Top Sims was the first to speak. “Cap’n, I think I can speak for everyone when I say, what the fuck?”
“I hear you.” I looked at their faces. “Ask your questions.”
Lydia held up a hand. “Sir? Permission to return to reality.”
“Denied,” I said. “If I have to deal with this stuff then so do you.”
“Permission to shoot myself?” she asked hopefully.
“Let me get back to you on that.”
“Where the Christ do we start?” asked Bunny.
“Nukes,” suggested Khalid. “We have to start there. But … that’s problematic. I mean, do we have even a clue as to the players and their teams?”
“Lots of clues, but no idea where we stand with them,” I said.
Khalid shook his head. “Where does Rasouli fit into this? How does it make sense that he brings this to us?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know yet.”
“Whatever it means, he seems to be the only one on our side,” said Lydia. “Kind of makes me feel dirty.”
“Good dirty or bad dirty?” asked Bunny, which earned him a hard elbow in the ribs.
“Okay,” Top said slowly, “all of this is fascinating as shit, but who has the damn nukes?”
“We don’t know,” I admitted. “Though the Sabbatarians seem to think it’s the Upierczi.”
“Why the hell would vampires want nukes?” demanded Bunny. “I mean … they’re fucking vampires, right?”
“Guess they want to blow something up,” answered Top. “Same as anybody.”
I told them about the conversation I’d had with Hu and Church about the Upierczi and my still-in-the-development-stage doomsday theory.
“Right,” said Top, “Okay, I’m with Lydia now. I’d like to catch a cab back to the real world.”
Bunny shot him a sour look. “Which real world would that be, old man? This time last year we were shooting zombies.”
“Yeah,” Top conceded. “Fuck me.”
Chapter Eighty-One
On the Road
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 9:59 p.m.
“That doesn’t answer the question of why these Upierczi want to blow up the oil fields,” said Khalid.
“No it doesn’t,” I agreed. “So when we get one of these pointy-toothed bastards in a corner, I want him kneecapped and cuffed and then we’re going to have a group therapy session with him, feel me?”
“Hooah,” they agreed.
“If Rasouli knows about the nukes,” asked Khalid, “isn’t this something the State Department and NATO should be handling?”
I said, “We are not in a position of trust. Rasouli came to us on the sly, and he clearly didn’t trust his own government.”
“Swell.”
Bunny leaned forward. “Look, I don’t like to be the one to piss in the punchbowl here, Boss, but how come we’re not all shouting the name Hugo Vox? I mean, vampires notwithstanding, does anyone really think that he’s not the Big Bad Wolf here? He’s already wanted by every law enforcement agency on the planet. Shouldn’t outing him to the authorities as the main villain be a natural next step to finding and stopping the vamps from triggering five sonofabitching nukes?”
“Seven,” corrected Khalid.
“Seven sonofabitching nukes. Jeez. My point is—”
“We can’t do much about him for now,” I said, “because we don’t know his exact role and we don’t know where he is.”
Top gave me a shrewd look. “There’s something else, ain’t there? I can see it in your face, Cap’n, there’s more to this.”
“There’s one more thing.” They all came to point, eyes sharp and focused, waiting for me to drop the last bomb. “When I took out the first Sabbatarian team today I obtained a briefcase which had, among other things, materials that had to have come from Vox.”
“What kind of materials?” asked Top.
“A list of all DMS staff as of the end of last year. And … the names and addresses of everyone’s families.”
If I’d dropped a flash-bang into the center of the room I couldn’t have hit them harder. Top’s eyes went wide and his lips parted in a silent O. He had an ex-wife back home, and a daughter who had lost both her legs in Baghdad when a mine blew up under her Bradley. It was the reason he joined the DMS, and now he was thousands of miles away from being able to stand between them and an unknown group of killers.
I held up my hands. “Church knows about this and he’s taken steps. Everyone on that list is going to be taken into protective custody.”
“Which won’t mean shit if Vox is behind this,” growled Top. “He had people wired into the cops, the FBI, everywhere. Probably still does.”
“I know, but Church is on it.”
Top looked at me with a stare so hard and cold that it felt like physical blows.
“We didn’t start this war, Top,” I said. “We have to count ourselves lucky that we found that list. It gives us a chance.”
We sat in silence thinking about the possible consequences. If I hadn’t found that list, if the Sabbatarians had been able to move on it, the resulting carnage and grief would have destroyed the DMS at its core. Even if we survived, the damage done to us would be like third-degree burns on our psyche. We’d never recover.
“Vox,” said Top. Just the name, but it had so much meaning; he said so much with it.
“Vox,” I agreed.
Lydia cleared her throat and glanced at me. “What exactly are we supposed to do when we find the weapons?”
It took effort to turn away from Top. “What would your guess be?”
She shrugged. “Locate and secure each nuke, de-arm the weapons, and have a meaningful conversation with anyone left who still has a pulse. Then go home and drink a gallon of tequila.”
Everyone laughed. It was all forced, though. Even Top measured out half an inch of smile. “Now you know the game plan,” I said.
Bunny asked, “Is there any kind of evacuation plan in case we drop the ball?”
“Evacuate who, Farmboy?” snapped Top. “The entire Middle East? How exactly do we do that?”
I rubbed my eyes. “Okay, we’re waiting for the go-order to hit the Aghajari oil refinery. It’ll be a quiet infil. Locate and de-arm.” I opened my tactical computer and called up the mission files uploaded by Bug. “First thing we have to do is study the layout of the refinery according to the blueprints Rasouli provided, matching them against satellite photos and intel from our own sources. I want six ways in and ten ways out.”
“Hooah” said Top. No one else joined him.
“Then I want you to pair up and buddy-test each other on the wiring schematics of the Teller–Ulam bomb and its variations. Swap teams every half hour. Everybody knows what everybody else knows. We don’t want surprises and missed cues when de-arming the nukes. Hooah?”
“Hooah.” All of them said it this time.
“After that, everyone gets rack time.”
“Sleepy soldiers are clumsy soldiers,” said Khalid, then punctuated it by quietly going, “Ka-booooooom.”
“Hoo-fucking-ah,” said Bunny.
Chapter Eighty-Two
Abandoned Warehouse
Outskirts of Tehran
June 16, 12:22 a.m.
While the others worked on their de-arming drills, I read through the vampire information Circe had obtained from Dr. Corbiel-Newton. Most of it was useless fairy-tale stuff or speculation without hope of verification. Some of it, though, was more practical, taking a look at the possibility of vampirism as a natural phenomenon. That was the same ground I had covered with Hu, but there were some things here that I found very interesting. Especially about garlic. In the movies, garlic simply repels a vampire, kind of like pepper spray, but it doesn’t kill them. In a lot of the world’s folklore, however, garlic was lethal to them, especially if introduced into the bloodstream or via a mucus membrane. In something called the “ritual of exorcism,” fresh garlic was placed in the mouth of a vampire. In some cultures garlic paste was used on skin or clothes as a deterrent and could kill a vampire if one of them bit skin that was coated with it. Of course … that would require a vampire with a head cold who couldn’t smell the damn garlic.
As I thought that, an idea skittered across my brain. It was there and gone. My three inner selves—the Cop, the Warrior, and the Civilized Man—all made grabs for it, but we came up dry.
So I went out and retrieved the Sabbatarians’ valise from the back of the vegetable truck, and then laid out the contents. Hammers and stakes to one side. I doubted they would be useful. Ditto the vials of holy water. But the bags of garlic powder and the jars of garlic oil … even touching them coaxed that idea out of its hiding place in the shadows of my brain.
I held a bag of garlic powder in one hand and a jar of oil in the other.
It was the Cop who figured it all out.
But it made the Warrior smile and smile.
Chapter Eighty-Three
Abandoned Warehouse
Outskirts of Tehran
June 16, 1:34 a.m.
I needed to sleep, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Instead I walked the perimeter of the warehouse to make sure it was secure. It was. We could not have been farther from the flow of life here in Tehran if we were on the moon. The night sky was immensely dark and littered with ten trillion cold points of light.
I fished a stick of gum out of a pocket and chewed it, enjoying the mint burn, glad to be rid of the lingering taste of garlic. Ghost came sleepily out of the warehouse and trudged along with me, pausing now and again to leave his mark on useful walls.
I called in for Church but was rerouted to Aunt Sallie. She listened to my report without much comment except to make a biting remark about my “letting” Jamsheed get killed.
“You’re a charming lady,” I said. “Anyone ever tell you that?”
“Eat me,” she replied. “Church will be in touch when he wants you to know something. Until then, lay low and try not to get anyone else killed.”
A crushing reply was poised on the tip of my tongue but she hung up on me.
Almost immediately the phone buzzed and I hit the button in hopes of flattening Aunt Sallie with my rejoinder.
“Hello, Joseph.”
I smiled, “Hello, Violin.”
She paused and I strained to hear if there was any background noise, anything that I could use to get a lead on where she was. But there was nothing. Ghost must have heard her voice and he actually wagged his tail. Dog’s a little weird.
“Are you somewhere safe?”
“For now,” I said, though that was only true in the physical sense. Everything inside my head felt like it was a junk pile of hand grenades without their pins and bottles of badly stored chemicals. “Thanks for the help today.”
“I wish I could have warned you, but I found out where you were by following the Sabbatarians. There are teams of them all over Tehran.”
“I’m surprised they can operate so freely.”
“They can’t. There have been a lot of arrests over the years, here and elsewhere. They are charged as spies. The church doesn’t know about them and their own people disown them. Most of them die in prison.”
“Pity,” I said. “Are they really part of the Inquisition?”
“How did you—? Oh. You must have questioned some of them.”
“Only one and he didn’t know much.”
“You’re probably wrong about that. How hard did you try?”
Ouch
, I thought. Ghost stood sniffing the wind as if trying to catch Violin’s scent on the breeze. Something caught his attention and he wandered off into the shadows. Probably some interesting jackal poop. Ghost is a scatological connoisseur.
“Since I already know some of it,” I said to Violin, “how about telling me more?”
“Yes,” she said.
It took me a two-count to catch up to that. “What?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think it’s time to tell you what’s going on.”
“First—whoopee, and I mean that sincerely. Second, why the change of heart?”
“It’s … complicated.”
“That seems to be a theme lately. Care to elaborate?”
“I asked my mother.” When I laughed, she said, “I’m not joking.”
“Your mother. Lilith, right?”
“How—? Ah … Mr. Church told you. Good, that will make it easier. She’s here in Tehran and she’s asked me to bring you to her.”
“When?”
“Now. Can you get away for an hour?”
“Maybe,” I said dubiously. “Where are you?”
“Right behind you,” she said.
Chapter Eighty-Four
Abandoned Warehouse
Outskirts of Tehran
June 16, 1:41 a.m.
I spun around and tore my pistol out of its holster.
She was ten feet away and she already had her gun out and up.
Ghost came pelting out of the darkness like a white bullet, but I gave him a hand signal and he stopped thirty feet from Violin’s right flank, uttering a low growl that was full of promises. So much for wagging his tail. I guess that he didn’t like being blindsided any more than I did.
“Drop it,” I said.
“No,” she said, “I don’t think I will.”
We stared at each other.
She smiled first. Small and tentative. Then I felt my mouth twitch.
“On two?” I said.
“Sure.”
I counted it down and when I hit zero we both abruptly tilted our pistols to the sky and took our fingers off the triggers.
We stood there assessing each other, then lowered our guns. Neither of us reholstered them, though.
“Hello, Joseph,” she said.
“Hello, Violin.”
She was both similar and different to the image of her that I had constructed partly from memories distorted by the smoke and thunder of the gun battle at Jamsheed’s and partly from how I’d imagined her since that first call yesterday morning. Lean, fox-faced, with erect posture and the slightly splay-footed stance you see in ballet dancers. The MTAR-21 assault rifle hung from its strap, and she held a Ruger Mark III .22 caliber pistol down at her side. In many ways she reminded me heartbreakingly of Grace, but she was also very different. Younger, taller, with an air of innocence about her—despite her profession—that Grace did not share. I wondered if they could have been friends.
“Come with me,” she said. “Lilith is waiting.”
“You call your mother by her first name?”
Violin shrugged.
“Is it a code name? Like Violin?”
“Nobody I know uses their real names,” she said, and there was sadness in her eyes.