City Of The Damned: Expanded Edition

by Stephen Knight

“Hold that here,” he said. “You’re bleeding.” With that, he pushed to his feet and trotted back toward the mine.

  The hillside was a sunken, misshapen mass riddled with fissures. A fuel air explosive was the most powerful non-nuclear weapon made, ideal for blasting a landing strip in a dense jungle or collapsing an underground bunker. They were dangerous weapons to employ, but the nature of the team’s work sometimes left them with few options. Anything in the blast would be instantly immolated. Which was exactly the point.

  Still… Doubt was something Acheson had learned to live with, but the nagging worry in the back of his mind was strong enough to give birth to a new breed of caution.

  “Let’s take a look around and make sure we’re good to go,” he said.

  “I agree,” Ellenshaw added. “This is too important to just walk away from with nothing to show for it but high hopes.”

  Acheson sighed, irritated by Ellenshaw’s presence even more now that the action was over.

  They spent the next thirty minutes poking around the area, looking for hidden entrances, exits, or hide sites. The lack of a search dog made it more difficult—Acheson felt another twinge of regret at the loss of Zeke—but the humans were no less apt at ferreting out the telltale clues using methods other than scent. Communication with the TOC was fruitless, and Helena offered nothing substantive. Acheson regarded the collapsed mineshaft, mindful of the fading daylight. He felt worry squirming about in his gut, but there was nothing to validate it.

  “It’s never easy, is it?”

  Acheson turned around. A few feet behind him stood Ellenshaw, his hands on his hips, the bloodied bandage crumpled in one fist. He also surveyed the flattened hillock before them, his expression a rueful one.

  “I used to do this, before you came on board. Not as artfully, and never with such great skill, but I’ve sent a few of these… things… back to Hell on occasion. And I always had a hard time believing a mission was truly complete.”

  “You ever blow one?”

  Ellenshaw studied him for a moment. “A containment operation? No… never, thank God. Though there were times when I was certain I had.”

  Acheson motioned toward what remained of the mine. “I halfway want to dig everything up and make sure.”

  Ellenshaw nodded slowly. “I understand the feeling.”

  Sharon approached. She held her MP-5 in both hands, a combat stance that communicated to Acheson her uneasiness as clearly as a flashing neon sign advertised the location of a roadside diner.

  “Area is secure,” she reported. “No fortified exits or hide sites, no evidence of foot or vehicular traffic that didn’t originate with us.”

  Acheson checked his watch. “Okay… let’s boogie. Follow-on attack is scheduled to commence in a little over an hour. We need to be way clear before then.” The follow-on attack would be conducted by U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter-bombers carrying Longrod Penetrators, a munition that had been introduced during the 1991 Gulf War. An effective weapon, it had decimated scores of deeply buried Iraqi bunkers. On paper, their combat effectiveness stood at nearly 100%.

  “Let’s saddle up, people!” Sharon said over the radio net. “We’re done here!”

  The team retreated to the Humvees.

  3

  The sun touched the peaks of the mountains to the west, bathing them in a halo of fiery orange. While Cecil drove, Acheson regarded the mountaintops from behind his sunglasses as the Humvee bounced across the desert, retracing its path to the TOC. No one spoke; there was nothing to be said. The job was done until they heard otherwise. The only thing left now was for them to get comfortable with it and perhaps celebrate the fact they had survived it. Acheson rubbed his face with one hand. Gritty sand clung to it. He had tried to scrub it off, but with no success.

  “Fast movers on the left,” Cecil noted.

  Acheson leaned forward and looked through the windshield, catching a glimpse of the two F-15E Strike Eagles as they slid past at 15,000 feet, their tapered noses pointed in the direction from which the two Humvees had come. Acheson had no idea what arrangements the group had made with the Air Force. More than likely, the Air Force was given a cover story, just like everyone else. Maybe they’d been told Al Qaeda had an underground hideout in the Arizona desert. Whatever worked. Acheson leaned back in his seat.

  His radio headset crackled to life.

  “Six, this is TOC. Steel on target,” George Sanders said over the radio. “Strike flight reports steel on target.”

  “TOC, this is Six. Roger that. It’s a wrap. Start packing up. We’ll be onsite in ten minutes, over.”

  “Roger that, Six. TOC, out.”

  Acheson closed his eyes for a moment as the vehicle continued to hurtle across the desert at a good forty-five miles an hour. He felt the tension slowly draining out of him, leaving in its wake a jittery kind of exhaustion. He yearned to be back in Los Angeles, and the feeling made him smile. One of the most violent cities in the world, and Acheson felt safe there.

  “Hey, Nacho.” Acheson looked over his shoulder. Nacho Delgado sat in the left rear bucket seat. “Zeke was tops, man. You did a fantastic job with that dog, and he went out doing exactly what you taught him. I’ve got to thank you for that. Without your dogs, some of us might be tits-up back there.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “But one thing—stop getting attached to them.” Acheson nudged his sunglasses up on his nose. “Easy say, hard do, but that’s what’s got to happen. You started freaking back there, and I don’t want to see that again. Dogs I’m willing to part with. People I’m not. You reading me on this, Nacho?”

  “I hear you, man,” Nacho responded softly.

  Acheson pulled his SIG P220 from its holster. He made sure there was a round in the pipe and that the hammer had been decocked. Just busywork. Something to keep his mind off the forlornness in Nacho Delgado’s voice.

  ***

  Ten minutes later, the Winnebago RV came into view. It lay in deep shadow, as the sun was only a fiery afterglow on the horizon.

  “TOC, this is Six. Crank it up and turn around, we’re getting out of Dodge. Over.” There was no response, and the RV did not move as instructed. Acheson frowned. What the hell, were the radios fritzed now?

  “TOC, this is Six. You copy my last? Over.”

  Cecil slowed the Humvee. “What the fuck?”

  Acheson leaned forward. The door to the RV stood wide open, sagging on its torn hinges.

  “Guns, guns, guns!” Acheson said over the radio. “Shake at the TOC!”

  Cecil accelerated again and cranked the Humvee’s steering wheel hard to the left, sending up a cloud of dust as he veered away from the RV.

  “Muthafuck!” he snarled. “We was almost gone!”

  “Go around back,” Acheson told him. Over the radio: “Five, this is Six. You guys take the front, we’re coming in from the rear, over.”

  Sharon’s reply was terse. “Roger that.”

  From the back seat came the sounds of metal-on-metal as safeties were clicked off and weapons were cycled. Nacho and Julia were ready. Acheson pulled his MP-5 from its tactical carry harness and charged it up. Cecil flipped on the Humvee’s lights as he charged past the RV and fishtailed to a halt thirty feet behind it. Acheson, Julia, and Nacho bailed out immediately.

  “Cecil, stay with the vehicle!” Acheson ordered the instant his boots hit the ground. “Keep an eye out!”

  “Damn straight,” Cecil shot back. He already had his two-tone Colt 10mm in his right hand.

  “Five, dismount and take up overwatch positions while we go in. Leave Ellenshaw in the Humvee, over.”

  The second Humvee slid to a halt, kicking up another cloud of dust. Its doors flew open, and before Sharon Thomas could respond, Robert Ellenshaw flung himself out of the vehicle and ran toward the RV as fast as he could. Behind him, Chiho Hara struggled to chase him down. Acheson swore to himself as he ran.

  He got to the RV first and flattened against the si
de of the vehicle next to the door. Ellenshaw pounded up and did the same, his jaw set, breathing hard and fast. The two men regarded each other for a moment before Acheson held up a hand and signaled that he would go in first. Ellenshaw nodded and shouldered his M4.

  Acheson sprung into the doorway, his MP-5 at the ready. The disemboweled remains of George Sanders lay draped across the threshold, his eyes wide and staring and full of dust. His neck had been torn open, the hallmark of feeding ghouls. Acheson stepped on the body—there was no other way—and hurled himself into the RV. Two other bodies in similar condition lay inside. Their blood was splattered across the expensive radio consoles and the rubber-matted floor. Heather Jensen and Philip Mack had been happy people in life. They had departed it anything but.

  Acheson checked the small bathroom and found it empty. The sleeping area was also vacant, the twin-sized bed unrumpled. No one had been attacked back here. Everything had gone down out in the RV’s salon.

  “Where is she?”

  Ellenshaw stood in the salon near the radios, and Acheson could tell his panic was cresting. Julia crept in behind him, all business. She looked over George’s body first, then at Heather and Philip. She pulled the Beretta 92F pistol from Philip’s right hand and sniffed it, then toed a single cartridge with her right foot.

  “One round from Phil,” she said. “George and Heather’s weapons are still holstered.”

  “Where is she?” Ellenshaw asked again, louder this time. “Where’s Helena?”

  “She might’ve escaped,” Julia said. “She might be hiding nearby—”

  Ellenshaw pushed past her, almost knocking Julia on her ass as he bolted out the door. “Helena! Helena!”

  Julia straightened her gear and looked at Acheson, her lips compressed into a tight line. Acheson nodded. If the TOC team had gotten off only one round, then the chances Helena Rubenstein had somehow escaped the carnage and made it to safety were on the high side of astronomical.

  “Five, this is Six.”

  “Go ahead, Six.”

  “TOC team is dead, Rubenstein is missing. Your team’s with Ellenshaw, but don’t go too far. Over.”

  A pause. “Roger that, Six. Breaking station, over.”

  “Roger. Six out.”

  Julia watched Acheson as he headed for the door. “What’s the plan?”

  “We stick to procedure. We clean up and get out of here.”

  “We’re just going to…” Julia shrugged her shoulders after a moment, and Acheson reached out and touched her arm.

  “The ROE’s clear on this, Jules. Help me with Sanders.”

  The two of them lugged the corpse into the RV. When they were finished, Acheson stepped outside and hurried to Cecil’s Humvee. Ellenshaw, Sharon, and Chiho were a hundred yards away. The older man was still calling out for Helena.

  “What’s the deal?” Cecil asked when Acheson walked up. “Rubenstein’s gone?”

  Acheson opened the right rear door and pulled out a box from beneath the seat. It held six body bags. He opened it and counted out three, then closed the box and put it back.

  “Stay sharp. We’ll be leaving in about ten minutes.” Acheson scooped up the body bags and slammed the door shut.

  “What about Rubenstein?” Cecil called after him.

  Acheson didn’t answer. He loped back to the RV, body bags under one arm, MP-5 in his free hand.

  Ellenshaw continued calling out for Helena Rubenstein.

  PART TWO

  THE RIGHTEOUS

  The strength of the vampire is that people will not believe in him.

  —GARRETT FORT

  1

  Two Years Later

  Life ain’t bad, Mark Acheson mused as his black Tahoe LTZ inched down the congested Hollywood Freeway. On a bright May morning like this one, not even the traffic bothered him. Perhaps he had, after all these years, become just another middle-aged man whose life missions were behind him.

  Though the Group had been idle as of late, it always cast its watchful eye about, sifting through massive amounts of intelligence amassed on a daily basis. At some point, Acheson and his team would be called to action. He never knew exactly where or when, but it would happen. It always did.

  The U.S. Bank Tower dominated the Los Angeles skyline, a 73-story upthrust of concrete and glass that dwarfed the other buildings. In a more vertical setting, such as New York City, it would have been just another also-ran, but in the City of Angels, it reigned supreme at 633 Fifth Street. Many locals found the building unattractive and uninspiring, but Acheson loved it. A series of overlapping spiral cubes, the result was a construct that was both square and circular, topped by a bright crown that shined even through the smoggiest of nights. A frustrated photographer, Acheson had taken several nighttime pictures of it from the observation deck at the Griffith Observatory. No matter how diligently he worked at it, his compositions, while technically good, seemed soulless and bleak. It galled him that Sharon, who had just started taking pictures herself some months ago, had a better photographic instinct and quick eye. Whereas Acheson had struggled for years to find his strength, Sharon had outdistanced him in a matter of months.

  He pulled into his assigned parking space and took the elevator to the lobby. As was his habit, he ducked in the Starbucks next door for a coffee, then returned to the Tower.

  The Group had the entire 68th floor, a tremendous 23,000 square feet. The doors leading to the main suite were made to look of rare West Indian mahogany, but were in fact much more expensive, blast-proofed fire doors. Likewise, all of the interior walls had been upgraded, packed with carbon fiber supports and Kevlar padding. It was perhaps the most ballistically tolerant area in all of Los Angeles, designed to withstand shaped charges… or the onslaught of something even more nefarious.

  The bronze nameplate on the door read ADVANCED MEDICAL CONCEPTS GROUP LLC. As far as the landlords, the Chamber of Commerce, and the IRS went, AMC Group was a biomedical organization with corporate headquarters in Los Angeles. In reality, it was a front organization overseen by the government.

  The office suite was tasteful—beige walls, intriguing if understated artwork, even a trendy bronze statue or two. Quality padded carpet ran underfoot, and the lighting was designed to mimic natural illumination. A comfortable place to work, even if work was sometimes 24 hours a day.

  “Morning, Theresa,” Acheson said to the hefty Hispanic woman manning the front desk. She wore a loud flowery dress with padded shoulders that made her look like a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers. On her big wraparound desk, several flat-screen monitors provided her with live video feeds from the floor’s security cameras.

  “Good morning, Mark. Traffic’s light today?”

  “I almost hit twenty miles an hour.”

  Theresa pushed her thick, brown-rimmed glasses up on her pug nose with one hand. “Then I guess Mr. Hayes must be pulling my leg. He’s running late. Traffic, he said.”

  Acheson sipped his coffee. “Really. Where is he?”

  Theresa tapped some keys on her keyboard. All Group vehicles were equipped with GPS, and it was easy to get Cecil’s exact location.

  “Hollywood Boulevard, sixty-nine hundred block. He’s scheduled to be in at nine.” As the office whip, Theresa was ruthless in her mission to keep the 68th floor operational. And Cecil was her favorite target.

  “I’ll give him a jingle and see what’s up,” Acheson said.”And Rick is wailing with his guitar,” Theresa said. Rick Wallace was one of the newer field operatives, also pulling the nine to five as he was technically still in training. He spent his spare time pounding away on a 1978 white-on-red custom Telecaster.

  Acheson grunted and walked to the rear of the suite, nodding to the support personnel in cubicles and in the offices along the way. All were government employees who possessed SECRET clearance. As he approached his own office, he heard the strains of guitar music coming from behind a mercifully closed door.

  Acheson had the largest office. The desk and m
atching credenza were of cherry wood, the chairs and long couch finished with leather. Complete with en suite bathroom, it was Extremely High-End Corporate, and with his Brooks Brothers suit, Acheson looked every bit the corporate chieftain. In actuality, he was more like a captain in the Army, only with five times the pay. He hung his jacket in the closet, switched on his workstation, and gazed out the large windows behind his desk. From the 68th floor, he could see everything from the Los Angeles Public Library directly below to Santa Monica. On clear days, he could even see a hint of the Pacific Ocean. Farther south, airliners landed and took off from LAX. It was a hell of a view in the daytime; at night, it was even better.

  The guitar music swelled, rising to a fevered pace. It wasn’t very good, an imprecise rendition of The Scorpions’ “Break Out.” Acheson walked down the hall and pounded on Rick’s office door. The music suddenly stopped. The door opened, and Rick Wallace looked out. He was a tall, lean man, well over six feet in height and with long copper hair that draped past his shoulders in a frizzy ponytail. His left eye was brown, his right eye hazel.

  “Too loud?” he asked.

  “At least you weren’t singing this time,” Acheson said. “Look, the soundproofing’s good, but not that good.”

  “Sorry, sorry,” Rick said. “Guess I got carried away.”

  “Just make it to the cone of silence at ten-thirty,” Acheson said. “You’re with Nacho this afternoon, right?”

  “Roger,” Rick responded. He was 39 and had been an Army Ranger NCO for twenty years. The only thing about him that had changed since leaving the Army was his haircut and dress. While he looked like a bona fide fuck-off, Rick Wallace could soldier with the best of them, and would make an excellent point man when he got a few more miles on him.

  “Good. Keep your ears open during the meeting.”

  “You got it.”

  Acheson returned to his office. He picked up the desk phone and dialed Cecil’s cell.

  “Where are you, big boy?” Acheson asked when Cecil answered. “You told Theresa you were caught in traffic, but the Hollywood Freeway’s a racetrack right now.”