A Vampyre's Sunrise, Jeff Schanz [best summer books .txt] 📗

passed much earlier in a car crash, named them after famous Dutch painters: Rembrandt van Rijn and Vincent van Gogh. Brandt always hated the reference, preferring the nickname Brandt for himself. Vincent was insistent on sticking with his mother’s original preference, and anyone who tried to shorten it to Vince would be quickly corrected. The boys were opposites in many ways, but they could count on each other. When no one stepped up to take care of them, they decided they needed no one else. Vincent was Brandt’s only family, and there was no question that he needed to know about Lia. The question was how could Brandt make Vincent believe it and not be disowned?

Brandt glanced at his phone and noticed the time. Though he still had a few minutes until he needed to leave, you could never count on L.A. traffic. He stood up, grabbed a quick snack, plucked his car keys from the table, and went out the door.

Even if he was late, dead bodies weren’t going to get up and run away. Usually.

 

 

 

Brandt’s silver Ford F150 truck slowed as it approached the gap in the metal link fence. “Crime Scene” tape that, at one time, had been stretched across the gate, was now shredded and resembled streamers. The fence sagged near the top and pulled away from its support poles in several places. It had originally been erected to keep casual trespassers out, not serious intruders. Those would’ve been dealt with by security men, probably present all over the grounds when this place was occupied. But now, there was no one here. No one alive anyway.

Brandt parked the truck in front of a loading area. The building originally was a manufacturing plant that had gone out of business or moved. The less-than-lawful enterprise that took the building over was more interested in anonymity than curb appeal, so the whole structure was left to rot, and would’ve been condemned if an inspector was allowed to visit. That newer enterprise was now also out of business and gone. Or more accurately, here in body but not in spirit.

Brandt got out of the truck and looked around, but didn’t see the man he was supposed to meet here. It wasn’t too early. The other guy was just late. Leave it to government officials to believe time waited for them.

Ex-Army Sergeant Brandt Dekker had seen enough of the government from his ass-end view after two tours in Afghanistan and being the sole survivor of a terrifying black-ops raid in Pakistan that got him sent home with a head full of nightmares. Nothing else came from the government besides a psych eval, useless medals, and some scattered unofficial apologies. He was also the man who killed The Russian and brought down an international opium empire, garnering him hero status, which also meant that suddenly everyone, including the Army, bent over backward to help him. Some of it was genuine, some of it posturing.

The best of the genuine ones was his buddy from the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Colonel Tom Hart had helped get Brandt’s civilian life back on track, starting with the on-call job Tom gave to Brandt as a special consultant to the military on issues to do with international drug operations.

The Russian’s death sent a shockwave that put a lot of operations into hiding all over the world, and there hadn’t been many things to consult on in the months following the incident. The few assignments he did get, he had been a decent help, which kept him feeling useful. Despite his easy life with Lia on their new ranch, and the lack of money issues, he still had a soldier’s soul that needed a worthwhile job. So today’s call was appreciated, it just wasn’t glamorous.

He was currently waiting in a weed-infested loading dock of a dilapidated warehouse, with dozens of dead bodies supposedly inside, which he could provisionally confirm given the foul odor his nose was picking up. But he wasn’t supposed to go in without Tom’s presence, so his official confirmation would have to wait.

Seventeen minutes late, Tom Hart pulled a black Crown Victoria into the warehouse grounds and parked next to Brandt. He got out with his hands in the air, apologizing before he was fully out of the vehicle.

“Sorry, man, Faye had a crisis with one of the kids,” said Tom. “I had to pull over to search something on WebMD for her. Like she doesn’t have a damned computer in the house.”

Brandt laughed. “It’s more legit if it comes from you.”

Tom grimaced and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Crisis averted. Have you been inside yet?”

“No. You told me I had to wait for you. I figured it would be illegal, or something.”

Tom gave a horse snort. “I’m not sure what you and I are doing is entirely legal to any law enforcement branch, but whatever.”

Tom was a pre-middle-aged man with a balding head and the kind of face that people trusted. Despite the sparse pate and dad bod, Tom had been one of the best officers the Army ever had. He led several successful off-the-books raids, then headed-up intel for similar kinds of missions. Eventually, he wound up driving a desk, supervising people to do the jobs he used to do himself. After Brandt’s first tour, Tom asked Brandt to join one of his squads to do some off-the-books stuff in Afghanistan. Of course, the last one ended badly, just across the border of Pakistan, with the traumatic deaths of Brandt’s squad, but Tom had done right by Brandt since. Brandt would trust Tom with his life, and had already done so on several occasions. And Tom had essentially invented this consulting job just for Brandt.

Tom ducked under the crime scene tape in the loading bay door and Brandt did the same. The two men walked into a large concrete room that housed a collection of mechanical equipment and conveyor belts that were all damaged in varying degrees. It smelled terrible for good reason. Brandt had been told what this meeting was about, though he still wasn’t sure what to expect. Supposedly, there would be a few dead bodies, mutilated similarly to the demise of his own squad in Pakistan. What he saw somewhat fit that description, except there were far more than a few corpses.

“Thirty-six bodies,” said Tom. “At least, by our count. And that’s not for certain since, as you can see, there’s a lot of detached body parts to account for.”

Brandt did see, and what he saw made his stomach acids curdle. He wasn’t squeamish, but Tom had been right about how the bodies had been mutilated, and it all came rushing back in Brandt’s mind: Every man in his squad brutally killed, dismembered, and desecrated, with internal organs and body parts arranged in symbolic patterns as sadistic messages, and the enemy’s urine splattered on them as a final insult. Brandt tried to shake away the memory. The bodies in front of him were enough to focus on.

There was a mix of men and women, mostly Hispanic, very possibly illegal immigrants since they tended to be commonly used in jobs that sought out the most desperate workers. Whoever they were, they were probably just people trying to eke out a dollar to keep their families alive, not hardened, soulless drug manufacturers. The hardened, soulless ones were the people who ran the drug manufacturing business, and were likely responsible for these poor people’s deaths. But he couldn’t assume that yet.

Brandt bent down next to one of the predominantly whole corpses. A small woman with wide hips and a weathered face. She probably had a kid or two somewhere. A husband too, judging by the wedding band. Maybe her husband and kids were among the corpses. Brandt surveyed the bodies on the floor and thought he recognized a few adolescents.

“No bullets or casings found,” said Tom. “All the deaths were inflicted by blades of some kind. At least, we think so.”

“Yeah, that’s what you told me,” said Brandt.

“Sorry, I forgot what I told you.”

Tom cautiously stepped over human bodies on the blood-slick floor and gestured to a corpse that was sitting up, propped against the leg of a conveyor table.

“This one has urine all around the body,” said Tom.

Brandt stood up and nodded. “Just that one?”

“As far as we can tell.” When Tom said, “we,” he meant his fellow investigators in the Army Special Forces. But those men were on payroll to investigate murders, misdeeds, and accusations involving soldiers, etc. They were not trained in drug cartel wars, and that’s why Brandt was called. The USASOC only handled dealings with drug cartels if there was an explicit Army tie somewhere. Though Brandt had his suspicions, Tom hadn’t explained that association yet for this case, but Brandt knew he’d eventually get around to it.

Brandt examined the woman’s corpse at his feet. Her throat had been cut and her limbs and torso were butchered by the same blade. From the way she fell, plus the spacing of the cuts, it appeared to Brandt like the initial wound was her throat, and then they hacked her up after she was already on the ground. There were thirty-six bodies, all likely killed by blades, all mutilated, some dismembered. Some of the limbs were scattered far from their torsos, but many seemed to have been cut off and left in their national positions. And though the urine desecration was the contemptuous signature of The Russian’s cartel, as well as some of the Mujahideen fighters Brandt had known, this one wasn’t contempt. It was suggestive. Made to resemble either The Russian or Mujahideen calling card, but only a singular example instead of every victim. Whatever the reason for marking only the one body, the result was a message to whomever the killers aimed to intimidate with this display, implying that The Russian’s cartel was alive and kickin’, and still lord here.

“Why the hell do they do that?” asked Tom.

Brandt shrugged, trying to will away the memories of his slaughtered Army brethren. “It’s their version of heads on a spike.” Brandt stepped over a few more corpses to approach Tom. “This whole thing is a display, meant to terrorize. How did they find this scene?”

Brandt meant the police. Tom answered, “Anonymous tip. Someone smelled something, heard something, police showed up, and voila.”

Brandt knotted his brow. “There’s no neighbors even close enough to smell or hear anything, and pedestrians and joggers would be too far away outside that fence. Sounds kinda fishy to me.”

“Oh, we know that. The tip was probably bait. So, yeah, I buy what you’re saying about this being a display. But who’s the display for?”

“That I don’t know yet.”

Brandt stepped over a couple more bodies and swiveled slowly. He put his hands on his hips and blew out a frustrated breath.

“I only see workers,” said Brandt. “There’s no bigwigs here.”

Tom took another glance around. “What about the guy who got pissed on?”

Brandt shook his head. “Line foreman, or someone low on the totem pole. Look at his watch.”

“Watch?”

“Cheap plastic job, probably ten bucks from Wal-Mart. The cartel bosses either don’t have watches and use their expensive phones, or have expensive watches to show off. That guy’s watch is just for keeping up with daily production minutes. Plus he wears sneakers, not dress shoes, to be comfortable pacing the floor. He ran the workers not the business.”

Tom wobbled his head side to side. “So, who’s his boss?”

“Not here. Either he ran and escaped, or he just wasn’t around.”

Tom thought and cocked an eyebrow. “If he ran, they’d have just gone after him. No need for this display.”

“Yep. So, either he’s an absentee boss, or this is for someone higher than him.”

“So, alpha-dogs goin’ after each other. Hostile takeover?”

Brandt nodded. “That’s my guess. Turf war.”

“That’s what we were thinking too. But there’s something else confusing us.”

Brandt straightened up and lifted an eyebrow at Tom. “Are we gonna get around to why Army Special Forces gives a shit about