Right?
“God,” she breathed. Mother was going to be so angry.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Mustapha’s Daily Goods
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 3:01 p.m.
In my trade, confidence is built on a platform whose legs are made up of good intelligence, continuous training, proper equipment, and field support. I had a sick dog, a dead man’s gun, a stolen briefcase, a vampire hunter’s stake in my belt, and a cell phone; and I was walking down a street in Tehran less than a day after breaking three political prisoners out of jail. I was involved in several murders and had left sufficient physical evidence behind to convict me on enough charges to lock me up until I was a thousand years old. Or enough to have me put against a wall.
Oh, yeah, and there were seven rogue nukes and somehow vampires were tied up in that.
My life used to be a lot less complicated.
I didn’t need a safe house so much as I needed a nice quiet place to have a nervous breakdown.
We headed to the place Church assured me was genuinely safe. Ghost walked more slowly with every block, the fatigue catching up to him again. I stopped to pet him a couple of times, but he barely wagged his tail. I couldn’t tell if we were friends again or if the events of the day had driven some kind of wedge into our relationship. It’s like that with humans, and it can be that way with animals too.
When we reached the convenience store we walked past it and cut through an alley to the back where there was a small door beside a Dumpster. The store was the only open business in a district of warehouses that had been closed during the local economic troubles. The nearest residential area was blocks away, but there was a graveyard nearby and frequent mourners formed the basis of the store’s customers.
It was a very useful setup for a safe house.
A key was hidden behind a brick, tenth from the ground, fifth from the door. I unlocked the door and peered inside. No crowd of armed thugs was waiting to pounce on me, so I nudged Ghost inside with my shin, checked that the coast was clear, and hustled inside, pulling the door shut behind me. The door looked frail and rickety, but it moved heavily, hinting at a steel core hidden beneath layers of weathered wood.
Ghost and I found ourselves in a storeroom with wire shelves stocked with dry and canned goods. I peered around the corner and saw a beaded curtain beyond which was the store. A clerk-the owner, Jamsheed Mustapha, I presumed-stood behind a counter pouring dry lentils onto a scale while an old woman watched. I crept to the edge of the doorway to eavesdrop, hoping they weren’t talking about the best way to sharpen stakes. They weren’t. They were sharing their outrage about the mosque bombing, which I imagine was still the number one topic of conversation in the country. The clerk did not look at me, although he’d probably gotten some signal that the security door had been opened.
In the corner of the storeroom was a tiny bathroom permanently marked “Under Repair.” I opened the door and again had to push Ghost inside. He was still sluggish and muzzy from the Taser and was recovering very slowly. Tasers are configured to knock out an adult male, not a hundred-pound dog. I’m lucky that son of a bitch hadn’t killed my son of a bitch.
I shut the door and sat down on the closed toilet seat. The stall was immaculate, and when I placed my palm flat on the wall I could feel its solidity and sense the faintest tremble of well-concealed electronics. If this was a safe house approved by Church then it was very likely built with “secure-pod” technology, something one of Church’s friends was bringing to market. An ultrasecure, ultrahardened capsule similar to the escape pod used on Air Force One. This one didn’t go anywhere, but it would offer physical protection and a secure spot for making reports.
Ghost immediately flopped onto the floor and whimpered softly. I bent down and ran my hands over him, checking to make sure that the Taser shock and burn were the only injuries he had sustained.
“You okay, fur-monster?” I asked.
He gave me an “Are you frigging kidding me?” look, but even with that he managed a wag. Just one, but there it was.
“Don’t know about you,” I said, “but I kinda want to switch gears from running and hiding to chasing and maiming.”
He curled a quarter inch of muzzle to show me one fang. Better than nothing.
I examined the briefcase and saw that the locks were even better than they’d first appeared, and small bulges on other side felt like the right size and shape for thermite charges. Force the locks and the case explodes into a white-hot fireball. Not the sort of thing I wanted to do with the case resting on my lap. I set it aside for the moment.
There was a small sink and I turned the spigot and let the water run until it was cold. Then I used some paper towels to wash my face and sponge the garlic out of my nose, trying not to feel as freaked as the situation warranted. Those sons of bitches had tried to stun me with garlic and drive a wooden stake through my heart. That’s something none of the guys back at the DMS is going to story-top.
For the third-or was it the fourth? — time today the immediate rush of adrenaline was flushing itself out of my blood. That fight or flight juice certainly amps you up but when it leaves it tends to take a lot of other things with it. Electrolytes were the least of it. I felt as if I had no energy left at all; I doubted I could go two out of three falls with Betty White.
When I closed my eyes I saw Krystos’s face, the way he looked at the moment I pulled the trigger. I’d made a joke as I killed him. Like I was a hero in some summer action flick. A cheap one-liner while I blasted the life from him.
I pulled out my phone and dialed a number.
Not Church this time.
The call was answered on the third ring.
“Cowboy?” asked Rudy.
“Hey.”
Are you alright?”
“I’m at the safe house. The one Church sent me to. It’s cool. The place is secure.”
“I am very glad to hear that. What about you, Joe? Are you okay?”
“No,” I said, and the word came out fractured. “No, man, I’m not. I just killed a man while he was praying.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
Mustapha’s Daily Goods
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 3:14 p.m.
Rudy and I talked for nearly ten minutes.
“Joe,” he said when I’d finished telling him about Krystos, “what else could you have done?”
“Nothing,” I snapped. “That’s my damn point. What choice did I have except to kill them? I’m not saying that I was wrong, or that I did it wrong. But I made a joke while I was doing it. Jesus.”
“I think we both know that your sense of humor is as much a weapon for you as your fists or your gun. It protects you. It keeps the pain at arm’s length.”
“Except when it doesn’t.”
“Except then, yes,” he conceded. “Tell me, though, does any defense work all the time?”
“Running away?”
“Joe…”
“I know, I know. I just can’t seem to square this in my head.”
“A long time ago,” he said, “or what seems like a long time ago, when we joined the DMS, we talked about this. About how violence always leaves a mark. Only the immoral or mentally unbalanced can kill without taking some harm themselves.”
“We both know where I stand on that score.”
“You are psychologically unique, Joe,” Rudy corrected, “as is everyone. You are the end result of the damage you received and the work you’ve done to understand it and adjust to its presence in your life.”
“Doesn’t address the morals issue.”
“No, but it’s connected. When you were thirteen you had the common moral worldview shared by people of your age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and family environment. When you were fourteen your worldview was knocked askew and you suffered intense physical and emotional trauma. As a result your morality underwent an adjustment. As you entered into a study of martial arts and learned to control your rage while developing dangerous combat skills, you began to understand that there were times and circumstances under which you would be willing to do harm to others. You knew then that if you ever confronted the teens who raped Helen and nearly killed you, that you could do great harm to them without suffering emotional harm from the act. This is not an irrational view given your history. Then, when you entered the military, your worldview was adjusted for you during basic and advanced training. You adopted the soldier’s view of violence, and had you gone into battle I have no doubt that you could have fought and killed without feeling that you were committing immoral acts.”