Dracula Dossier 48: The Man Comes Around

“The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup
Or disappear into the potter’s ground?
When the man comes around”
– Johnny Cash, The Man Comes Around

London, Two Days Ago…

“Go secure.”

“Secure.”

“Hound – D here. Prince says our favourite freelancers have picked up a Mossad kill team in Tel Aviv and boarded a flight to Buenos Aires. Take some Jacks and find out what they’re up to.”

“Sir. Rules of engagement?”

“Observe and report. If you must choose a side, it would be useful if our biological assets were fully independent.”

“Understood.”

Northwest Argentina, Last Night

The team decide to split the party, with Cartwright, Ritter and Vincent heading off on an eight-hour round trip to the airport to plant a bomb in Dracula’s helicopter in the hope of killing Varkony, while the rest double back to the Inca ruins to investigate the cave there.

Cartwright convinces the rest that the hotel booking and the helicopter are decoys, with Dracula arriving via road from the south and going directly to the ceremonial mound in the ruins; so once those two side quests are dealt with, they will get Hopkins to insert dummy road closures into the satnav data for the other ways into Londres, then set up an ambush on Ruta Nacional 40.

Lonely begins by stealing some outerwear and boots left in a hut by a construction worker to mask his scent from any werewolves that might be around. With Smyth and Emilia providing remote support, he sneaks through the wire fences marking off the Eastern Ceremonial Mound and up to the cave on the south side of the mound. Pausing on the threshold, he can hear a bored conversation in Spanish between two guards and see the glow of a lit cigarette. Pulling his night vision gear into place, he sees the cave has a variety of crates, with two guards sitting on some of them, and beyond the guards, an opening leading deeper into the mound.

After some consideration, he decides to try sneaking past the guards to examine what’s beyond them. Using the crates as cover, he manages this, and finds himself descending some stairs into a room perhaps nine metres by eleven, again with a number of crates scattered around, and double doors at the far end. Lonely has seen this kind of crate twice before, and both times it has been in one of Dracula’s secret biowarfare laboratories. He steals up to the doors and can hear footsteps beyond them, approaching. He takes cover among the crates and is disconcerted to see a werewolf emerge from the corridor beyond. It pauses on the threshold, nose wrinkling; that smell is like one of his colleagues, and at the same time, also not like them.

While it’s puzzling this out, Lonely steps forward boldly and unloads a pepper spray full on its muzzle, before turning to run back up the stairs as it sneezes violently and roars imprecations at him in Spanish, which fortunately he does not speak.

He is through the cave and out running down the mound before the guards can react, and when they do emerge and open fire, he is ducking and weaving some way off amid the scrub. The guards don’t pursue, apparently concerned Lonely might be a decoy to lure them out of position.

Ruta Nacional 40, Late Last Night

“Sorry to bother you, my Lord, but there has been an incursion at the Mound. No apparent damage, but the squad following the Europeans also ran into trouble – we lost five of eight, and both cars.”

“Don’t apologise for doing your job. Double the guard.”

“Already done, my Lord. Will you cancel the visit?”

“No, it hasn’t helped before – they just keep coming. Better to face them now, they’ll expect me to be helpless during the day. Driver, pull over. Werewolves – strip and shift to wolf form, they may try an ambush, I want you ready for it. Everyone else – into body armour, now. Enrique, pass me a set too.”

“One more thing, my Lord. A new group of tourists has arrived in Londres, from England. They don’t look like real tourists; one woman and four men. I’m sending a picture to your phone now.”

“Ah. That is Hound and her Jacks. EDOM has come to see who wins. I expect they will try to ally with me again once I have disposed of this rabble.”

Coronel Felipe Varela International Airport, Late Last Night

Ritter spots all the armed security who should have gone home by now, and guides Vincent and Cartwright through the laughably lax security at the airport. Cartwright conceals a radio-controlled bomb on Dracula’s helicopter; at this time of year there is one flight each day, arriving at 10 AM from Buenos Aires and flying back again an hour later. Sometime around 11 AM, therefore, the chopper will take off and fly to Londres.

Handing off control of the bomb to Hopkins, the team sneaks back out again and heads to a rendezvous on Ruta Nacional 40.

Ruta Nacional 40, Earlier This Morning

Ruta 40 is very long, very straight, and quite narrow, with knee-high to waist-high scrub along much of it, but nothing in the way of trees bigger than a man. By identifying where the Martinez family has property, the team is able to guess where Dracula came ashore and where he is likely to get on – and off – Ruta 40, and thus identify a suitable section of road for their ambush.

They’re unable to drop a tree blocking both lanes – there aren’t any that big – but did manage to scrounge a police stinger from EDOM earlier to blow out the tyres – they won’t help but are willing to provide minimal deniable support – and make up a pipe bomb, which they conceal in a culvert.

They alert Hopkins to insert the fake roadworks and delays into the satnav systems. They won’t last long before they’re checked and rooted out, but they only need a few hours. Then it’s just a matter of waiting.

Coronel Felipe Varela International Airport, Earlier This Morning

Shortly before 11 AM, Varkony and two other figures – both male, both bulky – emerge from the single airport building and make for the helicopter. They settle in on board without appearing to notice anything out of the ordinary, and soon they are airborne.

Once they reach an altitude of a hundred metres or so, Hopkins triggers the bomb; the helicopter bursts into flames and plummets to the ground. Within seconds, armed “airport security” drive an SUV to the crash site and rummage through the blazing wreckage; picking one of the charred and broken bodies from the debris, they stand guard over it until an ambulance arrives.

“I need whole blood, stat,” says one of the guards. The ambulance’s paramedic opens his mouth to protest, then sees an SMG raised to his face and thinks better of it.

“Right away,” he says.

Ruta Nacional 40, Now

The PCs hide the cars a little way off their IED in the culvert and take cover in the scrub. The Sayaret Aluka operators have M16A2s with M203 underslung grenade launchers, three loaded with 40mm grenades and one loaded with a hawthorn wood stake for close-in vampire defence – that’s the one next to Ritter. Ritter and Vincent have AK47s, Cartwright has a shotgun with an M203 , Emilia is in wolf form and Smyth and Lonely are running their thumbs thoughtfully along their blades.

Three black SUVs with smoked glass windows approach from the south at a leisurely pace. Everyone gets ready, then as the front vehicle passes over the culvert bomb, Cartwright sets it off, flipping it over. The other two vehicles gun their engines to accelerate past the wreckage, but before they can do so, those with automatic weapons and grenade launchers pop up out of cover and open fire. Ritter shoots out a window on the middle car, and one of the SA operators lobs a 40mm grenade from her launcher right through it, killing three of the occupants outright. Vincent’s grenade launcher is aimed at the rearmost car and through some fluke cranks the stereo up to full volume, pumping out incongruously cheerful pop music which is periodically drowned out by explosions and bursts of gunfire. Lonely, perhaps a bit late, fires the police stinger, which will at least blow the tyres out of anything trying to go back down the road to get away.

The initial volley of fire brings all three vehicles to a halt, unable to move further; the doors open and those inside spill out while Messy the Wander Dog flees in terror. In line with their training, the guard detail charges their ambushers, the Renfields firing SMGs from the hip. One Renfield and one werewolf charge Ritter and Wound him in melee as his attached SA operator tries to bring her weapon to bear. A similar pair barrels into Lonely, but by some miracle he escapes harm. A third such couple charge Cartwright and his SA operator; she is killed instantly by a cruel blow from the Renfield, while the werewolf slashes ineffectually at Cartwright. Vincent, by virtue of being further away from the fighting, is unengaged. Each of the other two SA operators is in hand-to-hand with a Renfield.

Emilia and Smyth, meanwhile, face off against The Man Himself.

To be concluded…

GM Notes

I made half-a-dozen mistakes applying the combat rules this session, but they all more or less cancelled out, and I’m not a huge fan of do-overs. I also dialled back the Renfields and werewolves from Wild Cards to Extras, as the GM workload with a dozen enemy Wild Cards on the board is just too much.

I think on the whole that was a fun and exciting session. Off-screen, Ida Varkony survived the bomb and the helicopter crash, but it will be 2-3 days before she’s back online, and it’ll all be over by then; I can’t see it taking more than one session to close out the campaign now.