“The what? I keep hearing that word. What is it?”
She looked up, surprised. “I thought you knew about that. The Sabbatarians of legend had magical powers and they traveled with a dog called a ‘fetch’ who lived wholly or partly in the spirit world. The fetch dog could sniff out evil, which the Sabbatarians would then dispatch using various magical means. A white fetch dog would be exponentially more powerful than any other kind. This legend has been heavily reinforced over the years by Sabbatarian hit teams bringing trained attack dogs with them. The Upierczi-even the ones who do not believe themselves to be evil-know of many cases where a fetch dog was used to kill one of their kind.”
“So why didn’t the knight kill Ghost?”
“Oh,” she said, flexing her fingers in Ghost’s fur, “they can’t do that. Fetch dogs belong to God. They are to dogs what saints are to humans. To harm one is to incur the wrath of God and all his angels.”
I smiled. “Great, now that Ghost’s heard that he’ll be insufferable.”
Violin gave Ghost a final pat and stood up. The shadows around us seemed to create an opaque screen between us and the reality of what we were really facing. Or about to face.
“When this is over…” I said, and let it hang.
“Yes,” she said. “When it’s over.” She looked away, her eyes filled with sadness.
“No,” I said clumsily, “I meant when this thing tonight is over. Not the war. I don’t want to wait until the end of the war to get to know you.”
She took a tentative step toward me. And another. She was so beautiful, so powerful in the way that a woman can be powerful. I’d known her for less than a full day. Longest day of my life, but still less than a day. I wanted to know her for a lot of days, for years.
I looked into her eyes and saw-or thought I saw-my thoughts mirrored there. Can it be like that? Love at first sight is a romance novel myth. Isn’t it?
Violin took another step toward me and I moved to meet her. She was tall, almost tall enough to look me straight in the eyes. She touched my cheek with one strong, soft hand.
“Joseph,” she said and suddenly she was in my arms. I could feel the heat of her breath on my face as she went up onto her toes, and I bent toward her, our hearts hammering, mouths open.
Then panic instantly flashed through my brain and I pushed her away and staggered back, colliding with Ghost who gave a sharp startled bark.
“No!” I gasped, clapping a hand over my mouth.
Violin gaped at me for a horrible moment. Then her face twisted into a feral mask of fury. “I told you I was a monster,” she hissed and she turned to run, but I darted out a hand and caught her arm. She surprised me, though, and wrenched her arm out of my hand.
“Stop!” I yelled.
She did, but her eyes were filled with hurt and anger.
“Listen to me,” I said sharply. “It isn’t about you. It’s because I don’t want to hurt you.”
“No, you heard what I was and-”
“Violin-before I left the other warehouse I ate an entire bag of powdered garlic. That’s why I’ve been chewing gum. If I kissed you now…”
She studied my face, looking for the lie, her whole body still tensed to run. And then a smile slowly blossomed on her face. It was like seeing the sun coming up over the mountains. It lit up her features and painted the night in brightness.
“Violin…” I said.
But she threw back her head and laughed, and then she walked away into the night.
In my earbud Top said, “Abdul’s two minutes out, Cap’n. We’re ready to roll.”
“Copy that,” I said with a sigh.
Ghost looked at me as if I was the biggest fool who ever walked on two legs. He was a great judge of character and I could find no fault with his opinion.
Feeling like an idiot, I turned and ran toward the warehouse where my team was waiting.
Chapter One Hundred
On the Road
Iran
June 16, 4:17 a.m.
The plan was for Abdul to take us to an auto repair yard ostensibly owned by his cousin but actually owned by the CIA. He wasn’t happy to see us. He was seriously disgruntled about having a woman along on what he clearly regarded as a “man’s mission.” He said as much in various ways, making sure his comments were loud enough for Lydia to hear. Regruntling him wasn’t high on my list of priorities. If we’d had a lot more time I might have put him in a room with Lydia so they could talk it out and come to some sort of meeting of the minds, though admittedly that would probably end with a meeting between her foot and his nuts. Detente would suffer.
We followed him in the vegetable truck. Even with what we were facing and everything that Lilith had told us-or maybe because of it-everyone was laughing during the trip. Mostly making fun of Bunny, though I finally got some mileage out of “Armanihandjob.” Yeah, I know, juvenile… but as an icebreaker on the way to de-arm a nuke possibly planted by vampires, what do you want?
Abdul led us to the deserted auto repair yard and parked by the vehicle that he would use to drive us into the refinery compound: a clunker of a Chinese Foton diesel truck. It had room for two up front and a big flatbed in the back.
Lydia turned to Abdul. “Unless you got a cloak of invisibility, cuate, how are we-”
Abdul cut her off with a curt shake of his head and then pointed. “Of course not,” he snapped irritably. He strode over to the closest box and opened it. True to its label there was a big hunk of machinery in there. Some kind of turbine. However, Abdul fiddled with a metal knob and the turbine suddenly opened with a hiss of hydraulics. It was a shell and inside was a tiny capsule with a bench. Bunny whistled, but Abdul gave him a sour look. “We made these to smuggle in a team of techs to the nuclear power station. To sabotage the centrifuges.” He shook his head. “We spent three years developing this plan. Three. Now- poof! — it has to be scrapped.”
Top smiled at him. “Did your station chief explain to you exactly what we’re doing?”
Abdul shook his head. “I don’t care. You Americans all think you’re Austin Powers. It’s all bullshit.”
Top, still smiling, bent close and patted Abdul on the shoulder. “I’m really sorry to screw up your plans for recreational vandalism, my friend, but we’re trying to keep your country from getting blown into orbit. So, if it’s all the same to you, you can take your sour feelings and your little pouty face and go piss up a rope.”
Abdul stared at him, uncertain how to react because Top’s friendly and affable smile never even wavered. Then Abdul’s eyes shifted away from Top and swept over the faces of the other members of Echo Team. He wasn’t playing to a friendly crowd.
“Okay, okay, but this is bullshit,” Abdul insisted. His expression suggested that he’d like Top and the rest of us to die in the desert and be eaten by vultures. Three years is a lot of time to invest in anything, but overall my nerves were running so high that, like Top, I managed not to give a shit. You know, the whole nukes thing.
I asked, “What’s the plan to get us into the refinery?”
“These are valuable parts that have been back-ordered for months,” said Abdul. “I have the actual parts here too, and I would have delivered them and waited until these parts were ordered for the nuclear plant.” He waited for us to console him about his great loss, got no love, and continued. “We set it up that way so that when the team was ready we could show up virtually any time of day or night.”
“Good.”
We were out of earshot of the others and Abdul cut me a quick look. He ticked his chin in Top’s direction. “Is what he said true?”
“Unfortunately.”
He sighed and cursed some more, mostly to himself. Or to God. When he had the last shell open he waved the team over and began locking us into the metal capsules. It was uncomfortably like going into a coffin, but it would get us in. I tucked Ghost into one with a rawhide bone and fresh water. It wasn’t the first time he’d done
