“Pieces are coming together.”
“Making what kind of a picture?”
“I’m not entirely sure yet, but let me ask you this, Captain, do you feel that we’re at war with the Red Order?”
I thought about it. “Actually, even though this thing is tied to them, I … I really don’t see how. We’re at war with someone.”
“Are we?”
“The nukes.”
“The nukes are in play, but we haven’t yet cracked the logic of their placement. There have been no threats, no demands. Nothing in the case files on the Red Order suggests an anti-American agenda.”
I thought about it. “Y’know, I kind of have the same feeling about Rasouli. I mean, he kicked this off by giving me the flash drive, but the drive itself is sketchy, and he’s been totally off the radar since it began. Granted, that’s not even a full day yet, but Rasouli feels like a day player. A walk on.”
Church shook his head. “He’s more important than that, otherwise the flash drive would have been sent anonymously through the mail. No, Rasouli and the Red Order are in this. I’m simply not convinced we’re at war with them.”
“They sent a Red Knight after me.”
“Someone sent a knight after the drive. Not the same thing.”
I grunted. “What about the Sabbatarians?”
“They’re independents. They hunt the Upierczi, which means they don’t work for the Red Order; and they are fiercely Catholic, which means that they aren’t acting on behalf of Rasouli.”
“The question, then, is who pointed them at me?”
“Captain—take yourself out of the equation. They were pointed at the knights, who were in turn pointed at the flash drive. You … got in the way.”
“Ah. I guess the villains just aren’t that into me.”
He manfully refused to smile.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m going to nominate Vox as the bad guy. Who else has ‘criminal mastermind’ on his business cards?”
“Vox alone?”
Interesting question. “Nicodemus?”
Church shrugged. He left to make a few more calls.
I saw Echo Team standing apart from the activity, looking like a biker gang that had crashed a women’s empowerment meeting. I gestured for them to follow me to the far end of the warehouse.
“Good job tonight,” I told them. “I was listening and I still never heard you on my six.”
“Kinda the point,” said Lydia. “Clumsy soldiers don’t get Christmas bonuses.”
We stood for a moment, each of us looking back at the cluster of Arklight women as they continued arming for war. I saw Violin sliding loaded magazines into slots on a bandolier. She saw me watching and gave me a brief nod that I returned. We turned away at the same moment.
“Top,” I said, “get back to the other warehouse and get everything ready. Finish modifying our equipment, but don’t use all the garlic. Church will have some kind of transport here soon. As soon I talk to the Big Man again I’ll come back for a mission briefing. Everyone eat some food, hit the head, take your vitamins. Finish that special project I gave you earlier from those notes Circe got from that folklore professor. Looks like we’re going to need it. We need to be ready to rock, and who knows how long this will take. Bring as much extra ammunition as you can carry.”
“Boss,” said Bunny, “what that woman said? That’s all true, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
He shook his head. Bunny was no naïve kid, but this was all a long, long way from Southern California.
Khalid looked concerned. “There’s a question we need to ask these women here,” he said. “If garlic hurts the vampires, is it safe to use around the … um … what was the word?”
“Dhampyri.”
“Yes.”
“Good question. I’ll ask. In the meantime, let’s hustle.”
“Hooah,” they said, and I watched them vanish through the back door, silent as ghosts.
Chapter Ninety-Seven
Arklight Camp
Outskirts of Tehran
June 16, 3:43 a.m.
As I turned to go find Violin, I saw Church heading quickly toward me.
“We’re hitting them all, Captain. A coordinated soft infiltration. Everyone is moving in at the same time. Four targets here in the Middle East and the one in Louisiana. I have every DMS and JSOC team not currently assigned to one of the targets on deck. Nuclear response teams are on high alert. We’ll do whatever is possible to do, but we can’t wait any longer.”
Soft infiltrations meant stealth and nonlethal weapons. Doing just one required extensive planning and training. Doing five? I whistled. “You ever do anything like this before?”
“No one has. So, we get to write the playbook on it. Your team has to avoid a political incident as well as find the bomb.”
“You want us to do this on tippy-toes?”
“Correct. You’ll infil during this evening’s shift change. Once you’re in position, you’ll begin an unobtrusive search for the device. Floor plans and construction blueprints for the refinery were on the flash drive, and Aunt Sallie has mapped out several likely areas for such a device to be hidden. Given its nature, and based upon the image from Rasouli’s phone, we are looking at a basement or subbasement. The construction blueprints of the refinery and the current surveillance layout are close matches, but they’re not exact. There are some postconstruction additions and some things that apparently were never built. Or at least that’s the CIA’s determination. Your map will have anomalies indicated by red dots. Don’t trust the Company’s report. When in doubt get eyes on those anomalies. Abdul will rendezvous with you here and deliver you to the site. He has a workable plan prepared.”
“Already? How’s that possible?”
“It’s a repurposed plan. Abdul was working with the Company to set up an operation at one of the nuclear power plants. He delivers heavy mechanical parts to refineries and the nuclear plant—turbines, generators, transformers, air purification systems, and so on. There’s a lot of overlap with the refineries and the nuclear station, and Abdul is well known. The refineries operate twenty-four hours a day, though at night the staff is reduced by about half. Nighttime deliveries are common. Heavy equipment is often delivered at night to be ready for installation by the larger morning shift, so this won’t raise any eyebrows. Abdul has been ordered to scrap the other plan in favor of this.”
“What’s our confidence in the infil plan? Can Abdul get us in?”
“Almost certainly, though this operation might compromise him, which means that his usefulness in Iran will likely end. He won’t be happy about it, and the CIA is definitely not happy about it, but I don’t particularly care about their feelings, Captain, and neither should you.”
“I don’t. Mission comes first, and our mission has a shorter shelf life than theirs, so it sucks to be them. End of story.” I paused. “What about the last two nukes?”
Church shook his head. “We’re nowhere with them.”
I stared at him. “Damn.”
“Yes.
“When do we roll?”
“Abdul should be here in twenty minutes. Figure two hours to the refinery, with a half an hour on either end for loading and unloading.”
I looked at my watch. “We’ll be hitting the place just shy of dawn. That doesn’t leave us much time to prepare a mission plan.”
“Figure it out on the fly.”
“Rasouli could be lying about the number of sites,” I pointed out. “There might only be five nukes. Or none.”
“Or there could be twenty,” said Church. “I’m aware of the risks; however, the overall threat increases the longer we let this play out. The president wants the sweep to focus on the known targets, regardless of additional intel.”
“Yikes. There are a whole lot of ways this could go wrong.”
“Yes, and very few ways to get everything right. And once this is all over there will be very angry people in several foreign governments, even among our allies. We’re putting armed soldiers into play without seeking permission from
any
government. A lot of sovereignty rules are going to be bent or broken, and that’s too bad. The State Department is working up several variations of a presidential response, no matter how this spins out. Best-case scenario is that we’ll later claim to the world press that we were always working in concert with, and at the invitation of, these governments. If we find and de-arm the bombs, then those governments will have to stand by us publicly and agree that they invited us in as advisors.”
“Armanihandjob, too?”
Church didn’t respond. I was two for two with nobody laughing at that joke.
“We have to face the possibility that our enemies will detonate the remaining two devices as soon as they know about the hits.”
“Well, you’re just a ray of sunshine,” I said. “I so look forward to our little chats.”
“If you want something cheerier, I hear that Best Buy is hiring.” He cocked his head at me. “Until you determine that the device is, in fact, at the refinery, you will be operating under limited rules of engagement. Avoid conflict but don’t get taken. If fired upon, you are not authorized to use lethal force. We are not at war with Iran.”
“So don’t start one,” I said, “yeah, I get that. You’re asking a lot from Tasers and beanbag rounds.”
“This order comes from the president, not from me. However, make sure the nonlethal weapons aren’t all you are carrying.”
“Something else,” I said. “Khalid brought up the question of whether these dhampyri are vulnerable to garlic?
”
“It varies. I know that some of them have been killed by Sabbatarians who attacked them thinking they were Upierczi. In heavy doses garlic is fatal to them too. But it’s not a matter of simply being around garlic. The garlic oil has to be introduced into the bloodstream, or in powder form into the lungs. They will be wearing ballistic shielding and each of them carries injectable epinephrine. Every soldier knows there are risks.”
He held out his hand.
“Good hunting, Captain.”
Chapter Ninety-Eight
Private Villa Near Jamshidiyeh Park
Tehran, Iran
June 16, 3:44 a.m.
After the call to LaRoque was finished, Vox was so charged with energy that he had to run around the house for several minutes just to calm down. His whole body seemed to be cranking out more energy than a nuclear power plant. He ran up and down the stairs twenty times. Finally, breathing heavily and bathed in sweat, he came back to his office and made the second call.
“It’s the middle of the damn night, Hugo,” Rasouli answered in an angry mumble. “This had better be important, or so help me.”
“Shut up and listen,” said Vox in a deep growl. “We have problems. The thing about using the phony flash drive to get the DMS to take out the Red Order—that worked like a charm. Church and his crew are ready to swat that psychopath LaRoque. You’ll come out of it looking like a hero. Rah, rah, we can all celebrate the new president of Iran.
But
,” Vox said, leaning heavily on the word, “there’s a wrinkle and it’s a big goddamn wrinkle. Those nukes are real. No, don’t say anything. I know what I told you, but it turns out LaRoque is even crazier than I thought he was. He didn’t just buy cases for them; turns out he had no intention of just using the photos as blackmail. No, this sick fuck bought real nukes from some black-market thugs in Kazakhstan.”
“Beard of the prophet…”
“And there really
is
one under the Aghajari refinery.”
The noise Rasouli made sounded to Vox like someone was choking a turkey. He jammed his mouth into the crook of his elbow to stifle a laugh. Then he took a breath and said, “Here’s the kicker. That agent you met, Captain Ledger, he’s going after the nuke. Yes, the one at Aghajari. And he’s doing it with a full American Spec Ops team. Right now. Today or maybe tomorrow at the latest. If you’re going to do something, you had better do it right goddamn now.”
He hung up before Rasouli’s head could explode. And because he couldn’t hold back his own laughter a moment longer.
Chapter Ninety-Nine
Outskirts of Tehran
June 16, 3:52 a.m.
I left the warehouse and began walking back to where Echo Team was waiting. Ghost trotted along beside me. He was still a little off his game from the Taser and the fights yesterday, but he was coming back.
Before I was halfway there, I heard a familiar voice.
“Joseph!”
I turned and, despite everything, I smiled.
Ghost, the big furry flirt, wagged his tail.
Violin ran through the shadows to catch up then slowed to a stop five feet away. We looked at each other and my smile faltered. So did hers.
“Wow,” I said, “you really know how to show a guy a good time. Best first date ever.”
Violin laughed.
She had a good laugh. A genuine laugh, and given everything that I now knew about her I wondered how it was possible for her to have any trace of a sense of humor. It said a lot about the person she was. It was that indomitability of spirit that made me believe that women like her and her mother and the others would not only survive their own history but one day rise completely above it. I wanted to say that to her, but now was in every way not the right time.
“I don’t know where to put all of this in my head,” I admitted.
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry you have to.”
Her voice was a little sad. She knelt down to pet Ghost, who immediately lost his damn mind and rolled on the ground like a puppy. So much for the impressive dignity of the military trained dog. She even found his happy spot that made him kick his leg.
“Over the years,” Violin said as she stroked Ghost’s thick fur, “different groups have deliberately clouded the public’s perception about vampires. First it was the church, labeling them as actual satanic creatures. Then it was the Red Order, building a mystique around them so that they would be feared, but also misunderstood. The Order were the first ones to distort the powers and vulnerabilities of the Upierczi. Many of the classic writings about vampires were influenced by the Order. Leone Allacci, Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, Dom Augustin Calmet, Reverend Montague Sommers, Walter Map, William of Newburgh, and even Bram Stoker either worked for the Order or were heavily influenced by them. It was more useful to have people believe that vampires were supernatural. Like the hate crimes the Order and the Tariqa committed, such beliefs drove people back to the protection of the church.”