“Try thinking big picture once in a while,” said Hu smugly.
“Are you-”I began, my voice rising.
“Don’t start,” warned Church. “We don’t have the time for it.”
I bit down on the things I wanted to say to Hu, and he was probably grinning at the other end of the phone, thinking that he’d just scored by having me yelled at by the teacher.
“What if the Upierczi stay underground?” asked Church.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “In graves or-”
“In tunnels. We have some intelligence that they live, or at least lived, in tunnels.”
“Well,” mused Hu, “rock and dirt are great insulators as long as they aren’t part of a contaminated water table or underground river.”
“In deserts?” I asked.
“Pretty good place to be. Again, though, they’d have to be away from water or, if Rasouli’s intel is right, away from the oil sands.”
“New topic,” I said. “Physiology. The Red Knight I fought was faster and stronger than me. Not just a little, either. What’s the upper range of human potential?”
“Impossible to say,” answered Hu, “because it depends on too many factors. Muscle density, bone density, and overall cellular structure. We keep pushing back the limits for fastest and strongest all the time, and I’m not just talking steroids. Every Olympic Games you have new world records set. There are going to be some extreme limits, of course. Human bones and muscle will never allow someone to bench-press a ton or outrun a sports car, but there is a whole lot of wiggle room; and that’s before we get into gene therapy. Remember the Berserkers from the Jakoby thing. They were big men who received DNA from silverback gorillas. Granted, it caused other mutations and it was a long way from healthy for the subjects, but in the short term those men were much stronger than ordinary humans. Now, if we talk natural mutation in terms of physical potential, that will vary, and we’ve seen average guys who are surprisingly strong and bulky guys who don’t have the strength to open a beer bottle. Like I said, I’d need to cut one of these guys to pin it down.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “What can I use to fight them? Those Sabbatarian freaks had hammers, stakes, holy water, and garlic.”
Hu snorted. “Forget holy water unless the Upierczi actually believe in it.”
“Why would that make a difference?”
“It wouldn’t, except psychologically,” said Church. “They’d fear it or try to evade it, which might open up an opportunity for you.”
“What about the stakes and hammers?”
“I expect,” said Hu, “that would work on anybody. If you don’t have a gun, a big pointed stick is worth a try.”
“And garlic?”
“Hm. Might be something to that. I did a search through the literature, and, though garlic allergies aren’t that common, there is plenty of documentation.”
“Fatal allergies?” I asked hopefully.
“Not usually. Most garlic allergies are a form of contact dermatitis. Chefs get it once in a while when they get garlic oil or dust in a cut. They present with patterns of asymmetrical fissures on the affected fingertips, maybe some thickening and shedding of the outer skin layers. In really rare cases that can progress to second- or even third-degree burns. Actually it’s a component of garlic, the chemical diallyl disulfide, or DADS, along with related compounds allyl propyl disulfide and allicin. You find all three in other plants in the genus Allium, too, like leeks and onions.”
“So what do I do, ask the Red Knights to make me some garlic bread and hope they have an accident with a knife?”
Hu laughed despite himself. “If the Upierczi have a congenital allergy, that could be in our favor. It’d be better if you could get some dust or oil directly into their lungs or bloodstream. That’s probably why the Sabbatarians threw garlic in your face. If you breathed it and you were a Upier, then you might go into anaphylaxis. Then they’d go all Buffy the Vampire Slayer on you and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“Hope springs eternal,” Hu said. “The kicker is that we don’t know if garlic is a genuine allergen to them or if that’s more disinformation. You’re going to have to figure that out on the fly.”
“Swell. Anything else you can tell me?”
“Nothing that isn’t blind speculation. We don’t have the data to do more than speculate.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” said Church, and he dropped Hu out of the conversation. “Any other thoughts, Captain?”
“Just one. What are the chances that the Iranian government is behind this whole thing? I know Rasouli gave me the flash drive, but I can see how he could be pulling a fast one: planting nukes in Iran and in the States and tipping us off so that we find them.”
“To what end?”
“To whitewash their reputation. They discover a global threat and reach across political and religious differences to join with us in a joint operation that proves to the world that they’re part of the solution and not the core of the problem.”
“Why do so covertly?”
“Because if it goes wrong they can plausibly deny any involvement and probably dump it all on us. After all- we have the original flash drive now, and we have people operating inside their borders without permission. We flub it, they have proof; we don’t flub it and we can both retroactively spin the story that this was all a hush-hush joint operation from the jump.”
“Chasing Hugo Vox is turning you into a cynic, Captain.”
“Hard to stay optimistic with a bunch of nukes ready to pop,” I pointed out.
“I could accept that Rasouli is behind it, but not as an official representative of the Iranian government,” mused Church. “They couldn’t afford to come within a million miles of such a plan. It would do irreparable political harm to the sitting party.”
“What about a move by an opposition party or a dissident group?”
He considered. “It would take enormous resources and would be ultimately self-defeating.”
“Only if they pulled the trigger.”
Church paused a little before he said, “Yes.”
“Do we have an overall game plan yet?”
“If we can we locate the last two devices, then we go for a quarterback blitz.”
“That’ll be interesting.”
“Won’t it, though?”
I closed my eyes and prayed to the gods of war to cut us a break. What Church was suggesting was to have teams move against every target at exactly the same time. It was a strategist’s worst-case scenario because if thousands of years of organized warfare have taught us anything it’s that no major campaign ever goes off exactly according to plan. There are always snafus. And that word came into military parlance as a result. SNAFU. Situation normal all fucked up. Tells you all you need to know.
“And if we don’t locate the other two?” I asked.
“Then we may have to try something riskier.”
“Like taking out the five we know about in order to secure suspects who we can interrogate?”
“Glad to see we’re on the same page.”
“It’s not a good page, Boss. There are a lot of ways that can go wrong too.”
“Yes.”
“And only one way it can go right.”
“Yes.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yes.” He sighed. “I’ll be landing in Kuwait in a bit. Hope to see you there by this time tomorrow.”
I heard the faint bing-bong of the doorbell downstairs.
“I think the courier’s here,” I said, and disconnected.
