Chapter 18
Operations That Go According to Plan Are Some of My Favorite Fantasies
One of the oddest sensations when doing a job – or in this case, an operation – is the strange combination of excitement and boredom. The actual drive down to the hotel was dull. Florida can be a pretty state, but Interstate 75 doesn’t always go through the most spectacular parts of the state. Mostly its sparse grasslands, farms, and then the edges of the Tampa sprawl. I looked across the cab of the truck. Vanessa spent the entire drive from Tallahassee immersed in the data on her laptop. Barely audible pop music drifted over from her headphones as she drowned out the outside noise. She didn’t speak to me the entire trip. Her body language was oddly neutral. I couldn’t tell if she was just immersed in her studies, or if she was making a concerted effort to ignore me. Hangman casually mentioned to me that my plan was costing Vanessa a good portion of her savings. He made it perfectly clear that her outlay wasn’t something to be taken for granted. I knew he was right, but I didn’t know how to talk to Vanessa about it – so I didn’t say anything.
To be perfectly honest, I had my own problems as we approached my home county. It was getting harder for me to put away all of those unfamiliar emotions that blasted through me as I thought about what Elizabeth must be going through – assuming she was still alive. Intellectually, I knew that she was most likely dead. If only my brain could get through to the rest of me. It was taking more and more of my willpower to continue on to the hotel. Everything in me told me to scream into Tampa and begin a violent search for her – even if it meant bringing in the pathwalkers. Once my mind hit that revelation, I knew that my judgment was getting seriously fucked up. I was going to need some serious time to get into mission-mode once we got to the hotel, and that was not going to help my already-strained relationship with Vanessa if she decided we needed to talk. Vanessa liked to talk out her problems.
The hotel was your basic chain hotel. The rooms were comfortable, and that was about the extent of it. Vanessa retreated to her room, leaving me alone with my traitorous thoughts. I concentrated on mission preparations. Such as properly rigging one of my sub-machine guns into a non-descript satchel. I hated wearing something like the satchel, but it would blend into the university scene. The blending was for the humans, not the vampires or ghouls. The last thing Vanessa and I needed was for some stupid human to catch sight of a weapon and panic. Four spare magazines slipped into another pouch. I really wasn’t expecting a fight during the mission. If we made contact with the vampires’ forces – which during the day would be ghouls and a few stupid humans – then Vanessa and I would run, with just enough gunfire to cover our escape. As much as I hated to admit it to myself, I wasn’t here to liberate my county – or even to find Elizabeth.
There was a soft rap on the door. I peered through the peephole and saw Vanessa pacing back and forth indecisively in front of my door. I jerked the door open and yanked my partner inside. Vanessa let out a stifled yelp. I flinched as Vanessa slammed a surprisingly strong fist into my side. Hangman must have been giving her lessons. The two of us glared at each other for a brief, but eternal moment.
“Sorry,” I murmured, looking down at the floor, “My mind’s kind of fucked up right now.” Vanessa’s expression softened slightly, but her annoyance was still there. She rubbed her arm and walked into my room.
“I understand Mark,” Vanessa answered, her voice seasoned with an unexpected uncertainty. She sat down on one of the twin beds and stared at blank television screen. Her stillness was unnerving. I waited for her to speak, uncertain of what was going on in Vanessa’s mind.
“You know, being this close to Tampa, I’m scared,” Vanessa said, a slight tremor in her soft voice, “I’m fucking terrified. I thought as we got closer to the mission, all of those fears would just fall away, but they haven’t.” She slowly turned and looked at me. Vanessa’s eyes were pleading with me. I walked over and brought her into my arms. I didn’t say anything as the two of us clinged to each other. Vanessa’s fear grounded my burning desires to tear Tampa apart in a desperate search for Elizabeth. This delicate little kin, the beloved of my friend and protégé, needed me to keep focused. If I didn’t, there was a damned good chance that she wouldn’t make it out of this alive. She needed to know that I was with her on this mission.
Vanessa gently pushed me away and sat back down on the bed. She gave me an appraising look. “That was unexpected.”
“Hangman said you liked hugs,” I answered meekly. Vanessa laughed long and loud as the tension inside of her finally found a release.
“That makes sense,” Vanessa said, finally getting control. She gave me an odd look and leaned into me, “You know Mark, you give good hugs. Reminds me of my brothers.” Vanessa stared at the blank television screen, almost as if she were looking through it. I waited as she collected her thoughts. Vanessa almost never mentioned her family. The few times that she realized she had let something slip in conversation, she just stopped and stared off for a bit.
“Are you sure this plan is going to work?” Vanessa asked without taking her eyes off the television, “It seems a little iffy to me.”
“It should,” I answered confidently.
I could see the curtains in the house move ever so slightly as the limousine pulled up to the curb. I stepped out from the back, my eyes sweeping the street for possible threats. Vanessa stepped out behind me after paying the driver. I looked up at the house as the limousine quietly pulled off. Right now, Vanessa and I were in the most dangerous part of our mission, even if she didn’t know it. I slipped the strap of the messenger bag over my head and walked up to the door.
The house was a simple non-descript home in a middle-income suburb. The varying blues of the outside were new as the owners modernized their home to fit in with the neighbors. Two nice, but unimpressive sedans were parked in the driveway. A rusty and worn sports car was parked on the curb. I smiled. At least part of my grand plan was working. Now, if the occupants in the house would cooperate. I gently knocked on the door.
The door swung open. A disheveled man in his early forties stood in the doorway. From the look of his black hair and growing beard – and the smell of stale sweat and beer, the man hadn’t shaved or showered in a few days. His eyes, although bloodshot, were clear and focused on Vanessa and me as he visually inspected us. He was wearing a faded black t-shirt and black sweatpants. There was a familiar bulge on his right side at the waist. The man looked like he was leaning into the left side of the doorway, but I could see the signs that his annoyed nonchalance was a charade. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from one of Mrs. Werstand’s finest security consultants.
“Can I help you?” the deep voice drawled, betraying a childhood firmly in the Southern states. I heard Vanessa take a step back as the alcohol tainted breath floated across us.
“I hope so Mr. Williams,” I answered. Williams perked up when I said his name. His hand slid down to the bulge, but his eyes never left mine. “My name is Marcus Smith. I worked for Mr. Werstand.” The reaction was almost instantaneous.
“Get in here,” Williams ordered, grabbing my arm and jerking me into the house. I was barely in the foyer before Williams was grabbing Vanessa and dragging her into the house. There was a small Glock in Williams’ hand as the door shut. I pushed down my instinct to either draw out my own weapon or yank the MP5 out of the messenger bag. Williams was scared, but he wasn’t threatening us. He was trying to protect us.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” Williams demanded as soon as the door was securely shut.
“We need your help,” I said, “More to the point, we need your son’s help, Mr. Williams.” Williams’ arm jerked as he almost brought his weapon up to me before his conscious mind caught up.
“Who is we?” Williams asked suspiciously, “Your whole operation was rolled up, and both your boss and mine are dead.” Williams had every right to be suspicious of me. He had never met me before, but he knew I did dangerous things. After all, Williams worked for Mrs. Werstand’s security company, and the employees helped out the Guild on a semi-regular basis. The employees weren’t stupid. They needed something to explain why they occasionally escorted individuals toting fully automatic weapons and did surveillance on individuals that acted like criminals and terrorists. Some of the employees were kin, and they knew the whole story. Unfortunately, they were a small minority of the company. There just weren’t that many kin with the necessary skill set for an upper-tier security firm. For those individuals with the necessary skill set, but not the heritage, it was quietly known that the firm contracted out to clandestine intelligence operations. So, as far as Williams knew, the local spy ring in Tampa fought a nasty clandestine war with a new foe and got rolled up with many, if not most, of the local ring’s operatives killed or fled. Now, I was showing up and telling him that I needed him and his son to get back into the game.
“Yeah, the locals are gone,” I answered, silently thanking Vanessa for being smart enough to just play along, “Now I work for the next level up. There are records here in town that we need. We need to get to their location and extract from their location without being seen.”
“What does this have to do with my son?”
“The records are at USF,” I said, “Your son is a student there. He can get us on to the campus with a minimal amount of fuss. We get the records and he brings us back here. Then we leave.”
“Fuck you,” Williams hissed, “I am not risking my family for this. For all I know, your bad guys are waiting there to kill you and anyone around you. Hell, they could be watching this house.” I took a moment before answering and looked at Williams. The aging in his face and graying in his hair was recent. This was a man who watched his work explode in his face and was worried that it was following him home to his family. I doubted that Williams had a good night sleep since Mrs. Werstand was killed by the Bleeders.
“I can tell you that the firm’s relationship to our work was not revealed,” I told Williams, “We lost because the opposition flooded us with cheap workers. We had already eliminated their main operatives. There wasn’t anyone to make the connection.” Williams looked at me askance. It went against all of his professional experience, but he knew I was telling him the truth. Not all of it, but enough for him to believe me. “Our organization needs these records if we’re ever going to retake this area. Yes, there is some risk. If there wasn’t, I would just go to the university myself and not involve you at all. But, I will be there, and I will protect him.”
Williams turned away from us and walked into the kitchen. Vanessa and I silently followed him. Vanessa gave me a worried look, but I just gave her a reassuring smile. I spent some hard time researching my mark. Williams was going to agree – and so would his son. He just needed enough time for his mind to come to that forgone conclusion. I just hoped he would do it before his son’s afternoon class.
The younger Williams eagerly agreed to help us out. Part of that was probably ingrained family tradition, but the bigger part most likely came from a teenager’s excitement for doing what he considered “Epic Shit.” I heard the capital letters in his voice as the young man bubbled on how exciting it would be to be doing a covert operation. Vanessa gave me a concerned look, but I just smiled and waved her worries away. Williams wasn’t the only employee of Mrs. Werstand’s company that had a child at USF, but the younger Williams was already profiled as a possible “asset.”
The young human’s performance confirmed my suspicions. As we drove onto the campus, any outward sign of eagerness or excitement faded away as Williams Jr. became just another student – one who was only giving some friends of his parents a ride onto the campus. He even wore the strained sneer of angst. He was his father’s son.
The younger Williams dropped us off in front of the massive six-story library. The beige-bricked and gray concrete structure was taller than almost any of the other buildings on the expansive campus, with the notable exception of the Sun Dome arena. As I made sure the messenger bag was hanging properly, Vanessa confirmed telephone numbers. I scanned the surrounding area. In front of the library was a courtyard area dotted with green metal tables and crammed with humans. Behind us was a small cul-de-sac that acted as an access road. Beyond that was a small parking lot and one of the parking garages. To the left of the library was Cooper Hall, the main liberal arts building and the College of Education. On the right was the main entrance loop of the university, starting from Fowler Avenue to the main administrative building. Across the loop was the College of Engineering. My instincts were screaming that something was wrong, and my hand reflexively slipped into the messenger bag.
“Something wrong Mark?” Vanessa asked with a strained casual tone.
“Nothing I can see, but something’s wrong,” I answered.
“Do we need to leave?” Vanessa asked with a hint of fear in her voice. Her hand lightly grabbed my left arm.
“No, but I think we need to be careful,” I answered, taking the first steps toward the library. She kept a casual pace next to me, but she was darting looks all over the crowd of people. I doubted any of the students noticed, but a professional would. “Do you know where we’re going?”
“I know what we’re looking for,” Vanessa replied, “I’ll find out once I get on one of the computers inside.” We entered the sliding glass doors, through an airlock, and into the lobby of the library. Just on the other side of the airlock was a wide entrance way with a Starbucks to the right and the check out desk on the right. The entrance way dumped into a common area crammed with students at tables. Vanessa stopped one of the milling students and asked where the common use computers were located.
I jerked my head around as my instincts screamed warnings. My eyes scanned the area around us. We were being watched, but I couldn’t see who. My hand gripped the MP5 in the bag. Vanessa’s conversation with the other girl came to a screeching halt. Both of them gave me fearful looks. This was not me being paranoid. Someone with a bit of training was tracking Vanessa and I. My protective side told me to extract Vanessa and hunt down the bastard on my own. My professional side reminded me that the job needed to be done. I shook my head. A vague threat was something to be cautious about, but nothing so far was enough for me to cancel the operation. I fully believed that the information was too important to Vanessa and my overall mission.
“Let’s get this done,” I murmured to Vanessa. She nodded and warmly thanked the still-spooked coed. I followed my partner back to a bank of computers. It was primarily set up for the students to check their email, the computers also let Vanessa access the library’s catalogue. I let her tap away on the keyboard as I searched again for whoever was following us.
“Are you sure you’re not being paranoid, Mark?” Vanessa asked in a low voice.
“We are being followed,” I told her, “I just can’t find who’s following us.” Vanessa went pale and swallowed hard. I smiled down at her. “Relax. I’d scrub the operation if I thought you were in serious danger. Hangman would kill me if he find out I risked you wrecklessly.”
“Somehow that’s not making me feel better,” Vanessa replied tartly. She turned back to the computer and copied down some information onto her PDA. “The information is on the fourth floor.” I grimaced at that. I was hoping that it was close to the ground. The library’s main elevators and staircase emptied onto a common area on each floor. Rooms surrounded the common areas, and most of those were the stacks. If a fight broke out, the exits were severely limited. Hostiles could easily block the common area, which meant any exit would mean using very noisy means. Either an emergency exit, which would pinpoint our location for any bad guys, or we would have to go out the window. I could survive a forty foot fall, but Vanessa couldn’t. With this many humans, I really didn’t want to have to pull out weapons. I spent a moment weighing the risks and rewards before nodding to Vanessa.
“Okay, let’s do this,” I told her, “We’ll take the stairs up.” Vanessa nodded in agreement. The two of us walked as casually as possible up the stairs to the fourth floor. Vanessa kept a happy smile on her face as we passed the smattering of students in the common area. My instincts weren’t screaming at me as we went through the glass doors to the library’s stacks. Maybe whatever was following us had given up. More likely, it was calling for backup.
Vanessa went in search of the court records while I cleared out one of the studying corrals. Apparently my glower was scary because the two humans quickly grabbed their materials and skittered out of the stacks after a moment or two of me standing over them. Vanessa was oblivious to the matter as she plopped down half a dozen thick books. From the look on her face, Vanessa was annoyed. More than likely because she had to actually sort through paper instead of scrolling through electronic records. Vanessa hated paper records. They were antiquated and obsolete, among many of her other complaints. She slid the first book in front of her and cracked it open. The book actually cracked from never having been opened since it was printed and bound. As Vanessa settled down in her chair and began reading, I focused on watching the glass door. If our stalker decided to sneak in here, I was damn sure going to intercept him and make sure he had a nasty surprise. Quietly, of course.
“Mark, what are you doing?” Vanessa asked, her voice tight with annoyance.
“Guarding you,” I answered, keeping my focus on the door.
“Mark, we’ve got over two thousand pages of paper text to get through,” Vanessa laid out, “We will not get anything out of these before dark if you don’t help me.”
“Can’t you just find the date of the envoy’s report?” I asked.
“If there was any sort of order to these things,” Vanessa answered, “The court recorders don’t put everything in a nice neat chronological order. They have some bizarre indexing system that I don’t understand.”
“Bloody hell,” I murmured, “Okay, but move over here.” I gestured to the seat I was currently occupying.
“What?” Vanessa asked, “If anyone comes through that door, they’ll see me first.”
“That’s kind of what I’m counting on.”
Vanessa was right on two things. First, the system for listing entries in the court records was bizarre. I couldn’t make rhyme or reason for how the recorders decided to list the various transcripts in the books. The transcripts went from subject to subject with no binding theme. Even the date had no bearing. Some passages had transcripts from the same day, other times one day would be spread out over several passages. It was enough to drive anyone trying to gather information from the books to near madness. The second thing – Vanessa was easily spotted where she was sitting.
After a few hours trying to decipher the books, I heard the glass door open. I’d heard it open several times, but this time my instincts began their screaming again. I slid out from the study corral into the stacks. I left the messenger bag, but my USP was drawn and out of sight. The stalker walked almost noiselessly across the carpet. He had some training, but the stalker wasn’t a professional. Could have been a ghoul, but I didn’t think so. They were usually too task-oriented to do things stealthily and subtly. The ones who could were usually personal servants to the vampires. He walked up to Vanessa. I heard the distinctive sound of metal against leather as he pulled out a weapon. Stupid fucker.
“Where’s the werewolf?” an angry voice whispered. Vanessa gasped. I stepped up behind the – lycanthrope? What the fuck? I didn’t recognize him, but he was definitely a lycanthrope. He was holding a small revolver at Vanessa and didn’t sense me as I placed the barrel of my USP right behind his ear.
“Very carefully pup, hand your weapon over to my partner,” I told him. He hesitated and his muscles tensed, prepping for a counter against me. A flip from my wrist slapped my pistol into his temple. “I really don’t want to kill you, but it wouldn’t be the first time.” His muscles went slack as my words reached him. He quickly handed the revolver to a wide-eyed Vanessa.
“Good,” I told him, “Now sit down.” The lycanthrope quietly complied and I finally got a look at his face. The dark brown eyes and similarly colored hair was almost a trademark of the lycanthrope population. His face was lean and angular. There were faint scars on his chin and a more prominent one that split his right eyebrow. He was looking at me in fear and surprise. He swallowed as I towered over him and holstered my pistol.
“Ancestors,” he whispered with a disquieting awe, “You’re Ranger.” The lycanthrope knowing me caught me off guard. I gave him another hard look. I didn’t know him, but I recognized him. The lycanthrope was a pack warrior. I didn’t know which pack, but I was sure I had seen this lycanthrope at one of the Rites. “Ancestors, I thought you were dead.”
“Well, I’m not,” I said, “What are you doing here?”
“The Guildmaster sent me,” the lycanthrope said, “Blue Blade saw you come in. Guildmaster told me to go in and find you.” My hand shot out and slapped the young lycanthrope. I hit him harder than I wanted to, but I wasn’t about to apologize.
“Guildmaster’s dead,” I whispered dangerously, “So you better tell me who the imposter is, and who damn well gave him the idea he could take that title.”
“That would be me,” murmured a familiar voice from behind me. I whirled around, drawing my pistol. Farmer kept his pistol aimed at my eye as I place mine firmly into his gut. “And as to your second question, the Lady-Apparent promoted me.”