Free The Cyclops Initiative by David Wellington Page B

their grooves.
    Normally—­but now it was lit with splashes of red and blue light, and the quiet was broken by the sound of police radios squawking back and forth.
    It seemed Wilkes had done the smart thing. Normal protocol for a mission like this would be to maintain discretion. You didn’t want to give your target any reason to suspect you were coming, so you went in alone by the most devious route you could find.
    Instead, Wilkes had called the cops before he arrived. He’d mobilized dozens of police cruisers to surround the area so that if Angel tried to run, she would find herself surrounded. It wasn’t how Chapel would have done it, but it made sense. Angel was no field agent. He sincerely doubted she was even armed. Why wouldn’t Wilkes make this easy on himself? Why not make it impossible for anyone else to help her? The marine was no fool, it seemed.
    Chapel found a position where he could observe the terrain without being spotted, but it wasn’t easy. The cops had set up patrols that kept moving around the fence, checking for any sign of movement. Chapel had been forced to take up a position in an old empty water tank right on the edge of the rail yard. The metal wall of the tank had rusted through on one side, giving Chapel a chance to look out and see what was going on.
    He checked the map on his phone again. The exact location seemed to be a trailer about a hundred yards away. It was the newest thing in this decayed section of the yard, but it hardly stood out. The paint on its aluminum sides was peeling and its wheels had been removed, the body of the trailer propped up on cinder blocks. It didn’t look like much, unless you noticed the thick bundle of cables that snaked through one of its windows. Those cables ran through a thicket of bushes and disappeared into the chaos of the yard. There were far too many of them to just provide power or even a standard Internet connection to the trailer.
    It was exactly the kind of setup that Angel would need. A place that was out of the way and unlikely to be disturbed. Plenty of power and data access. And it was mobile if it needed to be—­a helicopter could come in and pick up that trailer and move it to a whole different state on very short notice. When Chapel had first seen the coordinates, he’d been surprised. He used to live in Brooklyn, not an hour away, and he’d thought how crazy it had been that he’d been so close to Angel the whole time and had no idea where she physically was. But looking at the trailer, he realized she might have been moving around constantly.
    Below him a policeman slowly passed by, scanning the ground for any sign of trouble. The cop wore full body armor and had a submachine gun slung at his hip. He didn’t even glance in the direction of the trailer. Chapel was pretty sure Wilkes hadn’t arrived yet, and that the police had been instructed to secure the area but not to take any further action. They might not even know that it was the trailer they were guarding.
    Hollingshead might have stalled Wilkes, holding out on providing the coordinates for as long as he could. Or maybe Wilkes had just driven from Fort Meade up to New York and gotten stuck in traffic.
    Either way, Chapel had a little breathing room. But not much. He needed to move now. Too bad that cop was down there. There was no way for Chapel to get out of the water tower and over to the trailer without being seen. There just wasn’t enough cover.
    Chapel had no desire to add assaulting a police officer to his rap sheet, but it looked like there was no choice.
    He waited until the cop was almost directly below him. Then he gently pushed against the rusted wall of the water tank. It peeled away like wet cardboard, but not without squealing loud enough to get the cop’s attention.
    Six feet below, the cop looked up, right at where Chapel hid. Chapel just had time to register the look of surprise on the cop’s