communications and anyone he meets with, but I'd like to have guards put on him to observe his movements at all times. We still don't know if he has the capacity to activate one of those neural networks and initiate another attack.”

“You're suggesting he's personally behind all of this,” Grauen said. “I've known Rupert for years. He never struck me as the type to betray his country.”

“He didn't? He's never gotten along with the rest of the intelligence community. A few years ago he went to extraordinary lengths to destroy Tom Banks over at the CIA. He's not one of us. He's made that very clear. What if he decided
we
were the traitors, and somehow thought he could bring us down with these attacks?”

Grauen pushed himself back from the table. “I'll authorize the guard detail around him,” he said. “And I'll talk to the president. But you'd better be sure about this. If Hollingshead goes down, it's going to tear the entire intelligence community in half. Every director at every agency is going to wonder if they're next.” He stood up and adjusted the sleeves of his suit jacket. “I want constant updates,” he said.

“You'll have them,” Holman assured him. She gave him a very warm smile and reached up to touch his hand. “Please give my best to Sarah and the children.”

The director nodded and then hurried off.

“You are one sly fox, lady,” Wilkes said when he was out of earshot. “When you called me into this meeting, I thought it was going to be some pointless backgrounder. Politics and bullshit. Instead I got to watch you crucify your worst enemy. Even if the president says no, he'll have to lock Hollingshead down tight, just to cover his ass in case there are more attacks.” He wanted to applaud, he was so impressed. Instead he reached for a menu. “French toast sounds pretty good, if they don't have pancakes. And I am in serious need of coffee.”

Holman tapped the top of the menu with one perfectly manicured finger. Wilkes lowered it to look at her.

The cold fury in her eyes might have turned another man to jelly on the spot.

“You'll eat when Chapel is dead and you can prove it,” she told him.

Wilkes knew better than to snap back at her. “Ma'am,” he said, very quietly, very patiently, “when I shoot a man at point-­blank range, he goes down.”

She shook her head. “Get the fuck back out there. Find me a body. And you'll start operating according to our protocols from now on. Moulton tells me you weren't even wearing your hands-­free set during the operation. You broke communication with him at the most vital time.”

Dude's a little turd,
Wilkes thought, because he couldn't say it out loud.
He would have just distracted me
. Out loud he said, “Yes, ma'am.”

SOUTH HILLS, PA: MARCH 23, 11:38

Chapel couldn't move. He was frozen in place. He tried to talk, but even his lips and tongue were completely immobile.

­People surrounded him. Injured ­people.

­People with pieces missing.

“I'll take that arm, if he ain't using it,” Ralph said, fiddling with the straps on his own prosthetic. “I mean, if that's cool.”

“Dibs on his leg,” someone else said. “It's not fair he got to keep it this whole time.”

“All of you, out of my way,” Top said, pushing the others away. He grinned down into Chapel's face. “I got seniority here. Let me take a look at that eye,” he said, and his teeth started growing points. “You're dead, army man. You're dead and we're not. Sure you see how that adds up.”

And then there were hands on him, hands at his knees and his shoulder, hands that twisted at his skin, twisted
hard
and his joints started coming unscrewed, his bits and pieces coming loose and there was less of him, less of him all the time . . .

Jim.

Everything faded away. It didn't so much go black as it just vanished. All the ­people, the room, his body.

Just nothing left.

Nothing.

Jim. Can you hear me?

Jim!

So far away. So far away and calm. Nothing there to worry about, nothing that could hurt him now. He felt no remorse, no regrets. It was all going to be okay, because when there was nothing left, nothing mattered.

Blink or something! Please, Jim, stay with me!

A little bit of light touched him. It annoyed him, in that nonplace. He tried to move away from it, but the light just followed him around, and it kept getting brighter and brighter.

He's not breathing—­

I've got a pulse, but it's—­

Hold his legs, he'll hurt himself thrashing like that—­

The light tried to go away. For some reason that bothered him, so he chased after it. He had no legs, so he wasn't running, but somehow he could move, move with the light, even as it fled away from him so fast, even as it dwindled until it was just a star on the horizon, until—­

Until it went out.

SOUTH HILLS, PA: MARCH 23, 15:02

With his eyes closed, there was nothing around him but sounds and smells. Some of the smells were repulsive. The stink of antiseptic cleaning products. The smell of his own body, which really needed a wash.

The sounds were better. They were soft, low sounds. Unobjectionable. The sound of his own breathing, of the air going into his body and then slowly, slowly leaking out. The rumbling, rolling hum of a washing machine in spin cycle, somewhere close by.

The tiny cascade of sound that hair made as it brushed the skin of his hand. The hair smelled good, too, so much better than he did. It smelled like a woman's hair.

Soft lips touched the back of his hand. Fingers gripped his, held them tight. That felt good. It felt like those fingers would keep him from floating away again. From disappearing.

The hair brushed his hand again and this time he felt it, felt a thousand little tingles as each individual hair met the nerve endings in his flesh.

Would that hair be red or brown? He kind of wanted to know. He wanted to open his eyes and find out. He took a deep breath and consciously willed his eyelids to flutter open, so he could see, so he could—­

The pain hit him so hard that tears burst across his vision. His head roared with blood and with agony and his whole torso spasmed and shook. It felt like he'd been nailed down to the floor with a huge iron spike. It felt like he was a bug pinned to a board, wriggling its legs desperately to try to get free, only hurting itself worse in its desperation.

“Jim! Jim, try not to move—­try to calm down, I know it hurts, I know it hurts, but you'll reopen your wound. We didn't have any painkillers, nothing stronger than ibuprofen, please, please try to calm down!”

He forced himself to put his head back. To stretch his legs out so they wouldn't thrash. He tried to focus on breathing, even though every time he inhaled it felt like he was being run through with bayonets.

Eventually, after far too much time had passed, he quieted down again. His body came back under his control. The pain was still there, it was absolutely not going away, but if he didn't move, if he was very careful with his breathing, it couldn't take control of him.

When he was finally able to blink the tears away, he looked down and saw Angel sitting beside him, pressing her face against his hand. She looked terrified.

Julia stood over him, doing something to the bandage on his other side. He knew the look on her face, though it took him a second to place it. It was the look she got when she examined a dog or a cat in her clinic, when she had to be very careful to keep her expression neutral so the owner wouldn't panic.

“Am I going to die?” he asked.

Julia leaned over him and looked directly into his eyes. He realized she was checking his pupils.

“I don't know,” she said.

SOUTH HILLS, PA: MARCH 23, 19:31

“We found you crawling in the road. You nearly got run over by a car. The driver wanted to take you to a hospital,” Julia explained. Angel was nowhere in sight.

“Wilkes would have found me there and finished the job.”

Julia nodded. “That's what Angel thought. I kept telling her there was no way I could treat you without a lot of equipment and drugs, but she was adamant. She convinced the driver that we would take care of you. He seemed relieved not to have to let you into his car.”