Target Rich Environment 2 Read online

Two men in suits were waiting to greet them at the entrance. Kovac took one last glance back at the protestors. Most of them looked like they were attending a concert, but there were a few knots of them that made his instincts tingle. He’d often felt like that back in Afghanistan, rolling through a village, getting the eyeball from some of the locals that said you are not wanted here, and as soon as you were out of the way those were the ones who were planting IEDs. Some of those kids were giving him that exact same vibe now.

  Three men in white masks and black hoods were standing toward the front of the mob, arms folded, watching, too still compared to the excitement swirling around them, and Kovac felt the hairs on his arms stand up. A group moved between them, waving red flags, and when they passed, the men in the white masks were gone.

  “You can tell that’s your son. He looks just like you,” Gregor said.

  “Yeah, regular chip off the old block.” It wasn’t a surprise. He’d figured V-8 would get involved, and he’d known Matthew was working in this area. Marko keyed his radio as he moved smoothly through the masses. “We’ve got pros in the building. At least four. Plainclothes.”

  May’s elite V-8 troops were no joke. They were recruited from the best, and his old friend had done a good job staffing his special unit with the type of get-the-job-done hard asses who wouldn’t get unnerved by little things like fighting creatures straight out of nightmares. It hadn’t exactly been a shock to find out that his son had gone to work as a vampire killer. He’d always been a pretty straightforward good-versus-evil, protect-the-innocent type idealist, even as a little boy.

  Now, somebody with even a scrap of human empathy would have kicked Matthew from his anti-vampire unit once he discovered his father had turned vampire, but General May wasn’t the type to let some little thing like personal bonds or family history stand in the way of using the right trigger puller for the job.

  “You want to abort the mission?”

  If they could steal the screener technology it would be a powerful recruiting tool for their new army. He’d heard that the Red Court had already paid to get backdoor access to every DNA database in the world just in case. Far more importantly, the humans couldn’t be allowed to have such a weapon. If they could know for certain who among them was destined to become a vampire, there would be no more recruits. The vampires who could still pass as humans would all get caught. They would lose their spies and insiders. Their race would be driven to extinction once again.

  “Negative. Stick to the plan.” He checked his watch. Sundown was in twenty-five minutes.

  Gregor was following him. The big vampire was eyeing some of the pretty girls hungrily. He’d not fed for a while, and his kind had an insatiable appetite. “With May’s people here, you think it’s a trap?”

  “If it is, we’ll make them regret it.”

  “What about your kid?”

  That was a good question. Ever since his transformation, when Marko looked for that place where his feelings used to be, there was only a dark empty hole. He had loved his boy. Hell, he’d doted on him. Matthew had emulated his father and tried to follow in his footsteps. Seeing his son wearing the same uniform had been the proudest moment of his life. At the end of his mortal existence when he’d been chained and beaten, and the Syrians had begun to saw off his head, the last thing he’d thought of was his family. Only instead of dying, he’d turned, and never looked back.

  When Marko thought of his family now there was nothing.

  “The mission comes first.”

  The review wasn’t going well.

  “You’re a security expert? Have you ever fought vampires, Mr. Cook?”

  The head of security for Iwashiro Biomedical hadn’t been expecting to get grilled this hard this fast, and was stumbling badly. “We had five volunteers here during the early testing phase and I was in charge of managing—”

  “Not managed. I’m sure you’re a fantastic zookeeper. I said fought.”

  “Well, no. I haven’t, though one of our subjects did become unruly as a result of the drugs and caused some trouble, but as you can see outside, we’re working in close conjunction with local law enforcement. Between the police presence and our employees, we have a very secure facility.”

  Kovac had only been talking to this corporate goon for a few minutes and he was already running dangerously low on patience. He could have stormed this facility with a crack team of Girl Scouts. “I don’t think you realize that as of this morning’s press conference, your company declared it has something that every vampire supremacist in the world wants. You’ve dealt with volunteers desperate enough for a cure that they’ll let you do all sorts of things to them, but trust me, there are plenty of vampires out there who see your research as the effective end of their species, and they’ll do whatever it takes to stop it.”

  “I’ve been doing this for years and think we’re—”

  Kovac cut him off. Tagging in Solo was dangerous, because he tended to be colorful in his descriptions, but it needed to be said. “Sergeant Gonzalez, what do you do for a living?”

  “I kill motherfucking vampires, sir.”

  “And what did you do before that?”

  “I went to places that supposedly had good security, killed the people there and took their stuff on behalf of the United States Army. I was extremely good at it, sir.”

  “In your professional opinion, are vampires much like regular security risks?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How would you assess Iwashiro Biomedical’s security against a potential organized vampire threat?”

  “Woefully fucking inadequate.”

  “Well, there you go.” Kovac leaned back in his chair. “That’s pretty close to the assessment I’m going to give to General May, which he’ll pass along to the President.”

  They hadn’t even gotten a real tour. They’d been taken right past the entrance to the labs holding the sensitive goodies and upstairs to a conference room where they’d sat down with the CEO and his right-hand man. Cook was obviously proud of his handful of low paid, barely trained, just-over-minimum-wage security guards with their .38 Specials in nylon flap holsters and Fisher-Price My First Walkie Talkie level communication system, but Kovac’s standards were a bit higher when it came to protecting one of the most important discoveries in history.

  The conference room probably would have had a good view of the street, but they’d pulled the curtains. It was dark out there, light in here, and some chump in the crowd might have been tempted to pop off a few rounds at the enemy. Other than the security guards, the place was nearly deserted. Everyone who could stay home to avoid the protests had done so, except the CEO had proudly told them that the scientists vital to the screener and vaccine projects were still downstairs, bravely working away for the good of mankind, despite the danger outside. That might have sounded great on a press release, but Kovac didn’t like having all of their vulnerable eggs in one basket.

  Dr. Iwashiro was younger than expected for a CEO, probably only in his mid-thirties. Kovac had watched the morning’s press conference on YouTube on the ride over. During that, Iwashiro had mentioned inheriting the company from his father. The CEO had struck him as somebody who was trying to overcompensate to get out of his father’s shadow. Being the son of a legend and working in the same field was tough—Kovac got that better than anyone—but that didn’t justify taking stupid risks. A few hours ago this man had rocked the world, yet now Iwashiro was listening intently as his security chief was being eviscerated. So far he was playing it close to the vest, and Kovac couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “If you won’t accept our protection, at least let us provide a full security workup, Dr. Iwashiro. We understand the potential threats you face. We all come from special operations backgrounds.”

  “What did you do before becoming vampire experts?”

  Vampires were so damned new and odd that he didn’t think anyone actually qualified as an expert. Luther Swann maybe, as that dude w
as a walking encyclopedia of vampire trivia, but even then he was wrong half the time. “Gonzalez and I are both Army Special Forces and Morris is a SEAL.”

  “What’s he?” the CEO nodded toward where Mute was sitting. The tall, thin man hadn’t bothered to pull up a chair at the conference table, but instead was sitting on a couch by the windows, surfing the internet on a tablet.

  “It’s so classified you don’t even want to know,” Kovac said.

  “James Bond-level shit,” Solo suggested.

  “We can also bring in information security experts to prevent outside sabotage.” Iwashiro Biomedical had a good IT department. He knew that because General May already had his guys at the NSA working on breaking into their files. But they’d be more interested in stopping corporate espionage. Kovac was worried about the research being destroyed rather than stolen. As a man who’d seen firsthand the horrors of vampirism, he’d love to see the screener technology leaked far and wide. Screw Iwashiro’s bottom line, he wanted vampirism eradicated like smallpox.

  “I truly appreciate your offer, gentlemen, but this is my company. General May was rather demanding on the phone. I believe in cooperation, but you can see why I’d be hesitant to accept your help. Some of my advisors think that V-8 is overstating the danger of some sort of threat in order to gain access to my company’s research.”

  “We’ve got ninety nine bombings that disagree with your advisors,” Toolbox said. “And that’s just the stuff you’ve seen on TV.”

  “Yes, of course. Coordinated vampire terrorism, and stopping that, justifies everything.”

  Kovac made an honest plea. “I can’t share details about national security risks, but there are groups of vampires out there who are far more organized than anyone in the media suspects. Some extremely knowledgeable people have turned.” As he said that, Solo and Toolbox gave him a curious look. Everybody on the Field Teams knew about Showdown’s dad, but none of them liked to talk about him. “Some of these have been organizing and training cells. Their skillset makes them extremely dangerous.”

  Iwashiro gave him a patronizing smile. “Oh, I’m sure they are, but since we’re on the topic of vampires, there’s that old bit of folklore about how they can’t come into your home unless invited. Today, we know that’s a myth for vampires, but it has been my experience that it is true for the government. This is my house, gentlemen. Not General May’s.”

  The CEO sure was a smug little bastard.

  “Look, I’ll level with you. I hope you make billions off your screener. I hope you spend the rest of your life sleeping on a giant pile of money in a house made out of gold bars. I just want to make sure the screener is kept safe. I can have the rest of my team here in a few hours and we can get this place locked down.”

  The head of security came back for more. “We’ve already got a secure facility. No one is going to try anything when there are hundreds of cops right outside.”

  “And in a few days when the protestors get bored and go home, the cops will go away, and then a vampire could walk right in here.”

  “You can’t enter without scanning a badge!” Cook was getting upset. It was a good indicator of a man’s lack of professionalism when every pointed-out flaw was taken as a personal insult.

  “They aren’t exactly vault doors!” Solo exclaimed.

  Toolbox grinned. “If it was me, I’d just follow an employee up to the door, let them swipe it with their badge, then shoot them.”

  Solo wasn’t about to be outdone. “Or, hell, take out an employee at home and steal their badge!”

  “Our employees’ personal information is kept private,” Cook retorted.

  Mute cleared his throat and held up his tablet. It was easy to forget he was even in the room. “Yeah, about that, I just got all of your employees’ names and home addresses while we’ve been sitting here. Your HR director really needs to do something about his wi-fi settings.”

  “Holy shit, you people suck at this,” Solo muttered.

  Marko watched the sun disappear. It was remarkable how few vampires were actually light sensitive. The movies got everything wrong. “Execute phase one.”

  Bringing in agitators to rile up crowds and incite riots had been part of asymmetrical warfare since they’d invented the concept. Marko had agents placed throughout the crowd, some vampires, but most were easily duped or paid-off humans. It started simply enough, with windows shattering across several blocks and greedy morons rushing into stores to steal things. The smarter humans in the herd realized that the channel had just been flipped to a different station and tried to get the hell out of the way. The stupid got stuck in the middle, but even the panicked ones were useful meat shields and noisemakers. By the time the rocks and bottles started raining on the cops, the riot had begun in earnest.

  Killing the power had been a no-brainer, and any big city grid had its exploitable vulnerabilities. Remote detonation took out a few choice lines and five minutes after the first cop needed stitches from a brick to the face, half the lights in downtown Seattle were out. They could still see though, because by then some cars had been helpfully set on fire, and the flickering orange light and spreading smoke really added to the ambiance.

  All around them, angry youths rushed forward, hurling things at the cops. No Molotovs yet though. That was a downer. Marko had paid good money to have Molotovs here. The cops formed up in ranks, shoulder to shoulder, a wall of Kevlar and muscle, and they started forward, like a comparatively gentle, politically-correct Roman legion.

  Brave or drugged-up rioters rushed the line, kicking at the shields. Screaming and taunting, dancing around and hurling balloons filled with piss.

  And they said vampires were savage . . .

  “I love this stuff,” Marko told Gregor and Basco. He could tell that both of his lieutenants were feeling the bloodlust too. They wanted to jump in there and start taking heads and drinking from necks like fountains. “Easy, boys. We’ll feast tonight.”

  The cops turtled their way up, shields raised against the falling debris. He could hear the thunk-thunk of projectiles bouncing off of plastic. They were wearing their gas masks but they’d not started firing canisters yet. They were probably hoping for a quick clash and break to arrest the troublemakers, and then everybody could go home without any exciting news footage of downtown being gassed.

  The main bodies clashed. The Seattle PD must have been drilling a lot, because they kept their formations and did a great job of rotating men in and out as their arms got tired. Groups of cops would part ranks, allowing another squad to rush through, surround some of the really unruly troublemakers, drag them down, cuff them, and drag them out of the fray. They must have had some good leaders in there keeping order. Marko picked out the guy calling the shots and keyed his radio. “These cops are too calm. Sniper team, up the fear. Your target is the tall black guy giving orders at the front of the MRAP. Don’t kill him though. I want some screaming.”

  “Roger that.”

  Their shooters were hidden in the surrounding buildings, sitting back inside the rooms a bit so they wouldn’t be spotted by the police snipers on the opposite rooftops, just like he’d taught them. The suppressed rifle was so quiet that there was no way anyone would hear it over the chaos in the street, but the cop fell over, blood spraying, as the .308 round tore through his knee. Marko had seen plenty of limb hits like that. The bone blew up like a grenade, fragments making all sorts of secondary wound channels. It would probably need to be amputated, but Marko had to hand it to the cop. Other than one quick bellow of shock, he stayed calm, put pressure on it, and began calling for a medic, probably a fellow combat vet. Luckily some of the cops around him weren’t as cool, and they started freaking out. By the time they’d dragged the wounded cop behind the armored vehicle, the SWAT cops were looking to blast the shooter, and somebody else had given the order to fire tear gas.

  Then flaming bottles of gasoline were tossed toward the line, most shattering in the street, but a couple hit t
he cops. Those who’d come prepared had melted Styrofoam packing peanuts into the gasoline until it had gained the consistency of jelly. It was poor man’s napalm, and that stuff stuck to riot shields and flesh, melting either rather easily.

  “About damned time. Breaching team, you have one minute. Move. Assault team, kit up and execute on my signal.” Marko and his men unslung their packs, knelt, and began getting their gear ready.

  The 37mm tear gas rounds hit the pavement, bouncing, sparking, and spitting. A noxious haze drifted through the street. The stupid humans who hadn’t got out of the way in time really began to panic when they suddenly couldn’t see or breathe right. A few fools were knocked down and trampled. By the time the gas washed over the hidden vampires, those who were still vulnerable to such things had already pulled on their own gas masks. The rest were taking out firearms, unfolding stocks, and racking charging handles.

  Between the flickering fire, the spreading smoke, and the fog of gas, visibility was awful. A constant roar of shouting, screaming, and cursing filled the street. Nobody would see or hear them make their move, and if they did, by the time a response was organized they’d already be gone.

  “Breaching team is in the truck.”

  He knew he couldn’t bring up his own vehicle to ram the door with a protest in the way, so he’d had his stealthiest troops sneak into the Iwashiro parking lot last week to check the vehicles that were already there. They’d had plenty of time to make their own keys. The nice thing about being prepared was that even when your timeline got moved up, a professional was ready to handle it.

  The cops were pushing forward too fast now. Those that heard one of their own had just taken a bullet had started cracking skulls. The rioters reciprocated and now they had a good old-fashioned slug fest on their hands. The law was pulling away from the target building and leaving gaps in their lines. Wait for it . . . Marko watched the whole beautiful thing unfold until all of the angles were right.