Red Eye - 02

by James Lovegrove

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  COLONEL JACOBSEN WENT round the basement levels, rousting Team Red Eye from their quarters.

  “Up you get. Up and at ’em. New mission. This is not a goddamn drill.”

  He hammered on Red Eye Seven’s door.

  “That means you, Abbotts. Switch off the gay porn, wipe down your dick, be in the parking garage in ten. Hustle, hustle. Now, now, now.”

  “Screw you, asshole,” came the reply from Abbotts’s room.

  “Screw you, asshole, sir,” Jacobsen retorted.

  Eleven minutes later, Private Chris Abbotts stumbled into the garage, securing the last of the Velcro straps on his protective vest. He folded himself into the narrow back-row seat of the Hummer H2, next to Red Eye Six, PFC Kyle Larousse.

  “Hey, bud.”

  “Hey.”

  The two men had plenty in common. Both were the youngest and lowest ranked on the squad, both were southerners—Abbotts from Birmingham, Alabama, Larousse from Corpus Christi, Texas—and both were just a beer and a paycheque away from being hopeless white trash. Abbotts could boast the distinction of having spent a total of fifty-seven days in the stockade for a string of disciplinary infractions throughout his career, including gross insubordination and brawling while drunk and disorderly, leading to an Other-Than-Honourable Discharge. Larousse’s military record was, on the face of it, clean, but thanks to a good-time reputation and a lack of respect for authority he had never been likely to progress further than the lower ranks.

  Jeanette Berger started up the Hummer and the giant car rolled up a ramp to the garage door, which retracted automatically. All at once, Team Red Eye were out on East 84th Street, having emerged from beneath an impressive midtown townhouse. The building was, to all intents and purposes, a grand, single-occupancy home with little to make it unusual other than that its owner had not long ago done what a lot of the super-rich were doing with their urban residences: extended underground. Workmen had excavated down below the basement and out beneath the street to create an extra pair of floors, each of which was larger than the house’s ground footprint. There was the garage now, and a network of rooms, guest suites mostly, along with a gym and recreation complex and a dining area. This had augmented the property’s overall square footage by a good 50% and its market value by as much as 75%.

  Turning left onto Lexington Avenue, the Hummer cruised south. Snow chains gave the car a firm grip on the icy roadway, and its laden weight, nearly 9,000 lbs, added further stability and traction. Still, Berger drove with care. It was the other traffic she was worried about. The Hummer could survive any collision almost intact, but a crash would bring unwanted attention and complications, and of course there was the potential for a fatality among the occupants of any vehicle that ploughed into it or it ploughed into.

  “Okay, listen up, people,” said Jacobsen. “Here’s the deal. You want the good news or the bad?”

  “Good first,” said Gunnery Sergeant Child.

  “The good news is that we don’t have to travel at all far this time. We should be hitting the op zone in about ten minutes.”

  “Well, hallelujah,” said Abbotts. “It’s okay for the rest of you guys, you got comfy seats, but me’n Larousse back here, we ain’t got legroom fit for a midget. Any longer than a quarter-hour journey, I start getting cramp in my thighs like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “And already the moaning starts,” said Red Eye Four, Justin Lim, lately a corporal in the Green Berets.

  “Hey, fuck you, convenience store,” said Abbotts sharply. “How come you ain’t sitting back here anyway? What are you, five-three? Five-four, tops. This seat was made for your Korean ass.”

  “‘Convenience store,’” sighed Lim. “Racial profile much?”

  “Matter of fact,” Abbotts went on, “why don’t we have two of these cars ’stead of one? Seems crazy. Ain’t as if the guy bankrolling this whole deal is short of money. What’s an extra Hummer to him?”

  “Think about it,” said Lieutenant Giacoia. “Two of these things driving around in convoy, that stands out. It gets noticed. One, on the other hand, just looks like some Russian oligarch or rap artist taking his wheels out for a spin. Does the word ‘covert’ mean anything to you?”

  “I don’t know much,” said Abbotts, “but I know a pimp ride like this is anything but covert.”

  “Sure it is,” said Lim. “Maybe not in Redneckville where you come from, where a rusty pickup’s a limousine, but here in the civilised world, we’re blending right in.”

  “Oh, now who’s stereotyping? Guess you’d like me to put on a wifebeater and fetch out my banjo so’s we can all—”

  “Enough!” barked Jacobsen. “I’m not getting paid to listen to you bitch and bicker like a schoolroom full of little girls. Minds on the job. Don’t any of you want to know what the bad news is?”

  “Kinda not,” said Child, “but tell us anyway.”

  “This is going to be the largest nest we’ve tackled yet, by a wide margin. Estimate puts it at fifty vamps, maybe even more. So we do not take any chances. We stay sharp and play it by the book.”

  “That’s the best guess we have?” said Larousse. “Up to fifty?”

  “I’m sorry, is that a problem?”

  “How are we even getting hold of this intel? Where’s it coming from? Enquiring minds need to know.”

  “No,” said Jacobsen, “all you need to know, Private Larousse, is that you’re part vampire, you have all of a vampire’s strengths and pretty much none of its weaknesses, you have guns that destroy vampires and body armour that makes you impervious to their teeth and talons, you are, in short, superior to a vampire in every meaningful way, and your purpose in this world is to be pointed at vampires and blow their undead asses to hell. Anything more than that is above your pay grade and no concern of yours.”

  Twisted round in the front passenger seat, Jacobsen stared down Larousse until the latter looked away.

  “That’s settled, then,” he said. “If the working conditions don’t suit, you can always quit, any of you, and kiss a cosy retirement goodbye. Otherwise, brain in neutral, zip lip, engage training.”

  Jacobsen had to keep reminding himself that his team, like him, had volunteered to be subjected to the Porphyrian process and that this was not an official military unit; this was private enterprise. Hence, he was prepared to cut them some slack.

  At the same time, discipline and the chain of command could not entirely be dispensed with. That would be inviting disaster.

  THEY ARRIVED.

  Jacobsen had earlier carried out a preliminary reconnaissance of the op zone via satellite image and Street View. Eyeball reconnaissance confirmed that his theoretical plan of attack was valid and viable.

  With the Hummer parked out of sight in a back alley, seven masked and armed figures scurried up fire escapes to the tops of the buildings immediately adjacent to the target. They leapt from flat roof to sloping roof, from asphalt to tile. Then, with the utmost stealth, they crawled into position and, crouching, awaited the ‘go’ command.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  RÓISÍN LEARY HAD never been one to mince her words.

  “What in the name of the Pope’s holy ringpiece were you thinking, Redlaw?” she thundered. “Are you truly as daft as you look? The poor girl has about as much experience of vampires as you have of hot rampant sex, and you drag her right slap bang into one of the biggest vamp shindigs you can find! If my mother were here she’d give you a smack upside the head, and frankly I want to, too. It’s the least you deserve.”

  “I had no idea,” Redlaw protested. “I didn’t mean for it to turn out this way. She followed me. She was so insistent.”

  “Ah, and you couldn’t have told her to feck off?” said Leary, cocking one eyebrow. “What does she weigh, eight stone? Slip of a thing. And you’re big, rough, tough John Redlaw. You really mean to say you couldn’t have stopped her coming with you if you’d wante
d to? Punched her cold, maybe? It’s what I’d have done.”

  “I’m not into hitting women, not unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. Besides—”

  Leary overrode him, as she was wont to. “Your thing is, boss, you like having a sidekick. You pretend you don’t. You make out you’re Mr Self-Sufficient, don’t need anyone, Redlaw the loner, the hard man who always works solo. But you’re at your best with someone beside you, preferably a gobby female. You’d never admit it, but deep down you know it’s true. And that’s why you didn’t turn this Checkley girl away, even though you know you ought to have.”

  “She deserved a chance to prove herself.”

  “So you take her to a church teeming with vampires?”

  “Vampires under a shtriga’s control,” said Redlaw.

  “Still, she’s a civilian.” Curiously, Leary’s accent was slipping, morphing from a Dublin brogue into something more clipped and angular. “Not versed in the ways of the Sunless. It was like leading a sheep to the slaughterhouse, old bean. Very poor show.”

  It was odd, Redlaw thought, how alike Leary and Illyria Strakosha looked. He’d never noticed that before. The one was practically indistinguishable from the other. With just a slight blurring, a squint of the eye, his former SHADE partner could easily become the Albanian-born shtriga.

  “Yes, I can’t say I’m not disappointed in you, Redlaw old thing,” said Illyria in her peculiar speech pattern that hybridised European intonation with 1930s upper-class slang. “Innocent filly like that, hardly out of short trousers, wot? And now, thanks to you, she’s going to die. None too pleasantly, either.”

  “But the shtriga...”

  “Not all shtrigas are like me. A shtriga’s only loyalty is to their vampires. Anything else is just incidental. Remember when we first met? I nearly threw you off a balcony. And I would have, in a heartbeat, if I’d felt it necessary in order to protect the vampires in my care. Don’t go thinking that just because you and I became chums, every other shtriga is going to want to have tea and crumpets with you. That would be a mistake. Shtrigas are spiffing fellows, but ruthless too. We take our responsibilities very seriously.”

  “Tchaikovsky isn’t like you.”

  “He’s exactly like me!” Illyria declared, baring her perfect fangs. “In every respect. He will kill anyone to preserve what’s his, and he won’t even hesitate about it. And right this moment, old bean, he’s going to kill me, and I need your help.”

  Now Illyria’s accent was shifting, too. Her imperious cadences were becoming frantic, panicked, almost a scream.

  “You have to wake up, Redlaw. Redlaw! Wake up! They’re going to kill me. Please, wake the fuck up.”

  Illyria would never swear like that.

  “Wake the motherfucking fuck up.”

  It wasn’t Illyria talking any more. It was Tina.

  “Oh, please, oh goddamn Christ, someone please do something!” Tina begged.

  Redlaw, surfacing from unconsciousness, opened his eyes.

  He was in the church, St Magnus’s. He was groggy. His head was aching, pulsing, feeling like an overstuffed rubbish sack about to burst.

  He blinked. It was hard to focus.

  There was Tina. She was surrounded by vampires and they were dragging her towards the bare stone altar. There was something ceremonial about the way they all moved along the aisle. It had the air of a ritual procession, Tina being led, struggling, like some unwilling bride to her nuptials.

  Or a human sacrifice.

  And behind the altar, waiting, presiding, was Tchaikovsky. His hands were clasped at his solar plexus, like those of someone about to pray. His face was calm, but his eyes gleamed with avarice.

  “Place her there,” he ordered the vampires, and they hauled the resisting, shrieking Tina onto the altar and held her down, two to a limb.

  Redlaw got to his knees and tried to stand. The action seemed to demand an inordinate amount of strength and coordination, and he wasn’t even able to complete it. Taloned hands clamped down on his shoulders, pushing him remorselessly back into a kneeling position. Two vampires were standing sentry over him, one on either side. A further three stood directly behind, in case those two weren’t up to the task. The Cindermaker lay on the floor a few yards away, alongside Tina’s rucksack. The gun was tantalisingly close, and yet, given that Redlaw’s guards would never give him a chance to reach it, it might as well have been a mile away. Tchaikovsky didn’t want Redlaw going anywhere or doing anything. He wanted him to remain put, powerless, until it was his turn to be stretched out on the altar.

  “We have been provided for,” Tchaikovsky said. “God has smiled on us.”

  He had to raise his voice to be heard above Tina’s grunts of effort and shrieks of protest.

  “We have been offered succour in our hour of need, manna in the desert, a blessing from on high. Some call us damned, but we are not damned. We are merely beings whom the Lord, in His infinite wisdom and grace, has allowed to become different. He has refashioned us, re-created us, and now our needs are not those of mortal men, but we must acknowledge them and we must answer them, for that is how we have been made. This girl...”

  He gestured along Tina’s bucking, writhing form.

  “This girl carries within her everything that we require to survive, and not just survive but prosper. Her veins throb with that which gives us renewed life. Let us partake of her now. Let us take, eat of her body, drink of her blood, which she will shed for you.”

  “Noooo!” Tina wailed at the top of her lungs, and then she spat in Tchaikovsky’s face, with remarkable accuracy. “You fucking undead fucker, you scumbag son of a bitch!” She was pinned down, helpless, about to die, but she was fighting to the end, with hellcat spirit.

  The shtriga priest wiped the spittle off his cheek indifferently and carried on with his grotesque parody of the communion catechism. “Let us sip of her, each unto fulfilment but no further. Let us share her bounty evenly, and that of the other, Redlaw, in order that we may be replenished and enjoy continued health and vigour.”

  Tina turned her head. Her gaze locked on Redlaw. Her eyes bulged with horror and pleading.

  Tchaikovsky extended a forefinger. “With this first incision, I will begin.”

  Redlaw yelled, “This is blasphemy! This is not God’s way!”

  Tchaikovsky, even if he heard, didn’t pause. His talon lowered towards Tina’s neck. “I will take the first taste.”

  “Tina!” Redlaw said. “Listen to me. The Lord is waiting for you. This will be over sooner than you think. There is eternal life. Trust me. There is a hereafter. Don’t be afraid.”

  How could he make her believe it when he wasn’t sure he believed it himself?

  That didn’t matter, as long as his words brought her comfort in her final moments. It wasn’t much, but it was all he could do.

  The talon came to rest on Tina’s carotid, and Tina went silent and still, resigned to the inevitable like a rabbit in a wolf’s jaws.

  At the rear of the apse, the crucified Christ looked down benignly on the scene. It was as if He just didn’t care.

  A miracle, thought Redlaw. Right now, a miracle. Please. I implore you.

  The Redeemer of All Mankind didn’t seem in any hurry to supply one.

  But then...

  TWO OF THE windows at the church’s narthex shattered, blown inwards by plastique charges. A split second later, grey cylinders the size of soup cans were lobbed through. They landed, disgorging billows of yellow smoke.

  The smell hit Redlaw’s nostrils. An aerosolised suspension of allium sativum. Garlic gas.

  The vampires recoiled. Covering their faces, they backed away from the spreading clouds. They choked and spluttered, repelled as a human would be if the stuff were tear gas. A couple of them fell to their knees, overcome with retching and gagging.

  People followed the smoke bombs into the building, swinging in through the hollowed window frames on ropes. Redlaw saw them only dimly through the wr
eaths of gas, but he recognised their silhouettes, their uniforms. The paramilitaries from Tina’s subway footage.

  They abseiled to the floor and fanned out, taking up positions behind pillars and overturned pews. The vampires were milling about in panic. They were barely aware of the intruders in their midst, just desperate to get away from the stinging smoke.

  Redlaw took advantage of the chaos. His guards were momentarily distracted. He clobbered both of them in the groin. ’Lesses might be hardy creatures, but they had physical weak spots just like anyone. A scrotum was a scrotum, tender and vulnerable, no matter who it hung from.

  As the two vampires bent double in pain, Redlaw scrambled over to his Cindermaker.

  An indignant Tchaikovsky bellowed at the soldiers, “You dare invade our sanctum? You dare interrupt our service of sacrament?”

  The response was a barrage of gunfire from machineguns and assault rifles.

  Vampires howled and sprang for cover. Fraxinus rounds whipped and whined through the air, slashing the yellow smoke to shreds.

  Tchaikovsky sprang into action, making for the enemy by a circuitous route, from pulpit to window ledge to rafter, leaping to avoid the strafing onslaught.

  Redlaw, meanwhile, scuttled on all fours in the opposite direction, over towards the altar where Tina lay. He had the gun in one hand, her rucksack over his shoulder. Tina was in a state of dull-eyed shock, still anticipating the death-by-draining that had seemed so inescapable. She was oblivious to the soldiers’ arrival and the sudden reversal of fortunes that it had brought.

  No time to be elegant or gentle. Redlaw threw himself at the altar, scooping Tina up as he slid across it and tumbling down behind it with her. They lay in a tangled heap in the lee of the stone structure, shielded from the hailstorm of bullets, for now.