But no. The judge was too important to Banks’s plans for the future. Especially the next few days.
“He’s headed where?” Hayes demanded.
“The Catskills. You know what he expects to find there. Don’t make me say it, even on an encrypted line.”
Hayes was silent for a second. “You think he’ll learn anything?”
“It’s hard to know. My jurisdiction stops at the fence. What may still be inside there, if anything, is Hollingshead’s business. It doesn’t matter.”
Hayes wasn’t about to be diverted from his previous ire. “Whatever. I need him here, in Denver. I need him here now.”
Banks agreed. Chapel needed to be in Denver as soon as humanly possible. This jaunt to Camp Putnam was going to slow down a lot of plans. Not for the first time, Banks wondered how much Chapel had figured out. Whether he was starting to guess what the real game was here, and what the stakes were.
It seemed unlikely. Chapel had proved he was tougher than nails, but he’d also made a lot of dumb mistakes — like dragging the cute veterinarian around with him. A smart operative would have left her behind.
He couldn’t just assume Chapel was an idiot, though. And he definitely couldn’t just ring him up and tell him what to do. The one-armed asshole had to be led around like a bull with a ring in his nose. If you pulled too hard on the ring, he would just plant his feet and refuse to move. You had to be subtle about it. Make him think he was still in charge of his own destiny.
“I’ve got to go,” Banks told Hayes. “I think I can solve our mutual problem, but it means making a very delicate phone call.”
“To whom?” Hayes demanded.
The judge had no need to know, but for once Banks relented. “Rupert Hollingshead. I’ve got to light a fire under his ass.” Chapel trusted his boss. Time to exploit that particular mistake.
IN TRANSIT: APRIL 14, T+43:07
They landed in the Catskills with no fuss. The airport there was little more than a short runway between two forested hills, a place for hobbyist pilots to park their Cessnas. It was just big enough to accommodate the jet.
“There are some pretty rich people up here, in the middle of nowhere,” Chief Petty Officer Andrews told Chapel. “This isn’t the first G4 to land on this strip. What do you want me to do now?”
“Hmm?”
“Me, the pilot, this plane. Do you want us to wait here for you?”
Chapel thought about that for a second. “What are your orders from up top?”
Andrews studied his face for a moment before answering. Perhaps she was trying to decide what his security clearance was. “I’ve received no new orders since I picked you up in Atlanta. Though — there was one thing. I was told to watch you closely and provide an update on your psychological state.” She was being careful, he saw, choosing her words precisely. She hadn’t told him who was supposed to get that update.
“Okay. Don’t get in trouble on my account,” he told her, knowing perfectly well she wouldn’t. If orders came in to leave him stranded in the Catskills, she would take her plane up and away on a moment’s notice. “If you don’t get any other orders, stay put. Refuel if they have the right facilities here. We might need to leave in a hurry.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” she said, and saluted him. Her way of saying she would follow her orders — wherever they came from. Reminding him, perhaps, of the chain of command.
He returned the salute anyway, then went to wake Julia. She’d just managed to fall asleep and she was surly getting up, pushing his hands away and pulling her hair down over her eyes as if she wanted to block out the light. She didn’t say anything, though, as he led her down the stairs to the ground.
It was cold out, though not as frigid as Chicago. What Chapel hadn’t been expecting, though, was how dark it was. There were a few lights on the airstrip’s sole building, a hangar about five hundred yards away. The jet behind them showed its own lights that blinked on its wingtips. Otherwise the world was wrapped in a thick blanket of dark cloud that only a few stars could penetrate. The moon was down, and Chapel couldn’t see more than a dozen yards in any direction.
No one was waiting for them on the tarmac. Not a soul.
That was a good thing, of course. It meant Chapel wasn’t about to be arrested — or worse. It meant Hollingshead wasn’t ready to reel him in, not quite yet. Maybe the admiral wanted to give him a chance to come in on his own. Or maybe he wanted to see just how far Chapel would push.
The darkness was also a bad thing, though, because they had a ways to go yet in the middle of the night. “Angel,” he said, “what are the chances of getting some transport out here?”
“Sorry, Captain,” the operator said in his ear. She sounded like she had better things to do. “You can turn around and get back on that plane. Follow your orders. Otherwise, you’re on your own.”
“Understood,” Chapel said.
Crap. He’d gotten used to Angel’s help. He’d gotten used to having cars waiting for him everywhere he went, and helicopters when the cars weren’t fast enough.
Well, he still had his training. Army Rangers didn’t have angels sitting on their shoulders when they were dropped behind enemy lines. They were taught to improvise as necessary.
A little parking lot sat on the far side of the hangar. Three vehicles were parked there — two compact cars and a pickup truck. Chapel glanced through a window on the side of the hangar. There was an old man sitting in there, applying daubs of paint to a canvas the size of a barn door. Chapel saw no sign of anyone else — most likely the man in the hangar was simply a night attendant, there to make sure nobody ran off with the row of private planes parked inside the cavernous hangar. Loud music came through the window, something wild and classical. The attendant probably hadn’t even heard the G4 land on his runway.
So far so good.
The compacts were most likely stored there for the use of people flying in for the weekend — people who lived somewhere else but wanted to be able to drive around when they got up here. The pickup probably belonged to the painter, but it was the best choice for where Chapel was headed. It would also be the easiest vehicle to acquire. The doors weren’t locked. He stuck Julia in the passenger seat — she did as she was told without complaint or acknowledgment. Then he bent down under the dashboard and pulled some wires away from the fuse box. “You can’t do this on modern cars,” he told Julia, who didn’t even look at him. He was talking to fill up the silence. “The computers in them know better. But the older models were designed to be fixed by their owners, so everything’s out in the open.” He found the two wires he wanted. With his fingernails and teeth he stripped a little insulation off them, then rubbed them together until the pickup coughed to life.
As Chapel threw the truck in gear and rolled through the open gate of the airfield, there was no sign the painter was even aware he’d just been robbed.
PHOENICIA, NEW YORK: APRIL 13, T+44:19
The night was impenetrably dark. The skeletal branches of trees loomed over the road on either side, blocking out even starlight. The truck’s headlights could illuminate no more than a few gray weeds sticking up through the gravel of the road. Chapel had to take it slow, consulting the GPS in his phone every time the road branched or turned.
Occasionally they passed by an open field and the silver light of the overcast was just enough to see by. Old wooden buildings crouched on that open land, barns and farmhouses. Few of them showed any lights of their own.
Suddenly Julia sat up straight in her seat and peered through the truck’s window, her hand on the glass.