Free Myrmidon by David Wellington Page A

said, very quietly. “Belcher, this is—­it’s too much. If you blow up those igloos—­”
    â€œFigured it out, did you?” Belcher asked. “Won’t be long now.”
    Up ahead, at the front of the convoy, someone leaned out of a truck window and started firing an AK-­47.
    The attack had begun.

 
    CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    C hapel could see little from his position near the rear of the convoy, but he could guess what was happening from the noise and the shouts and the flashes of light.
    Pueblo Depot had been a significant army base once, a munitions storage-­and-­maintenance facility that had supplied half the country with ammunition from bullets to guided missiles. It covered more than twenty-­four thousand acres, and had been one of the major dumping grounds for equipment coming back from World War II. The vast majority of the depot had been shut down over the ensuing decades, though—­it was so reduced in usage that big parts of it had been leased out to civilians as warehouse space, and what the military still owned was scheduled to be closed in less than five years. Now it was only lightly guarded, definitely not up to a concerted attack by two thousand neo-­Nazis. Belcher’s men were overwhelming the gate guards and whatever reinforcements they could call up. The shooting was over in a few minutes, with what looked like only minimal casualties on Belcher’s side.
    Once it was clear, Belcher took his truck off the road and headed up toward the gate. Chapel got a good view of the gatehouse, a little booth enclosed in now-­shattered glass. An SAF guy in a leather jacket and Doc Martens boots had climbed up on top of the gatehouse and was firing his rifle in the air, while two others pulled the bodies of dead soldiers out of the way of the oncoming vehicles. Someone inside turned off the folding-­tire-­spike barrier, and pickups and SUVs moved quickly through the opening, spreading out among the buildings just past the fence. Belcher waved vehicle after vehicle through while he studied the road behind them, occasionally glancing at his watch.
    â€œYour friends should be here soon, Agent,” Belcher said. “We’re going to have to move quickly. But we’ve run enough drills we should be okay. My ­people know the layout of this base like the backs of their hands.”
    â€œThose soldiers never did anything to hurt you,” Chapel insisted, watching a body get dragged up to the fence surrounding the base. A skinhead propped the dead man up to look like he was sitting, then slapped the dead face playfully. Chapel felt his stomach turn over. “You hated the brass in your unit in Kuwait? Fine, go get revenge on them. These were just kids, doing their job.”
    â€œNice speech,” Belcher said. “You have any more like that, why don’t you save it for the media when this is all over? If you live through this, you’re going to be a star. Every news outlet in the country’s gonna want to hear your story.”
    Chapel shook his head but said nothing.
    Belcher got the last of his vehicles inside the fence, then pulled his own truck up to the gate. He waved at a neo-­Nazi in the gatehouse, and Chapel heard the sound of a hydraulic system starting up. Looking out his window, he saw the vehicle-­deterring spikes rise from the gateway, directly under Belcher’s truck. A row of steel spikes on a hinge, they were designed to shred the tires of any vehicle stupid enough to try to charge the gate. They hadn’t stopped Belcher’s men, but now Belcher intentionally drove over them, first forward, then back, until all four tires of his truck popped with a noise like low-­caliber gunshots. The truck sank a few inches, one corner at a time.
    Chapel knew what he was doing. Belcher didn’t need the truck anymore—­he didn’t plan on driving out of here—­so he had turned it into an