Aghajari Oil Refinery
Iran
June 16, 6:12 a.m.
The maintenance man flew back. The bullet blew out the back of his head, and the force of impact snapped his neck. Hollow points. Booyah.
The major didn’t stop to gape at his fallen comrade. He moved like a blur and I pivoted, firing round after round at him. Ghost barked and lunged, but he was trained not to run into a field of fire.
The Upier was stunningly fast, but he really ought to have run serpentine. I fired at the target and caught him with my fourth round. He was fast, but a nine millimeter bullet is a whole lot faster. The round hit him sideways, clipping his elbow and drilling into his hip. From the way he fell it was clear that his pelvis was shattered.
“Hit,” I told Ghost, and he flashed across the concrete floor toward the screaming vampire. The major’s screams instantly jumped to a higher register.
It was over very fast, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of Ghost’s aggression or the bullet. Jonatha Corbiel-Newton had made some very smart recommendations, and we’d used them. A drop of garlic oil into the mouth of a hollow point, sealed in place with a bead of wax. We’d used the same syringe to inject garlic into all of our shotgun shells, sealing the plastic cases with a cigarette lighter.
And we had some other surprises.
Which left a big problem.
Echo Team was still upstairs, and there were a couple of dozen Red Knights somewhere in the facility. The Knights didn’t know that and I couldn’t call my team. Lydia either hadn’t found Echo Team yet or something was slowing up their progress up there.
My instinct was to hot-foot it out of there and find them; but that was poor thinking. Just because the bomb wasn’t active at the moment didn’t mean that it couldn’t be activated by one of the Upierczi here in the refinery. The only way I could prevent that would be to remove the entire triggering system, and that was going to take ten careful minutes. Inactive or not, it was still a nuke and there was always the possibility of booby traps.
Ghost suddenly looked past me and barked. Loud, angry, and scared.
I spun, bringing the pistol up.
Red Knights.
And I didn’t have nearly enough bullets.