Lilith had been staring at these for minutes now.
“This doesn’t make senses,” she said. “In the previous codes, the I in A/I had been Iran. But J doesn’t fit with Iran’s other refineries, nor does V. And there is no M refinery in Saudi Arabia. Why change the code in the middle of a single list?”
“It’s not LaRoque’s handwriting,” said Circe. “Bug checked it against samples he found in the computer records at the foundation for which LaRoque sits on the board. He has a clunky style in print and a scrawling cursive. This is elegant. Toomey in handwriting says that the style and grace is indicative of a highly trained person, probably with Catholic school education. Someone who has spent much of his life writing in cursive. LaRoque’s young enough to have grown up with computers and e-mail.”
“LaRoque’s father is out,” said Lilith. “He would have been alive when the Order first tried to buy the nukes, but he’s long dead now.”
“It’s not Hugo’s,” Circe said. “Grigor?”
“No. I’ve seen his handwriting. It’s as terse and brutal as he is.”
Church said, “Nicodemus.”
Lilith and Circe stared at him. And nodded.
“Knowing that doesn’t help us understand the code.” He paused and grunted. “On the other hand, we might be overthinking this again.”
“What do you mean?” asked Circe.
“What if the list is not a code but a simple uncomplicated shorthand?” He tapped a key on his console and Bug’s face appeared on one of the screens. “Bug, initiate a search. Listen first. If the first letter in each pair is the name of the target—A for Aghajari and so on—and the second letter is the first of the location, I for Iran, we missed a clue right there. I was used to indicate both Iran and Iraq. The answer is right there and we looked through it.”
“But there’s no J or V refinery in Iraq, either,” insisted Circe.
“Stop thinking about specifics and go general. The additional targets may not be refineries. They could be anything. And remember, these were written by two different people. The code, and even the order of the letters might not match. Allow for flexible thinking.”
“If they aren’t matches, how will we ever find them?” asked Rudy.
“The second letter. Bug, let’s start there. Make a list of all oil producing countries beginning with the letters I and S. No, give me J as well, in case the order is skewed. Then get me a general alphabetized list of all countries. Run both through MindReader’s counterterrorism assessment package and cross-reference with significant potential targets beginning with V, J, and M. Do it now.”
Circe and Bug’s screens went dark. Lilith put her hands on Church’s shoulders and gave them a single squeeze, then she went out to deal with her teams.
Church sat back and waited, his face showing none of the tension that burned through him. His cell buzzed and he picked it up, looked at the screen display, and frowned. It read ID NOT AVAILABLE.
There were only two systems that could block MindReader’s phone trace technology: the one he had provided to Lilith years ago and which he could break if he chose to, and the one that had been used as a weapon against him by the Seven Kings.
He answered the call. “Hello, Hugo.”
“Sorry, Mr. Church” said an unfamiliar voice, “wrong monster.”
Church straightened. “Who is this?”
“Nobody.”
The accent was London, South End. That, plus the access to this kind of phone, told him a lot.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Chismer?”
“That person doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Should I call you Toys?”
“Toys is dead. He’s burning in hell where he belongs.” There was a sound. A soft sob. Then, “Can we do this without names? It won’t take long. I know you can’t trace the call.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“Hugo told me that you are a religious man. Was he telling the truth about that, too? Please tell me the truth.”
“Yes.”
“Hugo thinks that you used to be a priest. Was he right?”
“No.”
“I need to make a confession,” said Toys. “Will you listen?”
Church said, “Yes.”
Chapter One Hundred Twelve
Aghajari Oil Refinery
Iran
June 16, 6:10 a.m.
They stood between me and the tunnel that led back into the refinery. One was dressed in the orange coveralls of the refinery’s general maintenance staff; the other was the major. I’d walked on the false teeth he’d dropped, and he smiled to show me his real teeth. His fangs.
And I realized that he must have been wearing contact lenses earlier and had discarded them as well. Both Upierczi glared at me with hellish red eyes.
I had a flashlight in one hand and a plastic screwdriver in the other. My pistol was in its holster. So were theirs, but that wasn’t as comforting as it should have been.
Usually in situations like this Ghost would move to one side and slightly forward, preparing to defend the pack leader and launch the first wave of attacks. He didn’t. Instead, shivering and whimpering, he peed all over the floor. The Upierczi may be scared of white dogs, but my super-highly trained, ultrafierce attack hellhound was a whole lot more scared of them.
The two men stared at Ghost, and their smiles grew bigger.
Swell.
“Fetch dog,” laughed the major and made the same sign to ward off evil that the first goon had made back at my hotel—touching his heart and drawing a line above his eyes.
“If you kill that piece of shit dog we will make it quick for you,” said the maintenance man.
He smiled when he said it.
It was bad enough that he made that suggestion. He shouldn’t have smiled when he did, because until that moment I was genuinely terrified.
Now I was pissed.
“Here’s an idea,” I said conversationally, and I threw the screwdriver at the maintenance guy with my left hand and drew my Beretta with my right.
Two things happened at once.
The Upier in the coveralls shocked the hell out of me by catching the screwdriver.
A microsecond later I put a bullet through the bridge of his nose.
Do not fuck with my dog.
Chapter One Hundred Thirteen
Aghajari Oil Refinery
Iran
June 16, 6:12 a.m.
The maintenance man flew back. The bullet blew out the back of his head, and the force of impact snapped his neck. Hollow points. Booyah.
The major didn’t stop to gape at his fallen comrade. He moved like a blur and I pivoted, firing round after round at him. Ghost barked and lunged, but he was trained not to run into a field of fire.
The Upier was stunningly fast, but he really ought to have run serpentine. I fired at the target and caught him with my fourth round. He was fast, but a nine millimeter bullet is a whole lot faster. The round hit him sideways, clipping his elbow and drilling into his hip. From the way he fell it was clear that his pelvis was shattered.
“Hit,” I told Ghost, and he flashed across the concrete floor toward the screaming vampire. The major’s screams instantly jumped to a higher register.
It was over very fast, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of Ghost’s aggression or the bullet. Jonatha Corbiel-Newton had made some very smart recommendations, and we’d used them. A drop of garlic oil into the mouth of a hollow point, sealed in place with a bead of wax. We’d used the same syringe to inject garlic into all of our shotgun shells, sealing the plastic cases with a cigarette lighter.
And we had some other surprises.
Which left a big problem.
Echo Team was still upstairs, and there were a couple of dozen Red Knights somewhere in the facility. The Knights didn’t know that and I couldn’t call my team. Lydia either hadn’t found Echo Team yet or something was slowing up their progress up there.
My instinct was to hot-f
oot it out of there and find them; but that was poor thinking. Just because the bomb wasn’t active at the moment didn’t mean that it couldn’t be activated by one of the Upierczi here in the refinery. The only way I could prevent that would be to remove the entire triggering system, and that was going to take ten careful minutes. Inactive or not, it was still a nuke and there was always the possibility of booby traps.
Ghost suddenly looked past me and barked. Loud, angry, and scared.
I spun, bringing the pistol up.
Red Knights.
And I didn’t have nearly enough bullets.
Chapter One Hundred Fourteen
Arklight Camp
Outskirts of Tehran
June 16, 6:15 a.m.
Church closed his phone and thought about what Alexander Chismer—Toys—had told him. Much of it was information he already had. Some of it was Toys’s guesswork whose accuracy Church doubted. Some of it, though …
Hugo’s cancer.
Upier 531. Dr. Hasbrouck.
The disease and its possible cure explained two key parts of this puzzle. The viciousness was born out of frustration as a narcissistic megalomaniac lashed out from his deathbed. Vox wanted to light a nuclear pyre to mark his own death. Very dramatic, mused Church. Very Hugo.
Then there was the improbable amount of useful information on Rasouli’s flash drive. Vox had used Rasouli to provide the DMS with virtually everything it needed to hunt for the nukes. Why would he do that?
It made no sense unless Dr. Hasbrouck’s treatment had worked.
Hugo no longer wanted to burn the world because he intended to live in it.
Toys had not said any of this in plain language. The young man was more than half crazy with guilt and self-loathing—both for past actions and for betraying Vox with this call—but the essence of Vox’s plan was buried within Toys’s rambling confession.
One element remained obscure, however. Nicodemus. No matter how this thing was turned, the old priest—if priest he was—leered out at them.
Church called Joe Ledger, but there was no signal.
The most crucial thing was the leverage Vox had used to stall Grigor long enough in order to receive the full set of Upier 531 treatments.
The code scrambler. Without that, the nukes were dangerous, but they were sleeping dragons. He called for Lilith and briefed her and then used the team com channel to call Top Sims.
“Deacon for Sergeant Rock.”
“Go for Rock.”
“Sit rep.”
“Cowboy is at zero point. We’re converging on his location. No fuss, no muss upstairs.”
“Proceed with utmost haste. High probability that the nuke is not yet armed. Grigor may be on the way there with the code scrambler. Unknown if other activation codes have been sent. Regardless, obtaining that scrambler is now priority one, superseding all mission objectives and restrictions. Confirm understanding”
“Copy that.”
“Sergeant Rock, listen to me. The Red Knights are the hostiles. That is confirmed. All other combatants are secondary.”
“Copy that, too. We’re ready for them.”
“There are no time-outs, no rematches in this game. We win this or we lose.”
“Hooah. Rock out.”
Church made similar calls to the other teams. It was only Toys’s guess that Grigor would be coming to Aghajari. It was closest; Grigor’s Kingdom of Shadows was a mile below Tehran. However, all of the teams had to be prepared to encounter Upierczi.
When he was done he called the president.
As he ended that call, Bug rang through.
“Okay, Boss,” said Bug, “here goes. Oil refineries by nation are as follows. For I we have Iran, Iraq, Israel, and Indonesia, Ireland, and Italy. By ‘J’ we got Japan, Jordan, and Jamaica. And for S we have South Africa, Sudan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, and Suriname. But like you said, this mixes things from the order of the codes.”
Church pursed his lips. “Give me all the countries that start with those letters.”
“For I we have nine countries: Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, and Italy. For the ‘Js’ we have six: Jamaica, Jan Mayen, Japan, Jersey, Jordan, Juan de Nova Island. And the big list is ‘S’: Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, São Tomé and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Syria.”
“Did you run it through the CT package?”
“Got it, sending it to you now.”
There were multiple potential targets on the list from the counterterrorism software package, but MindReader was designed to look for patterns and probabilities. It weighted its choices, and at the top of each list was the most likely target, the one that would have the greatest economic, social, cultural, or political impact.
Church scanned the list.
“My God,” he said.
Lilith saw it too. And then Circe.
Rudy and Bug said, “What?”
And then they saw it.
“This isn’t about the Holy Agreement,” murmured Circe in a small, shocked voice. “They may have wanted the bombs for some purpose before 9/11, but this has nothing to do with that.”
“No,” said Church. “This is about the Upierczi. They are without doubt the ones with the bombs.”
“But why?” demanded Rudy.
“They were monsters and slaves for centuries,” Lilith said in a hollow voice. “They had become weak and almost died out. Now they are stronger than they ever were. Much, much stronger.”
“But—”
“We are about to go to war with a new nuclear power. The vampire nation.”
Chapter One Hundred Fifteen
Aghajari Oil Refinery
Iran
June 16, 6:16 a.m.
There were thirty or forty of them standing at the edges of the spill of light, but I could see indistinct shapes moving in the darkness. More of them. Many more.
Their ranks parted and one of them walked toward me. He was taller and more muscular than the others. His skin was milk white, his eyes the color of bright blood. He wore black clothes and a crystal teardrop on a silver chain. In the center of the teardrop was a brilliant ruby.
I aimed my gun at him, but I heard soft, furtive footsteps on either side of me. And behind me.
The lead Upier studied me for a moment. Around him his people were whispering to each other: “White dog … white dog!” They all made their protective signs, touching hearts and tracing lines on their eyes.
Their leader half turned and silenced them with a growl like a wolf. The silence was immediate. He turned slowly back to me, and a slow, broad smile spread over his hideous face.
“I know who you are,” he said in a voice that was every bit as cold as a Halloween wind. “You are Captain Ledger.”
And I said, “Oh shit.”
It is never going to be good news if a vampire knows your name.
“You are a traitor to your own people,” he said, “and an enemy of mine.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“Our friend told us,” he said, smiling so that I could see his teeth. Those teeth were scaring the living hell out of me. “He said that you conspired with Rasouli and the Red Order to keep us in chains.”
“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, pal. I’m here to keep this bomb from going boom. When I’m done with that, we can sit down with a latte and talk about it.”
I’ve always marveled at my own ability to be a smart-ass when there is neither a good reason to be one or time to screw around. It’s way high on my list of character flaws.
“Do you know who we are?” asked the leader. The other vampires had me completely surrounded. Ghost whimpered and shivered beside me.
“At a guess? Grigor, chief bloodsucker of the Upierczi,” I said.
He didn’t blink, just gave me a nod of approval.
“Then you’ll know what an honor it is to die by my hand.”
“That’s actually not on my day planner.”
His eyes cut left and right. “Bring him to me.”
The Red Knights closed on me.
“Ghost—hit!” I yelled, but Ghost simply stood there. Trembling, drooling with terror. His bladder let loose and he peed all over the floor. Again.
Not exactly the response I was hoping for.
The Upierczi stared for a two count, and then they all burst out laughing.
“Oh shit,” I breathed.
The closest Upier darted in and kicked Ghost in the side. It looked like a light kick, but it lifted Ghost’s hundred pounds and flung him against the side of the bomb case. Ghost slammed into the hard metal with a terrible yelp of pain, rebounded, and fell. He lay whimpering on the floor.
The vampires laughed and laughed at Ghost, but they were looking at me. Red eyes and red mouths surrounded me.
I pivoted and shot the Upier who had kicked Ghost. I hit him in the balls because I wanted him to suffer. He screamed and fell, and the bullet punched all the way through him and hit another Upier in the thigh. Two down. Their screams were so high, so shrill that it wiped the leering smiles from every face.
I liked the effect, so I kept shooting.
I wanted Grigor, but two Upierczi threw themselves into the path of the gunfire and died for their king.
I shot the gun dry, and in the confusion I swapped out the magazines.
But I never had a chance to fire the gun. A pale figure moved toward me with such insane speed that I couldn’t bring the barrel to bear. Grigor. He swatted the Beretta out of my hand and it went spinning away.
He grabbed a handful of my shirt and pulled me toward him. I used the impetus to hook a palm-heel shot across his temple. It turned his head but it didn’t drop him with a sprained neck like it should have. All that I accomplished was to shake loose of his grip, though as we staggered apart the whole front of my shirt tore away, exposing the Kevlar vest beneath.
With a snarl he darted forward and punched me square in the center of the chest. The blow slammed into me like a cruise missile and literally plucked me off the ground and hurled me ten feet through the air. I hit the flat front of the bomb housing near where Ghost had struck, and a twenty-one-gun salute burst along my spine. My feet landed flat but my knees buckled and I went down hard on my kneecaps and then fell forward onto my palms.