The Hydra Protocol (27 page)

“I’m not sure,” she said, when they were safely looking in different directions again, “what you thought was going to happen between us. We’re not the kind of people whose lives move toward oaths and ceremonies in little white churches. I wasn’t looking for a golden ring.”

Chapel had to squeeze his eyes shut for a second when he thought of the little jewelry box that was probably still sitting on the hall table back in Brooklyn.

“Our lives are not our own,” Nadia said. “We don’t get to make long-term plans.”

Chapel grunted in frustration. “I know that better than anyone,” he told her. “And I thought we weren’t going to talk about this.”

“Forgive me,” Nadia said. “But I really need to. She left you, Jim. She set you free.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“Of course it does.” Nadia moved toward him, as if she would grab his arm. He took a step in the opposite direction, and from the corner of his eye he saw her drop her hands in frustration. “You have no obligation to a woman who—”

“Nadia!” he said, loud enough to make Bogdan turn around and look. Much louder than he’d intended to. “Look,” he said, lowering his voice. “I think in some weird way you’re actually trying to help. That you think I need to hear this. But everything you say is just making it worse.”

He was pretty sure she stared at him then, stared at him with wide eyes. He wouldn’t know because he refused to look in her direction. He turned his face away until he couldn’t even see her shadow.

Eventually she gave up on him and hurried forward to catch up with Bogdan. The two of them carried on some light conversation in what sounded to Chapel like Romanian. He couldn’t have followed it if he wanted to.

The road they were on petered out after another half mile or so. The shops and houses gave way to larger structures—warehouses, factory farms, and light industrial workshops. No one was on the street out there, and judging by the boarded-up doors and the broken windows it looked like the district had seen better days. It wasn’t much farther to their destination, a nondescript shed of a building maybe a hundred yards long but only one story high. Like many of the buildings they’d passed it was surrounded by a high chain-link fence, but the gate of this one was ajar.

Nadia dropped back to point it out to Chapel. “Come on,” she said. “We still have a job to do, and we must do it together. Whether you like it or not.”

“Fine,” Chapel said. “We can be professionals, at least.”

Nadia shook her head and sighed. Then she strode forward, toward the open gate. Chapel and Bogdan followed close on her heels.

It was clear right away that the shed had not been used in a long time. Its walls were made of corrugated tin that had turned white in the sun and rotted away in some places, big holes in the structure that showed only darkness and swirling dust. The ground around the shed was strewn with old litter—plastic shopping bags that skittered across the concrete like insects, old tractor tires full of stagnant water, broken wooden pallets. Climbing over all the debris took some work, since Chapel didn’t want to accidentally step on a rusty nail and give himself tetanus. Nadia scampered over it like a mountain goat, of course, while Bogdan carefully and painstakingly navigated around the trash, moving each foot carefully before setting it down as if he would be contaminated just by touching anything.

The front of the shed ended in a tall doorway wide enough to drive a car through. It was locked up tight, with a massive rusted padlock hanging from a chain with links as thick as Nadia’s wrists. She rattled the chain for a second then let it drop back with a bang. “There must be a side entrance,” she said.

Chapel scanned the street behind them. This wasn’t the kind of place tourists should be investigating. Anyone who saw them now might remember the strange foreigners wandering around the abandoned battery farm—and if they remembered them, they could tell the SNB what they’d seen. Luckily the street was deserted.

Nadia made her way around the shed, climbing over a pile of blown-out old tires so high she could have climbed up onto the roof from its top. When she came down on the other side she was out of view, so Chapel hurried to follow as best he could. He heard her call out, and when he finally caught up with her, he saw she’d found a doorway that wasn’t locked.

He followed her inside, into the low, dim interior of the place. The far end of the shed was wide open and let in enough sunlight to dazzle him. He could only make out the rough outlines of what he saw. The walls were lined on both sides with hundreds of chicken coops, tiny cages made of thin wire. Narrow conveyor belts ran along beneath the coops, perhaps to catch the eggs the chickens had once laid. There didn’t seem to be anything alive inside the shed now except some ants that crawled over his hand when he touched the door frame. He shook them off and walked farther inside.

At the far end, near the open doors, he could make out the silhouette of the truck. It was bigger than he’d expected, a high square-cabined thing with a shovel-shaped nose that made it look more like a troop carrier than a commercial vehicle. It sat on eight massive fat tires, each with its own elaborate suspension. He supposed it needed all those tires to gain purchase on sand, but he could imagine less conspicuous vehicles to use on a covert mission.

“Hello?” Nadia called out, her voice echoing off the steel rafters of the shed.

There was no answer.

Chapel came up beside her, wondering why this felt wrong.

“Someone was supposed to be here to show us how the truck works,” Nadia said. “Varvara told me that someone would be here.”

Chapel nodded and walked ahead of her, toward the truck. He tried to keep his ears open to any sound, but his shoes crunched on the old dust and debris that covered the shed’s floor.

His eyes were slowly adjusting to the weird light in the shed. He thought he saw something inside the cab of the truck—maybe their contact had fallen asleep in there and hadn’t woken when Nadia called. Chapel hurried over to the driver’s-side door. It was five feet up off the ground, reached by a short folding ladder. He climbed up, holding on to the door’s handle, and tried to peer inside through the smudged glass of the window.

That was when he saw the bullet hole.

The glass of the truck’s windshield had been punctured by a small-caliber round—he guessed a rifle shot—leaving the familiar cobweb-shaped cracks in the glass. Their contact was inside but he wasn’t moving. Chapel pulled open the door and reached inside, barely catching the man as he slumped out of the cab and started falling toward the floor of the shed.

Chapel let the body fall the rest of the way, then jumped down to examine it.

“Someone beat us here,” he whispered, and gestured for Nadia to get down. If the shooter was still somewhere nearby, if the rifle was trained on anyone who approached the truck—

But the gunshot Chapel expected never came.

He ducked low and studied the body. The man had been about Bogdan’s age, just a kid. He had dark hair and a sad little excuse for a goatee, and the expression on his face was one of surprise. The shot had gone in through his left eye, probably killing him instantly. “Jesus,” Chapel breathed.

Nadia came up behind him, ducking low to use one of the truck’s tires for cover.

“Who did this?” Chapel asked her, keeping his voice down.

“How would I know that?”

“Those gangsters who were chasing Bogdan? Would they come this far? Or maybe Varvara has some enemies? Think, Nadia.”

She shook her head, but even in the half-light he could tell from her face that she knew something. He started to demand more answers, but he was interrupted as Bogdan shouted for them.

“I’ll get him,” Nadia said.

Chapel nodded. “There should be guns in the truck—I’ll look for them.” He climbed back up the side of the truck, feeling very exposed. If the sniper was still out there somewhere . . . but he got inside the cab without being shot. There were four seats inside, big bucket seats that looked like they belonged in an airplane instead of a land vehicle. The driver’s seat was covered in sticky blood that hadn’t had a chance to dry, even in the stuffy cab. Their contact must have been killed recently.

There was a hatch set into the back of the cab, between the rear two seats, which led to the cargo compartment at the rear of the truck. Keeping his head down Chapel moved back there and opened the narrow hatch, then slipped back into darkness. Light streaming in from the cab showed him there was a lamp set into the ceiling of the cargo compartment, but he couldn’t see how to switch it on—and wouldn’t have if he could, since that would have given any hypothetical sniper a great target to work with.

Slowly Chapel’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. The cargo compartment was packed full of supplies. Most of the room was taken up by fuel and water tanks and huge spare tires. There were some crates toward the back, next to the rear doors. The guns had to be there. He climbed in over the spare tires and started making his way over to the crates, then stopped in place when he heard a sound.

A series of sounds—a repetitive banging noise, like someone hitting metal with a hammer. The sound a sledgehammer might make as it pounded on a rusty padlock.

Someone was trying to get into the shed.

Chapel moved to the back doors of the truck and felt around until he found the latch that opened them. He eased one of the doors open just a crack so he could see outside.

The locked doors of the shed rattled and banged, and he could see dust sifting down across them. They hadn’t been opened in a long time, and they screeched as the lock broke and they sagged open. He heard someone shout, and then the doors flew open all at once and four men came rushing through, each of them carrying a pistol. Three of them were blond, and one wore glasses.

It was the same man he’d fought back in Bucharest, one of the gangsters who’d come for them when they were picking up Bogdan.

Had the Romanian gangsters followed them all this way? It seemed unlikely but Chapel definitely recognized the man’s face. Glasses even had a bandage on his left wrist—where Chapel had stomped on it.

The four men moved quickly into the shed, spreading out, their pistols covering the decrepit chicken coops, the rafters overhead, the dead body of Varvara’s driver. They weren’t trying to be subtle, this time—they looked like they expected a fight.

Well, Chapel aimed to give them one.

With the back door of the truck cracked open, a little light spilled into the cargo compartment. Just enough for Chapel to make out the various boxes and crates stowed there. One looked very familiar to him, a long, narrow wooden crate. He reached for its lid and found that it wasn’t—thank God—nailed shut. Inside he found a bunch of torn-up newspapers that stank of gun oil. He reached in and felt around to see what kind of weapons Varvara had provided.

She hadn’t stinted on the firepower. He felt a couple of pistols in there and the long wooden stock of an AK-47 assault rifle. There were clips for each of the firearms, already loaded with bullets.

Outside of the truck the four men moved step by step through the shed, their guns up and ready. Chapel had no idea where Nadia or Bogdan might be. He had to assume he was on his own for this. He pulled out the AK-47 and one of its curved clips.

Now came the tricky part. He slotted the clip and drove it home, as gently as he could. It made a sharp click as it locked into place, a sound the whole world was probably familiar with from hearing it in so many movies.

Outside the truck someone spoke, but he couldn’t catch the words. They must have heard the click.

He couldn’t give them a chance to figure out where it came from. He slid the firing selector on the rifle all the way down, to semiauto, and kicked open the truck doors, then jumped backward out of the truck and down onto the floor of the shed.

The four gunmen must have split up, two on either side of the truck. On the left side, one had climbed up the ladder to look inside the cab. Another had bent to look under the truck in case anyone was hiding there.

Chapel didn’t waste time looking for the other two. He brought the rifle up and squeezed the trigger, releasing a burst of three rounds into the body of the one hanging on the side of the cab. The man fell away from the truck instantly, and Chapel swiveled around even as the one looking under the truck started to stand back up.

The man had time to look over at Chapel, time for his features to take on an expression of surprise. Chapel’s second burst caught him in the chest and knocked him sprawling backward, onto the floor.

The noise of his firing echoed loud enough in the shed to drive any thoughts out of Chapel’s head. He moved on instinct, dodging left around the side of the truck, keeping his body behind one of the huge tires. He heard movement on the other side of the vehicle—the two men who had gone to the right, moving to react to the sudden attack.

They were smart enough, or disciplined enough, not to just come running around the side of the truck and straight into Chapel’s line of fire. He heard them shout back and forth, and though he couldn’t understand their words, he was sure they were making a plan to flank him. One would come around the front of the truck, the other around the back. He wouldn’t be able to fend them both off at once.

He had to move. He looked toward the open end of the shed, the same direction the truck was pointed. There might still be a sniper back there, the one who had killed Varvara’s driver. He glanced to the other side, toward the doors the gunmen had come through. There could be more of them out there, waiting for anyone foolish enough to come running out of the shed. The noise of the rifle fire would have alerted them, and they would be ready if Chapel showed his face.

The truck was too high to climb. He considered ducking underneath it, but if either of the remaining gunmen even glanced down there, he would be a sitting duck.

It was while he was thinking about what to do that he heard gunshots outside the shed, out front—pistol fire, and then someone screaming. He glanced out and saw a blur of movement, something fast bouncing around the piles of decayed wooden pallets. It took him a moment to realize it was a human being. He saw it drop to the ground and roll on its shoulder, then spring back up to its feet.