Operation (9 page)

“But we can get in right now,” Iliga offered. “Why should we wait? They cannot stop us.”

“Are you sure?” Dimitri asked. “Do you not remember that they learned ways to hurt us—to kill us? This is not an ordinary human place we are looking at to break into.”

“They will not be expecting an attack from the outside. We will overcome them easily,” Iliga asserted.

“You may be correct, my friend, but it is too risky,” Dimitri said, keeping his voice calm and reassuring.

“Risky? How?” Iliga asked.

“Do you forget, we are supposed to be dead?” Dimitri said with a wry smile. “If they knew or even suspected that we were alive, you can imagine what they would do to get us back. They would hunt us down again. We would have to hide again and lose the freedom we now enjoy.”

“Yes, I have forgotten,” Iliga said. “Forgive me.”

Dimitri turned toward his friend and placed his hand on his shoulder. “There is nothing to forgive, old friend. I suggest caution to protect the life we have in their modern world. Things would be different if we were back home where things were simpler.”

Iliga smiled and nodded his head in agreement. “You are a good leader, Dimitri.”

“We will see,” Dimitri said.

“What is your plan?” Andre asked.

“We observe them for a while,” Dimitri began. “Study their movements, find out which SEAL team is guarding the compound, learn where they go when they are off work so that we have access to them. When we are ready, we will go inside as they do, we will look like they do, act like they do. If there are others like us inside, we must make it appear as if they were stolen or kidnapped by humans. We must misdirect any attention to the fact they we might be alive. That is very important. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Andre said, and Iliga nodded his head in agreement.

“We must think like they do if this is to work,” Dimitri said and then, with an ironic chuckle, added, “We must be human in order to protect our vampire life.”

“What if…” Andre began, but drifted off as if he did not want to ask the question.

“Speak.” Dimitri said. “We must think as one. All questions and thoughts must be shared and answered.”

“What if there is some of our kind in there and they don’t want to come with us?”

Dimitri didn’t have an answer for that.

He had not considered the possibility that others like himself, or like his friends, would want to remain a captive of the humans. Was it actually a possibility? He didn’t know or couldn’t fathom what motive would cause such an alliance. As he thought about it, the remote possibility worried him. If the individual was obsessed by motives of hatred or vengeance, and killed for joy rather than food or survival... Killing for pleasure...Josip and Lauki... Dimitri’s memories of Josip interrupted his surveillance. Memories of a friend from the same village.

Always a bit reckless Josip, when he became a vampire, got worse. Josip toyed with the human, Idriz Lauki. He learned to kill for pleasure, and it got him killed. Of Lauki and Josip, who were consumed with killing one another. It began with Josip killing Idriz’s parents. In revenge, Idriz saturated the blood of a cow with a deadly elixir. Placing the cow near where his parents died, he hoped to lure their murderer by tempting him with an easy meal of stray cow. Franjo, passing by, saw the cow and drank from it. He died a horrible death, the elixir causing him to spontaneously combust. Josip coming by just in time to witness his death and watching as his remains—a pile of ashes—quickly dissipated into the night air.

Josip, enraged, vowed revenge for the death of Franjo. The forced hibernation of all the local vamps until things cooled down with the surrounding villages and returned to a sense of normality. Josip conceded to the hibernation, but wasted no time seeking his revenge upon awakening. He learned that Idriz had married and had two daughters. While his wife had died, but his daughters flourished, Josip took his revenge by brutally killed them both, causing Idriz to go insane with rage.

Idriz turned to the American peacekeeping forces that occupied Kosovo and the surrounding regions. The investigation forcing the group to attack them. The killings led to their exposure and their discovery and capture by the Navy SEALs. The military quickly realized their usefulness and their intended use in military operations.

During their time in captivity by the United States military, both Josip and Idriz planned their own revenge against each other. However, it was Idriz who realized he had nothing to lose—he had already lost everything he had loved and life meant nothing to him. He plied favors with the military captors through his promise of giving them the formula of the elixir. He bided his time. Slowly, he saturated his own blood with the elixir, as he had done with the cow that killed Franjo. He taunted Josip until he could not refuse attacking him. When Josip attacked and killed Idriz, he ingested the elixir and they both died. A perverted circular justice, but at least it had finally reached an end. They both achieved what they sought, but Josip’s death left only three of the original five friends alive—and Dimitri vowed to not do anything that might jeopardize their existence.
 

“Dimitri? What if there is one of us in there and they don’t want to come with us?” Andre repeated his question.

“We will have to think about that,” Dimitri said, as he left his memories and returned to Andre’s question. He knew it was not an answer, but it was the best he could do for now. “We must be very careful to not reveal our presence. We need to remember what they taught us and how they trained us to be like them—the SEALs. We watch, we learn and we act. We begin tonight.”

*****

Nights passed as Dimitri and his men maintained a vigil at the compound, observing the operation and watching the off-duty teams: where they went and what they did. The military routine was as precise as clockwork. Dimitri wondered if they realized that their precision made them an easy target. If they too followed the same attention to detail as the SEALs guarding it, it would be simple to get in and to get out again. Dimitri decided that tonight would be the last night of observing the compound. They had gathered enough detail about the routine of the guards to execute their plan to get into the facility. As long as the first part of the operation went as planned, they would be in the compound tomorrow night.

They were about to leave when three white vans pulled up to the main gate and then proceeded toward the inner compound area.

“Wait a minute,” Dimitri said, as he checked his watch. “This is not a normal delivery. Look at the three-vehicle arrangement. They are transporting something important.”

“That is the same way they used to move us,” Andre added.

“Yes, I believe you are correct,” Dimitri agreed. “Perhaps we will be lucky tonight and see who or what it is that they have in there.”

The vans came to a stop at the entrance of the compound. The doors on the first and third van opened and Navy SEALs jumped out and assumed a defensive posture that Dimitri recognized. It was the same procedure used with them: the two-man rule they called it, always a backup in case something should go wrong.

The doors of the middle van opened. Dimitri and his men anxiously waited to see who would come out of the van. But when the two figures emerged, there was nothing but silence as they watched the two young girls emerge from the van.

At first, Dimitri thought they had been mistaken and that the van did not carry what they looked for. Then Dimitri saw that both of the little girls wore the collars around their necks—the same ones that they too had worn. Something else about them nagged at his subconscious, but whatever it was eluded him. He knew he needed a closer look; at this great of a distance, he could not be sure what it was that demanded his attention about them.

He continued to stare at the two figures as they were escorted inside the facility.

“This can’t be,” Andre said, finally breaking the silence.

“You see it with your own eyes as I do,” Iliga said. “They are children.”

“Children? Who would make children into vampires?” Andre said.

“Dimitri? Are you alright?” Iliga asked. “You’re very quiet.”

“I thought I saw—it was nothing,” he said, letting the thought drift away. “I too can’t believe they have children. Why would they do that? What good could they be—” he started to say, but then remembered the news they had heard a few days ago.

Five Navy SEALs killed in one night and one of them had the vampire blood on him. Could these children have been responsible? Logic dictated the answer had to be yes unless there was
another
vampire beside the children. That was not impossible, he figured—but an extreme long shot at best. Still, the concept of children confused him—where had they come from and who were they? Why had General Stone turned children into vampires? 

Dimitri suddenly remembered what it that General Stone had said about vampires: that they, vampires, were the perfect killing machine. But what did that have to do with these children? How did children fit into all of this?

Then it came to him. Children represented innocence. Children could virtually go anywhere without suspicion. Nobody was worried that children were going to…kill.

Dimitri didn’t like the way things were adding up. In some way, Stone had set into motion a plan to make his perfect killing machine even more perfect.

“We must get them out of there,” Dimitri said. “This madness must come to an end once and for all—whatever the cost. We will make our move tomorrow night.”

Chapter Six

Dimitri, Andre and Iliga entered the outer door from the parking lot into a large foyer area of the bar, their attention drawn to the wooden sign that hung over the entryway. It read:

Death is better than defeat—defeat you have to live with.

Dimitri turned to the others and smiled at the irony.

The bar, Uncle Harry’s; was located outside the Naval Amphibious base in Norfolk, Virginia. Sailors, including Navy SEALs, often frequented it. Although the Navy policy regarding alcohol and drinking was pro-abstinence, it was a habit for sailors to drink, so it was common to see signs in the area reading:

Sailors and Dogs Stay Off the Grass.

As they opened the inner door to the bar, they were assaulted by loud jukebox music with a distinctive country & western twang. The mixture of the sound and scents momentarily gave the vampires sensory overload. After a few seconds of sensory adjustment, Dimitri and the others approached the bar.

“What’ll you have?” the young woman behind the bar asked.

Dimitri allowed his eyes a few seconds to examine the woman. He found her quite attractive, with her flowing shoulder-length blonde hair, trim and firm body, as well as the blue eyes, set into a soft looking face. She had long legs; close to six feet tall, and well tanned skin. The low cut halter-top she wore “artistically” exposed attractive amounts of her chest to the clientele at the bar.
A great tip enhancer
, Dimitri thought.

She placed three napkins on the bar with the speed and finesse of a Las Vegas dealer; it was obvious to even a casual observer she had been doing this for quite a while. As she accomplished these tasks, her eyes scanned the bar, looking to see if she was wanted elsewhere. The place was full of customers, yet she was the only person tending to the bar. Dimitri thought that this was another indication of the thoroughness of her abilities.

“Three of your finest scotch and waters,” Dimitri said.

*****

The woman glanced at Dimitri and stopped her practiced bartender movements as if she had heard something worthy of interrupting her attention to her automated tasks.

“Well, hello there,” she said smoothly as she smiled. She immediately found herself captivated by the looks of the man before her. He was tall and muscular but not bulky. His hair was a dark black, his chin sharp, with aquiline nose, but it was his eyes that attracted her the most. They were black, the blackest she had ever seen, and she felt that he could see right through her with those eyes. She involuntarily shuddered, unsure whether it was from fear or excitement.

“Scotch and water?” she asked.

“Yes. Three, please.”

She loved the sound of his voice. The tones and inflexion seemed to dance on her skin. She got goose bumps on her arms and a tingling sensation suffused her. She forced herself to turn away from him, feeling embarrassed at her own reaction. She busied herself making the drinks, reminding herself that he was a customer and the Golden Rule (never get involved with customers…never.)

As she began to place the first drinks on the bar, she took a moment to observe the other two men that accompanied him. She had the immediate feeling that they had been friends for a very long time; a sense of familiarity between them that was almost physical. They were also similar in regards to features; she assumed they were all from the same ethnic or cultural area. However, that was where it ended.

There was an air about them; a notable difference in the way they acted. The two men remained behind him, almost in some kind of protective arrangement, as if watching his back. Yet, as she continued to watch, she noticed something else. As they looked at the man seated at the bar, their facial expressions seem to change in a way, the little motions that your face goes through when you are conversing, the nodding, eye movement, twist or movement of lips, yet there was no sound. After a few moments, they moved off and mingled into the crowd.

“Here you go,” she said placing the third drink on the bar. “That’s fifteen dollars.”

“Thank you,” he said as he placed two twenties on the bar. “Keep the change.”

“Thanks,” she said as she scooped up the money.
Not only good looking but a great tipper…hmmm…this gets better by the moment.
“So, where did your friends go?”

“They are…looking for someone,” Dimitri said.