LITMIR.BIZ

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to whoever paid for them,” said Angela. “I’ve seen it before, but never on this scale. It’s like the snakehead gangs bringing workers out of the Far East. They get them as far as the Med, then use trucks the rest of the way. Someone is waiting for this ship in the north, I can guarantee you. Someone waiting for the cargo they ordered.”

      Larissa looked at Paul Turner, who nodded.

      “Operator Darcy is correct,” he said. “Our understanding is that the men and women on this ship are to be delivered into vampire hands as soon as the ship docks. What is planned for them after that, we don’t know. But given that the oldest vampire in the world, who is currently unaccounted for, is most likely in a condition that requires a regular supply of blood, we thought it might be worth looking into. Don’t you agree?”

      “You think those people are being shipped to wherever Valeri and Dracula are hiding?” asked Kate.

      “We think it’s possible.”

      “What do you want us to do?” asked Jamie, his voice firm.

      Larissa looked over at him, saw the set of his jaw, the calm in his blue eyes, and felt her stomach flip. She was incredibly proud of him, and as attracted to him in that moment as she had ever been. A low growl emerged from her throat, barely audible to anyone except Jamie, who was sitting beside her. He turned to her, and a flicker of red spilled into the corners of her eyes, so quickly that only he could have possibly seen it. He grinned; he knew very well what it meant.

      Maybe we won’t have to leave right away, he thought, hopefully. Maybe we’ll get to wait until after dark.

      The thought of the long hours of remaining daylight, and what they might contain, widened his grin. He dragged his gaze away from Larissa, and tried to focus once more on Paul Turner’s briefing.

      “You leave immediately,” said the Major, and Jamie’s heart sank. “We surveyed the area, and the only place anyone could illegally dock a ship that size is the old Swan Hunter shipyard at Wallsend. We’re having the surrounding yards closed as we speak, and the coastguard has been given orders to allow the ship to enter the river. I want you to take up surveillance positions before nightfall, then intercept the ship when it docks. The first priority is to find out where these people were being taken, and why. The second is the captives themselves. The new SOP does not apply on this operation. Is that understood?”

      We don’t have to capture the vamps, realised Jamie, and felt a savage wave of pleasure flood through him. We can destroy them.

      “Yes, sir,” he answered, and a second later Jack Williams said the same.

      “Good,” said Major Turner. “Now. There are more than two hundred men and women on that ship, all of whom are going to be weak, and probably terrified. So you’re going to need to manage the situation; if they panic, which they probably will, if they start running across your lines of fire, make them get down. The collateral loss limit for this mission is nine. Is that clear?”

      “It’s not clear to me,” said Jamie, although he had a horrible idea that it was.

      I hope I’m wrong, he thought. I really do.

      “It means we don’t want to see more than nine civilians die on this Operation. That’s the acceptable level of loss.”

      “My squad doesn’t deal in acceptable losses,” said Jack Williams, his voice low and steady.

      “Mine neither,” said Jamie, instantly.

      “Really?” asked Major Turner, his expression glacial. “Because I do. And so does Admiral Seward. And for this mission, yours is nine. Understood?”

      “I don’t think—”

      “Shut up!” shouted Major Turner, and the room immediately fell silent. He glared round at each of the six men and women in turn. “This is a Level 2 mission that Intelligence suggests may be directly related to this Department’s highest priority. You don’t like talking about collateral losses, fine, but you will bear them in mind when you’re out in the field. Because they can be the difference between a medal and six months on the inactive roster, especially on a mission like this, a mission that I expect you to be able to accomplish, even with only two squads.”

      “Why are you sending two squads?” asked Shaun Turner, mildly. “We normally work alone. Sir.”

      The young Operator’s words dripped with insolence, but his father favoured him with a look full of such icy threat that he quickly dropped his gaze. Unseen by anyone else in the room, Kate’s cheeks flushed momentarily as she watched Shaun buckle under his father’s stare.

      “If it was possible to do so,” said Major Turner, “we’d be sending four squads on this operation. If I had three at my disposal, I’d be sending three. But I don’t; I have two. You two. So that’s why you’re both going. Because we’re down to the bare bones here.”

      “Seven vamps, though?” said Jack Williams. “It doesn’t need six of us to handle seven of them.”

      “I don’t care if it’s one newly-turned vampire in the middle of an open field, Lieutenant Williams. You have your orders, you have your briefing, the surveillance data has been transferred to your consoles and your transport, and I am deeply bored of talking to all of you. Dismissed.”

      For a moment, no one moved, then Turner walked swiftly round the podium and took two long strides into the middle of the room.

      “I said, dismissed,” he said, and this time they all moved, quickly.

      Six and a half hours later Operational Squads F-7 and G-17 huddled together in the shadow of a grey factory building on the banks of the River Tyne.

      The towering cranes that had once been such a feature of the skyline of this part of the world were gone, dismantled and sold to an Indian shipyard two years earlier. The huge yard, where thousands of men had laboured to build the legendary RMS Mauretania in the first years of the twentieth century, where their grandsons had built the Royal Navy’s flagship, HMS Ark Royal, seven decades later, was silent. The floating dock, with its four wide berths, sat open to the lapping water of the Tyne; it was already becoming overgrown, and was slowly filling up with discarded bottles and cans, left by the teenagers who prowled its wide-open space after dark.

      The factories that had once manufactured engine parts and hull panels were empty, their heavy machines sold to shipyards around the world that were still enjoying better times. They were coated in graffiti, and beginning to rust at their corners. The roads that ran between them, which had once hummed with the accumulated sound of thousands of men’s voices when the evening whistle blew, were covered in a spider’s web of cracks and holes; tangles of weeds emerged from these gaps, as though the earth was already beginning to reclaim land that had once been home to the very best of human ingenuity and innovation.

      A thick fog was rolling down the Tyne from the North Sea; as Jamie looked out across the desolate, creaking yard, he could not see the far bank of the river. The grey tendrils were drifting up to the edges of the concrete dock below them, but were not, as yet, cresting them and moving on to the land.

      “This is going to be no fun at all if that fog breaks over the dock,” he said. “Seven vamps may as well be seventy if we can’t see them.”

      Jack Williams nodded. The six Operators had finished their reconnaissance of the old shipyard, and concluded it was sufficiently isolated for their purposes. It was far from secure, however; there was a main thoroughfare, Hadrian Road, less than two hundred metres to the north, and the fences that surrounded the yard were in significant disrepair. There was no time to plug the holes and tighten the net round the yard; instead, the plan was to never allow the vampires to get more than a few metres from their ship.

      “I’ll take Kate and Larissa down there,” Jamie continued, pointing to a series of rusting metal containers that stood at the edge of the concrete dock, fifteen metres from the river’s edge. “Jack, why don’t you take your squad over there, behind that wall? That way they’ll have to come between

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