Yes. That was it.
With his hair and his fair skin, his eyes… he could have been Violeta’s child. Perhaps… perhaps it was her whisper, from his lips, that brought him to America.
“I’ll go with you,” Lon said, breaking his long silence, “to New York.”
Ilecko was surprised to realize that that was exactly what he wanted to hear.
Three
Manhattan
January 2
Daybreak
Aircraft swarmed the Manhattan sky like an apocalyptic cloud of locusts.
Nearly nine thousand US helicopters were on active duty, the latest and greatest alongside Vietnam-era Hueys. US Air Force F-22 Raptor and F15E Strike Eagle fighters rocketed above their range, packed with air-to-surface weapons capable of leveling skyscrapers. Air traffic control required circuitous flight patterns, precise lateral, vertical, and longitudinal assignments—and a lot of luck.
The Joint Task Force was comprised of over 170 platoons, deployed primarily by air. Command centers were established on roofs, landing pads, and seaports. Canvass districts overlapped in dangerous areas like Hell’s Kitchen and Chelsea in western midtown, where the conflict at the Lincoln Tunnel still raged. Significant civilian resistance was expected in all zones, particularly the island’s outer rim.
The haunting surveillance image of Demetrius Valenkov was affixed to every soldier’s backpack, pilot’s console, and riot officer’s shield. Up until six p.m., orders were to capture the HPT (high-priority target) for questioning. After six, shoot to kill upon acquisition.
One hundred thousand leaflets had been dropped over the city during the night. They bore the same image of Valenkov, and the following text:
DEMETRIUS VALENKOV
WANTED ALIVE
FOR QUESTIONING IN REGARD TO
THE WEREWOLF DISEASE
This man should be considered HIGHLY DANGEROUS.
If you see him, alert nearby authorities or
assist your fellow citizens in APPREHENDING or
TRAPPING him. We will overcome this together.
Believe and trust in your fellow Americans.
From six a.m., a cycling broadcast emanated from the skies: A federal state of emergency has been declared. Clear the streets immediately. Military forces cannot guarantee your safety.
The moon set at 8:03 a.m. The JTF coordinated to storm the city after a safety window for the reverse transformation.
At 9 o’clock precisely, thousands of paratroopers and rappelling soldiers dropped from the sky. UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters put soldiers down on open intersections. The barricades were moved for armored personnel vehicles. Troops moved against civilian resistance with rapid dominance, establishing swift ground control so the dragnet could begin.
Four
Joint Base Andrews
January 2
7:30 a.m.
Brianna Tildascow was feeling her exhaustion. She’d managed some tormented rest on the return flight from Transylvania, but four hours of sleep in three days wasn’t enough. Her fumes were running on fumes.
The kid had pleaded for them to take him into Manhattan. He’d been dug in for a battle, and he was stupefied when she consented without one.
The way she saw it, he’d proved his worth in Transylvania. For some strange reason, he had a place in Ilecko’s heart (she’d considered that it might be in another body part, but that didn’t seem to be the case). His knowledge was undeniably valuable, and, most importantly, he’d obeyed her orders. She made it clear that this was a do or die mission (in all probability, do and die), and also that he’d be left behind if he lagged. He didn’t hesitate, so neither did she.
The moon would rise at 7:15 p.m. She wasn’t privy to the specifics of the federal government’s plan, but the resolution would be decisive. Something had gone badly in Atlanta, something that made them believe Ilecko’s warning. They couldn’t allow the full moon to rise on the thousands—maybe tens of thousands—of werewolves.
It had to end tonight. If Demetrius Valenkov did not die, everyone left in Manhattan would, her along with them.
Packing was light and easy. She brought a couple of canteens, power bars, a good knife, and two sidearms: her modified .45 Springfield 1911A1 and a USAF-issued Glock 17 loaded with newly-struck 9mm silver ammunition.
The 1911 was all she ever needed in a gun or a boyfriend: a broad-nosed hand cannon with an intimidating metal mouth that would make a seasoned marine wet his diapers. Perfect weight distribution so it felt like it was holding her hand, minimizing blowback and promoting repeat-fire accuracy. It was a SWAT weapon, not standard issue. But she wasn’t a standard agent.
The Glock was a far less reliable weapon. Bitchy recoil and a fucking plastic handle. Even worse, she couldn’t know this particular gun’s history. It looked okay when cleaned and inspected, but it’d stay in her belt until she positively needed silver love.
They also gave her a Colt 9mm submachine gun with silver rounds, but she planned on stowing that bulky rifle on the ‘copter till sundown.
From a practical standpoint, if they came up against actual werewolves, they’d already be out of time.
She kept the black MOLLE utility vest she’d worn to Transylvania and packed her mother’s good looks behind a black baseball cap and polarized sunglasses. They’d be on the move, so the cold wasn’t of much concern.
She packed Lon light as well, and she hid a Glock under the power bars in his backpack—no need to tell him about that. Ilecko wouldn’t take any provisions or gear other than a new Velcro strap for his Anelace’s sheath.
Someone high up was told by someone higher up to give her team whatever they wanted. When she asked Ilecko where they should start searching, his shrugging response didn’t exactly inspire a tidal wave of confidence.
“In the middle,” he said, with his sticky Romanian d’s.
A good ole-fashioned Army-grade SWAG: a scientific wild-ass guess.
Armed with such expert insight, she requested just a couple of high-speed, low-drag troops and constant, redundant air support. Less show, more go.
At 0730 (she was falling back on her armyspeak as she spent more time around these grunts), a wingnut led her, Lon, and Ilecko across the Andrews campus to the helipad, which was the eye in a tornado of noise.
A Black Hawk helicopter awaited them, with its twin engines jutting above the bulky passenger cabin like a boxer’s bulging collar. Grunts called it the “Crash Hawk” because of its alarming propensity to crash. Her inner Rambette shrugged as she realized this wasn’t the DAP attack variant or even the 60K special ops mod, and it didn’t have stub wings attached for weapon stores. A bee without its stinger, purely a transport vehicle.
Mantle and Jaguar were at the helm, a sight she found surprisingly welcome.
“Hooah!” Mantle yelled as Tildascow climbed into the cabin.
They looked like infants beneath their enormous flight helmets, which had lenses mounted on either temple, jutting out like the folds of a king cobra. Tildascow had fooled around with a predecessor of those helmets during her time in Nevada; they were called “TopOwls,” and they projected high-resolution images from the aircraft’s flight and weapons systems directly onto the pilots’ visors, allowing them to guide missiles simply by looking at their targets. It seemed beyond futuristic, but this tech was old hat to pilots trained on videogames.
She led Lon and Ilecko into the forward-facing seats between the empty side cannon stations, got them strapped in, and put on her headset.
“How we doing, boys?” she shouted over the intercom system.
“WETSU!” Mantle hollered, and Jaguar repeated it right on top of him. We eat this shit up.
“Hooah!” she responded heartily.
“Hooah!” Lon yelled as he put on his own headset.
Everyone laughed. If you didn’t hate this kid, you had to love him.
“Howdy howdy and welcome to your limousine!” said Mantle. “We’ll be cruising at 180 mil
es an hour today on a luxurious flight to lovely New York City, gonna take the apple back from the big bad wolf.”
They were off the ground before he got to “apple.” Every second counted.
Another chopper lifted alongside them, and when Tildascow saw it she damn near salivated. It was a bulky attack helicopter, dark green, with extended wings loaded with Hellfire missiles and Hydra rocket launchers. A positively impolite 30mm chain cannon was mounted beneath the fuselage, the horse’s hard leg that Tildascow wanted from her air support. UNITED STATES ARMY was stenciled in black text, and someone had hastily spray-painted a name across the broad shaft of its tail boom: “Silver Bullet.”
“I’d like to direct y’all to our escort,” Mantle said. “That is the United States Army’s preferred delivery method of airborne destruction, the AH-64D Apache Longbow. We call that particular one the Silver Bullet, I don’t know why. Why do we do that, Jaguar?”
“I must confess, I do not know.” Jaguar responded with the taint-licking placation of a talk-show sidekick.
“Anyways,” Mantle continued, “She ain’t quite as pretty as the Black Hawk, but that there ‘copter could just about turn a city to mush. I could bore you with all the details, but let’s just say when the devil got diarrhea, he put it into a Hellfire missile.”
Confidence restored.
Their friend Beethoven saluted from the pilot’s position, the raised rear seat in the Silver Bullet’s tight tandem cockpit. She nodded back as the Bullet broke right to escort them northeasterly toward Manhattan.
As Mantle yapped, she wished Beethoven could have been their pilot.
“Now we’re gonna make this flight extra smooth for the lovely ladies onboard, so you just relax and sun yourself and we’ll have you on the ground in no time.”
The ride was as smooth as they’d promised, but Mantle and Beethoven’s paltry comedy couldn’t stave off the nerves wafting off Lon. When the Bay materialized on the horizon some eighty minutes later, she could practically hear his heart stomping. By then, she couldn’t blame him.
Apocalyptic plumes of smoke loomed beyond, as if volcanoes had sprouted through open wounds on the Manhattan skyline.
Half a mile from the southern coast, Governor’s Island was a hotbed of military activity. Helicopters flowed in organized traffic patterns; the most striking were the Chinook cargo ‘copters, giant green bananas flying under two horizontal rotors.
Her old CO used to refer to them as “Shithooks.” He hated wasting a sentence without slipping in some filth.
A fleet of Coast Guard cutters was in the midst of launching from the southern docks, dwarfing the size of nearby Port Authority and NYPD boats.
And there was the Statue of Liberty on their left. As they crossed through her somber southeastern gaze, it kinda felt like she was crying for help. Tildascow rolled her eyes at the thought.
Can the hyperbole, kill this guy, and let all the biblical consequences eat shit.
Manhattan was so stuffed with clusterfuck that it was almost spilling over the southern tip. A horde of civilians—maybe tens of thousands strong—was massed at the entrance to the Battery Tunnel. It was two after nine, a whopping one hundred twenty seconds after the mandatory curfew lifted. So much for cooperation.
The city proper wasn’t as bad as the outlying regions, but it wasn’t any good, either. Assorted vehicles littered the streets, skewed in every direction and frequently stashed in Matchbox piles. Tanks and APCs were trying to blaze trails through the metal thicket, but most soldiers were on foot. That didn’t bode well for their “start in the middle” plan (which was sure-fire otherwise).
The USAF gave her a Defense Advanced GPS Receiver, which might’ve been useful if she was trying to pinpoint smartbomb targets in Afghanistan. Here she expected to fare better with her hacked and re-hacked BlackBerry.
Valenkov had been seen at 26 Federal Plaza in the minutes before the government’s virtual private network servers were destroyed—right in her own damn building. He could’ve gone anywhere from there. It was even possible that he’d found a way off the island.
But he didn’t want to leave. If he did, he would have slipped out right after Times Square. In fact, he wanted them to know he was still there. The VPN wasn’t a valuable target—if Valenkov knew about it, he’d also know they had redundancies. They were back to full speed in a couple of hours. No, he just wanted to be seen, and he knew he’d be seen at 26 Fed.
The military was using Columbus Circle as a staging area and command center. It was located at the southeastern corner of Central Park, as close to “the middle” as they’d get. The dual Time Warner Center towers were rapidly approaching, the skyline landmark for Columbus Circle.
Go time.
Lon’s hands trembled. Ilecko had gone stiff. Even Mantle and Jaguar were gazing slack-jawed at the fires and pile-ups and riots. Tildascow kept her eyes on the Silver Bullet in front of them.
She kicked the iron divider behind the cockpit. “Got any tunes on this flying coffin?”
A few seconds later, their headsets blasted with an angry trash rock anthem by Kid Rock. Not a bad tune, but she preferred Eminem with her morning meatballs.
She removed her headset and let her ears adjust to the cold. The tinny bangs were still audible above the rotors.
Columbus Circle was surrounded by a mob of civilians, several thousand strong. The five rings of traffic lanes were heavily barricaded in all directions, with riot officers trying to keep the crowd civil. There were two designated landing pads, each wide enough to land Shithooks and off-load vehicles. One was deploying a 6x6 Cougar even now.
Their Black Hawk dropped hard onto the open landing zone, but it touched down gracefully. Her Shadow Stalkers yapped too much for her taste, but the fuckers knew how to fly.
The chaotic frenzy of the city surged into the cabin. Tildascow pulled off Lon’s headset and yelled over the din. “You don’t have to do this!”
“I know!”
“You’ve done enough for your country. We can leave you here, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of!”
“I know!” he said, shaking his head emphatically. “I want to come!” He leaned around her to nod his reassurance at Ilecko. More than anything, Ilecko seemed deeply offended by the nonsense music.
“Lon, look at me.” The kid could never make eye contact and she had to see his pupils dilate to make sure he comprehended what she was about to say: “Within the next ten hours, the United States government is going to level Manhattan. We will not be able to extract. Do you understand?”
He matched her gaze. “I want to go.”
The doors swung open. The freeze rushed in.
“Lon,” she said into his eyes, “we are going to die.”
“No we’re not. We’re going to find Valenkov. We are going to win this.” He seemed to believe it. Maybe more than she did. “So I can come?”
“Go go go!”
Five
Columbus Circle
9:28 a.m.
What a great way to start.
Lon stepped onto the frigid asphalt in Columbus Circle as hundreds of NYPD and military watched, along with thousands of civilians from behind police barriers. Here he was: an important member of the super strike team that represented mankind’s best hope against the doomsday threat of the supernatural.
And he tripped.
This was no minor stumble. It was an epic poem of elaborate, prolonged humiliation, a passionate love letter to the very fiber of his self-loathing and a mighty, terrible, and oh-so-ominous symphony of piss-poor coordination.
He’d made valid contact with the ground and he was capably walking away from the helicopter. Maybe he’d entertained the image of a scowling, slo-mo, Nicolas Cage-worthy stride.
And then he tripped the shit fantastic over some kind of flashing strip they’d set down to mark the landing zone.
One, two, three stumbling steps, his balance slipping further from his grasp with each ridiculous lurch until he
finally went full-on horizontal, arms spread like Superman. And then, miraculously, he managed to get his leg out—
—only to smash his sternum into his knee before crashing chin-first into the cement. Cherry on top was the blazing explosion of pain that erupted from his tongue as his jaw clamped down.
“Uhhhggghhhuuuhhh…” he groaned as his lungs emptied.
He rolled over, onto that fucking backpack she’d made him wear, thrashing his legs as if they could pump air into his body. His chin throbbed and his tongue was somehow both numb and pounding. Both palms were pocked with bloody holes. And—goddammit—he’d put a scuff on his beloved replica One Ring, which he wore on “the third finger of his right hand,” as Master J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in—
Ah, fuck. Never mind.
Tildascow peeked into his sky-filled point of view, holding her baseball cap tight against the helicopter’s wind. She yelled something that was probably “Are you okay?” and helped him up.
He nodded a sheepish apology, feeling the fuckingly familiar flush of crimson in his thick cheeks, but he couldn’t stand just yet.
Ilecko arrived, squatting to examine two daggers that Tildascow had strapped to her left thigh. She lifted her arm and looked down, wondering if he’d seen a bug or something.
“Silver?” he asked about the dagger.
She shook her head no. Ilecko took one of the knives and examined it.
They both thought that was weird, but Lon was grateful for the extra breaths before she yanked him to his feet—almost off his feet. The fuck did they feed her in the FBI?
Lon put his hands on his knees and shook his head at the ground, searching for the shattered pieces of his pride. When he finally mustered the courage to check just how many people would be smirking at him, it wasn’t too bad.
Because everything else was so much worse.
A civilian mob had surrounded the camp, and they were on verge of a full-scale riot. Gunshots popped in the distance. Military and cops scurried about like crazed ants at a picnic. Shouting. Arguing. Lon was shoved aside by men carrying a refuel hose for their Black Hawk.
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