Operation (25 page)

As he waited, he thought about how this day was becoming more and more bizarre. Here he was back on active duty and treated like a criminal. Was that a sign they knew what he had done? On the other hand, was this waiting to make him believe that they knew something?
But then,
he thought,
why? Things were—

The sound of a loud click, the unlocking of the door, drove him from his thoughts. He looked at his watch—less then five minutes after he covered the phone with his Navy cover.

Sherlock would be proud.

Reese watched as the woman entered into the room. She looked to be in her forties. Her dark brown hair draped simply around her face. Her clothing was business bland, dark Navy blue and did nothing to accentuate any of her curves—if she had any. Her clothing hung loosely on her, which added to her nondescript figure. In her hands, she held a folder that was crammed with paper documents. As he looked at her eyes, he found them sharply focused on him. Her eyes were fierce: they seemed to burn through him when they centered on him. He began to feel uncomfortable.

“Welcome, Commander Reese. I apologize for keeping you waiting.”

“Are you in charge?” he asked.

“Is anyone ever really in charge?” she said quickly as she stopped in front of Reese.

“Sure. Someone ultimately is. Is that you?”

“Perhaps.”

“Why am I here?”

“Right to the point, aren’t you? The no-nonsense approach is appealing and becoming extremely rare these days.”

“I hope you will take the same approach,” Reese said.

“My name is Samantha,” she said, as she offered her free hand.

Reese grasped her hand. He felt her squeeze his fingers briefly yet with strength. She moved to the far side of the desk and sat in the chair, removing his cover from the telephone, and then handed it back to Reese.

“Mr. Smith was quite perturbed that, you ruined his fun.”

“I bet he was. He needs to seek professional help.”

Reese saw that she tried to stifle a laugh by covering her lips with her hand and faking a cough.

At least she has a sense of humor—hopefully, that’s a good sign.

“Let’s be honest, Commander, shall we?” she began.

“Reese. You can call me Reese.”

“As you wish, Reese,” she said. Her voice lost any hint of the previous humor. “You’re here because of your affiliation with a project called
Team of Darkness
.”

Reese began, “I’m sorry, but I am not allowed to discuss that with—”

“Here is a letter from the Commander of the Special Operations Command, authorizing you to cooperate fully with this agency in regards to this matter.”

Reese examined the letter. One sentence long, simple and to the point:
cooperate fully in regards to the Operation Team of Darkness
. General Morris signed it. Reese knew the name. He was the man in charge of all Special Operations Force, the role which had been vacated by General Stone when he had been murdered.

“You can keep that if you wish,” Samantha said.

“One thing,” Reese said. “It doesn’t specify which agency I am cooperating with.”

“That is on a need-to-know basis, Commander. I’m sure you can understand that based upon your past experience. Just be aware that we have full authority over this matter.”

“Given all that,” Reese said. “Everything I know is on file. It’s probably there in that folder you have. So what’s the point in all this charade of bringing me back on active duty?”

“A little dramatic maybe, but we weren’t sure if you would be willing to cooperate.”

“Cooperate with what? All I know, you already know. So what’s the point?”

“But what I know, you don’t know,” she countered quickly.

“There’s more to this, isn’t there?” Reese asked as he felt his stomach lurch.

“Yes.”

“There’s something else, another problem?” he asked.

“A problem,” she said and smiled. “Yes, a problem. That’s when they call me in: to fix the problems that incompetents cause.”

“And you want my help?”

“Yes. You understand that whatever I tell you is highly classified. What is at stake here is a matter of national security. Your assistance can greatly help us save the United States from a potential threat.”

“Do I have a choice?” Reese asked. “Let’s be truthful, you have me by the balls, don’t you? What are my options if I refuse to help you?”

“Let’s just say that your refusal would be highly frowned upon, Commander. Your actions would be construed as hostile, and dealt with accordingly. Fort Leavenworth is full of many people who have been uncooperative in one way or another. And being a military institution, it is not bound by rules of civilian court.”

“I see. That’s why you brought me back on active duty.”

“As you said, we have you by the balls and there is a steel vise getting ready to squeeze them.”

Trapped.
Reese thought.
They have me whether I want to play in their sand box or not. Damn it, but why go through all this carp? Something must be really hosed up.

“So what is it you need from me?” he asked.

“Your expertise on the Team of Darkness operation. Your interaction with the vampires before their deaths may be crucial in our recovery efforts.”

“The recovery of what?” Reese asked.

“What we have lost, obviously. Or, more appropriately, what has been stolen from us.”

“I’m confused.” Reese said as he felt his stomach tightening even more. “What are we talking about here?”

Is she referring to the Team, and what I did?

 “Your involvement with the vampires ended when you destroyed them when they tried to escape.”

Reese wondered if that was a question or a statement. He also noticed the abrupt change in the direction of the conversation. She probably did it on purpose.

“Yes, that’s true,” he answered. “It’s all on record, for the ninety-ninth time.”

“You destroyed some pretty valuable assets.”

“It seemed the right thing to do at the time,” Reese asserted. “The risk of them getting loose on the populace was too great a chance to take.”

“But your action was uncharacteristic with your feelings, was it not?” She probed.

“What do you mean?”

“Your feelings, and motivations, were well-known. You wanted to study them and learn about them. You wanted to analyze them and learn what made them tick, so to speak.”

“Of course, it’s where my interests lie,” Reese said, trying to sound honestly sincere. After all, that much was actually the truth.

“It must have been a difficult decision for you to make. To press a button and destroy what you sought for so long,” she said.

“It was,” Reese agreed. He felt as if she were examining him to confirm what she suspected. “But as I said, there was a greater risk. During my time with the vampires, especially Dimitri, I learned much about them. They weren’t really that much different from us. If you removed their requirement for blood as a form of sustenance, they had many of the same desires and goals as we do. But they have something more than we do; something that makes them unique.”

“What’s that?” Samantha asked, puzzled.

“They have a history. Where our lives span an average of seventy years or so, theirs is easily hundreds of years. I can’t help wondering how that perspective would make them different from us, to have seen things that we only read of from history books, and what it would be like in the world today if we possessed that much history in our own memories. Maybe we wouldn’t be so messed up and have to have organizations like yours.”

“If they were so like us, why kill them? Why not just set them loose?” she asked.

There’s one of the zingers she’s setting me up for…she led me by the hand nice and slow to get here.

“I think it’s part of the cycle,” Reese explained. “These creatures have been around for centuries and we have just scratched the surface of their role in society, or the world, for that matter. I believe privacy and secrecy is crucial for their survival. When General Stone discovered them, their existence became compromised and that changed everything. Even I was stunned by the confirmation of their existence at first.”

“I don’t follow.” she asked, looking annoyed.

Reese continued. “By their discovery and removal from the Balkans, the entire scheme of their existence was messed up. Bringing them back here was an unnatural event that upset the balance. If they had gotten loose and turned on the local populace or perhaps fallen into the wrong hands, the results could have been disastrous and God only knows how it would affect the cycle of things.”

“I see,” Samantha said. “Your point is well-taken. I think I understand why you killed them. You’re a humanitarian and a patriot at heart, Reese.”

I think, maybe, she believes me.

 
Reese
felt a wave of relief flow through him. “I don’t know about that. I just believe things happen for reasons at certain times. When something or someone upsets the normal progression of things, the consequences can be deadly.”

“I see,” she said, nodding her head. “So you consider what General Stone did an interruption to the natural order of things?”

“Basically, yes,” Reese agreed.

“One more question. Would you do it again?”

“Would I do what again?” he asked, unsure of the inference.

She said calmly but firmly, “If there were vampires here today, let’s say, loose and endangering the populace of Washington, DC—would you kill them again?”

The momentary sense of calm left Reese as well as his breath.

Again…she said again?

“Commander?” she repeated.

“I’m sorry. Your question just…ah…are you saying that there are more vampires? Here in the United States?”

Not answering his question, she continued. “Remember earlier when I said they call me in to fix problems? Well, here I am.”

There was a moment of silence as Reese felt her eyes burning into him, watching for his reaction. He wasn’t sure any more if she was referring to his involvement with the Team or something else, and the something else seemed strange.

“I need an answer to my question, Commander Reese.” Her voice was firm and direct now. “Would you do it again? Would you kill the vampires that pose a potential threat to the local populace and the national security of this country?”

She’s set me up…

Reese knew there was only one answer he could give to the question. She had conveniently set him up through his own responses and the use of rhetoric, maneuvering him perfectly to where she wanted him. If he said anything less then yes, she would have him…as well as Fort Leavenworth.

Play along, John…there’s no other choice right now.

“Yes,” he answered. “Yes, I would,” he repeated it again in a firm tone of voice.

“That’s good, Reese. I’m glad to hear it. I would have hated to end this meeting on a bad note.” Samantha opened the large file in front of her. “Shall we begin?”

“Sure,” Reese said. “Why not? No time like the present…”

Chapter Four

Samantha flipped through the file in front of her, “General Stone was a man of vision as well as duplicity, wouldn’t you say?”

“He was very thorough,” Reese agreed. “I don’t think he missed anything in terms of details.”

“Almost,” she said and let the word hang in the air without further explanation.

Finally, Reese asked, “What do you mean?”

“General Stone set many things into motion, some of which neither you nor anyone else involved with the Team of Darkness op, were aware of.”

“I don’t understand. I was chief advisor to the op,” Reese said. “When he needed something, he came to me.”

“That’s what he wanted you to think,” she said pointedly, as if Reese should have known that. “You honestly didn’t believe you were in his confidence, did you?”

She’s fishing to see exactly how much I know before she tells me what she knows.

Reese didn’t like being played, and he was determined to not let it happen again.

 “Look,” he began. “Can we please stop talking in circles and just tell me what you are getting at?”

Samantha’s face took on a disdainful look. “You’re all alike. It’s as if they cast you from the same mode.”

“Excuse me?” Reese asked, not sure where she was going now.

“Military personnel,” she said. “You’re the worse of the lot. They never admit it in public but they hate taking orders from civilians. Impatient as all hell. So what do they do? Try and be secretive and hide stuff so that they can bring it out later and save the day. General Stone was one of the worst.”

“I assumed the Team of Darkness op was hidden. No one in his or her right mind would have sanctioned such an endeavor with no victorious accomplishment to roll out in front of the public. So I don’t get your point.”

“You’re correct, in terms of not in the public realm anyway. We never learned about what the general was doing until after his death. That was when we learned the other disturbing news.”

“Which was?” asked Reese.

“Redundancy. If you were the general, what would you have done to have a back-up plan?”

Reese said the first thing that came to his mind. “We only had the four vampires. We could have separated them into two groups in case one was discovered or killed.”

“But you never did that, did you?”

“No,” he agreed.

“And why do you think General Stone never did it?”

“The obvious answer would have been that he had other vampires in case something went wrong—a second Team. But that wasn’t possible because there were no other vampires.”

“Not at the beginning.”

Reese felt his world tremble beneath him.
Not at the beginning…

“What do you mean?” he asked. “They were closely monitored at all times. Besides, Dimitri would never have allowed any other vampires to be created.”

“You think you knew the creature that well?” she asked skeptically.

“Well enough on this issue,” Reese shot back. “If he wanted to, he had the perfect opportunity when Lieutenant Johnson was dying from wounds during an op, but Dimitri refused to make him a vampire. Johnson wanted to become a vampire. He admired Dimitri and their capabilities. But still Dimitri refused him.”