Texas Hold 'Em (14 page)

“And we trust this lady—why?” Jeffrey asked, plucking a runaway chip off the table and eating it.

I shrugged. “Okay, she was a little out of it when she called, but can you blame her? She escaped from a bunch of bloodsucking fiends that had been draining her for days. A lot more of these girls are in there. The lady said a couple dozen of them are trapped, being used for food and worse. Why would she make something like that up?”

“How did she find us?” David asked.

“She found us through that guy we helped last year. Reginald or whatever his name was. You remember, the one with the undead ex-wife problem?” I held out my beeper. “Her number’s still here if you want to call her back and check it out for yourself.”

The guys weren’t particularly moved by my speech, so I had to employ some psychological warfare.

“Man, are those chicks going to be grateful when we come and rescue them. She said there was more than ten of them.”

“That’s what I’m talking about!” said Craig. “See what happens when you go and get yourself hitched, David? You miss out on all the grateful women we rescue.”

David finished his beer and tossed the can in the trash. “You’re just jealous ‘cause you don’t have a real woman, and my Betty makes all those loose women you go out with pale by comparison.”

Jeffrey began pulling himself up off the couch. “Okay, Jacob. If you say your intel is solid, and this lady’s story tracks, then I believe you. But if you’re wrong, and I miss the Cowboys winning this game for nothing, then you had better start running, because I am going to kick your ass when I catch you.”

“Can’t all of the ass-kicking wait? We’re gonna win this one. I can feel it! Smith is running all over them Bears,” Fred said from the couch.

“No, it can’t,” said Robert.

David checked the magazine in his Uzi before tossing it in the bag. “Let’s get this over with. I have to get home in time for dinner or Betty is going to kill me.”

Craig put a hand on Fred’s shoulder. “Give me a break, man, the game ain’t gonna matter. Even if the Cowboys win, you know the Rams are going to kick their butt next week, right after they hand Minnesota’s ass to them tonight.”

“Craig, you’ve been smoking way too much of that funny stuff.” Fred laughed.

“Come on, ladies. We’ve got to move!” Robert could barely contain his excitement. “I am not letting these bloodsuckers get away with this. The longer we wait, the more innocents they kill.”

“Relax, man,” said Craig. “It’s not even noon. I’ll get the van loaded up. If we leave now, we should have plenty of time to get to Austin and take care of this nest before sunset.” He folded the stock on his SPAS assault shotgun and zipped it into his duffel bag.

“Shit.” Fred got up and hit the power button on the TV.

I turned the TV back on and sat on the couch.

“Oh, no!” said Fred.

“You’re coming on this one, Jacob,” said Robert.

“Like hell I am,” I said. “I don’t do field work, you know that. Too unpredictable.”

“Well, you’re coming on this one. We need you to monitor the scanner and make sure the cops don’t come early. No way are we going to let you stay here and watch the game while we go risk our lives,” said Robert.

“He’ll still get to listen to the game in the truck,” said Fred. “How about I monitor the radio, and Jacob goes in to stake the vampires?”

“Here,” Craig said, tossing an M79 grenade launcher at me. “If anything comes your way, blow them the hell up. But make sure they ain’t too close when you do.”

It was after two when I parked the van a couple hundred yards down the street from the gate and hopped into the truck next to Paul. The van was our backup vehicle in case the big rig didn’t make it out.

The address was in an exclusive neighborhood. The mansion backed onto Lake Travis; its grounds consisted of a dozen acres surrounded by a six-foot-high stone wall. A gate with a small stone guardhouse was manned by an actual person.

We took him out first. Man, were we nervous. We hated whacking a human like that, and we were all thinking the same thing: What if we had gotten it wrong? What if it was some regular rich Joe minding his own business and the tip was a vindictive ex with a creative streak? What if we were about to kill some innocent rent-a-cop?

But Paul stopped the semi in front of the gatehouse and rolled down his window. When the guy came to ask what we wanted, Paul put a bullet through the front of his brain with a silenced .45. This was war, and that guard was working for the wrong side.

It was too late for second thoughts now. I wiped off the spray from the guard that had spattered me in the face as Paul rolled the semi forward through the gate.

Robert had already entered the grounds. I thumbed the talk button on the radio and gave him the signal, and by the time the truck rolled up to the house, he had taken out the two guards patrolling the grounds. He loved the up-close-and-personal work; him and that KA-BAR Special Forces knife of his were a scary thing. The guards’ throats were cut before they knew what hit them.

We hoped the bloodsuckers would be asleep, preferably underground in the basement, so they wouldn’t hear us coming. Clearing the upper floors of the house we could do quietly, but we were worried most about that truck and its compressor.

David was out first, heading to the alarm box. He had already taken out the phone back at the street, so no calls to the cops, but we didn’t need some siren shrieking at us.

I stayed on the radio, monitoring the police scanner and our shortwaves. The rest of the team filed out of the sleeper cab and up to the house. Fred took a crowbar to the shutters. Every window had them, of course, and in every room we cleared we opened those suckers up, letting in that Texas sun. The vamps had been smart when they built the place, though—the house had wraparound porches on both levels, which prevented a lot of the direct light from getting in.

Jeffrey popped the window. Robert went in first; he always did.

“Clear.”

The team moved into the first room—a library, I think it was—with no resistance. After that, it was room to room. Methodical and fast, just like the Army trained us to do it. A couple more humans were all we encountered on the first floor, and they didn’t put up a fight. That was our first clue something wasn’t right. If it hadn’t been for the house being all shuttered up tight, we would have turned around right then. But only vampires are that paranoid about the sun.

The first person we encountered in the house was a maid and, man, was she freaked out. Normally when we found a human in a vampire lair they were either dead, drained into submission, or under a vampire’s thrall. When they were under the influence, they were either glassy-eyed zombies or they went ape-shit crazy in their effort to protect their undead master. Not this one, though. She seemed like you’d expect someone to seem when surprised by a bunch of heavily armed men. She was scared out of her mind. We asked her where the hostages were, but she acted like she didn’t understand. Said there weren’t any. Said some guests were upstairs. Said the family was downstairs. Begged us not to hurt anyone.

We tied her up and tossed her outside. The rest of the ones we encountered were the same way. Had to kill most of them to keep ‘em quiet. Couldn’t risk a screamer alerting the vamps. We figured this was some new kind of mind control.

“Looks like they’re throwing themselves a party,” said Fred, entering the ballroom. It had been decorated to the nines. Streamers and black and white balloons. Even a giant banner.

“Oh? What kind of party?” I asked over the radio.

“Would you believe a wake?”

“Man, that’s appropriate, because they’re all about to die!” Paul’s voice crackled.

“Shit, will you look at that—it’s someone named Susanna’s one- thousandth death-day, and we are seriously about to F it up,” said Craig.

“Good to know they have a sense of humor,” said Fred.

The first-floor sweep complete, we headed upstairs to the guests. We figured the top floors would be mostly empty, but we didn’t want any surprises coming after us when we headed to the basement.

Floor two was where we found the first vampires. The upstairs was mostly bedrooms, probably for guests. Most of them were empty; a couple of them weren’t.

The first pair went easy. They were asleep together in the same bed. Heads were off before they knew what hit them. Next three went the same way. We hit a snag with the last one, though. He was either a light sleeper or already awake. Boy, did he put up a fight. Made some noise before we finally took him apart.

Paul was already working on the ventilation system. That was our grand finale: a tanker full of napalm. Paul and I had the hoses hooked up and the pump running by the time the team headed downstairs.

Man, we couldn’t believe it. Five vampires wasted in one raid. It tied our personal record. Like I said, the last guy didn’t go quietly, so the team hustled it downstairs to the basement where the maid confirmed the family was holed up.

As expected, underground was where things got more interesting. We couldn’t burn them out, because that’s where those captive girls were supposed to be.

One of the first things we came across down there was a huge wine cellar, and right next to that was the blood. Except it wasn’t in people. It was in bags. Two rows of those commercial refrigerators full of the stuff. You know, like they have in a 7-11, with the glass doors? We figured it must be their emergency stores for when they couldn’t get the fresh stuff.

But if anyone had been trapped in that house, we never found them. No women, no men, no one. Not a single prisoner being held against their will.

We found the family, though. That’s what it was, for the most part: a family. Must have all been turned at the same time, or close to it. A dad, a mom, and a son. It was like the unholy trinity.

They had a couple of retainers that I suspected had been with them for a long time. They were all vampires, so we set about doing what we did.

“Unless there’s some secret section down here, I am not seeing any prison cells,” said Fred.

“Me either, but we got what looks like a suite of rooms up ahead. You want to check ‘em out, or vacate and burn?”

“Lawrence, what’s going on out here?” That was the first time any of us saw Christian. He came right out of one of the doors, wearing silk pajamas, of all things.

“Lawrence isn’t here anymore. But my name’s Robert and you, sir, are about to burn in hell.”

Christian was a quick one. He managed to duck back into his room before taking too many rounds. Started screaming for Suzanna and Michael. Must have been the rest of the vamp family.

We figured there was no reason to take on any more vampires than necessary in the basement’s close quarters, especially not ones that were a thousand years old, so the team laid cover fire and retreated back up to the ground floor.

Robert gave the order during the retreat and Paul turned on the hose. Out came a few thousand gallons of napalm, right into that cellar.

The team had closed and sealed the basement door behind them. Barred it with a pry bar and added a Claymore antipersonnel mine as a surprise, just in case they managed to get it open.

Not long after we set the stuff on fire, an explosion rocked the mansion. The door to the basement blew off its hinges, a massive gout of fire jetting out after it.

While the basement burned, Paul used the high-powered hose to douse the back half of the house. Sent a few hundred gallons through the windows. As soon as the team cleared the doors, I used the M79 to lob an incendiary grenade inside. Before long, if anything was left alive in the house, it only had one way out. The ballroom was the last to burn, and we were waiting right outside.

Sure enough, the vampires must have had a secondary staircase up out of their basement rooms, because we saw the three of them enter that ballroom. Suzanna got a bigger surprise than Christian intended for her.

She was the nearest target. Not bad looking from what I remember. Twenty-five going on a thousand.

“We got a live one!” Jeffrey fired the crossbow.

“Mom!” The kid moved fast, managed to push his mom out of the way. Bolt struck him instead. Went right through his arm.

Fred kicked on the electronic winch and the cable started pulling. It was like sport fishing with vampires! Man, that kid struggled. Fred lit him up with his M4, making the boy dance ‘til he slipped. Once he lost his footing, he started sliding right across the marble floor and toward the hot, hot Texas sun.

His mom tried to get to him, but I lobbed in a grenade. She had to jump out of the way of the shrapnel.

His dad was on him quick, though. If he’d had more time, I suspect he would have found a way to rip the bolt out, despite the barbs. As it was, he didn’t. So he took the kid’s arm off. Better that than the alternative.

Anyway, didn’t matter ‘cause Robert got the boy with bolt number two, right through the gut. And he was off again, Christian holding his son’s arm, watching as the kid lit up like a road flare when he hit the sun. The oldest burn the brightest, I guess. Oh, that pissed the old guy off. Christian howled like crazy but what could he do, right? Well, I’ll tell you. He grabbed himself one of the tablecloths, put it over him and his wife and they made a beeline straight out of that house and right for us!

Jeffrey was out in front, the poor bastard. He dropped the crossbow and went for his M4, but his time was up. He hadn’t even shouldered his weapon when they were on him. Ripped his head clean off before any of us could react.

They were already moving for the tree line before Jeffrey’s head had even hit the ground, but Paul was fast with that flamethrower of his. Got ‘em as they were running. On fire, there was no way the vampires were going to make those trees, so they veered to the closest cover, the pool house.

We were right behind them. Paul was there first. He was a big guy and that flamethrower didn’t even slow him down. But before he could let loose on the building, out of the door came a flaming spear.

Old Christian must have wrapped that cloth around a table umbrella and chucked it at him. Paul tried to get out of the way, but it hit his tank. Man, he shimmied out of that rig fast. Managed to drop it before it exploded. Bam! His legs were gone and he was the human torch. David grabbed him and took both of them into the pool. Saved Paul’s life, but not his looks or his legs.