Area 51: Nosferatu-8 (33 page)

This lab was also where Majestic had shipped the Guardian computer they discovered in Temiltepec in South America, the device that had corrupted the members of Majestic who had come in contact with it, giving them its programmed instructions to fly the mothership.

The team leader called out a time warning, indicating they were less than five minutes from the target. With a slight smile Nosferatu watched the men in the cargo bay don night-vision goggles. Human technology had finally started to catch up with a capability he'd had for thousands of years.

Nosferatu knew that the small security force posted at Dulce had no reason for concern. Their first indication of trouble came when the aircraft landed and the first thing off were flashbang grenades that stunned and blinded them.

Nosferatu had insisted on taking down the security force without killing them, and the mercenaries had agreed, seeing no point in committing murder if it was avoidable. They seized the stunned guards and quickly secured them. Nosferatu then exited the helicopter and followed one team down into the dig site.

The engineers who had worked on the site had dug a shaft straight down through the pancaked levels of the base, with an occasional side tunnel. A large crane holding

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a metal cage served as a makeshift elevator and Nosferatu climbed on board with four of the mercenaries as another took the controls of the crane.

The basket was swung over the shaft and lowered all the way to the bottom.

This was where General Hemstadt had been running highly classified biological experiments for Majestic-12 before being co-opted by the Mission. The higher levels had taken most of the force of the foo fighter's power beam. This level was relatively intact, as the intelligence reports Nosferatu had purchased indicated.

There was some debris, but they were able to move. They were in a hall that extended about sixty feet, ending in a dead end. There were several doors to the left and another corridor turning to the right. There were name plaques next to each door on the left indicating that those rooms were quarters for Sublevel 1

staff Nosferatu passed right by all of them, taking the right turn at the end of the corridor.

He was in a ten-foot-long corridor that ended in a double set of doors with biological warning signs posted on them. Nosferatu walked up to the doors and pushed them open. A rough concrete floor angled down to a large cavern carved out of the mountain. The ceiling was twenty feet high and the far wall a hundred meters away.

There were several dozen large, vertical vats in the room. They were empty, but Nosferatu knew they had once held bodies. He looked to the right, where, according to his report, the Guardian computer had been stored. There was an empty space there now.

Nosferatu walked forward, past the tubes. Set off to the left was a bank of machinery set on two carts. What he had come for. At his signal the mercenaries began wheeling out the blood machines.

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Hong Kong

Vampyr's absolute stillness caused Chon great anxiety. He felt the weight of his failure to locate Tian Dao Lin's lair. And five minutes earlier his men had called to report—as he had feared—that they had lost the trail of Tai and the blood in the back streets of Hong Kong, where Tian Dao Lin's power was absolute.

Two of the trailers had been shot and killed, indicating the level of seriousness of whatever was happening.

"Sir—"

"Yes?" Vampyr waited.

"Perhaps," Chon began, but he stopped when Vampyr's SatPhone rang. Vampyr listened for a few moments, then hung up without saying a word. He wrote an address on a piece of paper and slid it across to Chon. "What is there?"

Chon read it. "An office building downtown. The Pacific Rim Bank Building."

Vampyr stood. "It is time to pay Mr. Lin a visit."

"Are you sure—"

Vampyr's glare caused Chon to bite off whatever he was about to say. He grabbed the phone and barked orders.

The faint beat of helicopter blades echoed down from the roof.

Vampyr turned for the door.

"It will take a few minutes for—" Chon began, but he didn't finish the sentence as the windows and steel shutters imploded, sending shrapnel flying through the room. A piece of metal caught Chon in the chest, ripping through, severing his spinal cord and killing him instantly.

Vampyr reacted instinctively, diving to the floor unscathed. He rolled away from the windows as he caught a glimpse of figures rappelling in on ropes suspended from

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the roof. A half dozen figures dressed in black with black balaclavas covering their faces were in the room. They all ran toward Vampyr.

Vampyr rolled under the first, at the same time pulling a short sword—his xithos from so long ago in Sparta—out of its sheath and getting to his feet, assuming a ready stance, the point of the ancient sword directed toward the intruders. One jumped at him and he swung, the blade slicing cleanly into the man's shoulder, then diagonally through his body, coming out the opposite hip.

The two pieces fell to the floor.

Everyone in the room halted. The remaining five -bracketed Vampyr, keeping their distance from the sword.

"Where is Tian Dao Lin?" Vampyr asked.

No one replied and no one moved. Vampyr had never been a big believer in standoffs. He jabbed at one of the intruders facing him, then spun, sword extended and lopped off the head of the other. He began to advance on the others when the door to the office crashed inward and four more figures dressed in black jumped through, taking up positions. They were followed by an old man wearing loose-fitting black silk with red dragons on each sleeve. He took in the situation and held up a hand.

"Stop." The old man took a step into the room. "Vampyr."

Vampyr shifted the point of the xithos toward the old man. "Tian Dao Lin."

The old man nodded. "You were foolish to come here. You should have taken Nosferatu's offer." His Quarters took up flanking positions, slightly to the front of he who had made them.

"Nosferatu is weak and a fool who has been besotted by love all these years,"

Vampyr said.

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"Perhaps," Tian Dao Lin said.

"Join with me," Vampyr said.

"At the moment I see no reason why I should," Tian Dao Lin said. "I have some of the blood and Nosferatu will have the technology needed. You have nothing."

"I have Adrik on my side. With you, we will be able to get whatever we want from Nosferatu." Vampyr backed up slightly, to a point where he was near the front of Chon's desk, his backpack lying against the metal front. " Tian Dao Lin shrugged. "So he has been spying for you. I assumed Adrik was hiding something.

The last report I had was that he had recovered what he needed to also."

"He has. And he is with me, not Nosferatu." Vampyr made a show of sliding the xithos into its scabbard, while, unnoticed, his other hand slid into his pocket.

"You still have not made a proper proposition," Tian Dao Lin said.

'True," Vampyr acknowledged.

"Then I will have you killed." Tian Dao Lin turned for the door.

Vampyr leapt backward, clearing the desk, and falling to the floor on the far side. Vampyr squeezed the detonator in his pocket.

The roar of the claymore mine secreted in his backpack was instantly followed by the sound of thousands of steel ball bearings ripping into the far side of the room, tearing through plaster, wood, and flesh and bone. Vampyr felt the air being sucked out of his lungs from the proximity of the blast on the other side of the desk and the shock wave moving away from him.

He drew his xithos as he got to his knees and peered over the desk top, his ears ringing. Blood, viscera, and parts of bodies littered the room. Two of the Quarters

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were moving, moaning in agony. Vampyr got to his feet. Cautiously he walked around the desk, being careful where he stepped. He lopped off the heads of the wounded Quarters with two swift strokes. He spotted a blood trail leading out of the doorway and rushed forward.

Vampyr's lips split in an evil grin as he saw Tian Dao Lin trying to drag himself away along the floor of the hallway, his left leg almost completely severed from his body.

Vampyr went up to his fellow Undead and placed his boot on the practically severed appendage, causing the Chinese to scream in agony.

"You will survive this," Vampyr said. "Indeed, the leg will grow whole again.

But it will take many, many years. I know. But if you ally with me now, and come with me to the Haven, it will go much more quickly."

Tian Dao Lin could only nod.

"Where is the blood you recovered?" Vampyr asked, leaning forward, putting extra pressure on the wounded leg.

Tian Dao Lin hissed. "In my helicopter."

Vampyr sheathed his xithos. With one hand he picked up the wounded Undead and slung him over his shoulder. "Let's go then."

Earth Orbit

The two astronauts made their way across the scorched deck of the mothership's hold and climbed into the airlock on the X-Craft. They carried with them all the blood they had gathered from the Airlia bodies. As Nosferatu had predicted, there wasn't much, but what

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they did have was pure Airlia blood. They placed it in the X-Craft's hold.

They sealed the airlock, secured the cases, and took their seats. With a few gentle puffs of power from the thrusters, they maneuvered the craft out of the hold and into space.

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Nosferatu was joined at the round table by Adrik. In the center of the table were four flat-screen monitors one facing each of the chairs. They displayed the blood lab, where the supply Adrik had brought from Moscow was currently being worked on.

"Your headquarters was destroyed?" Nosferatu asked, his eyes on the screen.

Adrik nodded. "Yes. The FSB assaulted it."

"Why?"

There was a short silence, then Adrik shrugged. "I'm not certain."

Nosferatu shifted his gaze from the screen to his fellow Undead. "I know you think me a fool. But I am the Eldest. I know you've met Vampyr. You've communicated with him. Do you know it was he who tried to kill you in Moscow and got the FSB to assault your headquarters?"

"I thought he might be behind it," Adrik acknowledged.

"Vampyr has no honor," Nosferatu said. "He is just like you. When you were Genghis Khan you had no honor. You killed all who stood in your way, sparing none. Vampyr did the same in his various incarnations. What did you expect from him?"

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"I have honor," Adrik disagreed. "I am bound by it."

"How so?"

"Vampyr saved me. When my palace guard revolted and entombed me underneath the Kremlin, he rescued me from a horrible fate."

Nosferatu laughed, bringing a flush of anger to the other's face. "Has it not occurred to you to ask why he was so fortuitously in Moscow at just the time your guard revolted and entombed you?"

Several seconds of silence passed.

"Even if you have honor," Nosferatu said, "you do not have love. It is a trait of the humans, not the Airlia. It is what allowed them to defeat the Airlia here and elsewhere. It is more powerful than the Airlia virus that runs through our veins."

Before Adrik could say anything, Nosferatu's SatPhone chimed. He pulled it out and snapped it open, listened for a few seconds, then shut it. "Tian Dao Lin's plane is in the air coming this way. He will be landing shortly. And my X-Craft will also be landing soon."

Space

The X-Craft was flying upside down to the planet, the crew checking their flight path with observations of the planet's surface "above" them. Sure they were in the correct orbit, they then fired the maneuvering thrusters and the craft went tail over front, until the belly was facing the planet. Then it began to descend.

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The Skeleton Coast

One of the scientists in the chamber turned toward the camera and gave a thumbs-up.

"They have processed what you brought," Nosferatu said. He looked at Adrik.

"Would you like to go first?"

Adrik glared back. "It is for the Eldest to go first."

"Good decision," Nosferatu said, "but that is not what will be." Nosferatu stood. Adrik stared at him, waiting. "If you would indulge me, I propose that the first be Nekhbet. She has not seen the light of day in over five hundred years."

Reluctantly, Adrik nodded his agreement.

Nosferatu left the conference room and headed for the subbasement lair to bring his beloved to the blood room and back to life.

Earth Orbit

On board the X-Craft, the pilot lifted the nose to get more lift as it entered the atmosphere. At the same time, the copilot watched the crosshairs on the computer screen in front of him. The copilot hit a key, putting the system on automatic release. A red digital countdown appeared in the lower left corner indicating they were slightly less than four minutes from the airfield.

On Approach to the Skeleton Coast

Vampyr looked across the cabin at Tian Dao Lin as they were challenged by Nosferatu's security force, requesting the proper code word to land. A tone was 302

sounding in the cabin, indicating that a ground-to-air missile radar was locked on the jet. The Chinese was very pale, the loss of blood from his leg wound extensive. Vampyr had had one of his mercenary doctors put a tourniquet on the wound and the bleeding had stopped but Tian Dao Lin was barely conscious.

"Answer," Vampyr ordered, as one of his men shoved the microphone in Tian Dao Lin's face.

Tian Dao Lin whispered the proper code word. The warning light went out.

Crowded into the rear of the jet were two dozen of the best mercenaries that Vampyr's vast fortune could buy. They were armed with the latest weapons, and all had night-vision goggles on, as the only light in the cabin came from a single red night-light

Vampyr looked at a computer screen on the small conference table in the center of the cabin. "Perfect," he whispered as he saw the signal representing the X-Craft appear.

The Skeleton Coast

Nosferatu held the clear plastic tubes in his hands, feeling the warmed blood flowing through them and into Nekhbet. It had taken two minutes to completely drain her of her old blood and replace it with a partially frozen solution that cleaned out her system and kept her in stasis. Her entire body had been cooled down to a point where her cells were just about inactive.