“Sergeant Rock, listen to me. The Red Knights are the hostiles. That is confirmed. All other combatants are secondary.”

“Copy that, too. We’re ready for them.”

“There are no time-outs, no rematches in this game. We win this or we lose.”

“Hooah. Rock out.”

Church made similar calls to the other teams. It was only Toys’s guess that Grigor would be coming to Aghajari. It was closest; Grigor’s Kingdom of Shadows was a mile below Tehran. However, all of the teams had to be prepared to encounter Upierczi.

When he was done he called the president.

As he ended that call, Bug rang through.

“Okay, Boss,” said Bug, “here goes. Oil refineries by nation are as follows. For I we have Iran, Iraq, Israel, and Indonesia, Ireland, and Italy. By ‘J’ we got Japan, Jordan, and Jamaica. And for S we have South Africa, Sudan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, and Suriname. But like you said, this mixes things from the order of the codes.”

Church pursed his lips. “Give me all the countries that start with those letters.”

“For I we have nine countries: Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, and Italy. For the ‘Js’ we have six: Jamaica, Jan Mayen, Japan, Jersey, Jordan, Juan de Nova Island. And the big list is ‘S’: Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, São Tomé and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Syria.”

“Did you run it through the CT package?”

“Got it, sending it to you now.”

There were multiple potential targets on the list from the counterterrorism software package, but MindReader was designed to look for patterns and probabilities. It weighted its choices, and at the top of each list was the most likely target, the one that would have the greatest economic, social, cultural, or political impact.

Church scanned the list.

“My God,” he said.

Lilith saw it too. And then Circe.

Rudy and Bug said, “What?”

And then they saw it.

“This isn’t about the Holy Agreement,” murmured Circe in a small, shocked voice. “They may have wanted the bombs for some purpose before 9/11, but this has nothing to do with that.”

“No,” said Church. “This is about the Upierczi. They are without doubt the ones with the bombs.”

“But why?” demanded Rudy.

“They were monsters and slaves for centuries,” Lilith said in a hollow voice. “They had become weak and almost died out. Now they are stronger than they ever were. Much, much stronger.”

“But—”

“We are about to go to war with a new nuclear power. The vampire nation.”

Chapter One Hundred Fifteen

Chapter One Hundred Fifteen

Aghajari Oil Refinery

Iran

June 16, 6:16 a.m.