The Hydra Protocol Page 28

  Tried to breathe.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I know. Well. I guess.” He had no idea what to say. No idea what to do next. As he had so many times before, he forced himself to fall back on his training. When you got frantic on the battlefield, he knew, when shells were bursting around you and fear and confusion threatened to take over your brain, you started making mistakes. You stopped doing all the little things that kept you alive.

  Focus on the little things, he told himself. He could take care of the logistical details. It might mean nothing, it might not change how he felt at all, but it was at least something he could accomplish. “Angel, can you arrange for someone to go and collect my things? There’s not much, just some clothes and a few boxes of papers. It should all fit in a cheap storage locker.” His whole life back in the States and it would probably fill two suitcases. He thought back to what Nadia had said, about what this job did to you, how it made you a nonperson, and he wanted to laugh. We leave no trace, no mark we were ever there. Maybe he should tell Angel to burn all his things in a trash can. Just throw everything away—how appealing was that idea? Just chuck it all. Maybe not just his things. Maybe throw everything away. Fly off to Siberia with Nadia and find out how far he could run before he had to start thinking again.

  No. That wasn’t . . . it wasn’t possible. He knew that. Even if he was having trouble remembering why.

  “Just . . . just move the stuff. And send me the bill.”

  “I’ll do that,” Angel said.

  “Yeah.”

  He ended the connection on the tablet before he could say anything else. Popped the door of the truck and jumped down into the sand. Nadia had the tent set up and she stood next to it, watching his face. She was smiling when she first saw him, but maybe the look on his face scared her. It made her stop smiling, at any rate.

  The sun was almost up. Chapel said nothing to anyone, he just crawled in the tent and made room for himself. Took off his artificial arm and laid it down next to him like he planned on using it as a pillow.

  Nadia and Bogdan came inside after a while and settled down themselves. Bogdan and Chapel on the sides, Nadia in the middle. There was no pretense of privacy or personal space—the tent wasn’t big enough for that.

  An hour later, maybe, Chapel still hadn’t fallen asleep and he was just listening to Bogdan snore, listening to any noise that would drive thoughts out of his head. The sound the sand made as it rolled down the face of the boulder behind the tent. The flutter and snap of the canvas tent in the night breeze.

  Nadia breathing behind him. He could just feel her warm breath on the back of his neck. It felt good—it was cold inside the tent—but then each time it went away he shivered, chilled again until her breath washed over his skin again.

  He turned over on his other side, careful not to make too much noise or shake the tent. Rolled over until he was facing her. He wanted to see her sleeping face. The tent was almost perfectly dark, the rising sun blocked by the boulder behind the tent. But there was just enough light to glint on her open eyes.

  She wasn’t sleeping either.

  He was too angry, too hurt, too confused to worry about social niceties. He reached over and brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. His real fingers. She blinked—he could only tell from the way the light in her eyes vanished for a moment—but she didn’t move, not away from him, not toward him.

  He leaned in and kissed her. Gently, just a touch.

  It felt good. It felt natural. There was comfort there. But it was like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. It wasn’t going to be enough.

  He couldn’t trust her. No matter how much he wanted to.

  She reached for his hand, but he pulled it away. He rolled over on his side again, facing away from her.

  Scooted over so he didn’t feel her breath on his skin anymore.

  KYZYLORDA PROVINCE, KAZAKHSTAN: JULY 20, 20:22

  Chapel woke to find the tent shaking, its poles rattling against each other. His first thought was that he’d woken up to an earthquake.

  He turned over and looked around and saw that instead it was Bogdan, wrestling with a sheet, trying to get up and onto his feet. The hacker turned and stared at Chapel. “Must pee. Now.”

  “I’m not stopping you,” Chapel said.

  Bogdan managed to get untangled from the sheet and stumbled forward into the flap of the tent, his long fingers running up and down the seam looking for the zipper. He eventually found it and he yanked it downward, spilling light and heat into the tent. It was enough to wake Nadia, who covered her eyes with her hands as she sat up. Bogdan stepped outside of the tent, making no attempt to close it again behind him.

  “Is it time to get up, now?” Nadia asked, looking like she would much rather go back to sleep. “Is it time to—”

  She didn’t finish her thought. Bogdan came racing back into the tent, as quickly as he’d left.

  His eyes were wide and staring under their fringe of hair. He’d gone as white as a ghost.

  “Get gun, shoot them! Do it now!” he said, his voice an octave higher than usual.

  Chapel glanced at Nadia. She was wide awake now. She put one hand behind herself, reaching for a pistol. Chapel picked up his arm and clamped it onto his shoulder. “What did you see?” he asked Bogdan.

  “No time! Just shoot!” the hacker exclaimed.

  Chapel pushed him out of the way and peered out through the tent flap, expecting to see half the Russian army out there. What he saw instead made him jump back nearly as fast as Bogdan had.

  “Giant lizards,” he said. He forced himself to look out of the tent again.

  Surrounding the tent were maybe a dozen big reptiles, some of them seven feet long. Their lean bodies and long tails were striped and spotted in desert colors, for camouflage maybe, but Chapel had no trouble seeing them. Their tapered snouts were open, showing rows of vicious triangular fangs and pink, wet mouths, and they hissed angrily when Chapel poked his head out through the flap.

  “Desert monitors,” Nadia said, coming up beside him to take a look for herself. “Not uncommon in the Kyzyl Kum. This rock we have been using for shelter must be their den.”

  “They’re as big as I am. Their jaws are big enough to swallow my head,” Chapel said. Maybe that was an exaggeration, but not much of one. “What do they eat? Tourists?”

  “Wild sheep, mostly.” Nadia put her weapon down.

  “So they’re carnivorous,” Chapel said.

  “Konyechno. You have seen so many plants in this desert for them to eat?”

  “Great.” Chapel reached for his assault rifle, but she grabbed his arm.

  “No! You can’t shoot them,” she said.

  “We’re surrounded by giant carnivorous lizards. This is about as close as I’m ever going to get to being attacked by dinosaurs,” Chapel said, as if explaining himself to a child. “I am not in the mood. You want to worry about animal rights, you can—”

  Nadia shook her head. “If you fire a weapon, even in the air, the entire group will attack us at once and tear their way in through the tent to get at us.”

  “Uh-huh,” Chapel said.

  “Also, they are venomous,” she pointed out.

  “Jesus.” Chapel put his rifle down. “So what do we do?”

  “I will strike the tent. Bogdan,” she said, “you gather up our things. Then the three of us will walk very slowly to the truck and drive away. I do not think they will attack if we are calm and do not overly antagonize them.”

  It was probably the worst plan Chapel had ever heard. The problem was, he couldn’t think of another one. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and grabbed a pistol from the floor of the tent. They’d taken the precaution of bringing plenty of weapons with them, in case they were attacked while they were sleeping. He knew Nadia was right, that if he started shooting they would be quickly overrun, but he wasn’t about to go out there unarmed.

  Behind him the tent started to collapse as Nadia unscrewed the poles that h
eld it up. Bogdan pressed up close behind Chapel as if he was afraid of being hit by fallen canvas. Now or never, Chapel thought.

  He stepped out of the tent, the pistol held loose and low in his hand. The monitors all watched him with their yellow eyes as he took a step farther into their midst. The truck was about seven yards away—directly behind the pack of lizards. He could run for it, but the way the reptiles all crouched, their legs bent taut, made him think that was a bad idea.

  The nearest one—and the biggest, bigger than Chapel—closed its jaw and lifted its snout in the air, turning it one way, then the other. Its huge eye stayed locked on him. As he watched, it flicked a nictitating membrane across its pupil. Chapel knew more than he wanted to about nictitating membranes. He knew, for instance, that the monitor could see him just fine through the cloudy third eyelid.

  Bogdan and Nadia were close behind him. He lifted his free hand a few inches, to tell them to stay back. Then he took another step forward.

  The big monitor opened its mouth and made a noise that wasn’t so much a hiss as the sound of a steam boiler about to burst apart at the seams. Other monitors started moving, spreading out, flanking them. For solitary animals they understood just fine how to work as a pack.

  “Stay calm,” Nadia said. “Do not make sudden moves.”

  “Jesus,” Chapel said. “What’s that smell?” The odor wafting off the monitors was like rotten eggs, or maybe dead flesh. A deep, earthy, animal smell that made the hairs inside Chapel’s nose prickle.

  “Musk,” Nadia told him. “That explains why there are so many here in one place. This must be the mating season. Animals can be so direct about these things.”

  “Ha ha,” Chapel said. “Not the time for that. Okay, I’m going to start moving toward the truck. Just stay behind me, all right? If we split up, they’ll probably try to isolate the weakest of us or something. So, Bogdan, you stay very close.”

  “I can tell when I am insulted,” the hacker said with a sniff.

  Chapel stopped talking, then. He edged sideways a little, which the big monitor seemed to find acceptable, then took another step forward, barely inching his way ahead. The monitor started opening his mouth again.

  “I heard you,” Chapel told it. “I heard you the first time. I’m just going to head this way, all right?” He took a step to the side, and the monitor closed its mouth. Jesus, he thought. This was the world’s worst game of Simon Says.

  “Jim,” Nadia said.

  “Hold on.” He took another step to the side. That brought him closer to another big monitor, this one maybe five feet long. It was crouching low, its jaw nearly scraping the sand. Chapel wished he knew what that meant—whether it was about to attack, or if it was showing submission. He kind of doubted it was that second thing. “Just—”

  “Jim,” she said once more.

  He glanced behind him. The look on her face was very serious. She was pointing upward. He followed her finger and saw the top of the boulder. There were about six more monitors up there, perched ten feet up over his head, and they were all peering down at him, flexing their back legs like they were about to jump.

  “Damn,” he said. “These guys are good. We’re going to have to run for it. Bogdan, you first—”

  “Jim, no,” Nadia suggested.

  “—then Nadia, be ready to fight, I’ll bring up the rear—Now!”

  Bogdan at least knew the score. He burst past Chapel, running as fast as his long legs would carry him. One small monitor tried to snap at him, but he vaulted over it, moving far more gracefully than Chapel would have expected.

  With a sigh Nadia dropped the bundled tent and sprinted after the hacker, a pistol in either of her hands. She tracked them around to aim at the monitors as she ran, but she didn’t fire. Chapel was already moving by then, coming up close behind her, keeping an eye on the biggest of the reptiles, the one that was clearly the alpha male.

  The alpha was moving, too. Coming right for him. Chapel threw an arm across his face, but the monitor slapped his legs out from under him with one big claw, its talons shredding his pant leg. It twisted its head around, and he saw its eye staring into his face as its jaws came down to disembowel him with one bite. He barely managed to get his arm down across his abdomen before the darting attack connected.

  “Jim!” Nadia screamed. “Jim, the venom!”

  Down on the ground Chapel stared up into the face of the thing that had his arm in a vise lock. Like an alligator—he’d seen plenty of those back in Florida—it started twisting its head back and forth, trying to tear off a piece of him. The venom, brown and thick, spread through the flesh of his arm.

  Or rather, the silicone simulated flesh of his artificial arm.

  He tried desperately to get up, to get at least one foot under him. It was tough to do with a hundred and fifty pounds of lizard thrashing around on top of him. His prosthetic had saved him for the moment, but he knew his time was limited—any second now the other monitors would move in for the attack, swarming him from every side. Some of them were bound to get their poisonous jaws into his living flesh.

  “Come on, you son of a bitch,” Chapel shouted, yanking his arm back, trying to free it from the monitor’s grip. Those teeth wouldn’t let go, but at least he managed to get up on his feet again. He looked around and saw half a dozen of the bigger lizards coming toward him, taking their time, their tails lashing the sand into deep furrows.

  He’d lost his pistol when he was knocked down. The rifle was still slung across his back, but there was no way to reach it with one hand. His only hope was to get back, closer to the truck. He shouted for Bogdan and Nadia to get in, then dug his feet into the shifting sand and danced backward, pulling the monitor along with him. The monster didn’t even try to dig its claws into the sand—it let itself be pulled along, saving all its energy to use to hold on to the arm. The other reptiles scampered after Chapel, but at least for the moment they didn’t attack.

  If Nadia had been a better shot, maybe she could have driven some of them back. As it was, especially in the fading light, he was glad she didn’t try. Inch by inch, step by agonizing step he moved toward the truck, the alpha just digging his teeth deeper and deeper into the artificial arm. Chapel considered releasing the arm, just loosing the clamps that held it to his body and leaving it behind, but he couldn’t bear the thought. He staggered backward, through the stink and the hissing, and suddenly his back rammed into the side of the truck.

  The monitors came after him, moving faster now. The pack knew it was in danger of letting its prey escape and they would do anything they could to stop that. Chapel reached up with his free arm, trying to find the handle of the truck door without looking.

  Then Nadia reached down and grabbed him with both hands and pulled. “Drive!” she shouted to Bogdan. “The pedal on the right!”

  With his free hand Chapel found the ladder on the side of the cab. He wrapped his good arm through and around one of the rungs and just held on as the truck roared to life and started moving away from the rock and the pack of lizards. The monitors tried to chase after it, but in seconds it was moving too fast for them and they fell behind.

  All of them except the alpha, who hadn’t so much as loosened its death grip on Chapel’s arm. It was dragged along, its feet paddling wildly on the sand but unable to gain purchase.

  On the outside of the cab Chapel clung on for dear life as Bogdan took them straight up the side of a dune and then over the top. Chapel’s legs swung free—as did the alpha, whose big eyes showed no terror at all as its body flopped through the air.

  Nadia leaned out of the window of the truck, a pistol in her hand. She pointed it at the monitor’s eye, but the lizard flopped around so much she couldn’t seem to line up a shot. “I can’t risk shooting you!” she shouted over the noise of the engine.

  “Hit it between the eyes!” Chapel shouted back.

  Nadia twisted around until she was sitting on the windowsill. She held the pistol by its barrel and
brought its grip down hard on top of the monitor’s head.

  It was enough to make the monitor blink its nictitating membranes, but nothing more. Its grip didn’t loosen at all.

  Chapel cursed and shouted at the monitor, but that didn’t help either. The truck crested another dune at speed and nearly threw him, his legs flying out wide from the body of the cab. One foot got tangled with the monitor’s front leg.

  Maybe, he thought—just maybe—

  Chapel lifted his feet and planted his boots on the monitor’s shoulders. The reptile thrashed but there was nowhere for it to go to get away from him. Chapel braced himself as best he could and then pushed down with his feet, shoving the monitor’s body away from him, using every bit of strength he had.

  The alpha responded by tightening its grip still further. Its teeth tore deep into the silicone flesh of Chapel’s artificial arm and then, with a sickening slowness, tore right through it. The flesh came away in one big chunk, no longer attached to the arm at all.

  For a moment the monitor seemed to float in midair, its jaw already chewing at the chunk of prosthetic arm, but then it disappeared as it fell away from the truck, rolling over and over along the sand. Chapel just had time to see it spit out a mouthful of silicone before it fell away behind them.

  He looked down at his artificial arm. The silicone sleeve was just a ragged mess, still brown at the edges with venom. He tried flexing the arm and it worked—apparently the reptile hadn’t damaged any of the actuators under the skin.

  Using both hands, he climbed up and through the window of the truck, landing in Nadia’s lap.

  “Are they after us still?” Bogdan asked. He was hunched over the steering wheel, his eyes wide and staring.

  “Just drive,” Chapel told him.

  KARAGANDY PROVINCE, KAZAKHSTAN: JULY 20, 21:07

  In the backseat, Chapel poured water over the torn flesh of his arm to try to wash away the last of the venom.