Love Lost

by Michael Anderle

  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 is a way to communicate with him without me being the communication bottleneck.”

  She went down the chairs on her left and got updates. Nathan mentioned 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 looker 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 those 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, however; if that doesn’t work I’m going to want more definitive results. We can use multiple ways to make this happen. However; 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 blasé, 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 50 miles from where we would drop anchor. However; it is at least 40 miles over land 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 US has a strong relationship with Costa Rica but the populace isn’t fond of the US 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 US 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 know is the sound depending on how high we fly.”

  Bobcat piped in, “The will 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 of the countries including the US, Great Britain and the Dutch 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 mentioned it. “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 is what we will do. We need to pull her at least outside if we can. Is there anything that would cause her to come out of her hole? Ok. Ecaterina your 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 had 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 for this op to finish. 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 the story become a little more believable.

  The next morning the two boats parted ways. She spent the next two and a half days vetting the new crew on the Polarus and generally staying out of sight and let Gabrielle take her place.

  Neither Nathan or Frank could get any confirmed information on any of her additional children. So it seemed that Adrian had passed along the warning and it had been taken to heart. Clarita wouldn’t and 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 effort 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 with 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 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 one time. 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. However; 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, however; 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 from the offer. 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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  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 originations for 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 with a fortunately dark night. It took them a little over two hours to fly to the landing location near San Jose. It was significantly longer than a straight shot, but when you are trying to stay under the radar and following valleys it can take significantly longer. She could see that Bobcat loved the flying, but even he was sweating by the time they got to the landing location outside San Juan.

  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 black sleeve shirt and tennis shoes. She had put in earrings and a necklace. She would call a cab a little way off. She had two extra bags of blood with her in case things went horribly wrong. The team had four for Gabrielle.

  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 for 10 feet around this rock.”

  She just nodded his head 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 her 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 moved 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 location. It was a set of warehouses out in the suburbs. According to Nathan, Clarita had both drug and gambling operations here.

  She had a large 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 DJ’s 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 that comment. It all depended on how quickly Clarita was notified of the comment and who she had nearby to go and ‘persuade’ the DJ that he really wanted to play at her club.

  A couple of DJ’s actually tried to do the same thing just to get invited. Those usually suffered a mishap and got their hands smashed by whatever was handy when her children visited the insufferable DJ.

  Tonight, it 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 didn’t handle the demolition pack Darryl put against the wall.

  Darryl yelled to the group, ‘Hole in the wall, coming up’. Everyone protected themselves. 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. They had some 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.

  Darryl had just yelled ‘clear’ while looking out a door. They could hear the people outside starting to panic and leave the establishment.

  Eric was presently going back around to pull the darts back out of the people. They didn’t want any darts left behind for forensics if possible.

  Gabrielle came out of an office carrying a laptop and motioned for John to put it into the bag. He unzipped it and she slid it in. Zipping it back up he twirled his hands in the air. They pulled the unconscious people out of the room and into the warehouse and then to the far wall.

  Going back into the office, Eric pulled out an incendiary and chucked it in. The office
s would go up in flames shortly.

  They went back and pulled the rest of Clarita’s team outside and zip-tied their hands. They didn’t want to risk the building going up too fast and the people not being able to walk away.

  It took Scott three minutes to find a van he knew how to hot-wire. They tossed everything in the back and took off to their next destination.

  Road to Escazu, Costa Rica

  Bethany Anne could hear the sirens in the distance. The taxi had been at the bar already and was asking which of the patrons had called him when she walked in the bar. He looked frustrated with her but didn’t gripe too loudly as he took her to his car. It was a nice, white Toyota van that had a manual stick shift in the dash.

  She got in the back and they took off towards a small restaurant overlooking the city and San Jose in the distance. It happened to also be about a quarter mile above the small enclave where Clarita had her house. It took them a half hour to make their way up the winding roads to the restaurant. Ecaterina had found the restaurant and made her a reservation under Bethany Anne Michaels. She thought it a nice touch. If anyone from the Forsaken side was able to trace her to this restaurant, they would recognize the names and realize that perhaps Bethany Anne had come from Michael himself. It would cause them to think about attacking her twice.

  Knowing how afraid everyone was of Michael, it would probably make them think about it until the following year.

  She had told Adrian to pass on that she would kill everyone in Central America, however; considering how much a pain in the ass it was to accomplish this simple operation, she would need to move down here to accomplish the threat. She would have to be smarter next time before she mouthed off.

  It wasn’t that she couldn’t take everyone out, it was that she lacked the time and resources to do it. All of her previous thoughts about how lazy Michael must be for failing to already take care of the Forsaken was seriously biting her in the ass.