Operation (8 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“Then get to it.”

*****

  With less then an hour before sunrise, a white unmarked van drove into the parking area of the Ocean View public beach. Without stopping, the rear doors of the van opened and the body was dumped out. It rolled for a few feet and came to rest. The van sped away.

A figure emerged from the shadows of the snack stand. He was a tall man and of large build. He glanced out toward the ocean and the horizon above it as if searching for something, then turned back toward the body. He moved toward it at a leisurely pace, which indicated that either he was not concerned about being seen, or that he was accustomed to witnessing such acts.

When he reached the area where the body laid, he looked around the area once more, and then knelt down next to the body to examine it. He figured he had time. The police would not be here for several minutes—or perhaps not at all, until a morning jogger or beach walker discovered the body and called it in.

The dead man was dressed in prison clothing, bright red with black letters stenciled on it. He read the name of the institution: Naval Station Brig Norfolk, VA. The man was obviously military and in custody for some reason. The glitter of something metallic caught his eyes; the handcuffs and shackles on the man’s wrists and ankles. Seeing the dead body still shackled and handcuffed sent a wave of uneasiness through the man.

Further examination revealed that the man’s throat ripped open. He closely observed the wound. The throat cut by something jagged, something short and not very sharp. Death had been painful and unexpected, the man thought, as he looked upon the expression of the dead man, his face frozen in a grimace of pain or fear; the lips stretched as if he were screaming or badly scared.

There were patches of something dark smeared on the side of the face, which didn’t look natural to him for some reason. Looking further, he saw that the man’s pockets bulged with something. He reached into one of them and removed little packets, which contained a white powder. The obvious indication was drugs.

Memories poured into the man’s mind. The military—the drugs—and the slit throats; the combination was always deadly; the universal punishment by and for the drug cartels. He remembered his own actions while in Jamaica and areas of South America. He had killed them—the drug lords—in his own way, then slit their throats to make it appear as if it had been done by another cartel, and not by himself and his team—the Team of Darkness. Here it was again, the memories washing up onto the beach of his consciousness like a forgotten piece of driftwood, which he wished would remain forgotten. He didn’t want to remember any of it.

Dimitri Bicannoff stood and gazed toward the horizon once again. The blackness had turned to a dark gray now as the morning began its slow approach. He knew he should go before it became dangerous for him, but something drew him back to the body. There was something strange about the body, but he couldn’t place what it was.

As he tried to think in the increasing brightness of the morning and the threat it brought, he was about to leave and return to his home only a few blocks away, until a strange but familiar smell wafted up from the dead man. The association was immediate and he discovered what it was he should have realized earlier.

He knelt down next to the body again and turned the man’s head to one side to show only the profile. The dark stains on the side of man’s face were beginning to smolder—the flesh was beginning to cook.

Anger surged through him like a bolt of electricity. His hands opened and closed in frustration, as if wanting to grasp something and tear it apart. He screamed his frustration into the pre-dawn air until he felt his anger abate enough to be coherent.

There was no time for this now, he thought, as his primal instincts for survival and the first glimmer of dawn reminded him he had to leave now. He hurriedly ran to his car, got in, started it up and drove out of the parking lot. He arrived at the house within a few minutes and quickly exited the vehicle. He ran toward the door of the home, feeling the first rays of the morning light come over the horizon and strike his back. He felt the heat inside of him grow quickly, his vampire blood beginning to boil.

He stopped in the shade of the house, but didn’t go all the way in. Instead, he removed a small knife and a handkerchief from his pocket. He opened the knife blade and held the knife in his right hand, then ran the sharp edge across the palm of his left hand. Dark blood oozed from the slit that was quickly trying to close itself back up. He dabbed at the blood with his handkerchief and watched it turn black from the blood. He then returned the knife to his pocket.

Stepping back toward the door that led to the outside, careful to remain out of the direct light that now filtered in, he threw the handkerchief into the rays of sun. He watched as it briefly smoldered and then burst into flame.

“Is something wrong?” a voice called to him.

Dimitri didn’t answer but continued to stare at the burning handkerchief.

“Dimitri?” the voice repeated.

Slowly, Dimitri turned in the direction of the voice. In the hallway, there stood two men. They were large like him, and their skin was dark, the look of European ancestry in their faces, skin and hair. He looked at Andre and Iliga, his friends, fellow vampires and survivors of the Team of Darkness, as they stood in the shadowed light of the hallway.

“It is happening again,” Dimitri said, in a voice that was cold and unemotional. He turned and looked back at what remained of the handkerchief. With his heightened sense of smell, he was able to separate the smell of the burning cloth from the other odor he had recognized earlier—it was identical.

Dark memories engulfed him as the dark stain burning brightly reminded him of the day when his friend and comrade, Franjo, had drank the poisoned blood of the cow. Again, he watched as the black blood poured from the vampire and burst into flames. He imagined that the dead body on the beach was burning now, in the bright light of the morning.

“We have to do something tonight,” Dimitri said. “We have to go back to our prison.”

“Why?” Andre asked.

“To check if they are doing it…again.”

“And if they are?” Iliga asked.

“Then we will have to do something about it.”

 *****

Dimitri, Andre and Iliga watched the evening news that night before going out. The discovery of the body near the Ocean View beach was the major headline. The identification of the body revealed the dead man was a Navy SEAL confined to the brig on the Naval Station. A representative for the Naval Station Norfolk Security Office said Petty Officer First Class Mark Jones had escaped from the brig in the early morning hours. The actual method of his to escape was still under investigation. Jones had been in the brig for the murder of a naval officer, as well as for suspicion of distributing drugs, while awaiting transfer to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Petty Officer Jones’ twelve-year career had been marred with several incidents of non-compliance to orders, disrespect for authority, and other numerous infractions of military law, the reporter said. Highly decorated for his operational service, he had been afforded the opportunity to correct his behavior and hopefully learn to conform to the military way of life. That part had been considered a failure with his latest infraction: murdering a platoon commander. 

“Local authorities had been alerted by an early morning beach walker who found the body,” the reporter intoned. “The coroner states that the apparent cause of death was a knife wound to the throat and the probable blood loss that followed. Drugs were found on the body. An undisclosed source in the police department speculates Jones somehow managed to escape from the brig with help from his local drug contacts. However, their motive for rescuing Jones from the brig is suspicious. It is believed that Jones had been offered a deal if he revealed his local drug sources to the authorities, in return for a reduced sentence. Whether or not his escape was facilitated by outside help to ensure his silence, is still unknown. The investigation continues.”

Dimitri noticed that there had been no mention of the burning of the dead man’s flesh. He wondered why. Was it too ghastly to mention or was it unexplainable? Or perhaps, they were told not to report it for another reason—they couldn’t explain why or what caused the flesh to burn.

“Dimitri?” Andre asked.

“Yes?” he answered, coming up from the depths of his thoughts.

“Are we going?”

“Yes. I was just—”

Dimitri’s attention was drawn back to the television by the mention of the words Navy SEALs and additional deaths. He listened as the reporter relayed the story. 

“In an unrelated but deadly incident, four Navy SEALs were killed in a training accident on the Naval Amphibious Base last night. A representative for the Naval Special Warfare Group stated that the accident was under investigation, but that preliminary information indicated a faulty timing device on an explosive charge. The men were inside a structure in the live fire area when the explosives they were carrying prematurely detonated, killing them instantly and destroying a significant part of the building they were in.”     

“An accident…” Dimitri said thinking out loud. “How coincidental that all of this happens in the same night—five dead men.”

“You think it is connected?” Andre asked.

“How foolish they are to think that they can announce it and say it is not.”

“Should we still go?” Iliga questioned.

“Yes,” Dimitri answered without hesitation. “We must know for sure.”

Chapter Five

Later that night, Dimitri and his two trusted friends infiltrated the Naval Amphibious base with very little difficulty. They easily circumvented the main gates and went over the security fence. The gates and fences were wired with detection devices activated by body heat. For Dimitri and the others, being dead had its advantages—no body heat. There was no sense in developing a security device to protect people from the dead, because for the most part, they posed no active threat to the living.

They moved with unwavering speed and direction. They knew exactly where they were going, to an area previously used for recreational purposes, but closed and refitted when Dimitri and his team required a living and training area, or as they called it, their prison.

Seeing their prison again reminded Dimitri of the collars they had been forced to wear, controlling their behavior. His hand involuntarily moved to his neck and felt where it had been. The collar, with the poisonous elixir ready to be injected into their bloodstream, killing them.

Control by fear of death, the oldest and yet most effective method. Commander John Reese knew that well and had used it effectively against us. It will never happen again.

Never again. Dimitri hoped that the facility would be empty and abandoned, although that would leave the question of where the vampire blood came from unanswered.

Why did this have to happen now? We were almost done with all of this—we were going to go home soon.

But if the base was not abandoned, then who was in there? Where did they come from?

Nothing but questions and the dreaded potential answers that brought only more problems. Problems that he didn’t want to address because they’d inevitably lead to what they could not afford: discovery.

If there were something going on, the man likely involved with it would be the man that had assisted in their capture, as well as their escape. That man was Navy Commander John Reese. Dimitri thought that Reese had left the Navy, after he made his objection to the forced servitude of the vampires as military weapons—but if that was the case, and if the operation continued, was Reese involved?

He was their so-called expert on vampires.

Reese planned their capture and developed the collars that Dimitri despised. He had also laid the groundwork for this facility.

Had Reese been lying? Did he change his mind and now thought otherwise?

Dimitri wasn’t sure anymore—he thought he had known Reese, but now it appeared that all of that had to be reconsidered. To be safe, Dimitri thought it best to assume the worse and that if other vampires being held here, then Reese was involved. 

Only one road that led to the compound but they stayed off it and traveled through the woods that surrounded the area, avoiding the surveillance cameras.

What they saw when they arrived at the compound was not encouraging. The floodlights blazed, there were vehicles in the compound and the security areas were manned. By all these indications, there was obviously something inside that needing guarding. The only good sign in all of this was that there appeared to not have been any changes at all to the original configuration, which meant Dimitri knew as much as their captors did about the inside of the facility.

“Dimitri?” Andre asked.

“Yes,” Dimitri said.

“Do you think there is another…one of us in there?”

“I think…” he hesitated for a few seconds before continuing, “I’m not sure. We have been among each other so long and we have become accustomed to each others presence—I’m not sure if we could detect another of our kind.”

“What do you think the chances are?” Andre asked.

Dimitri thought for a second then spoke. “The blood that was on the dead man came from someone. It could not have survived from the samples they took—our blood does not live outside of our bodies.”

“Are you certain?” Iliga asked.

“I am. The chemist we paid to develop the neutralizer for the elixir in case we should need it, he told me that about the blood. So if the blood was from a vampire, the question becomes is the one it belongs to here? You can see that something is going on here by all this activity.”

“So what’s next?” Andre asked.

“We have to get inside to see for sure.”

“Now?” Andre asked.

“No. First we wait and we watch.” Dimitri answered, not taking his eyes from the compound. “Then we must come up with a plan of how to get in without revealing ourselves.”