LITMIR.BIZ

      7

      SINK OR SWIM

      “So where do we start?” asked Patrick Williams.

      “Intelligence is putting together probable location lists,” replied Holmwood. “We’ve had every available satellite working outwards from the hospital since early this morning, and we’ve tracked over a hundred heat blooms. They’re where we start.”

      “OK,” said Dominique Saint-Jacques. “Let’s get going.”

      Holmwood nodded. “I’m sending squads out with lists of five likely target locations. I’m authorising daylight operations, so destroy them before the sun goes down if you can. All usual containment protocols remain in place, and I want it made clear to all Operators that these targets are significantly more dangerous than the vampires they usually encounter. I’m putting in place a hard window of eight hours, after which you come home. I don’t care whether you’ve destroyed all five of your targets, or two of them, or none of them. Eight hours, then return to base. Having what’s left of this Department exhausted and careless is not an option. Clear?”

      “Clear, sir,” replied Dominique.

      “Excellent. I’m officially activating all Operational Squads that include rookies until this threat has been eliminated, then they go back to training. Look after them out there and bring them back safe. Clear?”

      “Yes, sir,” chorused the Zero Hour Task Force.

      “Good. Dismissed.”

      Jamie stepped out of the lift and strode along the central corridor of Level B.

      Search and destroy, he thought. Just like that. Search and destroy three hundred super-powerful vampires. No problem at all.

      He had left the Ops Room with his stomach churning uneasily. There was no doubt in his mind that the mass escapes of the previous night had been orchestrated by Dracula, or at the very least by Valeri, and that they had the potential to cause widespread carnage. There was a positive aspect to the move: such a large action, designed so clearly to occupy Department 19 and its counterparts around the world for a significant amount of time, strongly suggested that Dracula was not far in advance of their Zero Hour timeline, if at all. But that was going to be of little comfort to the men and women who were by now already heading out to hunt down the escapee vampires.

      Jamie pulled the console from his belt and typed as he walked.

       M-3/OP_EXT_L1/LIVEBRIEFING/BR4/ASAP

      He pressed SEND and knew that, far below him, in the circular confines of the Playground, the consoles belonging to John Morton and Lizzy Ellison would now be vibrating into life. He wondered how long it would take them to make their way up to Briefing Room 4 on Level 0, and guessed at ten minutes.

      It’ll probably take them five minutes to find the right room, he thought, smiling to himself. It used to for me.

      Jamie reached his quarters, pressed his ID against the keypad set into the wall, and pushed his door open when the red light turned green. He flopped down on his bed, grateful for a few minutes’ rest; given the situation that Cal Holmwood had described, he doubted there were going to be many similar opportunities in the next few days. Not that there ever really were; life inside Department 19 was physically and mentally exhausting, a result of the high stakes that were constantly in play. If Jamie and his colleagues failed to do their jobs well, people died; it was as simple as that. Every Operator understood this, found a way to process it and carry on, but it was not always easy.

      Jamie felt his eyes begin to close, even though he had only woken up three hours earlier, to find a box in the middle of his console’s screen telling him that he had a message waiting from Larissa. He had pressed OPEN and read the lines of text that appeared.

       Hey! Hope you’re OK? Will be awake for the next hour or so if you’re around and fancy giving me a call… x

      Jamie had checked the time stamp on the message. It had arrived at 7:30am, when he had apparently been so soundly asleep that he hadn’t even heard it beep. He had quickly done the time-zone maths in his head.

       Half past eleven in Nevada. Late.

      He had considered calling her anyway – he didn’t think she would be too annoyed if he woke her up – but had decided to let her sleep. Now, as he contemplated the scale and horror of what he had just been told in the Ops Room, he wished he had made the call; it would have been good to hear a genuinely friendly voice. For a second, he considered walking round and knocking on the door to the quarters next to his own, the quarters occupied, technically at least, by one of his best friends, but knew it would be a waste of time.

      Matt Browning was almost never in his room these days, unless he was asleep. Jamie knew he had turned down the chance to move into one of the larger quarters inside the Lazarus security perimeter, and while he admired the reasoning behind his friend’s refusal, a spirited attempt to avoid devoting his every waking moment to his work, he thought it had, in fact, been largely pointless. Matt’s life now revolved entirely around the Lazarus Project, and that was that. Jamie missed his friend, but wasn’t annoyed with him; how could he be, when what Matt had devoted himself to was arguably the most important project being carried out in the whole of Blacklight? However, he did think he should try to press Matt into having a drink in the officers’ mess, or at least into sharing a table at lunch; it had been a while since they had talked for longer than a minute or two in a corridor, when both were on their way somewhere else.

      On

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