The Cyclops Initiative (35 page)

As a burst of rounds sped toward Chapel far faster than he could dodge, he was only barely aware of the fact that Contorni was firing a weapon that was just balanced precariously on a wheeled dolly—­it hadn't been bolted down or secured in any way.

Three bullets did hit Chapel, though all of them tore through the silicone flesh of his artificial arm and none of them drew blood. Those bullets escaped the weapon with enough velocity and momentum to knock the entire gun sideways and then backward until it was spraying bullets into the wall and then the ceiling of the warehouse. Eventually the entire assembly—­barrels, receiver, feed system, and ammunition drum, weighing approximately three hundred pounds, fell backward off the dolly and rolled on top of Harris Contorni, who gave out a little shriek and then let go of the trigger mechanism.

The noise of the weapon discharging was enough to make Chapel's ears ring. That passed quickly enough. The surprise he felt at finding himself still alive and mostly in one piece took a lot longer to process.

By the time he could move again, Wilkes had come up beside him, a pistol in either hand, both of them pointing at the ceiling.

“What happened? You okay?” he shouted.

Chapel looked over at Wilkes. Then he looked back at Contorni, who was still wrestling with the M130, unable to get out from under it. He opened his mouth to say something. Reconsidered that thought. Closed his mouth again.

Pinned to the floor, Contorni finally shouted, “One of you assholes gonna help me out here, or what?”

TOWSON, MD: MARCH 25, 12:43

“Your men all ran off, once they heard the shooting,” Wilkes said. “They were smart. You, on the other hand, tried to kill an employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency. You do understand what that means, don't you, Harris?”

They had Contorni tied to a chair in an office at the back of the warehouse. To his credit he made no attempt to struggle or get free. “I've got so many lawyers on my payroll they're gonna name a library for me up at Columbia Law,” Contorni insisted. “I was defending my property, wasn't I? I had no idea who broke in, just that they got past my security. I was afraid for my life.”

Chapel shrugged. “You're right. We don't need this guy.” They had, after all, come here looking for weapons. Not to charge Contorni with any crime.

Wilkes didn't seem to get that, though. He pressed the barrel of his silenced pistol against Contorni's cheek. “I might start by blowing your teeth out,” he said. He moved the pistol down to Contorni's chest. “Then again, maybe we just puncture a lung.”

Chapel fought to keep his face under control. This was not at all how he'd imagined the operation would go down. “Wilkes,” he said, “just—­”

“Just kill him?” the marine asked. “I could. But then we wouldn't get to find out why he's been lying low the last ­couple of months.”

“I know ­people,” Contorni insisted. “I know the kind of ­people, if you kill me here, they'll come find you. Find you when you're asleep and—­”

Wilkes pressed the barrel of his pistol against Contorni's arm and pulled the trigger.

The black marketeer howled in panic and distress, and Chapel had to look away. He knew perfectly well that Wilkes had at most just grazed Contorni's skin. He would get a nasty powder burn, but the wound was unlikely to even scar.

Given what Wilkes had been threatening, though, it must have felt like a real gunshot wound.

“For months now,” Wilkes said, “this dickweed and I have been watching you. Tracking your every movement. We know what you do for a living, Harris. We know you steal guns from the Proving Ground and then sell them to whoever has the money. Street gangs. Hit men. White power groups. But the last ­couple of months, you haven't so much as sold a bayonet to a Civil War reenactor. You want to explain why?”

Contorni was still howling. Chapel could barely hear Wilkes over the noise. Somehow, though, the screams turned into words. “Knew you—­were there—­not stupid—­enough to—­”

“You knew we were watching you?” Wilkes asked.

Suddenly Chapel was very interested in this interrogation. “How?” he asked.

Contorni calmed down enough to explain, a little. “There was this, this guy, this little creep, I only saw him one time. Came to the place where I, where I get my breakfast. Sat down in front of me. Told me the DIA was on my trail. Told me your names, gave me pictures of you. I saw you at the motel and—­”

“This guy, was he wearing a sweater vest and a tie?”

The look on Contorni's face was answer enough.

Wilkes didn't bother asking Contorni any more questions. He kicked over the black marketeer's chair and left him there, his cheek pressed up against the concrete floor, still whimpering.

Chapel and Wilkes left the office and closed the door behind them so they could talk. “Moulton wrecked our case,” Wilkes pointed out.

“I guess he wanted to make you resent Hollingshead even more, by making your assignment as boring and pointless as possible.”

Wilkes nodded. “I knew that guy deserved a bullet.” He walked over to the nearest shelf and grabbed one of the cardboard boxes stored there. He put his weapon in his pocket, then cut open the box using the knife he'd taken off Contorni's guard. “Time to go shopping,” he said.

Chapel was not particularly surprised to see that the box contained M4 carbines. Standard gear for the kind of soldiers stationed at the Proving Ground. He lifted one and made as if to offer it to Wilkes, but it was hardly what the mission called for. Wilkes grunted and went to another shelf, this one with larger boxes. “What do you like, Jimmy? Combat shotties? Grenade launchers? You can pretty much take your pick.”

“I usually just carry a handgun,” Chapel replied. He headed over to another shelf and started examining the boxes there. They were all marked as containing stereo equipment. “Something with some stopping power but a nice magazine size. If you come across any SIG Sauer P228s—­”

He stopped because he heard Wilkes laughing.

Coming around the side of a shelving unit, he found the marine standing over a very large box full of Styrofoam. Sticking up out of the packing material was a device made from what looked like lengths of green pipe welded together.

“Is that what I think it is?” Chapel asked.

Wilkes had a huge grin on his face. “Harris!” he shouted. “Contorni! You don't screw around, do you?”

TOWSON, MD: MARCH 25, 15:38

Chapel was laughing despite himself by the time they got back to the motel. Wilkes's sense of humor could be a little coarse, but sometimes you just needed to blow off a little steam. After running for his life for days on end, it was good to feel a little safe, too, even if he knew that he was about to throw himself right back into the path of the oncoming train.

Julia was watching TV when they came in. “You should see this,” she said, working the remote control to raise the volume. “Things in California are getting worse, not better. They say there's a virus in the power grid, and it's spread as far north as Seattle and down to the border with Mexico. The government can't say when they'll get it fixed, and meanwhile ­people are rioting in the streets. Plus, there's been a run on bread in the Midwest—­a loaf of that processed bleached garbage stuff was going for twenty dollars this morning! The country's about to collapse.”

“Lucky the good guys are on the case,” Wilkes said.

“This is serious,” Julia told him.

“And we're serious, too,” Chapel said. He'd brought a six-­pack of beer. He cracked open a can and handed it to her. She stared at it like he'd just handed her a live lobster, but after a second, she seemed to rethink her position and she took a long sip.

They called Angel, and she came over from the room next door. By then Chapel had a road map of the area around Washington spread out on the bed. It was time to get planning. He offered Angel a beer, too. “Probably our last chance to relax before this thing is all over.”

“We could all be dead tomorrow morning,” Wilkes pointed out.

“Thanks, I'm good,” Angel told him. “Did you see the thing on TV about the president's speech?”

Chapel was too busy smoothing out the map to pay much attention. “Does he think that he can calm ­people down by talking to them?”

Angel shook her head. “The pundits say that, given the number of staffers working on it, this is going to be more than just a call for peace. They think he's going to announce something big. Like maybe that the power outages and the food prices are the work of terrorists. One guy even suggested he was going to declare war on China.”

Chapel looked up when he heard that.

“It was just some crackpot,” Angel said, blushing and looking away. “But that's out there, now. ­People are talking about it.”

Chapel shook his head. He didn't have much use for speeches as a rule. Politicians talked, because that was their job, even when they had nothing real to say. But if there was even a hint of retaliation—­

“The president won't attack China just on principle,” Julia insisted. She looked to Wilkes. “When you were burrowing your way into this conspiracy—­was there any sense that this Initiative or whatever was taking orders from China?”

“No, everyone involved kept insisting what a patriot they were. The kind of ­people who argue over who's wearing the bigger flag pin.” He shrugged. “I don't know who's at the top of this, though. Could be Beijing. But if it is, they've covered their tracks pretty good.”

Chapel chewed his lower lip. There were wheels within wheels here, games within games. Bringing China into the mix was probably just disinformation—­a way to point the blame away from Holman and her Cyclops Initiative. It didn't matter what he knew, though. It mattered a great deal what the public believed.

Well. Nothing he could do about that. “No matter what, our move has to be rescuing Hollingshead. So let's look at that.”

Wilkes nodded. He drained his beer can and tossed it in the corner of the room. Then he leaned over the map and stabbed it with one finger.

“They forced him out of his offices a while back. Tried to make him resign, but the latest I heard was he was just acting like he was taking some vacation days.”

Chapel looked where he was pointing. It was a little bump of land sticking out into the Potomac River, just south of Ronald Reagan airport. “There's something there,” he said, trying to remember his Washington geography. “Boats. A marina, I think.”

Wilkes nodded. “Let me guess. He never told you where he lived, did he?”

“That was never something I needed to know,” Chapel pointed out.

“He spends most of his time at work, up at the Pentagon. But he sleeps on a yacht down there. He'll be there right now. But it's not as easy as coming alongside in a rowboat. Holman pulled a snow job on her boss, the NSA director. She wanted to put Hollingshead in a cell so he could be interrogated. The secretary of defense vetoed that—­which did not make her happy—­but her boss did authorize her to monitor Hollings­head's communications and movements twenty-­four seven. He also put a bunch of guards around the old guy. MPs, drawn from Pentagon staff, if I heard right.”

“Any idea on how many of them, or where they're posted?” Chapel asked.

“That wasn't ever something I needed to know,” Wilkes said.

Chapel nodded. “Give me your smartphone. I need a better map of that marina. If I can see all the access roads and good hiding spots, I can figure out how they've constructed their security. And then I can think about how to get in.” He looked up at Angel and Julia. “We should get some rest, too. I'm going to need all of us to pull this off. We won't leave until after dark, so we have a ­couple of hours downtime.”

Wilkes stretched his arms. “Sounds good to me. Wake me up if the Chinese start nuking us or something.”

Chapel was too busy working the smartphone to reply. After a minute, Angel came over and took it away from him because she thought he was using it wrong. “Google Maps isn't going to show you what you need,” she told him. “You want a real street map, the old-­fashioned kind. Let me show you how to access those.”

It was good to be back to something approximating normal.

OVER LANGLEY, VA: MARCH 25, 16:12

The nation's fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles had gone through quite a workout in the last twenty-­four hours. Every aircraft had been grounded and checked out by a team of mechanics, their hardware stripped down from nose to tail and checked for any sign of unauthorized maintenance or sabotage. Those drones that were not considered vital to national security had been physically grounded, the mechanics actually removing their propellers and emptying their fuel tanks so they could not be commandeered by anyone.

Of the thousand-­odd drones that would normally be airborne on a night like this, ranging from tiny hand-­launched spy craft like toy helicopters to strategic reconnaissance drones big enough to look like passenger jets, only a handful were allowed up in the air.

Some of the drones had to stay airborne, by order of various agencies. There were those which were part of ongoing criminal investigations, and those tracking the borders for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants. These were allowed to go aloft again, but only with extra supervision in their ground control stations. Then there were the armed drones that circled various high-­value resources day and night: crucial airports and satellite uplink sites, the “backbone” facilities that kept the Internet running, Camp David and the White House. Those drones were there to prevent another 9/11—­if someone tried to fly a commercial aircraft into a collision course with the sites, the drones would shoot the terrorists down before they could reach their targets.

Those drones were vital to national security.