“So how do you know—?”
“I don’t, okay? Are you saying we’ve never scouted an unknown location before? Have you been working with the same team I have for six years? Come on, Brian.”
“Who’s going with you on this intel gathering mission? Because I know you’re going.”
“Kerry. We’re the only two women, and if we have to, we can play the part of adoring servants long enough to get out of there.”
“Fuck. You’re going to do this, no matter what I say.”
She shrugged. “Unless you can come up with a good reason why we shouldn’t. We need better intel on the interior of that building. Is it one big room inside? A warren of hallways? Who the fuck knows? But don’t you think we should?”
He sighed. “You really think we’re going to assault that place?”
“I don’t know. I do know that Xavier wants Sakal, not a bunch of teenage truth seekers. So any op we do run will have to be at night, to be sure the asshole vamp is there.”
He dropped his head, jaw clenched as he studied his boots, before looking back up. “All right. But you’re not going in unarmed, and you’re wearing comms. River and I will move in closer, but we’ll still need to know if you’re in trouble before it happens, not after they drag your dead bodies out into the dirt.”
“You really think that Kerry and I couldn’t take a bunch of kids, if we had to? Have some faith.”
“I have plenty of faith. I just know you too well. Let’s get this damn thing organized.”
AN HOUR LATER, LAYLA and Kerry were ready. The grounds of the compound had been crowded with acolytes until maybe fifteen minutes ago, performing a variety of tasks, including farming and maintenance. But then, a soft chime had sounded outside the building, and the workers had responded instantly. They patted the dirt around a final plant, put away their tools, and headed for a row of outdoor faucets to wash their hands. They’d been orderly about it, but not horror movie creepy orderly. There’d been no falling into line and marching in silent lock-step to the sinks and through the open doors. After washing up, they’d walked into the building in small groups of quiet conversation, and that was it.
Layla glanced at the time. They had another hour until true sunset, maybe an hour after that before Sakal would arrive, since according to Xavier, the vampire was weak and wouldn’t rise until well after dark. If she and Kerry were going to infiltrate the compound, it had to be now. They wanted to be in and gone before Sakal arrived. Weak or not, if he had anything close to the kind of enhanced senses that Xavier and his people exhibited, Sakal might sense their presence, and they’d be cooked. She glanced at the other woman and found her staring back, waiting.
“We go now,” Layla said softly. “They’re probably settling in for their evening meal down there, before prepping for the vamp’s arrival. If they eat communally—and why wouldn’t they, with the whole group- think mentality—they’ll all be in one room, so we can snoop some.”
“Right, but make it fast,” Brian said, crouching next to them. “You need to be out before they finish eating.”
“We’ll be careful. I’m not going to get caught by a bunch of brainwashed teenagers.” As she spoke, she was removing her ballistic vest, followed by her boots, which she exchanged for a pair of well-used sneakers. Her weapons had been removed, except for her Glock pistol with a thirty-round mag, and her belt knife. She and Kerry were both dressed in tank tops and khaki pants, which they’d rolled up to mid-calf.
When they’d checked their comm units and were ready to go, Layla looked at Kerry and said, “You’ve got our route fixed, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good, you lead. And you guys stay frosty and alert up here.”
Brian and River chuckled at the favorite movie quote, but their nods were serious. This mission had been a cakewalk when all they’d been doing was talking about it. But now shit might go down.
The two women moved with practiced ease through the thick shrubs and stunted trees covering the hillside between them and the compound. They’d marched twice as fast through much more hellish environments on other battlefields, but the tough part of tonight’s approach was still ahead of them. Once they paused to lie flat on the ground and brought up scopes to check out the building, looking for cameras or watchers they might not have spotted from above. Layla found it impossible to believe there was no security at all on this place.
“Maybe the doors are locked,” Kerry murmured, as she continued to scan.
“Probably. From the little I could see, they looked like push-bar fire doors. Easy open from the inside, easy lock from the outside.”
“Not an easy lock to by-pass, though. Not with a crowd inside. If we open a door and they’re all sitting there eating dinner, they just might notice us.”
“Roger that. I say we go in a window.”
“I’d sure like to get a look inside before we pick an entry point,” Kerry commented.
“Yeah. No ground level windows on this side, though. Let’s go down a bit more, take a stroll around the building, see if we can get a peek into where they all are.”
“Agreed. On three.”
They ran across the open ground, crouched low and moving fast. If they were wrong, and someone was perched in a crow’s nest outlook on top of the building, they were fucked. But there hadn’t been any sign of that. So it was a risk, but a good one.
And it worked. In minutes, their backs were pressed up against a windowless wall, listening to nothing but silence. Looking over, Layla lifted her chin ahead of them, got a confirming nod from Kerry, and took off down the length of one wall to the corner, where they paused long enough to verify there was no one on the next side of the building, then moved along that wall in the same fashion.
They were about to give up on the idea of windows, when they peeked around next corner and found a long row of them starting about waist height and stopping a foot from the roof eaves. They could hear a steady hum of noise coming through those windows—lively conversations, with an occasional shout of laughter, the clank of flatware on cups and plates, the random scrape of a chair on a tiled floor. It was the sound of a large group of people having a meal. There were no amplified voices, no announcements or speaker that they could detect. Not yet, anyway.
Dropping to their hands and knees, they crawled below the windows, careful to remain close to the wall to avoid anyone catching a glimpse of movement. It was unlikely, but why take the risk? Once past the final window, there was a short expanse of wall—three feet maybe— and then an apparent portico, which Layla verified led to another closed, push-bar fire door.