The Cyclops Initiative (24 page)

“Over my head, here,” Chapel said. “But I guess I get the point. We know that the NSA was smart enough to hide themselves from you. So any information you found like that was useless, right?”

“For most of it, yes,” Angel told him. “I analyzed thousands of packets. Almost all of them stripped. Almost all—­a handful of them somehow got missed. That isn't uncommon. Software is only as good as the person who wrote it, and everybody makes little mistakes. Normally it doesn't matter, if you use multiple-­step security, which the NSA always does.”

“Normally.”

Angel grinned. “Normally you aren't up against the likes of
me
. But bragging aside, I wouldn't have found this if I'd had anything better to do. I scanned the stray packets that still had their headers because I had nothing else to look at. I assumed they would be hidden behind proxy servers at the very least. But they weren't. This was just a simple bug in the system, but it let me see behind the curtain for the barest fraction of a second.”

She tapped a URL into the browser and brought up a mapping site. “The location you get from the packet headers can be laughably wrong or just really imprecise. In this case, it turned out not to matter.” On her screen the map zoomed in on a specific location, a large rectangular patch of white surrounded on every side by green. Chapel realized he was looking at a satellite image. “This is the only building that fits the coordinates. A place in rural Kentucky. It's surrounded on every side by woods and fields. I think it's some kind of mansion, or at least it was—­property records say the place was abandoned years ago.”

“Does it belong to the NSA?” Chapel asked.

“Well, no, it doesn't match the coordinates of
any
government or military installation I've ever heard of. It's definitely not an official NSA data center. But maybe that's the point. They didn't want to be traced back to their headquarters, did they? So they set up a server in some building nobody could ever attach to them.”

She shook her head and then came back over to sit next to him. The look on her face was not particularly hopeful.

“It's probably nothing. I mean, they could have just found an abandoned building and used the address to throw us off the trail.”

“Or?” Chapel asked.

“Or,” Angel said, “that building could be a secret NSA server farm. Which would contain all the evidence we need.”

Chapel would have asked her more questions, but they both turned then as they heard a commotion at the top of the stairs—­and then the door that led down to the basement banged open and boots tromped down the steps.

SOUTH HILLS, PA: MARCH 23, 20:30

Upstairs, five minutes earlier, the troops were in revolt.

“Maybe I don't own this house,” Ralph insisted, “but I have a right to know what's going on.”

“Fuck yeah,” Suzie said, bobbing up and down on her feet like she expected a fistfight to break out any second. Julia thought the woman probably wanted one.

“Look,” Julia said, “Top specifically said—­”

“Top ain't here,” Ralph pointed out. “He and Dolores wanted to go see a movie.”

Which explained why things had gotten so tense right now, Julia thought. Clearly the others had waited until the king and queen of the house were out of the way before they pushed for answers.

Julia was sympathetic. The three of them—­Chapel, Angel, and herself—­had burst in here before dawn the day before and disrupted everyone's lives. They were obviously in trouble and Top was clearly protecting them. But the others in the house—­Top's boys—­had no reason to feel loyalty to Chapel, and they were scared of what was going to happen to them. It wasn't an unreasonable fear. If the cops came storming in, the lot of them could be taken in as accomplices in harboring the fugitives.

“Look, I'll explain, but—­”

“No need,” Ralph said, pushing toward the door to the basement. “I'll just have a quick look for myself.”

It was Rudy who came to Julia's defense, then. “Now you just hold it, fella!” he said, putting his back up against the basement door. “I know this fine lady. If she says there's a reason to stay out of the basement, then I figure it's got to be a goodly one.”

“Seriously?” Suzie asked. “You pathetic old drunk.” And then she picked Rudy up like a sack of potatoes and threw him onto the couch.

Before Julia could stop him, Ralph had the door open and was pounding down the stairs in his heavy boots.

“There's a sick man down there!” Julia shouted, chasing after him.

But she couldn't catch him in time. He had already reached the bottom of the stairs. Suzie pushed past Julia to join him. The rest of the boys, including Rudy, stood up at the top looking down, as if they wanted to know what was down there but they were afraid and wanted Ralph and Suzie to go first.

She half expected them to run over and attack Chapel on the spot. But when she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw Suzie leaning up against the basement wall, arms folded across her chest. She refused to meet Julia's eyes.

Meanwhile Ralph stood in the middle of the basement, rubbing his mouth with his good hand. He was staring at Chapel.

No. He was staring at Chapel's left shoulder. What remained of his missing arm.

“He's been hurt,” Julia said. “He has a surgical wound. I don't think I need to tell you how serious an infection could be.”

“Don't worry,” Ralph said. “I'm not going to sneeze on him.” The one-­armed vet walked toward the camp bed—­then changed course and went to the bookshelf nearby. With his good hand and his claw he picked up Chapel's robotic arm.

And then he just stood there, staring at it. For a very long time.

“You could have just fucking told us,” Suzie said, still not looking at anyone.

“I'm seriously confused,” Julia said. “A second ago you were ready to tear this basement apart.”

“Yeah, a second ago,” Suzie said. She sighed dramatically and then leaned out over the stairs. “You bunch can come down now,” she said, and soon all the boys had tromped down into the basement, gathering in a respectful semicircle around the camp bed.

Julia shook her head, but there was nothing she could do.

Ralph grabbed a chair and sat down next to Chapel. He cradled the robotic arm in his lap like something precious. She supposed to a man with a claw replacing his lost hand and a piece of beige plastic for an arm, Chapel's prosthetic would be worth more than rubies and pearls.

“You're a vet. You were in the war and you lost an arm,” Ralph said.

“Yep,” Chapel replied. “That's how I became one of Top's boys.”

“You want to talk about it?” Ralph asked.

“He doesn't have to!” Suzie said, almost shouting.

“It's all right,” Chapel said. “I don't mind.”

SOUTH HILLS, PA: MARCH 23, 20:32

“I actually didn't see much of my war,” Chapel said. Most of the boys had pulled up chairs around his camp bed or were just sitting on the floor where they could hear him. Suzie still leaned up against the wall, scowling, but she wasn't the one who interrupted.

“Chapel,” Angel said, “this story's classified.”

“I guess we're past that now,” Chapel said, with a weak smile. “Anyway, these ­people are soldiers, marines—­”

“Sailors, too,” said a guy who had burn scars over half his face.

Chapel nodded gravely. “These ­people can be trusted,” Chapel said.

Angel stared at him with huge eyes. Then she just nodded.

Chapel launched into his story, then. “I'm older than most of you,” he said, nodding quickly at Rudy, who was the obvious exception. “I was in Afghanistan in the real early days. Just after September eleventh. I'd been trained by the Rangers and I thought I was the toughest, meanest son of a bitch ever created by the toughest, most morally upright country the world had ever seen. At the time we figured three months tops and we'd have Bin Laden in custody, we'd have knocked over the Taliban and taught everybody over there a lesson.”

Julia barely recognized the Chapel telling this story. He'd fallen into a whole different speech pattern, much rougher and more expansive than usual. She realized this must be how he talked around other soldiers, and she wondered if this was how he thought in his own head.

“A whole bunch of us got sent in to Khost Province where we thought we still had some friends. My unit had all been crash trained in the local dialect. We'd been taught which hand to eat with and how to show respect to village elders. We even had special dispensation from the regs to grow beards, to help us gain respect from the locals. My job was to meet up with a bunch of mujahideen—­guys we used to call freedom fighters—­and get them on the team. These were guys we used to pay to fight the Soviets, in the old days. They were already our best friends, right? It was going to be a cakewalk. There were Taliban everywhere, but our friends were supposed to protect me, keep me out of sight.”

“The Taliban were onto you, though?” Ralph asked. “I remember, they always seemed to know our business, sometimes even before we got our actual orders. They had spies everywhere.”

“This time they didn't need them. The main guy I was meeting with, he arranged transport for me; he was going to take me up to a cave complex where I was going to meet with a bunch of our kind of ­people. He showed up in an open jeep at the house where I was staying. No armor on it, no MG, just basically a beat-­up old car, except a car might have blended in, but this jeep was obviously military. I didn't like it much, but I figured they had their own ways of doing things and you had to go along to get along. My contact drove me about fifty clicks out into open country, a wide valley between two mountain ridges. I kept my eyes open, scanning the high ground, but I didn't see anything. At one point my guy brakes hard and stops the jeep because there's a flock of sheep crossing in front of us. Taking their time. Their shepherd kept making nasty gestures at us, calling us all kinds of names. My guy tells me this kind of thing happens, it's nothing, and if I give him a hundred dollars, he can get the sheep moving and we can be on our way. I give him the money and he jumps out of the jeep. He and the shepherd go wandering off to talk and work things out.”

Chapel grimaced. “You all know the feeling, I'm sure. That cramp in your guts when you just know you're being played. When shit is about to go down.”

The boys assented in a chorus of profanities.

“I didn't see the Taliban. I didn't have time to see anything. An RPG hit the jeep, getting in under the back of the undercarriage so the whole thing flipped over on top of me. Sounded like my head was an anvil getting hit with a big hammer. I couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything. I could smell lamb chops, though. Well-­done lamb chops.”

Julia was surprised to hear some of the boys laugh at that. The thought of Chapel under the jeep made her sick to her stomach. But she supposed when you lived in constant danger you learned to find humor where you could.

“My contact—­all the ­people I'd come to talk to—­had already made up their minds. They were honorary Taliban by then, one hundred percent committed. Seconds after the jeep flipped, they were all over me, pulling on me, screaming in my face, asking me where my money was and saying they would let me go for a million dollars. I was hurt, bad, and I couldn't do anything. They pulled me out of that wreckage, but they weren't gentle about it and they left a big chunk of my arm behind.”

“How'd you get free?” one of the boys asked.

“I didn't. They took me to that cave complex, the one I'd been headed for anyway. It was full of guys with AK-­47s and RPGs and even just machetes. Even if the place had been guarded by kittens, I was in no shape to fight my way out. They held me there with no food, just a little water each day, and they demanded information. They wanted to know where our troops were, where they were headed. They wanted to know what locals we'd contacted and who was looking to betray them. They wanted to know every piece of information I could give them. They wanted to know a whole bunch of stuff I had no idea about, too, and they refused to believe me when I said I didn't know.”

“Did they cut off your arm?” the burned sailor asked.

“No. No, they didn't touch it. They beat me occasionally, and sometimes they . . . well, they tortured me. But they left the arm alone. That was intentional. They kept saying that it was getting infected. That it was going to die unless I got medical attention. They made me watch as it turned different colors. They pushed it in my face so I could smell it rotting.”

“They let gangrene set in?” Julia asked, horrified. “You could have died!”

“Probably would have,” Chapel said. “I got lucky.”

“How?” Ralph asked.

“The best kind of luck you can get—­a SEAL team. It was just before dawn one day and my guards were already up, making breakfast. They liked to do that in front of me to remind me how hungry I was. One of them stood up to get some salt, and his brains came right out of his ear. The others ran for their weapons, but they were dead as soon as they moved. I was so out of it by then, so delirious, I thought it was all a trick. A ruse to get me to talk. I don't remember much else until I was on a helicopter, headed to a field hospital. That was the last time I ever saw my left arm. They knocked me out for surgery, and when I woke up, I was about eight pounds lighter.”

SOUTH HILLS, PA: MARCH 23, 20:46

“They couldn't save the arm,” Chapel said, looking around at his audience. It had been a long time since he'd talked about this with anybody. A long time since he'd let himself think about it. “The gangrene had progressed too much. It was poisoning me, and leaving the arm on would just make it worse. They cut it off while I was still asleep. Then they shipped me to Walter Reed so I could get pumped full of antibiotics and that was where I met Top.”