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)

by Michael Anderle

  Bobcat lit the light in the back cabin, it was time. John opened the door and nodded to Bethany Anne who gave a thumbs up and jumped out. She found the running lights of the boat to the south and angled her flight in that direction. She pulled the chute and then her guiding lines to place her descent on track to close with the boat. She was coming in from the aft section. There was a handy area outside of the main captain’s bridge to land on the boat.

  She considered the location and decided to slip and come in about ten feet above. She wasn’t sure how to compensate for the rolling of the deck, not having ever been on a Superyacht before. She unclipped her chute and disappeared.

  Atlantic Ocean, 6.25 hours out of American Waters

  John was a little anxious until he heard the clicks over the team comm. Everything seemed like a good idea with using Bethany Anne as the primary on attack. She would start the op by slipping through the etheric to land and incapacitate the crew. She had a bottle of the sleeping gas, a modified set of chemicals based on Nathan’s research into the October 2002 Russian hostage crisis. It would take a little while for the ventilation to get the gas throughout the ship and for her to hopefully hit the commands that would cause the ship to come into the wind for Bobcat to land Shelly.

  It took a little bit of time, but the General found that plenty of Bethany Anne’s companies did scientific research and one had a Russian office with persons of interest. This office employed two scientists that had tried to ascertain what the military had used back in 2002. Both had been interviewed and told to drop the efforts by government officials. The scientists had decided they didn’t need to be told twice, and had resumed their previous research.

  Now, most people don’t even remember the hostage crisis and the efficacy of the Russian military effort. Of those that do, they don’t think about losing 100% of the hostages from the total destruction of the theatre, but rather the 16% of the hostages that passed away from using such a lethal concoction. As a comparison, in World War I the gas attacks had a 7% lethality rate.

  The gas would not bother Bethany Anne at all. Since TOM had already reviewed the chemical composition, he had prepared the nanocytes to compensate when she inhaled the chemicals.

  She needed to get to the main ventilation intake and disconnect the air scent injection and replace it with her gas tubes.

  Bethany Anne appeared ten feet in the air above the topmost helipad, which was fortuitously empty. That was what the SEA AXE was for, she guessed. She landed lightly with hardly any sound. In the dark night with her black outfit and face paint, she would be hard to spot. When she switched to moving at her vampire speed, anyone looking out of the corner of their eye would find nothing.

  The boat wasn’t moving at her fastest speed. She was doing a sedate 10 knots or about 11.5 mph. She was roughly 260 miles out from Miami and was outside even the furthest 200 mile economic zone of the United States. This zone was created in 1982 by the United Nations. While Bethany Anne could have attacked closer to land, she didn’t want to be within any jurisdiction of the United States on this operation. Shelly had a confirmed combat radius of 360 miles, and they had flown as low as practical, trying to stay off of as many radar screens as possible. She knew that if a tasked satellite was looking down on them, there wasn’t much she could do. Hopefully, they would be able to land Shelly on the Polarus and that would help them so the helicopter had no return track back to the United States.

  A mile away, her parachute finally slipped under the water.

  Bethany Anne glided up right outside the bridge. She could hear two men speaking Arabic inside the compartment. The room was dark with only monitors lighting the space. She quickly glanced inside and decided that even at a faster speed, she really didn’t want to open the door to get in. She weighed whether or not to kill the men or incapacitate them. She decided that incapacitate would work for now. She looked at all of the other areas on the deck she could see. She spotted one lookout at the front of the yacht, just staring out into the night. It was a pretty night, she conceded. To die.

  Standing up, she slipped through the etheric and walked right onto the bridge. The second man must have noticed something as he started to turn and look in her direction. He never made it past a quarter turn of his head when Bethany Anne shot him and the captain with her tranquilizer gun.

  Now, there is no known tranquilizer that is reliably safe without fear of side effects and overdose to knock a human out quickly. Most humans would have to be able to reliably gauge the weight of the target and how many darts to use to shoot them effectively.

  But when you have a Kurtherian and a Kurtherian computer the ability to modify the dosage goes up exponentially. TOM had the team build two clips of darts for Bethany Anne and then she used a syringe to place one drop of her blood with the etorphine. By the time Bethany Anne had dropped out of the helicopter, the darts would be 100% effective on humans within two seconds.

  TOM didn’t promise they wouldn’t be lethal, just that they shouldn’t be lethal. When Bethany Anne asked him to clarify, he said she might kill when she frightened someone with her red eyes and fangs, so what did she want from him? He had a point. He could only do so much unless she wanted him to add Stage 1 commands as well. She agreed that wasn’t a good plan.

  The second mate and the captain had been so surprised at the black clad woman that even after the darts hit them, they were still trying to figure out what was going on. Both fell down, the second mate bouncing his head off of a monitor before crumpling to the floor. Bethany Anne never looked back.

  It took her two more minutes to confirm that the deck was clear. She found three guards. The one up front she had noticed earlier and two in the back of the ship. She didn’t know all of the correct terms for a boat. She needed to learn them quickly, she supposed. She had shot all three of the guards with a dart each. Two ended up tied up. The last guard was watching a video on his phone when she shot him.

  She had gone to zip-tie him and the video was still playing. It was a snuff film. She grabbed the drugged guard in her right hand and tossed him off the boat to drown below. “Sorry, you should have been watching where you were walking, you bum-banging spum biscuit.” She tossed the phone off into the waves as well, wiping her hand on her leg. If she had a paper towel, she would have used that to grab the phone.

  She was sure there was a mom who might shed a tear that he was missing. Bethany Anne figured the mom should have done a better job raising that cock-stain.

  Within five minutes, she had found the right air equipment and connected her hose to start the gas. With TOM’s help, it shouldn’t be as deadly as the Russian version, but if she had a little breakage on this op it wouldn’t bother her.

  She waited five more minutes and checked three staterooms; everyone was sleeping. She notified John she was ready for them to join her and went back up to the bridge.

  It was a very advanced bridge. Fortunately, there were software programs that allowed you to virtually captain your own Superyacht around the world. She had used the programs enough with three different bridge layouts to confirm she could put the yacht on a heading into the wind at two knots. Bobcat told her you never wanted to land a helicopter with a tail wind and with a minimum of speed it would help keep the rolling down on the ship.

  She made sure her two original captives were tied up and set the captain in a compromised position with his second mate. The more she thought about the late guard’s snuff film, the angrier she felt.

  She left the bridge to go find Sheikh Robban.

  Atlantic Ocean, 6.00 hours out of American Waters

  Bobcat gently put Shelly down on the massive yacht. With the calm winds and beautiful night, it was almost a pleasure to do this operation. His Black Hawk wasn’t your normal Bell Helicopter and the weight was substantial.

  First, he landed enough to not jump around the landing pad, but kept some of the weight on the engines as John and the team jumped off. Pete was to stay with him and the helicopter. T
his time, Pete had a bull-pup FN P90 that John had given lessons on how to use properly. Unlike the punky kid of a couple of months ago, Pete was composed and making sure that his area was given the attention that it deserved and didn’t allow Bobcat to get him involved in a conversation, just in case John was testing him.

  Which was a very good decision for Pete. John had talked with Bobcat before they left the mainland and asked him to try and distract Pete from his duties. The conversation attempt was a good test and Pete had passed it.

  John and Eric went up, pulling down their breathing masks before entering the bridge, Eric covering John. John had to smile as he took in the scene in front of him. Apparently, Bethany Anne was making a comment about the crew.

  John stepped past the two men and checked out the rest of the bridge and looked inside any doors. While Bethany Anne probably would have found anyone, John and his team had plenty of practice with unexpected problems that were manageable when found early. Nothing like a Nosferatu you weren’t expecting to pop up when you finally let your guard down. That situation had resulted in a good friend losing his right arm about ten months back on an op in the Western United States.

  “Clear.” John turned back around to see Eric pulling at his mask, staring at the captain and the other crewman.

  “John, why does the captain look like he’s sucking off the crewman?” Eric’s face had a look of disbelief.

  “Focus, Eric. I imagine it is Bethany Anne venting a little. You have the bridge.”

  Eric put his mission mask back on, “I’ve got the bridge, aye.”

  John just shook his head and went to the stairs going down. He wondered what he was going to find below. Darryl and Scott called in that they had two security guards tied up on the deck. One fore and one aft. They thought one was missing, a zip-tie was found where they surmised they would have found the third guard.

  Scott called it in, “I think one fell overboard.”

  John just replied, “Probably thrown overboard. Darryl you have port, Scott you have starboard. Stay alert for bad guys and pissed-off vampires.”

  Making sure his mask had a good seal, John continued down through the ship. He found multiple rooms of sleeping crew. Some in their beds, others at stations or watching TV. None were awake. He found one older man in his shower, the water running the blood from a head wound down the drain. He turned off the water. No need to waste it right now.

  Continuing the search, he made his way to the owner’s suite. He knocked on the door and opened it. He was being polite to the vampire he expected to find in here. He was confident there were no humans awake anywhere in the ship.

  He pulled up. He had found Bethany Anne and he was surprised at the scene in front of him. The suite was impressive, of course. Multiple rooms and its own small kitchen and dining table. He had no time to spare as he could see the owner’s bedroom through the open doors. He was ready for anything from her draining the Sheikh dry to blood and parts all over the room.

  He wasn’t ready to find Bethany Anne with tears rolling down her face. She was holding a naked woman, her dead eyes looking vacantly at nothing. The Sheikh was pushed off the bed and lying on the side. He let his rifle hang on the quick-sling and walked into the room.

  The woman was dead, that was obvious. She had bruises all over her body and it looked like a bump on her head. She also had some blood around her mouth. He looked down at Bethany Anne’s right wrist and noticed some blood staining it as well.

  Bethany Anne was crying, talking to the woman. She kept repeating herself, “I’m so sorry…so, so sorry…” John walked up to the two of them and closed her eyes. He grabbed a sheet and covered her naked body. When he reached to grab Bethany Anne’s hand, she flared up at him. Eyes red and fangs suddenly appearing. She hissed at him as if he was pulling away something she owned.

  John didn’t react. It wouldn’t be a good thing to act frightened right then. He was pretty sure Bethany Anne wouldn’t do anything to him, but he didn’t want to cause a reaction the both of them would regret later.

  “I’ve got her, Bethany Anne. I’ll make sure she’s wrapped and has some dignity.” It took everything he had to look into her face and not show his sympathy. Slowly, her eyes changed color and her fangs disappeared back into her mouth. Her face showed recognition, then anguish.

  She looked down at the body, “I was too late, John. I couldn’t save her, I tried. I promise I tried.” She seemed to be drawing back into herself.

  He barked out, “Hey! Snap out of it.” The sudden noise stopped her withdrawing. Being yelled at brought her attention back to him. “We have an op to finish and without your direction, we can’t do that. We will bury her at sea and notify her family. That is more than this jack-off would have done. We can’t win all of the fights, but we did make a difference.” He softened his voice, “Let me cover her up.”

  Bethany Anne just shook her head and easily lifted the corpse up and between the two of them, they solemnly took the time to properly wrap the woman’s lifeless body.

  John looked down at the sleeping Sheikh. “It’s not just the Forsaken we fight, but wherever the evil is. Down here or up there, we’ll fuck them all up.”

  Bethany Anne stood up off of the bed and walked around to look down at the Sheikh. “And let God sort them out.” Her voice had gone cold, distant, and even John shivered a little.

  She reached down and threw the man over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Once he was out of the gassed areas, he would wake up pretty quickly.

  John spent a few minutes looking for any identification for the woman. He found her purse in the bathroom and grabbed her ID. He took the carefully wrapped woman upstairs as well. He heard the screaming Sheikh before he reached the top deck. He had already given the whole team the short version of what was going on. When he made the top of the stairs, Scott was there to gently take the body from John. Scott was a solemn man vibrating with anger at what was found. They would store the body and have a funeral in a short while. Depending on what Bethany Anne decided, the lady might have a funeral guard shortly.

  The men ignored the pleading cries from the Sheikh. Whatever Bethany Anne was doing, was horrifying the Sheikh and his cries were interspersed with screams of pain. It lasted for almost an hour before Bethany Anne silenced him for the last time and unceremoniously took a picture and then tossed the body into the water. She had cut his head off and laid it six inches from the rest of his body to make sure whoever saw the pictures knew that there was no surgery possible the sheikh could receive to survive this encounter.

  John came up behind her as she watched the waves behind the boat. She didn’t turn around, “How many crew?”

  “Looks like about twenty-six, plus the security team which is ten, not including the three you already took out.” She didn’t correct him on the count. So they were right about one of the security guys already going overboard.

  “The woman?”

  “She was Natalia Berona. I have her ID and other information. Nathan will be able to find whatever we need.”

  “Bring her body up here. She will bear witness to the justice.”

  John just shook his head and comm’ed Pete to bring the body to them. Bobcat had finally trusted Shelly’s full weight to the boat and had shut down the engines. Together, Bobcat and Pete had found ties to tie-down Shelly. It wouldn’t help much in a storm, but it made him feel better doing it.

  Pete had brought the body up to the aft area where Bethany Anne was. She had found a table and pointed to it. Pete laid the body there. She looked up at John, “Please bring the security men, two at a time. We will zip-tie their hands and legs. They will be tried together. Don’t forget the two with darts. Hit them with the antidote. They need to be awake for this trial.”

  Twelve men were on the deck with four of her team. Bobcat was still with Shelly, and Eric was still on the bridge. Three of the twelve men spoke both Arabic and English and could translate. Personally, Bethany Anne didn’t care what they
told the others. She pulled up the picture of the Sheikh, his head separated from his body. The men looked from her to the picture and back. Some of them got belligerent. She let her eyes go red and her fangs descend. All of their eyes widened in fright. Two on the end started muttering something that sounded like prayers to her. None chose to continue their belligerence. They had just been introduced to something that was worse than death.

  She explained what she had found in the cabin below. None of them showed the least bit of surprise. That sealed their fate. She turned to John. “Before I sentence them, do you have anything to say on their behalf, or any request as a fellow security professional?”

  John was momentarily shocked. He had expected just to bring them up here to be tossed overboard. That she would try to mitigate her actions by including any comments in their possible defense caused him to pause. Then he thought about it. As a professional protection detail he had responsibility for his primary. He also knew that if Bethany Anne actively started attacking randomly, he would be honor bound to step between her and the innocent. While he couldn’t conceive of Bethany Anne becoming evil, he and his team would protect the true innocent, as these men should have done for Natalia and any other women.

  He nodded to Bethany Anne who stepped back. John grabbed the first man from the line and without much strain lifted him to his feet. John pulled him to the back of the yacht, looking towards the east where the false dawn was starting to show. He held him with his left hand, his massive muscles wanting to just snap this guy’s neck. Instead, he started to speak, allowing the interpreters time to catch up should they want to.

  “You twelve were the guard. You were sacredly charged with protecting not only the Sheikh, but also those who could not protect themselves. Given the responsibility of fighting those that would do evil, you failed to protect Natalia Berona from the evil in front of you. You are charged with her death, and others who came before her. You are found guilty by the Queen Bitch’s guard. You are unworthy of this life. Aeternitatem.” With that, he pulled his Glock out and shot the man in the back of the head, then pushed his body over the edge and into the water behind the boat.