Lopes might have been prideful, but she was also savvy enough to recognize who got the most respect in this room. “Is there anything that you would like to add, Julie?”
“Sure.” I walked to the front. The Americans knew me. I assumed most of the Europeans at least knew of my résumé. “Thank you for doing this. My baby’s life is in your hands… But here’s the deal: most of you have never seen a Master vampire before. They can soak up an incredible amount of damage and keep fighting. They heal unbelievably fast. They move like a hurricane-force wind. Blink and you’ll miss them. For them, ripping your limbs off is like you plucking the leaf off a tree. Susan in particular also has some psychic powers. She’ll cloud your thoughts and screw with your head. She may be able to read your mind. She can change shape. We have documented her being able to turn into mist to pass through walls. And when we get close, she will sense us coming.”
Some of the Portuguese Hunters had been smiling when I’d started. They weren’t now. Good.
“Susan Shackleford has all those nasty vampire powers, but she’s worse because she used to be one of us. She knows how Hunters work. She knows our tricks. She used to teach this stuff for a living. The other Master vamps we’ve killed? It’s because they got proud. They got stupid. They underestimated us. Susan won’t. She’s way too young to be as strong as she is, but she is. Whether it’s from black magic, her sucking the life out of monsters that vampires normally wouldn’t prey on, or who knows what, she’s damned strong. Pair that with a flexible mind and a killer instinct, and she’s quite possibly the most dangerous thing you’ve ever fucked around with.”
The room was real quiet now. I’d been worried about Lopes arguing with me, but I could tell that even she was starting to feel worried.
“That said, we have a chance today because she was injured yesterday and probably hasn’t fully recovered yet, and this plan?” I went to the board where Lopes had drawn a bunch of lines and arrows. “It’s pretty good,” I lied. It was terrible. Even if they’d had time to build a mock-up and do trial runs, it would’ve sucked.
“Thank you,” said Lopes, completely oblivious.
“But since I’m one of the few people in the world who has fought Master vamps more than once…” I trailed off, because if the siege had gotten nuked, I was the only one left, but I just shook my head and continued, “Would it be okay if I make a few tweaks? It isn’t like any of us have wasted time practicing this.”
“I value your input. We can revise on the plane,” Lopes agreed.
That was a small victory, though honestly I was so damned tired I’d been hoping to use that opportunity to sneak in a nap.
“If this Master’s that tough, then how we gonna kill her?” asked one of the Portuguese Hunters.
I thought about what the Guardian had told me. It was all about what I wanted to protect, and what I was willing to sacrifice. For my baby, I was willing to sacrifice everything.
“I’ll face her. If I fail, the rest of you back up and blow the entire place to hell.”
CHAPTER 23
Screw sleep. I’d sleep when I had my son back in Alabama. Right now, right this moment, I was getting ready to hunt monsters. I’d spent most of the plane ride trying to gently nudge Lopes into an entry plan that wouldn’t get all of us killed. From what she’d drawn on the map, it was obvious these guys didn’t do very many big raids, and she had teams blundering into each others’ fields of fire with big sections left uncovered. She even had teams breaching the doors and entering before they smashed in the windows to let in daylight, which was a no-brainer when dealing with vampires. It seemed to have worked. She accepted a bunch of my suggestions, and we’d just passed out new assignments.
The cargo plane’s seats were basically nylon baskets down each side. In the middle, the out-of-town Hunters were picking through crates and getting kitted up. A couple of our retirees had gotten too fat to buckle the borrowed load-bearing vests over their Hawaiian shirts.
“You know, your Hunters are not what I expected,” Lopes mused.
Whatever. I wasn’t about to tell her that these were the dregs of the dregs because everyone else was at Severny or in a German prison. “They’re good. Worry about your men.”
“Mine are excellent. Very many experienced Hunters. Then there’s three men from Paris, the very best, and four men from Germany. I am commanding a very large operation. This is a great honor.”
I closed my eyes and made a vague prayer in the direction of whoever might be listening that ASS wasn’t going to make this all, well, ASS backwards. There is something you learn in this business. You don’t put rookies in charge of big operations. I suspected, when it came to operations of this size, Lopes was very much a rookie.
From what I’d gathered about this culture, to have a woman in charge of something like this was really odd. American women like to complain about equal opportunity, but we’ve got nothing on Latin countries. She had to be really competent and hard-working to overcome that. Or, this was a dead end position and she’d annoyed someone enough that they’d stuck her here. Either way, Lopes appeared to be trying to make the most of it. She clearly didn’t agree with her bribe-taking, vampire-ignoring superiors. Maybe by being this crazily in your face, she thought that no one would suspect her of anything underhanded, like taking a notorious American fugitive on this operation with them.
My internal clock was still too screwed up to tell what time it was, but according to Lopes’ watch, we reached our destination just after noon. As our plane descended into a small airfield just off the ocean, out my window I saw the other vehicles we’d be using to hit the mansion. The trucks were lined up and waiting to carry most of us, but the air transport for the team that was going to hit the roof was a Huey helicopter that was probably older than I was…and unlike MHI’s ancient Russian Hind, ASS probably didn’t have a magic orc to keep theirs running.
“I’ll watch the operation from above in the helicopter,” Lopes said. “I like helicopters.”
“How good’s your pilot?”
“The best.”
“You’re going to fly it too, aren’t you?”
“Copilot.” Lopes grinned. “I always wanted to fly. When I was young, no women in Portugal’s Air Force. Very backward. Besides, they use such old airplanes you take your life in your hands every time you go up. You see, once you do that, and assume you’re going to die every time you fly, there is nothing else to fear. I said I like helicopters. The government gave this one to ASS; I’d be a fool not to take lessons!”
I’ll admit that made me a little glad that I was one of the Hunters going in by sea.
* * *
The beach was deserted. There were signs everywhere saying something or other in big red letters. Even without knowing Portuguese, I could understand PERIGO and INTERDITO. Lopes had explained that the cover story was that there was a gas leak from an underground mine that trickled out here, and if you inhaled it you could die suddenly. But in reality it was to keep people from seeing her “secret weapon.”
The submarine pen was basically a big concrete shed built into the hillside. The room was lit with a weird blue light.
“This is the secret weapon of ASS,” Lopes said proudly.
Frankly, their little submarine looked like a rusty piece of shit. MCB agents wouldn’t be caught dead in this thing.
“You understand the traditional danger in Algarve is of Deep Ones. They love to settle just off our shores, especially in this part of the coast for some reason. Twenty years ago they carried off too many tourists, so the government secretly bought this so we could hunt them and not be seen.”
Either that was extremely practical, or it was the only way these people could get some perks from their job and somebody thought it would be cool to have their own submarine.
It was probably half and half.
“We’re Portuguese.” She said that in a way that it seemed to be a major brag. “We have one of the longest coastlines relative to t
he landmass in the world. We’ve got almost as much coastline per area as any island. We—”
“So you bought a submarine?” I asked, incredulous.
“Three. They bought three submarines. Little ones.”
I was starting to suspect that the reason that Portugal was the P in the PIIGS—the countries most in debt in Europe—might have something to do with the enthusiastic spending of their supernatural agency.
Then Lopes got sad. “But the other two sank… But anyways, this one is still good. And even with super vampire senses, she will not be expecting us to strike from under the sea.”
Could Susan’s thought-sensing abilities get through solid steel and all that water? This might be the only way we could actually gain some element of surprise. If so, a submarine would be ideal. I wasn’t fond of the idea of consigning myself to a can that someone else would be driving into an underwater cave, where a small screwup meant drowning. I’m always a little uneasy with flying too, not so much because I’m up in the air, but because I’m not in control. Unless, of course, Skippy is flying, because then I’m not nervous at all.
Lopes nodded toward the crew, who were waiting on the catwalk over the sub. “That’s Captain Pereira. He will deliver your strike team.”
Pereira was an ugly little man, and he just kind of frowned at Lopes. It was pretty obvious that somebody didn’t like the fact a woman had clawed her way up to being his boss.
Lopes talked to the crew hurriedly in Portuguese as Pereira occasionally grunted something back. At length, Lopes turned to me and said, “I believe this will work. Unless you hit the rocks of course.”
But apparently Pereira did speak English too. “I’d be honored to have you in my craft. I’ll get you there all right.”
This might be an empty promise, but what else did I have to go on?
My “strike team” consisted of me, three of my Hunters—Kenneth Bell, Nik Rao, and Joshua Radick—and three of Lopes’ men. Because she’d warned me it would be a really tight fit, I was the tallest one there.
Lopes called three names, “Coelho, Justino, Anuncio,” and the three locals started climbing down through the hatch.
“The submarine will arrive first. Hopefully it will be a surprise. Your mother will sense your presence in the cavern and surely go to fight you. She won’t want to endanger the baby, so she’ll leave him upstairs. Once you radio that she is fighting you, that is when we will land on the roof and secure the baby,” Lopes explained, which was kind of silly since I’m the one who’d talked her into that plan, but she probably said it like that to try and impress Pereira with her tactical brilliance.
“Susan’s powerful, but she can only be in one place at a time.”
“I want you to appreciate the diversionary tactic, like Hannibal with the herds of cattle with lanterns on their horns.”
I had no idea whatsoever what Lopes was talking about. Hannibal had two files in my sleep-deprived brain: one having something to do with Rome and elephants, and another a movie about a serial killer. I couldn’t even imagine how either applied in this case, so I just nodded.
“Time to go,” Pereira said, “while it is still sunshine.”
Which was kind of funny, since there was no daylight where we were going.
* * *
The submarine was indeed small and…let’s just say that I really hoped it wasn’t nuclear because, if it was, then I was compromising the health of all my future progeny.
Honestly, the interior looked like it was entirely covered in random metal plates. The appearance was that of a much-mended garment, and it seemed to me—though I knew next to nothing of submarines—that it was a bad idea to have things that were designed to be submerged be all patched up with visible rivets.
And I wondered how all of this was going to work, and if ASS had any idea what they were doing.
There were three things I’d already learned while dealing with Portuguese: first, they didn’t take orders very well. Even though these were their country’s equivalent of MCB and, therefore, presumably more disciplined than the private Monster Hunter orgs, they were more unruly than MHI.
The second thing is that Portuguese really weren’t that good at understanding the chain of command thing. They argued everything and barracks-lawyered everything possible. On the plane, and right there in the sub, they were arguing and rearguing the plan, trying to turn it all upside down.
In fact, Lopes had even warned me during our planning session, “It’s like we say here. Our plan always ends up being all in a pile and may God help us.”
I can’t say that filled me with confidence.
And, finally, the third point was much in evidence as they elbowed and jostled each other inside the sub. Even such spontaneous forms of organization like standing in line seemed foreign to them. They weren’t really good at self-organizing, but they were very eager, and joking and laughing as we sailed toward our potential suicide.
It wasn’t so much they were fearless, it was that fear, and possibly sanity, were nowhere near their mind. And I thought leading my people was like herding cats. Frankly, I didn’t know how an entire country of people like that could ever work out, but I liked the stubbornness and the refusal to bend.
The little I knew of the Portuguese system of government was that it’s the same kind of controlling, super-regulating state as most of Europe. But the feeling I was starting to get from the people told me that while they vote for jerks who regulated everything, they were convinced this was needed so other people behaved properly, while each individual by himself had the absolute certainty that rules didn’t apply to them. Each individual was an anarchist in a country that wanted to control everything.
I’d been in submarines before. I knew what they were supposed to smell like. The stink of motor oil and old socks had only bothered me for a moment. But there was an undertone of fish in this one that really disturbed me. The fish were supposed to stay on the outside.
“It’s a short ride. Not too bad,” the one named Justino warned us as he sealed the hatch.
I was standing, squished between Radick and Bell, both of whom were relative Newbies, but Justino looked like a freaking little kid compared to them.
“I’ve never fought vampires. Lopes says it will be easy because it’s day.”
I demurred. “Not necessarily. Newly created vampires tend to be really sluggish during the day, but older vampires might be awake and frisky.” And I worried, of course I did, because the kid had never fought vampires, despite me asking Lopes for her best men. Normally we tried to give the Newbies an easier job, and saying that he wasn’t my Newbie really didn’t help. He was going on this mission because of me.
The metal hull made a terrible groaning noise as we went beneath the surface. The interior lights flickered. There were no windows close to me, which I was kind of glad of. Pereira was sitting up front with another sailor named Silva. They seemed relatively competent, even though I had no idea what any of the controls they were working did. This thing wasn’t much bigger than a van, so it couldn’t be that hard to drive. They had the only window, though it was really more of an armored-glass bubble. That view wasn’t too bad…at first. It was nice and blue, and fish swam by, but as the minutes passed, it got darker and darker until all I could see was darkness, and little bits of silt and seaweed floating through our headlights. That view somehow made everything worse, so I had to look away.
We moved sluggishly through the water, in the stink of motor oil, with the engines making an infernal electric hum, listening to the occasional metallic pop as something shifted under the increasing pressure. The kidding around stopped. The jokes ended. No matter how hard you thought you were, riding in this thing was unnerving.
I’m not normally claustrophobic, though right then, I think I understood how people who suffered from that felt. Between us and our equipment—and we’d brought a ton of stuff—there was no wiggle room at all. There wasn’t much airflow back here, so within minutes it go
t really warm, and we were all sweating through our black fatigues. The inside of the submarine heated up until I was wondering if it was an easy-bake submarine.
There wasn’t a good way to distract myself from the stifling heat and lack of air, because everything I looked at inside seemed rusty or wrapped together with duct tape, which just added to the general unease. Glancing forward, it was just shadows and floating bits of dead fish. That didn’t help either.
My regular team was talkative before a mission. It kept things loose. You needed a sense of humor or you’d go crazy. Earl had taught me that a long time ago. Don’t let your Hunters stir inside their own heads, because that’s when the fear and tension starts to eat at you. Keep them talking. Only it was hard to make witty banter when my kid was in danger, and my husband and all my friends and family probably just died. I needed to put that aside and try though. Burdens of leadership and all that.
“You know, once this is all over I should introduce these guys to Milo.”
“Good idea,” said Nik.
“Who’s Milo?” asked one of the Portuguese Hunters—Coelho. I’d started thinking of the three Portuguese Hunters as Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
“Who is Milo? Only the best mechanical genius in all of monster hunting.”
“I bet he could fix this thing right up. Install some air conditioning, some good speakers so we could listen to some tunes.” Nik wasn’t very tall, but he had the build of somebody who lifted a lot of weights, so he was squished in behind me and obviously hating life. I’d requested him for the sub because he was one of my experienced guys—even if he was out of practice now—and he had actual medical training. There were bound to be vampire feeding pits down there, and if there were any survivors, they would be in really bad shape. Also, he was pretty handy with a flamethrower.
“Oh, that Milo guy is nuts. He’s also in charge of the Gut Crawl. Grossest thing ever,” Joshua Radick said, and every one of us MHI people shuddered at the same time. Radick had one of those weird résumés that tend to make good Hunters. He’d bounced around the world, being a school teacher in places like Guatemala and Kurdistan, before he’d had his run-in with the supernatural. Then he sadly added, “Except Milo was on the island too.”
Monster Hunter Guardian Page 31