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.