Operation (4 page)

She opened the door and stepped out into the darkness of the night.

John Reese stared after her as he sat naked on the edge of the bed with only a sheet wrapped around his mid section. His mind raced—should he go after her? Something inside his mind said yes…but the chorus of opposite thought that had acknowledged and agreed with her accusations said no.

The smell of the briny water of the Chesapeake Bay, drifting in through the open window, reminded him of the last mission he had been on with the team.
The last mission.
The words hinted at a finality that did not really exist. He had set the vampires loose upon the civilized world and now he paid the price for it every waking day and even during the night in his dreams.

Every damn night!

His life changed, from a comfortable routine existence, into a world of controversy where he could not hide. Damn them! Damn them for their logic and philosophy! Damn them for their immortality! Damn them all to the hell they came from!

Anger surged through him. He grabbed one of the pillows from the bed and threw it at the door, but missed. A cheap painting fell from the wall and its glass shattered on the floor.

A pounding on the wall from the occupants next door, “Keep it down over there or I’ll call the cops!” a male voice threatened. 

“Screw you!” Reese yelled in response.

With his anger still seeking an outlet, Reese turned his attention back to the bed and the remaining pillows, which he grabbed and tossed across the room with all the force he could muster. Their softness yielded little satisfaction to the destructiveness that pulsed through his body. He turned his attention back to the bed and his eyes focused upon the remaining object that he had placed under the pillows earlier.

The dark outline of the Glock 9MM handgun was in stark contrast to the white bed sheet on which it lay. Its polished dark metal shimmered in the light, beckoning to him like an old and trusted friend. The sight of the gun and the reassurance of the option it offered helped to remove some of the rage that had stolen his reason. He picked up the handgun and held it in his hands. The weapon was his way out if he so chose—a way to end the madness that had become the relentless monkey on his back. He remembered that was not the original intent when he purchased the weapon, but the logic that he had used then, was that it was for protection from his enemy. That was a fallacy which could not be denied.

Logic. What a line of crap that was.
Ah…yes, John Reese steps up to the plate of logic…he swings and it’s strike one.
The weapon would be useless against the vampires.
And what human foes would come for me? Everyone involved or in charge of the mission were dead…all of them. He swings and misses again…strike two. Here’s the pitch… No…not yet. Not tonight. Not strike three yet. That will be the big decision when the time comes: the time when I face the decision to jump the ship of humanity, so to speak. 

The anger was gone. The frustration subsided into its resting place in his subconscious. He placed the gun into his small gym bag that he had brought with him, dressed quickly and left the hotel. It was about 1 a.m. and the parking lot and surrounding area was deserted. He unlocked his car and placed the bag inside, then decided to take a walk along the bay rather than drive the short distance back home. He closed the car door, locked it and made his way to the sand and gravel path that led to the beach area. 

The night was warm and humid, as it usually was in this area of Virginia. Streetlights running along the walkway punctuated the darkness of areas with a dull gray light. Reese walked along the sand and made his way to within a few feet of where the water lapped up to the beach. He stared out into the darkness of the water, looking at the lights of the Bay Bridge Tunnel and the lights of ships out at sea.

How peaceful it all looked, he thought. The sea had that effect on things. Its expansiveness seemed to swallow up the problems that confronted humanity, made them appear small in relationship to its size. If only the mind could work the same way. If only the problems that faced humanity could be diluted by the supposed infinite capability of the human mind, how easier things would be. Men would stop fighting other men, greed and deceit overcome. Individual struggles ejected and washed up like driftwood, never found along some isolated beach of some island.

Reese laughed at his own thoughts. If only it was that easy. If that were the case, he wouldn’t be here right now. He wouldn’t have a gun that ultimately might cause his own death. He was alone to face his thoughts of the past and which confused him of the course of his future. Moreover, while he was here, alone and frustrated…they were out there. They were adapting and surviving. Their philosophical dilemma, if one could call it that, was beyond his own comprehension. He knew that to give into their way of thinking was in effect a rejection of the principles that had guided life in general, both physically and morally. Yet, it was so damn appealing. So appealing, but the change was so frightening.

He didn’t know, because he had never asked and it had not come up in conversation with the vampire Dimitri, if there were any young vampires: children that had been changed. He wondered how they would view being vampire. How would they feel: their lives of never achieving the level at which a person becomes conscious of their life in terms of love, family, or having a purpose? Just the thought of an adult becoming a vampire was mind-boggling enough, but for a child it must be devastating.

“Hey man,” a voice called to him, causing him to jump. Reese’s hand instinctively went to the small of his back where he kept the gun—but as soon as he felt the emptiness, he remembered placing the gun in the bag and the bag in the car. He cursed himself as he turned in the direction of the voice.

A few feet away, a man stood looking at him. He was unkempt in appearance: unshaven, and his shoulder-length hair danced upon his shoulders in the ever-present ocean breeze. His clothes were baggy and loosely fitting as if he had lost a lot of weight or if the size was not a consideration he could afford.

“Got any spare change?” the man asked.

Reese relaxed a little. He didn’t think that the unkempt man was a hit man or anyone that meant him harm...as long as he maintained his distance.

“I need bus fare to get—”

“Yeah, I know,” Reese said. “You need bus fare to get home.” His tone carried a sarcastic tone of
I have heard this one a million times before
. To get rid of the bum, he dug into his pocket for some change.

“Now that’s uncalled for,” the man said. “Keep your damn change! I don’t want it.”

Taken aback at the sharp retort, Reese felt a momentary pang of guilt because he had made the usual assumption: that the man was a bum and would blow the money on booze or drugs.

The man turned to leave without another word.

“Wait,” Reese called out. “Here, take the change.”

The man turned to face Reese. “Oh, now you want to give it to me. Why…so I can ease your conscience? No thanks. I think you should have some guilt—there’s more than enough to go around these days. Quick to judge, that’s the problem with so-called humanity.”

For the second time in a matter of seconds, the man’s words caught Reese off guard, but this time the shot was straight to the heart. “Guilt”—his own personal issue, yes, he knew about guilt all right. And “humanity”—all the buzz words that Reese was being bombarded with these days. As strange as the circumstances were, Reese suddenly felt a burning desire to want to hear this man’s point of view on both subjects.

The man turned and began to walk away for the second time.

“Wait. Please. Here, take the money,” Reese said. “How about we get a cup of coffee?”

“Say what?” the man said.

For the first time, Reese heard surprise in his voice.

“I said, how about a cup of coffee,” he repeated.

“Buddy, what’s your plan here? I ain’t that desperate,” he said, his voice betraying his thought that perhaps Reese wanted something else from him in exchange for the money.

Reese smiled. “No, it’s nothing like that. Seriously, how about a cup of coffee? There’s a little shop next to the hotel. Maybe we can sit and talk for a bit. I just had a…well bad incident with a—”

“Let me guess…a woman. I’m right, huh?”

“Right on the money,” Reese agreed.

The man now looked at Reese curiously. “Ain’t you just changing with the breeze,” he snickered. “One second you’re ready to tear me up and throw me away without a second thought, the next you want to talk.”

“I know it’s strange, but I want to hear your point of view,” Reese said. “How about it then: one cup of coffee?” 

“I tell you what,” the man began. “I can’t go in the shop, they tend to get nervous and call the cops. But if you bring that coffee out here,” he pointed to a park bench under one of the lamps that lit the walkway near the beach, “I’ll sit a spell with you. But if you get some weird idea in your head about looking for something else…”

“No. It’s nothing like that. I just want to talk,” Reese said. “I’ll be right back.”

“Light and sweet,” the man called. “And supersize it.”

A few minutes later, Reese returned with two large cups of coffee. The man was sitting on the park bench as if he were sunning himself in the middle of the afternoon. His head lay along the upper back of the park bench, gazing upward into the sky, his arms outstretched to each side, resting on the top rail. He looked so relaxed and content that Reese almost felt bad about disturbing him. The poor guy probably couldn’t sit out here during the day with all the tourists and cops around, so the night was his only time when he could enjoy the serenity of the beach.

“Here you go, one light and sweet coffee,” Reese said, as he approached the bench with the cup of coffee in his outstretched hand. Reese’s shadow covered the man in a dark light. There was no reaction. Reese wondered if the bum had fallen asleep.

“Here you go,” he repeated in a louder tone.

Still no movement. Reese slid to one side so that the light from the street lamp could cut through his shadow. It was then he saw the dark liquid that covered the man’s shirt collar.

“Christ,” he uttered. He put the coffee cups on the ground and moved closer. Intending to check for a pulse, Reese saw that his throat gaped open.

Reese turned quickly, his feet knocking over the two cups of coffee.

“Shit!” he cried, and then started back to the coffee shop to call the police. After a few steps, he suddenly stopped.

Was it them?
He immediately asked himself. No, it couldn’t be. Too messy. They wouldn’t be that careless. But, what if…what if…they were leaving him some kind of message or something? Reese remembered the universal sign of a traitor’s punishment: the slit throat. Had they not been trained to kill that way? Yes. They had. He remembered Carlos the Columbian: his throat had been slashed in a similar fashion. But why now? Why here? Were they watching him? Did they think he was going to tell what really happened and that they were loose here in Norfolk, Virginia, and not dead like he said they were? Was this a warning of some sort: that if he talked, this would be his fate as well?   

“Damn it—damn you,” he cried. “Son of a bitch!”

They know I can’t say anything. If I did, they would lock my ass away and throw away the key. It makes no goddamned sense! Maybe it wasn’t them… maybe it was a random murder.

He had to get away from here. If he called the police, they would question him and that would only cause undue attention that he didn’t need right now. Especially when they asked why in the world was he talking with a homeless man along the beach at 2 a.m. But the coffee: someone might remember that he had come in and bought two cups of coffee earlier. No. It was a 7-11, the revolving door of coffee to go. They would not remember him. Someone would find the body in the morning and call the police.

Reese walked back to his car, his eyes searching the area for anyone that might be up at this hour. He saw nothing. It was the beginning of the off-season and most of the tourists had left. The hotel parking lot confirmed that as well: only a few out-of-state plates that Reese hoped belonged to weary travelers who had settled in for sleep hours ago.

He got in the car, started it and drove away slowly, not wanting to attract any attention. In less than fifteen minutes, he was home. As soon as he closed the door behind him, he took the few steps into his living room and fell into the large overstuffed chair as what had just happened this night came crashing down on him in full force. Sarah’s rejection, a dead man who may have been killed because of him: all of it caused by his affiliation with the Team of Darkness. His life was being consumed by the operation that he had once believed was the best thing that had ever happened to him—the discovery of vampires. Instead, it spawned one controversy after another, to the point that he could no longer see the line between reality and fantasy.

My reality and my fantasy
, he corrected himself.
The rest of the world is just fine. It’s just my world that’s all screwed up
.

If he didn’t stop, he would find himself crazy or worse and he might hold a consultation with his good friend the Glock. That was one argument he wouldn’t win.

 Since his retirement from the Navy had become official a few months ago, he had time to think about things and probably too much at that. Time with no meaning or purpose could be an enemy. And it had been. He had brooded over the Team of Darkness affair to the point of second-guessing everything he had done. This brooding had contributed to this evening’s problems with Sarah, but that was only part of it. His thoughts and dreams haunted him: the dreams of a life that would be eternal, but at a cost too great to him—his humanity.

Why he persistently thought about it escaped him. He knew he couldn’t do it. He knew that he couldn’t give up his humanity to be one of them. Although he had never mentioned or discussed it with Dimitri, Reese knew the vampire was aware of his dream and would not turn him, even if asked. Dimitri had never turned a human into a vampire. He had stated it so explicitly: he had been a victim of circumstance himself, so he would never force anyone into the same situation. After all, he had refused to turn Lieutenant Johnson and that was what Johnson had wanted, badly. Johnson saw what he would be able to do militarily if he had the powers of Dimitri. But that was all in the past. Johnson was dead, Dimitri and the others supposed to be gone.