Chimera: A Jim Chapel Mission

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."

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?"

"I'm receiving you loud and clear."

"Good. And, sweetie, you don't have to shout. Just talk normally and I'll hear you. In fact, I'll hear everything you do, so I can give you advice on the fly. Your car is waiting at the entrance to the heliport. We'll get you to Dr. Bryant's place right away. In the meantime, I'll walk you through the process of migrating all your data from your old phone. I can do most of that for you from here."

What was it Top had told him about living in George Jetson land?

"Okay," Chapel said, as he jogged out of the chain-link gate of the heliport. A black car-a Crown Victoria, just like the one Laughing Boy drove-was waiting for him. He had an appointment with a dead woman.

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+8:12

Neptune Avenue was lined with modest houses and convenience stores, pizza parlors and medical clinics. The air smelled of the ocean and pasta sauce and was filled with the noise of cars and thumping radios. Dr. Bryant's house was a simple two-story structure with bars over its windows and a steel-core reinforced door.

"Looks like she was worried about security," Chapel said. "Not that it helped."

"That's pretty standard for New York," Angel told him. "Police records say she's had a couple break-ins before, as well. People who saw her name on the door-saw she was a doctor-and broke in looking for drugs."

"Does she keep an office here?" Chapel asked.

"No, this was just her home. Her office and her lab are a few blocks away. This is kind of a run-down area for somebody like her. I guess she wanted to live near her patients. By the looks of things, they were mostly Russian immigrants."

"You have access to her medical records?"

"Nothing privileged, though I could probably get that without too much trouble if you need it," Angel told him. "I don't see anything that stands out, right now. I don't see anything that would have made her any enemies."

"One was enough," Chapel said. He gritted his teeth and walked up to the door. A single strand of yellow police tape crossed the opening, and a uniformed police officer was standing just inside. She stared at his ID with a skeptical eye, but she let him through. Angel had already talked to the local cops and let them know he was coming.

The house was dark inside, and it took a while for his eyes to adjust. When they did, he saw the place was full of police photographers and detectives drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups. He would have preferred to visit the scene alone, but that wasn't an option.

He heard someone crying loudly in the back of the house-probably a kitchen back there; he could see the side of a refrigerator through an open door. The last thing he wanted at that moment was to be questioned by a grieving relative, so he headed up the stairs instead-that was where Angel told him Dr. Bryant had been discovered.

"I'm getting some preliminary reports now; they were just filed by the detectives on the scene," Angel said in his ear. "Chapel, this isn't going to be pretty. It sounds like she was beaten to death in her bedroom."

"I've seen dead people before," he told her.

A detective in a cheap suit, wearing a police laminate on a lanyard around his neck, looked up and stared at Chapel. "Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

Chapel flashed his ID again, but the detective shook his head.

"How about you just tell me, instead of making me read the fine print on that thing? I figure you have a right to be here or we would have turned you away at the door. But you're no cop. I'm guessing . . . military?"

Chapel bit his lip, but said nothing.

The detective scratched at the stubble on his chin. He looked like a tough old bastard. He looked like a drill instructor Chapel had known in basic training, frankly. He looked like the kind of guy who was used to being lied to and didn't like it at all.

"I can't answer your questions," Chapel said. "I can't tell you anything. This murder is of interest to-"

"DHS," Angel whispered in his ear.

"The Department of Homeland Security," Chapel said. It was a lie, but it wasn't a ridiculous one.

The detective's eyes went wide. "Yeah, okay. I know that score." He stepped aside and let Chapel past.

"That was too easy," Chapel said under his breath.

"This is New York, sweetie. This is where 9/11 happened. They understand terrorism here-and nobody will bother a DHS agent."

"Good thinking, Angel." Chapel stepped through another doorway and walked into the crime scene proper.

He may have seen dead bodies before. He had seen the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. This was different, though, and his breath caught in his throat.

Dr. Helen Bryant was lying on the floor, twisted into an unnatural shape. She'd been thrown into a mirror and pieces of broken glass were everywhere, a shoal of them covering part of her face. That was a small mercy. She was an elderly woman. A little old lady. No little old lady should ever have this happen to them. It was just so . . . wrong.

One of the detainees had done this. Chapel suddenly wanted very much to kill the son of a bitch. He wanted to make the guy suffer.

Chapel forced himself to squat down and take a closer look, much as he wanted to just turn away and shake his head. He made himself look at the wounds on Dr. Bryant's body, the broken bones, the lacerations. There were no gunshot wounds, and no sign that she'd been cut with a knife.

The bastard had done this with his hands.

"Do you need us to move her?" someone asked from behind him. It wasn't the detective who had questioned him. This was a paramedic, or maybe somebody from the coroner's department. "We're almost done taking fiber and hair samples. If you need something, just ask."

Chapel looked up at the paramedic. She was black, in her midthirties, and she looked like she was in awe of the DHS agent who had graced her crime scene with his presence.

Damn, Chapel thought. Angel's ruse had gotten him this far, but now it might cause problems. If the cops thought this case was somehow connected to terrorist activity, they might start asking questions. Well, he decided, that was for Angel or Hollingshead to take care of. He had tougher problems to solve.

He put his hands on his knees and started to straighten up. Turning his face away from the body, he caught something out of the corner of his eye. "What's that?" he asked.

The paramedic came over to stand next to him, taking care not to step on any evidence as she did so. Together they looked at the bedside table. A book of crossword puzzles and a pen lay on the floor next to the bed, and just above them, on the wall, someone had scrawled a single word.

Chapel moved closer. The letters were shaky and hard to make out, as if they'd been written by someone with a broken arm, someone in a panic, somebody who knew she was about to die. He had no doubt that Dr. Bryant had written the word.

She must have been trying to leave some kind of clue, maybe even to identify her killer. She could have been more clear about it, Chapel thought, and then scolded himself for thinking uncharitable thoughts about the dead. Still, he had no idea what the message meant:

CHIMERA

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+8:20

"Angel," Chapel said, "you ever heard of something called Chimera?"

"Sounds familiar. Give me a second." He heard the faint sound of clacking keys and knew she must be looking it up on the Internet. "Right . . . for one thing, you're saying it wrong, sweetie. It's not 'chim-ur-uh,' it's 'kai-mare-uh.' It's a monster from Greek mythology-a lion with a goat head coming out of its back and a snake for a tail."

"I'm guessing Dr. Bryant wasn't killed by some kind of weird lion creature," Chapel told her. "It's got to be something else. Was there a Project Chimera? Maybe something the CIA was involved in? Maybe that was the name of the place where the detainees were held."

"No, nothing like that is showing up. And I've got access to some pretty weird databases, so I'd expect at least a footnote somewhere."

He glanced over his shoulder to see if the paramedic was listening, but she had stepped out of the room, maybe to tell the detective about the scrawled message on the wall. Chapel stood up straight, ignoring his protesting knees.

"Maybe it's a person's name," Angel suggested. "Or at least an alias."

"Maybe," Chapel said. At the very least it was a clue. Dr. Bryant had died to give him this information. It had to mean something.

But it was going to have to wait. Dr. Bryant was dead-there was nothing more he could do for her. There was one other name on the kill list that was located in New York City. He needed to get moving.

At the door the detective was waiting for him. "Anything you can share?" he asked.

Chapel shook his head and started to push past the man.

"Maybe you should talk to the daughter," the detective told him.

"Daughter?"

The detective nodded. "You probably heard her on your way in-she's in the kitchen, grieving pretty hard for her mom. She's the one who found the body. They were supposed to have lunch together today."

Chapel's heart went out to Dr. Bryant's daughter, but it wasn't his job to console anyone. His job was to make sure nobody else's kids had to mourn their parents today. "Did she give you anything you can use? Did she see anybody running away from the house, or tell you about any enemies Dr. Bryant might have had? Otherwise-"

The detective shrugged and pulled a notepad out of his jacket pocket. "Julia Taggart, thirty-two, lives in Bushwick. No, nothing like that. We liked her for this at first-the skinny is she and her mom had some fights, just screaming matches. But I've seen what people look like after they kill their moms and she ain't the type, she-"