Incubus Dreams   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

Страница: 571 из 605

I was still in the vest, even though I’d pointed out that nothing we were about to go up against would be shooting at us, and vests were useless for stabbing or tearing. I’d run into this before with both military and law enforcement. They just couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that the body armor, their best defense, didn’t help against someone that could crush steel. It was like going up against Superman, and thinking Kevlar would keep you safe. Finally, Sergeant Melbourne said what few special tactical units will ever admit out loud, “We’re using bullets.

Bullets can ricochet, and we’d just feel better if we knew you were safe from friendly fire.” The microphone was integral to the vest and attached to a little earpiece, like the Secret Service wear. They showed me the button for the mike in the center of the vest, near your gun when you were holding it. They made sure the mike worked, someone patted me on top of my helmet, and I was good to go. Or as good as it was going to get. Not going in would have been the good thing, but the vamps had kidnapped that option away from us.

The woman they’d taken was Dawn Morgan, twenty-two, and had only worked at the club about three weeks. They had a picture of her up on their Web site and we’d all seen it. It was a publicity shot for a stripper bar, so we tried to look at her face. Brown hair, about shoulder length, and enough makeup that it was hard to really see her face. She was all blue eyes and red pouting lips. I didn’t ask if the men had a harder time looking at her face than I did. She was covered by hands and a few well-placed pieces of cloth, but the illusion was that more skin was showing than really was. Distracting, and meant to be. I’m sure if Ms. Morgan had been told she’d be kidnapped by murderous vampires, she’d have left us a nice, less glamorous face shot. But you just don’t plan for these kinds of things. We memorized the face of the hostage so we wouldn’t accidentally shoot her during the action. Yeah, that would be bad.

I think that if I hadn’t had my own dangerous toys to play with they would have taken me in unarmed. Most of the tactical team seemed to think I was a civilian and treated me that way. They weren’t rude, just didn’t like the idea of me having a loaded gun at their backs. I guess I couldn’t blame them. I hadn’t had their training. They’d never seen me use a gun. They’d never seen me do this kind of work. They seemed to consider me almost more dangerous than the vampires.

My biggest problem with the vest was that it made it impossible for me to carry the Browning and the Firestar in their current holsters and have any hope of drawing them.

|< Пред. 569 570 571 572 573 След. >|

Java книги

Контакты: [email protected]