“Jeurgen,” I said into the intercom. “How far to the castle?”
“At the speed you’re going, about ten minutes.”
“Good.”
I suddenly yanked on the collective and pulled the chopper higher into the air.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Do I want to know what that was?” he asked.
“Telephone wires.”
“And do I want to know how close we came to hitting them?”
“No. No you do not.”
Bolt’s voice came over the intercom.
“Speaking on behalf of your passengers I’d like to request that, whatever you just did, you do not do it again.”
“I promise nothing,” I replied.
We sped on for a few minutes, watching the beautiful, rugged Romanian scenery unfolding below us, until, perched on a rocky mountainside like something out of a black and white horror movie was our destination: Dracula’s castle.
I veered us in a wide circle around the massive stone building, taking in as many details as possible from a distance. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. The castle had become something of a sacred site since the vamps came out and tourism was forbidden. I took the chopper lower, looking for anywhere to land. We spotted and discarded several sites until we saw a clearing with a few ruined log buildings. It was easily big enough to accommodate the chopper so I flew us down for a closer look. One of the buildings was burned out completely, the others were falling apart. It had been, by the look of things, some sort of low-tech mining camp. I wondered whether the vamps had run off the humans who had worked here. I thought it likely.
CHAPTER
36
“The area looks clear,” said Bolt as he returned to the chopper.
We were standing in the clearing at the mining camp, spread out in a loose perimeter. It was early afternoon and, unusual for an op like this, we actually appeared to have time to spare.
Still, that was no excuse for wasting time.
“Let’s shake a leg, people,” I said.
We moved out along a narrow, mostly overgrown trail that wound through the forest. Cam was up ahead, walking point, with Bolt bringing up the rear. Marie, now in her wolf form, was stalking along beside me.
It was annoyingly pleasant out here in the forest. I always felt better going somewhere dangerous if I was doing so in foul weather or, at least in darkness. Going off to face possible death in beautiful sunshine seemed like a denial of every action movie I’d ever seen.
The trail wound to the left and widened slightly. Cam was crouched to one side, as if taking cover behind a tree. I raised my hand, bringing the rest of the team to a halt, then motioned them to take defensive positions. Nothing seemed to be amiss as far as I could tell but I wasn’t about to let that fool me.
Birds sang in the trees and shafts of sunlight slanted down through the branches as I crept forward. Cam suddenly stood up and turned.
“We gotta problem, boss,” he said quietly. “This tree is scent marked. And it’s not just one scent, either.”
“I’m guessing we’re not talking deer scent,” I replied.
He shook his head.
“So what does it mean?”
“Pack boundary,” he growled. “We should be safe if we stick to the path.”
“And after nightfall?”
“After the sun goes down we could be in trouble.”
“So we should be moving along rather sharpish, then?”
“I would advise changing this dance into a quickstep,” he replied dryly.
We set off again, eager to cover the distance and get inside before dark. Technically I—and, by extension, Marie—could claim the protection of the Paris pack if need be. I wouldn’t want to test it if I didn’t have to, especially as we both had unresolved issues with the Sheffield pack. Things could get complicated very quickly.
I briefly reflected on how much simpler my life had been before the vamps had come out of the crypt. I glanced at Marie’s lupine form. Simpler? Yep. Better? Not a chance.
We came to a break in the trees where we could see the imposing walls of Poenari Castle.
“And just how are we going to get in there?” asked Jeurgen.
“Well,” I replied, “we could climb the fifteen hundred steps that lead up to the front door.”
“Or?”
“I dunno,” I shrugged. “Maybe we could find a church and pray for a revelation?”
CHAPTER
37
We had to climb a steep, winding path in order to find the church, but it was worth it. The church was actually very picturesque. Well, it had been picturesque before it had fallen into ruin. Ivy had climbed and pulled down several walls and knee-high grass hid most of the fallen masonry. I had no idea how long it had been abandoned, but the Vatican records said the feature I was looking for had still been accessible four years ago, the last time a Catholic priest had passed through the area.
Inside the church was dingy and musty, with great swathes of moss covering almost every surface and the rotted remains of several pews scattered around the floor. A broken stump of stone that might once have been a font stood by the door and the sunlight slanted in through glassless windows. We cautiously made our way towards the altar, probing the darkness with our torches.
“Over here,” said Bolt quietly.
He was standing by the remains of a door set into an alcove. Behind the door was a stone staircase that led down under the church.
“Yeah, that’s it,” I said in a low voice.
We descended into the gloomy crypt, the beams of our torches the only illumination until we reached the bottom. Once down the steps we could see a small hole in the ceiling that let in a shaft of dim, grainy light.
I motioned everybody to stay where they were and crept over to the far wall. At the base was an obviously man-made hole. It had been covered by a metal grate, as if it was a simple drain. The grate had been torn away, twisted and thrown to one side and through the hole I could see down into a dank tunnel.
I reached to the back of my PLCE and pulled out my Kevlar helmet. On the front I clipped my IR scope. With the darkness in the tunnel an NVG would be near useless—even the best night vision scope needs at least some light to work with—but the IR scope would immediately reveal anyone inside. I carefully placed my FAL on the floor and drew my SIG. I had deliberately chosen the pistol with the extended, threaded barrel so I could use a suppressor.
Once I was ready I flipped the IR scope down and buckled the helmet in place. Through the scope I could see the blue of the cold stone and a ghostly blob where I had rested my hand, now quickly fading.
I took a moment to deal with the weird, primary colored view I now had through one eye and leaned my hands on either side of the hole.
With a deep breath inside me I swung out and dropped into the hole, deliberately throwing my legs forward so my heels skidded over the damp floor and I was dumped unceremoniously on my backside with my pistol already up and pointing into the blackness.
I stayed there for a few breaths, my left eye closed, staring through the scope. Nothing. There was nothing in the tunnel with any sort of heat signature except me.
I let out my breath and lowered the pistol.
“Clear,” I said under my breath.
I stood up again. Standing on the floor of the tunnel I was shoulder deep in the hole, which is why I'd needed the sore arse. I put the pistol on the floor and boosted myself out of the hole.
“Okay,” I said in a low voice. “Getting in will be a little tight for Cam, but everyone else should be okay. Once you get past the wall the tunnel's low, but not too bad. We'll have to be careful. Everyone ready?”
There were nods all round, except for Eva and Jeurgen, who were giving me puzzled looks.
“Tunnel?” he said.
“Vlad’s escape tunnel,” said Cam, smiling.
“His escape tunnel came out in a church?” Eva hissed incredulously.
Another myth busted
. Vampires have no problem with consecrated ground.
“Sure, it was on the plans for Poenari Castle that were in the Vatican archive,” I said. “You never looked at them?”
Eva gave me a dirty look that made absolutely no difference to my grin.
“We're going in there?” asked Jeurgen.
“Absolutely.”
“Mind if I pray?” he asked in a challenging tone.
“You do whatever you want, buddy,” I said with a smile.
I picked up my FAL and dropped back into the hole. Crouching down allowed me to duckwalk under the wall and into the tunnel, where I could stand upright. I slung the FAL, barrel down, over my back and pulled my MP7. Small and compact, the PDW was infinitely better than the battle rifle for confined spaces. I pulled out the stock, flipped down the front handgrip and took a moment to attach the suppressor.
Behind me I could just make out the soft murmur of several voices praying in Latin.
“Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.”
I knew that one. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Too pessimistic for me. I didn't intend to die in here.
Bolt was already in the tunnel by the time I heard the quiet amen. I snapped a fresh lightstick, swapped the IR goggles for a set of NVGs, and stepped further down the tunnel as each person came down the hole. With the lightstick and NVGs, I could see the inside of the tunnel like it was some weird green daylight. Behind me I could hear the scrape and clatter of Cam trying to fit through the narrow, low gap.
“Okay, let's go. No talking from here on out. We don't know what's waiting for us.”
Then we set off towards the castle.
CHAPTER
38
The tunnel was bad. At least it was high enough for everyone to walk upright with the exception of Cam. I didn't like this. I hate walking into a situation where anything is unknown. How many vampires were in the castle? How many humans? Was the end of the tunnel even open anymore? The Vatican's records said it was and, if there was a problem, there was a second exit about halfway down, but still, it was an unknown. Would there be guards at the end? If it were me I would have set tripwires and explosives, but I wasn't facing me. Vamps, for some reason, have a deep distrust of modern technology, especially the oldest ones. That's why so many were starting to gather human security forces, or hire recently-turned vamps to handle technology.
I kept a wary eye forward and we rotated who was on point every few minutes to keep fresh eyes on guard, but the journey stretched on and nerves were wound tight.
The gloomy tunnel began to slope gently downwards. Personally I thought it a bad idea, because any person using the tunnel to escape the castle would be working uphill, but they hadn't bothered to ask my opinion when they'd built it. The trouble was that, as the tunnel descended the walls got damper and damper until, finally, we were moving through ankle-deep water. That slowed us down as we tried to avoid noisy splashing. I really felt for Marie. My boots were waterproof all the way up to the calf, but she was barefoot—barepaw?—and couldn't have been comfortable. Not that any of us were comfortable. Despite the chill, the air was close and clammy, and sweat was running down my face and soaking my back. I was worried that the tunnel would keep on dipping but, after a few dozen yards it leveled out and started to gently rise again.
Ahead I could see the end of the tunnel, a massive spiral staircase cut out of the rock. I held up a hand to stop my team before creeping forward to take a peek up the stairs. A lot of the individual steps were cracked and crumbled, but the way was clear. I padded silently to the top. There was a doorway with the rotted remains of a heavy, ironbound door lying on the floor. The floor around the doorway had a few pieces of rubble scattered around but was otherwise clear. I took a quick look through the doorway into what looked like a set of deserted dungeons. This, according to Father Theodore's accounts, was the actual place where Vlad Dracul had been run to ground and executed, trying to get to the very tunnel we'd just come down.
I could see why the dungeons were deserted. A large piece of masonry had fallen, blocking the stairs and pinning the door shut. From the other side it would be near impossible to shift. From this side, with Rolling Thunder the Werewolf Wrecking Ball? Yeah, We could move that.
I prowled around the dungeon level for a moment, checking things out, before heading back through the doorway and down the stairs. I hadn't just been wandering; I'd needed to see if there was anyway our voices would carry up into the castle proper. There were no chimneys, no windows, nothing I could see. We would still be keeping the noise down but at least we wouldn't need strict silence. I checked my watch: less than four hours 'til sunset.
I crept back down the stairs and sat down at the bottom, pulling off my backpack. I beckoned Marie over, indicating that she should sit on a step a few above the one I was perched on. Her feet were still soaked from wading through the water, so I took a small towel out of my pack and began to dry her fur. The first rule of soldiering is to look after your feet. It's more important, believe it or not, than looking after your weapon. You can be the biggest, nastiest, most heavily-armed bastard in the world but if your feet are fucked, you're fucked. If you're weapon's fucked but your feet are good, at least you can run somewhere safe, but the other way around never ends well.
“Okay,” I said quietly, “the door out of the dungeons is blocked by some rubble which, I'd bet my bollocks, we can shift easily. We'll hold here for a few hours then make our way into the castle.”
I finished drying Marie's feet and gave her claws a jokey buff with the cloth before shoving it back into the pack.
“So,” I said. “Keep the noise down and this'll be a piece of piss.”
CHAPTER
39
Compo rations are designed to be eaten hot or cold. Most flavors taste like crap either way, but the body needs fuel so I got the stuff down my neck anyway. Bolt had some American-made MREs, complete with self-heating pouches of fairly palatable food, but as few things carry like the smell of hot food, he'd reluctantly put them aside. Now that I thought about it, we should have eaten on the 'plane ride, but I'd been too busy sleeping. Food or rest? The eternal question. In the field it was rare you got enough of either.
I popped a boiled sweet into my mouth and checked my weapons. All were loaded, clean, cocked, locked and ready, just as they should be, but I went ahead and checked them anyway.
I noticed that everyone was doing the same thing, checking the tools of our violent trade. Bolt was absently fine-tuning the settings on his Dragunov's scope, peering back down the tunnel as he did so. I checked my watch; thirty minutes 'till sunset.
Marie was using a glowstick to read one of those ridiculous pornographic me-novels. This one I recognized. It was one of the earliest, book two or three, called Defend Our Island, and it was the first time Our Hero had ever done the nasty with a vampire.
Fairly solid rumor said the vamp was based on Anna—although the author denied it—and John had asked me to sign a copy for her. The sex scenes in that one—three, if memory serves—were long, energetic and very inventive. I wasn't even sure if some of the positions were physically possible. Strangely, it was actually one of the more romantic novels in the series. The vampire was one of Pagan's colleagues. They'd teamed up to hunt down a coven of vamps in south Wales and she was badly wounded in the fight. The only way to save her life was to allow her to feed from him. Once they'd done so they'd been 'bonded' and discovered a hidden attraction for each other. Hit by a sudden storm and forced to take shelter in a remote, abandoned farmhouse, there really was only one way to pass the time.
I wasn't sure how the book fit into the anti-vampire propaganda campaign, but it was one of the most popular novels.
It was strange but the early books were actually quite readable, provided one didn't expect much. Pagan was something of a rogue but he did, apparently, genuinely care for the women he took into his be
d. He rarely slept with the same woman for more than one book—the vampire being the one exception when she returned for a rematch up around book eleven or twelve—but he wasn't a bad guy. There was never more than one woman in his life at once and there was usually some compelling reason why, at the end of each book, he had to bid his latest beau goodbye.
Marie didn't seem to be reading the books in any particular order, but she'd definitely taken a shine to them.
They were woefully inaccurate when it came to military procedures and weapons specs, but they were popular and sold like the proverbial hotcakes. And the fact that a vampire couldn’t feed from me must be something of a State secret, because the author certainly didn’t mention the vamp rolling around on the floor screaming.
Marie must have noticed me watching because she looked up and gave me a wink. I smiled and winked back.
Time wore on and the anticipation started to build. I could feel myself approaching that ideal combat mindset: cold, emotionless and calculating. I was turning the map of the castle around in my mind, looking at approaches and escape routes, assessing cover and firing positions. There was little doubt that the ritual—the resurrection—would be performed in the main hall. I suddenly realised that the main hall had a pair of staircases that led up to a pair of balconies, overlooking the main dais. The ballroom at Le Sang de Dieux was a direct copy of the main hall in Vlad’s castle. That might be something worth remembering.
Where the vamps would get the blood was something I was trying not to think about, but I hoped we'd arrive in time to prevent innocent deaths.
I was trying not to second-guess myself. It had to be night before we started moving, else the vamps would just run and find somewhere else for the ritual.
Finally I packed everything, including the empty cans from the vile meal, into my backpack.
“Let's go,” I said.
We climbed the stairs and went through the doorway into the dungeons. I pointed up the shallow steps to the fallen chunk of stone. Marie and Cam, their weapons slung, nodded dismissively. I glanced around and then nodded back.
Crusader (MPRD Book 2) Page 19
