They had agreed earlier to talk at 8:00 PM in the large room. By the time she got there everyone was present. Eric and Darryl had been at the door to her room. They smiled at her while she rolled her eyes and smiled back.
Everyone else had eaten earlier, so Bethany Anne had some finger food and joined everyone at the table. She sat at the head. Her father was to her left, Dan was to her right. Frank, Nathan and Ecaterina went down her left side and Captain Thomas, Bobcat and Lt. Wagner went down her right. John’s team stayed standing up with two outside the door to the room and two inside. It seemed the first meeting was called into session. The rest of the teams had things to do and were working on them. She had asked and found out that Pete was topside with Killian who was on the upper level with a scope watching the area around them. Todd Jenkins had watch in the bridge at the moment along with Officer Dukes.
She put her plate down and drank some of the Coke that Ecaterina had set beside her. She was a keeper.
“Considering we are not presently in a battle, let’s start on the business side. General?”
Now, her father’s rank had become nickname as much as anything else. Few called him Lance, except Frank. When you’re as old as Frank and have met so many high ranking military members their ranks tended to blend together. Lance really didn’t mind either one. He had come to embrace the new challenges with the businesses. When people called him General, it grabbed the attention of major CEOs in an instant. It was a very effective way to cut through the bullshit, he felt.
“We have approximately one thousand two hundred and two businesses we need to follow in the portfolios. Easily over eighty percent need nothing at the moment. However, that leaves us with over two hundred that require attention. Some of these are issues with poor management, which will require an adjustment at the board level. Several have individuals that Nathan has found to be channeling funds out of the company in ways we don’t appreciate. Nathan will speak about those in a minute. I have three companies that are large enough and screwed up enough we will need to personally visit them. That will have to wait until after our present operation.”
“Did you check into militarily useful enterprises?”
“Yes. We have seventy-four companies that Dan and I are presently reviewing. He will explain some of the help they have provided so far.” This was getting Bethany Anne’s attention. She had a large interest in things that went boom.
“As you might imagine, there are some biotech companies. Some are almost completely research, including many with military focused research. There are a few that completely focus on blood and with TOM’s assistance, we might be able to crack the code you are looking for.”
Captain Thomas interrupted, “Excuse me, but who is Tom?”
The General looked like he had committed a faux pas. Bethany Anne spoke to the group, “My father is referring to the alien that piloted the spaceship. I’m in contact with him. It will be with his help we uncover the secrets of his ship. His real name is a difficult to remember answer to a mathematical formula. So, he chose to be known as Thales of Miletus who I have since found out was considered one of the Seven Sages of Greece. I shortened his name to TOM instead of calling him Thales or Thales of Miletus. So, it’s an acronym.”
Both the Captain and Lt. Wagner seemed surprised that she was in communication with a living alien. She wasn’t only in communication with one, the guy had jumped aboard without permission.
Fortunately, TOM stayed quiet during this part of the conversation.
She turned back to her father. “OK, let’s table anything that doesn’t need to happen within the next week. Do you have anything that needs addressing right now? I’ll get with TOM and find out if there’s a way to communicate with him without me being the communication bottleneck.”
She went down the chairs on her left and got updates. Nathan said that he was able to track the funds of some of the problem people and a couple were supporting terrorists. He had siphoned those funds and blocked the accounts, making it look like the bank had found the problem and would be tracking the leak themselves. That should keep the troublemakers running for the next few weeks.
“You bring up an interesting problem. I’m going to need a way to get rid of these characters quickly.”
Frank took this one. He was significantly younger looking and more vibrant than when she first met him. Now he looked like a fresh-faced Colonel Sanders. White hair, white beard and a bit portly. Thank God he didn’t dress in a white suit. “I’ve connected with Nathan and Interpol. Some of these guys are connected to people who are on the international wanted list. Between Nathan and myself, we think we can get the three parties to meet together and Interpol will get the credit and the takedown, leaving us out of it.”
“Do that. If that doesn’t work I’m going to want more definitive results. We can use multiple techniques to make this happen. But I don’t want them all to be deaths. I don’t personally care if they die, but eventually someone will look into TQB Enterprises and too many cut brake line deaths are so passé, you know?” She smiled to take the reality out of her statement. “The more of these people we can snare by using local law enforcement, the better the results in the future will be.”
“Frank?”
“Besides what you have been told so far, we have tracked Clarita down to one of two residences. She is either west of San Jose, Costa Rica or Managua, Nicaragua. Most likely Costa Rica. That puts her about fifty miles from where we would drop anchor. It’s about forty miles overland to get there.”
“I guess it would be too much to ask for her to live right on the beach for us.”
“Indeed.” Everyone smiled. “She is not a day walker, so this op might be a little easier, but she does have plenty of daytime cover and we really don’t want to fly a Black Hawk over Costa Rica in the daytime if we can avoid it.”
“I can only imagine it would be frowned on. Any chance to get orders cut to allow the flight anyway?”
“Not likely. The U.S. has a strong relationship with Costa Rica but the populace isn’t fond of the U.S. showing military strength. One helicopter isn’t the same as the Navy getting involved in the drug war with the Costa Rican Coast Guard, but unless we have to it would be better for us not to do it. The U.S. consulate is also in San Jose and would probably be getting questions why the military helicopter was around. If we go in at night the most they would be aware of is the sound, depending on how high we fly.”
Bobcat piped in, “They’ll hear us, we aren’t flying that high.”
“Does she live in town?”
“Close enough. She has a property to the west in the richest part of Costa Rica in a town named Escazu. The problem will be that the ambassadors from many countries, including the U.S., Great Britain and Holland live out there. We could see issues with the police pretty quickly.”
“Well, she has selected a place that reduces our options. I don’t want to get other countries involved in this op. What if we do the same thing that they did to us up in Florida?”
Dan spoke, “You mean when they got the SWAT team stuck in well before attacking downtown? That’s an idea…”
Everyone thought about that, then Ecaterina asked. “What is the bait?” There were a couple of snorts from John’s team and a grin from the General. They were likely remembering that the General was the bait for Adrian. “Good question, Ecaterina. Let’s work on that right after we finish going around. I think that’s what we’ll do. We need to pull her outside if we can. Is there anything that would cause her to come out of her hole? Ok. Ecaterina you’re up.”
They finished the update on the Polarus and the SEA AXE. Lt. Wagner was ready to go in the morning. A few days late but it had taken them a while to get a crew together. Now, all the old crew was off of both ships. Bethany Anne would have to spend the night interviewing the new crew to make sure they weren’t already bought and paid for by other interests. Whether that meant drugs, family, business or governmental. Everyone in the crew h
ad already been vetted by Frank and Nathan, but there could be nothing left to chance with this crew. It would take them a while to get over there, more than enough time to finish this op. They would be leaving in the morning as her team left to head to Costa Rica.
She was surprised to learn what ‘fill her up’ meant when you were talking a ship of this size. The fuel bill was almost a quarter of a million dollars for the two ships. Thank God they weren’t empty.
She spent the night with the new crew for the SEA AXE and was surprised to find everyone checked out. They used the ruse of a truth gas. They didn’t even use any gas at all. They did spray a minor amount of oil on a rag that the Chief Engineer had handy just to help make the story believable.
The next morning the two boats parted ways. Bethany Anne spent the next two and a half days vetting the new crew on the Polarus and generally staying out of sight and letting Gabrielle take her place.
Neither Nathan or Frank could get any confirmed information on any of Clarita’s additional children. So it seemed that Adrian had passed along the warning and it had been taken to heart. Clarita wouldn’t or couldn’t leave. As the top Forsaken in the area she couldn’t allow anyone to see a weakness.
The guys had found four businesses that belonged to Clarita in San Jose. They would start striking them early in the night, going from one to the next. She should be able to see the flames from her small villa up on the mountain in Escazu. According to Gabrielle, it would be a normal Forsaken action to destroy the businesses of the leader. This was a slap in the face. If the leader couldn’t protect her own businesses she would lose faith from her followers. Eventually, she would have to take care of the attacker or flee. They hoped that others had learned of the potential attack and would be hanging around the city to see the fireworks. They guessed that some would be there to attack the winner, some to try to win Clarita’s favor by attacking her team. Either way, word would get back to Clarita that it was four humans and a female vampire.
Her team worked with Gabrielle on offensive and defensive techniques, and Bethany Anne became the enemy. Dan used this time to figure out new attack and defense plans. They couldn’t use real ammo and the swords got wrapped up with as much protection as possible. Bethany Anne still got inside Gabrielle’s guard and broke her arm once. Gabrielle was surprised to see her throwing her personal team around as well. She wasn’t letting up on any of them.
By the time the second round was finished, the five of them were pretty united in their desire to win a point against Bethany Anne.
For her part, Bethany Anne was happy to see them working together. They needed to work as a team and if uniting them against her right now was going to save their lives, then she would make sure they hated her guts for now.
By the time night fell, the score was Bethany Anne 7, TQB and Gabrielle 0. Bethany Anne had to give Gabrielle a blood pack to heal properly and she had to help Eric as well. He had taken a swing to his arm from Gabrielle who hadn’t realized Eric had come up on her side. Gabrielle wasn’t used to playing with others. She had been so apologetic to Eric he was embarrassed. A little of Bethany Anne’s blood and he was doing better. It was Eric’s first time to swallow the blood and he didn’t flinch. Bethany Anne considered providing it in a cup like she did Frank. But she thought about what it meant to the team and how Stephen had taken the blood. She started to understand that for her to give blood shouldn’t be meaningless. To have no respect for the effort and to make it less personal was to destroy the value. She had Eric drink from her wrist after a small cut was made. She decided that Frank was going to have to change his method of drinking as well.
It wasn’t that she wanted to become a religious figurehead, but the further the blood was from her the less personal it was. She wasn’t a common blood bank, for fuck’s sake.
Eric manned up and didn’t flinch. For that she was grateful. Until Gabrielle’s nanocytes were fixed, she didn’t want to have her provide blood unless it was necessary.
She hoped it wouldn’t be necessary for the guys during the op.
22
Caribbean Sea - Off Coast of Panama and Costa Rica Border
They decided that the best place to launch would be where the borders of Costa Rica and Panama joined. If Shelly was seen as coming in from Panama, they hoped it would help confuse the Black Hawk’s origin when they needed to get back out to sea.
As soon as it got dark, Bobcat took off with Pete beside him. Her team and Gabrielle were in the back. It was a very low flight on a fortunately dark night. It took them a little over two hours to fly to the location near San Jose. She could see that Bobcat loved the flying, but even he was sweating by the time they got there.
It would be a little over a mile jog for the team to hit Clarita’s first business. They hoped to find some wheels at that location and would try to drive from there.
For Bethany Anne, it would be a little easier. She had a bag with her leathers, vest and guns. She wore a nice pair of jeans and a long sleeved black shirt and tennis shoes. She had put on earrings and a necklace. She had two extra bags of blood with her in case things went horribly wrong. The team had four for Gabrielle. She expected to call a cab.
John came over to her. “If you don’t make it back, I’m coming for you.” His eyes were granite hard and unyielding. She felt the closeness that they shared when on ops before. Her being a bitch the last two days during the effort to get Gabrielle working with her team hadn’t turned them against her. She smiled up at him.
“If you let Gabrielle get hurt, I’m going to kick your ass all the way to Miami. You will need to open your mouth to… well, just take care of her, Mr. Grimes, you hear me?” He smiled at her use of his last name. It was a reminder for him of how they met.
“Yeah. I hear you BA, I hear you.” He openly grinned as she rolled her eyes.
“You can be a real irredeemable ass-pirate, you know that?”
He put up his hands in defeat, “Not trying to one up you here, Bethany Anne. I don’t need push ups right now.”
“See that you don’t. Now, I’ll meet you guys back here, keep this location clear for me, ok?”
John looked at where she was standing and walked over to a large rock ten feet away, picked it up and brought it over. He dropped it a couple of feet away from Bethany Anne. “We will keep it clear ten feet around this rock.”
She nodded and watched him walk back to the team. They took up positions around Gabrielle and started into the bush. They looked good. Alert and on track.
She had talked with Gabrielle before leaving the ship. Any loss of her guys had better be over Gabrielle’s dead body were the first, second and third point in the instructions. Gabrielle wasn’t offended. She had connected with Bethany Anne’s team and was amazed at how good they were. She had no concerns going into a fight with this group. They were fast and they were not afraid. If anything, the last two days working against Bethany Anne had taken their skills up a notch. Todd Jenkins had started in on Bethany Anne’s team on the second day. Although he often got tagged out early in the sessions, he was starting to get his own edge back. None of the new crew was involved in the training sessions except Todd.
They had installed some pod-based missile offensive and defensive systems they had been able to procure through a couple of TQB Enterprise companies. Frank had to get special approvals pushed through the State Department to allow them to be flown out of the United States to Jamaica. Bobcat, Pete and Shelly had moved them over to the Polarus.
If a machine had a heart, Shelly’s was beating like the warrior she really was. Recently, she had been nothing more than a glorified air taxi. Bethany Anne thought Shelly felt alive on her trip to San Jose this evening.
Bethany Anne waved to Bobcat and Pete and started her jog to a small town that had a tourist bar. She had texted a request for a taxi to pick her up in twenty minutes.
Time to go.
San Jose and Escazu, Costa Rica
Gabrielle and the team made it
to the first point of contact. It was a set of warehouses out in the suburbs. According to Nathan, Clarita had both drug and gambling operations here.
There was a club taking up two warehouses that used the large amount of partiers as a way to hide the transfer of drugs and the movement of the money. It didn’t hurt that she did have some of the best DJs in San Jose at her club.
No one could figure out how she was able to always get the best. Especially after an up and coming DJ would talk about how he wouldn’t ‘sell out’ and play at her club.
Usually they were there within three weeks after proclaiming that. It all depended on how quickly Clarita heard about it and who she had nearby to go and persuade the DJ that he really wanted to play at her club.
Tonight, there was a large crowd watching a San Jose favorite. The team went to the warehouse next door, broke the lock and went inside. Gabrielle paid attention to the sounds of the night.
The clubhouse did have good protection and video surveillance. What they didn’t have at this one was a very creative head of security. The walls between the two buildings couldn’t handle the demolition pack Darryl used.
Darryl yelled to the group, “Hole in the wall, coming up.” Everyone took cover. The breaching charge blew a significant hole in the wall directly into the back offices where the drugs and gambling operations were located.
There was one vampire on duty. Unfortunately for him, a large splinter from the wooden wall had captured his entire attention. By the time he was able to pull it out, Gabrielle replaced it with a sword through his chest and then two bullets through his brain.
Eric went around shooting anyone else with TOM’s special darts.
It took the team six more minutes to ransack the place. They grabbed the money, but what they really wanted was information. The large walk in safe had been open when they started the operation. No one had thought to close it. Scott stood outside of the door as John walked in with a carrying bag. He grabbed anything that looked important and a few bags of cocaine. There were several archival disks so he grabbed those as well. He heard some shots outside so he grabbed one more bundle of cash and went out to see what was going on.
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 60