Under My Heel

by Michael Anderle

  William whistled, “Forty-eight hours? Hope we all ate our Wheaties this morning.”

  Marcus asked a question out loud, to no one in particular. “If there are only twelve people going on the operation, why does he want eight ships?”

  Bobcat started smiling, “Yes! William, grab those drawings. I’ll get the chopper up top warmed up. We might make the fun after all!” He started heading toward the door leaving their area.

  William’s face lit up in glee, “Hell yeah!” He turned and ran to the wall, carefully pulling down the manufacturing drawings that he had used to make the prototype.

  Marcus stared at his two rapidly disappearing teammates, “What did I say?”

  Bobcat poked his head back in the door, “Marcus! Don’t stand there looking fucking clueless. Get with TOM and make sure we have everything ready to go for ten engines. ‘Daddy’ is going to need a test run.” With that, Bobcat winked at Marcus and disappeared.

  Marcus was almost pleading as William was quickly packing up his papers. “Can’t you tell me what just happened?”

  “Yes, Stephen gave us a way to get involved.” William grabbed his papers, “Make sure you have the engines ready within twenty-four hours, thirty-six on the outside.” He started walking towards the door and stepped out. The door opened a few seconds later, “Marcus? Thirty-six hours’ tops, We’ll be back!”

  With that, William was gone.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Las Vegas, Nv - USA

  Eric rapped on the door, John popped his head around to see Eric wave him out. John let Bethany Anne know that he was stepping out and she waved to him. He also got Tom’s and Jeffrey’s attention to let them know that he would knock, to be let back in the security door.

  He stepped out. Eric walked back towards the front. John noticed Ashur sitting in a corner. “Got Ashur out of the SUV I see.”

  “Yeah, I got him as soon as I stepped out. I doubt they want dog hair gumming up their fans in there so I didn’t take him down to be with Bethany Anne.”

  Ashur ‘woofed’.

  Eric stopped three feet from the door. It was a glass door, but it had some reflective film on it to reduce sunlight and heat. It made the outside look darker. John stopped beside his partner. “What’s up?”

  “We have company watching us.” Eric nodded his head slightly towards the door. “Three buildings down, one guy acting like he is smoking. His coughing is cracking me up, and one guy one building behind him has settled down on the roof. I didn’t see anyone in the other direction, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Forsaken in the daytime?” John unconsciously reached for his pistols and made sure the snaps were off.

  “No, I think military.”

  “Why?”

  “Their stance, their inability to act like a civilian… The Air Force vehicle three buildings further down. Minor shit like that.”

  John snorted. Eric could be pretty calm in a bad situation.

  John said, “You think they are just surveillance, or are they a scout team?”

  Eric shrugged, “I can’t tell. If this was an op, I would think we will know it when they come through the front door.”

  Ashur woofed again.

  Eric turned and smiled at the dog, “Or Ashur warns us, whichever one happens first.”

  Ashur raised his head and started growling.

  Eric put up his hands, “Ok, ok, when Ashur warns us.”

  Ashur put his head back down on the floor.

  John eyed the dog, “He doesn’t seem bothered.”

  Eric looked at his partner, “Why would he? They are over a hundred feet away.”

  Ashur seemed to glare at Eric, at least that is the way John interpreted his facial expression. Then again, he might be looking at Eric as a juicy steak bone at the moment, too. “Ashur?” Ashur raised his head, “I think you need to go for a walk.”

  John turned around and walked back to the security door to the server room and knocked on it. A moment later Jeffrey opened it, but John stayed outside. “Jeffrey, do you have any rope that I could use to make a dog leash?”

  Ashur barked loudly from up front. John looked down the hall, “It’s for appearances. Stop barking and be a team player!”

  Jeffrey was surprise and stuck his head out of the room, “There is a dog here?”

  The men heard Bethany Anne’s voice from inside, “He’s with me!”

  Jeffrey turned slightly towards the room and then back out to John, “Good hearing.”

  “You have no idea. Rope?” John had to get the man back on track.

  “Yeah, over in building 2, we only have some networking cable here in this building.” Jeffrey told John where he could get the rope.

  Ashur stood up. John looked over at the huge German Shepherd. “Just getting some rope to pretend we have a leash on you. I want to walk you around and see what’s going on. I’ll be right back.”

  As he left the building he told Eric to watch and let Bethany Anne know if he was stopped, but that he was only going over to building two

  John exited the building and headed straight for building two. He noticed what he could, but he kept his eyes on the next buildings door and went inside.

  He located some rope in a desk drawer and turned to walk back to building one when his phone chimed. He looked down and noticed he had twelve missed phone calls from Frank.

  He hit the callback button.

  The Queen Bitch’s Ship Polarus

  Dan and Stephen were in the meeting room, reviewing a few notes when Captain Thomas walked in. The two men looked up.

  He came up and took a chair, “Stephen, Dan.”

  Dan sat back in his chair, “How are the preparations going?”

  Captain Thomas snorted, “Exactly how you think any preparations would be going with Jean Dukes. She’s been told she might be able to play with her favorite children again. Her and the fire teams are excited they might see more action, which is why I’m here.” He turned to face Stephen, “What are our parameters if we have attackers?”

  Stephen looked perplexed, “Parameters? Other than ‘win’ I’m not sure what you are asking.”

  “We are near Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Cyprus. What if any of their ships are part of an attack?”

  “Captain Thomas, if you can outrun them, fine. If you cannot, they must not be permitted to board these vessels. Protect these people, protect these vessels. You are in my waters, make the call you feel is necessary and I will back you up. We cannot assume that there are none of David’s people in the navies around this area. If there is an incident, I will make a few calls and get the people to back down. Just as soon as I am free, to do so, from our Turkey operation.”

  Captain Thomas wasn’t clear what Stephen meant, “Make a few calls?”

  Stephen’s smile turned a little malicious, a rare sight for the two men to see, “Sometimes the rumors are true and the reputation is deserved. The people I make calls to will know whom they speak to. Be assured I will get you and your people free if anything happens. Just make sure that there are still people here for me to ‘free’ in the first place, ok?”

  It wasn’t often that Stephen surprised Captain Thomas. But he had to admit that, in this moment, he sounded scarily like Bethany Anne. If she had a few more decades of scaring the crap out of people, already under her belt.

  He stood up and shook both men’s hands and left to make sure that the Polarus would be ready to protect both his ship and his sister ship.

  Stephen watched him leave before turning around to Dan. “That reminds me, I need to ask Bethany Anne to move TOM’s ship if possible. Probably out to an unknown location to hide it while we are gone. I trust that Captain’s Thomas and Wagner will do their best, but most of our fighters are going to be gone. Better to be prepared.”

  Dan thought about his statement, “Not a bad idea, if she has the time. Where would you think to stash it?”

  “What about where it was for a thousand years? No one fo
und it there, maybe we can stash it there for a few days?”

  “A sensible idea. My first though was Siberia. If it can handle the cold of space, then it shouldn’t have any problems there. I will have to ask Bethany Anne.”

  “That might be a problem.”

  Stephen looked confused, “Why?”

  “The Air Force has surveillance plans drawn up to be watching Patriarch Research. Frank has been trying to reach anyone in the party, but they must be in a building that is blocking their cell signals.”

  Stephen thought about that, “Has anyone asked Marcus to have TOM reach her?”

  Dan rolled his eyes and stood up, “No, neither Frank nor I thought about that. Let me talk with Frank for a few minutes, I’ll be back.”

  Stephen waved at the man and pulled out his phone. He had a couple of emails to return, including one to Ivan who was taking care of getting his house back together. Most of the home had been repaired. There were a couple of contractors that would not show up on time. Even when Ivan dropped Stephen’s name, they still showed up late. That was causing the completion of the repairs to drag out. Stephen made a note of the company names, he would have to visit these people in the future.

  Ivan and Claudia had been staying at different safe houses at night. There was no reason for them to chance David sending a second group ‘just in case’ Stephen was stupid enough to return home. But, David had almost a psychological connection to his own castle, so maybe he assumed everyone thought of their own home that same way.

  Those tasks completed, he spent a minute browsing on Tinder. He had such little time lately that he hadn’t taken a moment to window shop. He heard Dan coming back in plenty of time to close the app down.

  Dan returned to the room, “Frank is going to talk with Marcus now. Apparently, the Air Force is going to try to implement a raid on Patriarch Research’s servers.”

  “Is there anything that we can do?”

  “Not right now, either Franks messages or a communication through TOM should give them some advanced warning. If not, Frank and Lance have a large number of connections inside the congress and senate. Someone will be made aware that a major business person has been targeted for, what looks like, either trumped up charges or a fishing expedition. Lance is aware of what is going on and he and Patricia are reaching out to the lawyers to get them ready.”

  Stephen asked, “Doesn’t everyone know that nothing can hold Bethany Anne?”

  “Of course, but it would be a bad idea to just disappear from within an Air Force base. Lots of questions would be asked at that point. I just hope that if there is a problem, that Bethany Anne lets the lawyers or Frank get her out. I don’t think she would be in there for more than five hours, tops.”

  Stephen considered the situation with Bethany Anne and agreed there wasn’t anything that wasn’t already being done for them.

  The two men got down to planning the operation. Occasionally, they would call Todd, Pete or Nathan for input. The crew was getting Shelly prepared while many of the men went through their own packing and readiness efforts. Frank was able to provide satellite imagery showing the narrow road going into the small town of about 500 plus souls.

  Stephen spoke up, “You realize, except for the few who are in hiding, that everyone else is most likely dead?”

  Dan sat back, “Yeah. Even if there were only a handful of Nosferatu they would be able to kill everyone. I can’t imagine that David went to all of this effort that we will only be facing a few. By now, we have to assume he knows about the results in San Jose and Buenos Aires. Even if he doesn’t, I don’t want to under-plan.”

  “No, David has always been close to his vest with his plans. He doesn’t mind leveraging large efforts. He is a conniving bastard. We need to up our expectations for something bad to happen. If I’m wrong, nothing lost. If I’m right, then we will be glad to have the extra munitions. Make sure we have plenty of first aid supplies.”

  The men worked on trying to see if coming up with additional support would be possible. Dan tried to contact Frank, but it rang through to his voicemail. He wrote himself a note to get with Frank on who their American contacts would be when they were in Turkey.

  A rap on the door got Dan’s attention. He noticed Stephen was already looking over to the door. Nathan had poked his head in, “Hey, Ben has two bits of information we might want to review. The first is related to the terrorist assholes. The second is cell tower id’s used right before all communications went out in the area. He’s hacking into the local telecom to see if he can backtrack the two phone calls that were made right before it died. I’m assuming those might be David, or whoever set up this little party for us.”

  Dan considered his options, “Unless Stephen says otherwise, the terrorists will have to wait until we handle the AAR for this op. See if he can nail down their locations while we handle this dust-up. What does he need for the cell phone tracking?”

  “Hopefully, not much. Language skills perhaps if we come to something, that needs reading, that we can’t decipher.” He thought about it for another minute. “Nothing more at the moment.”

  Stephen turned back to Dan, “You seem pretty sure there will be people left after this op to need an after action review.”

  Dan smiled, “Well, we have you going on this op and the Guardians plus Nathan and Ecaterina. But to be honest, that isn’t why I’m sure there will be people returning.”

  “Oh?” Stephen was pretty sure that most of them would return but he knew no plan survived contact with the enemy.

  Dan looked at Stephen and said with a knowing glint in his eyes, “I know my boss…”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Las Vegas, Nv - USA

  So, this version of ADAM has promise?

  A few more minutes, please.

  Bethany Anne had allowed TOM to work with ADAM while she walked around. He was both more capable to review the information and better suited for the activity.

  She decided to speak to Tom and Jeffrey while TOM was busy.

  Walking over to the two men, both still trying to figure out the origin of the wireless signals. Tom turned around as she came up to them. Tom had his signal checking device in his hand, outstretched as he turned and aimed his arm straight at her.

  She watched his eyes go down to his device, then back at her, then back to his device. She waited patiently while he moved it around some more and his face grew a look of confusion that was pretty comical. She had a pretty good idea why the device might be suggesting she was the cause of his confusion. Maybe she would tell him, sometime in the future, why his device was giving him ‘faulty’ results.

  Maybe.

  “Gentlemen.” Both men stopped looking at the single device and gave her their full attention. “I would like to discuss the next stage of your employment.” At Tom’s look of concern, she added. “There is further employment, not a nice way for me to explain that you’re not needed anymore.” Tom looked relieved. “You might not appreciate it but the companies that I have responsibility for are in multiple areas of specialization. Those areas include computers and AI research, such as your own, as well as medical, military, financial, and advanced transportation fields. One of these small research firms, based in Romania, has un-earthed exciting new technology related to gravity and antigravity. However, they need substantial computer and research support, which Lance Reynolds and Nathan Lowell believe your company presently have.”