Department 19: Battle Lines (65 page)

Kate Randall sat on the bench in the back of the helicopter, her hands resting on her knees, and tried to still her racing heart. Matt Browning was beside her, his pale, gentle face set with determination, his gaze locked on the floor. On the bench opposite sat Colonel Victor Frankenstein, his huge grey-green head almost brushing the ceiling. He was watching them silently, his uneven eyes unreadable.

They had lifted off from the Loop twenty minutes earlier, their helicopter hauling itself into the darkening sky and heading south. The pilots had announced an ETA once they were airborne, and since then there had been silence in the passenger hold. That was fine with Kate; she had no desire to talk about where they were going or what they were going to do. This was not a normal operation, where intelligence could provide a reasonable understanding of the terrain, numbers and motives of the enemy they were about to face.

This was different.

They had no idea how many vampires were waiting for them; it could be Albert Harker on his own, or he could have an army with him. They had no idea what Harker was doing, although the location they were heading to, the printing press of one of the biggest tabloids in the country, certainly suggested that his plan involved the public exposure of something, whether it was vampires, or Blacklight, or both. And, crucially, neither of them had any idea how their fathers had become involved with whatever was happening.

Kate glanced over at Matt. She was trying not to worry about him, but failing; he had no Operational experience whatsoever, and had undergone only basic weapons and tactics training at the Loop. This was understandable, as Matt had been recruited to work for the Lazarus Project, not as an Operator; the only normal scenario in which he would be expected to take up arms was in defence of the Loop. Part of her was convinced that she should not have brought him, that if anything happened to him, it was going to be her fault. But she knew she could not have gone without him and lived with herself: there were certain things that you simply did not keep from people.

“Five minutes,” called the pilot.

“OK,” rumbled Frankenstein, then gave Kate a thin smile. “Are you ready?”

The monster gave her no cause for concern, despite his absence from active operations; he had volunteered, he had more experience than the rest of the Department combined, and she was absolutely delighted that he was there.

“I’m ready,” she said.

Albert Harker smiled as he rounded the security desk, which was now soaked with Kevin McKenna’s blood, and floated towards Pete Randall.

His terrible eyes glowed a red so dark it was almost black, and Pete found himself absolutely certain that his life was about to end. But rather than the agonising death he was expecting, Albert Harker merely clapped him hard on the back.

“No going back, Pete,” he said. “We go all the way to the end.”

Harker led him back into the main room of the press and turned his attention to the four men that Greg Browning had tied up earlier. The noise in the room was deafening; the machines had started to run again, pumping out copies of the vandalised version of the next day’s edition of
The Globe
that carried Kevin McKenna’s final story. The captive men looked up at the blood-soaked vampire with outright terror, as Pete tried desperately to clear his head; the unthinkable horror of McKenna’s death and the heavy blow to the head had combined to render him barely functional.

The vampire approached the two nearest men, the ones who had tried to crawl away when Pete had been briefly unconscious, and pulled their throats out with two casual flicks of his wrist. Blood gushed out across the concrete floor, a pool of crimson that spread with nauseating speed. The two remaining men screamed and grunted behind their gags, their eyes bulging in their heads. They tried to squirm away as Harker approached them, his smile wide, his eyes blazing.

“Don’t…” managed Pete. “Please…”

The vampire rounded on him. “Don’t what?” he asked. “Do what needs to be done? Your courage may be failing you, but mine remains resolute.”

“You said… no one… would get hurt.”

Harker sighed. “That is how I would have had it, Pete. Believe me. Unfortunately, Kevin has changed that, for all of us. Now they will be coming, and we must be ready.”

Pete stared, tears rising in the corners of his eyes. This was not what he had signed up for, what he had gathered his courage and travelled into the unknown to be a part of. This was the murder and terrorism of the innocent.

This was madness.

Harker lifted the two crying, thrashing workers into the air and turned to face Pete. “Go to the loading bay with the others,” he said. “This will be where they come. Quickly, now.”

Pete looked down the long room. At the far end, beside the rolling metal doors, he could see Greg Browning overseeing four men in blue overalls. Three of them were stacking a pallet with bundles of newspapers as they came off the press; the fourth was sitting in the cab of a forklift truck, waiting to load it into a waiting lorry. The driver was presumably safely in his cab, waiting for the word to go, with no idea of what was taking place less than fifteen metres behind him.

Pete wondered briefly whether he could run, whether he could hide in the tangle of machinery, but realised immediately that such a move would be futile; Harker could fly above the machines to look for him, could move many times faster than him, and could in all likelihood hear him breathing.

He was going to have to bide his time, and hope for a chance to atone for the horror he had helped unleash.

Jack Williams stood beside the open doorway of the helicopter, his static line fixed safely to the security rail. Behind him, Todd McLean, the Australian rookie who had replaced Shaun Turner, and Angela Darcy, whom he had temporarily recalled to his squad after her own had been decimated, were watching him carefully, waiting to see if he could control the anger that was raging inside him.

He was
furious
with Kate and Matt for going after Albert Harker, and incredibly disappointed they had not come to him and told him what was happening. He would have let them come with him, of course he would, and it hurt him to think that Kate hadn’t known that. And part of him, the ambitious part that wanted to be the Blacklight Director one day, was terrified by the thought that they might succeed, might destroy Albert Harker before he could get there.

Mine
, he thought, as the helicopter swept low across the landscape.
He’s supposed to be mine.

Pete Randall walked between the thundering machines of the printing press like a man going to the gallows.

Albert Harker flew easily above him, holding the bound men casually in each hand. As they reached the wide expanse of the loading bay, and Greg Browning and the four workers in blue overalls stopped to watch their approach, the vampire’s eyes bloomed a bright, joyous red. He swooped down to the ground, dropped one of the two men to the floor, then turned and threw the other over the towering machines. The stricken man spun through the air, impossibly high, and disappeared from view. A second later there was an awful thud, like a bag of cement hitting the ground.

“Continue with your work,” growled Harker, turning to face the staring, shell-shocked workers. “And you may yet live to see the morning. If you get any stupid ideas, of trying to run, or trying to oppose either myself or my companions, I suggest you think about what I just did and reconsider. There have been changes to our circumstances, but your roles remain the same. Untie your colleague, load the trailers, and send them on their way. Let nothing else concern you.”

The four men stared at him, their faces slack with terror.

“Get back to work!” bellowed Harker.

The men scattered, three of them running back to their posts with their heads down. The other lowered his head, scampered forward, and untied the man that Harker had carried down the long room.

The huge press had continued to run as Harker spoke and a number of copies of
The Globe
had piled up on the floor at the end of the final conveyor belt. As the workers began to scoop them up, Pete looked at the front page full of the simple, awful headline that McKenna had written, and felt nothing. This was what he had dreamt of, a daring plan to alert the public to what they weren’t being told, but the reality was awful; the papers turned his stomach to look at them.

He looked up and saw Greg Browning staring at him. The expression on his face was one of total dismay, and Pete knew that his new friend was feeling exactly the same things as him.

Betrayal. Disappointment.

Fear.

Albert Harker rose up into the air and hovered above the rolling doors, watching the men working below him. His red eyes kept glancing along the long length of the building and Pete knew why: the vampire believed they were about to have company.

Greg curled the fingers of his hand in a tiny, subtle ‘come here’ gesture. Pete walked slowly across to the conveyor belt, as casually as he was able, and pretended to examine the newspapers that were streaming past. Greg made his way to the opposite side and lowered his head, as if concentrating on the job in hand.

“Where’s McKenna?” he whispered, his voice barely audible.

“Dead,” said Pete, his voice low and trembling. “Harker killed him.”

“Why?” asked Greg. “What the hell for?”

“He rang the police,” said Pete. “Knocked me out, then rang the police from reception. So Harker tore his throat out.”

“Jesus,” whispered Greg. “Why did Kevin do that? This is his thing.”

Pete shook his head, so slightly it was barely visible. “I don’t think it is,” he said. “To be honest, I don’t think it ever was. I just don’t think McKenna realised until it was too late. This is Harker’s thing. You, me, McKenna, we’re just pawns. And I’ll tell you something else, Greg. I don’t think you and I were ever meant to get out of here.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Think about it. Why are we here? Harker doesn’t need us to do what he’s doing. He could do this on his own. And the last thing McKenna said to me, the last thing he said to anyone, was, ‘I’m doing this for you.’ I think he realised that he’d been lied to and was trying to do something about it.”

“But Harker is doing what he told us he was going to do,” said Greg. He reached out, grabbed one of the copies off the belt, pretended to examine it, then put it back. “It’s happening, Pete. The public are going to know.”

“And five innocent people are dead,” said Pete. “He’s doing it, but I don’t think he’s doing it for the same reasons as you and me, for the reasons he told us and Kevin. This is about revenge for him. He thinks Blacklight are on their way here right now and he isn’t scared, Greg. He’s
excited
.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” hissed Pete. “But what do you think is going to happen to us if he’s right and the men in black show up? We might not have killed anyone, but you tied those men up, and I stood still and did nothing when he tore two of their throats out. We have to get out of here.”

“How?” asked Greg. He looked up for a split second and Pete saw the naked fear in his new friend’s eye. “We can’t fight him, not the two of us on our own. I doubt the seven of us can, even if we could persuade the others to try.”

“I don’t know,” said Pete. “I don’t have a plan. But we’d better think of something, because if Albert is right, this is only going to get worse.”

The helicopter containing Kate Randall, Matt Browning and Victor Frankenstein touched down outside
The Globe
’s printing facility with a heavy thud.

The car park was deserted; scraps of litter, thrown into the air by the draught from the rotor blades, swirled across the tarmac, and street lights cast a pale amber glow. Frankenstein leapt easily down, then held out his hand. Kate took it and allowed herself to be helped to the ground, before Matt did the same. As soon as they were all safely clear, the helicopter roared back into the air, disappearing into the dark sky overhead.

Matt watched it go. His stomach felt as though it was filled with concrete: a painful, relentless pressure that made it difficult to put one foot in front of the other. He was scared; Kate knew it, and he was pretty sure that Frankenstein did too. That was fine. What he hoped they also knew was that he had no intention of letting them down.

The printing press loomed over them, a huge grey building with a glass reception. Even from where they were standing, perhaps fifteen metres away, Matt could see that at least one of the panes of glass was cracked and that red covered much of the small transparent area.

“Blood,” he said, pointing with a gloved finger. “Lots of it.”

“I see it,” said Kate. “Let’s move. Ready One from here on. Matt, visors at all times for you and me. We can’t let anyone see who we are. Silent comms. Is that clear?”

“Clear,” he said. He flipped his visor down, marvelling as ever at the technology contained within the thin sheet of coated plastic. Kate did the same, then spoke into his ear. “Are you ready for this, Matt?”

“I’m ready,” he replied, with as much conviction as he could muster. “Lead the way.”

Kate did so, drawing her T-Bone as she walked and holding it before her, one hand resting beneath its barrel, the other curled round its grip. Matt did likewise, feeling the heavy weight of the weapon in his hands. Frankenstein left his T-Bone on his belt, but drew the enormous silver shotgun from its holster that ran down his long spine. They walked forward in a line, like gunslingers down the main street of an old Western town as the clock ticked towards high noon.

The reception door was controlled remotely, but Frankenstein simply pushed its handle until the lock gave way. Kate stepped inside, with Matt following close behind her. The smell hit him instantly: the rich, coppery scent of the blood that covered the floor, the desk, and ran in thick streaks down the glass walls. Frankenstein stepped round the desk and checked the security guard who was lying beneath it. There was no need to do the same for the other man; his throat had been torn wide open.