Vampire in Atlantis

Chapter 30

Colonel Brig St. Ives had been a full-bird colonel in the U.S. Air Force back in the days before vampires and werewolves and all the other beasties from the especially ugly bedtime stories and campfire tales decided to make his life a living hell. Now he was forced to work with a bunch of jarheads, squids, coasties, and FBI suits in a joint paranormal operations task force, and frankly he’d rather have been doing something more fun—anything more fun—like sitting on a beach drinking beer, or, hey, maybe picking porcupine quills out of his ass with a crowbar.

Had to be more fun than this. He hadn’t seen daylight in three days. Missed his wife. Was going to miss the birth of his first grandkid in the next day or so if he didn’t get the fuck out of this hole. So when the call came, he was more relieved than anything else.

“Time to go, sir. We’ve had radio silence from Smithson for seven minutes past his designated check-in time.” The fresh-faced lieutenant standing at attention in front of Brig’s battered steel desk made him tired.

Had he ever been that young?

Surely not.

“Sir?”

“Seven minutes, Lieutenant? He’s a banker, not a marine. Seven minutes just means he spilled his latte on his candyassed suit, or took a shit and lost track of time. We don’t call a go on seven civilian minutes late.”

“Sir, yes sir, but you said—”

“At ease, Lieutenant. I know what I said. I also know that we’re going to wait until sixteen thirty, and then if we don’t hear, we’re going to call him, and then and only then will we proceed with Operation Tombstone.”

“Sir, yes, sir.” The former sailor turned P-Ops flunky saluted sharply and executed a precision turn to leave the office.

Brig just sighed. Operation Tombstone. What the hell these jokers in Washington were thinking, he didn’t know. Just because the banker running this scam on the region’s head vamp happened to live in the same state as the legendary gunfight, didn’t mean it had fuck-all to do with this op. Whatever asswipe had decided the men needed to salute indoors was another paper-pushing moron, too.

But nobody’d asked him. He was just an old pilot, stuck behind a desk, ready to hand off the reins. Ready to meet his grandkid. Ready to make love to his wife again.

He pushed a button on his phone, and the lieutenant’s crisp voice sounded through the line. “Sir?”

“Better get them ready to go, son. Just in case.”

Never hurt to be prepared.