Chimera (43 page)

So, Chapel thought, it's distant from the local
police, and if they needed help it would be a long time coming. One road leading
in meant only one escape route if they needed to flee. Forested land was Quinn's
favored terrain—it was where he'd grown up. Add to that the usual problems of a
rural location: spotty cellular coverage (if any), frequent power outages, and
it would be pitch-dark at night.

But Hayes did have a point. The Voice, the author
of the kill list, wouldn't know where they were going. And he'd been right to
keep the information from Chapel as well—the last thing they needed was a repeat
of Stone Mountain.

“Okay. We'll leave tonight, about two in the
morning—”

“The convoy is gathering right now,” Hayes said.
“Reinhard has overseen everything. We'll leave as soon as the lunchtime rush
hour is over.”

Chapel sat back in his chair. He had pushed Hayes
hard enough already. Maybe it was time to ease up a bit. Still, it wouldn't hurt
to try reasoning with him. “It would be safer at night. I'd also like to get you
in a nondescript car. The black sedans your people use will make good decoys,
but if you're in a different car, then even if Quinn attacks during the transfer
you'll be safe.”

“I'm taking my limousine,” Hayes said, in a voice
that wouldn't brook disagreement.

Chapel sighed. “I've been trained in how to do
this,” he said.

“So has Reinhard.”

Chapel shook his head. “I was flippant about it
before, but really, whoever trained him had no idea what this situation was
going to be like.”

“I've known Reinhard for nearly ten years,” Hayes
said. “I trust him. He's kept me safe through riots and protests and death
threats from some of the most hardened criminals in Colorado. You, Captain
Chapel, I've known in person for less than an hour. When we get to the house,
he'll accept your command. You can see to security there as you please. But
right now I'm putting my life in his hands.”

“Okay,” Chapel said. “At least let me oversee the
embarkation. The absolute most dangerous time is when you move from this office
to your vehicle. I'll feel better if I'm watching you while you make that
switch.”

“As you wish,” Hayes said.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL
14, T+58:39

Chapel managed to get the judge into his limo
and moving out without incident. If Quinn was nearby, he didn't show himself.
Chapel supposed that was the best he could hope for, at the moment. The sedans,
several troopers on motorcycles, and a highway patrol vehicle formed up in a
loose convoy, headed north.

Hollingshead had said it wouldn't be enough.
Hollingshead had been certain of that.

Chapel rode with one of the troopers, in the patrol
cruiser, at the back of the convoy. Out on the road, under the big western sky,
an attack could come from any direction. He strained his neck trying to look
every way at once.

The mountains off to the west were wrapped in the
green majesty of heavy pine growth, dappled here and there by the shadows of
clouds that streamed across the big sky as fast as trailing smoke. It was a
spectacle that might have taken Chapel's breath away any other time.

“Are we likely to hit much traffic?” Chapel asked
his driver, a grizzled old state trooper named Young.

She shrugged. “Could be. The road to Boulder is
pretty heavily traveled all times of day. I've had no reports of congestion so
far, but if there's an accident . . . well, these roads really weren't
meant for all the people on 'em. There's four million people in the entire state
of Colorado, and two million of 'em live in this corridor, between Fort Collins
and Colorado Springs.”

“Great,” Chapel said. He watched civilian vehicles
go whizzing by on his left. They were moving fast enough he couldn't get a good
look inside any of them. Quinn wouldn't know how to drive, himself, but the
chimera in New York had proven how easy it was for one of them to commandeer a
vehicle.

If Quinn was coming from the north, headed toward
them, it would be easy enough to veer into oncoming traffic and ram the limo.
Even a chimera would know the long car was where the judge would be. At highway
speeds, that kind of collision might kill the judge outright.

Chapel touched the hands-free unit in his ear. “Is
the judge wearing a seat belt?” he asked.

“No, he is not,” Reinhard called back. “Keep this
channel clear, Captain. My men might need it in an emergency.”

Chapel shook his head. There was something wrong
here. Reinhard was acting like this was just a Sunday drive and Chapel's
paranoia was irritating him, rather than reassuring him like it should.

“Get the judge belted in. If someone rams the limo,
he'll go bouncing around in there like a pebble in a tin can, otherwise. And
keep that screen of motorcycles tight in his front left quadrant.”

“We're doing good, Captain. I want this channel
clear. If you have any more suggestions, keep them to yourself.”

Chapel watched a civilian car try to overtake them.
A motorcycle drifted out to their right to block its advance. The civilian
honked his horn but eventually got the point.

“If it's any consolation, I think you were right,”
Young said.

Chapel glanced across at the driver. “About
what?”

“About the seat belt. You know how many people we
have to scoop out of wrecks every year? That's half our job in the summer,”
Young said. “If people would actually wear those belts, a lot of them would
survive.”

“Colorado doesn't have a mandatory seat belt law?”
Chapel asked.

“Well now, we do, but we can't pull you over unless
there's some other reason,” Young told him. “Unless you're under seventeen, we
don't even make you wear a helmet when you're riding a motorcycle.”

“I guess things are a little different out west,”
Chapel said.

“Sure are. We all think of ourselves as having a
little cowboy in our souls, still. So we don't much like the government treating
us like children who have to be told what to do.” Young clucked her tongue.
“Does make you think twice, though, when you get a report of some family of
vacationers in a crashed car, and all you find is raspberry jelly all over the
dashboard.”

Chapel laughed, despite himself. “That's gruesome,
Young. Truly gruesome.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” she said. “I guess that's what we
call dark humor. Helps us get through our job. You know. You ever want to see
gruesome for real, you come out for a ride along with me up in the
mountains.”

“If I ever decide that yes, I want to see gruesome
for real, I'll do just that,” Chapel told her. He turned his head and saw one of
the sedans full of Reinhard's goons just ahead of him and to one side. “What
about those?” he asked. “Tinted windshields. I thought those were illegal,
too.”

“It's a kind of iffy thing. You're allowed to tint
them down to twenty-seven percent, which means twenty-seven percent of available
light gets through. I'd say those sedans are pushing the limit.”

“Only twenty-seven percent of available light?
That's ridiculous,” Chapel said. “How can they expect to see anything? They're
missing three-quarters of their visual perimeter like that.”

“I have a feeling, now, that Mister Reinhard
figures, if you can't see in, you can't tell who's in the car. So you can't tell
which car the judge is in.”

“Unless you notice that one of the cars is a limo,
and the rest are sedans,” Chapel pointed out.

“That
is
what we might
call, in my line of work, a clue,” Young agreed.

Chapel touched his hands-free unit. “Reinhard, your
people can't see anything through those tinted windows.”

“Captain Chapel? I told you to keep your thoughts
to yourself,” Reinhard replied.

“Have them roll down their windows. It'll be windy
but they'll survive,” Chapel ordered.

“Those windows are bulletproof, Captain. They're up
for a reason.”

Chapel grimaced. “Our guy isn't a shooter. That's
not his style. Roll down the damned windows.”

“Chapel, I swear, if you don't clear this—”

Reinhard's transmission cut off in midsentence. At
first Chapel thought something had gone wrong, that Quinn had somehow disrupted
their communications, but then he realized Reinhard had just muted his
microphone, presumably so he could talk to the judge.

“All right, Chapel,” Reinhard said, after a while.
“The judge says I have to play nice with you. I'll make you a deal. If I have
them roll down their windows, will you promise to stay off this channel?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Chapel said.

“I'll hold you to that,” Reinhard replied.

Young laughed. “That boy does not like you, he
surely does not,” she said. “You'd think the two of you might get along, being
in the same line of work.”

“Oil and water are both liquids, but they won't
mix,” Chapel pointed out. He craned his head around, watching all the sedans.
One by one they started lowering their windows and he could see the black-suited
security guards inside. The guards blinked and squinted as the pure mountain
sunlight hit their eyes.

“Tell the truth, now. Did you do that just to annoy
'em all?” Young asked.

“I think I'd like to have my lawyer present before
I answer that—”

Chapel stopped talking, then.

“Something wrong?” Young asked.

“Yeah,” Chapel said.

One of the security guards, up in a sedan just
ahead of Young's car, didn't squint or blink in the sun. No, he didn't need
to.

His third, black eyelid just slid down to protect
his eyes.

Quinn had been with them the whole time.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL
14, T+58:51

“Angel? Angel, can you hear me?” Chapel
called. There was no response. “Angel, come in! I need you to patch me through
to the walkie-talkie system Reinhard's people are using. Angel!”

Trooper Young glanced over at him. “Maybe we're
just out of cell range. Reception is still kind of spotty out here,” she
suggested.

“Maybe,” Chapel said. Though he'd assumed that
Angel's signal was carried by the satellite network, not by cell towers. She'd
reached him in all kinds of strange places.

He tried the leader of the security guards.
“Reinhard, come in. Reinhard—the assassin is riding in car three!” There was no
response. Just as there hadn't been since he'd first called the man. “Damn it,
Reinhard—I know you can hear me!” The head security guard wasn't responding.
Maybe he'd been serious about clearing Chapel off his radio frequency. Maybe
he'd turned off his walkie-talkie.

The timing suggested that was more than a
coincidence.

He grabbed the handset of the radio unit built into
the car's dashboard. He tried to raise anyone and heard only static in
response.

“That can't be right,” Young said. “I ran a radio
check not ten minutes before we left the courthouse. It was working just
fine.”

“Somebody's jamming it,” Chapel said. It was the
only thing that made sense. Except it made no sense at all. “We have to let them
know. There has to be some way to communicate with them.” Two of the sedans were
way up ahead, one in front and one in back of the limo. Car three, with Quinn in
its backseat, was just ahead of Young's car, which was trailing at the back of
the convoy. “Short of yelling at them—”

“There's a thought,” Young said. Chapel looked at
her, having no idea what she meant. She laughed and gripped the steering wheel
with both hands. “I guess I've been doing this longer than you. I remember back
before we had cell phones, before we had wireless Internet, before—”

“Young? What are you talking about?”

“Just hold on,” she said, and floored the
accelerator.

The patrol cruiser shot forward, swerving to
narrowly miss the rear bumper of car three. The sedan made way for them, though
the driver flashed his lights and honked his horn. Young ignored him. “There's a
pen and paper in the door pocket by your right hand,” she told him. “Write a
message, quick.”

Chapel scrabbled for the items—a ballpoint and a
citation book. He scrawled out the words
ASSASSIN IN CAR
THREE CALL REINHARD
while Young pulled up alongside car two, directly
behind the limo.

“Here, give me it,” Young said, and grabbed the
citation book. She flicked her siren on and off until the guard in the passenger
seat of car two looked over in their direction. She held the citation book up to
her window. “Is he looking?”

“Yeah,” Chapel said, watching the passenger's face.
“Yeah, I think he's got it. He's shouting something but I can't hear him.”

Young rolled down her window. Air burst into the
car, ruffling the pages of the citation book.

“I said,” the passenger shouted, “are you
nuts?”

Chapel grimaced in frustration.

“Our radio is out,” Young shouted back.

The passenger in car two rolled up his tinted
window.

“I don't think they're taking us serious,” Young
said. Her face was impassive, but Chapel knew she must be thinking the same
thing he was.

They were a guard detail for a man who had been
targeted by an implacable assassin. They might doubt what Chapel had to say.
They might think he was trying to sabotage the detail. But there was no excuse
for not being cautious and heeding what he said.

“We have to assume a few things,” Chapel told her,
picking his words carefully. “We have to assume they have orders not to listen
to us.”