The fact that David was even considering issuing his people non-silver-tipped ammunition was a sign of how desperate the situation might become that night. Silver disrupted magical spells and impeded regeneration. Strong-enough shields—like those Romanov and Riley had being wielding the prior night—could withstand a lot of silver, but they’d stop an almost infinite amount of regular ammo.
Sandbags reinforced the positions out on the slopes, but more went into building a fallback position in the main parking lot. They’d have to fight the vampires on the slopes, bleed them and delay them, but David expected he’d need to pull his people back.
He didn’t know how they were going to stop two thousand attackers with fifty people.
The sandbagged positions in the forest would be the first line. Then his people would fall back to defensive positions around the bunker and silo entrances, hopefully luring the attackers into a killing zone for artillery and air strikes.
After that…
David sighed.
He needed to talk to the Arbiter.
HE FOUND Jenna in the surveillance center, the white-robed Keeper watching the many screens for activity.
“Your people are busy,” she told him. “Those mines…they terrify me.”
“They terrify me,” David agreed. “There’s a reason most places in the world have banned them. We have ways to get rid of them afterwards, but we’re expecting to be outnumbered forty to one.”
“I apologize for this,” Jenna said. “I wish there was a more peaceful way to make this happen. It…doesn’t seem right that there should be so much violence when all we want is to make peace.”
“People aren’t willing to let go of what they have, vampire or human,” he told her. “Many of them don’t even realize what this is about. They’ve been told Omicron has seized the Crèche and they have to retake it for the future.”
He shook his head.
“And the Thralls don’t even have that much choice. They simply…obey.”
The blonde vampire shivered.
“I’ve met some of them,” she noted. “They are disturbing. Intelligent, sensible beings, and yet fundamentally broken by my people’s power.” She smiled sadly. “I was always a Keeper, Commander White. In a quarter-millennium, I have never been involved in violence. I am…not representative of my race, I am afraid.”
“The point of this whole affair is to make you representative,” David told her. “If all of this is to mean anything, your people will have to change. And that’s a scary thought to everyone.”
“Not just my people, I take it,” Jenna replied. “I doubt it’s an accident you have no reinforcements, Commander.”
“No,” he admitted. “I need to speak to the Arbiter.”
“He is resting,” the Elder Sister told him. “But…” She sighed.
“I will take you to him. He would want to speak with you.”
SHE LED David down corridors and tunnels that went even deeper into the Mountain than he’d expected. They were definitely out of the original SAC bunker construction now, into sections that had been carved later and with somewhat more care. Decorative patterns were woven into the concrete, and the aura of the calming charm that filled the entire facility was even stronger here.
Finally, they came to a halt at a gorgeously ornate wooden door that looked like it might have come from the Arbiter’s pre-Revolution French residence. Gabriel stood outside the door in her armored bodysuit, a sword and a rifle strapped across her back.
“This is closer to the teknon than he should be brought, Sister,” the bodyguard snapped. “The smell of human blood will agitate them.”
“We both know he doesn’t smell human,” Jenna snapped back, the first David had heard of such a thing.
It wasn’t a reassuring thought.
“He needs to speak with the Arbiter,” she continued. “He asked to be awakened in such a case.”
“He did,” Gabriel admitted. “Give me a moment.”
The younger vampire opened the door and stepped through, closing it behind her.
“He doesn’t wake easily,” Jenna told David gently. “He is very old and his memories are not gentle to him.”
That was an eerily poetic description of the PTSD that someone could accumulate over two thousand years of life and conflict.
David heard something through the thick wooden door, but even his enhanced hearing couldn’t decipher it.
Finally, Gabriel opened the door again. She looked far more tired than she had a few minutes before, but she nodded to them.
“Come in,” she told David. “Coffee, Commander? I am brewing some for him.”
“I’ll take some,” he replied.
“Sister, please take him to the reading room,” the vampire asked Jenna. “I’ll bring coffees for us all.”
Jenna led David through the door into a room that looked like it had been stolen from Louis XV’s France. Rich tapestries and plushly upholstered furniture filled the spaces that she led him through, until they stopped in a seating area with six chairs that looked like they’d eaten a couch’s stuffing each.
He waited patiently, though he couldn’t help checking the time, for the vampire to enter.
He was somewhat surprised when the Arbiter finally did join them. It was the first time he’d seen the old vampire in anything except his pseudo-priestly robes, but he joined them in slacks and a polo shirt that would have looked perfectly normal on a Wall Street CEO.
Of course, the Arbiter’s black eyes and shaven head somewhat ruined the normalcy of the clothing, but he took a seat in silence as Gabriel entered the room with four large steaming mugs of coffee—and a temperature-controlled thermos of something else.
“Excuse me, Commander,” the Arbiter said politely, “but I must eat before we continue.”
David tried not to watch, but there was a degree of morbid fascination as the old vampire picked up the thermos of stabilized blood and chugged it down the way an athlete might drink a protein shake.
Jenna was waiting with a cloth napkin when the Arbiter finished, wiping away the leftover blood almost before David saw it. The whole process was disturbingly normal, almost mundane for a two-thousand-year-old creature drinking blood.
“I apologize; I would have preferred not to eat in front of you, but I got the impression your request was urgent,” the old vampire told him. “I do not require much sleep, but I am not easily awoken from it.”
He shook himself like a tired dog.
“How can I assist you, Commander White?”
“We’re not going to be able to hold on the surface,” David told the Arbiter. “We’re going to need to fall back into the bunker, and I don’t want to put your people in danger.”
“Ah.” He gestured and Gabriel handed him the coffee. The vampire took a long drink before he responded.
“I had hoped for more assistance from your superiors, but I suppose I can see where they stand,” he admitted. “What would you have me do, Commander? They will no more threaten the teknon than you; I cannot oppose them unless they actively attack my charges.
“I serve the race, not any particular cause or family.”
“I don’t need you to fight them,” David replied. “I need you to help us seal the entrances at the silos, and then pull your people as deep into the bunkers and tunnels as you can.
“I don’t want your people in the fight”—he didn’t exactly trust them, after all—“and this is all for nothing if they get killed. We’ll need to fight the Familias in the tunnels, but I want your people safe.”
“Of course,” the Arbiter replied with a nod. “We will assist as we can, within the limits of our oaths. Your assistance is my best hope of preserving the race.”
“Even if we kill half of the vampires alive in the States?” David asked bluntly. “You’re setting up a lot of death here, Arbiter.”
“They will not all fight to the death. Many will surrender once the battle clearly turns against them. I will tak
e what opportunities I can to speak to them as well,” he promised. “I am not without influence with my people.”
“I hope it’s enough,” David admitted. “If this all goes wrong, I don’t know if the Familias will ever trust you again.”
“Peace will be harder if you fail,” the Arbiter agreed. “I request that you do not.”
31
“Well, Commander, are the planes going to get some exercise tonight, or should I be sending my boys and girls to bed?” Colonel Dallas asked David over the radio as the sun edged down towards the horizon.
“Colonel, I’m expecting a multi-battalion-scale attack sometime after the sun goes down,” David replied. “Believe me, I have every intention of using your people.” He considered for a moment. “Are you equipped for air interception at all?”
“That depends on what you need,” Dallas replied. “Our missile loadout is all air-to-ground, but we still have our cannon and could pull an intercept on, say, transport planes.”
“You read my mind, Colonel,” David told him. “We’re expecting to see heavy transport in the air in the near future, but identifying it is going to be a pain in the ass. If we can confirm them, we’ll pass the information on.”
“How heavy are we talking, Commander?”
“Heavy enough for tanks and APCs, Colonel. I’m expecting to see a good chunk of several National Guards’ budgets and armories go missing and show up here in the wrong hands,” the ONSET Commander admitted. “I’m not expecting airplanes, but it wouldn’t be out of scale with some of the crap they have managed to get their hands on.”
“Shit, Commander, that’s a hell of a worst-case scenario,” Dallas pointed out. “Who are these people?”
“That’s not even my worst-case scenario,” David admitted. “They’re vampires, Colonel. They’ve had their fingers and minions in every branch of our military and country for as long as the USA has existed. Layer in blackmail, threats of violence and outright mind control…”
“I’m going to be glad when this is over,” the Air Force Colonel told him. “And I’m going to have nightmares about it for the rest of my life.”
“Welcome to my world, Colonel. When this is over, I’ll buy you a damn drink.”
“Be ready to buy the damn bar, Commander. I’m going to need it.”
David could almost hear Dallas shaking his head.
“We’re ready, Commander,” he finally concluded. “You’ll have your intercept if you can get us targets; you’ll have your airstrikes either way. We’ll get you through this.”
“I hope so, Colonel, because my intelligence is starting to make me wish I’d updated my will.”
“Don’t bother,” Dallas said with a chuckle. “The Air Force will save the day, we promise.”
Letting the channel drop, David turned back to the sunset. He sat on top of the big concrete entrance to the main bunker, looking out over the parking lot and down the slopes of Mount Scott.
The parking lot looked like something from World War One now, with machine guns and sandbags forming a solid semicircle around the bunker entrance. There was no one in those defenses yet, with even Riley having moved to the outer layer of positions.
Mines and defenses would hopefully funnel the vampire attack up the main road, where Dallas and his F-22s would turn the already-battered section of forest into a preview of hell. Artillery and machine guns could do a lot, but it was the Air Force’s missiles he was counting on to truly even the odds.
No matter how this turned out, the Vampire Familias of North America were going to have a bad night.
Unfortunately, David was relatively certain he and his own people weren’t going to have any better of one.
“SIR, I’ve got good news and bad news on the enemy,” Leitz told him as night finally set in.
“Lay it out,” David ordered. There was no point trying to soften the blow at this point.
“The good news is we’ve located their assembly point,” she noted. “There’s an old private airfield on the side of the Park. It hasn’t been active in twenty years, but the runway is apparently intact.”
“And?” he asked quietly.
“There’s at least a dozen heavy transport planes, C-130s and even bigger ones, already on the ground,” the analyst replied. “Several are taking off, too, likely going for more personnel. They’ve got a temporary hangar set up that would allow them to off-load vampires if they’re careful.”
She sighed.
“That’s…at least a thousand troops, plus vehicles. They’re all under cover, so we can’t be entirely certain, but…”
“But it’s telling,” David agreed. “Track the planes leaving; see if you can identify any planes heading there. Relay everything to Dallas and Lange. If we can hit that assembly point, it might buy us one hell of a chance.”
“Understood, sir. But that’s not all.”
Something in her tone warned him that this was going to be even worse.
“What happened?”
“An Oregon national guard base went off the air just before sundown,” Leitz said quietly. “It’s an armor base, sir. At least thirty-two M1 Abrams tanks ready for deployment.”
“Dear god,” David breathed. “They can’t possible have the trained crew to man them, can they?”
The fate of the likely thousands of people at the base was terrifying. The Familias truly was pulling out all of the stops tonight and apparently didn’t care how many died along the way. It was hard not to feel responsible for the deaths, too. He was the one who’d initiated this whole mess, even if he was now on the defensive.
“I don’t know,” the analyst admitted. “We don’t have overhead and no one is on the line, but the GPS trackers on the tanks are going down as we speak. They may not have them all, but they’re less than two hours’ drive away.”
“Thanks,” David replied. “We’ll deal with it. One way or another.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Not your fault,” he told the analyst. “Keep me informed and get Dallas the coordinates for that assembly point.”
He switched over to the channel for Major Wilbur.
“Major, how are your people feeling tonight?” he asked with a cheer he knew the other man would see right through.
“Still trying to sort out what the hell is going on, I think,” Wilbur replied. “What do you need?”
“You said you had anti-tank rounds,” David noted. “How many?”
“We had three Copperheads on each of the ammunition transports,” the Army Major said slowly. “Picked up another half dozen in the drop-off, so…eighteen. Just what hell is coming our way, Commander?”
“We’re pretty sure the vamps just commandeered an Oregon National Guard armor squadron, Major,” David told him. “We’re not sure how many of the tanks they can actually use, but there were at least thirty M1s at the base.”
“My god.”
“Can your Copperheads take out an Abrams?”
He heard Wilbur swallow hard.
“Yes,” he said steadily. “We’ll need your people to provide laser target designation, but the shells should be able to take them out. But I don’t have enough to stop an entire regiment.”
“I know. But I need you to stop what you can,” David told him. “The rest will be up to us.”
“How are you going to stop tanks?” Wilbur demanded.
“With mines, with rocket launchers, and with Mages. And if all that fails, with a goddamn magic sword.”
WITH SO MANY different irons in the fire, David found himself flicking back and forth between radio channels almost at random, trying to keep track of what was going on as his people prepared to defend themselves against the oncoming storm.
When Dallas reported his squadrons were ready for takeoff, he locked onto that channel. Leitz had a direct line to him that would get through regardless, and he had the command network still up as well. Between the analyst, Mason, Sokol and Riley, he knew he’d be informed if something ca
me up to need his immediate attention.
The air strike, however, could short-circuit half of their problems in one swift stroke.
“All right, people, we are going black,” Dallas told the two squadrons’ worth of pilots as the last of them reached cruising altitude. “All external coms are to be relayed through my plane; this entire operation just went Top Secret.
“As you can guess, this is not a training flight. We are operating under special authority for combat operations on US soil,” the Colonel continued grimly. “We are intercepting a number of hijacked military transport aircraft and then carrying out an air strike on a hostile assembly point.
“Major Lange and I have been fully briefed, but many of the details involved here are classified above Top Secret,” he told them. “We have an active hostile domestic force that we are tasked to neutralize.”
“Sir…that’s a lot to swallow,” one of the pilots responded. “We can’t just…shoot down our own planes because you say it’s okay!”
“If you double-check your orders, you’ll find a sealed packet with orders signed by the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force. People, this is a real and present threat to the United States, the entire reason we have been on standby at Mountain Home for the last seventy-two hours.
“NSA is relaying coordinates for the aircraft as we speak. They are believed to carry multiple stolen armored vehicles and militia troops. We will attempt to force them to land at Mountain Home AFB, but if they do not turn back, we will shoot them down.
“Do you understand me, gentlemen?”
David missed the responses as he brought up the map of the area on his HUD, checking for the coordinates. Leitz had identified an entire second wave of aircraft, another dozen heavy transport planes, heading towards the vampires’ stolen landing site.
Twenty-four F-22s would be able to easily take down the transports and then level the assembly site. The tanks would still be a huge problem, but locating the assembly site and tracking the planes had just changed the entire shape of the battle to come.
ONSET: Blood of the Innocent Page 22