David stopped and turned to find the hulking form of Leonard Casey barreling down on him. With a grunt of laughter, the black ex-Airborne punched him lightly in the arm. A smaller woman in an identical uniform followed him at a distance.
“Figured it was you when they told me to catch an ‘Agent White’ before he left the building,” Casey rumbled at David. “ONSET ain’t big enough for there to be two of you. Pam,” he said, gesturing the woman forward, “this is David White. David, this is my fire team partner, Pam Uphoff.”
David gave the slightly built woman a nod of recognition. “You were told to catch me?” he asked.
“Yeah,” the larger man confirmed. “A couple of our grand poobahs want to debrief you. I got tagged by my unit Commander as being free.”
“Unit Commander?” David queried, as he gestured for Casey to lead the way. “I thought you’d been headed for an Inspectorship.”
“So did I,” the OSPI man admitted as he and Pam guided David away from the elevators and toward a set of stairs. “I think they barely finished getting the fax of my profile from ONSET before I got co-opted into a special program, though.”
“What program?” the ONSET man asked, curious. So far as it had been explained to him, OSPI had Inspectors and Security teams, and the Security teams were mundanes like ONSET’s Anti-Paranormal Companies.
“We’re part of the Stutters,” Pam answered him as the trio climbed up the stairs. “That’s SSTTR, or Special Supernatural Tactics, Technology, and Recon. Also known as the dirty tricks command.”
“I thought most of that fell under ONSET’s jurisdiction,” David asked carefully as Casey led him out of the stairwell into another blue-carpeted and beige walled corridor.
“ONSET is combat teams,” Casey told him. “Stutter is designed to disable and capture enemies we don’t need to bring the heavy hammer down on—or need alive.”
It sounded to David like a recipe for an inter-force rivalry, but he didn’t have a chance to say anything as the SSTTR man swung open a door leading into another conference room, similar to the one he’d just left. This one, however, contained half a dozen men, including an intrigued-looking Director Morrison.
#
The debriefing was mercifully short, and David found himself rapidly hustled back to yet another black government car. He wondered if the arrival and departure of so many blatant government vehicles from this supposedly commercial high-rise stood out to those surrounding it.
By the time they got him to the airport and handed him his plane ticket back to Colorado Springs, he’d been in New York for less than eight hours. The whole affair seemed rushed to him, like he wasn’t welcome in OSPI headquarters, and he wondered to what extent that was true.
Before ONSET had been an independent office, it had been the OSPI High Threat Response teams. He knew Michael, who’d been involved in those teams, seemed to think it had been a move for the better, as did most of the ONSET people he knew who’d talked about it.
He was left wondering as he boarded his plane, however, how the organization that massive chunk of funding and influence had been ripped away from had felt about it.
#
David returned to the Campus to an empty dormitory. ONSET Nine had left without him, a helicopter whisking them away to another week-long assignment that he’d been removed from. No one had expected his New York trip to take a single day.
Six days was a long time to burn without training, so he called Koburn up and talked his way into special unarmed training sessions with the Sage. While he was faster and stronger than the trainer, the trainer continually pulled out tricks David hadn’t seen before.
Between training and setting up his new home, his week vanished surprisingly quickly. He grabbed time to have lunch with Leila Stone again, but only once, as she was busy with her team finally going on a deployment at the end of the week.
When ONSET Nine finally returned late Sunday evening, they found him in the dormitory common room, cleaning the disassembled parts of the M1911 that Chief Hanson had given him.
“Look who’s had the lazy week,” Michael said loudly as he tromped through the common room, followed by the rest of the team.
David looked up from the parts of the gun and returned his Commander’s grin. “Rumor has it that you guys weren’t doing much more over in California,” he replied.
“Probably less,” Bourque grouched as she slouched past David and collapsed into a chair, slinging her locked and unloaded machine gun onto the ground beside her.
“Secure that,” Michael half-barked. “Come on, people, let’s get the gear off, then we can harass the local layabout. Did you at least clean up around here?” he added to David, who shook his head laughingly as the team trooped past him into the armory behind the common room.
#
The team slowly drifted back into the common room, freshly showered and with body armor and weapons stored in their lockers. They collapsed into chairs and glanced at the television, which Morgen had turned on with the new Star Wars movie playing at low volume.
Kate, the last of the team to come back downstairs, had just settled on the chair across from David when the door to the outside of the dormitory swung open.
“TEN-HUT,” a masculine voice bellowed, and the members of ONSET Nine leapt to their feet and snapped to attention as two men in full ONSET combat gear stepped into the room. A moment later, Major Warner followed them.
David looked at her uncomfortably. He could guess why ONSET’s second-in-command would show up in the common room of a reserve team. He suspected their time off was about to be cut short for real work.
“Ladies, gentlemen,” she addressed them calmly. “At ease.”
The team rapidly drifted together into the middle of the room as she regarded them. For all his discomfort, David was with them. He might not think he was fully ready, even with the last three weeks of training, but he knew he’d proven himself. If there was a job to do, he was going to be right there with the rest of his team.
“Our friends over at ISA have forwarded a request to us,” she told them. “The Royal Canadian Mounted Paranormal Police have a situation in Montreal that they would very much like to have a strike team for. Unfortunately, Canada’s Joint Task Force Hercules has one team currently tied up assisting operations in the Middle East, and the other is apparently somewhere in the Arctic Circle, dealing with a minor Incursion.”
It made sense, David reflected, that other countries had organizations like OSPI and ONSET. He couldn’t help feeling, however, that “Joint Task Force Hercules” was a much better name than ‘the Office for the National Supernatural Enforcement Teams.’
“Therefore, the RCMPP has requested to borrow an ONSET team to support this operation. You’ve been designated,” she finished. “We’ve coordinated in the past with both JTF-H and the RMCPP to everybody’s satisfaction, and I expect this time to be the same.”
“What’s the mission?” Michael asked calmly. David, like the rest of the team he was sure, was listening carefully to the answer.
“The RCMPP has located a complex they have confirmed to belong to a major Vampire Familias,” she told her subordinate. “While we have yet to confirm which Family, we have linked it to some of the intelligence provided by the Elfin. Carderone was funneling money from his parish’s charitable donations to a shell company that owns part of the complex.
“Even without that information, however, the Canadians don’t want that boil on the universe to exist for one day longer than it has to.”
“When do we leave?” Akono asked, the elf’s dreamy tones somehow much scarier than normal.
Chapter 20
“What’s Canada like?” David asked Michael as ONSET Nine busied themselves in their armory, pulling on their full gear. He hadn’t lived far away from the northern country, but he’d never made it up there and didn’t trust rumor for an accurate opinion.
The werewolf Commander paused for a moment, sliding his assault rifle back into his locker a
nd gesturing for his subordinates to do the same. “No rifles,” he ordered. “We’re trying to be at least somewhat covert.” He pulled a submachine gun, the curved grip and magazine shape of a Heckler & Koch MP5, out of a locker and slung that instead.
He checked that the rest of the team was doing the same, and then turned his gaze back to David. “Canada?” he responded, appraisingly. “Good coffee. Decent hockey. Lots of ice. That really sums up ninety percent of what you need to know. Oh, and the Quebecois, the folks around where we’re going, speak French.”
“French?” Ix asked, the demon pulling a black knitted cap down to the augmented reality goggles to cover his giveaway horns. David wasn’t sure it would help if anyone got a close enough look to see the inhuman red tinge to the demon’s black skin, but from a distance, it would work.
“Older language from over in Europe,” Michael answered. “Second language of the Canadians.”
“None of us speak it,” Bourque objected, pausing in her process of attaching various small and medium weapons about the combat suit. David agreed with her that not speaking the language in the area would be a pretty major problem, and wondered how Michael was planning to get around it.
“All the RCMPPs do,” Michael told her. “As well as English. We’ll be fine.”
David settled the low-profile AR goggles over his face and checked the safety on his M1911 before holstering the pistol opposite his mageblade and slinging his own MP5 over his shoulder. If Michael was expecting them to be able to rely on the Canadians for translation, then they’d be working pretty closely with them. He wondered why the Canadians needed an ONSET team if there would be enough of them for that.
“What sort of resistance do we expect?” he asked, putting the question into words as he brought his suit computers online for a systems test.
“Not sure yet,” Michael admitted. “We’ll be rendezvousing with a Sergeant-Major Bordeaux from the Mounties on the ground at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport. He will be in charge of the operation and will brief us en route.”
“That leaves only one question,” Morgen said, the Mage sliding his own Silver auto-loader into its holster with an audible thunk. “When do we leave?”
Michael glanced around the room at the team and met David’s eyes for a moment. David gave a slight nod, and the werewolf Commander grinned.
“Now.”
#
It was the first time David had ever been loaded into a Pendragon making full speed. The trip to Louisiana had been done at the helicopters’ normal subsonic cruising speed, and the trip to Carderone’s church hadn’t been far enough to need it.
This time, ONSET Nine was in a hurry, and Malcolm Akono knew it. As soon as the door shut behind the last team member, the helicopter was already moving, and the elf ordered the team to strap in.
A slight touch of sweat filled the air as the helicopter body-slammed its way into the sky, but David was simply thankful that no one had thrown up. The initial lurch upward had almost brought his breakfast back up.
Seconds after leaving the ground, a sonic boom crackled through the mountains around the ONSET HQ Campus as the Pendragon went to full speed. The helicopter had been designed to outrun any civilian aircraft in existence before Omicron’s Mage-technicians had taken it apart and enchanted the pieces.
At full speed, the chopper had to avoid populated areas like the plague, as even magic couldn’t conceal the sonic boom of an aircraft screaming along above the speed of sound. For those inside, the supersonic ride was uncomfortable at best, as even the slightest turn threw the passengers against their safety belts. With all the precautions and the circuitous route, it took the helicopter ninety-six minutes to cross the continent from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado to Montreal in Quebec.
#
“Welcome to Montreal, ladies and gentlemen,” the RCMPP officer standing on the helipad greeted them as the American team drifted out of the Pendragon into the river-fresh air of Montreal. He was dressed in an ordinary-looking business suit, short and dark-haired with an Asian angle and coloring to his face and eyes. “I am Sergeant-Major Jean Bordeaux, commanding officer of the Quebec detachment of the RCMPP. You made incredible time,” he finished, looking at the sleek black jet-copter behind them.
“Our government and our Office both highly value the cooperation between our countries,” Michael told the Sergeant-Major. “We were ordered into the field as soon as your request reached the Campus.”
“We appreciate the speediness of your response, Commander,” the RCMPP office replied. “Normally, I’d have Joint Task Force support, but they’re currently tied up in the Middle East and the Yukon.”
“I understand completely, Sergeant-Major,” Michael replied. “We have three teams in the Middle East ourselves, coordinating with the Europeans and the Israelis.”
This was the first David had heard about ONSET operations in the Middle East beyond the story of Casey’s recruitment, but it made sense. America was tied up in providing enough security support against IS that it made sense they’d be helping with supernatural security, too.
The RCMPP officer nodded, and gestured for the team to come with him.
“We have transportation to the operations center ready,” he told them. “This is a secure pad, but we should still get you out of sight.”
David, looking around at the conspicuously black-clad and armed strike team, agreed completely with the officer. He and the rest of the team willingly followed Bordeaux to the unmarked white van sitting near the edge of the pad.
The driver waved out the window at them. “Bienvenue à Montréal,” he greeted them warmly.
“Ils sont américains, Pierre,” Bordeaux responded in the same language, “ils ne parlent pas français.”
“Sorry,” the driver immediately said to the American agents. “Welcome to Montreal, Officers.”
“Thank you,” Michael responded, with a quick glance at Bordeaux. “The back’s unlocked?” he asked.
“Jump right on in,” Pierre replied. “It’ll be nice to show these sang they can’t fuck with people like they do.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Michael told the driver before following his people into the back of the van, where long benches waited for them.
#
The operations center turned out to be an unmarked eighteen-wheeler truck tucked away, with several other unmarked vans, into an alley next to a Chinese restaurant and behind a large hardware store emblazoned Canadian Tire. Behind the cover of the vans blocking the alley entrance, men in blue coveralls and black body armor quietly loaded and checked shotguns and submachine guns.
Bordeaux led the American team into the trailer, which turned out to be a fully functional mobile command center, with the front end hosting a flatscreen display that covered the entire wall. Right now, the display showed a satellite photo of an ordinary-looking warehouse. Blinking red lights and circles on the photo were the only marks to distinguish the image from any other warehouse anywhere.
David was impressed. ONSET had better setups—hell, Charles’s “personal computer” was probably vastly more capable—but those were immobile, not fitted into the back of an eighteen-wheeler.
“This is our tactical display,” the RCMPP officer said unnecessarily. “Our surveillance technicians”—he gestured at the half-dozen men in gray and blue sitting at computers in the surprisingly spacious trailer—“are combining data from surveillance satellite footage and our onsite observers to give us the best image possible of what is going on at the warehouse.”
“We have current satellite footage?” Michael asked.
“Over the course of the next six hours, we’ve been granted special access to a total of seventeen spy satellites—mostly American and French, but two are ours and one is British—to keep continuous surveillance on the warehouse,” Bordeaux replied. “We shouldn’t need it for that long.”
Spy satellites? David was again surprised by the reach of the supernatural organization
s of the world. Turning away from the screen, he looked out the window at the back of the truck at the early evening sky. “It’s almost dark,” he observed to the two Commanders. Everything he’d read suggested that vampires were almost as vulnerable to sunlight as myth and fiction made them out to be. “Shouldn’t we wait till morning to raid vampires?”
“Oui,” the Canadian replied, “normally, we would. However, in this case, your prompt arrival has given an opportunity we didn’t expect.
“We have acquired intelligence since our original request for help that a VIV—Very Important Vamp—from the family running this place arrived there last night and is leaving tonight.”
“That…is a very good reason to go now,” Michael said softly, and David found himself in full agreement. His encounter with vampires had left him very willing to blow holes in plans of theirs. “I’m glad we came so quickly.”
“So am I,” Bordeaux admitted. “Most of my people are glorified ERT—Emergency Response Teams. I have sixty men, but only five are Empowered, and I’m the only Mage.”
And that, David realized, was why they’d wanted an ONSET team. As the assessment of his own survival chances of going into the Charlesville warehouse had made quite clear after the fact, mundanes didn’t stand much chance against vampires.
“What sort of resistance are we looking at?” Bourque asked, interjecting herself into the conversation firmly.
“Each of these red circles is a confirmed guard on the outside of the building,” Bordeaux told them, turning back to the tactical display. Nine red circles marked the outside and roof of the building. “The blinking lights are where we’ve seen guards that aren’t our definites, but we’re not sure where they are now. All of the outside guards are uninfected,” he finished. “They’re all armed. Only one of our observers got a really good look at the weapon. He confirmed a small suppressed SMG.”
ONSET: To Serve and Protect Page 18
