Chimera (8 page)

She went silent for a moment and Chapel wondered
what it was she thought she was doing—breaking into his bank account? Changing
his e-mail password?

Then he saw his own hand come up in front of his
face. His left hand. The hand rotated to face him and then the fingers wiggled.
His hand was waving at him.

Sweat broke out on his forehead. He hadn't told the
arm to do that—he couldn't even feel what it was doing. He grabbed the wrist of
his artificial arm and forced it down into his lap. It tried to fight him, to
break out of his grip, but he held on as hard as he could.

Apparently this guardian angel could take control
of his arm. Any time she wanted. It had a wireless Internet connection built in,
he knew that—the microcomputer built into its circuitry had to get firmware
updates from time to time—but he had never considered for a moment before that
that might be a security flaw.

If she could do it—anybody could.

Adrenaline surged through his body, and he fought
down an urge to tear the arm off his shoulder and throw it out the helicopter's
window.

Slowly he fought to regain control of himself. He
glanced over at the pilot. The kid was looking at him out of the corner of his
eye. He was frowning. He must have seen the whole thing.

The embarrassment helped Chapel slow his heart rate
and start breathing again.

“Angel,” he said, because she still hadn't told him
her name.

“Ooh, I like that,” she said. “From now on, that's
what you'll call me.”

“Angel,” he said, almost growling, “don't ever do
that again. Seriously.”

“I know that was a little naughty of me—”

“Angel!” he interrupted. “I'm an amputee. I lost a
part of myself once, do you understand? Can you understand why I would be a
little sensitive about losing it again?”

She said nothing. Hopefully she was feeling
terribly guilty and was too embarrassed to say anything.

“Let me show you what that was like,” he told her,
because he was very close to getting furious. Nobody messed with his arm. “I'm
not supposed to know anything about you. But I know you aren't military. You're
a civilian.”

“That's—that's strictly NTK,” she gasped. “Who told
you that?”

“You did.”

She didn't sound so playful anymore. “Damn it,
Captain. If I have a breach, I need to know about it
right
now
. This is national security tech I'm working with here—if it's
been compromised—”

“Relax,” he told her. “Nobody's hacked your system.
I just used my amazing powers of deduction. You referred to our mutual boss as
Director Hollingshead. That's probably his official job title. But anyone who'd
ever served in the armed forces would know better—they would call him
Admiral
Hollingshead.”

That long, uneasy silence again. Maybe she was
thinking that if he could figure that out he was dangerous to her. Maybe she was
about to tell his arm to strangle him.

When she came back on the line, though, her voice
was as sweet and sexy as it had ever been. “I think I'm going to
like
you,” she said. “You're going to keep me on my
toes. Well, we have just tons of work to do, don't we? Where do you want to get
started?”

Chapel shook his head. This was not exactly what
he'd expected when Hollingshead told him he was going to get a partner.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL
12, T+7:32

“First things first. I'll be in New York
soon. The address I'm headed for is in southern Brooklyn. Is there a helipad
nearby?”

“Very near by. The address you're thinking of,”
Angel said, “is in Brighton Beach, and there's a heliport less than a mile away,
just the other side of Marine Park.” Chapel's BlackBerry turned itself on and
vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and looked at the map shown on the
screen. Angel highlighted both the address he wanted and the location of the
heliport. “You caught a break there—it's about to turn into rush hour in New
York. If you had to touch down in Manhattan, you could have been looking at an
hour ride on the subway.”

“Considering my mission I don't think the subway
would have been appropriate,” Chapel pointed out.

“Sweetie, in New York, during a workday? The subway
is the
only
way to get around. But seeing how close
you'll be, I'll have a car waiting for you when you arrive. See how useful I can
be? I'll get you a visual reference on the address as well, so you know when you
get there and don't have to go hunting for house numbers.”

“Good,” Chapel said. “How long until I land?” He
glanced out the window and saw urban sprawl beneath him, but that meant
nothing—most of the land between D.C. and New York was built up to one degree or
another.

“Not for another half an hour yet.”

“Okay. You have my list of addresses.” He didn't
want to call it a
kill list,
not when the pilot
might be listening. “Can you get phone numbers for each of those names? I want
to call them all now and make sure they know they're in trouble.”

“That's just a piece of cake, sugar. But are you
sure you want to do that?”

“Why not?” Chapel asked.

“Not to be a pill, but part of your job is making
sure this doesn't get any public attention. If you tell these people that crazed
lunatics are coming for them, what's to stop them from going to the media?”

Chapel frowned. “If I talk to them the right way,
make sure they know that's not in their best interests, I think we can minimize
that. The last thing these people want to do is advertise their locations. I
just want to make sure they get somewhere safe, like a police station or an army
base. Somewhere we can protect them.”

“Director Banks isn't going to like that,” Angel
chided.

“We don't work for him. I'll handle any blowback.
But I won't have these people made into sitting ducks. I'll do anything in my
power to keep them alive.”

Angel clucked her tongue. The sound was annoyingly
loud in Chapel's headphones. “I should really run this past
Director—Admiral—Hollingshead.”

“Do what you have to do, Angel, but get me those
phone numbers. These are human beings. They're American citizens. They have a
right to protect themselves. That's not something the intelligence community
gets to take away when it's convenient.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. Jim—”

“Call me Chapel. Everybody does.”

“Okay. Chapel. I'll get those numbers. And I'll
make the calls for you, that's part of my job. I'm sorry I questioned you. I
don't ever get to meet the people whose lives I touch. Sometimes I forget that
sort of thing.”

“It's an occupational hazard. We're in the business
of protecting people, but to do that, sometimes we can't tell them the whole
truth. Sometimes we have to lie to them, frankly. If you do that long enough,
you forget that it's not a good thing. People like Banks forget that's a
regrettable necessity, not the whole of their job. I won't make that mistake,
not if I can help it.”

“Thanks, cutie. Okay, I'll take care of that.
Anything else?”

“I need as much information on those people as you
can dig up. I need to know what they do for a living, where they hang out after
work, what kind of family they have.”

“Want their shoe sizes? I can get those,” Angel
joked.

“I somehow doubt that,” Chapel told her.

“Seriously? Do you know how many people buy their
shoes online these days? People are lazy. They'll do anything they can online
because then they don't have to get off the couch. Look at me—I'm saving the
world and I can do it from my bathtub, if I feel like it.”

Chapel fought down the urge to ask if she was in
the bath right at that moment. He had work to do.
Focus,
he thought. “Okay. Okay. The real thing I want to know is why
they're on that list. You have any idea about that, Angel?”

“I didn't get any details you haven't already
heard,” she told him. “Looking at this list, I don't see any immediate
connections. Maybe something'll come up as I get more facts on them. Let's start
with the first name on your list—the one in Brighton Beach. Name, Bryant, Dr.
Helen. Lives on Neptune Avenue. Sounds like a fun place. Occupation: Genetic
Counselor.”

“What's a genetic counselor?” Chapel asked.

“Let me Google her . . . ooh, she's got a
website! I love it when they have websites. Nice-looking lady, if your taste
runs to older women. Looks like she's an ob-gyn. She sees pregnant women and
helps them find out if their babies are healthy, and what they can do if it
turns out the babies have genetic problems. Oh my God, that must be the saddest
job in the world sometimes. Can you imagine?”

“I've never had kids. Never got the chance,” Chapel
said.

“A man of your age should have a wife, Chapel. A
wife and lots of happy little healthy babies. I'm finding all kinds of stuff
about Dr. Bryant here. Looks like she's pretty famous in certain circles—she's
won all kinds of awards, gotten commendations from numerous institutes, worked
for the National Institutes of Health for a long time . . . did
fieldwork in Africa during the early part of the AIDS crisis. Weird, looks like
there's a police bulletin about her too. Let me just take a peek
. . .”

Chapel imagined Angel crouched forward looking at
her computer screen, scanning through dozens of web pages at once. When she
didn't come back on the line after a few seconds, he began to wonder what she'd
found. “Angel? Is everything okay?”

“No, sweetie. It's not. At least, not for Dr.
Bryant.”

IN TRANSIT: APRIL
12, T+8:02

“Goddamn it, no!” Chapel shouted, and he
punched the instrument panel of the helicopter with his good fist. The pilot
started to protest, but the look on Chapel's face must have warned him off. “She
can't be dead. I can't be too late.”

“The police are already on the scene,” Angel told
him.

“Damn it,” Chapel said, but more muted this time.
He'd known how tight the time frame was, known that people had already died at
the hands of the detainees. But this was the first civilian—the others had been
military personnel. That didn't make their deaths much easier to bear. But
they'd known what they were getting into, or at least known they were dealing
with dangerous people. Nobody had even told Dr. Bryant she was in danger.

“Do you still want to go to Brooklyn?” Angel asked.
“I can change your flight plan and take you to the next address instead.”

“No,” Chapel said. “No. I need to see the crime
scene. There might be some evidence there that can help me track this bastard.
And we know he was in the area recently—maybe I can catch him now before he
moves on to the next target.”

“All right, Chapel. You'll be on the ground in a
few minutes.”

The chopper curved in over New York Harbor and then
made a straight line across Brooklyn, an endless sea of two- and three-story
buildings, rows of brownstones and warehouses and churches punctuated in only a
few places by taller structures. The pilot shed altitude as they came in over a
rectangular slice of greenery by the ocean. It looked like a salt marsh. On the
far side Chapel saw the heliport, a commercial pad with a few civilian choppers
sitting dormant. Chapel slapped the pilot's shoulder in thanks, and the kid gave
him a thumbs-up. Before the skids had even touched asphalt, Chapel jumped out of
the side hatch. It felt good to have his feet on solid ground again, though he
knew it would take a while before his head stopped thrumming with the sound of
the rotor blades.

The chopper lifted off again as soon as he was
clear. It would head for the nearest air base where it could refuel, in case he
needed it again in a hurry. In a few seconds it was gone from view and Chapel
could hear nothing but ocean waves and distant car traffic. The silence was a
dramatic change.

“Did you get me that car?” Chapel asked, and when
Angel didn't answer, it took him a second to realize he'd left his headphones in
the chopper. He reached for his BlackBerry, wondering how he would make contact
with her—she hadn't exactly given him her phone number.

Before he had a chance to call the DIA and ask to
be connected to the sexiest-sounding woman working there, someone called his
name and he looked up.

A courier in a FedEx uniform came jogging up and
handed Chapel a package. He signed for it, and the courier left before Chapel
could figure out who was sending him a parcel at a heliport he'd never heard of
an hour ago.

He tore open the package and found a cell phone
inside, still in its box. There was a plastic blister package in the parcel as
well, holding a tiny in-ear attachment for the phone.

He managed to get all the packaging undone without
too much trouble. The new phone was a touch-screen model that was all screen and
no buttons. He'd always wanted one of those, frankly—the tiny keys on his
BlackBerry were hard to use with his less sensitive artificial fingers. He put
the earpiece in his ear and powered on the phone. It looked like its batteries
had a decent charge.

“Let me guess,” he said, as the screen lit up. “Is
that you, Angel?”

“Hi, sweetie,” she said. “I figured it was time for
an upgrade.”

“You know, it's DoD policy that we only use
BlackBerrys,” he told her. “This brand is a no-no.”

“It's got sixteen times the memory and twice the
screen resolution. I'm a high-definition kind of girl. It works with the 4G
network and Wi-Fi and the best hands-free transceiver on the market. Namely the
one in your ear right now. Keep it there—and keep the phone in your pocket—and
we never have to be apart. Sound good?”