He was just finishing up, closing up the engine compartment door when his phone rang.
“Bobcat Aviation, this is Bill speaking. Where can we fly you today?”
Bill heard a nice voice over the phone ask him about his availability for flying immediately. “Yes, I’m open today. Is it going to be you and another, or just you?” Hey, she sounded good on the phone—maybe it would be a long flight. Since getting out of the military a couple of years back he was doing OK, but the business was taking all of his time. His ability to meet women was seriously curtailed. Besides, the Black Hawk already demanded all of his money. There wouldn’t be any left to share with another woman. The Black Hawk was a jealous girlfriend.
“You’re asking about the Black Hawk? Yes, it’s available as well but it would be really expensive, ma’am. About $5,000 an hour. How much for the rest of the day?” Crap, this was fantastic. Getting to fly the Black Hawk and actually make money instead of sucking gas fumes. Thank god.
“I can cut you a deal at $35,000, but that isn’t total air time. That just means you have my attention for the rest of the day until midnight. Any extra fuel over 500 miles will be added to the bill.”
Bill got concerned. “You need me downtown? I can’t do that. The aviation rules won’t permit me to do that. Yes, if you take care of that I can get out there. Ma’am, if I start now before I get approval you will get a bill for $5,000. That’s a big risk. OK, I’ll do it.”
Bill got the credit card info and went to his computer. She had told him to put a hold on the credit card for $50,000 and damned if it didn’t go through.
He went whistling over to the little electric four-wheeler he used to push the helicopter out of the hangar. He was going for a ride whether he got the job or not. $5,000 would be enough for the gas and at least an hour of playing and he would still have enough for the rent this month.
Ten minutes later, he got an incoming call from Washington D.C. that gave him clearance and the coordinates of his pickup. Son of a bitch. He was told this was for a police action and that according to his military jacket he had the security clearance to know how to keep his mouth shut. While he couldn’t be ordered, it would be appreciated. The veiled threat was that if he opened his mouth, life could become hard.
Although it rankled him that someone would try to put the screws to him, he never talked about any of his clients. He certainly wouldn’t talk about a woman who had a credit card that didn’t even flinch at a $50k approval.
He went through the preflight, got his clearance and the bird was aloft, heading downtown.
He landed in a large park in the middle of a soccer field with three large black SUVs on one side and men around the perimeter making sure no one came close to his landing spot. As he was setting down the second SUV pulled out and started driving on the field. Stopping a few feet outside the main rotor wash, the door opened and four guys in black fatigues with full battle rattle got out of the SUV and, holy hotdogs in heaven, there was a female in battle rattle, but with black leather pants. If she was the lady on the phone he certainly wasn’t talking to anyone about her. Damn, he wished it was a flight for one.
The group opened the door and the lady came in third. The last two got in and closed the door. The lady came up. “Mr. Carlson?”
Bill picked up a second pair of headphones and handed them back. Bethany Anne put them on and immediately it helped compensate for the loudness of the helicopter. “That’s so much better. So, let’s try this again. Mr. Carlson?”
“Yes, but call me Bill or Bobcat, it’s my nickname.”
“From the service?”
“Yes.”
“All right, Bobcat. My name is Bethany Anne and behind you is my team leader John, plus Eric, Darrell and Scott. I need you to take us to within a hundred feet above the Southeast Financial Center. Hover there for sixty seconds after I pat you on the shoulder and then leave going the same direction for five miles. After that, I want you to just fly wherever you want to. I have your cell phone so if I need you, I’ll call you back. Make sense?”
“Yes. Fly over to Southeast Financial Center. Count to sixty after the tap and then fly straight five miles and then pretty much wherever I want. You’ll call if you need me.”
“Right, just make sure you have enough fuel if I need you, OK?”
He grinned, it would mean he went down a couple of extra times, but that was OK. “Sure, no problem. I’ll fly into a nearby airport for fuel in case you call me while I’m on the ground.”
“Sounds good. Let’s go.”
She handed him back the headphones. Damn, he wasn’t going to be able to get her number. Wait, he had it on his cell phone already. Sweet!
The Black Hawk helicopter landing in the park was the main topic for the local kids for a week. Finally, a school fight became the new topic when a teacher got punched in the nose.
As they approached the tower, she turned to her team. “All right, if you aren’t comfortable with trusting me, now’s the time to admit it and pussy out. Anybody in the ‘not trusting’ category raise your hand.”
All of them just smiled at her; she smiled back. “OK, we’re about to do something that is team only. I don’t want this getting out because it can and will be used against you and me. I’m going to get each of you down to the top of the building from the helicopter. Darrell, you and Scott are going second. Make sure you have those blood bags. Let me have one now.
Bethany Anne took a bag and started drinking, a little self-conscious doing it around the guys. John just winked at her.
When the Black Hawk started slowing down they double-checked their gear and Bethany Anne moved both Scott and Darrell back and told them, “On pain of death, you two wank-lickers better not move an inch, you understand?” They both grabbed a handhold and promised themselves that nothing could cause them to move from this spot. She nodded to Eric who opened the door. She quickly looked out and down at the top of the building below. She leaned over to the pilot and patted him on the shoulder, then turned around and ran towards the door, grabbed John and Eric in a vice-like grip, and all of them disappeared.
Scott and Darrell were shocked. They wanted to look to see if they were splattered over the rooftop or not. The next thing they knew, she was back in the helicopter, closed the door and grabbed both of them. Fifteen seconds later the helicopter left the airspace and headed towards Hollywood, Florida. Bobcat was the only one in the aircraft.
Down below, the team shook off their surprise, got their op faces on and started towards the door into the building. The team found the main stairway and headed down. Floor numbers were painted on the doors in green, making it easy to keep track of their location.
Bethany Anne left them at level forty-seven. By the time she came back, the team had made it to twelve and they were breathing hard. Down is easier than up, but it still isn’t easy.
She let them know that the group in the basement had been wiring up explosives to take the building down. There was a newly made hole that led to a tunnel. That was where her team was going to exit if possible.
She let the team rest while she filled them in. The terrorists were in contact with each other every three minutes. So, they had three minutes to take care of everything.
This might suck.
She asked for any ideas. Eric suggested that the team could split up. She could take a group and two teams of two could go after the other two groups.
Worked for her. The first priority was the safety of the hostages. Then the charges in the basement. She wanted the last guys to be the ones hitting the computers as she wanted them to answer a few questions. She took the second bag of blood from Darrell and drank the contents. Getting all of them down off of the Black Hawk hadn’t taxed her energy too much, but she hadn’t topped off either. She didn’t really want to drink this coppery tasting stuff so she only did it when in a situation that warranted extraordinary actions. Two bags left. She told Darrell to give one to Eric so each team would have one if she needed it. Scott
gave everyone a set of fake fangs and then everyone played a fast game of rock paper scissors and Eric was the first loser. He didn’t get a pair. The other three put in their contact lenses. Everyone agreed that it didn’t cause too much of a distraction to their eyesight. On an op with a huge chance to blow up into a PR nightmare, they needed to make sure that Bethany Anne’s heritage, as recent as it was, was hidden in broad daylight.
So to speak.
They all put their fangs, including Bethany Anne, in a pocket of their vest. No one could talk well with them. They would use them later after the main hit if they needed to.
There were smiles all around. These men were hardened vets against the Nosferatu. Their reaction times were against pros that even spec-ops teams couldn’t compete against. This team had just taken down two by themselves and had come out the meat grinder on the other side whole. Now, they had the best fucking leader in the world who trusted them to get the job done, they wouldn’t fail her or the hostages downstairs.
It was time to party.
They carefully made their way down to the fifth floor to the server rooms. Scott and Darrell stepped out of the stairwell, carefully signaled back to the door they were clear and slowly made their way to the area where the guys were hacking the computers.
Bethany Anne stopped at the main floor and motioned John and Eric to signal her when in place.
The minute it took them to get ready allowed her to focus her hearing on what was going on with the hostages. She heard a few women and one man crying. A couple of times she heard someone get a beating with the stock of a gun and a huge number of threats. Bethany Anne was getting pissed. Her eyes were glowing red and her fangs had involuntarily grown to the longest length they ever had. No one would be mistaking her fangs for makeup right now.
She fucking hated it when someone in a position of power took advantage of others. She wondered what these assholes would do if the tables were turned? Would they shout and berate others if they were helpless? She heard one woman scream to her child to come back to her. That tore it, she was going in early. As she opened the door, she heard the click.
Good timing, men. Good timing. She quickly clicked a reply and tore into the first man without even slowing down. He had his rifle poised to strike a toddler who was crying and just blindly running. She backhanded the man, throwing his body, now headless, back into a large decorative tree in the lobby. His body hit the trunk and stopped, then slumped over.
The next two closest to her had been waiting to see the expected beatdown of the child. Their faceplates each received two .45 rounds, blowing chunks of their helmets out the backs of their heads, peppering the hostages on the floor with brain matter and plastic. Couldn’t be helped.
The three other men were on the opposite side of the room. There was no way for her to run through the audience. This room had thirty foot high ceilings. She ran to a wall and kicked backwards off of it aiming to jump over the hostages and then used her ability to slip through the etheric and appeared twenty feet in the air right above the middle tango. She started shooting as gravity took over and all three were dead before she dropped ten feet. She landed by the first tango, sprawled on the ground with his blood draining from the holes in the top of his head. She quickly ran over behind a decorative tree and slipped back through the etheric to the safety of the stairwell. She clicked her headset once to let everyone know her task was complete.
She started racing up the stairs to get back to level five. The group in the basement had three members. She was confident John and Eric could take them out.
Down below, John and Eric had eased into the room and blocked the stairway door from closing so it didn’t make a sound. They weren’t sure how Bethany Anne had made it in and out and weren’t about to break radio silence to ask.
John felt alive. Even more alert than last night if that were possible. It seemed everything was crystal clear and he was definitely in the zone. He pointed to Eric and then pointed to the guy by the exit.
Their team only had one rule of engagement. The enemy needed to be put down. That was the rule. The corollaries all had to do with ‘If this type of supernatural, use silver frangibles. If this other type use the prescribed ammunition.’ For humans, lead worked really well. Maybe if someone had thought about it, they might have activated different rules but no one seemed to remember to do that. Oh well, tough shit for these guys.
Eric was quiet as he prepared to take out the last guy. He gave John the ‘ready in five’ sign and started the countdown. On five he stood up and took out his target who had been looking into the newly made four foot hole in a back wall. They had pulled out some old computer racks that were on wheels and apparently used them as a protective wall and set off a demo. The floor was a mess. Now, his tango had two bullet holes in the back of his head and his blood was all over the wall.
Eric heard one set of shots behind him and he quickly turned around, there should have been two sets of shots. Coming around the corner, he found the first dead tango and looking up he saw John walking over to the second dead tango. Somehow, he had acquired the second tango and fired fast enough it sounded like one set of shots. Son of a bitch, that was fast.
They heard Bethany Anne’s click of success and responded with their own. They started to look at the explosives and realized that it wasn’t set up for remote detonation, thankfully. The wires all went to a master control by the fresh tunnel exit. They had a good idea how to disarm it, but without a really good reason they weren’t going to take any chances. They moved the box as far away from the exit as they could and then prepped a defensive position aiming into the tunnel. They had the responsibility to make sure nothing took the team from here. The rest of the team had to make sure their backs were covered and since Bethany Anne was behind them, they felt pretty secure.
Up above, when Darrell and Scott heard the second set of clicks, it was their turn.
They came around the corner and each put a silenced bullet into the lookout’s legs. Scott took the right leg, Darrell took the left. He fell down in pain and surprise and never saw the two come up beside him. Scott helped lift the lookout high enough so Darrell could grab the badge and slot it in place. At the same time Scott grabbed the lookout’s right hand and placed it over the security glass. Sensing a live handprint and the badge it unlocked the door. Scott dropped him back to the ground. Darrell shot him in the head once the door opened.
“Let me go in first, guys.” Darrell started just a bit, not expecting to have Bethany Anne right next to him. He was able to continue focusing on his task, but it was close.
Crouching, Darrell moved sideways and Bethany Anne went ahead so fast you would think she was running in a crouching position. He and Scott then took positions on the inside of the door facing out. Bethany Anne knew she had tangos in front of her; they were safe from that position.
The inside of the server room was loud. With this many rows of server racks there was probably over a thousand machines in this space, almost all of them running fan systems that made it sound like little jets taking off every time they spun up to cool down the machines. The little 1U & 2U units could be really loud sometimes.
There were three hackers, each in a different part of the server room. All of them had their short bullpup rifles on the floor leaning against the rack as they worked.
Bethany Anne recognized the design. It worked by moving the firearm’s action and magazine behind the trigger to save weight and gain maneuverability while not sacrificing accuracy from a shorter barrel. However, she didn’t recognize the make.
It didn’t matter; none of them heard when she knocked a hacker in the back of his head with her forearm. Unfortunately, she killed the first one when she didn’t think about the difference between a Were’s hard head and a human’s.
So, she had two unconscious guys and one dead one. Wow, never mind. One of the live ones was a female. Teach her to be gender biased. She signaled Scott to come take the female and she threw the male
over her shoulder in a fireman's carry. Scott took the second in the same way and they left down the stairs. She could hear the commotion from the hostages as they passed the main level. It was pretty chaotic as people were heading out. She hoped it wouldn’t become a stampede but she couldn’t show herself right now, she and her team needed to get the hell out of Dodge. She sure hoped that the exit went somewhere or there was going to be egg on her face. She did not want Frank to get involved to help get her team out. How embarrassing.
They went down to the bottom basement and saw the three bodies and the defensive position that Eric and John had set up. Darrell took over from Scott to give him a rest. Bethany Anne gave John the guy she was carrying and he took the load without too much trouble. That freed her up to go into the tunnel unencumbered.
She was able to make good time and followed a significantly long tunnel that took two doglegs until it hit a regular underground drainage pipe system that went both left and right. She supposed the doglegs were to reduce the blowback from the collapse of the building. Well, that wouldn’t be happening now.
No one was waiting for her when she poked her head out of the dogleg. The bad guys must have thought that they would have an advance team. Tough shit, Bethany Anne had the winning team and to the victor go the spoils. Namely, contestants number one and two that they were carrying with them.
She took out her phone and turned on the mapping function. She was close enough to the surface to get a reading. They were under NE 2nd Avenue. There was another hole forty-five feet down the tunnel to her right. She went down the tunnel and into the hole. It stopped only in a few feet at a metal ladder leading up which she started climbing. Reaching the top, she pushed aside a metal grate and entered a metal building. She could see that they had hidden their efforts by making it look like this building was under renovation. No one was here, but a quick look revealed two windowless white vans right outside. Both had ‘John’s Building Contractors’ in poor handwriting and a cell phone number painted on the sides. Both vans looked pretty rundown. That was how they got in and out of the building without making anyone suspicious.
Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Set One: Books 1-7, Death Becomes Her, Queen Bitch, Love Lost, Bite This, Never Forsaken, Under My Heel, Kneel or Die (Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Sets) Page 35