Chimera: A Jim Chapel Mission

Back at the laboratory complex he'd ruined Laughing Boy's shooting hand.

"Hoo ha hee heh," Laughing Boy spluttered. It might have sounded like a laugh, but it had plenty of anger in it.

"No toes," Chapel said. "No fingers. Pretty soon you'll look like me."

"I'm no fucking-ha ha-cripple!" Laughing Boy shouted, and he leaned out from behind the boulder to fire three rounds at them, one after another. Chapel shouted for Julia not to take the bait-he could visualize Laughing Boy dropping into a roll, lowering his visual profile, making himself almost impossible to hit-but it was too late.

She fired wildly, squeezing her trigger until her hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Wasting all her bullets. She screamed in frustration and stared down at her weapon, then dropped behind her rock just as Laughing Boy started firing again. Chapel dropped into cover as well, throwing his arm over his head to protect it.

The shooting stopped. Chapel risked a glance over the top of his rock. Laughing Boy was gone. He'd exhausted the six rounds in his revolver. Chapel was certain, absolutely certain he had more, and had just gone back into cover to reload.

"Jul . . . ia," Taggart said.

Chapel looked over and saw the scientist slumped behind his own rock. Blood slicked Taggart's neck. He'd caught a round.

"Dad," Julia gasped, and ran to him before Chapel could tell her to stay in cover. Maybe she could do something for him.

Maybe Chapel could do something for both of them. He jumped up from behind his rock and ran toward the boulder as fast as his legs could carry him.

"Hee heh ha," he heard as he ran.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+85:06

Ian saw it all. He saw blood explode from Dr. Taggart's neck. He rose halfway to his feet in terror. If Dr. Taggart died-how would he ever learn the final answer? How would he ever know what his life was to become? No one else could tell him.

He had followed the snowmachines, crept after them, keeping himself out of sight. Knowing if he showed himself one human or another would kill him. He had followed and stayed close on the off chance there would be one more opportunity, however unlikely, to talk to Dr. Taggart. To ask the final question.

Even if he was beginning to think he knew the answer. Even if he was terrified of what it would be.

Indecision was not a trait common to the chimeras. Their rages led them on, made everything simple. But Ian had mastered his rages. Mostly.

He crept closer, careful not to show himself, and watched.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+85:07

Chapel kept his head down as he ran, knowing that at any second Laughing Boy could start shooting again. The boulder loomed overhead. Its irregular shape made a hundred deep shadows, a dozen good hiding places. Smaller rocks lay tumbled against it, creating natural cover. Laughing Boy could be anywhere in there.

Up ahead he heard rocks patter and fall. He raised his pistol. Kept his trigger finger loose. He couldn't afford to snap off a hasty shot. He had one bullet left. He had to make it count.

He ducked low under an overhanging ledge of rock. Padded across bare stone and came upon a patch of snow that glared in the sun. The sky was clearing, and light was streaming down in thick golden beams that lit up every patch of lichen on the rocks, made every crevice a vein of impenetrable shadow.

Click. Click. He heard the sound and knew what it was. He'd heard it before. Laughing Boy was loading shells into the cylinder of his revolver. It was taking him a while.

"I don't know-ha heh-how you do this one-handed," Laughing Boy said, not shouting now. At a conversational level. He knew Chapel was close enough to hear him.

"You learn to do all kinds of things. You want the chance to learn them? You can put that weapon down and come out with your hands up," Chapel said, because there was no point in stealth now. Laughing Boy was right around the side of the boulder. He couldn't be more than ten feet away. "I'll let you live."

"Oh-ha-will you? Wonderful! Except, heh heh, that's a terrible, heh, deal for you. You kill me, you-ha ha ho-let me live, doesn't matter. They'll send-ha-more like me."

"There's no one else like you," Chapel said.

Laughing Boy seemed to find that amazingly funny. He laughed and chuckled and guffawed. "Guess you'll-heh-find out!"

Chapel dashed around the side of the rock, his arm held out straight, the pistol an extension of his arm, his eyes focused on where his shot would go, his-

Laughing Boy was crouched among some rocks, looking right at Chapel. Revolver shells lay scattered on the ground around him. The cylinder was full, with the brass casings of six new shells loaded into its chambers. All Laughing Boy had to do was snap the cylinder shut and he'd be ready to fire.

Chapel took his shot.

The noise of it was enormous. It blasted around the rocks, came caroming back from the cliffs to deafen him. The stink of the gunsmoke filled his nostrils and he had to blink as it stung his eyes. He forced his eyelids open, forced himself to see if he'd fired true.

He'd aimed for Laughing Boy's center of mass, just like he'd been trained to do. The heart lay just to the left of the sternum, but it was a thick mass of muscle and it was not unknown for a bullet to just graze it, to be turned by its knotty texture, and leave the target alive. You shot for the aorta, the swollen blood vessel just above the heart. Pierce that and death was almost instantaneous.

A red dot appeared on Laughing Boy's parka, just left of center. Blood welled from the wound. But it didn't spurt.

Laughing Boy screamed and gurgled and choked on his pain.

But he didn't die.

His eyes stared into Chapel's, as if he couldn't believe it either. But the light didn't go out of those eyes.

"Must have-heh-missed it by . . . by a-he heh-hair."

"Guess so," Chapel said.

Laughing Boy flicked his wrist, and the cylinder of his revolver snapped shut. He cocked the hammer and was ready to fire again.

Before he could, though, Ian dropped from the rocks above them, to land in a catlike crouch.

His eyes were black from side to side.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+85:10

Chapel could only stare in utter surprise as Ian rose slowly to his feet.

He didn't think he had the capacity for any more shock, but then it happened and he was left reeling.

"Good," Laughing Boy said, "you're-heh-here. Kill this fucker for me."

Ian turned to face Chapel. His nictitating membranes were still down, and his eyes were unreadable. "You didn't know, did you? You didn't know who the Voice was."

"He-you mean-" Chapel had no idea what to say.

"He freed me from Camp Putnam. He showed me how to get here." Ian turned to look at Laughing Boy. "He told me what to do."

"Yeah. Heh ha hee. Yeah," Laughing Boy said. His face was turning pale, and sweat was forming beads on his forehead. He was hurt, and badly, by Chapel's shot. But he wasn't bleeding out. He would live through this, Chapel knew. Laughing Boy was going to survive. And Ian-Ian would-

"I was supposed to be the father of a generation," Ian said, softly. "Instead they made me a weapon. I was supposed to live on after the greatest war, and instead, I am a foot soldier in this petty little squabble."

"Ian, just-let's talk about this," Chapel began.

The chimera lashed out with one hand and knocked Chapel away, sent him flying. The empty pistol leaped from Chapel's hand as he threw his arm back to arrest his fall.

"Good, yeah, heh," Laughing Boy said. "Good. Looks better-ha ah ha-this way, if you do him. Heh."

"You used me," Ian told the CIA assassin. "But I used you, too. I used you to get my freedom. I thought I could be something more, but no. You humans. You can't understand us. You're too limited to understand. All you see in us is death. Well, so be it."

Laughing Boy frowned. "Wait. Heh. What?"

Ian took a step toward Laughing Boy. Another step.

Laughing Boy was no fool. He brought his revolver up. Pointed it at Ian's chest.

"Dr. Taggart made me promise I wouldn't hurt anyone anymore," Ian said, stopping in place. "But he broke so very many promises he made to me. Humans break promises all the time. We can, too."

Laughing Boy fired as fast as he could pull the trigger, pouring lead into Ian's chest and face. He got off five bullets of his six before Ian snapped his arm like a piece of dry wood.

He broke Laughing Boy's other arm with a punch. Another punch took him in the throat and stopped his laughing. After that-

After that it was largely superfluous. When Ian was done, there wasn't much left of Laughing Boy.

Then he turned to face Chapel.

Chapel had no weapons left. He knew he couldn't fight Ian hand to hand. Trying that had nearly gotten him killed when he faced Malcolm-only Julia had saved him then. He tried to scramble away, tried to fend Ian off with his arm, but it was impossible, there was nothing he could do. Ian grabbed Chapel by the throat and just picked him up off the ground and held him in the air. Chapel grabbed at Ian's wrist with his hand, tried to force him to let go, but it was like trying to free himself from an iron manacle.

Chapel couldn't breathe. He couldn't speak.

"No," Ian said, but he didn't let go. "No, I don't have to do this!" He was arguing with himself, trying to step back from the all-consuming rage that ruled him. "No, I will not. I will not!"

He threw Chapel away from him like a piece of garbage.

Chapel rolled through the snow, his whole body racked with pain. He thought he had broken some ribs. Maybe his shoulder, too. He could barely breathe, couldn't think at all. He opened his mouth and tried to talk. Tried to reason with Ian. "Ian, it's over-no one wants to kill you now, you-"

"I had a question," Ian said.

He sounded perfectly calm.

Chapel struggled to sit up. To get back on his feet. Ian was different from the others, maybe. But he was still a chimera. He could still kill them all without any real effort. And he was bleeding. Even if he didn't kill them, if he got his blood on Taggart-on Julia-

Chapel would die before he let that happen.

He forced himself upward. Forced himself to stand. Walking was probably out of the question. But he dropped into a fighting crouch. Got his arm up. Made a fist.

"I had one question left to answer," Ian said.

"What-is it?" Chapel asked. If he could keep Ian talking, maybe Julia could get away. Get her father back to the lab, to the snowmachines there.

"It doesn't matter. I found my answer. I found it while I watched you fight among yourselves."

"Try me," Chapel said.

Ian came closer. One big stride and he was almost close enough for Chapel to touch. It was hard to read his eyes, covered as they were, black from side to side. But the way Ian kept twisting his mouth around, the way he held his hands, spoke volumes.

All his control, all that self-restraint that made Ian different from the others, was just a veneer. A surface. Underneath he was still a chimera, with all that meant.

"I wanted to know what I'm supposed to do now," Ian said. He closed his mouth with an audible click. His blood was draining away, cascading out of him to stain the snow. He didn't seem to be weakening, though. He would never be weak enough that Chapel could take him in hand-to-hand combat. "What comes next for me?"

"You can come south with us," Chapel said. "You can tell the world what they did to you. You can make sure the people who did this to you pay."

Ian studied Chapel's face with his black eyes. His nostrils were flaring. He was one wrong word away from turning into a machine with tearing hands and pummeling fists, a machine that could only kill. "That's what you want from me?"

"Isn't it what you want? Revenge?" Chapel asked. "Killing us won't do it, but you can-"

The chimera grabbed Chapel again and threw him down on the ground. Raised one foot high in the air as if he would stomp Chapel to death, there and then. Chapel closed his eyes and threw his arm across his face, for all the good it would do.

The foot didn't come down.

Slowly Chapel opened his eyes and looked up.

"In another life, I would have been a great man," Ian said. He glared down at Chapel with those black eyes. "I would have been a hero. A king. And you want to give me revenge. You want to make it all better by punishing the guilty. That's not how it works."

The chimera looked down at himself. Blood covered the front of his parka. He tore it away with hands like claws, tore away the shirt beneath. Four massive wounds like red roses had blossomed on his chest. A fifth marred his cheek.

"This world," Ian said, "isn't my world. My world was to be cinders and dust. My world was a place where I could build something new. In this world I have no place." He bent down and sorted among the ruins of Laughing Boy's body and picked up the assassin's revolver.

Chapel was on his back in the snow, still gasping for breath. He tried desperately to get up, to run toward Ian, but it was too late.

Ian pressed the barrel of the revolver under his chin and fired.

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION: APRIL 15, T+85:14

Angel saw it all on the satellite feeds. She couldn't reach Chapel without a cell signal, but she could still watch him from orbit. She saw Ian die.

In a corner of one of her many computer screens she had a clock running, a timer that she'd started around six ten on April twelfth. The moment the fence of Camp Putnam came down and the chimeras walked out into the world. It had been counting up ever since then, telling her how much time had expired, measuring the length of their escape.

She stopped the clock now, at eighty-five hours and fourteen minutes.

All four targets had been neutralized. The mission was complete.

EPILOGUE

WASHINGTON, D.C.: MAY 3, 11:02, EDT

Rupert Hollingshead was sitting on a bench with a good view of the Capitol building. He was eating a sandwich from a paper bag, and he had a laptop computer sitting on the bench next to him.

Chapel watched him from across the street. "What am I missing, Angel?" he asked. "Where are the soldiers waiting to arrest me as soon as I show my face?"

"I guess anything's possible, sugar, but it looks like he actually came alone. I don't see any SEAL teams hiding in the bushes. He did say he would meet with you one-on-one."

"And you trust him?" Chapel asked. He had a baseball cap pulled low over his face. He was relatively certain no one had followed him to this meeting, but he'd gotten pretty paranoid over the last month as he made his way back to Washington. When Hollingshead had asked for this meeting, he'd just assumed it had to be a trap.

"About as much as you do," Angel admitted. "But I also want to hear what he has to say."

Chapel grunted in frustration. This was a stupid move. Coming out of the cold like this, even for just a few minutes in a public place, meant putting himself at enormous risk. They could take him at any time. And once they had him they could get him to talk. He had no doubt about that. He would hold out as long as he could, but eventually he would tell them where Julia was hiding.

But if he didn't go down there and talk to Hollingshead, he would never know what the admiral wanted to say for himself.

"Okay," he said. "I'm going in. Let me know the second you see any suspicious movement near my location."

"You got it, honey."

Chapel strode quickly over to the bench and sat down. He did not look at Hollingshead. The admiral seemed slightly surprised to see him.

"Is that a mannequin arm in your sleeve there, son?" he asked.

"Your people would be looking for a one-armed man," Chapel said. "My artificial arm was destroyed in Denver, so I had to improvise."

"Clever."

For a while they sat in silence. Chapel waited to see armed soldiers come running at him, weapons ready, but none appeared.

Hollingshead continued to eat his sandwich. He said nothing.

"Banks was behind it all," Chapel said, finally, though he was relatively certain Hollingshead already knew that. "I can't prove it, though. He used Laughing Boy as a cutout. Laughing Boy was the Voice. That disposable phone I found in Camp Putnam that you took from me. It would have told you as much."

"Indeed," Hollingshead said.

"He released the chimeras. Gave them the kill list and sent them out to murder everyone on it. If they failed, he would still have the excuse the targets had been exposed to the virus, so he could kill them anyway. It was all about cleaning up a mess. Your mess. Fixing the chimera problem, and fixing it quietly, will earn Banks some favors in the White House. And meanwhile he'll have a pet judge on the Supreme Court, in Hayes. The CIA is going to come out of this looking like a bunch of heroes."

"You've figured it all out," Hollingshead agreed.

"Not all of it. I thought you were on my side, but then you betrayed me."

"Interesting. That's how you saw it?"

"How else can I see it?" Chapel asked. "You knew what was going to happen in Denver. You knew it was a suicide mission. But when I started to figure it out, when I started to ask questions, you shut me down. And then you threw me under that particular bus. You all but sent me to Denver at gunpoint."

Hollingshead took a bite of his sandwich. "I suppose I did."

"I know why you picked me. I get it now. You said you didn't pick my name out of a hat. That was true. Banks would have vetoed anyone you chose for this mission, if he thought they had a chance to succeed. So you called up a semiretired one-armed guy in his forties, long past his prime. Me. You needed to sacrifice somebody and I was expendable. I understand that. Obviously I don't like it."

"Obviously."

"But I understand it. I just can't figure this one thing out, though. What did you stand to gain from this?"

"I beg your pardon?"

Chapel shook his head in disgust. "It was a game. The CIA and the DIA were playing a game, with Camp Putnam as the chessboard. Right?"

Hollingshead nodded. "Darling Green was a DoD project, and for a long time we owned it lock, stock, and barrel. That changed when Malcolm escaped. That wasn't supposed to happen. The CIA was brought in to cover external security on Camp Putnam. Ever since then they've been trying to take over the whole thing."

"Why would they even want a mess like that?"

Hollingshead smiled warmly. "Until you can answer that question, you'll never truly understand politics, son. Why did the U.K. go to war over the Falkland Islands? Because they thought it belonged to them, and people with power will never give up power voluntarily."

Chapel laughed, a short, bitter laugh. "So to take over Camp Putnam, Banks had to blow part of it up. Wow. By letting the chimeras out, they became an external security problem. His bailiwick."

"But his mole failed. I was called in before he was. So I retained some oversight on the recovery effort." Hollingshead put his sandwich down. "I was allowed to bring you in, as a last attempt to save myself from disgrace."

"Except-you didn't. You had every chance to make that work. But you threw the game. You could have warned me not to go to Denver. If I didn't go, there would never have been an attempt on Hayes's life. Hayes needed a martyr for his cause, and until I arrived he couldn't play out his false flag operation. You could have ruined all of Banks's plans by just telling me not to go. Instead you sent me in with a pat on the back. Certain that I would get myself killed just like Banks wanted."

"No," Hollingshead said.

"No?"

"That's where you're wrong."

"Admiral. With all due respect, sir. Don't lie to me now. It's not going to get you anywhere."

Hollingshead sighed. "You think so little of me. Are you armed, Captain? Did you come here to kill me? Let me tell you a little story first if you'd be so, ah, kind. Don't worry. It's quite short."

"I'm listening."

"About two years ago I fell down a flight of stairs. Terrible bother of a thing, broke my femur if you can believe it. When you're as old as me that can happen, apparently. I had to have a hip replaced, too, which-son, be glad you aren't old enough to know this yet-is one of the most debilitating surgeries there is. After the replacement I needed lengthy and quite, oh, decidedly unpleasant physical therapy."

Chapel frowned. Where was Hollingshead going with this?

"I went to Walter Reed for it. And there I met a man who was going to become a very good friend of mine, despite the fact that I cursed his name every day. A physical therapist, a fellow with one arm, one leg, and one eye."

"Wait-you're talking about Top," Chapel said.

"I'm talking about the meanest son of a bitch I ever met," Hollingshead confirmed, "and the man who made sure I am not in a wheelchair today. A man who, despite my advanced age, insisted that I consider myself one of his 'boys.' "

"You're definitely talking about Top."

Hollingshead nodded. "Top had one bit of conversation he kept coming back to. Just how lucky I was. I certainly didn't feel that way. But he would continuously point out that while I had lost a hip, my new one was a perfectly good replacement. I was far luckier, he kept telling me, than boys of his who had lost arms and legs. He occasionally mentioned one of his boys who had lost an arm. A boy from Military Intelligence with one arm who had somehow taught him-taught Top, that is-how to swim. He was unabashedly proud of this particular boy."

Chapel didn't know what to say.

"When Tom Banks came to my office and I could see in his eyes he would never accept a young, strong, whole man for this mission, I rejoiced, honestly. I finally had the chance to activate the operative I'd wanted to meet for so long. I most certainly didn't pick your name out of a hat, son. I'd been following your career for months, waiting until I had the perfect opportunity to bring you into my personal fold. When I discovered what Banks had planned for my operative in Denver, I didn't hesitate for a second to recommend you for that particular mission."

"Now you're losing me," Chapel said.

"I didn't send you to die there, son. You're one of Top's boys. I sent you there because I knew nobody else could live through it."

Chapel could only stare in disbelief.