Target Rich Environment 2 Read online

  “Execute, execute, execute.”

  Ten vampires set out toward their target and no one even saw them coming.

  When the lights had gone out, Mute had pulled back the curtains to take a look outside. His voice was eerily calm as he warned them, “We’ve got incoming.”

  There was a crash below them that shook the whole building.

  “What was that?” Iwashiro shouted as the four men from V-8 drew their guns. Cook fell out of his chair and hid under the desk. When normal people hear a big bang, their first reaction is surprise, and then puzzlement. In Kovac’s line of work it was assess and prepare to return fire.

  Mute had his forehead to the glass and was peering down. “They rammed the front door with a truck.”

  Toolbox looked at Solo, as if embarrassed that he’d not mentioned that method of getting in. “I guess that works too!”

  If it had been a car bomb, they’d already be dead. That meant they were about to raid the lab. “Box, call it in, then you and Mute take the north stairs. Me and Solo will take south.” They had to counterattack, break the momentum. Time was of the essence. Any delay and the attackers would have to retreat because there were a whole lot of reinforcements nearby. He turned to Iwashiro. “Have your security protect the lab and get the civilians out of here. Let’s move.”

  “Told you so,” Solo spat at Iwashiro as they left. The lights came back on within seconds. It made sense that a building that did sensitive medical research had a good backup power generator. They rushed past a handful of confused employees, to the stairs and down, taking whole sets at a time. It was hell on the ankles, but riding an elevator into a potential gunfight was a great way to make yourself the proverbial fish in a barrel. They reached the main floor and headed toward the entrance.

  Kovac took cover at a corner and risked a quick peek down the hall. A single headlight was visible through the dust swirling around the broken wall. The guards who’d been posted there had been hit and were lying on the ground, partially crushed by the debris. Solo moved up behind him. “If we’re really lucky, that was just a stupid car accident and we’ll all laugh at it over beers later.” Someone began screaming and it took a moment for Kovac to realize that there was a guard stuck beneath the truck. Solo started to move up, but Kovac signaled for him to hold.

  There was a chuff of a suppressed gunshot, and the screaming stopped.

  “So much for beers,” Solo whispered.

  There was a lot of movement around the wreck. A man moved in front of the headlight, crouched with a stubby rifle at his shoulder. Before he could ID him as friend or foe, the man put a round into one of the unconscious bodies lying on the floor. That would be foe. Kovac leaned out, centered the front sight of the Sig M11 on the man’s chest and pulled the trigger. Solo fired a split second later. The man went sideways, hit the wall, but stayed up. He saw them, opened a mouth full of jagged shark teeth and screeched something incomprehensible. They opened up, striking him repeatedly, but he didn’t go down.

  “Vest!” Kovac warned, but by the time he could sight on his head, Solo had blown the vampire’s brains out. That did the trick.

  More vampires around the truck began flinging rounds their way. Solo hung his M9 around the corner and cranked off several more shots. The headlight went out. Then Kovac took a turn just as a vampire moved up behind the reception desk. He put a couple 9mm rounds into the wood and was rewarded with a surprised yelp from the other side. That slowed them for a second, but then the vampires came back shooting. Their heavier rounds zipped right through the walls. One of them was on full auto and Kovac had to pull back as several rounds pulverized his corner into dust and splinters.

  He heard crashing, fearful cries, and more suppressed shooting. Some attackers must have entered before they’d gotten here. They’d been too slow to establish a bottleneck. There was a flash of movement and Kovac fired at a vampire sprinting across the lobby. That one dove behind cover before he could put a round into him. Some vampires were just too damned fast. They were going to get flanked here. “Fall back.”

  “Cover me, Show.”

  He leaned out and started shooting, forcing the vampires to keep their heads down while Solo crossed the hallway. Then he followed. The two of them rushed back into the offices. Employees were running past them, and every bit of movement was making his nerves twitch. “Get out the back! Get out of here!” Kovac held up one hand as they approached a glass partition. He’d seen a dark reflection in it. Someone was moving up the other side, and this one wasn’t dressed in a lab coat or a suit. They both took aim and the split second a vampire with a hoodie and a gun came around the side, they lit him up. The glass shattered. One eye socket turned into a gaping red hole and the vampire collapsed in a heap.

  The slide was locked back on the Sig. “Reloading.” He had two more mags his belt, but they had not come here expecting a firefight. By the time Kovac had shoved a fresh mag into the gun, Solo had moved up on the dead vampire, taken his Tavor rifle, and lifted its bloody clothing to reveal that he was wearing a plate carrier and mag pouches beneath. “Bastards came loaded for a fight.”

  “Grab it and go. We’ve got to protect that lab.”

  There was more unsuppressed gunfire from that direction. Mute and Box had gotten in on the action. They’d dropped two but had no idea how many more there were. From the noise coming through the building, there were several, and from the dead bodies they passed, some of the vampires had gotten ahead of them. Most of the staff had been shot, but a few looked like they’d been ripped apart by wild animals and spread across the cubicles.

  The men of V-8 had gotten really good at tuning out that sort of thing while in the zone. You dealt with the images later, once the job was done.

  They reached the entrance to the lab just in time to see a grey, twisted, hunched-over thing rip a security guard’s heart through his ribs. They both shot at it, and Kovac was positive he hit it, but it lurched across the carpet lightning fast and disappeared into the lab. A split second later it came back, cranking off a bunch of rounds on full auto their way. Bullets tore through the desks around them, but Kovac stayed up and shot it in the face that time. There was a splash of blood and teeth, but the thing just shrieked and pulled back, still annoyingly alive.

  “I’m hit.” Solo said, perfectly calm.

  Kovac jerked his head over to see his partner sinking down as his leg slid out from under him. Blood was pumping out of Solo’s thigh. “Damn it.” He slunk over, trying to stay low behind the desks, until he reached Solo. “How bad?”

  “Bad.” Solo was pulling his belt off. “Help me tourniquet this before I pass out.”

  Kovac did. Solo roared in pain when he cinched it up tight. His hands came away slick and red. “Take it easy.” He kept risking quick peeks over the desk to make sure the grey vampire wasn’t sneaking up while he pulled off his dress shirt to use it as a makeshift bandage. “Keep pressure on that.”

  “What the hell was that thing?” Solo asked through gritted teeth.

  “One of the Indonesian types.” He couldn’t remember the name but he’d read about one in another team’s report. “They’re one of the fastest we’ve seen.”

  “What do you want to do, Show?”

  “Carry you out the back.”

  “Hell no. That screener can ruin these suckers once and for all.” Solo shoved the stolen rifle toward him. “Don’t let them take it.”

  Solo was right. Judging by the continuous gunfire, the rest of his team was occupied at the far end of the building. “Okay. Cover the hall and call Mute and Box. I’ll hit the lab.”

  Marko checked his watch. It had been three minutes since they’d rammed the door. They were running out of time. He glanced around the laboratory. He’d memorized the blueprints, but it still felt like he was in the wrong place. It was far plainer than he’d expected. Laboratories were supposed to have all sorts of interesting devices—Tesla coils and bubbling vats, that sort of thing. This was mostly com
puters and all of the fancy medical equipment looked like white or beige boxes. Disappointing.

  He’d shot a few of the staff to make the point that he was in control. From the noise coming through the walls, the V-8 soldiers were being a pain in the ass and refusing to die. A couple of his assault team hadn’t checked in, which meant they were probably dead. The breachers were holding the front door. Basco was watching one entrance to the lab and Gregor had the other. Meeker was off running an errand, and Doroshanko—who actually understood all this egghead stuff—was screwing around with their computers.

  “Sniper team. Status outside?”

  “I don’t think the cops have made you yet. The riot is going crazy.”

  That had been money well spent. “Doroshanko, what’ve you got?”

  He’d pulled his gloves off so he could type better. Marko could see the bones of his fingers through his weird, translucent skin. Some mutations were stranger than others. “I’ve taken most of their research, but there are a few files that have extra password protection.”

  Marko glanced at the scientists. He’d made them all kneel on the floor in a line. “Which one of you has the password?” They all looked at the floor. “Nobody?” He tore off his mask, went to the nearest idiot in a lab coat and picked her up by the hair. There was a hot pressure in his face as the fangs grew, and then he sank them into her neck. His jaws clamped shut, slicing through the flesh. She kicked and thrashed and screamed as the wonderful blood filled his mouth and painted the walls. He unclenched his jaw, ripped his teeth out, and hurled her across the room. She slammed into a machine hard enough to smash a huge dent in the sheet metal and send sparks flying from it. Droplets of blood sprayed from his mouth as he shouted, “How about now? Anybody got the password now?”

  “Market, the number forty-two, underscore, the number twenty, blue!” shouted a young man. “All lowercase!”

  “Thank you,” Marko said as Doroshanko typed it in. The Moldovan vampire nodded when he was in. “Keep being helpful like that and you might just live through the next few minutes.”

  Gregor came in, dragging an Asian man by the tie. “Look what Meeker found hiding in a janitor’s closet upstairs.”

  “That boy has a nose like a hound. Ah, Mr. Iwashiro. Just the man I’ve been looking for. I really enjoyed your press conference.”

  “Why are you doing this? We’re trying to cure you!”

  “Cure us?” Marko laughed. “You’ve got that backwards, Doc. Vampires are the cure. I’m preventing genocide here. I’m the good guy.”

  “Go to hell!”

  The CEO had balls, Marko would give him that. He knew he was rather intimidating when he was covered in blood with fangs sticking out and eyeballs filled red, and he’d get the truth out of the doctor eventually, but he didn’t have time to screw around. “Gregor, bite off one of his fingers.”

  “What? No!” Iwashiro cried out as Gregor grabbed his hand. He strained and fought, but Gregor’s mutation had turned him into an asasabonsam, and that bloodline was ridiculously strong. It was like watching a kid wrestle an adult. Gregor dragged the hand up, pried out a pinky, and smiled, revealing grey, flat teeth. “No! No!” And then Gregor chomped down and bit the finger clean off. Iwashiro screamed.

  Gregor spit the severed pinky out. He saw that Marko was scowling at him. “What?”

  “I thought you were hungry.”

  “I don’t eat the bones, man.”

  Marko turned back to the weeping CEO. “We’ve got a problem. You said you had a prototype screener. I can’t find it. Your people deny knowing where it is, and I’m pretty sure they’re telling the truth.” He glanced theatrically at the corpses. “So where is it?”

  “I don’t have it!”

  “Another finger.”

  Gregor dragged the twitching, bleeding hand back up and shoved the ring finger between his iron teeth. Chomp. Iwashiro screamed again.

  “Damn. Someone just experienced a drastic reduction in typing speed. Where is it?”

  “I’m telling you! There is no screener! It isn’t real!”

  “Another.”

  Iwashiro screeched and babbled and fought. Chomp.

  Gregor spit it at his feet. “I feel like I should be saving these. Make a necklace or something.”

  “Now you can’t flip anyone off. Tell me what I want to know while you can still point.”

  “There’s no screener. I lied! The press conference was a lie! I swear!” Iwashiro was desperate. Gregor clamped the last finger between his teeth, but didn’t bite down yet.

  “Explain.”

  “We’re stuck, just like all our competitors. We can’t get it to work right. We got so much bad publicity from the trials that our stock was in the toilet. I needed to do something or I was going to lose the company. Claiming to have a working screener was just to buy us time.”

  “You lied to boost your stock prices?” Marko had wasted his time, his resources, and lost some vampires over a PR stunt? He didn’t even need to tell Gregor anything that time.

  Chomp.

  With a stubby bullpup rifle on his shoulder, Kovac swept into the lab.

  There wasn’t a vampire in sight. Moving quick and crouched, Kovac saw lots of blood, footprints tracking blood, and shell casings, but no vampires. There was a spatter trail from where he’d nailed the Indonesian in the face, and that blood had a purple tint to it, but after a few meters the trail disappeared, and he’d either healed or got the bleeding to stop.

  Room after room, nothing. His nerves were spiked. He was ready to react. A fraction of a second after he picked up a target, it would catch a 5.56 round. He’d been fighting vampires for a year, so Kovac knew to keep scanning, not just side to side, but also up and down, because some of these bastards liked to climb walls or stick to ceilings. Some could only be seen in your peripheral vision when they were holding still. Kovac listened, but it would be hard to pick up the stealthiest predator sneaking up on him with all that gunfire-related ringing in his ears. The worst part about operating by yourself was that no matter how good you were, you could only look in one direction at a time.

  It had all happened too fast. In minutes the vampires had swept through and killed everyone, and they’d done it with an army of cops outside. It was too brazen, too slick. There was a gnawing feeling in his gut about who was behind this.

  Kovac reached a closed door. There was a headless security guard sprawled in front of it. No sign of the head. He kicked the door in.

  This room was a mess. It hardly seemed possible but there was even more blood everywhere. There was a pile of dead in white lab coats now dyed red. Judging by the splatter and the waist-high line of bullet holes in the wall, it looked like the scientists had been lined up, put on their knees, and then machinegunned down.

  There was so much blood that it was hard not to slip in it. He moved around a table and found Dr. Iwashiro flat on his back, staring at the ceiling, with his chest so torn open that his ribs were visible and his intestines were hanging out. Kovac swore under his breath. The vampires had fled.

  Surprisingly, Iwashiro was still alive. On the other side of the red ribs, he could see purple lungs inflate. “I’m sorry.”

  It was such an odd thing to say when you were laying there disemboweled that Kovac didn’t know what to say. He knelt next to the doctor and had to lower his head to hear the whispers.

  “This is my fault. I lied. There was never a screener. My . . . fault . . . All a lie.” He coughed up blood and went out.

  “You son of a bitch.” Kovac’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out. The screen read Toolbox. “Are you guys okay?”

  “Yeah, looks like the vamps are retreating.”

  “Listen. Solo’s injured. He’s in the hall by—”

  “We’re with him now. Where are you?”

  “In the lab.” There were footprints through the blood leading away. Three sets of them. “Iwashiro and all the scientists are dead. He just told me there was no screener. I think
it was a scam. I’ve got three vamps on the move. I’m going after them.” He stood up and followed the red path down the tile.

  “Wait, Showdown. I’m coming to back you up.”

  “There’s no time. They’ll get away.”

  “You just said there was no screener. There’s no reason not to wait. You go by yourself you’re liable to get killed.” They all knew that was true. Only a fool ever went after a vampire by himself, let alone multiple vampires. Solo had gotten his call sign by being stupid enough to do that once. “Wait just a damned a minute.”

  “I can’t do that, Box.”

  “You can’t because you think it was your dad that did this. This feels like one of his ops. I know you want to put him down—”

  “More than you can ever understand! He’s gone evil, Box. I’ve got to stop him.”

  “Don’t let your anger cloud your judgment, Captain.”

  “Catch up,” Kovac ordered, then ended the call. He needed to concentrate.

  They’d only been inside for a few minutes, but the riot had changed dramatically during that time. Maybe they’d been unconsciously spurred on by all the blood-spilling going on right under their noses, but the rioters were really charged up now. Maybe it was all the pent-up aggression and worry since ancient horrors had started rearing their ugly heads again. Maybe the cattle were tired of getting bled and had begun to stampede—Marko didn’t know, but shit had gotten real in the street. A bunch of kids had knocked one of the cops out of formation and were beating him like a piñata. A rioter was lying facedown in a gutter, skull cracked open. There were wounded on both sides, and some of the cops looked ready to call it a night and open fire with real guns. It looked more like a battle than a riot and the protestors had transformed into wannabe berserkers.

  Into that mess, Marko Kovac melted. He pulled the plastic mask back on, put up the hood, and simply walked away. The rest of his vampires spread out, each of them taking a different route to the rally point and then they’d get out of town. The hungry among them would certainly feed along the way, and they’d earned it. Three of his new recruits hadn’t checked in, which meant they were most likely dead or lost. But that’s why he’d sent the inexperienced ones to roam the building to cause trouble so his elite could focus on the mission. What a waste.