“Good job tonight,” I told them. “I was listening and I still never heard you on my six.”

“Kinda the point,” said Lydia. “Clumsy soldiers don’t get Christmas bonuses.”

We stood for a moment, each of us looking back at the cluster of Arklight women as they continued arming for war. I saw Violin sliding loaded magazines into slots on a bandolier. She saw me watching and gave me a brief nod that I returned. We turned away at the same moment.

“Top,” I said, “get back to the other warehouse and get everything ready. Finish modifying our equipment, but don’t use all the garlic. Church will have some kind of transport here soon. As soon I talk to the Big Man again I’ll come back for a mission briefing. Everyone eat some food, hit the head, take your vitamins. Finish that special project I gave you earlier from those notes Circe got from that folklore professor. Looks like we’re going to need it. We need to be ready to rock, and who knows how long this will take. Bring as much extra ammunition as you can carry.”

“Boss,” said Bunny, “what that woman said? That’s all true, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

He shook his head. Bunny was no naïve kid, but this was all a long, long way from Southern California.

Khalid looked concerned. “There’s a question we need to ask these women here,” he said. “If garlic hurts the vampires, is it safe to use around the … um … what was the word?”

“Dhampyri.”

“Yes.”

“Good question. I’ll ask. In the meantime, let’s hustle.”

“Hooah,” they said, and I watched them vanish through the back door, silent as ghosts.

Chapter Ninety-seven

Chapter Ninety-Seven

Arklight Camp

Outskirts of Tehran

June 16, 3:43 a.m.

As I turned to go find Violin, I saw Church heading quickly toward me.

“We’re hitting them all, Captain. A coordinated soft infiltration. Everyone is moving in at the same time. Four targets here in the Middle East and the one in Louisiana. I have every DMS and JSOC team not currently assigned to one of the targets on deck. Nuclear response teams are on high alert. We’ll do whatever is possible to do, but we can’t wait any longer.”

Soft infiltrations meant stealth and nonlethal weapons. Doing just one required extensive planning and training. Doing five? I whistled. “You ever do anything like this before?”

“No one has. So, we get to write the playbook on it. Your team has to avoid a political incident as well as find the bomb.”

“You want us to do this on tippy-toes?”