Chimera: A Jim Chapel Mission (Jim Chapel #1)

Chimera: A Jim Chapel Mission (Jim Chapel #1) Page 28

"Can't sleep?" she whispered. She wriggled back against him again and gasped in surprise. He had a pretty good idea what she'd just felt. "Apparently not," she said. She turned her head so she could look at him over her shoulder.

"I'm just glad you're here," he told her.

She twisted around enough to kiss him on the lips. "Me too," she told him. She rearranged herself to spoon him again as if she planned on going back to sleep, but she stroked his thumb with hers, and he knew she was at least half awake now.

He kissed her neck again, and this time her back arched. She let out a pleased sigh and pulled his hand up to her mouth. She kissed each of his fingers in turn. "This might be our last chance," she said, and he knew exactly what she meant, but he waited for her to make the next move.

She did so by bringing his hand down to cup her breast. He squeezed it gently and she sighed again. Through her sweater and her bra he felt her nipple begin to harden and he stroked it with his fingers. He kissed her neck more passionately now, and she squirmed against him, rubbing up and down on him until he couldn't stand it. He moved his hand down between her legs and felt the heat there, heat and a little dampness, even through the thick fabric of her jeans.

"Ohhh," she said. "Chapel . . . last time, in Atlanta, it was about comfort. This time it's more. Right?"

"Yes," he told her, and he pressed his mouth against her neck, her back. He unbuttoned her jeans and unzipped them. She moved his hand down inside her panties and he slipped a finger inside of her, feeling how wet she was.

With her help he pushed her pants down, then unzipped his own fly. Her hand found him and guided him into her from behind. Their bodies fit together effortlessly. She was more than ready for him and he grabbed her hip, ready to thrust deeply into her, but she pushed back. "No," she said. "Take it slowly. In fact, don't move. You shouldn't be exerting yourself."

"Oh," he said. "Should I . . . stop?" He moved his hand against her body, his fingers making circles through her damp pubic hair, finding the right spot.

"No," she told him. "No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that at . . . all." Her ass slid back and forth against him in tiny movements that were going to drive him insane. "Just . . . stay there. Oh, yes. Right there." She ground against him and he started to gasp. It was torture, utterly sweet torture, and he desperately wanted to grab her and just fuck her, but he knew how to obey orders. The tip of his index finger made tiny circles on her clitoris and she moved with her own rhythm, her own pace. He could feel her body shivering, feel her rising toward climax. Deep inside her, he felt his own body surging with blood as she took him along for the ride.

"Right there," she said again, and pushed her hand down over his, crushing his fingers against her body. "Right . . . yes . . . there . . . yessss . . . Don't you dare stop," Julia told him, and pushed his hand back to where it had been. The whole time her ass shifted against him, rubbing up and down in tiny increments until he complied. He forgot all about-whatever it was that had made him stop-and moved his finger in quicker, ever smaller circles until Julia was bucking against him, thrusting backward with her ass again, and again, and again, and-

"Chapel, I'm going to come," she told him, and looked back over her shoulder at him. "I'm going to-I'm going to-" Her lips were slightly parted and her hair had fallen down over one of her eyes. "I want you to come with me," she begged, and he kissed her deeply even as their bodies jerked and ground together, and he felt himself surging, passing the point where stopping was even an option. She pushed herself back against him one last time and then put her free hand up over her face as her body squeezed him inside of her, as they came together. He pulled his hand free of hers and lifted her fingers away from her face so he could watch her, watch her eyes as she came. He stared deep into her eyes and saw what he was looking for there, even as his own body released all his tension into her. He cried out and she covered his mouth with hers and they kissed, just kissed for the longest time as they rode out the wave of their shared orgasm.

Eventually she relaxed and dropped back against him, her back wriggling against his chest. She turned her face toward the pillow and just breathed, breathed in the same rhythm as his own breath. She took his hand in both of hers and used it for a pillow and in a moment he realized she was falling asleep, spent and in perfect comfort with him there, still inside of her.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 15, T+80:49

Chapel woke later to find the cabin lights slowly coming back on. He blinked his eyes and gently stirred Julia. "I think it's time to get up," he said.

CPO Andrews's voice over the intercom was soft and pleasant. "Good morning. We'll be landing soon. I have a simple breakfast of leftover chicken and vegetables, and a little bread. I'll come into the cabin in a few minutes to serve it."

Julia looked up groggily. She smiled when she saw Chapel's face and leaned in to peck him on the lips. Then she squirmed around to pull her pants back up and zip them. Chapel did the same.

When CPO Andrews entered the cabin, she carried their breakfast on a tray, which she set down on the table between the seats. "It's a little before eleven in Fairbanks," she said. "The current temperature is hovering around thirty-six degrees and it's snowing, but just a little. It won't interfere with our landing. I'm going to the galley to prepare for landing, so you won't see me again until we touch down," she said.

"Uh, thanks," Chapel told her, reaching for a glass of juice.

This time, Andrews definitely winked before she headed aft.

Julia dropped her fork. "She-she must have heard us," she said.

Chapel watched her face. She was blushing, and with her fair skin her whole face turned red, as well as her ears.

"It's a small plane," Chapel said, apologetically.

"But I was trying to be quiet!" Julia put a hand over her mouth. "Oh God. I am so embarrassed."

Chapel bent over his breakfast and ate heartily. He had no comment to make.

IN TRANSIT: APRIL 15, T+81:21

Fairbanks International Airport might have been huge and cosmopolitan or it could have been a tiny airstrip. There was no way to tell. The snow had picked up while they taxied across the runway, and now the whole sky had turned featureless white. Fat, wet flakes landed on Julia's blue-gray parka and collected in her unbrushed hair. Chapel squinted through the snow and tried to make out the terminal.

CPO Andrews hugged herself in the cold. "Are you sure you don't want me to come with you?"

"No," Chapel told her. "I need you here, ready to take off again as soon as we get Taggart."

Andrews shook her head. "Listen, at least-Julia, you take this." She reached inside her jacket and drew her sidearm. It was a snub-nosed revolver. She handed it over to Julia, who held it as if it were a poisonous snake.

Then Andrews wished them luck and closed the door behind them.

They walked across to the main terminal building. At the ground transportation desk, Chapel learned it was easier to rent a snowmachine than it was to rent a car.

"The roads here are treacherous all winter," the clerk explained, showing them to their vehicle. "Snowmachines are the best way to get around. Now which of you is driving-" He stopped suddenly and stared at the way Chapel's left sleeve hung loose from his shoulder. "Here you go," he said, handing Julia the keys.

Chapel looked at the snowmachine. It was bigger than he'd expected, a long, sleek model with skids in front and big, powerful-looking tracks in back. It had room for two, a high windshield, and a spare gas can mounted behind the rear seat. It was no racing model-this was a utility vehicle, meant for getting around over rough, snowy terrain. A workingman's snowmachine.

Steering it, however, meant holding on to a pair of handlebars. That was beyond him now that he'd lost his artificial arm.

"You ever drive one of these before?" he asked Julia as she climbed into the front position. He remembered she was from New York City. "You ever drive a car?"

"Back in the Catskills, sure," she said. "Admittedly, that was fifteen years ago." She shrugged and reached up to touch the new hands-free unit in her ear. Angel had made sure they each had one so she could talk to them both. "I have someone to walk me through it," she said. She gunned the throttle, and the machine roared underneath her. "Ooh," she said. "I might like this."

Chapel climbed on behind her and wrapped his arm around her waist. They leaned forward together, and she steered the machine out onto the open snow, and they were off.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+81:45

The first mile on the snowmachine made Chapel consider seriously just jumping off and walking to their destination. Julia kept goosing the throttle when she thought she was going too slow and stamping on the brake every time the machine fishtailed on a patch of ice, and it was all Chapel could do to hang on. But he should have known by then that she was a fast learner, and she rarely made the same mistake twice. After a while she was driving like a pro, keeping her speed steady and her treads well in contact with the ground. He had to admit he was impressed. He wondered if he could have taught himself to drive the machine as quickly.

The snow made no sound as it fell, and the afternoon sun melted it nearly as fast as it accumulated, but it never stopped. Julia stayed close to the roads where she could, but they were already slick with ice and she had an easier time cutting across open fields. They headed south of the city, across the Tanana Flats, a vast frozen plain that ran unbroken as far as Mount McKinley and the Alaska Mountains.

Chapel thought that William Taggart could have chosen a more hospitable location for his lab. Ahead of them, at the far edge of the Flats, lay a maze of twisting canyons carved by glaciers, a landscape of nothing but snow and dark rock. It would be way too easy to get lost back in those canyons if you didn't have Angel whispering in your ear. Visitors weren't even allowed into the more mountainous parts of the park except on special buses. It was rugged terrain even in summer, and now, with winter only slowly loosening its grip on Alaska, it seemed like a great place to get yourself killed.

They started to see signs warning them that the park was off-limits to snowmachines, but Angel told them to turn off and head west anyway. They entered a narrow canyon between two high ridges and headed south again, skirting the highway as it bent around to follow the river that formed the northern border of the park. Down here in the shelter of the mountains more trees grew, and the only path they had to follow was the road, which they had to cross every once in a while to avoid obstacles.

"You're close, now," Angel said, and Chapel was glad for it. It felt colder and darker by the river, and the snow was falling heavier. They headed away from the road, north along an old logging trail. The ground was broken by permafrost and general disuse, and the snowmachine bounced and shook even when Julia slowed them down to a crawl. "We never would have made it this far in a car," she shouted back over her shoulder. "What the hell does my dad do out here?"

"I thought you might have some clue," Chapel shouted back.

"What?" she asked.

Angel repeated his words, but Julia just shrugged. "I haven't spoken to him in years. I knew he was in Alaska, but I didn't even know which city."

An even rougher path split off from the logging trail. It wound through a stand of pine trees that looked like new growth-few of them were more than ten feet tall. The darkness of the place grew, even though somewhere overhead, through the cloud cover, the sun was shining.

Up ahead, in the lee of a high cliff, stood a small cluster of unremarkable buildings. There was no fence, nor any sign, but Angel was sure of it.

"You're here," she told them.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+83:01

Julia switched off the snowmachine and an incredible silence settled over the clearing in the trees. After a few seconds Chapel could hear the individual snowflakes falling on the ground around him.

He climbed off the back of the machine and took a few steps toward the main building. It was a squat, windowless structure, built of heavy brick that looked like it could survive being buried in snow every year. A metal stovepipe stuck up from one end, pushing white steam or smoke into the air that was the same color as the snow, the same color as the sky. A snowmachine not unlike theirs sat parked near the single door. The machine looked like it had seen some heavy use-duct tape had patched a crack in its windshield, and the skids were scuffed and pockmarked.

Chapel looked back and saw Julia still straddling their snowmachine, her hands on the handlebars as if she might start the vehicle up and drive away.

"You coming?" he asked her. "You don't have to."

She nodded. She was looking at the building as if she could see through its walls. "Give me a second," she said.

He understood. Her father was in there, a man she'd never gotten along with. A man who had done terrible things. He waited in silence. He could feel his nose hairs freezing, but he just gave her the time she needed.

"Okay," she said, finally. Just as he'd known she would. She got off the machine and came up to the door with him. Reaching out one hand, she knocked hard on the door. There was no bell or intercom or any other way to summon the inhabitants.

Nor was there any answer to the knock. They stood together, their breath frosting the air between them. Snowflakes settled on Julia's eyelashes. She knocked again.

Chapel tried the knob. It turned easily-the door wasn't locked.

They stepped inside, out of the snow. The room beyond the door was wide and open, only a little warmer than the outside air. The inside of the building was even less impressive than its exterior. The interior was lined with row after row of cinder blocks, and one wall of the room was a big rolling door, like a more secure version of a garage door. If it were opened, the building would offer no shelter at all from the elements. There was little furniture inside except for three waist-high aluminum slabs.

On top of each slab lay a grizzly bear, curled up and sleeping, their enormous bodies rising and falling slowly as they breathed. Electrodes were buried in their thick fur and attached to wires that hung from the ceiling. Where the wires came together they were gathered into thick cables.

Chapel put his arm out to hold Julia back. "Watch out," he said.

The bear closest to them had opened one eye. It watched them with a dull indifference. The bear moved its forelegs a few inches, sliding them across the slab as if it would start to get down at any moment. Then, as Chapel held his breath, the bear tucked the foreleg in, closer to its body, and its eye closed again.

"This is not what I expected," Julia said.

"No," Chapel agreed. He tried to think of something else to say.

Before any words came to him, Julia approached one of the bears-one that had not stirred-and walked slowly around its slab, examining it without touching it. Chapel wanted to drag her back, to get them both out of there, but he didn't want to risk making any noise.

"They don't appear to have been ill-treated," Julia said, bending low to examine one bear's nostrils.

"Are they drugged?" Chapel asked, whispering, though she'd spoken at conversational volume. Having grown up in Florida, he'd learned a healthy respect for animals that could maul and eat him without much provocation. You didn't mess with alligators if you wanted to live to go to high school, and he had a feeling grizzly bears belonged in that same category.

Of course, she was a veterinarian. Maybe she knew what she was doing.

"They're hibernating," Julia told him. "Actually, 'denning' is the preferred term. Bears don't really hibernate."

"No?" Chapel asked.

"No, their body temperatures never fall low enough for that, and they can be woken up a lot more easily than, say, a hibernating bat or hedgehog."

"Then maybe you should keep your voice down," Chapel told her.

"Aren't they gorgeous? You just want to curl up with them and pet their fur," she said, almost touching a bear's two-inch-long claws. "Not a good idea, though. They're way stronger than they look, and a hell of a lot faster. They can run faster than us. And they're highly aggressive-it doesn't take much to set them off."

"Like the chimeras," Chapel pointed out. Meaning, she should get away from them and the two of them should leave. As cold as it was, the air in the room was humid and full of the smell of the bears, and he was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. Give Chapel a squad of heavily armed Taliban screaming for his death and he knew how to react to that. This was wholly outside his sphere of knowledge.

"My dad's not here," Julia said. "He must be in one of the other buildings." She took one last look around and inhaled deeply. "Come on. Let's go."

"Okay," Chapel said. He backed toward the door slowly, not wanting to take his eyes off the bears.

When the door opened behind him, he jumped and nearly shouted in panic.

A man in a heavy parka stood there, looking in at them. He looked like he was in his midtwenties, and he had a calm, unexceptional face. "Who are you?" he demanded. "What are you doing in here?"

"We're looking for William Taggart," Julia told him. "He's my father."

The man's expression didn't change. "He's over in the lab. You shouldn't be in here. We can't risk exposing the bears to anything you track in. What do you want with Dr. Taggart?"

Julia looked confused. "I told you, he's my father. And he's . . . in danger. I've come to find him and take him out of here."

The man turned to face Chapel, as if expecting him to introduce himself. Chapel stayed silent. There was something about this guy he didn't like. He felt wrong, even though Chapel couldn't have said why.

"Dr. Taggart can't leave. Not now," the man said. He was still staring at Chapel. When Chapel didn't say anything, he held out one hand for Chapel to shake.

Chapel grabbed him by the wrist and twisted around to get the stump of his left shoulder into the man's stomach, knocking him off balance. Chapel pushed hard, and the man fell backward out of the door, into the snow, with Chapel almost on top of him.

A look of sudden rage passed over the man's face. But that wasn't what Chapel was watching. When the man staggered out into the daylight, the sun hit him right in the eyes. Just as Chapel had expected, black nictitating membranes slid down over the man's eyes to protect them from the sudden light.

Chapel rolled off him and up to his feet, drawing his sidearm in the same motion. He pointed the weapon right at the man's face.

"Ian," he said, "don't you fucking move."

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+83:16

The chimera blinked and spat some snow out of his mouth. He put his hands down on the ground as if he might spring up at any second, jump up and right at Chapel.

"Where's Taggart?" Chapel demanded. "What have you done with him? Did you kill him? I don't know how you got here so quickly, but if you killed him, you're going to pay. And don't get any crazy ideas about trying to trick me. I've met your brothers. Malcolm, and Quinn, and the one who went to New York. The one who killed Helen Bryant."

"Brody," Ian said.

"Brody, fine. He's dead. They're all dead, except for you. And I don't think you're going to last much longer."

"Brody killed her," Ian said. "He actually did it." He shook his head. His body was tense on the ground, a steel spring ready to be triggered.

Chapel took a step back, his aim on Ian's forehead never wavering. He should just do it, he knew. He should shoot now and end this. He'd tried to convince Malcolm to come in peacefully and look where that had gotten him.

Ian started to sit up.

"I told you, don't move," Chapel said.

Julia appeared in the doorway of the building where the bears were hibernating. She looked scared.

"Stay back," Chapel told her, and she nodded.

"You killed them," Ian said. "All of them?"

"Three of them. Yeah," Chapel said. "I had to. They would have killed me, otherwise. They would have killed a lot of people. You need to realize, right now, that you've already failed. That getting up right now, that fighting me, will get you exactly nothing. Just because I killed them doesn't mean you need to fight me."

"You must know a little about us," Ian said. He held himself perfectly still. Probably biding his time. "Maybe you know how we feel about someone who can kill a chimera in a fair fight. We respect that."

Chapel thought of Camp Putnam. Of four corpses mounted on a blackboard, and the words scrawled beside them. He remembered what Samuel had told him, about the gang that Ian had ambushed and destroyed. "I know about Alan, and what you did to him and his gang," Chapel said. "So I know your respect isn't worth a whole lot."

"You probably also know I won't make this easy on you. Why don't we both back down? You leave here. I won't kill you."

Chapel squinted at Ian, wondering what to do. Then, over to his left he heard feet crunching on snow. He didn't move, didn't look away from Ian's face.

Julia stepped out of the doorway. "Dad?" she said.

Chapel couldn't help himself. His eyes flicked sideways, and he saw another man, an older man, standing twenty feet away. William Taggart. Alive and apparently unharmed.

"What are you doing with my new lab tech?" Taggart asked.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+83:26

"Everyone just stay calm," Chapel said, once they had relocated to the lab.

"Young man," William Taggart said, "that would be a lot easier if you weren't holding that gun."

Taggart was in his midsixties but looked younger to Chapel. He had a wild shock of red hair that stuck up almost straight from his receding hairline, and bright eyes that never stopped moving. He talked elaborately with his hands and always seemed excited about something.

His lab was little more than a shack, much smaller and more cramped than the building that housed the three bears. Much of it was filled with equipment-centrifuges, racks of test tubes, piles of computer towers tied to laptops by thick bundles of cables. The rest was filled with cages. Cages full of bats and hedgehogs and squirrels in three different colors. Every animal in every cage was fast asleep, breathing so slowly it was hard to realize they weren't dead. They were all hibernating, and like the bears they were being constantly monitored by electrodes buried under their fur.

"What-exactly-are you studying here?" Chapel asked. "And why is the CIA funding it?"

Taggart's eyes went wide, and his smile lit up the room. "I've found the DNA sequence that codes for hibernation," he said, grabbing a nearby cage and peering down at the sleeping hedgehog inside. "It's so simple! For a long time we've understood the metabolic pathways involved in hibernatory behavior, but we've lacked the genetic understanding to know why some animals do it and some don't. Just imagine what we could achieve if humans could hibernate. Can you grasp how useful that would be, to be able to program yourself to sleep that deeply, any time you wanted? The possibilities are enormous, from spaceflight to military applications-"

Chapel shook his head. "I don't think the CIA has manned missions to Mars planned for this."

"Well . . . no, probably not," Taggart admitted. "They probably want to use it to torture people or something; that's what they're good at. But what if I could put you to sleep for four months, at the end of which you would have lost twenty-five percent of your body weight? We could end obesity and curb the diabetes epidemic!"

"Or turn Guantanamo Bay into a warehouse full of people the government doesn't like," Julia said, "asleep for as long as we wanted."

"That's a horrible thought," Taggart admitted.

"The CIA is famous for taking horrible thoughts and making them realities," Chapel pointed out. "Like, say, the chimeras."

Taggart threw his hands in the air. "I knew it would come to this! That's why you came here, isn't it? To accuse me of doing bad things. Maybe you thought I would get all ashamed and start apologizing."

"It would be a start," Julia said. "Dad, we found out what you did to all those mentally ill women. We found out about their-their mothers."

Every eye in the room turned to look at Ian.

The chimera was sitting quietly in a chair at one end of the room. He'd allowed Chapel to tie him to it with lengths of computer cable. Chapel had no doubt that when Ian was ready he could break those bonds without much trouble. But tying Ian up made him feel marginally better.

"Apologies and the like can wait," Chapel insisted. "We actually came here to save you. From him."

"As you can see," Taggart said, "that wasn't necessary. Ian's been quite pleasant company, actually. He just showed up here about three days ago, and since then he's been helping me with some of the more mundane tasks. Cleaning the place, at first, but now I've taught him to titrate samples and prepare them in a centrifuge. He's an amazingly quick learner and-"

"Three days?" Chapel asked. "He's been here three days?"

"Yes. He showed up even before I got that phone call saying I was in danger."

Chapel's eyes went wide. There was no way Ian could have gotten to Alaska that quickly on trains or even in a car. He must have flown directly to Fairbanks after escaping from Camp Putnam. The Voice must have helped with that. This whole time Chapel had been racing against the clock, trying desperately to get to Alaska before Ian could . . . and the chimera had been here the whole time.

But then something else occurred to him. "When Angel called you to warn you someone was coming here to kill you, you didn't even mention to her that someone-that a chimera-had already arrived?"

"Ian and I had already come to our arrangement by then," Taggart pointed out.

"Arrangement?" Chapel asked.

It was Ian who answered. "I had questions. I had a lot of questions. I needed to know why I'd been created, mostly. I needed to understand. So I made a deal with Dr. Taggart. I promised I would control myself, that I wouldn't hurt anyone, if he would tell me what I wanted to know."

"You're a chimera," Chapel pointed out. "You can't make a promise like that. Any kind of frustration, any small thwarting of your will can set you off. I've seen it-I've watched your brothers go from reasonable to homicidal in seconds. You can't control it!"

"Any kind of frustration," Ian said, smiling. "Like, for instance, having a gun pointed at my face and being threatened with death right when I'm about to find out the answer to the most pressing question of my life? You mean a frustration like that?"

Chapel had to admit that Ian had already proven him wrong. "It's just a matter of time," he said.

"It's a matter of will," Ian told him.

Chapel shook his head. "No. I've tried to reason with chimeras. I know where that gets you. You're a time bomb, Ian." He turned to face Taggart. "Doctor-back me up here. I don't know why you created the chimeras, but I know they were a failure. You had to lock them up in Camp Putnam, seal them off from the world because they were too violent. Maybe you thought they could be something else, but their level of aggression was more than you could handle. They-"

"I beg your pardon," Taggart said, sneering. "There was no failure. The chimeras were-are-exactly what I meant them to be."

"You meant them to be so aggressive they killed each other off while the U.S. military could only stand back and watch?" Chapel demanded. "You meant for them to be violent psychopaths?"

"I wouldn't put it that way," Taggart said. "But the answer is yes."

"Good God!" Chapel exclaimed. "What the hell did you think you were playing at? Why on earth did anyone authorize you to make these things?"

Taggart took a step backward and leaned against a stack of cages full of sleeping bats. "As an insurance policy, of course."

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+83:37

"Insurance policy?" Chapel asked, deeply confused. "Against what?"

"All this is top secret, Captain," Taggart said. "Are you sure you're cleared to hear this? I know my daughter isn't."

"Dad," Julia said, "he has a gun."

Apparently that was enough. Taggart shrugged and inhaled deeply before beginning his story. "It was 1979 when I was first brought in to consult on what became the chimera project. It had a code name back then-Project Darling Green-which thankfully was abandoned later, when we actually realized we could do it, we could solve the problem."