“I’m not feeling real rulesy right now, Mitch.”
“We’re trained professionals,” Trip said. “We’re perfectly safe.”
“Friggin’ management . . . I get fired if I don’t follow the handbook but they just toss order right out the window at the first sign of trouble. Management just picks and chooses which rules to ignore and then everything turns to chaos, and you watch, because then it goes on my evaluation . . . Chaos, I tell you.”
“Total chaos. Complete pandemonium, I know, but here’s the thing, you can have my full-auto shotgun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. Apparently your management is on my side in this argument, so quit dinking around and let’s go.”
“All right, fine. Guns, guns, guns. You better be on your best behavior.” The chunky man turned and led us down the hall. “What’s going on?”
“Have you seen the news?” I asked.
“Before it went out, we were. It isn’t Ebola,” Mitch said. “I know that much.”
“What do you know?”
“Damned near everything.”
“That’s unlikely,” I whispered to Trip.
“Whatever it is, we don’t need outside contractors to handle it. We’ve got our own security force here. My guys can handle anything.”
“Well, apparently management disagrees with you there, Mitch.”
Muttering profanity, Mitch swiped his card and led us through another door into a large room. Two uniformed security guards watched us suspiciously and put their hands on their holstered pistols, but since we were with Mitch they hesitated. Trip gave them a friendly wave. “Morning.” Past the guards were a bunch of employees watching dozens of computer monitors. Each monitor was divided into four separate camera views, and they switched around every few seconds.
“That’s a lot of cameras.”
“Thank you,” Mitch answered with pride. This was obviously a man who owned his job. “Hey . . . wait a second, dreadlocks. I recognize you now. You two were with that bunch that trashed the buffet.”
“It was all a misunderstanding,” I said.
“We looked great on the security video, though . . . I mean, we probably looked great on video.” Trip corrected himself. “I can only assume. Obviously.”
“Freaking management.” Mitch grumbled. “They said we were supposed to be nice to you conference attendees. At least the polo-shirt bunch had the common decency to move to a hotel across the street and out of my hair. If it was up to me I would’ve pressed charges and never ever let any of you back on the property.”
“But then we wouldn’t be here to save the day now.”
“Freaking management.” Mitch gave the sort of resigned sigh that only a truly disgruntled employee that knows he’s smarter than his bosses can make. “Come on.” Mitch took us to the first couple of computers. “These banks cover the street. How many people you got out there now, Mickey?”
The employee manning those computers looked over and did a double-take when he saw how Trip and I were dressed. “I lost count when the National Guard showed up.”
Mitch continued his tour. “Most of these cameras are of the casino floor, these show the shops and plaza, here’s the conference center, and we can cover every corridor and elevator in the hotel. I saw you all running around on sixteen earlier. We called the police and sent up a security team, but they got turned away by some of you assholes who wouldn’t let them up the stairs—”
One of the uniformed security guards butted in. “They don’t pay us enough to argue with a bunch of crazies with machine guns.”
“And then this—this travesty.” Mitch pointed at one of the four squares on the screen. It was black. “Can you believe that?”
“There’s nothing there,” Trip pointed out.
“Exactly. You people broke one of my cameras.”
“That’s what happens when you set off a homemade bomb in an enclosed space while trying to stop an invasion of metal Teutonic slug monsters. Hell on the hardware.” I cracked my neck. “Speaking of which, you guys got any Tylenol in here?”
Mitch must not have caught the slug monster part. “That camera was very expensive.”
“Put it on my tab with the ice swan. That damned thing cost more than my college education.”
“Oh, I will. You just wait until you see your final room bill.”
“Don’t finalize that bill just yet. We might not be done wrecking your stuff . . .” I raised my voice and addressed the whole room. “Attention, everybody, I’m Owen Pitt. This is Trip Jones.” Earl had warned me that I should keep this on a need-to-know basis. The less these people knew about monsters, the less likely the MCB was to ruin their lives afterward. They only needed to know enough to not get themselves killed. “We’re consultants and we’re here to help you through this situation.”
“Management has specified that we need to give these men our cooperation.” Mitch’s tone left no doubt as to his opinion of that decision. “Full cooperation.”
“Which means we’re pretty much in charge,” I said. Mitch looked at his shoes and grumbled some more. “On the bright side, if something goes horribly wrong we’re the ones that get blamed and sued, and you probably won’t get fired.” That seemed to cheer him up. “But we’re going to need your help.”
“What’s going on?” asked one of the employees. “Something bad?”
“Bad? What gave it away? Okay, seriously. This is going to sound weird, but it’s the truth. What I’m about to tell you must be kept secret. You can’t tell anybody. Not your family, not your friends, nobody, or the government people outside will shoot you. I’m not kidding . . .” Many incredulous looks were shared by the security room night shift. Here goes nothing. “We think there’s a dangerous supernatural entity loose in your casino.” There was some nervous laughter. It gradually died as my expression didn’t change. “Yeah. Sorry to break it to you. It killed several people in northern Nevada yesterday and murdered one of your guests this morning in room 1613.”
A long, awkward silence filled the room. “That’s nuts,” Mitch finally said.
“You know what? Go ahead and roll with that. We’re crazy, so just humor us until we’re done.” I didn’t want to waste my time debating the skeptics. “We still need you to do your jobs and keep your eyes open, and most importantly, keep a cool head.”
“Cool head?” That had offended Mitch. “We’re professionals. We handle criminals daily. We can spot pickpockets and cheats smoother than the guy in this place’s magic show. There haven’t been any rappers shot in my casino, because we see trouble before it happens. We can handle this. This isn’t nothing but a chance to get some overtime for my boys.”
“Good. Keep that positive attitude.” You’re probably going to need it.
“What’s this supernatural entity look like?” asked one of the techs incredulously.
“We don’t know. It’s able to change shape,” Trip said as I moved down the line of monitors, looking for suspicious activity. “So we’ll need to know about anything that seems out of place.”
Seeing this many different angles really drove home just how huge this facility really was. Starting at the top, there were a few different views of the roof where Julie’s group of marksmen were keeping an eye out. A black shape that had to be Skippy had a panel open on the tail rotor of our chopper and was beating something with a hammer. That just filled me with all sorts of confidence.
“Provided Skip doesn’t break anything, we can still fly out of here if we need to,” Trip said quietly to me. “Unless the MCB has a surface-to-air missile down there . . . Which they probably do. Never mind.”
Beneath the roof level and helipad was the hotel, all twenty luxurious stories, eight cameras per floor. The upper floors weren’t done yet, but cameras were already installed there. There were no cameras in the rooms, but every hall was covered. I counted all of our small Hunter teams going room to room. They’d knock, talk to the occupants if there were any, then move on. I spot
ted the other patrols in the gambling area, the concourse, and the shopping area. All were accounted for. I addressed the security personnel with my authority voice. “Keep an eye on those patrols. If any of them disappear for more than a couple of seconds, sound the alarm. If any of them look like they start freaking out about something, sound the alarm. Hell, if you see anything weird, sound the alarm. Then I want you to use the switchboard and call the conference center so we can get my people on it fast.”
“If we see something strange, we can ring the closest patrol and warn them,” suggested one of the men.
“Good call. Do that too. I’ll make sure they know to answer.” I decided to try and placate Mitch. He needed to feel important. “I can tell you run a tight ship here. You men are our first line of defense. All of these innocent people are counting on you. The faster we react, the fewer of them die. With you as our eyes, I know we can get through this alive.”
The employees exchanged nervous glances. Apparently my words of encouragement hadn’t helped any. When it came to motivation, I was no Earl Harbinger.
“Friggin’ management.” Mitch wandered over to the coffee machine, still muttering angrily to himself. The angry banging told me that he was taking out his frustration on the coffee maker. “Want one?” Mitch called to us. “How do you Ghostbusters like your coffee?”
“Without spit in it?” Trip whispered to me before answering him. “Five sugars.”
“Jeez, Trip, why don’t you just melt some candy bars in it? None for me, thanks.”
One of the techs spoke up. “Hey, boss, I’ve got something coming up the main valet parking circle.”
Me and Mitch bumped shoulders trying to see the monitor. He spilled coffee on my armor. The screen showed a small, tracked remote-control vehicle driving from the police line toward the front door. “What is that?”
“It’s a bomb-squad robot,” Mitch said. “We had a threat a few months ago and the cops used one of those little guys to blow up a suspicious package someone left on the concourse. Turned out it only had sandwiches in it, but you never can be too careful.”
There was an unfurling spool of wire on the back of the little robot and a package dangling from its single arm. “Have your operator warn the conference center. The Feds want to talk.”
* * *
We took one wrong turn and ended up in an entirely different section of the gambling floor. It didn’t help that this place had been designed to be confusing, so that anyone attempting to leave would get turned around until they just gave up and gambled until they died. By the time Trip and I had sprinted back across the casino, the robot messenger had already arrived.
Several Hunters were keeping the furious crowd away from the entrance. The robot was rolling on its little treads back the way it had come. Cooper was guarding the front door. The former EOD man waved goodbye at the departing robot. “Carry on, noble PacBot.”
“Friend of yours?” Trip asked. At least he could talk. He was in a lot better cardiovascular shape than I was. I was busy catching my breath.
“I carried one of those heavy little buggers on my back for a lot of long foot patrols in Afghanistan,” he answered. “Pain in the ass to drive with only a little screen in a pair of glasses and a Playstation controller. Still, I think we should buy a couple. I bet I could stake a sleeping vampire with one.”
“Where’s Earl?”
Cooper pointed down. “Follow the cable.”
The robot’s delivery had been taken into a side room for privacy. I made sure to close the door behind me. There were already several Hunters inside, most of them leadership from different companies. A desk had been cleared off and a laptop was running in the middle of it. The computer was plugged into a cable that led directly back to the roadblock. The hard line enabled us to bypass the jamming.
The initial communication must have been something, because Earl was yelling at the computer. “Damn it, Stark. Don’t be an idiot!”
“What’d I miss?” I whispered, but the nearest Hunters shushed me. I pushed between bodies until I could see the jowly face of the new MCB director fill the screen.
“That’s the deal, Harbinger. Take it or leave it.”
“My folks will stay and we’ll take care of this thing, and I bet most of the other companies would volunteer too, but for the love of God, let us evacuate the others. They’ve got nothing to do with this. They’re sitting ducks in here.”
Stark’s chins trembled. “Well . . .” he looked to the side as someone off screen addressed him. From the background, I was guessing that he was in some sort of armored vehicle, probably right outside. “I can’t allow that. My hands are tied.”
“How many innocents are you willing to let die this time? You want another Copper Lake on your hands?” Earl’s voice was low and dangerous.
“No, of course not.” He sputtered. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to prevent. This entity can’t be allowed into the city.”
“You learned what it is, didn’t you? What’s in here with us?”
“I can’t say. That’s classified.” Stark kept glancing nervously to his left. “You’ve got twenty-four hours to get a confirmed kill on this thing, or we’ll be forced to take drastic measures.”
“Drastic? You intend to burn this place down with all of us in it, don’t you?”
“I did you a favor getting that much of a delay approved. I put my neck on the line for you. You were lucky to get twenty-four hours.” Stark was turning red. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
“Then tell me!”
“I . . .” Stark glanced left again. “I can’t.”
“If you can’t, then put somebody on who can.”
“I’m the final authority on this mission.”
“Bullshit. You’re a lap dog for Special Task Force Unicorn. Put Stricken on.”
Stark blanched when he heard those words, but he tried to recover. “I’m the head of the MCB. Don’t question my authority!”
Earl’s voice turned into a low growl. The assembled Hunters all took an unconscious step away from him. “Now.”
Stark hesitated, glancing to the side one last time. He listened quietly, then, resigned, shuffled out of view without another word. A moment later he was replaced with the narrow, unnaturally pale face of Mr. Stricken, who seemed to fold his long body into the space. His odd-colored glasses hid his eyes. “Harbinger,” he greeted without emotion.
“What’ve you done to us, Stricken?”
“I merely offered you a lucrative business opportunity. I thought it was some Decision Week dreg that needed a fast cleanup. It wasn’t until a couple of hours ago that I was briefed on the particularly nasty nature of this case. If I had been aware of the threat level sooner, I would have dealt with this matter internally. If you have anyone in there who isn’t already familiar with the basic facts of that incident, send them out of the room now. They’ll thank me later.”
None of the Hunters moved.
Earl controlled his seething rage long enough to ask, “What’ve you locked in here with us?”
“Let’s see . . . Locked in there with you: Ick-mip guests of a non-militant persuasion, approximately one hundred and forty. Staff, one hundred and twenty-two. Monster Hunters, two hundred and fifteen from fourteen different companies. One crew of sheetrockers, some union electricians, and we’re trying to get a handle on gambling addicts that were dumb enough to be there at four A.M., but I’m estimating that around fifty, and an unknown number of co-eds and party girls who crashed Grimm Berlin’s celebration, and last but not least, one extremely dangerous science experiment.”
“Capabilities?”
“Unknown.”
“Weaknesses?”
“Unknown.”
“What do you know?”
Stricken’s smile was totally devoid of human warmth. “Most of the records pertaining to this particular experiment have been destroyed or buried deep, even by my admittedly high standards for secrecy. Howev
er, it has been brought to my attention that some of the original Decision Week scientists are still alive and may have firsthand knowledge. We are contacting them now.”
The Unicorn man was a seething bundle of lies, but that part sounded plausible. “There’s a reason you locked this place down so quick when you found out it had followed us here. There’s something else. How do you know this thing is so dangerous?”
“My first responders retrieved some physical evidence from the containment unit.”
Earl looked to me and I nodded.
Stricken’s laptop was rigged to watch the entire room. We should have known. “Pitt . . . I’m not surprised. So that was you in Dugway with Agent Franks.”
Denying it would only waste valuable time. “There were some tags missing from the old machine.”
Stricken chuckled. “Interesting. I was wondering who that second man in the photos was. It was hard to tell with those chemical suits on. It figures. I’ll have to have a few words with old Frankie about the necessity of maintaining security protocols.”
“You do that.” If we were lucky Franks would lose his temper and beat Stricken to death, hopefully before he got to me for inadvertently ratting him out.
“My team did recover some items. One of the others had a project identification number. Setting internal matters aside for now, and getting back to your original question, we were able to track the identifiers back to one of the most exciting and secretive weapons projects in history. I’m assuming you already knew that, though. Of course you do, because Agent Franks couldn’t keep his big fat stupid mouth shut. Interesting fact, did you know that they ranked all of the World-War-II-era experimental weapons systems on a scale from one to ten, with one being the least, and ten being the most potentially destructive and disruptive to society?” Stricken waited.
“Werewolves were a two,” Earl whispered.