Operation

by Tony Ruggiero

  At first Dimitri thought it was over, the enemy defeated for the moment. However, an intense feeling of impending danger struck him hard. He turned toward Alexander just as one of the remaining Germans fired an explosive round at him.

  Time came to a near standstill as Dimitri saw the round travel toward Alexander, but he could do nothing. Even his speed could not best the velocity of the weapon. To attempt would cost them both their lives. Alexander looked toward Dimitri and acknowledged his concern with his usual expression of warmth.

  Stay where you are. You are ready to live your life on your own terms now. Remember—to live is everything...

  The projectile exploded at point blank range. Alexander’s body was blown apart into hundreds of pieces that scattered over a large area.

  “No!” Dimitri cried.

  Unfrozen from the torture of time, Dimitri awoke with a rage that overcame all reasoning.

  He immediately turned his attention to the German who had fired the weapon that had killed Alexander. The soldier was reloading his weapon. Dimitri flew across the distance that separated them. He snatched the weapon from the soldier’s hands and ripped it apart. Taking his hands, he grasped the German by the neck and lifted him off the ground. Rage consumed him as his fangs extended to their maximum capacity. He wanted this man to know that he was going to die a miserable death.

  “Nein! Nein!” yelled the German, apparently seeing the creature that held him in its true nature. Dimitri smiled at the man’s realization of his death.

  “Bitte...gnade,” the soldier pleaded.

  “Please…mercy! You dare to beg for your life!” Dimitri shouted, his voice harsh and animal like.

  Holding him by the neck with one hand, he tore the man’s right arm off and held it in front of him, the fingers still twitching with life.

  The soldier screamed.

  Dimitri tossed the arm to the ground, then tore the remaining one from its socket slowly, relishing each snap of bone and the tearing of muscles and flesh.

  The soldier’s eyes closed. Dimitri tossed him on the ground and began slapping him over and over trying to revive him. He knew he wasn’t dead and he wasn’t done either. He wanted this man alive long enough to experience more agonizing pain. The soldier’s eyes fluttered open. Dimitri smiled.

  “You think your angels will come for you soon, but you will not see them. I deny you that privilege for what you have done.” Dimitri dug his fingers into the man’s eyes and tore them out of their sockets.

  When Dimitri had finished, he looked around him and discovered that the others, Josip, Franjo, Andre, and Illiga, had also exhausted their fury on the soldiers. The area was covered in blood. Parts of bodies were strewn about like a poorly managed junkyard. His men were covered in the blood. Dimitri realized they had taken part in a feeding frenzy as they killed.

  Dimitri focused on the blood that covered their faces.

  “How can you drink the blood of these foul men? The killers of our beloved teacher and mentor?”

  “It just happened,” Josip said.

  Josip stood next to Franjo, who also nodded his agreement with what Josip had said.

  “And it will never happen again,” Dimitri shouted. “I need your word on it tonight—right now.”

  Josip and Franjo said nothing.

  Dimitri continued, “We must decide how we will live and what we shall be. I chose a life of peace by avoidance. I have seen enough killing to last me a lifetime. There will be no more. If you cannot agree with what I am suggesting—we part our ways now.”

  Dimitri turned and looked at Andre and Illiga. “What say you?”

  “We will do as you ask, Dimitri,” Andre said. “You have always led us and you shall always will.”

  Dimitri turned back to Franjo and Josip. “And you?” What is your decision?”

  “We have the power to be greater than they are,” Josip said.

  “Power?” Dimitri asked. “You believe you have power over mankind?”

  “Yes, is it not obvious to you? Look around you,” Josip said, indicating the dead bodies that were strewn around them. “Yet you choose to hide from what you could be.”

  “And what is that? A murderer? A killer? Do you not see what the blood has done to you? You’re a fool if you believe that.”

  “And what would you choose, Dimitri?” Franjo asked.

  “I choose life a life free of killing innocent people. I don’t have the stomach for it. I was never a soldier, just a simple farmer, as we all were. Or have you forgotten that? Do you not recall our times in the field and the simple pleasures we got from that?”

  Josip and Franjo looked downcast. Dimitri’s words obviously shamed them.

  “We can never have that life back,” Dimitri added, “but I will take no more part of this killing. I choose a life of solitary pursuits, of achieving an understanding of what I am. It may never come, but I can live with that. If things change later—they change. But right now, you can go and do as you will; if you stay, you must follow what I say.”

  A long silence fell between them.

  “I…shall stay,” Josip finally said. “We have been friends too long to do otherwise. You have always done what is right.”

  “And you, Franjo?” Dimitri asked. “Will you listen and follow my guidance?”

  “Yes, I too shall stay,” Franjo agreed.

  “Good. We may have lost a father tonight, but we are still a family,” Dimitri said.

  He knelt at the pile of white phosphorus ash that was all that remained of Alexander. He scooped them up and held his hand out to the night breeze and let the wind carry them away.

  “Good-bye, my friend. We will do as you have taught us and hope that we will find our place in this world where we can live in peace.”

  As the last ashes left his hand drifted off into the troubled night air of a country lost in its turmoil, Dimitri, hiding his red-tinged tears, returned to the sanctuary beneath the monastery as the others followed.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  “There was no way to save him?” Reese asked.

  “No. The explosive device dismembered him too badly for his restorative abilities to compensate.”

  “I’m sorry,” Reese said.

  Dimitri sensed that the feeling was genuine. “He was a good man,” Dimitri said. “He taught us how to survive and how to fight the temptation of human blood.”

  “Why? I thought—”

  “Of course you did,” Dimitri said, before Reese could finish. “More of your myth and folklore. They say we steal the blood of babies, don’t they? I suppose some of it is true, but we can live on the blood of animals just as well as we can on the blood that runs through your body.”

  Dimitri noted that Reese winced at the analogy. “I apologize for the terminology. I am trying to explain the best way so that you will understand.”

  Reese nodded.

  “It is easy to become addicted to the human blood because of the effects. It’s like a narcotic. It enhances our thinking and creative processes.” Dimitri paused before continuing. “Don’t you want to know?”

  “What?” Reese asked.

  “If I have drank human blood?”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes.” Dimitri said calmly. “On occasion we would encounter some of the—how would you say…the lesser quality people that the town had discarded, such as drunks and vagabonds. If their own kind saw no worth in them, what would it matter if we took them? It was as if the town had given them to us, saying, take them and save the world from any further foolishness or abuse of such idiots.”

  “But that was not the case with Idriz’s daughters, was it?” Reese asked.

  Dimitri eyed Reese with a cautious look. The sudden change of topic was an obvious ploy to see how he would react. “That was a blood feud that was carried too far. Idriz’s parents were makers of the elixir; they used it to keep us away from their cattle. When they did, we stayed away until things got quiet. Then we moved back i
n and stole some of their cattle for our food supply. This type of arrangement had been going on for years, passed through the generations. We avoided all other unnecessary contact with the villagers.”

  “So what happened? What went wrong?”

  “Idriz’s parents came to where we live in the mountains and Franjo found them before we did. He went crazy at the sight of them and killed them both before I could stop him. Idriz sought retribution and arranged a very purposeful trap that snared Franjo. He used a cow that he had continually fed the elixir to until the animal’s blood became saturated with it. Franjo drained the animal and ingested the elixir. He died a horrible death. Josip swore to seek revenge, and I told him he could have it, but I never thought that he would take the daughters.”

  “But he did,” Reese said.

  “Yes,” Dimitri said, as he rubbed his face. “I put the issue to the back of my mind. We all agreed to wait and came up with a better way to get food. We decided that in order to avoid a reoccurrence of the missing cattle, we would buy cattle from the villagers every few years and drive them up into the mountains. That way they all would believe that Idriz had killed the creature that lurked in the mountains.”

  “And did it work?”

  “Yes. Things had been going well until Josip killed the girls. We had been content in a way to continue our lives hidden in the mountains. One thing about finding yourself immortal is you have a new perspective on all things. There is no more rush or hurry to do or see things. It is just a matter of catering to your fantasies in ways that most men could never dream of.” Dimitri looked away and reflected on his words. After a few seconds, he turned back to Reese and said, “Now what can you tell me about our future?”

  “You’re not a fool, Dimitri. You’re intelligent, you must know what people are thinking in regards to the powers that you possess and how they might benefit in a military use.”

  “Of course, the thoughts crossed our minds many times. You know what my country has gone through. It has always been in a constant state of bloodshed. But we do not get involved with the trivial matters of mankind anymore. As I stated earlier, we have a different perspective about the world around us.”

  “I don’t think you will have a choice in that anymore. If your powers cannot be reproduced, you may be—”

  “Asked to do things in order to keep on living,” Dimitri said, finishing Reese’s statement.

  “Yes.”

  “You are not a fool either,” Dimitri said. “You must surely realize that no good can come from it.”

  “I know. But in this case, I don’t have a choice and neither do you.”

  “There are always choices, Commander Reese. No one knows that better than I do. However, it’s what we do with those choices that truly defines our existence.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  General Stone arrived early and without notice, a habit that he enjoyed. He liked catching people off-guard; it gave him an advantage he had found useful on more than one occasion. He especially found pleasure in that it didn’t let the ass kissers and brown-nosing scum get ready for him, and there were so many of them these days. The military was just as much as a haven for them as any civilian corporation.

  Stone was no fool and he realized that a certain amount of brown-nosing was required; after all, he had done his share on the way up. However, he saw it as a tool rather than an easy route to success. He thought how it was so closely related to the Italian Mafia and their skillful art of performing favors in order to have the ability to call in your own one day. He had managed to perform his favors carefully, used those paybacks to rise through the ranks by obtaining the jobs he required in the places that would reap him the most benefits based upon his performance rather than his empty promises.

  He had called in a lot of favors during this latest operation in order to cover his tracks. He may have been in charge of one of the most powerful commands in the world, but it still required him to go outside his chain of command and that was where the danger lay. Most of his favors had come from his buddy, General Arthur Sorrell, who was in charge of the European Command responsible for the operation in Kosovo. Fortunately Arthur had had some rough times in the past where he had been helped out of some very damaging situations from his good friend, Stone. Now they were even and there would be no more help that might jeopardize Arthur’s career. The debt had been paid in full.

  As he left his rented vehicle that he had picked up at the commercial airport and approached the main entrance door to the facility, he removed the plastic card Commander Scott had sent him. He placed it in the slot and touched the pad with his thumb to authenticate himself to the security system. The door unlocked with a heavy metallic click, and he went inside as the first strokes of sunrise painted their red-orange glow across the horizon.

  He knew the layout, having familiarized himself with the plans Scott had sent. He made his way to the control room, where he used his card and thumbprint again and entered into the secure area. He surprised a young Navy SEAL petty officer who had been looking at the remote camera monitors and making annotations in his desk log. At the sight of the general, the young sailor leaped from his seat as his eyes fixed upon the three shiny stars on the large man’s shoulders.

  “Sir,” the sailor yelled, surprised. “May I be of assistance?”

  “At ease, young man,” Stone said. “I’m early and just poking around some, getting a look at the place.” He glanced at the clock on the wall; the time was 0615 in the morning. “I would have liked to have gotten here when it was still night so I could have gotten a look at our visitors.”

  “We have all of it recorded,” the young sailor began, trying to be as helpful to his superior officer as he could. “Would you like me to play it for you?”

  “Yes...I think I would. What did they do yesterday, or I should say last night?” he asked.

  “Mostly medical examinations, sir. Major Barkley took a lot of samples and conducted physicals on them.”

  “That sounds fine. Let me see it.”

  “Yes, sir.” The young sailor took a compact disc and placed it in a player that was not in use. He indicated the monitor that would display the recording.

  “Thank you, son,” Stone said. “Perhaps you should return to your station. If I need anything else, I will let you know.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said and returned to his seat, where he observed the monitors and went back to entering information into his logbook.

  The video displayed the scene of what appeared to be any ordinary person getting a physical, with the exception that this man was wearing a collar around his neck of some sort. The man on the screen in the blue jumpsuit sat on the table as the doctor examined him. Stone watched as the men in the white lab jackets drew blood for testing. The general felt disappointed at this initial view of these creatures he had risked so much for. He had imagined they would be different, perhaps looking more like a beast of some sort, with dominant features or bulging biceps or something. But instead, the man sitting on the table appeared to be nothing more then a plain man, with the exception of the skin color being slightly paler than an average human.

  How would these creatures help him? Where were the powers that they were supposed to have? How could they help him in achieving his goal? Had he been wrong in pursuing this action without a field test that would have confirmed or denied what they thought about these creatures? If this information ever leaked out, he would be finished and retirement to some obscure life would be bestowed upon him. This had to work; this had to be the way that the United States would regain its seat of power and world dominance. The U.S. needed to stop taking all the crap from these third world shit-holes that were getting their hands on weapons that threatened the country.

  “Found what you’re looking for, General?” Reese asked, as he walked into the control room.

  “Commander Reese, how are you?” Stone asked. “And no, I haven’t seen anything yet that says that they are what you claim they mig
ht be.”

  “Stick around for feeding time. That’s always an eye-opening experience to what these creatures are.”

  “But what does that prove? They drink blood. It’s a strange world out there, Commander. I need something more.”

  “Unfortunately, we didn’t have a video recording of the initial attack when one of them took out two SEALs in a matter of seconds as if they were children.”

  “The men could have been careless and the creature just lucky,” Stone said, with a shrug. “We need some kind of test of their abilities.”

  “Why the hurry, sir? We’ve only been here for a few days.”

  “Do you have any idea how much this is costing, Commander?” Stone asked sharply. “I can understand your personal interest because of your background in studying these...creatures or whatever they are. But I need something to keep the money flowing.”

  Reese had no response to that. He knew the costs must have been staggering for the resources expended on the capture and the captivity—taxpayer dollars at work. And he had to admit his personal interest was greater than his military interest. For now, the key thing was to keep Stone engaged with what was happening. Keep him interested.

  “I understand, sir.” Reese said. “If I may suggest, perhaps we should get the doctor’s briefing and Lieutenant Johnson’s report. Then we can figure out our next move.”

  “Fine, Commander Reese.”

  “How about some breakfast first?” Reese asked. “The briefing is not scheduled for another two hours and this is probably going to be a long day.”

  “Lead on, Commander.” Reese led Stone into the small dining area within the facility. The Navy cook on duty took their orders and they sat down at an isolated table. Reese drank a large cup of coffee; he had been up all night with the creatures and was fighting exhaustion with the caffeine. He had assumed he was going to be able to grab a couple of hours of sleep, since Stone was not scheduled to show up until nine. But here the general sat and he would have to just suck it up and try and get through the day.