“We’ll meet here.” I noted a place between the northwest corner of the hotel and the side entrance, where there were no security cameras. “We’ll climb to the hotel roof. From there we’ll make our way to the annex. I’ll get in through the top. You two go through the basement entrance.” I showed them the door that Goodman had driven the golf cart through. “You’ll find the electrical conduits here. Disable the power. Look for the backup and disable that as well. We’ll use the dark.”
“Dark?” Antoine asked. “When are we going?”
“Tonight. As soon as we’re ready.”
Jolie nodded again but didn’t smile.
I showed them another map; this one had the layouts of the basement, second, and third floors as best as I could remember them. I drew asterisks where the electrical panels would be. I traced my pen over the stairs and elevators. “There is a freight elevator on the north side. That must be how they move the cylinders.”
Jolie stopped her pacing. “Like the one holding Carmen?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, we’re in the annex,” Jolie said. “Then what?”
“We go after Clayborn on the second floor.”
“Why? This plan is to rescue Carmen.”
“I need him to open Carmen’s cylinder.”
“What if Clayborn’s not there?” Antoine asked.
“If, if, this plan is riddled with ifs.” I raised my voice in irritation. “If Clayborn is not there, then we either break Carmen out or we find a way of escaping with the cylinder.”
Antoine pressed on, “We spring Carmen, we capture this Clayborn alien, what’s next?”
“We should be here, back in the basement of the annex. As to getting off the resort, that’s the iffy part of my plan,” I confessed. “We’ll have to play it by ear.”
“Playing it by ear, huh?” Antoine rubbed his chin. “Well, me being a musician, I don’t like this tune.” He sorted through my drawings and took my pen. Antoine hunched over the table. “How about a suggestion? You and Jolie get in the annex on your own.” He drew another rectangle. “This is the roof of the annex.” He marked an X on the rectangle. “After you get Carmen and Clayborn, wait for me here.”
“You lost me, Antoine.”
“Go back a bit. While you and Jolie go to the resort, I’ll make a detour to Hunter Army Airfield and borrow a helicopter.”
Hunter Army Airfield lay southwest of Savannah, a two-hour drive from Hilton Head. The airfield was the home of the aviation brigades for nearby Fort Stewart.
“And this makes my plan less iffy?”
“Considerably. Once Jolie, Carmen, and you get on the roof, I’ll swoop down and scoop you up.”
“In a helicopter?”
“That’s what they got at the airfield.”
I studied the sketch. His idea gave us more of a chance than mine did. “What kind of helicopter?”
“Yeah,” chimed in Jolie, “I don’t want nothing like that piece of crap you got back on the island.”
Antoine scratched his temple. “Depends on what I can get my hands on. Maybe a Blackhawk. A Huey. A big Chinook. That would be fun.”
“You know how to fly a Chinook?”
“Nope. I’ve never been in a Blackhawk either but I’m a quick study. I have confidence in myself.”
“The army’s not going to let you fly off with one of their helicopters.”
Antoine chuckled. “Like I haven’t thought of that already. You take care of your part of the rescue and I’ll worry about getting you off the roof.”
I said, “Timing’s going to be critical.”
“I’m ahead of you. Helicopters carry two-hours-plus worth of fuel. Call my cell phone when you start to move in. I’ll give you an hour. That will leave another hour’s worth of gas to get away.”
“Away to where?”
“That’s the iffy part of my plan. By the time you call me, I’ll have it figured out. I do well in pinch situations.”
I thought about my getting past security, our attack into the annex, the reaction of the guards, and us being ready just as Antoine swooped to pluck us off the roof. This rescue was a real lash-up job. Rube Goldberg wouldn’t lend his name to this rickety disaster-in-waiting.
Chapter
45
Jolie shuffled the drawings. “Is this going to work?”
“It has to,” I replied.
“What if you run into Goodman?”
“I hope I do. Because then he dies.”
There was a knock on the door and Leslie announced herself. I answered. She brought in a tray with a carafe and three heavy mugs. She set the tray on the table next to the writing pad.
Antoine took the carafe and filled a mug. The steamy aroma told us it was Peruvian Andean Gold and type B-positive.
“Is the blood fresh?” he asked.
Leslie rolled her right sleeve and showed us the new bandage on the inside of her forearm. “Any fresher and you’d need to fang me.”
Antoine nodded appreciatively and sipped his coffee.
I poured the blend into the other two mugs.
“Do you need anything else?” Leslie unrolled her sleeve and covered her arm again.
Antoine shook his head. Jolie acted as if she hadn’t heard. I thanked the chalice and dismissed her.
Antoine snagged a chair with his foot. “Jolie, sit already. You acting this nervous is going to curdle the blood in my coffee.”
Jolie stopped and stared at him. Her aura slowly dimmed, like she had turned down the burner on a stove. Grabbing another chair, she spun it around to sit astride it. She crossed her arms and propped them on the top of the chair’s back. I gave her a cup, which she sipped. Her aura dimmed a little more. Good.
Jolie said what all of us knew but none of us wanted to say: “You know that if we can’t rescue Carmen we’ll have to kill her.”
Her tone was heavy and ominous, but she was right. The protocol set by the Araneum was that no vampire could be detained under conditions that could expose the existence of the undead world. Spending the night in a drunk tank was one exception. Either the vampire was freed or, if that was not possible, the vampire would be annihilated along with evidence of its existence.
Antoine rubbed the creases growing on his forehead. “Does the Araneum know about this?”
“I haven’t said anything to them,” I replied.
“When will we tell them?” Jolie asked.
“If we fail to get Carmen out.”
Jolie stared at me. “Or destroy her.”
We all had the same question. How do you kill a friend?
“We fail and it’s shit creek,” Jolie continued. “Felix, it’s vampires like you and me that the Araneum would dispatch to handle a situation like this.” Jolie put her hand on Antoine’s knee. “No offense big guy, but you’re not the kind of muscle they’d call for this.”
Antoine waved her off. “None taken. The less I hear from the Araneum, the better.”
His aura percolated with worry. He was an artist, not a fighter. Conversion to the undead doesn’t change one’s basic nature. A crook is still a crook, a liar remains a liar, a decent musical guy, well, he’s still musical and decent, if you overlook the penchant for occasionally biting people on the neck and sucking their blood.
Antoine flipped through the writing pad and found a likeness I’d drawn of Clayborn. “Is this the alien?”
“Yeah.”
Antoine took the pad, studied the drawing, and passed it to Jolie.
She grunted dismissively and laid the pad back on the table. “That’s one ugly motherfucker. Probably got chased off his home planet for scaring the neighborhood kids.”
“Where is this Clayborn from?” Antoine asked.
Jolie chuffed. “What? You’re going to send this troll a Christmas card?”
Antoine let the sarcasm slide. “How was Carmen captured?”
“I don’t know,” I answered uncomfortably. “She went to meet a couple, boyfriend and
girlfriend, for fun. You know Carmen. Turns out it was a trap.”
Jolie rose from her chair. “You know this couple?”
“I do. In fact I introduced them to Carmen.” Saying this made me feel like a dumb ass.
“Are they still at the hotel?”
“Probably.”
Jolie’s talons extended into spikes. “Good.”
Antoine downed the last of his coffee and blood. He stood from the table. “I better get going. Hunter Army Airfield is not close.”
“Either of the chalices will take you there,” I said.
Antoine returned my pen. “How exactly are you going to get in the hotel?”
Jolie unsnapped her denim vest and arched her back to stretch the tank top across her breasts. “I know men. Some stupid bastard won’t know what hit him.”
“And you, Felix?” Antoine asked. “They’ll be expecting you to come back for Carmen. They’ve certainly got your name and face on some watch list. How do you plan to get in? Transform into a wolf?”
“Nope. Nothing that complicated.” I slipped the pen back into my pocket. “I’ll be coming right through the service door.”
Chapter
46
Iclimbed into the middle seat of the Chevy van. Leslie the chalice had used her mortuary makeup magic and fixed me up with a mustache, soul patch, and a wig. The rug gave me a disheveled look, like I hadn’t found my way to a barber’s chair since I’d crossed the border from Mexico.
Another Mexican climbed in behind me, so I was squeezed in the middle next to Pablo from Nicaragua.
Angelo Sosa, the foreman, handed us Styrofoam cups of coffee and said in Spanish, “Here’s so you sleepyheads are awake when we get to the hotel. Don’t spill anything on your uniforms, you clumsy tarugos.”
We were the night maintenance crew for the Grand Atlantic. That a bunch of immigrants were let onto a secure site should surprise no one. Back in Colorado, the newspapers had discovered that undocumented workers, most of them from Mexico (where else?), were tending the landscaping and cleaning toilets inside the perimeter of the satellite complex at Buckley Air Force Base. Weeds and dirty toilets don’t take care of themselves.
I had zapped Angelo earlier and made him forge identity papers for my application and assign me to this crew.
He looked inside the van and counted heads. He lingered for a moment on my face, his expression perturbed. My post-hypnosis control wasn’t perfect but was still good enough. I smiled at him. He smiled back and slammed the door shut.
The van pulled away from the curb and followed a panel truck loaded with clean laundry. Our headlights cut a swath through the darkness. The driver turned up the stereo and sang along to a ballad in Spanish.
We drove out of Bluffton and over the bridge onto Hilton Head Island. Traffic was light. I pretended to sip from my cup. Even with premium blood, this frog water wouldn’t have been drinkable.
How was Carmen? My kundalini noir curled anxiously. How had they captured her? What was it like being in that capsule? She had looked okay, even peaceful.
Whom was I kidding? She was on her way to a kennel on another planet.
How many other women had Goodman pimped for the aliens? And at what price? In what other evil plans was our government in cahoots with Clayborn?
The fingers of my right hand closed as if gripping the edge of Carmen’s cylinder. Before daybreak, she’d be free.
Step one was getting on this van.
Step two was getting past the guard. We made the final turn toward the resort. The headlights made the guard in a black SWAT uniform stand in relief against his shadow cast on the wall of the guardhouse.
The driver turned the stereo down. He asked, “What’s with the guard’s getup? Why all the guns?”
Pablo replied, “You know how it is. Somebody skips on their hotel tab and they blame us. Good thing we work in this country. The rich gringos have someone to blame for their troubles.”
The panel truck halted at the striped traffic bar blocking the road. The guard went to the driver’s window and shined a flashlight. He was handed a paper, which he scanned by the beam of the flashlight and then stuck his head through the driver’s window.
The guard stood away from the truck and waved. The traffic bar pivoted upward.
“Okay, desgraciados,” our driver said, “make sure eagle-eyes can read your badges.”
Everybody in the van opened their nylon jackets and flipped out the badges clipped to our neck lanyards.
The van pulled up to the guard and scrolled down the window.
“Good morning, sir,” the driver said.
The guard shined a flashlight into the driver’s face. He turned the interior lights on. The guard read from the paper the panel truck driver had given him, and counted faces.
I followed everyone’s example and avoided eye contact.
The guard pointed the flashlight at me. “You. Are you new?”
I glanced at him, then at the driver. I raised my eyebrows and feigned ignorance. “¿Que?” What?
The driver turned in his seat. Damn, what if he had tried looking for me in the mirror?
“The guard wants to know if you’re new,” the driver said.
“It’s my first time here, so of course I’m new,” I replied in Spanish. I looked at the guard, nodded, and gave him my most simple-minded grin.
The guard stepped back and waved us through.
We turned left where the road forked, and passed the front of the hotel. I saw guards paired up and on patrol. On the roof of the hotel two more guards watched us drive by.
The van continued to the service area and parked. The panel truck backed up to an open bay.
The driver got out. “Everybody inside. The dollar is calling.”
Step one. Check.
Step two. Check.
Now for step three.
Chapter
47
My crew and I pushed laundry carts filled with fresh linen and towels out of the panel truck. We arranged the carts on the right side of the service bay. The left side of the bay had rows of carts piled with soiled laundry. We hustled those carts into the truck. I had the privilege of pushing a cart heaped with damp towels that reeked of stale perfume and the nastiest body odor I had ever imagined possible from a living human. If rich people thought their money made them smell better than the rest of us, then they ought to get a whiff of this.
Pablo joined two other workers pushing a train of carts with clean laundry out of the bay through the swinging doors into the hotel. I ran up to him and helped shove the last of the carts. We guided the carts down the hall to a storage room and sorted the towels and bed linen onto shelves.
Angelo came by and put me to work running a vacuum cleaner in one of the conference rooms.
I kept reading my watch. Finally it said two A.M. Time to move.
I pushed the vacuum cleaner down the hall close to the side exit where I would meet Jolie. I hid the vacuum in a closet and went out the door.
At this time of the morning, anyone moving on the grounds would look suspicious. The guards watching the monitors would be bored and certainly notice me. But in this uniform, I was just another of the workers tending the property.
Outside, I stopped in the blind spot between the video camera and the corner. Where was Jolie?
A Gator drove up the road toward the guardhouse. I took out my contacts and scanned for auras. Other than the two guards in the Gator, nothing.
I stripped out of my uniform and disguise. Underneath I wore black sweats. I rolled the uniform and wig into a ball and stashed it behind a hedge.
Two fifteen. Antoine should be on the way. What about Jolie? She was supposed to be here. Knowing her, I should expect an entrance. Like a meteor crashing. I told her this operation had to be stealthy. We’d get plenty of fireworks before the night was done.
I couldn’t waste more time. I had to get on the roof and scope the grounds. Two guards waited up there. I wouldn’t have a pr
oblem dealing with them.
I set my fingers and the toes of my shoes against the wall. I looked up and around again. A light illuminated the side door and another the front corner of the building. The path on the wall above me was in shadow.
I climbed up, as sure-footed as a spider. I stopped short of the roof and listened.
I expected to hear footsteps or conversation. Where were the guards? Why were they so quiet?
Chapter
48
I couldn’t be too careful. What if the instant I poked my head over the wall, a searchlight nailed me and volleys of machine gun bullets clawed my body to pieces?
I raised my head and looked.
Jolie sat on the prone bodies of the guards piled on top of each other. “Hey there. In another minute I was about to do my nails.” Her aura glowed with triumph. “It’s showtime.” She stood, her lean body clothed in a trim black jogging outfit. She showed me her cell phone and tucked it back into a pocket. “Antoine’s on the way. We got a half hour.”
We surveyed the grounds. Sprinklers on the fairway to the right whooshed. Something heavy splashed in one of the ponds, probably an alligator lunging for its prey. A minute later, the sprinklers to the right fell quiet and the sprinklers on the left whooshed on. The red auras of tiny, nervous animals flitted underneath the brush.
Jolie and I walked across the roof toward the corner overlooking the annex. We levitated so that our feet barely scraped across the surface.
A video camera was fixed to the corner and swiveled to pan the annex and surrounding area.
“This has to go.” Jolie knelt behind the camera. She grasped the cable and yanked it from the camera housing.
We waited for a moment, to see what happened. The gate to the annex enclosure opened. A golf cart with two guards rolled through.
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