Jonathan Maberry - Assassin's code

Lilith and Circe stared at him. And nodded.

“Knowing that doesn’t help us understand the code.” He paused and grunted. “On the other hand, we might be overthinking this again.”

“What do you mean?” asked Circe.

“What if the list is not a code but a simple uncomplicated shorthand?” He tapped a key on his console and Bug’s face appeared on one of the screens. “Bug, initiate a search. Listen first. If the first letter in each pair is the name of the target- A for Aghajari and so on-and the second letter is the first of the location, I for Iran, we missed a clue right there. I was used to indicate both Iran and Iraq. The answer is right there and we looked through it.”

“But there’s no J or V refinery in Iraq, either,” insisted Circe.

“Stop thinking about specifics and go general. The additional targets may not be refineries. They could be anything. And remember, these were written by two different people. The code, and even the order of the letters might not match. Allow for flexible thinking.”

“If they aren’t matches, how will we ever find them?” asked Rudy.

“The second letter. Bug, let’s start there. Make a list of all oil producing countries beginning with the letters I and S. No, give me J as well, in case the order is skewed. Then get me a general alphabetized list of all countries. Run both through MindReader’s counterterrorism assessment package and cross-reference with significant potential targets beginning with V, J, and M. Do it now.”

Circe and Bug’s screens went dark. Lilith put her hands on Church’s shoulders and gave them a single squeeze, then she went out to deal with her teams.

Church sat back and waited, his face showing none of the tension that burned through him. His cell buzzed and he picked it up, looked at the screen display, and frowned. It read ID NOT AVAILABLE.

There were only two systems that could block MindReader’s phone trace technology: the one he had provided to Lilith years ago and which he could break if he chose to, and the one that had been used as a weapon against him by the Seven Kings.

He answered the call. “Hello, Hugo.”

“Sorry, Mr. Church” said an unfamiliar voice, “wrong monster.”

Church straightened. “Who is this?”

“Nobody.”

The accent was London, South End. That, plus the access to this kind of phone, told him a lot.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Chismer?”

“That person doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Should I call you Toys?”

“Toys is dead. He’s burning in hell where he belongs.” There was a sound. A soft sob. Then, “Can we do this without names? It won’t take long. I know you can’t trace the call.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Hugo told me that you are a religious man. Was he telling the truth about that, too? Please tell me the truth.”

“Yes.”

“Hugo thinks that you used to be a priest. Was he right?”

“No.”

“I need to make a confession,” said Toys. “Will you listen?”

Church said, “Yes.”

Aghajari Oil Refinery

Iran

June 16, 6:10 a.m.

They stood between me and the tunnel that led back into the refinery. One was dressed in the orange coveralls of the refinery’s general maintenance staff; the other was the major. I’d walked on the false teeth he’d dropped, and he smiled to show me his real teeth. His fangs.

And I realized that he must have been wearing contact lenses earlier and had discarded them as well. Both Upierczi glared at me with hellish red eyes.

I had a flashlight in one hand and a plastic screwdriver in the other. My pistol was in its holster. So were theirs, but that wasn’t as comforting as it should have been.

Usually in situations like this Ghost would move to one side and slightly forward, preparing to defend the pack leader and launch the first wave of attacks. He didn’t. Instead, shivering and whimpering, he peed all over the floor. The Upierczi may be scared of white dogs, but my super-highly trained, ultrafierce attack hellhound was a whole lot more scared of them.

The two men stared at Ghost, and their smiles grew bigger.

Swell.

“Fetch dog,” laughed the major and made the same sign to ward off evil that the first goon had made back at my hotel-touching his heart and drawing a line above his eyes.

“If you kill that piece of shit dog we will make it quick for you,” said the maintenance man.

He smiled when he said it.

It was bad enough that he made that suggestion. He shouldn’t have smiled when he did, because until that moment I was genuinely terrified.

Now I was pissed.

“Here’s an idea,” I said conversationally, and I threw the screwdriver at the maintenance guy with my left hand and drew my Beretta with my right.

Two things happened at once.

The Upier in the coveralls shocked the hell out of me by catching the screwdriver.

A microsecond later I put a bullet through the bridge of his nose.

Do not fuck with my dog.

Aghajari Oil Refinery

Iran

June 16, 6:12 a.m.

The maintenance man flew back. The bullet blew out the back of his head, and the force of impact snapped his neck. Hollow points. Booyah.

The major didn’t stop to gape at his fallen comrade. He moved like a blur and I pivoted, firing round after round at him. Ghost barked and lunged, but he was trained not to run into a field of fire.

The Upier was stunningly fast, but he really ought to have run serpentine. I fired at the target and caught him with my fourth round. He was fast, but a nine millimeter bullet is a whole lot faster. The round hit him sideways, clipping his elbow and drilling into his hip. From the way he fell it was clear that his pelvis was shattered.

“Hit,” I told Ghost, and he flashed across the concrete floor toward the screaming vampire. The major’s screams instantly jumped to a higher register.

It was over very fast, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of Ghost’s aggression or the bullet. Jonatha Corbiel-Newton had made some very smart recommendations, and we’d used them. A drop of garlic oil into the mouth of a hollow point, sealed in place with a bead of wax. We’d used the same syringe to inject garlic into all of our shotgun shells, sealing the plastic cases with a cigarette lighter.

And we had some other surprises.

Which left a big problem.

Echo Team was still upstairs, and there were a couple of dozen Red Knights somewhere in the facility. The Knights didn’t know that and I couldn’t call my team. Lydia either hadn’t found Echo Team yet or something was slowing up their progress up there.

My instinct was to hot-foot it out of there and find them; but that was poor thinking. Just because the bomb wasn’t active at the moment didn’t mean that it couldn’t be activated by one of the Upierczi here in the refinery. The only way I could prevent that would be to remove the entire triggering system, and that was going to take ten careful minutes. Inactive or not, it was still a nuke and there was always the possibility of booby traps.

Ghost suddenly looked past me and barked. Loud, angry, and scared.

I spun, bringing the pistol up.

Red Knights.

And I didn’t have nearly enough bullets.

Arklight Camp

Outskirts of Tehran

June 16, 6:15 a.m.

Church closed his phone and thought about what Alexander Chismer-Toys-had told him. Much of it was information he already had. Some of it was Toys’s guesswork whose accuracy Church doubted. Some of it, though…

Hugo’s cancer.

Upier 531. Dr. Hasbrouck.