Assassin's code jl-4

by Jonathan Maberry

  I doubted it was good news.

  “I heard from Bug,” Church said. “He’s located a device here in the States.”

  “Where?”

  “Louisiana.”

  Bang. There it was.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Mustapha’s Daily Goods

  Tehran, Iran

  June 15, 6:48 p.m.

  “Christ,” I said. “Tell me.”

  “Bug initiated a MindReader search of cargo ships, oil tankers, fishing fleets, and other craft capable of carrying a large, shielded device. Backtracking through ports where cargo could be quietly shifted from one craft to another. These are routes and transfers that would not ring bells on any standard-security computers, so we got lucky.”

  “Now give me the bad news.”

  “It’s on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico a few miles off the coast of New Orleans. We confirmed the presence of a nuclear signature with a flyover. Low levels, which means it is likely shielded, probably not a danger to the staff aboard the rig, but too high to be anything other than what it is. I have two of our people doing a soft infil right now under cover of a random inspection of blowout preventers. The rig is about due for a check, so we caught that break.”

  “Shit.”

  “I borrowed SEAL Team Six to work a coordinated operation with Riptide Team out of Miami. Aunt Sallie will coordinate it from the TOC at the Hangar.”

  “When do they hit it?”

  “The president is making that decision now.”

  “Who’s stalling, him or you?”

  “Me. I talked him out of giving an immediate go-order. We now know that the devices exist, and that the U.S. is on the list. I don’t want to hit one and have that serve as a signal for our enemies to trigger the other devices.”

  “No joke. During my interrogation with Krystos, he said the Sabbatarians were trying to prevent the Red Knights from destroying the world, and he wasn’t talking about a global suckfest. His crew think that these Upierczi freaks are the ones with the nukes.”

  “Aunt Sallie told me that you forwarded a theory along those lines,” he said, “so I’ve arranged for Dr. Hu to join us. I’m conferencing him in now.”

  “Swell,” I said.

  “I heard that,” said Hu.

  “It was an expression of great joy,” I said. “I’ve missed you and longed to hear your voice.”

  “Eat me.”

  Church sighed heavily, which effectively silenced the sniping war.

  The only person at the DMS who disliked me more than Aunt Sallie was Dr. William Hu, the head of Church’s vast science and research department. Hu was a couple miles beyond brilliant, and he had what would have been a fun pop-culture sensibility if it wasn’t for the fact that he was a totally amoral asshole. If there was a plague totally unknown to science that was killing thousands of people an hour, Hu was as happy as a kid on Christmas morning because he had a new toy to play with. By comparison, Hu made Dr. Frankenstein look like Jonas Salk. Granted, Bug had some weird detachments from the real world, too, but Bug had a heart. I’d need a full autopsy of Hu before I believed he did, and I’d pay for that procedure right now.

  For his part, Hu once described me as a “muscle-headed mouth breather.”

  “Doctor,” began Church in a rather more commanding voice than usual, “I would like you to give Captain Ledger some useful feedback on his theories.”

  I heard Hu quietly mumble the word “theories.” “Sure,” he said.

  “First up, what the hell are the Upierczi? Are they vampires?”

  “I’d need to dissect one,” Hu said, sounding jazzed at the thought, “so I can only speculate on whether the model of the traditional vampire is medically possible. It isn’t. Not as Hollywood shows it. Therianthropy is-”

  “Whoa-what?”

  “Therianthropy,” he said, pronouncing it slowly for those of us on the short bus. “From the Greek therion, meaning ‘beast’ and anthropos, meaning ‘human.’ Creatures who can change their form. Also known as ‘shapeshifting,’ but it’s mythology, not science. Refers to creatures that could change shape from animal to human, or human to animal.”

  “Like vampires turning into bats.”

  “And werewolves, which would be subclassified as lycanthropes. Folklore’s filled with crap like that. You got cynanthropy, which is transforming into a dog, ailuranthropy, turning into a cat, yada, yada, yada. There is no evidence of any credible kind that humans can transform.”

  “What about sunlight?”

  “Possibly. Photophobia is a fear of sunlight and a morbid fear of it is called heliophobia, but Auntie said that your ‘theory’ was that these Upierczi have increased resistance to radiation. That would contradict a fear of sunlight unless the fear was purely psychological and not physiological.”

  “Isn’t that likely here?” I asked. “If we’re going to talk about vampires of any kind existing, even if they’re just faking it somehow, then they are going to have to be aware of the myths and legends.”

  “Okay,” he agreed grudgingly, “there are a couple of takes on that. Either the Upierczi are some kind of vampire, in which case their unusual nature inspired some of the legends about what we popularly think about vampires. Storytellers, campfire tales, and fiction writers filled in the rest.”

  “Or, maybe the Upierczi deliberately provided their own disinformation campaign,” I suggested.

  “Maybe,” he said, but I knew I’d scored a point.

  “Could a human subspecies have a greater tolerance for radiation?” I asked.

  “Sure. Not to the point where they can juggle isotopes, but we’ve seen a pretty big range. Some of the exposure studies after Chernobyl and Fukushima show that.”

  “Enough for them to live in a postnuclear environment?”

  “That would depend on where the nukes detonate, both in relation to prevailing wind and ocean currents and to actual proximity to the highest concentrations. When Chernobyl melted down everyone thought that the area around it would be a total dead zone, but we saw plant growth return much more quickly, and also the return of animals and birds. Nature loves to adapt. Now… another factor in species survival would be the number of nukes. If the Upierczi live anywhere near one of the blast zones, it’s doubtful they would be able to withstand the doses. However, if they are removed from the blast zones, it would be up to their unique biology as to how soon they could reinhabit those areas.” He paused. “We’re looking for seven nukes worldwide? That would not pose a lasting threat even to the normal human population.”

  “It wouldn’t?”

  “Well, I mean a bunch of people would be toast. Worst-case scenario from the five we already know of, including New Orleans, would be maybe fifty million dead from the blasts, maybe two hundred million dead in two to forty years from cancers. That’s nothing matched against the six and three quarter billion who wouldn’t die.”

  “That’s ‘nothing’?”

  “Try thinking big picture once in a while,” said Hu smugly.

  “Are you-”I began, my voice rising.

  “Don’t start,” warned Church. “We don’t have the time for it.”

  I bit down on the things I wanted to say to Hu, and he was probably grinning at the other end of the phone, thinking that he’d just scored by having me yelled at by the teacher.

  “What if the Upierczi stay underground?” asked Church.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “In graves or-”

  “In tunnels. We have some intelligence that they live, or at least lived, in tunnels.”

  “Well,” mused Hu, “rock and dirt are great insulators as long as they aren’t part of a contaminated water table or underground river.”

  “In deserts?” I asked.

  “Pretty good place to be. Again, though, they’d have to be away from water or, if Rasouli’s intel is right, away from the oil sands.”

  “New topic,” I said. “Physiology. The Red Knight I fought was faster and stron
ger than me. Not just a little, either. What’s the upper range of human potential?”

  “Impossible to say,” answered Hu, “because it depends on too many factors. Muscle density, bone density, and overall cellular structure. We keep pushing back the limits for fastest and strongest all the time, and I’m not just talking steroids. Every Olympic Games you have new world records set. There are going to be some extreme limits, of course. Human bones and muscle will never allow someone to bench-press a ton or outrun a sports car, but there is a whole lot of wiggle room; and that’s before we get into gene therapy. Remember the Berserkers from the Jakoby thing. They were big men who received DNA from silverback gorillas. Granted, it caused other mutations and it was a long way from healthy for the subjects, but in the short term those men were much stronger than ordinary humans. Now, if we talk natural mutation in terms of physical potential, that will vary, and we’ve seen average guys who are surprisingly strong and bulky guys who don’t have the strength to open a beer bottle. Like I said, I’d need to cut one of these guys to pin it down.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “What can I use to fight them? Those Sabbatarian freaks had hammers, stakes, holy water, and garlic.”

  Hu snorted. “Forget holy water unless the Upierczi actually believe in it.”

  “Why would that make a difference?”

  “It wouldn’t, except psychologically,” said Church. “They’d fear it or try to evade it, which might open up an opportunity for you.”

  “What about the stakes and hammers?”

  “I expect,” said Hu, “that would work on anybody. If you don’t have a gun, a big pointed stick is worth a try.”

  “And garlic?”

  “Hm. Might be something to that. I did a search through the literature, and, though garlic allergies aren’t that common, there is plenty of documentation.”

  “Fatal allergies?” I asked hopefully.

  “Not usually. Most garlic allergies are a form of contact dermatitis. Chefs get it once in a while when they get garlic oil or dust in a cut. They present with patterns of asymmetrical fissures on the affected fingertips, maybe some thickening and shedding of the outer skin layers. In really rare cases that can progress to second- or even third-degree burns. Actually it’s a component of garlic, the chemical diallyl disulfide, or DADS, along with related compounds allyl propyl disulfide and allicin. You find all three in other plants in the genus Allium, too, like leeks and onions.”

  “So what do I do, ask the Red Knights to make me some garlic bread and hope they have an accident with a knife?”

  Hu laughed despite himself. “If the Upierczi have a congenital allergy, that could be in our favor. It’d be better if you could get some dust or oil directly into their lungs or bloodstream. That’s probably why the Sabbatarians threw garlic in your face. If you breathed it and you were a Upier, then you might go into anaphylaxis. Then they’d go all Buffy the Vampire Slayer on you and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “Hope springs eternal,” Hu said. “The kicker is that we don’t know if garlic is a genuine allergen to them or if that’s more disinformation. You’re going to have to figure that out on the fly.”

  “Swell. Anything else you can tell me?”

  “Nothing that isn’t blind speculation. We don’t have the data to do more than speculate.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” said Church, and he dropped Hu out of the conversation. “Any other thoughts, Captain?”

  “Just one. What are the chances that the Iranian government is behind this whole thing? I know Rasouli gave me the flash drive, but I can see how he could be pulling a fast one: planting nukes in Iran and in the States and tipping us off so that we find them.”

  “To what end?”

  “To whitewash their reputation. They discover a global threat and reach across political and religious differences to join with us in a joint operation that proves to the world that they’re part of the solution and not the core of the problem.”

  “Why do so covertly?”

  “Because if it goes wrong they can plausibly deny any involvement and probably dump it all on us. After all-we have the original flash drive now, and we have people operating inside their borders without permission. We flub it, they have proof; we don’t flub it and we can both retroactively spin the story that this was all a hush-hush joint operation from the jump.”

  “Chasing Hugo Vox is turning you into a cynic, Captain.”

  “Hard to stay optimistic with a bunch of nukes ready to pop,” I pointed out.

  “I could accept that Rasouli is behind it, but not as an official representative of the Iranian government,” mused Church. “They couldn’t afford to come within a million miles of such a plan. It would do irreparable political harm to the sitting party.”

  “What about a move by an opposition party or a dissident group?”

  He considered. “It would take enormous resources and would be ultimately self-defeating.”

  “Only if they pulled the trigger.”

  Church paused a little before he said, “Yes.”

  “Do we have an overall game plan yet?”

  “If we can we locate the last two devices, then we go for a quarterback blitz.”

  “That’ll be interesting.”

  “Won’t it, though?”

  I closed my eyes and prayed to the gods of war to cut us a break. What Church was suggesting was to have teams move against every target at exactly the same time. It was a strategist’s worst-case scenario because if thousands of years of organized warfare have taught us anything it’s that no major campaign ever goes off exactly according to plan. There are always snafus. And that word came into military parlance as a result. SNAFU. Situation normal all fucked up. Tells you all you need to know.

  “And if we don’t locate the other two?” I asked.

  “Then we may have to try something riskier.”

  “Like taking out the five we know about in order to secure suspects who we can interrogate?”

  “Glad to see we’re on the same page.”

  “It’s not a good page, Boss. There are a lot of ways that can go wrong too.”

  “Yes.”

  “And only one way it can go right.”

  “Yes.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Yes.” He sighed. “I’ll be landing in Kuwait in a bit. Hope to see you there by this time tomorrow.”

  I heard the faint bing-bong of the doorbell downstairs.

  “I think the courier’s here,” I said, and disconnected.

  Chapter Seventy

  Private Villa Near Jamshidiyeh Park

  Tehran, Iran

  June 15, 6:52 p.m.

  Hugo Vox was bent over the toilet, his stomach heaving and churning with nothing left to expel, when the phone began ringing. His private cell.

  He clawed a towel off the bar and wiped his mouth and crawled out of the bathroom to the night table. Walking was an impossibility this soon after the dose kicked in. There was only enough time to drive home and swallow half a dozen aspirin before the first waves hit, and it was worse with each treatment. He joked to Grigor about the fact that the cure was going to kill him before it cured him. Now he wasn’t sure it was a joke.

  The thick sausages of his swollen fingers were clumsy on the buttons, but he finally hit the right one.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “Mr. Verrecchia?”

  Ah. It was Father Belloq, East Asia regional coordinator for the Sabbatarians. That group knew Vox by his old family name, Verrecchia-a name his grandfather had changed at Ellis Island, but which Vox still used for certain operations. As far as Belloq was concerned, “Luigi Verrecchia” was a devoted and very rich Catholic who was serving God by covertly using a great deal of his wealth to fund the operations of the Inquisition. And that wasn’t all that far from the truth, except in terms of motives. Vox couldn’t care less about the church, or its God, but he f
ound it useful to have a vicious little private army he could aim at his enemies. The Sabbatarians were everywhere, their ranks significantly expanded over the last fifteen years thanks to the millions Vox funneled into their numbered accounts. They were blind fanatics who were convinced they were making serious inroads into the fight against supernatural evil. In point of fact, they had contributed significantly to five of the most lucrative operations of the Seven Kings.

  They had no real role in the chaos that Vox was building around the Red Order, the Tariqa, Iranian politics, and the mad plans of the King of Thorns; but that was the point. Vox loved adding random elements. It would drive Church and the DMS up a goddamn wall trying to figure out how the Sabbatarians factored in. Sure, there was the obvious vampire connection, but the Sabbatarians created the wrong connection. Chaos was a lovely, lovely thing.

  Vox took a breath and adjusted his tone. “Yes, Father. Do you have something to report?”

  “We have had a problem, sir.”

  “Tell me.”

  Belloq told him about the failed ambush of Joe Ledger.

  “You lost the whole team?” growled Vox. His anger was only partly contrived. It would not have surprised Vox to hear that Ledger had taken out at least half the team; he knew Ledger was that good. But all of them?

  “Every last man is in the arms of Jesus.”

  “Please, Father Belloq, this is madness,” said Vox, mopping sweat from his face. His stomach felt like it was ready to explode, but there was nothing left it in. “What could possibly have happened to all those men?”

  “There is only one possible explanation,” said the priest with undisguised contempt. “Upierczi.”

  Vox faked a gasp and then waited a few seconds for Belloq to appreciate how disturbed he was by this news.

  “Surely no single Red Knight could-”

  “No, sir. We believe that the Upierczi are out in force. Sir… I’m afraid that the thing we were afraid of is about to happen.”

  “You mean…?”

  “Yes… it seems certain now that the Upierczi have obtained nuclear weapons.”