Chimera (7 page)

“Because time was of the essence and I was already
working on this, the commander in chief decided I should remain in charge. But
Banks was given veto power over every move I made. He has not been shy about
using that power. It was his decision to send a single man rather than multiple
teams. He is far more concerned about maintaining secrecy in this matter than in
actually capturing the fugitives.”

“But if they're that dangerous—”

“He feels that allowing the public to know what's
going on would be an even greater threat to national security,” Hollingshead
said. He shook his head sadly. “He's a smart man, but I can't say I approve of
his priorities. He insisted that it had to be one man for this job. He wanted to
send that goon of his, but I insisted I choose the man. Any number of
twenty-five-year-old Navy SEALs came to mind, but no. I wanted someone who could
be discreet, somebody with some experience—no cowboys. This isn't a job for a
hit man; this is far more surgical. I picked you.”

“I appreciate your faith in me, sir,” Chapel said.
Even though he couldn't claim to understand it.

“You're going to curse my name before this over, I
don't doubt it. But I need you in this role. You are the last chance to keep
this thing in Military Intelligence hands. If you fail, I fail as well. Banks
will gain total control over this operation. He'll send his goon in and I think
you can guess what would happen then. The cretin will kill every shaggy-haired
man in a five-hundred-mile radius. The collateral damage will be astonishing,
and terrible. You and I both swore an oath to protect the American people. It's
you who's going to have to uphold that oath, because there can be no one else,
now.”

“I'll—I won't let you down,” Chapel promised.

“I know what we've handed you, Captain. I know how
I would feel about being given a mission like this and then being told I
couldn't know any of the details. We're playing a rotten joke on you, frankly,
and I'm sorry. It was Banks who insisted we send you out into this with an
incomplete briefing, as well.”

“I understand the need for secrecy, sir,” Chapel
said.

“I daresay you do. What neither you
nor
I understand—at least not completely, not yet—is
just how much is going on behind the scenes. Banks is playing a very deep
strategy here. He's keeping me from telling you everything I know. But he can't
keep you from finding things out on your own.”

“Sir?”

“Keep your eyes open, out there. Put the clues
together. If you're going to actually pull this off, that's the only way. Figure
out what we're not telling you—and why we
can't
tell
you. Banks won't like you peeling back the lid of his box of secrets, but he
can't stop you, not if you're smart about it.”

Chapel nodded in understanding.

“Whatever you do,” Hollingshead said, “keep
yourself alive. It's imperative to me that you don't get killed out there.”

“I—sir, that's—”

“Because, Captain, I don't have time to find a
replacement. Now get going! I've got a little surprise for you en route. You'll
get to meet your new partner.”

He shook Chapel's hand and headed back into the
Pentagon.

Leaving Chapel all alone—with a job to do.

BROOKLYN, NEW
YORK: APRIL 12, T+6:29

In Brooklyn an old woman was just being
roused from sleep. The bedside light came on with a click, and Dr. Helen
Bryant's eyes flickered open. She had been in the middle of her midday nap and
felt somewhat annoyed at being awoken. Then she looked up and saw a face looming
over hers and fear caught flame inside her chest.

“Please,” she said, clutching the sheets in her
fists. “Don't hurt me. I don't keep any drugs here. They're at my clinic.”

The face hovering over her was broad and cruel.
Male, perhaps twenty-five years old. His hair and beard were hacked short, as if
he'd cut them himself, and his eyes were hidden by large sunglasses. If she'd
been a little more awake, she might have known what that meant.

“Relax,” he told her, his voice a low growl that
held a purr of violence ticking over like an idling engine. She tried to sit up,
but a thick hand pressed down between her breasts and pushed her back. She
couldn't fight that hand—it was like struggling against an industrial press. She
could feel the bones of her rib cage flex as he pushed down harder. “I said
relax. My name is Brody. You know what I am.”

“You're not here for drugs,” she said, because she
was beginning to understand who Brody was. What he was.

“I said you know what I am,” Brody said. “Don't
mess with me.” He leaned down over her, close enough she could smell the dirt on
his skin. “I came a long way to find you. I had to know.”

He reached up and took off his sunglasses. She had
known already what she would see underneath, but still she gasped. His eyes were
black from side to side. There were no irises, no whites, just featureless shiny
black. Looking into them she felt like she was looking into a darkened
room—anything at all could be in there. There would be no predicting Brody's
behavior, she knew. He seemed calm enough now, but he could erupt in violence at
the slightest provocation. He was strong enough that if that happened, one
little old lady was not going to survive his wrath.

“You shouldn't be here,” she said. “How did you get
out?”

“I'll ask the fucking questions!” Brody shouted. He
grabbed the metal bed frame underneath her and yanked hard, throwing the
mattress, the box spring, and Dr. Bryant to the floor. She struggled with the
sheets wrapped around her neck and arms and tried to scuttle away as he reached
down with inhuman speed and grabbed her by the shoulder.

“No,” she screamed, as his fingers closed around
her clavicle and crushed it into powder. Pain ran screaming up and down her body
as her arm twitched wildly against the floorboards. “Please—please just—tell me
what you want to know! I'll tell you anything!”

Brody let her go. “That's better.” He walked over
to the door and shut it carefully. For a while he didn't look at her. He stared
down at his hands, at the floor. “That's . . . better. Just everybody
relax.” Was he talking to himself, as much as to her?

He sat down in the chair by her dressing table. He
dropped into it hard enough to make it creak, as if he wasn't used to fragile
furniture. She supposed he wouldn't be. “You left us there. You just left
us.”

Dr. Bryant was in horrible pain, but she knew she
had to do something. The telephone on the bedside table was useless. There was
no way help could reach her in time. There was a pen, there, however, perched on
top of the crossword puzzle she'd been working on before she fell asleep. She
grasped it with her weak left hand and fumbled the cap off.

“You—you didn't want us anymore,” Brody said, his
anger back to a low simmer. Dr. Bryant knew that the comparative calm wouldn't
last. He rubbed at his hair and face with both hands. “I guess we didn't work
out, huh?” A nasty grin crossed his face. “I guess we just weren't good
enough.”

Dr. Bryant dropped the pen. She'd managed to scrawl
a message on the wall next to the bed frame. Nothing complex, but enough that
the right people would understand what it meant. Assuming the right people ever
saw it.

“Brody,” she said, “It wasn't like that. It
wasn't—”

“You said you were our mother! You stood up on the
platform, and you shouted it through a loudspeaker. You were our mother, and you
were going to take care of us! Make sure we were okay!”

“We did what we could,” she pleaded. “It wasn't
safe to—to get any closer. We sent you food, and clothes. Toys—”

“You're pretty stupid for a doctor, huh?” Brody
asked. He dropped to his knees next to her and smashed her across the face with
a hand like a lion's paw. “Stupid! Stupid! I know how to read, you stupid bitch!
You gave us
books
. You gave us books so we could
read. Did you think we wouldn't figure out what a mother was supposed to be?” He
struck her again and again. “In the books, the mothers hugged their children.
They loved them! You never loved us,” he said, and his voice was a roar.

“It wasn't safe,” she begged, in between blows. “It
wasn't safe—we couldn't—we couldn't—please stop! Please!”

Brody stopped hitting her across the face. For a
moment he glared at her, his nostrils flaring. “This isn't going right.”

She could only stare up at him. Blood ran down her
face in streams.

“This isn't what I expected. I thought I was going
to come and talk to you, just talk. That I could learn something here. But I
just keep getting frustrated.” He shook his head from side to side.

“Brody,” she managed to squeak out, “Brody, I'm
hurt. I'll . . . I'll tell you anything. I'll . . . I'll be
your mother if you want, just—”

“You know what I am. You know we don't
do well
with frustration,” he said. Then he grabbed
her by her hurt arm and threw her across the room to smash against the vanity
table on the far wall. She just had time to see her own screaming face in the
mirror before she crashed into the glass with a shattering, tooth-rattling
noise.

Brody hurt her more after that but thankfully she
felt very little of it. She was dead long before he was finished.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL
12, T+6:46

Partner?

Chapel thought maybe Hollingshead had meant the
helicopter pilot. When he climbed on board, though, he saw that the pilot was an
air force kid who couldn't be more than twenty-five—and who had no idea who
Chapel was, where he was going, or what his mission was.

Chapel pulled on a crash helmet and moved the
integrated microphone around so the pilot could hear him. “New York City—as fast
as we can get there.”

The pilot confirmed, and in a moment they were
airborne. The chopper cut a wide arc around the Pentagon then slewed northeast,
headed straight over Washington.

Chapel sat back in his seat and let his gaze wander
over the landscape. He considered taking a nap. It was going to be a long flight
and there wasn't much he could do until they arrived. He was too keyed up,
though. Too excited—and scared—and worried—to even think about closing his
eyes.

Instead he could only let his mind race, thinking
over everything he needed to accomplish, everything he could reasonably do to
catch the detainees before they killed again. And about how it might already be
too late for the first name on the kill list.

He was lost in his own thoughts when a voice spoke
in his ear.

“Good morning, Captain,” a woman said.

It was the smokiest, most sultry voice Chapel had
ever heard. It was like someone was stroking his ear with a velvet glove.

He glanced over at the pilot, then back at the
empty seats behind him. Whoever this woman was, she wasn't onboard.

“No,” she said, with a chiding laugh. “I'm not
there with you.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Why don't you go ahead and think of me as your
guardian angel?” she suggested.

“What do you mean, guardian angel?” Chapel
asked.

The pilot of the helicopter glanced over at him
briefly, then shrugged and went back to flying the chopper. Apparently the pilot
wasn't hearing the voice in his ear.

That was probably for the best.

“Director Hollingshead asked me to keep an eye on
you, cutie,” the voice said. “I work directly for him, normally, but for the
next few days I'm all yours.”

“He mentioned something about a partner. What's
your name?”

“Well, my initials are NTK.”

He smiled despite himself. In other words, her very
name was Need to Know. “So you're the secretive type. I can handle that,” he
told her. “Let's just run down the list, shall we? What is your current
location? What's your rank? What's your official job description?”

“All those things are classified, and you know it.
You're playing with me,” she said.

“Just establishing some ground rules. All right.
Let's try another one. Are you going to be waiting for me when I land in New
York?” Chapel asked. “Surely you can answer that, since I'll find out one way or
another in an hour.”

“Captain, I'll
always
be with you. But this is as physical as I get. The sweet little voice in your
ear, making helpful comments and keeping you company. I've already been briefed
on your operation, and I'm looking for ways right now to help.”

“I'm not sure I understand.”

The voice sighed, just a little. “Let's put it this
way. While you're in the field you're not going to have a lot of time to check
your voice mail or look things up on Wikipedia. I'll do all that for you. If you
need a map to your next target, I'll send it straight to your phone. I guess, if
you really wanted to get on my bad side, you could call me your secretary. I'll
keep you up to date, I'll file your reports with the DIA, and I'll make any
phone calls you don't have time to make. But I can be so much more to you. I can
coordinate with law enforcement and the National Guard. I can make sure people
know you're coming and stay out of your way. I can get into any computer system
and make it purr for you.”

“Any computer? You're a hacker?”

“What an ugly little word that is. But yes. Any
computer, any microchip that's hooked up to the Internet. For instance, I can do
this.”