Release the Dogs of War

by Michael Anderle

  “Hmmm,” Mr. Escariot drew out, “So, she has physical protection and with the third strike they took them out. I wonder if that is a weakness we can use.”

  “How is that?” Johann asked, “Strike more quickly?

  “Yes. They might allow one hit to test their defenses and then on the second attack more forcefully. You never know what little piece of information is going to support your efforts, Johann.”

  “Yes, sir.” Johann was happy he wasn’t on video as his face clearly showed his confusion. None of the individuals he spoke to ever acted as if he was anything but a lackey and go-between. Here was arguably the highest and most secretive member acting as if he was taking him under his tutelage.

  The deep voice continued, “So, I want you to take the next private plane to Las Vegas. From there, you are going to go see a man that I want you to talk to, and leave a box with him. One I’ll have waiting for you in a package pick up in the city. The combination will be sent to you when you arrive at the location. He will know what the box is for, so do not open the box at all, understood?”

  “Yes sir,” Johann answered. “Do I need to update any other members of the group, sir?”

  “No, I will let them know the changes from my side. For now, you are answering to me, Johann. Contact me again when you reach Las Vegas.”

  The connection was canceled.

  As Johann closed his laptop, he failed to notice the warning that his connection was not secure.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Son-of-a-bitch that hurts!” Tabitha tried to bring her practice sword up after rolling backward only to have the flat of Ryu’s blade pop her on the side of her knee and cause her to fall to her left. She had rolled a few times before a ‘hold’ was called. Tabitha was on her stomach in the exercise area of her home. Anton had it built underground, and it was sufficiently large enough to hold a practice inside.

  Or a good beating.

  She looked over to Hirotoshi, “How did I do?” She croaked out, “Does he have any sweat on his forehead?” When Hirotoshi shook his head, she murmured, “Dammit.” She could feel her pain reduce as her body healed. When Bethany Anne told her that pain was a great teacher, Tabitha didn’t realize how quickly she would come to understand that lesson and then hate the knowledge.

  Barnabas had informed her before she got home that they had moved in the reporters and their two vampire guards. She spent a total of ten minutes with Giannini, Sia, and Mark and talking with the two vampires on their team, Samual and Richard. Those two had enough personality to fill the whole house. The two reporters and their videographer had arrived the day before she had, and the rooms they chose were fine with Tabitha.

  Especially since two of them were her old rooms. Bethany Anne had asked the Elite guards to move Michael’s stuff out and put Tabitha’s stuff in while she was in the Pod doc. So they had packed up Michael’s belongings and moved them out to storage. Ecaterina and Gabrielle had then come in and set up the rooms for her.

  It was obvious that both women had helped, considering how it looked. It was tasteful enough that Ecaterina had to be involved and yet practical enough for a new vampire that Gabrielle had a hand also. Tabitha now had a rack with one sword on it tagged with a signed note from Bethany Anne. The katana was a gift, but it could not be removed from the rack until Hirotoshi approved.

  Which, apparently, wasn’t going to happen today, either.

  Barnabas had told her that the two of them now represented Bethany Anne’s Rangers group, it would grow, but for now it was just them. Tabitha had quipped that they were Bethany Anne’s versions of Judge Dredd and Barnabas had just stared at her in confusion.

  Then, Tabitha had to explain the whole story and by the end, Barnabas admitted he preferred the Texas Rangers story.

  “What, the Lone Ranger?” Tabitha asked. “Weren’t there five of Rangers originally and they got set up in an ambush? So, he ended up with an Indian sidekick who helped him back to health, and they went around doing good deeds?”

  “I understand it was something like you are telling, yes.” Barnabas agreed.

  “Great, Ashur is called for, who’s going to be my Tonto?” She said.

  “I don't know, I like what Bethany Anne says, and I believe we are going to implement this saying,” Barnabas told her.

  “What’s that?” She asked.

  “One problem, One Ranger.” He replied, a smile on his face.

  “What about all of the Elite I have with me, do I have to give them back?” Tabitha asked, successfully keeping any whine out of her voice.

  Barnabas looked down at the Pod-adjusted slightly taller woman, “I said one Ranger, I didn’t say how many Tontos you could have.” He smirked.

  So, now Tabitha called her Elites her ’Tontos” and Hirotoshi her head Tonto.

  Apparently, one of her group asked the vampire Richard about it and the very next morning they referred to her as the Lady Kimosabe. If she ever figured out which smartass had started that, she would beat him senseless.

  Well, if she could ever learn how to beat up a five-year-old first.

  Mad hacking skills did NOT provide her any support for acquiring martial arts abilities. All of those computer games did provide quick reflexes, but they had nothing on a man who learned martial arts from when he could walk, and had hundreds of years to refine those skills.

  Just so he could show Tabitha how bad she really was.

  “Tell you what, Hirotoshi, If I beat Ryu hacking into the Pentagon can we call it a day?” The tiny shake from Hirotoshi confirmed Tabitha’s guess. “Well, no time like the present to continue my ass kicking.” She got up off the ground and pulled her practice sword into position to go through the beginning practice steps, “Just so you know, I will get good enough to kick your ass, Rhu.”

  “I count on it,” Ryu said in his clipped English style.

  Tabitha was so shocked that he spoke to her, that his sword came in undeflected to painfully knock her on her ass.

  “Fucking SHIT that hurts!” She yelled when she finally rolled to a stop, “You cunt munching malcontent,” she continued her yelling, “You knew I’d drop my guard you cock kissing masochist!” She rolled over and started to get up, then her eyes flashed red, and she ran towards Ryu. When she was ten feet from him, he had to duck under the rattan practice blade she threw, but he realized too late Tabitha was not acting out of anger, but rather had used that emotion as a way to hide her cunning.

  Her knee hit him squarely in his jaw as he started to come back up. He rolled with the kick and was on his feet as Tabitha was working to get back up off of the ground. Ryu got behind her and put his practice blade against her neck.

  She stopped moving, “I yield!” she said, her hands in the air.

  Ryu pulled the blade away from her neck and bent down to whisper in her ear, “That fucking hurt!”

  Tabitha grinned as she pulled herself up off of the ground.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  QBS Polarus - Mid-Atlantic

  “So, Mr. Brajorly has decided he would like to retire to his island which is now infested with all sorts of armed defenses.” Dan Bosse explained.

  He had Bethany Anne, Barnabas, John, Eric, Scott, and Darryl, plus Akio and Gabrielle in the meeting room on the Polarus.

  “Further, he seems to have a fair amount of illegal weapons and who knows what else.” Dan continued, “My guess is he is hunkering down for a final fight. He brings in supplies once every three days from the mainland, and his little island isn’t too far off a main data trunkline, so he has underwater connections to the Internet backbone between Europe and the United States.”

  “Drop a meteor on them?” Gabrielle asked.

  “Too obvious,” Dan replied, “ADAM says that we are probably going to be the ones all fingers will point to if that happens. Plus, he does have other family and friends out to the island, so they aren’t all targets.”

  Bethany Anne stood up and went to the screen, “Zoom in here.” Dan
manipulated the controls to zoom in on the roof of the house.

  “Big sucker. So, he has an anti-air emplacement here plus men to watch most of the island. Walls around the house to keep out any sort of attack from the water. Everyone either stays by the pool or goes out the main gate to take the path to their beach and the yacht offshore.” She tapped her finger on the viewer. “I’m thinking just two of us. Myself and Barnabas for the house. Then another team for the yacht. Let’s drug them and pull the boat away for a few hours. We will make those in the house believe that he left on the ship, and then drowned at sea.” She turned around, “Barnabas, you change the memories, I’ll take out the security staff. We go back up to the roof and leave.”

  “What about electronic surveillance?” John asked.

  “They are already on the Internet,” Dan answered, “ADAM is inside their firewalls and has been causing their system to have problems for three days, now. When it all goes down, so will the security.”

  “Not fond of you going without one of us,” John told Bethany Anne.

  “I understand, but in this case, we know who is there and where they are on the island. We’ve used their own surveillance to spy on them.” She shrugged, “You guys have the yacht, and Gabrielle is a backup for the two of us. This prick is on the business board for the group that hit us. I want him to know who kisses him good night before he dies.”

  John nodded his understanding.

  “Let’s go have some fun, shall we?” Bethany Anne asked the group. Everyone closed their books or shut down their tablet’s and got ready.

  Another enemy was going to bite the dust tonight.

  Small Island off the East Coast of the United States

  Bethany Anne and Barnabas took a normal two-seater pod with Gabrielle in a Black Eagle to fly as their wingman. The Guards were in their usual ‘Bitches’ getup and had their own Pods to take over the Yacht.

  When they were about five hundred feet above the roof, Bethany Anne used the video cameras to check out the security along the rooftop. “I see emplacements and, son-of-a-bitch, an actual missile launcher. That’s some pretty high-tech shit. It’s a shame all of that effort and we would still survive the hit. But, I’ll give them a B+ for effort.” She looked over to Barnabas, “I’m surprised you ditched your Monk outfit.”

  Barnabas tugged at his black fatigues John had provided him, “I’m trying to adjust to my new life. The monk outfit was so last century.”

  “I see you’re trying to gain skills in the humor department, as well.” She replied as she turned back to the screen, “Don’t quit your day job, just yet.”

  “I don’t operate too well in the daylight if you haven’t noticed.” Barnabas quipped.

  “I told you, all things in due time. I didn’t push you to stop being a pompous ass with a cork up his butt when I met you, did I?” She asked as she dialed the camera around to view other areas they had marked as security locations.

  “Well, no. You dropped me on Frank as I recollect,” he agreed.

  “That’s because you both deserve each other,” she returned, “Ok, they are staying on the schedule. We are going to drop in, take out the top guards and move forward. You make sure everyone is either asleep or play with their memories so they don’t remember us. I’ll go see to our buddy, Mr. Brajorly.”

  ADAM, when we drop, make sure you answer for their security personnel when they call each other.

  >>I understand, Bethany Anne. I can mimic forty-eight percent of their speech and ninety-two percent of the terms they use for each other. I can fudge the rest, usually, with static on the line.<<

  Well, let me know if you are having issues on that side.

  >>I will.<<

  “How are we going to drop in?” Barnabas asked.

  “Simple,” she told him as she pushed open the Pod doors and Barnabas’s eyes opened a little wider, “I grab your arm and we take a little hop. Don’t worry, it’ll be fun.”

  —

  “I sure hope Bethany Anne is having fun,” John grumped as Eric pulled the last of the yacht’s crewmembers in. They had boarded the yacht and sleepy-darted everyone. “Because this was beyond careless and sloppy of the crew. Seriously, who plays tequila shot games when you might be attacked at any moment? By TQB Desperadoes no less? Our rep must suck.” John continued bitching while he set the controls to pull up the anchor and started loading the destination they had selected. The target location was a common enough fishing area which the owner had visited twice in the last couple of weeks. Once ADAM was in their system, it was easy enough to find the sailing data.

  Eric dropped the last crewmember whose head rebounded off the deck. Eric flinched when he watched it happen, “I don’t know if that is going to bother his head any more than the tequila already has,” Eric commented as he walked over to John. “You are just upset you didn’t get the chance to shoot anyone.”

  “Well, the guys’ night out was a shot in the arm,” John admitted. “Did you hear that Frank’s book made it up to the top one thousand ranking?” He asked as he pulled the final release and the yacht started moving, “Damned good thing we had the review on how to operate these boats. Next time, I’ll consider asking for someone on the Navy side to join us.”

  “We would get a lot of volunteers, especially Jean Dukes,” Eric commented.

  “Yes, but we need the boat in one piece,” John said, “I’ve no idea what she would do with a perfectly sound boat we don’t want to sink.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Eric winked and left the bridge to make another loop through the ship.

  —

  “Wakey, wakey,” Bethany Anne poked Davey Brajorly in his shoulder a couple of times softly. When the man didn’t budge, she grabbed his arm and forcefully yanked him off the bed and tossed him to the floor where he landed in a body jarring thump.

  “I said wake the fuck up!” She snarled as Brajorley’s eyes flew open. He looked up to see a black-haired woman in leather pants and obvious mercenary get-up, two pistols slung low on her hips and a sword handle over her shoulder.

  “What the…,” He looked around his room. His room was luxurious, his large king-sized bed with a blue cover, was in the center of a twenty-foot wide by twenty-five foot long room. He had a pleasant sitting area in one corner with its own television and couch. He was sprawled between his bed and the doorway to the master suite bathroom. “How the hell are you in here?”

  “Your men are sleeping on the job,” She retorted, “Or dead. Which is just a sleep you don’t wake up from. Kind of like this moment right here. You see, you are dreaming, and you definitely won’t be waking up from this dream you sorry sack of selfishness.”

  “What are you talking about?” He demanded and was starting to get up when the lady kicked him in his chest. He rolled twice before hitting the wall with a grunt and a stream of epitaphs. “That hurt bitch, and this isn’t a dream!”

  “Well, perhaps I misspoke,” she told him as she walked over and squatted down next to him, “It’s actually the end of your dream and many people’s nightmares. You’ve been a useless leader, and now you won’t be making mistakes because you focus on your own selfish needs. You played your hand out and screwed over the wrong people.” Her eyes started glowing red, and she hissed at him.

  “Namely mine!”

  Elsewhere in the large complex, Barnabas heard a man scream in fear, “Dammit. I wasn’t finished knocking everyone out here, Bethany Anne.” He bumped up his running and decided to forego the gentle effort to knock them unconscious with his mental abilities. Anyone with a gun got a club over the head and a fast mental command that made them think that they had made a mistake that caused them to fall and hit their head. Fortunately, that was only two people.

  Barnabas started walking back towards the master suite, “Couldn’t you have waited just five more minutes?” He murmured and then remembered his own feelings when his love was killed.

  Nevermind.

  —

  Jo
hn watched the two Pods come down to the back of the larger yacht. One was a Black Eagle, which Gabrielle was flying, the other a standard Pod. The Pod descended then halted five feet above the ship and turned to face the aft and flew backward to match the ship’s speed. The front doors opened, and Bethany Anne tossed a body to John, who was there to grab Brajorley as she dropped to the deck herself, “Thanks,” she told him, “bad catch, though.”

  The Pod doors closed, it rose back and then it along with Gabrielle’s Pod raced back towards the compound to pick up Barnabas, who was finishing any mind altering efforts he felt he needed to sell the story they had decided to lay out.

  “What are you talking about?” John asked as he tossed the comatose man over his shoulder and followed Bethany Anne, “I didn’t fumble the catch.”