Mustapha’s Daily Goods
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 6:47 p.m.
My cell vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it and looked at the code on the screen. Mr. Church. Jamsheed excused himself and went out to his store so I could take the call.
I doubted it was good news.
“I heard from Bug,” Church said. “He’s located a device here in the States.”
“Where?”
“Louisiana.”
Bang. There it was.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Mustapha’s Daily Goods
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 6:48 p.m.
“Christ,” I said. “Tell me.”
“Bug initiated a MindReader search of cargo ships, oil tankers, fishing fleets, and other craft capable of carrying a large, shielded device. Backtracking through ports where cargo could be quietly shifted from one craft to another. These are routes and transfers that would not ring bells on any standard-security computers, so we got lucky.”
“Now give me the bad news.”
“It’s on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico a few miles off the coast of New Orleans. We confirmed the presence of a nuclear signature with a flyover. Low levels, which means it is likely shielded, probably not a danger to the staff aboard the rig, but too high to be anything other than what it is. I have two of our people doing a soft infil right now under cover of a random inspection of blowout preventers. The rig is about due for a check, so we caught that break.”
“Shit.”
“I borrowed SEAL Team Six to work a coordinated operation with Riptide Team out of Miami. Aunt Sallie will coordinate it from the TOC at the Hangar.”
“When do they hit it?”
“The president is making that decision now.”
“Who’s stalling, him or you?”
“Me. I talked him out of giving an immediate go-order. We now know that the devices exist, and that the U.S. is on the list. I don’t want to hit one and have that serve as a signal for our enemies to trigger the other devices.”
“No joke. During my interrogation with Krystos, he said the Sabbatarians were trying to prevent the Red Knights from destroying the world, and he wasn’t talking about a global suckfest. His crew think that these Upierczi freaks are the ones with the nukes.”
“Aunt Sallie told me that you forwarded a theory along those lines,” he said, “so I’ve arranged for Dr. Hu to join us. I’m conferencing him in now.”
“Swell,” I said.
“I heard that,” said Hu.
“It was an expression of great joy,” I said. “I’ve missed you and longed to hear your voice.”
“Eat me.”
Church sighed heavily, which effectively silenced the sniping war.
The only person at the DMS who disliked me more than Aunt Sallie was Dr. William Hu, the head of Church’s vast science and research department. Hu was a couple miles beyond brilliant, and he had what would have been a fun pop-culture sensibility if it wasn’t for the fact that he was a totally amoral asshole. If there was a plague totally unknown to science that was killing thousands of people an hour, Hu was as happy as a kid on Christmas morning because he had a new toy to play with. By comparison, Hu made Dr. Frankenstein look like Jonas Salk. Granted, Bug had some weird detachments from the real world, too, but Bug had a heart. I’d need a full autopsy of Hu before I believed he did, and I’d pay for that procedure right now.
For his part, Hu once described me as a “muscle-headed mouth breather.”
“Doctor,” began Church in a rather more commanding voice than usual, “I would like you to give Captain Ledger some useful feedback on his theories.”
I heard Hu quietly mumble the word “theories.” “Sure,” he said.
“First up, what the hell are the Upierczi? Are they vampires?”
“I’d need to dissect one,” Hu said, sounding jazzed at the thought, “so I can only speculate on whether the model of the traditional vampire is medically possible. It isn’t. Not as Hollywood shows it. Therianthropy is-”
“Whoa-what?”
“Therianthropy,” he said, pronouncing it slowly for those of us on the short bus. “From the Greek therion, meaning ‘beast’ and anthropos, meaning ‘human.’ Creatures who can change their form. Also known as ‘shapeshifting,’ but it’s mythology, not science. Refers to creatures that could change shape from animal to human, or human to animal.”
“Like vampires turning into bats.”
“And werewolves, which would be subclassified as lycanthropes. Folklore’s filled with crap like that. You got cynanthropy, which is transforming into a dog, ailuranthropy, turning into a cat, yada, yada, yada. There is no evidence of any credible kind that humans can transform.”
“What about sunlight?”
“Possibly. Photophobia is a fear of sunlight and a morbid fear of it is called heliophobia, but Auntie said that your ‘theory’ was that these Upierczi have increased resistance to radiation. That would contradict a fear of sunlight unless the fear was purely psychological and not physiological.”
“Isn’t that likely here?” I asked. “If we’re going to talk about vampires of any kind existing, even if they’re just faking it somehow, then they are going to have to be aware of the myths and legends.”
“Okay,” he agreed grudgingly, “there are a couple of takes on that. Either the Upierczi are some kind of vampire, in which case their unusual nature inspired some of the legends about what we popularly think about vampires. Storytellers, campfire tales, and fiction writers filled in the rest.”
“Or, maybe the Upierczi deliberately provided their own disinformation campaign,” I suggested.
“Maybe,” he said, but I knew I’d scored a point.
“Could a human subspecies have a greater tolerance for radiation?” I asked.
“Sure. Not to the point where they can juggle isotopes, but we’ve seen a pretty big range. Some of the exposure studies after Chernobyl and Fukushima show that.”
“Enough for them to live in a postnuclear environment?”
“That would depend on where the nukes detonate, both in relation to prevailing wind and ocean currents and to actual proximity to the highest concentrations. When Chernobyl melted down everyone thought that the area around it would be a total dead zone, but we saw plant growth return much more quickly, and also the return of animals and birds. Nature loves to adapt. Now… another factor in species survival would be the number of nukes. If the Upierczi live anywhere near one of the blast zones, it’s doubtful they would be able to withstand the doses. However, if they are removed from the blast zones, it would be up to their unique biology as to how soon they could reinhabit those areas.” He paused. “We’re looking for seven nukes worldwide? That would not pose a lasting threat even to the normal human population.”
“It wouldn’t?”
“Well, I mean a bunch of people would be toast. Worst-case scenario from the five we already know of, including New Orleans, would be maybe fifty million dead from the blasts, maybe two hundred million dead in two to forty years from cancers. That’s nothing matched against the six and three quarter billion who wouldn’t die.”
“That’s ‘nothing’?”
