Chimera (24 page)

He could hear music. Faint music that sounded tinny like it was coming from a transistor radio. He banged on the door for a while, but there was no response. He tried the second door, but that was locked, too.

He headed down the corridor to the final door. The music seemed louder there. He rested his ear against the door and through it he could almost make out what song was playing. The sound had to be coming from behind that door.

His instinct was to draw his weapon. It was possible the chimera had beaten him here.

But he'd seen no sign of a struggle. “Mr. Funt!” he shouted. “Turn off your music and listen to me! I'm here to help!”

There was, of course, no reply.

Chapel grunted in frustration and grabbed the knob of the door before him. It turned easily and the door opened on well-oiled hinges.

Beyond lay a linen closet with a number of shelves. On one shelf sat the radio, playing some light jazz.

On another shelf sat a squarish box made of green metal, slightly convex, propped up on a pair of scissor-shaped legs. In raised lettering on the front of the box was the legend
FRONT TOWARD ENEMY
.

Chapel knew instantly that it was a claymore antipersonnel mine.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+26:51

Julia considered just leaving. After what Chapel had said to her, she was righteously angry—after everything she'd been through, for him to talk to her like she was an unruly child . . . it was sorely tempting to just walk away, to get a cab to the airport and go . . . somewhere else.

She was smart enough to know that would be a terrible idea, though. Laughing Boy was still out there somewhere, looking for her. He would eventually find her. And if she didn't have Chapel around to protect her when that happened, she would die.

But damn Chapel! She'd thought, after what had happened that morning, that maybe there was something between them beyond just his business. She'd begun to think . . . well, she had no idea what she'd begun to think. But that was over now. Right out of the question. He'd gotten what he wanted. He was the big strong knight in shining armor and she had fallen straight into his arms—arm—like she'd been following some cheesy Hollywood script, and she hated herself for that a little. Now that he'd fucked her he had lost all interest in her as a human being, clearly. Just like every other man she'd ever met before. If he thought she was going to share his bed again tonight, he was sorely mistaken. She was her own woman and she could make her own choices.

She couldn't just walk away from him, obviously. She was stuck with him. But while he was off gallivanting around, at least, she considered herself on her own recognizance.

There were shops around her, places she could go find some fresh clothes. Places to get something to eat. She
was
hungry.

And maybe if she left, the homeless guy would leave her alone.

“Do you like jazz?” he asked her, for the third time. He had a hopeful twinkle in his eye. Still.

“Not particularly,” she said.

Chapel had been down there for what felt like fifteen minutes. What was taking him so long? He just had to grab Funt and come back up. That shouldn't have taken more than a few minutes. She wondered if maybe he'd stumbled on some booby trap down there and gotten himself blown up.

It would serve him right,
she thought. Leaving her here with this wino so she could watch for the police.

From what she could tell, Underground Atlanta wasn't exactly high on the list of places cops went to hang out. It was clogged with homeless people and drug dealers.

“You're not a tourist, I can tell,” the drunk said, as if he'd just proved he was Sherlock freaking Holmes. “That guy you're with, he's some kind of—what? Urban explorer? Thrill-seeking spelunker?”

“He's a building inspector,” Julia said, thinking on her feet. “I'm his assistant. We had reports that radon gas was leaking from this place, so he went down to check out just how deadly it is. Just standing here is probably giving you cancer.”

The drunk's eyes went wide, but then he laughed. It was not a sound she particularly cared for. Not after the previous day, when she'd had to lock herself in her own drugs closet while a laughing man claiming to be a cop tried to shoot her.

“You're just foolin' an old fool,” the drunk said. “Tell you what. Let's play a game. The game's called Truth or Dare. You can pick which one—”

“I've played Truth or Dare before,” Julia said.

“I'll just bet you have,” he said, with a leer.

Julia just sighed.

“Okay, I pick Dare,” the drunk said, and he moved around her until she couldn't help but look in his face.

“I dare you to go brush your teeth,” Julia said. She turned away from him, not even wanting to look at him anymore.

But then she saw something that made her blood ran cold. A man in a charcoal gray suit. A man with a crew cut and a pair of thick black sunglasses, despite the gloom of the Underground. She knew his face.

It was Laughing Boy.

And he was walking right toward her.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+27:56

Chapel knew all about claymore mines.

They were designed to shred people. Nestled inside that green box were approximately seven hundred steel balls embedded in C-4 plastic explosive. When the mine went off, it would send all of them screaming forward, right through his body. The force of the explosion would deform them into the shape of bullets. Anyone standing as much as fifty meters away from the explosion would be cut to ribbons by the blast. As close as Chapel was, there would be little left of him afterward but red goo.

He threw his artificial arm up to protect his face. It would do no good at all, but it was a reflex action. So was screaming. He managed not to do that.

Instead he shouted, “Funt, I'm DIA!”

He knew something else about claymore mines, too. They weren't actually mines at all. They weren't designed to go off when you stepped on them or crossed a tripwire. They were designed to be remotely detonated by someone with a triggering device, someone nearby.

The claymore didn't explode. At least not for the moment.

Instead, Chapel heard a shrieking sound just behind him. He braced himself for instant death coming from some other quarter. When he didn't die, he slowly turned around and looked at what had made that noise.

The sliding panel in the reinforced steel door to his side was drawing back, tearing the paint around it as it moved. When it was retracted all the way, he saw a face behind it—the face of a man maybe sixty years old, wearing a pair of thick-lensed glasses. The eyes behind those lenses were hugely magnified. Chapel saw them narrow as they peered toward him.

“DIA?” the man asked. “They sent somebody from Military Intelligence this time?”

This time?
Chapel shook his head. No time to unravel that, not with a claymore mine right behind him. “My name's Chapel. Captain Jim Chapel. I was sent to protect you from the chimeras,” Chapel told him. His arm was still up across his face. Slowly he lowered it. “Please, please, do not detonate this thing. Are you still holding the clacker?”

Jeremy Funt—it could be no one else—held up the green metal detonator for the claymore. His thumb was resting on the trigger. “I am. I'm going to keep hold of it, for now. You have some kind of ID I can look at?”

“It's in my jacket pocket,” Chapel told him. “I'm going to reach for it now.” The man was a paranoid nut. There was nothing to be gained whatsoever by spooking him. If he thought Chapel was reaching for a gun, he might detonate the claymore on instinct. “Is that all right?”

“Sure. Just do it slow.”

Chapel nodded and carefully removed his laminate from his pocket. He held it up before Funt's eyes and let the man read it.

“I hope you'll forgive me,” Funt said, “if I'm a little careful.”

“I understand,” Chapel said. “There's one of them in Atlanta right now. We have to assume he's coming for you.”

Funt shrugged. “So what else is new? That's an old, old story.”

Chapel frowned in confusion. “I'm sorry? You're used to being hunted down by dangerous lunatics?”

“If by ‘dangerous lunatics' you mean ‘CIA hit men,' then . . . yes,” Funt replied.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+27:03

“Come on, come on,” Julia whispered, pressing the redial button on her phone. “Chapel, pick up already!”

But there was no answer. This was the third time she'd tried to call Chapel's number and he still wasn't picking up.

When she saw Laughing Boy coming toward her, she'd panicked. She just ran, not knowing where she was headed, not knowing what she should do. She'd gotten around a corner and found a women's restroom and ducked inside and started dialing.

She had no illusions that Laughing Boy wouldn't follow her inside. She just hadn't known where else to go.

“Shit,” she said under her breath.

And then she nearly screamed, because her phone started to buzz in her hand.

She stared at the screen and saw she was being called by someone whose phone number was listed as (000) 000-0000. What the hell?

The phone kept buzzing. She swiped the screen to answer. “Hello?” she asked, keeping her voice as low as she could.

“Dr. Taggart,” a woman's voice said, “you've been trying to call Captain Chapel for a while now. He's outside of cellular coverage and can't take your call, so I thought I'd make sure you were all right.”

“Who are you?” Julia demanded. For all she knew this was somebody who worked with Laughing Boy trying to track her down.

“You can call me Angel,” the woman on the other end of the line said. “I'm sure you've seen Captain Chapel talking into his hands-free unit. I believe you said it made him look like a douche bag. I was the person he was talking to.”

Julia shut her eyes and tried to breathe. “Thank God. I'm in real trouble here. I need you to send help or something. There's this guy—this, I don't know, he claimed he was a policeman before, but that was in New York, this guy who tried to kill me, and—”

“You're talking about Laughing Boy,” Angel said.

“Yes,” Julia told her. “He just showed up here, in Atlanta. We're in some kind of underground mall and—”

“I have your location. Dr. Taggart, I need to ask you a personal question. From everything I've seen so far, you're a pretty strong woman. Would you say that's a correct assumption?”

Instantly Julia calmed down. She opened her eyes and changed her grip on the phone. “I like to think of myself as a competent person.”

“Right now I need you to be one tough bitch,” Angel told her.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+27:05

“I don't understand,” Chapel said. “The CIA is trying to kill you? You know that sounds crazy, right?”

“Captain,” Funt said, “I have a clacker in my hand ready to detonate the claymore mine behind you. I'm well protected behind this door. You might be smart about this and not insult me.”

“That's a fair point,” Chapel said.

“The CIA has been trying to kill me for nearly fifteen years. I know too much to be left free and alive. I've survived this long by being quick on my feet and not taking chances. You claim to be a DIA agent, but it would be relatively easy for a CIA assassin to fake those credentials. So I'm assuming that you're just the latest in a long line of hit men.”

Chapel shook his head. “You have to believe me. You have to trust me.”

“I do?” Funt asked.

“Yes! There's a man coming for you right now, someone who isn't a CIA agent but who definitely wants to kill you. I don't know what kind of threats you think you've survived all this time, but—”

“In 1998, they sent a team of men in commando gear, carrying M4 rifles, to my home. I happened to be coming back from the grocery store at the time and so I nearly walked in on them ransacking my place. I turned around and drove away and never went back. Since then I've been moving every few months, staying light on my feet. In 2001, they caught up with me in Montana. You ever been to Montana, Chapel? It's big sky country. Lots of open space, not a lot of good places to hide. They only sent one man that time, maybe because they figured I would be expecting a team, maybe because they thought they had me cornered. This guy was pretty slick. Claimed to be FBI, like I used to be. Said he wanted to discuss some old cases with me. I had him inside my house and pointing a gun at my face, ready to shoot. The only reason I survived was because I'd already poisoned his coffee.”

“Jesus,” Chapel said. This guy was crazy. Dangerously crazy.

“He lived. I didn't want to kill anybody, not back then. I just fed him enough rat poison to give me time to get out of there. To escape. I went to New Orleans. Now there's a place a man can lose himself. Or at least I thought so—until 2003, when the same man, the one I'd poisoned, came for me again. I couldn't take any chances that time. I set fire to my own apartment on the way out. Maybe he got out in time, maybe he didn't. I didn't go back to check. In 2006, a new guy started coming for me.”

I'm going to die here,
Chapel thought.
I'm going to die because this man is insane and he thinks anyone who comes looking for him is an assassin.

“This one figured he'd play it real simple. No false ID, no tricky attempts to convince me he was an old friend. He just walked up to me in the parking lot of a Starbucks and started shooting. I got out of there by the skin of my teeth.”

“So the bomb in your house—”

“Just in case,” Funt explained.

The story was nuts, but it explained one thing. There had been dust all over Funt's house, far more dust than could be easily explained. At least, it couldn't be explained if Funt had set the bomb only after Angel called him.