Queen Bitch

by Michael Anderle

  “I’ll let my government contact deal with that end, John. You and the team need to figure out what we need for an op in two days. We are going to meet a group of unruly Weres and we need to look sharp and as badass as we can. Consider our dress on op and off op. Dan has signed on to lead the new unified team and Frank is on board to get everyone the chance to join me if you want. If you want to get out, I’ll understand. You guys didn’t even know me before yesterday.”

  She looked all of them in the eyes and there wasn’t one who doubted he was in the right space.

  “Ok, I’ll take it that all of you are going with?”

  Scott said from the corner, “One for all and all for the TBQ!” All of them except Bobcat busted out laughing.

  Gott Verdammt, she wasn’t going to get to change that name now. Oh well, make it your own she thought. “That’s right, and you guys just became my bitches, so get your asses in gear I want to be wheels up by 5:30 in the morning day after tomorrow.

  They all left happy and excited. They had feared that Bethany Anne was going to go on to her other responsibilities and they would be broken up until the next event happened. Now, the action wasn’t going to stop and they finally felt like there was hope for the future and a way to take the fight to the enemy. They were still on their high from two successful ops in 24 hours and they didn’t want it to end.

  There was one thing that they were sure of; around Bethany Anne life would not be boring.

  Over the Atlantic between Miami, FL and New York City, NY - USA

  Bobcat lifted a few minutes past 5:30 AM with Bethany Anne’s team and an extra co-pilot. Bethany Anne took a few minutes in private with John to take a strip off of his skin for missing the planned take-off time.

  He respected her point and he took it for the team this time. But he received the message loud and clear that there was going to be one way to get things done and it was his responsibility to make sure it happened

  She went up to the cockpit of the rental Gulfstream G550. It was a pretty large jet, able to handle almost 20 passengers. For her team of four it was over-kill, however; she told Bobcat to rent it because she wanted to know if she liked it enough to purchase. Even as rich as she was, her toy list was getting damn expensive. She was going to need a way to make some money off of this somehow. At least eventually.

  That reminded her; she needed to start getting with TOM about the future. Which meant someone was going to have to help her with the businesses she already had access to and the businesses she would need to buy or create to get the science finished to get out of the Earth’s gravity well. Space-X and two other companies were pushing the envelope with rockets and sub-orbital aircraft liftoff. That was nice, but TOM’s capabilities were a massive jump in ability above anything they had right now.

  A decision she needed to worry about soon, just not on this flight.

  She went up to the pilots cabin and sat down next to Bobcat. The co-pilot they had ‘rented’ with the plane had gone to the back for a few minutes to give her some time with Bobcat. Terribly inappropriate, but who was going to tell on her?

  “Hey, what do you think of the plane?”

  Bobcat looked it over. “Nice, it’s got legs which we might need. Who’s kidding, we will need it I’m sure. However; I don’t know about buying it. We are renting this bad boy for just shy of $7,000 an hour with me flying so the bill is going to be about $60k for the trip there and back. Considering the heavy duty weapons we have on board I realize you didn’t want to fly commercial, but damn Bethany Anne, this sized?”

  “Hey, I wanted to both check it out for a full team load and I’m hoping to come back with more than just five passengers. Did your chief engineer take the bait?” Bethany Anne had told Bobcat to contact his friend, Billy “William” Stevenson and find out just how bad he wanted another tour in the sandpit. They decided a contract to retrofit the Black Hawk, now nicknamed ‘Shelly’, was a good idea. They would see if he wanted to leave once he put his blood, sweat and tears into the girl.

  Someone on the team mentioned that Bobcat treated the Black Hawk like he had treated his old girlfriend Shelly. That story stuck. Then Bobcat made a tactical error and exclaimed that Shelly was not an appropriate name for a Black Hawk. The more he bitched, the more the team gave him shit until he realized he had cemented the deal himself.

  Now, William was ordering all sorts of parts to upgrade Shelly. Including the engine upgrades the Army used in the latest iteration of the Black Hawk.

  “Yeah, he was both happy for the work and is looking forward to working on her and upgrading the engines. He loves those birds and he already has helped me on Shelly.”

  “So, you finally gave in to the name?”

  “Had to, the more I fought, the more the guys figured ways to get the name ‘Shelly’ into the conversation. It became a losing battle and truth to tell, I started to come around and liked it anyway.”

  “Good, when we get back figure out if William is the right guy for our team. We need a kick-ass aviation engineer and I hope he’s the right one. I want one that has military experience since I figure he will have seen a lot of the problems our birds might have.”

  “What, stress cracks from hard use?”

  “No, bullet holes.”

  “Oh.” That kind of put a final period to that conversation and Bethany Anne looked out towards the ocean and let her mind drift.

  They needed to find another hanger location. The one Bobcat had was good for commercial customers but not for her team. She had Dan take over the logistics since he should know best how to move the assets around. She trusted his knowledge and insights from his 15 years running this team and his time before that.

  However; the slower speed they were flying helped explain why Michael’s plane had those kick-ass military jets. When you were called into an op, speed was a requirement not just a ‘nice to have’.

  Fortunately, they were just testing the plane. There was a new G650 that Bobcat was interested in. He said the wait time was a mile long. Bethany Anne just smiled. She was sure it was, but money might be able to take care of it. She would talk with TOM, maybe he would have some ideas on how to build a better jet. She considered that for a moment. Maybe starting a small jet engineering company could provide what she wanted and start the perfect cover for the engineering efforts to come. So much to do, she needed a bigger team. She was going to have to talk with Frank and finally get in touch with her father.

  She knew what Michael thought of reaching back into your old life, but she had already broken the rules so many times since starting with Ecaterina that she figured what was one more? When you’re a day-walking vampire most people don’t find anything too special that makes them want to point and say ‘vampire!’ Especially since she could go without blood except in dire circumstances. So much had happened in the past 72 hours that she felt like she was on a roller coaster and it wasn’t stopping.

  She got up and patted Bobcat on the way out of the cabin. There wasn’t any reason she needed to be thinking in the cockpit and the co-pilot didn’t need to be sitting in the back.

  She passed him and went back to her team to figure out the strategy for making an impression in New York. They called Ecaterina and got her on the phone to confirm what she was setting up and picking up for them in New York that they had expedited last night.

  If nothing else, New York was going to be a blast. Now, if she could just make it work the roller coaster was going to have jets strapped to the back.

  The got down to planning the nitty gritty.

  New York City, NY - USA

  Carl Corruthers, the executive driver, was waiting for his customers to land at JFK. He was stationed at a personal hanger that was pretty large. That wasn’t too strange. Often, people would park multiple planes in one hanger. That this one was empty could mean that they were all gone. This was supposed to be just someone coming into town for a few days and leaving again.

  Carl had been told to take the b
addest SUV the company had. It was a beautiful Chevy Suburban that had been modified by Texas Armoring Corporation and was so plush inside that the back two seats could actually lay back like seats on a first class flight. They even had the little tables that could come out for working or drinks.

  He didn’t know who it was he was picking up, but he imagined it would probably be a rich person who had delusions of grandeur. He didn’t care as he was getting an automatic tip for this whole trip. He was going to have a great check at the end of this gig.

  Finally, a jet which had just landed seemed like it was heading in his direction. Oh mama. That wasn’t a little turbo prop. This was a beast of a private jet. You could purchase a car instead of renting one of these for just two hours.

  Maybe they were important.

  He straightened up a little. The jet rolled up near the hanger, but didn’t go into it before stopping. The door opened and the co-pilot was the first off. Then one of the biggest men Carl had seen came down dressed in a two piece black suit and carrying nylon ballistic that clanked around came down the stairs and headed straight for him.

  “Name?”

  “Carl Corruthers.”

  “John Grimes, pleased to meet you Carl. Is this the vehicle we requested?”

  “If you requested a special executive protection package Chevy Suburban sir, then yes it is. We can get shot and no one will get hurt inside.”

  “Good, open it up and let me make sure there aren’t any surprises.”

  Carl was surprised but it wasn’t a big deal. He popped the locks and he went through the inside while another guy dressed the same style pulled a mirror and went around the base looking under the carriage. He turned around to see the most beautiful woman coming down the steps. She had a subtle flair that wasn’t makeup but it was mesmerizing. She was dressed in a black pantsuit herself with a suit jacket over her top. He noticed that all of them, included the woman, had shoulder holsters and pistols. Ah hell, who was he ferrying around that looked like they truly needed this vehicle? While it might be nice to get a great story, he couldn’t tell anyone if he might actually be dead soon.

  His easy gig turned a little worrisome.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  New York City, NY - USA

  Gerry was standing toe-to-toe with the Alpha of the Denver Area Pack, Jonathan Silvers. Jon was as salty as they came and had spent a lot of his time up in the mountains on his ranch. He had a nice spread out there. Most of his pack was of the ‘live and let live’ mentality. However; his son was a prick of the highest order and because Jon had a large amount of land, money and influence, his son Pete felt that he was important as well.

  The problem was that Weres assumed you were important for what you had personally accomplished. The only thing Pete had accomplished was showing his ability to turn into a wolf. One time the girl took video with her cheap cell phone. These situations broke the strictures and Jon was having problems with both his son and his council lead.

  “Jon, you hard headed son-of-a-bitch. If you can’t get Pete to fix these issues either the council will have to deal with it or Michael’s group will!”

  “This isn’t your son you’re talking about, Gerry! Get off my case. Michael hasn’t been seen in years and the rumors all say he is dead.”

  Gerry wanted to punch something. “Those are rumors! I’ve talked with Frank and we don’t know that for sure. I don’t need another massacre on my hands and it isn’t Michael we will be dealing with. We will be dealing with Bethany Anne, you cock-eyed imbecile.”

  Jonathan turned around to try and cool down. Yelling at Gerry wasn’t going to accomplish anything. Gerry was predisposed to never backing down in an Alpha argument, so Jonathan would never ‘win’ that way. Plus, if it got out of hand Nathan Lowell was standing over in the corner of Gerry’s office. Jonathan was just lucky Nathan wasn’t in his pack. He didn’t really know if Nathan or Gerry would come out on top in a fight, but he had to respect any Alpha which handled Nathan as his second.

  He turned back around to Gerry, trying to keep his voice calmer. “Look, I hear you. We have a new vampire here in the States, but you will have to forgive me if I don’t feel like believing she can be as vicious as Michael. That bastard was a cold-blooded and heartless killer. I hope to God he is gone and good riddance. I’m not promoting we reveal ourselves. But killing everyone who might make a mistake is too harsh. And that’s what Pete has done. He’s made some mistakes.”

  “So why can’t he fix his mistakes?”

  Jonathan’s shoulders slumped. That was the root of the problem, wasn’t it? Pete wasn’t a mature guy and when he made a mistake he wouldn’t own up to the mistake. Everything was someone else’s fault. It was infuriating to Jonathan to deal with. So he hadn’t dealt with it and it could be the cause of Pete’s death. He didn’t believe that the new vampire was powerful because he didn’t want to believe it. He couldn’t believe it if he wanted to hope his son had a chance to live.

  He looked up to Gerry’s eyes and came clean. “Because I didn’t do my duty to make sure he would be a stand-up man. I went to work on my ranch instead of my son. It was easier to give him a cherry sucker instead of a spanking. So here I am worried that if you’re right, I’ve killed my son by being lazy instead of keeping him alive with discipline.” He was emotionally spent; he sat down on the couch in Gerry’s office.

  Gerry didn’t know what to say to that. He was caught off guard with this sudden declaration and wiped his face and sat down in a chair between the couch and his desk. He put his elbows on his knees and put his chin in his hands. “You got anything, Nathan?”

  Nathan stirred a little from the spot where he had been holding up the wall. “I have little patience for Pete, if that means anything. But if you mean do I have anything to help this situation? I’m at a loss. We have two women that Pete has shown him changing from a human to a wolf. That is not only against the strictures, that was careless and stupid. Now, we have one video that thankfully is mostly too dark since he was being an ass at night and she had a crappy cheap camera phone. Pete doesn’t want to deal with the women anymore since he only knows how to put his head in the sand. The women are starting to figure out that maybe they can make money with this. What a cock-up.”

  “What do you think Bethany Anne is going to do?”

  It was Nathan’s turn to wipe his face. “Well, I can tell you her first reaction isn’t to slap someone’s head off. However; she doesn’t suffer disrespectful fools at all. Which is just about the definition of Pete. So, I don’t have much hope if we get her involved. However; I don’t know how NOT to get her involved. She has the ability to make this all go away.”

  Jonathan latched on that comment like it was a lifeline thrown to him at sea. “How can she make this go away?”

  Nathan looked at Jonathan. “Well, she can probably wipe the women so they don’t remember, however; she isn’t really enthused with that option. She could wipe Pete back a few years and you could start over.”

  Jonathan went white when he realized just how powerful she must be to accomplish wiping years of a person’s memory away.

  “But again, she probably wouldn’t want to do that either. She could also just kill everyone. The girls, Pete and anyone who pissed her off. I’m telling you Jonathan, the best chance you have is what you just did and that’s to explain the problem and hope she sees a solution we don’t.”

  Gerry hadn’t been expecting to be talking about Jonathan’s kid right now. They were supposed to be finalizing the plans for the people they had termed the ‘green’ team. As in, these guys are so green they don’t know enough to keep their mouths shut.

  The Weres on the ‘Green’ team, however; thought it was a great name and assumed it had something to do with a fresh start.

  Either way, this conversation was derailing them. Gerry had taken Jonathan’s appointment because he was an important person on the council. “Jonathan, we need to finalize this meeting with Bethany Anne. The best id
ea, however; is to approach her with the problem. What do we have to lose? She’s going to be involved at some point and it might as well be earlier when she has a better chance to help.”

  Jonathan relented, “Ok, I agree. So, what do we need to finish up this meeting? You are saying she agreed to a safe harbor?”

  Gerry confirmed, “With the qualification that no one was too aggressive with either her or her team. If that happens then she can and will take care of the problem.”

  “Is that why you left out Paul Gleason and his group?”

  “Hell yes. That hothead wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut and we would be knee deep in blood in five minutes.”

  Jonathan shook his head. “He called and complained to me and others on the council. How he was able to string together ‘No Implementation without Representation’ boggles my mind.

  Gerry snorted. “Coached, I’m sure. There are players on the council starting power grabs. This is a pain in the ass and frankly something we don’t need. If we aren’t careful, we all will have knifes in our backs as well. I’ve been tempted to introduce them to Bethany Anne and walk out of the room. After a few minutes I would just work with whoever she left alive.” Gerry laughed darkly, “Still tempting frankly. I understand she is in town?” He looked over at Nathan.