The President's Vampire by Christopher Farnsworth Read Free Book Online Page B

what its ultimate goal was—not even most of the people who worked for it.
    One thing was certain: it had forged alliances with the things Cade was supposed to stop and kill. It had made a deal with the devil. Literally.
    Zach had encountered the Company on his first assignment with Cade. A small cell of operatives, led by a sociopathic blonde named Helen Holt, tried to kill Cade with fifty pounds of C4 and, later, assassinate the president. They failed, but only just barely. Along the way, Zach had almost died in the bomb attempt before being tortured for hours by one of the Company’s operatives.
    So yeah, Zach had issues with anything involving the Company.
     
     
    “WHAT DO WE DO NOW?” Zach said.
    “No chance you’ll let Colonel Graves handle this?” Prador asked.
    Cade simply gave Prador a look. Zach, however, laughed out loud.
    “You tell us there’s an extinction-level threat in the hands of the Shadow Company, and you want us to go home and let the senior-citizen special handle it? Not a chance. It’s his company that’s involved. For all we know, he’s working with them.”
    Graves spoke up. “I have a suggestion.”
    “Yeah, well, I don’t want to hear it,” Zach snapped.
    “We work together.”
    “That’s . . . surprisingly reasonable,” Zach said.
    “You’ll need our assistance and resources. And frankly, we’ll need Cade’s experience at dealing with this kind of threat.”
    Zach hesitated. “You’re asking us to trust you.”
    “At least as much as we’re trusting you.”
    “We don’t need your help,” Cade said.
    Prador sighed with impatience. “ Enough ,” he said. “Almost a year ago, this organization very nearly killed the president. It knows things that no one outside the White House is supposed to know. And we still don’t have the first clue about it. You’re supposed to protect the president, Cade. So I’m telling you—I’m ordering you—to work with Colonel Graves on this. As far as you’re concerned, an order from him is an order from me. Is that clear?” Prador glared at Cade.
    Cade, however, looked at Zach. Again, the barest movement of his head. This time, a nod.
    It had all the hallmarks of a good compromise: it didn’t look like it was going to make anyone happy.
    Zach nodded back.
    Cade said to Prador, “I’ll follow your orders.”
     
     
    IT ONLY TOOK THEM a moment to decide how to proceed. Cade and Graves would go into the field and investigate the trail of the shipment; they would try to find out where it originated. They’d also try to deal with any other outbreaks of Snakeheads—the name Zach had given them—before they could spread their infection.
    Zach, meanwhile, would stay in D.C. and work with some of Graves’s analysts, trying to figure out where the Shadow Company had managed to infiltrate Archer/Andrews, and find a cure for the Snakehead virus.
    They were about to leave when Graves asked Zach a question.
    “Just out of curiosity, what led you to the pirates in the first place?”
    Maybe they were working together now, but for Zach, it wasn’t even a close call. He wasn’t about to reveal their sources on this one.
    “We had a report of nonhuman activity in the area. It was related to something that happened on the Ugandan border a year or so back.”
    “What kind of a report?”
    “Tracks,” Zach said. “There were nonhuman tracks found and photographed.”
    Graves looked aghast.
    “Tracks? You flew halfway across the planet and slaughtered a bunch of people on a boat for tracks? You know those can be faked by a ten-year-old with cardboard on his sneakers, right?”
    “But they weren’t, were they?”
    Zach and Cade went to the door. Prador offered his hand to Zach before he left.
    “Sorry about all this. Just goes to show we’re all on the same side, right? Fighting the same battles.”
    Zach smiled at that. “You ought to catch the fight live sometime. It’s a little different than the view from behind a