“Fair enough,” he conceded. “Freeman here tells me you’re going in after the Night Stallions?”
“Yes,” David said carefully. “Did he say why?”
“Not my place to know,” Donnelly replied cheerfully. “This here’s my county,” he continued. “So these boys”—he waved at the collected deputies and sheriffs behind the trucks and cars—“are going to follow my lead.
“Now, the Night Stallions are the kind of twits who give hardworking folk, survivalists and libertarians a bad name, but they’re still citizens of this country and they still got rights. You got a warrant?”
David produced the “short warrant” from inside his uniform jacket. Unlike the full warrant, it didn’t mention anything about supernatural forces or charges under the Supernatural Enforcement Act. The short warrant looked exactly the same as any other warrant issued in the USA, for exactly this purpose.
Despite his unrefined exterior, Donnelly went through the warrant with a clearly practiced and professional eye, then handed it back to David.
“I didn’t expect anything less,” he acknowledged. “But I owe it to my folk to be damn sure, you understand?”
“I was a regular cop once,” David replied. “I understand. Now, since we need to wait on some more friends, how about you two run Commander O’Brien and myself through what you know about this compound?”
#
Freeman and Donnelly pulled out reams of photographs of the compound at the ATF SUVs. David had seen most of the photos the ATF agent had already, but Donnelly added enough of his own to suggest the sheriff had been keeping an eye on the compound for a long time.
“Whole site’s surrounded by an earth berm, ten feet tall with barbed wire at the top,” Freeman told him. “Gate is here. Here and here”—the agent tapped on another photo—“are pillboxes. They’re set up to cover their contents from aerial or ground surveillance, but we know they’ve got at least two Ma Deuces that went astray on their way home from Iraq.
“My guess is they’re set up there. The Stallions keep at least one man in each pillbox day and night. Gate is electric, controlled from one or both of the pillboxes.
“There are three main groups of buildings,” he continued. “Southwest quarter of the complex is four houses for ‘General Broadman’ and the other leaders. They’re nothing impressive, ready-to-moves brought up from Seattle, but they’ve got all the luxuries of home.
“Southeast quarter is the dormitories for the rest of the Stallions. Not sure what the interior layout is, but there’s about fifty men and women living in this three-story hunk of concrete.”
The dormitory was an ugly block, clearly assembled from the cheapest materials the Night Stallions could get their hands on.
“Northeast corner is their farm. They produce a good chunk of their own food, and all waste products go into a biomass power plant buried under the main hall in the northwest corner. Sewer hookups from the other buildings feed there as well.
“Not a bad setup, not entirely self-sufficient—they still buy food from the nearby towns—but pretty contained.”
“The main hall looks like our main target,” David noted. It didn’t look that different from the dormitory, another three-story block of concrete slabs. It had more chimneys than the dormitory and appeared to be the central point for the various power cables run around the compound. The helipad and fueling station were right next to it as well, which suggested the vampires visited it first.
“It’s where they have administration offices, their main kitchens, storage, et cetera,” Freeman agreed. “We believe, but we have no proof, that there’s at least one drug lab in there.”
“What about underground?” David asked. The concrete buildings weren’t entirely windowless, though what windows he could see would be easily rendered safe for vampires with curtains. Nonetheless, the vampires would probably prefer to be underground.
“We don’t know,” Freeman admitted with a sigh. “We know the biomass plant is underground—the methane production pit is a hundred feet deep. They had the earth-moving gear in to build that, so there could be an entire underground complex we don’t know about. Certainly, what we think has moved into the compound in terms of guns and drugs is quite a bit more than we know has moved out or could be stored in the aboveground buildings.”
“So, underground storage at least,” David acknowledged. “I can deal with that. Thank you, gentlemen.”
“More than the plant, that’s for sure,” Donnelly agreed. “The earth-moving gear was on-site for weeks, back when we didn’t know what was going on. They dug out more than one pit, and more than they needed for the berm, too.”
So, underground tunnels were almost certain. David was feeling more and more certain by the moment that they’d found a major vampire nest.
More engines interrupted further conversation as another wave of local law enforcement arrived. Freeman gave David a firm nod and headed off to meet them, leaving the two ONSET Commanders standing alone with Donnelly.
“I ain’t a man to ask questions I don’t wanna know the answer to,” Donnelly said quietly, “but…I got a job. And a duty, if you know what I mean.”
“To serve and protect?” David suggested, his voice equally soft.
“Yeah,” Donnelly agreed with a muffled bark of laughter. “Bloody LAPD optimistic garbage, but it gets the point across, doesn’t it?” He sighed.
“Look, the Night Stallions have been around this area, with Broadman leading them, by one name or another for twenty years. A year and a half ago, this compound pops up like a fucking mushroom. The Stallions had been running drugs, running guns, but this kind of thing takes real money. Clean money—the kind Broadman didn’t have.
“So, I see another player here, and I think you know exactly who,” he continued. “And I ain’t a suspicious man, but you guys aren’t armed like cops. You’re armed like space-age special forces.”
“Counterterrorism calls for a lot of different things,” David said slowly.
“Yeah, well, there’s the point that means I gotta ask the question,” the Sheriff replied. “Eighteen months ago, this compound pops up. And then folk start disappearing. Not locals, not usually. But hunters go out and don’t come back. Tourists go out and don’t come back.
“We search, we tear the forests apart, and we find nobody. First it’s one or two. Then it’s two a month. Then three. Then suddenly, we’ve had more folk go missing in the last eighteen months than have even been hurt in these woods in the eighteen years before.”
That was…exactly what David would expect if a vampire nest had moved in. There was a reason they tended to be in cities, not the wilderness. The flow of campers and hikers here would help hide some disappearances, but the pattern would be visible soon enough to law enforcement.
“So I gotta ask, Commander White, would you expect our missing folk in that compound?”
David sighed.
“You won’t like what we find if we do,” he told the sheriff quietly. “But…it’s likely, yes.”
Donnelly nodded slowly, then spat on the ground.
“I ain’t a superstitious man, but that don’t sound right to me. Which leaves me with another question I won’t like the answer to. It may happen that my dad was superstitious and made himself up a handful of shotgun shells full of silver and rock salt. Made me swear I’d keep ’em with me the day I got a badge from the sheriff before me.
“Given all this strangeness, I wonder if I should be taking ’em out of the truck and keeping a spare shottie loaded with ’em.”
David glanced at O’Brien. Rock salt had some efficacy against supernaturals, though it was better at breaking active spells than hurting anyone. Even a half-load of silver shot, however, would put most vampires down. The werewolf shrugged.
“I can’t tell you anything specific, Sheriff,” David finally responded. “But I would say that if you’ve got something like that, it might not be a bad idea to have it with you today.
“If we do our jobs, you won’t need it. But I’ll never say no to backup.”
The sheriff sighed massively.
“Damn, I was hoping I was pulling at shadows,” he told them. “I appreciate your honesty, Commander. Go get those sons of bitches.”
Chapter 30
There were times when the best approach was subtlety and stealth. There were arguments for it in the case of the Night Stallions compound, that surprise would prevent them from destroying documents, for example.
But today was a time for speed and force over subtlety and surprise—which meant that the ONSET assault on the militia compound opened with the Pendragon helicopter salvoing four Hellfire air-to-surface missiles into the north wall.
Four twenty-pound explosive warheads ripped massive holes in the defensive berm, creating a clear path for a ground assault. Moments later, an alarm ripped through the compound and armed men boiled out of the main dormitory toward the new gaps in their defenses.
“This is the FBI,” the pilot’s voice boomed over a loudspeaker. “Lay down your weapons or we will open fire.”
One of the militia, either braver or just stupider than his friends, opened fire on the helicopter with his assault rifle.
The Pendragon’s two miniguns opened up in response, the rapidly repeating muzzle flashes sparking even in the late-morning sun as the weapons sprayed fire across the compound.
“Well, that’s well and truly got their attention, hasn’t it?” O’Brien asked softly.
“Indeed,” David agreed with a cold smile. “Agent Hellet, if you be so kind as to deal with the pillboxes. Agent Dilsner, the gate.”
Speed and force didn’t rule out all subtlety. With the entire compound in arms and boiling toward where the Pendragon had blasted down the wall, the guards at the pillboxes were busy trying to manhandle their weapons around.
They weren’t expecting Dilsner to rip the gate to pieces with a blast of force magic—or for Hellet to fling fireballs through the suddenly open entrance to the compound and into each pillbox.
The fireballs probably killed the militia guarding the gate on their own, but it was impossible to tell. Both spells also ignited the ammunition storage for their respective machine guns, causing the concrete pillboxes to detonate in an explosion of silver shrapnel.
“Move,” David ordered. “Stay out of the buildings for now and take surrenders.”
#
Full supernatural force was not authorized particularly often against mundane opposition. With an advanced-enough Mage—it wasn’t, David was led to understand, a question of pure power—an entire building’s worth of people could be sent to sleep or otherwise disabled.
Those Mages were rare. The handful ONSET had, like Kate Mason, another ONSET Nine graduate like David himself, led their own teams and were busy dealing with their own crises across the country. Morgen Dilsner and Kate Hellet weren’t as strong or as capable as Mason was.
They were still Mages, the key artillery of an ONSET assault.
Fire and lightning echoed in the tiny confines of the militia compound as the two opened up, using fireballs to take out particular threats while bolts of lightning sent people crumpling to the ground in twitching but still-alive heaps.
Stone and Ix flanked the two Mages, both carrying heavy weapons used to lay down suppressing fire, forcing back and scattering the Night Stallions as they tried to move on the Mages. The four of them combined formed a central firing position the militia couldn’t challenge as they swept the compound, leaving the defenders dead or unconscious behind them.
They cleaned. David and O’Brien swept, the two superhumanly fast Commanders moving around the outskirts of the compound, secure in the knowledge that Ix and Stone would keep the Mages safe.
Leaving the main force to move up the center, David went right, heading straight for the dormitories to deal with anyone who hadn’t already joined the force attacking the helicopter. He didn’t even bother to go for his weapons as four armed militiamen came charging out the dormitory building’s front door.
He went for their weapons instead. His hand slammed down on the barrel of the lead militiaman’s M16, ripping the weapon from his hands with casual strength and tossing it aside. The other three barely had time to panic before he was past the leader and onto them.
All four were disarmed in under a second, and he grabbed the first militiaman’s hands as he went for a revolver. One inhumanly fast zip-tying later and the man was on the ground, his hands bound. Two of his followers went down equally fast and painfully—but the last militiaman had enough time and presence of mind to see what was happening and calmly present his hands to be cuffed.
It earned him the gentlest landing of the four. With the four armed men down, David unhooked a gas grenade from his belt and tossed it into the dormitory. A soft hissing, clearly audible to his hearing, let him know it was working and filling the main floor with an odorless, colorless gas that would render any regular human safely unconscious in three breaths.
Having Mages involved in manufacturing your non-lethal weaponry dramatically improved its safety, if not necessarily its range or effectiveness. The gas grenade was almost useless outside and would dissipate relatively quickly even indoors, but while it lasted, no one was getting out of the dormitory building conscious.
A mundane version of the gas wouldn’t be as effective and would be far more likely to turn its victims into unintentional corpses.
The rest of the militia were already throwing down their weapons and running for cover. The main core of the Night Stallions had responded to the attack on the berm, and that core had already had enough. Many were wounded, more half-shocked into submission.
David was about to call the situation—on the surface, at least, there were still almost certainly vampires beneath them—resolved when a voice bellowed across the compound at a volume that was not natural for a regular set of lungs.
“Rampant Stallions,” the speaker bellowed, and David Saw the power ripple through the air as he spoke. “Is this how you honor your oaths? Rise up, my warriors! Rise up and fight!”
Many couldn’t. The dead would never answer anyone’s call again. Those whose nervous systems had been battered by magical lightning lacked the strength—others were too badly wounded or had already allowed themselves to be cuffed like David’s captives behind him.
The rest acted like the words went directly to their muscles without hitting any intervening center of intelligence. Rifles were snatched back from the ground, and even the wounded were suddenly back on their feet, opening fire on the ONSET Agents again.
“Speaker!” O’Brien snapped.
“I’m on it,” David replied. “Watch your audio pickups; you all should be immune, but no risks!”
A Speaker was a dangerous type of Empowered, one that wasn’t officially on the “shoot on sight” list like the ones that had to eat humans to survive, but was on the unofficial “do not recruit, do not give an inch” list—because every single Speaker known had been a narcissistic psychopath.
Any mundane person exposed to them for a length of time that varied from Speaker to Speaker fell under their control, unable to resist their commands even in the face of certain death. The ONSET teams, being supernaturals, should be immune—and also hadn’t been exposed for long enough for his commands to work on them regardless.
His followers, however, would fight and die at his command. Unless they put down the Speaker, they were going to have to kill or cripple every Night Stallion in the compound.
#
The half-dozen men boiling out of the “officers’ quarters” were visibly a cut above the rest of the militia in the compound. Their weapons were the same, but they wore heavier body armor and moved entirely differently.
Part of that was training. These six had seen real combat training, Marines or even Special Forces. More than that, though, was just the speed and liquidity they moved with—a speed and liquidity no purely mundane human could ever reach.
All of them moved with the same Empowered speed, which was not normal. David wasn’t sure just what that meant, but he did know that one of them had to be “General Broadman” and presumably the Speaker whose voice was going to drive everyone in the compound to fight to the death.
David charged.
His carbine snapped free of its quick-release straps into his hands as he moved, and he opened fire on the group of militiamen while their attention was focused on the main force with the Mages. One went down before they realized they were under attack, David’s bullet punching neatly through the man’s neck.
His second target dodged, evading the ONSET Commander’s fire with a fluid speed that was unquestionably supernatural. The militiaman turned to face David and charged back, opening fire as he came.
They closed half of the distance between them before the militiaman went down. He was fast enough to make it hard to hit him. David could actually dodge his bullets. It wasn’t really a contest.
David was charging past the downed fighter, loading a new mag into his rifle with practiced speed, when the same voice bellowed toward him.
“Get up, Arthur! Rise and fight!”
The man David had shot was wounded and dying but apparently not yet dead. The Speaker’s voice acted on him with magical power and he managed to go from lying, bleeding out on the ground, to kneeling and lunging into David's midsection.
Even half a second of prescient warning couldn’t prepare him for a man he thought was dead attacking him, and both men went down in the dirt. David’s rifle fell from his grip as the militiaman tried to wrap his hands around David’s throat—while bleeding from the lung and gut wounds that would kill him.
Shocked and horrified, David managed to get his hands on his opponent’s wrists, pushing the other man’s hands away. With Empowered strength, he only barely kept the hands from his throat, the militiaman pushing forward with inhuman dying strength.
With a convulsive motion, David snapped both of the other man’s wrists and flung him away. He was covered in the militiaman’s blood, and despite his injuries, the dying man continued to try and crawl toward him.
ONSET: My Enemy's Enemy Page 20