Red Eye - 02 (25 page)

“I feel the rest of Team Red Eye deserve a break,” said Jacobsen, “and all I’m doing is trying to locate the vampires while I still can, before they get too far. That Brit as well, if he’s still with them, Redlaw or whatever his name is. I can move quicker and easier by myself.”

“This is highly unprofessional of you.”

“Mr Farthingale, a professional gets the job done, and that’s me. I’ve just had a Porphyrian treatment. I’m at optimum efficiency. It’s now or never, really.”

“You didn’t think to run it past me first?”

“Do you or do you not want those vamps found?”

“The vampires I don’t care about so much. There’s more where they came from.”

“And Redlaw?” Jacobsen asked carefully, pointedly.

“That’s another matter,” said Farthingale. A note of dawning comprehension entered his voice. The sound of the penny dropping. Many, many pennies, Jacobsen hoped. “Are you... are you offering to deal with him for me? Is that what this is all about?”

“Depends on what you want done with him, sir. I’m prepared to consider any and all possibilities. I gather you have a beef with the man, judging by how you reacted when that shtriga priest confirmed his identity. If I locate the vamps and take them down and there happens to be a little collateral damage...”

Jacobsen could hear Farthingale mulling things over, cogs turning in that billion-dollar brain.

He continued, “What I’m thinking, sir, is that I can resolve the issue for you. I’d want something in return, of course. A little extra on the side.”

Farthingale stayed silent for a while longer, then said, “How much extra?”

“My going rate for an op is fifty k. Treble that.”

“That’s plenty extra.”

“Your choice,” said Jacobsen. “Tell you what, I’ll make it easy for you. Just say nothing. If you do, I’ll take it as a ‘go’ command. Call it moral deniability.”

Farthingale said nothing.

“Then we’re agreed. Leave it with me. Pleasure doing business with you.”

“You know, I never pegged you as such a mercenary, colonel,” said Farthingale.

“Then you pegged me dead wrong, sir. Quit the infantry and keep soldiering, what else are you? Mercenary’s the only name for it.”

Jacobsen cut the connection and climbed back into the Hummer. He had played that pretty well, he thought. He’d got his own way
and
secured the prospect of a handsome bonus for his pension pot. He’d pitted himself against a world-class wheeler-dealer and won. Score one for GI Joe versus The Man.

He resumed the hunt.

F
ARTHINGALE STARED OUT
of the picture window of his study. The lights of the mainland were invisible, obliterated by frantic flurries of snow. A keening gale howled across the reach, buffeting Far Tintagel’s walls like a besieging horde.

Well, it was done now. He thought about contacting Uona to inform him. No. He’d leave it until confirmation came that Redlaw was dead.

Redlaw, dead.

He had just commissioned the termination of a human life. Somehow the fact that there was a price tag, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, made it more palatable. It turned it into a financial transaction, much like any other. You purchased a service, paid for it, let someone perform it on your behalf. Simple. Mundane, even.

So why were his hands trembling?

Farthingale nearly picked up the phone to call Jacobsen again and rescind the arrangement.

Then he thought of Nathaniel Lambourne. He thought of Uona, who had said, “You know what’s expected of you. I only hope you don’t disappoint.”

The phone stayed put.

It might not be trepidation, Farthingale realised, that was making his hands shake.

It might be excitement.

A
T LONG LAST
—vampires.

A clear strong vamp scent in the air, like a thread begging to be followed.

They were a mile distant, maybe less.

Jacobsen parked the Hummer, loaded up with weaponry from the trunk, and hurried onward on foot. It was the small hours. Nobody around, nobody but him. The blizzard had cast a spell over New York, putting the City That Never Sleeps to sleep. All good folk were abed, blinds drawn, snug and warm, out of the storm. Nobody to see a heavily armed soldier moving westward through New York City, keeping low, hugging the shadows, a ghost amid the snow.

Soon he was near Manhattan Island’s edge, close to the frozen Hudson, the river’s leaden smell strong in his nostrils. He glimpsed a hulking edifice, some kind of factory.

Yes.

In there.

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

T
HE COLONEL ENTERED
the factory via one of the high windows. Vandals had smashed out almost every one of its panes, leaving a rotted skeletal frame. A segment of transom and mullion more or less crumbled to pieces in his hands. He slipped through the opening and found himself on a steel gantry which ran the length of a space roughly the size of a football field. The gantry was precariously rickety and let out a worrisome low creak when he shifted his weight. He vaulted the handrail and landed on the floor twenty feet below, noiselessly as a cat. He listened out. Sounds came at him from every direction: the dripping of water, the fluster of pigeon wings, breezes hissing and sliding. The darkness was not darkness at all. His eyes saw everything with pinpoint clarity, in a myriad shades of grey. The nocturnal world was, to him, a black-and-white movie.

He moved with his assault rifle at the ready, stock cradled against shoulder, eye lined up along the sights. The gun was a modified Colt AR-15 semi-auto, adapted to take 9mm Fraxinus ammo. He trod warily, his trailing foot occupying the spot just vacated by his leading foot. He recalled the house-to-house sweep-and-searches he had carried out in Baghdad and Fallujah, rousting insurgents from their lairs. The trick was to keep your wits about you, never drop your guard, always assume that a hostile lurked round the next corner or behind the next door, and never presume that there was any such thing as a friendly or a noncombatant. Vampires were insurgents, in a way. An enemy within. Ostensibly human but driven by powerful inner impulses that made them alien and unpredictable. Jacobsen felt no sympathy for them, nor even empathy, for all that some of their own genetic material was currently cycling round his body, enhancing him. He had always had the ability not to identify with his foe on any level. Even as a raw recruit, taking part in Operation Desert Storm, he’d understood that there was
us
and
them
, clearly demarcated opposites, and it was a mistake to believe there was any overlap between the two.

He approached a slightly ajar door and nudged it all the way open with the barrel of his gun. A short corridor. A half-dozen more doorways. He tried each in turn. Changing rooms. Restrooms. Broken pipes, shattered basins, partly dismantled toilet stalls. Faint lingering traces of vampire presence. They’d been here but weren’t here right now. Elsewhere in the building.

He retraced his steps and moved on.

He couldn’t help thinking about the money—the bounty on Redlaw’s head. It was a breathtaking figure. Hard
not
to think about. His service pension was decent but barely kept level with the soaring cost of living. That $150K, on top of the other sums he was earning as Red Eye leader, promised him a more comfortable future than he could ever have imagined. His sister lived in Florida, just outside Boca Raton. Her husband ran a boat charter firm down there, based in Pompano Beach, and was doing well for himself, taking tourists out whale watching and sports fishing. Several times he’d invited Jacobsen to go into partnership with him. He was looking for someone willing to invest a little capital in the company so that he could expand and diversify further. Despite the economic downturn it seemed like a good bet, and Jacobsen was jealous of his brother-in-law’s lifestyle. Not just the income, but the pleasure of sun-kissed days out on the ocean waves, cruising the Keys, cold beers in the fridge, tourist-friendly business hours. Idyllic, it seemed. Hardly work at all.

And maybe he could persuade Berger to join him there. He didn’t know if what he and she were having was just an office romance or something more. Possibly it would sputter out as soon as the Red Eye job was done. They would go their separate ways, fun while it lasted, over now, no harm no foul. But he kind of liked the idea of carrying it on with her. Berger was smart and feisty and took no shit from anyone. Great in the sack, too. Best he’d ever had. Him and Jeanette Berger, in Florida, together in a beachfront apartment, living the good life...

Focus
, said a voice in his head. It sounded a lot like his one-time drill instructor at Fort Benning, chewing out the cadets.
Head out of ass!

Jacobsen neared another door. There was a strong whiff of vampire emanating from behind it. He snicked off the safety on the AR-15 and caressed the trigger with his index finger. He reached out with his other hand and depressed the door’s lever handle, gently, slowly.

Acquire targets. Assess individual threat levels. Eliminate highest-value opponents first.

The door swung inward.

In the centre of the room there were the embers of a dying fire, glowing fitfully.

Beside the fire knelt a child. A girl. She looked to be no older than nine or ten. She was a cute thing. In her hands was a teddy bear and she was tugging affectionately at one of its tufty little ears.

She turned and looked up at Jacobsen. Unafraid.

“Mister?” she lisped. She held out the bear. “This is Jingle Ted. Do you want to play with him?”

Jacobsen knew she was a vampire.
Knew
. And he knew he was going to pump her full of Fraxinus rounds. He had to.

But for a fraction of a second, he hesitated.

A girl.

Just a kid.

Even in Iraq, you didn’t shoot kids. You had orders to—anyone, any age, could be a suicide bomber—but you didn’t.

A fraction of a second.

Then something hit him from the side, with sufficient force to knock him off his feet. He fired his rifle, a triple burst, but the shots went wild, raking the ceiling. Hands grabbed him. The gun was wrenched from his grasp. He became the nucleus for a frenzy of heavy hammering punches. Then the butt of a handgun loomed in his vision, swinging towards him.

The black-and-white world went purely black.

CHAPTER

TWENTY

S
OME TIME LATER,
the soldier came to.

He was bound tightly. Redlaw had made sure of that. Chains, ropes, lengths of copper cable, whatever could be scavenged from the factory site, all wrapped round his body and secured without an inch of slack, virtually mummifying him. No chances were being taken.

The body armour and weapons lay in a pile nearby. The soldier had only his battle fatigues on. No boots or gloves.

Redlaw watched him struggle against his bonds, applying all his considerable strength. Finally the soldier seemed to accept that it was futile. He was helpless. Trussed up and going nowhere.