Victor Gischler - Vampire A Go-Go

“Let me see.” Ten seconds crawled by. “Five.”

Father Paul thought about it quickly. Five was enough. “Where’s the van?”

“Two blocks north of you.”

“I’ll see you in five minutes.”

The priest pushed away from the table, made his way through the Globe’s crowd and checked the restrooms. He circled the café once on the off chance that Allen had been caught in a conversation with some girl, but as suspected, Allen was nowhere to be found.

Father Paul went outside and turned north.

He stuck another cigarette in his mouth and considered. Somebody had gotten their hooks into the Cabbot boy. Father Paul thought he’d arrived early enough to preempt any sort of action by the opposition, and it irked him that he’d figured wrong. He’d planned to make Allen Cabbot his link to Evergreen. Father Paul could deal with Evergreen without the boy, but he didn’t want to have to try. A lot of careful thought had gone into the plan.

The black van came into view, and Father Paul broke into a trot. It was a large, nondescript van, parked in an alley. The priest reached it and knocked on the back door. It opened, and he entered, pulling the door closed behind him.

The interior of the van hummed with electronic equipment. Father Flynn Finnegan was a giant pale Irish block of meat with a headset perched on his fat noggin. It looked like some children’s toy headset. His black frock bulged with thick muscles. His red hair was growing gray at the temples. He nodded at Father Paul as he entered the van.

“Blake and Santana are on the way,” Finnegan said. “What’s the target?”

“Give me a quick rundown.”

The big Irishman swiveled in his chair and tapped at a laptop. Pictures of buildings and houses flickered on various monitors. “Target zones alpha and beta are quiet,” Finnegan reported. “But our people watching the house in Zizkov say a sedan pulled into the driveway six minutes ago. The lights are on, and there’s activity.”

“That’s the one,” Father Paul said. “Start the van.”

“Right.” Finnegan took off the headset, went to the front of the van, and squeezed into the driver’s seat, cranking the engine.

Father Paul opened the weapons locker under one of the bench seats and withdrew a flak jacket. All the Battle Jesuit flak jackets had a small emblem over the heart-a golden cross, the bottom of the cross in the shape of a sword blade. He shrugged into it, looked at the other two young priests in the back of the van. They looked of the same mold: young, athletic, a steely-eyed appearance that seemed to indicate a cool, calculated readiness for action. He’d seen their files but had yet to speak with them in person.

He nodded at the tall black man sitting across from him. “Father Starkes?”

William Starkes shrugged into his own flak jacket. “Yes, sir.”

“Good to meet you.” According to Starkes’s file, the man had served a hitch as an Army Ranger before earning a degree in religion from Princeton and then joining the seminary. Father Paul’s outfit had only recruited and trained him three months ago. He was a good man on paper, but he looked nervous.

The priests strapped on nylon shoulder holsters, checked the magazines of their 9 mm Glocks. Finnegan punched in the security code on the gun locker’s keypad and handed each priest a fully automatic H &K 9 mm submachine gun with laser sight and collapsible stock.

Father Paul shifted his attention to the short man sitting next to Starkes. Emile DeGaul had joined the French Foreign Legion at age seventeen and had already served eight years when his older brother-a priest-had been killed in an automobile accident. DeGaul had made some private deal with God that Father Paul didn’t completely understand, and DeGaul had answered the calling a month later.

“Are you ready for this, DeGaul?”

“Absolutely!” His French accent was thick, but his English was good.

Father Paul saw that Finnegan was strapping on a flak jacket also. “Where do you think you’re going, Monsignor?”

“You don’t think you’re going to keep an old warhorse like me out of this, do you, Father?”

“Didn’t you just celebrate your fiftieth birthday, Finnegan?”

Finnegan flexed, and muscles rippled beneath his frock. A grin spread across his ruddy face. “Would you like to arm wrestle?”

A smile tugged at the corner of Father Paul’s mouth. “No, I don’t think I would. Call off Blake and Santana. I don’t want to wait for them. Finnegan, take us to Zizkov.”

“Right.” The Irishman crammed himself into the driver’s seat and drove toward the target house.

The three priests in the back of the van checked one another’s equipment and made sure their gear was properly secured. They checked and rechecked their weapons. Father Paul handed out headsets. They put them on, plugged them into the compact radios on the shoulders of their flak jackets.

“Remember, this is an extraction,” Father Paul said. “I want Cabbot secured and out of there as fast as possible. Let’s try to keep casualties down. But never forget these are dangerous people. You see a threat, shoot to kill.”

Grim faces nodded back at him.

“Shall we say a quick prayer?” DeGaul asked.

“Lord, aid us in Your work and help us to triumph over evil in Your name. Amen.”

They all crossed themselves.

“How about grenades?” suggested DeGaul.

“Definitely not.” Father Paul wanted to keep the number of things exploded to a minimum.

“There’s a shoulder-based antitank missile in the storage compartment on top of the van,” Starkes said.

“No!”

“We’re a block away,” Finnegan shouted from the front of the van.

“Put us someplace dark,” Father Paul said.

“There’s an alley up here. Give me two seconds.”

Finnegan pulled in, the big van blocking the narrow alley. At this time of night, it probably wouldn’t matter, and Father Paul didn’t want to spend the time looking for a better parking spot. It would have to do.

“Stick to the shadows. Get into position. Wait for me to give the word. Go.”

They spilled out of the back of the van, scattered, then ran in the shadows toward the target house. Finnegan and DeGaul broke off for a back alley to take them behind the house. Starkes trailed behind Father Paul. It was late at night in a quiet, residential section. So far nobody had seen them, but they couldn’t count on luck for long. Best to get under cover as soon as possible.

Father Paul scooted under the low branches of a small tree in the front yard and signaled for Starkes to head down the narrow driveway to the side of the house. Father Paul then waited for everyone to get into position. The light was on in the front window. In a moment he’d need to creep forward and have a look.

“Where is everyone?” he asked in a low voice.

The earpiece crackled, and the priests reported in one at a time. Finnegan and DeGaul were in the rear, and Starkes was along the side. Father Paul covered the front. Nobody covered the other side because the target house was almost slap up against its neighbor.

“I want a quick scan. Tell me what you got.”

“One window downstairs. Two up,” Starkes reported. “All dark.”

“The lights are on back here,” Finnegan said. “Lots of movement. I see three people, no, make that four. Maybe they can-gun! I just spotted a weapon. They’re definitely armed, boyo!”

“That decides it for me,” Father Paul said. “We’re going in hot, safeties off. Just watch out for Cabbot. Pick your entry points, and wait for my word. Finnegan, is that one with the weapon upstairs or downstairs?”

“Upstairs. There’s a drainpipe. I can shinny up there, pop in, and handle the situation no problem.”