Deadly as hell.
My heart started beating as fast as Ghost’s and all the spit in my mouth turned to dust.
“God,” I murmured, but I was looking at the devil.
The bomb.
Chapter One Hundred Ten
Aghajari Oil Refinery
Iran
June 16, 6:05 a.m.
I moved toward it. I wanted to run. God, I wanted to run for my life.
I kept moving toward it, drawn to the sheer enormity of what it represented at the same time as I was totally repulsed.
Ghost was right with me, but he seemed happy to be away from the dead, which is weird. Dogs like smelly, rotting stuff. He should have been having a field day cataloging all the scents. He wasn’t.
The device was larger than I thought. Four feet high, six wide, eight long. The data on these models gave a weight range between eight hundred and sixteen hundred pounds. This one looked bigger, maybe a ton. I wasn’t going to slip it into a pocket and run out of here with it, and I wasn’t going to sneak it out on a hand truck.
I was going to have to de-arm it.
I tapped my earbud again in the vain hope that somehow there was a signal. Nothing, and glancing over my shoulder at the heap of corpses I had a pretty good idea why. Whatever was happening, whatever the Red Order and the knights, or the knights themselves, had running—the infiltration, the communications jamming—was happening now.
The only thing that kept me from having a stroke right there was the thought that there were a couple of dozen of our unknown hostiles here at the refinery. Not the time to detonate the device.
Hopefully they were not suicide soldiers.
My inner Cop told me to shut the fuck up and pay attention to the task at hand.
I used my forearm to wipe sweat out of my eyes, then took a long steadying breath, and focused my mind on the PDA strapped to my forearm. I tapped the keys to pull up the de-arm procedures for the nuke. I scanned it to refresh my mind and then scrolled back to the first step.
“Okay,” I said aloud, hoping that my voice sounded competent and calm. Maybe tomorrow I’ll cure cancer. About as likely.
I have a little bit of religion. Not much, just enough to get me to church on Christmas and Easter. I wasn’t much for personal prayer. Not like my friend, Rudy, who was a staunch Catholic. However, as I removed my tool kit on the cowling of the beast, I was praying as hard as I could.
My tools were all made from an ultra-high-density polymer rather than metal. Plastics are nonconductive. The steps sound easy. Remove the screws holding the cover plate in place, disconnect the wires leading from the battery or the timer to the detonator. Sounds easy, but this is where you’re most likely to encounter a booby trap. Trembler devices, fake wires, micromotion detectors, heat sensors. If nothing goes boom at that phase you hit the whole red wire–blue wire thing.
I slowly unscrewed the six screws and checked to make sure that there wasn’t a trip wire rigged to an anti-intrusion trigger. There was no wire visible. Sweat ran down my face and stung my eyes. Ghost smelled my fear and whined nervously. I held my breath as I removed the plate.
Nothing went boom.
I set the plate down and addressed the wires. The leads from the battery were easy to spot. And, yes, they were red and blue. Always have to appreciate the classics.
There was a second plate covering the electronic trigger device. This was the brains of the machine, a computer that operated the neutron trigger and would fire it as soon as the activation code told it to. In devices like this, the code could be radioed in or hand-entered. I glanced up at the rocky walls. No, maybe the device on the oil platform in Louisiana could be activated via radio, but no radio signals at all were getting in here. They must have come and hand-entered it. As soon as I removed the plate I should be able to determine how much time was left before detonation. With any luck it would not already be ticking. Ideally, a two-hundred-year countdown would be nice.
I gingerly removed the screws and lifted off the plate.
And stared at the digital screen display.
“What the fuck?”
The bomb was not ticking away its last few seconds.
All of the little lights were dark. The timer wires were not even attached.
I stood up and backed away from the device.
The bomb wasn’t live. Not yet.
I wanted to fall down. Swooning like a Victorian maiden seemed like a proper response.
The universe so rarely cuts me a break that I usually don’t recognize them, or believe in them, when they show up.
Nevertheless here it was.
“Ghost old buddy,” I said. “I think we finally got lucky.”
There was a sound behind me. A soft scuff.
I spun around. I knew what I would see standing in the dark behind me.
A Red Knight.
But I was wrong.
There were
two
of them.
So much for luck.
Chapter One Hundred Eleven
Arklight Camp
June 16, 6:06 a.m.
Church swiveled in his chair, looking from one screen to another. On each of them the teams were in motion, but on the Aghajari screen the little glowing dot that indicated Joe Ledger had winked out.
There were two possible explanations. Either he was deep underground, or his transponder was damaged. Neither optioned seemed to be a happy one.
Church touched the communications button. “Talk to me, Auntie.”
“The ball’s in play. Riptide Team reports zero resistance, no apparent hostiles. They’ve taken the rig and are searching for the device. SEAL Team Six is in the water checking the underside and the drill head. Landshark Team is inside the Beiji refinery but no joy so far. Same for the Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia. Only resistance is at the Pakistani site. We have satellite and predator surveillance, but, as yet, bubkes. Local military were on-site for an inspection and they encountered Zulu Team. At present no shots fired.”
“Keep me posted.”
He turned to the screen on which the remaining identification codes were posted. V/I, M/S, and J/I. Circe’s face looked at him from an adjoining screen.
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.