Red Eye - 02

by James Lovegrove

  Shortly after that, he was at the wheel of the Hummer and heading back out into the city.

  The car growled along, windscreen wipers struggling to fend off the continual assault of snow. Jacobsen drove slowly, with some impatience, peering out into a world of whirling white. He had the roads virtually to himself—here and there the occasional cab or police car, tyres caked with ice, struggling for grip, and a few snowplough trucks and grit spreaders vainly trying to subdue the snow, about as successful in their efforts as King Canute holding back the tide.

  If it wasn’t for the integrated sat nav unit embedded in the dashboard, Jacobsen might easily have become disorientated and lost. One snowy street was all but indistinguishable from another, and most of the street signs were frosted over and unreadable. The blizzard seemed to be erasing everything, as though God had grown sick of His creation and was rubbing it out and starting again.

  Eventually, St Magnus’s. A section of the street was cordoned off by police tape and sawhorses. Jacobsen rolled past at the crosswalk. Cops, firefighters, paramedics and forensics experts were tramping in and out of the church. Blue and red lightbars rippled like fairground illuminations.

  Jacobsen continued round the block and commenced his hunt. With the driver’s side window wound all the way down, he cruised the neighbourhood, halting every now and then to lean out and inhale deeply through his nose. The air was laden with scents, mostly vehicle exhaust particulates and the peppery aroma of Portland sandstone, New York’s principal construction material. The falling snow deadened the scents, making them less potent, but Jacobsen nevertheless breathed them all in and assessed them. Vampires had a distinct odour. Old dried blood, poor personal hygiene, a faint undertone of decay. Once you knew it, you couldn’t forget it or mistake it for anything else. And a group of vampires would leave a significant trail.

  An hour passed, Jacobsen methodically exploring the area around St Magnus’s in a widening spiral. A number of times he got out of the Hummer and stood on the running board, the better to catch the air currents. There was a chance that this search was futile, he knew, but he had to try. The vampires weren’t going to get away from him. They certainly weren’t going to get away with Larousse’s death.

  He was outside the car, being bombarded by snow, when his phone rang. Farthingale. Jacobsen hit the Accept Call icon. He had been expecting this.

  “At least you’ve got your cell with you,” the Bostonian growled. “You haven’t gone completely incommunicado.”

  “Sir. Rather busy right now. Can we hurry this up?”

  “Five minutes ago, colonel, I was woken up by a call from one of the Red Eye technicians. He informed me that the Hummer wasn’t in its garage and you weren’t in your private quarters.”

  “Which tech, sir?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “One of them was attacked this evening, that’s all. By Red Eye Seven.”

  “How unfortunate,” said Farthingale. “Well, it may have been him, but his motives in contacting me were purely honourable. One of my employees has gone off the reservation, and that’s something I ought to know about. So we pinged the Hummer’s onboard GPS and apparently it and you are on the West Side. Can this be true? And if it is, can you kindly tell me what the hell you’re up to?”

  “I’m furthering the mission.”

  “I beg your pardon, you’re what?”

  “Looking for the vampires who gave us the slip.”

  “Alone? Without my say-so?”

  “With all due respect, sir, I didn’t think permission was required. Our original objective was to take out all the vamps at St Magnus’s, am I right? So I’m seeing that through to the end.”

  “I’m not sanctioning this,” said Farthingale. “While I applaud your thoroughness and your initiative, Colonel Jacobsen, I can’t have one of my employees going off on a jaunt, working independently. What’s got into you? Does the chain of command mean nothing?”

  “I feel the rest of Team Red Eye deserve a break,” said Jacobsen, “and all I’m doing is trying to locate the vampires while I still can, before they get too far. That Brit as well, if he’s still with them, Redlaw or whatever his name is. I can move quicker and easier by myself.”

  “This is highly unprofessional of you.”

  “Mr Farthingale, a professional gets the job done, and that’s me. I’ve just had a Porphyrian treatment. I’m at optimum efficiency. It’s now or never, really.”

  “You didn’t think to run it past me first?”

  “Do you or do you not want those vamps found?”

  “The vampires I don’t care about so much. There’s more where they came from.”

  “And Redlaw?” Jacobsen asked carefully, pointedly.

  “That’s another matter,” said Farthingale. A note of dawning comprehension entered his voice. The sound of the penny dropping. Many, many pennies, Jacobsen hoped. “Are you... are you offering to deal with him for me? Is that what this is all about?”

  “Depends on what you want done with him, sir. I’m prepared to consider any and all possibilities. I gather you have a beef with the man, judging by how you reacted when that shtriga priest confirmed his identity. If I locate the vamps and take them down and there happens to be a little collateral damage...”

  Jacobsen could hear Farthingale mulling things over, cogs turning in that billion-dollar brain.

  He continued, “What I’m thinking, sir, is that I can resolve the issue for you. I’d want something in return, of course. A little extra on the side.”

  Farthingale stayed silent for a while longer, then said, “How much extra?”

  “My going rate for an op is fifty k. Treble that.”

  “That’s plenty extra.”

  “Your choice,” said Jacobsen. “Tell you what, I’ll make it easy for you. Just say nothing. If you do, I’ll take it as a ‘go’ command. Call it moral deniability.”

  Farthingale said nothing.

  “Then we’re agreed. Leave it with me. Pleasure doing business with you.”

  “You know, I never pegged you as such a mercenary, colonel,” said Farthingale.

  “Then you pegged me dead wrong, sir. Quit the infantry and keep soldiering, what else are you? Mercenary’s the only name for it.”

  Jacobsen cut the connection and climbed back into the Hummer. He had played that pretty well, he thought. He’d got his own way and secured the prospect of a handsome bonus for his pension pot. He’d pitted himself against a world-class wheeler-dealer and won. Score one for GI Joe versus The Man.

  He resumed the hunt.

  FARTHINGALE STARED OUT of the picture window of his study. The lights of the mainland were invisible, obliterated by frantic flurries of snow. A keening gale howled across the reach, buffeting Far Tintagel’s walls like a besieging horde.

  Well, it was done now. He thought about contacting Uona to inform him. No. He’d leave it until confirmation came that Redlaw was dead.

  Redlaw, dead.

  He had just commissioned the termination of a human life. Somehow the fact that there was a price tag, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, made it more palatable. It turned it into a financial transaction, much like any other. You purchased a service, paid for it, let someone perform it on your behalf. Simple. Mundane, even.

  So why were his hands trembling?

  Farthingale nearly picked up the phone to call Jacobsen again and rescind the arrangement.

  Then he thought of Nathaniel Lambourne. He thought of Uona, who had said, “You know what’s expected of you. I only hope you don’t disappoint.”

  The phone stayed put.

  It might not be trepidation, Farthingale realised, that was making his hands shake.

  It might be excitement.

  AT LONG LAST—vampires.

  A clear strong vamp scent in the air, like a thread begging to be followed.

  They were a mile distant, maybe less.

  Jacobsen parked the Hummer, loaded up with weaponry from the
trunk, and hurried onward on foot. It was the small hours. Nobody around, nobody but him. The blizzard had cast a spell over New York, putting the City That Never Sleeps to sleep. All good folk were abed, blinds drawn, snug and warm, out of the storm. Nobody to see a heavily armed soldier moving westward through New York City, keeping low, hugging the shadows, a ghost amid the snow.

  Soon he was near Manhattan Island’s edge, close to the frozen Hudson, the river’s leaden smell strong in his nostrils. He glimpsed a hulking edifice, some kind of factory.

  Yes.

  In there.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  THE COLONEL ENTERED the factory via one of the high windows. Vandals had smashed out almost every one of its panes, leaving a rotted skeletal frame. A segment of transom and mullion more or less crumbled to pieces in his hands. He slipped through the opening and found himself on a steel gantry which ran the length of a space roughly the size of a football field. The gantry was precariously rickety and let out a worrisome low creak when he shifted his weight. He vaulted the handrail and landed on the floor twenty feet below, noiselessly as a cat. He listened out. Sounds came at him from every direction: the dripping of water, the fluster of pigeon wings, breezes hissing and sliding. The darkness was not darkness at all. His eyes saw everything with pinpoint clarity, in a myriad shades of grey. The nocturnal world was, to him, a black-and-white movie.

  He moved with his assault rifle at the ready, stock cradled against shoulder, eye lined up along the sights. The gun was a modified Colt AR-15 semi-auto, adapted to take 9mm Fraxinus ammo. He trod warily, his trailing foot occupying the spot just vacated by his leading foot. He recalled the house-to-house sweep-and-searches he had carried out in Baghdad and Fallujah, rousting insurgents from their lairs. The trick was to keep your wits about you, never drop your guard, always assume that a hostile lurked round the next corner or behind the next door, and never presume that there was any such thing as a friendly or a noncombatant. Vampires were insurgents, in a way. An enemy within. Ostensibly human but driven by powerful inner impulses that made them alien and unpredictable. Jacobsen felt no sympathy for them, nor even empathy, for all that some of their own genetic material was currently cycling round his body, enhancing him. He had always had the ability not to identify with his foe on any level. Even as a raw recruit, taking part in Operation Desert Storm, he’d understood that there was us and them, clearly demarcated opposites, and it was a mistake to believe there was any overlap between the two.

  He approached a slightly ajar door and nudged it all the way open with the barrel of his gun. A short corridor. A half-dozen more doorways. He tried each in turn. Changing rooms. Restrooms. Broken pipes, shattered basins, partly dismantled toilet stalls. Faint lingering traces of vampire presence. They’d been here but weren’t here right now. Elsewhere in the building.

  He retraced his steps and moved on.

  He couldn’t help thinking about the money—the bounty on Redlaw’s head. It was a breathtaking figure. Hard not to think about. His service pension was decent but barely kept level with the soaring cost of living. That $150K, on top of the other sums he was earning as Red Eye leader, promised him a more comfortable future than he could ever have imagined. His sister lived in Florida, just outside Boca Raton. Her husband ran a boat charter firm down there, based in Pompano Beach, and was doing well for himself, taking tourists out whale watching and sports fishing. Several times he’d invited Jacobsen to go into partnership with him. He was looking for someone willing to invest a little capital in the company so that he could expand and diversify further. Despite the economic downturn it seemed like a good bet, and Jacobsen was jealous of his brother-in-law’s lifestyle. Not just the income, but the pleasure of sun-kissed days out on the ocean waves, cruising the Keys, cold beers in the fridge, tourist-friendly business hours. Idyllic, it seemed. Hardly work at all.

  And maybe he could persuade Berger to join him there. He didn’t know if what he and she were having was just an office romance or something more. Possibly it would sputter out as soon as the Red Eye job was done. They would go their separate ways, fun while it lasted, over now, no harm no foul. But he kind of liked the idea of carrying it on with her. Berger was smart and feisty and took no shit from anyone. Great in the sack, too. Best he’d ever had. Him and Jeanette Berger, in Florida, together in a beachfront apartment, living the good life...

  Focus, said a voice in his head. It sounded a lot like his one-time drill instructor at Fort Benning, chewing out the cadets. Head out of ass!

  Jacobsen neared another door. There was a strong whiff of vampire emanating from behind it. He snicked off the safety on the AR-15 and caressed the trigger with his index finger. He reached out with his other hand and depressed the door’s lever handle, gently, slowly.

  Acquire targets. Assess individual threat levels. Eliminate highest-value opponents first.

  The door swung inward.

  In the centre of the room there were the embers of a dying fire, glowing fitfully.

  Beside the fire knelt a child. A girl. She looked to be no older than nine or ten. She was a cute thing. In her hands was a teddy bear and she was tugging affectionately at one of its tufty little ears.

  She turned and looked up at Jacobsen. Unafraid.

  “Mister?” she lisped. She held out the bear. “This is Jingle Ted. Do you want to play with him?”

  Jacobsen knew she was a vampire. Knew. And he knew he was going to pump her full of Fraxinus rounds. He had to.

  But for a fraction of a second, he hesitated.

  A girl.

  Just a kid.

  Even in Iraq, you didn’t shoot kids. You had orders to—anyone, any age, could be a suicide bomber—but you didn’t.

  A fraction of a second.

  Then something hit him from the side, with sufficient force to knock him off his feet. He fired his rifle, a triple burst, but the shots went wild, raking the ceiling. Hands grabbed him. The gun was wrenched from his grasp. He became the nucleus for a frenzy of heavy hammering punches. Then the butt of a handgun loomed in his vision, swinging towards him.

  The black-and-white world went purely black.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  SOME TIME LATER, the soldier came to.

  He was bound tightly. Redlaw had made sure of that. Chains, ropes, lengths of copper cable, whatever could be scavenged from the factory site, all wrapped round his body and secured without an inch of slack, virtually mummifying him. No chances were being taken.

  The body armour and weapons lay in a pile nearby. The soldier had only his battle fatigues on. No boots or gloves.

  Redlaw watched him struggle against his bonds, applying all his considerable strength. Finally the soldier seemed to accept that it was futile. He was helpless. Trussed up and going nowhere.

  “Neat trick with that vampire kid,” he said to Redlaw. “You got me, all right. I should have blown her away the moment I set eyes on her. Wish I had now. Then you’d never have all been able to rush me.”

  Cindy Newton hugged Jingle Ted to her stomach and swung her hips from side to side, looking coy but pleased with herself. Andy Gregg slipped a protective arm around her and planted a proud paternal kiss on the crown of her head.

  “Cindy did well,” said Redlaw. “She was very brave, agreeing to act as a decoy. Child vampires can be... problematic, even for the most hard-hearted of us. Not easy to reconcile what they are with what they appear to be. I know that from experience. Now, questions. Who are you? Who are you with? My guess is, not the regular army. You people are some sort of non-official paramilitary force. Supremacists, perhaps? Right-wing extremists?”

  “Shows how ignorant you are, dickwad.”

  “But there’s also the vampiric aspect to consider,” Redlaw went on, unfazed. “You’re not human, not as such. A kind of hybrid. Someone’s been tampering. I suppose it was inevitable.”

  “I’m not telling you jack-shit,” the soldier said. “You better go ahea
d and shoot me now. It’ll save you time. I’m not going to beg for my life or spill the beans or any of that shit. You’ve caught yourself the wrong trooper if that’s your game.”

  “Really?” Redlaw turned to two of the vampires beside him. “Miguel? Denzel? Let’s take the gentleman outside, shall we? See if we can’t make him reconsider.”

  The two vampires grabbed the soldier by the feet and hauled him like a sack of coal out through a doorway into the night.

  Only it wasn’t night, not quite, not any more. The snow was still bucketing down but, to the east, the sky was brightening. There was a crack in the darkness, clay-grey light peeking through.

  The soldier flinched at the sight of this. Just a tiny bit, but enough to tell Redlaw that his conjecture was correct. The soldier shared the Sunless’s inherent antipathy to the sun.

  Miguel and Denzel hurried back indoors to safety, leaving Redlaw alone with the soldier.

  “Dawn’s coming,” Redlaw said. “Five minutes, ten at most, the sun’ll be breaking the horizon. Even through the overcast, its rays will reach us. I won’t feel a thing. I wonder if you can say the same.”

  The soldier’s mouth tightened. “I’ve been looking a little pasty lately. Could do with getting some colour in my cheeks.”

  “I suspect it’s more than colour you’ll be getting. Do you really want it to end like this? I’ve no desire to see you suffer. I just want some answers.”

  “This is bullshit,” said the soldier. “You Limeys don’t have the balls for this type of thing. America’s always had to keep coming over and saving you guys’ asses when you get into a jam. You don’t have what it takes to get the job done. You’re a pissant little nation that can’t get over the fact that it doesn’t have an empire any more and lives with its head up its queen’s skirts, sniffing her butthole like a dog.”

  “What a charming image,” said Redlaw. “But you’ll have to try harder than that to antagonise me.”