Boris looked at Janna. Really looked at her. After more than a week of large meals and steady exercise her body had filled out. (A little bird called Nathan had told him about Alexi training Janna while he was away.) Her original tall, willowy body was now slightly taller, with fuller hips, and a perfectly fantastic gait.
He found it hard to concentrate around her. When he closed his eyes, he could think of how much he liked and respected her. Her input on military matters was well-founded and her intelligence was impressive. However, when he saw her, smelled her, his body took over. The sway of her ass was mesmerizing. Her long red-blonde hair was entrancing. His hormones and attraction collided with his respect for her abilities until he could not seem to think objectively.
Trying to find some balance, he attempted to think objectively. Her bust was, honestly, larger than he usually found physically attractive. That made no difference to his thoughts or feelings. He had learned over the past four hundred years that it was the person, not the body that was truly important. And she was an entrancing, intoxicating person to him on multiple levels and to his head, heart and hormones.
The two of them both started talking at the same time. Janna broke off in a burst of laughter that sounded like sweet-toned bells. “You first,” she said with a smile on her face.
He drew her into a hug and said “I think my time away has given me some perspective. Janna, if you are willing, I would like to see where ‘us’ will head. No pressure, beyond doing our jobs as well as we have been. But I missed you, worried about you horribly, while I was gone. When I found out what you had done while I was…”
She interrupted his sentence with a hungry, aggressive kiss. Breaking the touch of her lips on his, she laid a gentle finger to his mouth. “Don’t spoil it by saying something like ‘you were angry.' Or you wish I hadn’t done it. It was simply part of the job. I will not have you saying what I can and cannot do, ignoring the fact that I am a grown woman.” She waved her free hand up and down her body, illustrating her point. “A woman who has done this kind of work for five years. I was the best person to send. Danislav did object, just so you know.” She frowned, thinking about it, “Paul, if anything, encouraged me.”
Boris shrugged and commented, “I am honestly not sure how Paul’s brain really works. Even in the UnknownWorld, many fear me. He never has. He is always pragmatic to the point of sociopathy when on a mission or a job.”
“Balancing that, he shows a level of empathy with his family and friends many others cannot match. He is in many ways a cipher. Paul is only able to look at the pros and cons based on the mission requirements. He’s never been able to look at the overall impact on an operation, though. Just the individual tasks. But he is brilliant in his work.”
“I was going to say that after Dan had laughed at my reaction, I was forced to look at the mission pragmatically. You were right to go, and I am proud that you did so with success and flair. I am proud of you and your abilities.”
He kissed her on the forehead, and she dragged him down into a hug and a deeper kiss. They lost all sense of time locked in each other’s scent, kiss, and embrace.
*****************************************************
After they had proved to the prisoner that they were willing to heal his injuries and go back again to the interrogation, he was more willing to talk. The nanite-infused liquid that Bethany Anne and TOM had provided to Dan increased the agony of the repeated questioning and proved a painful point. They obviously were happy to keep going, and Paul’s repeated references to a dentist and the supposed timeline had an intensified effect.
Janna and Boris were broken out of their enjoyment of each other by Paul calling out to them “He’s singing like a bird! I think you want to hear this, Boris.”
The broken man gave descriptions of the three sites that Konrad used to base his operations and admitted that there was somewhere in the north near Finland that Konrad spent time. They also found out that Konrad had various Weres captured on these bases and was using them to improve his most loyal followers. With a success rate of about one in ten. Apparently, he didn’t want to create a potential competitor as strong as he was. Once they had the locations and grid references, ADAM did his magic. They confirmed that one was serving as a comms node, and was, therefore, the most likely place for Konrad to be at this time.
Paul was all for organizing a full press assault on the base. Boris and Danislav were not precisely against this, but agreed that there should be a better solution. Dan left them discussing it, since he didn’t really have a good handle on the capabilities of Boris’s people. Besides, he needed to get back and report. Things were showing signs of breaking loose in too many places for him to be comfortable spending time away from the base in Australia unnecessarily. Boris had things well in hand here.
Bottom line, though, events in Russia still had the potential to go so completely FUBAR that he needed to report to Bethany Anne and start contingency planning.
After Dan had left, discussions changed to how to draw forces out from the base by staging a closely-fought ambush on a convoy within twenty kilometers of the base. At worst, it would pull a portion of the guard force that could be the real ambush target. At best, Konrad would come himself.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NVG Base Omega, Central Siberia, Russia
Shen was becoming unnerved by his captor’s weird behavior. He had expected more questions and visits after the earlier incident. What was unexpected was for the vampire to move his office into the same room as Shen’s cell. The considering looks he’d been getting were not a comfort either, although the increased rations were.
Konrad had alternated between ranting about his dead brothers and their killer, the curious site discovered near Arckangelsk, and real plans on how to maneuver his political group into shifting Russia’s policies to align with Konrad’s own objectives. At least once every three days, he would rant at how gallingly effective the commander of the raiders and his troops were against his forces. He did not realize how paranoid he sounded when he blamed the attacks on Boris.
Konrad had given Shen all his reports on the attacks and what he had been able to piece together of the attacks on the supply convoys. The vampire had started to assign a company of troops as convoy escorts, and the raids had died back, only to be replaced by spoiling attacks on the bases.
Whoever was organizing the raiders was brilliant in many ways. All the NVG he had seen were on edge as if they were expecting an attack at any moment. Shen could see that it was wearing on them, and tired people made more mistakes.
From the reports and the limited history, he knew that the raids could be originating from Boris. Or they could be a new faction of Chechens, as many indicators in the reports suggested. It could be some other foreign or domestic group that wanted everyone to think that it was the Chechens. There simply was not enough data. None of the raiders who had been killed or injured had been left on site. There was the occasional scrap of a torn uniform, but those could have come from anywhere, even if it was the camouflage pattern and color combination favored by the Chechen rebels.
While Shen was reading over the latest reports, Andrev came running into the room and saluted Konrad, “Sir, we have received reports that the convoy that was due today has come under attack and is pinned, but holding ground.” Shen’s ears almost twitched at this. If the irregular troops were commanded by Boris, this was almost certainly a trap. The big Were could probably defeat Konrad, but Shen remained quiet. With incomplete information, he could hardly be expected to voice possibilities or advice, let alone a warning.
If Boris killed Konrad, it was entirely possible that he would come to the base. Although Shen feared the outcome if Boris found him here, he feared it far less than any possible outcome of remaining trapped in this base with the unstable vampire. The man was riding the ragged edge of insanity, almost ready to tip over into full madness. Shen knew that being a madman’s prisoner was not likely good for one’s long-term health.
>
So Shen kept his suspicions to himself while the vampire and his command team planned a reaction force to ‘smash’ the ambush. They had convinced themselves that Omega base was their second most secret location so to them, it seemed more likely that an organization discovering it would keep looking and find the Archangelsk base. With the secrecy surrounding that location, it would appear to be the actual HQ.
Omega base was a centralized comms node, but they were careful to keep the traffic hidden and relayed through other bases. A reasonable person would conclude it was an important site, but any attack was, in their analysis, more likely to be directed against Archangelsk.
Shen thought their analysis showed why he was glad that he was their prisoner, not one of their men or officers. Rather than positing a scenario into which the facts slotted neatly, they were twisting and bending many of their facts to fit their situation. When he was asked his opinion, he responded simply, “It fits as well as anything I can come up with. There are other possibilities, but this is as likely or more likely than most of them.”
Andrev nodded with a vicious smile. “Good. Now we have a chance of knocking these raiders back on their heels. If we can hand them a defeat, it can only weaken their resolve.”
Konrad nodded slowly. “Yes. Ready the HQ guard squad as well. We will lead the rescue effort, and make sure some of the raiders escape. With our appearance, we can spread fear among these troublemakers. They may work for Boris, but I doubt he risked revealing his other forms to them for oh-so-many reasons. They may not even realize the base is in such close proximity, in which case this additional force will break the strength of the raiders we attack by the shock and surprise alone. Their leaders will appear less competent and that will erode their resolve and morale. Go, Andrev. Gather the forces we will need to leave only a handful of survivors. I will go prepare myself.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Relief Force Ambush Site, 20 Kilometers from NVG Base Omega.
Boris had been forced to place most of the Weres he’d been able to gather for this operation with the group ambushing the convoy. They would act as both a reserve and a TARFU plan. If this strategy was unsuccessful, at least the original ambush force would be able to get out. The force attacking the convoy numbered two hundred riflemen and fifty Weres. They had already taken more casualties than he liked, but were doing a good job of pinning the convoy in place. It made them a tempting target for any relief force, and one was already forming in the NVG base along this road. He’d placed Danislav in charge of that part of the offensive.
This attacking force had a dozen mortars, a handful of anti-armor weapons and twenty of his snipers with Barretts. He had three carefully hoarded anti-vehicle mines on the road, as well as a demolition charge. Only a thousand men had been able to be gathered for the second force, and it worried him. Still, he still had the Ace that hadn’t been used. Bethany Anne had eight Black Eagles on standby. She’d also cleared and dropped off the Spetsnaz that had defected or been captured by the refugees. Two of them had been willing to carry out the brutal orders against the refugees without the implied threat of being killed by their more ruthless comrades. The pair had been executed by the rest of the willing defectors. The rest had arrived earlier and were acting both as observers and poised to disrupt any retreat by the relief forces.
Boris had contempt for Konrad’s open and easily-disrupted plan. The bases the vampire had built or secured gave him enormous strategic reach but were too dispersed to support each other. They were tactically vulnerable. This was true even if four of them provided jump-off points to nuclear sites.
Tactically, they were at least two days apart from each other. Against the mobile forces of the Russian military, the best the vampire could do would be to pull off ambushes to slow consolidated forces down, while he gathered enough soldiers to force a confrontation. Against spoiling attacks and convoy raids like Boris used, Konrad could not even block and stop possible escape routes. Without forces gathered in large groups, the skirmishers of the Were’s forces would be impossible to block or avoid. Several bases were large enough to provide assistance but even fully-manned their effectiveness would be limited since the NVG had no helicopter or air support.
Perhaps they had planned on using the massacre of the Regressive Whites who had been ‘plotting against the President’ to speed their recruitment. If they had spun it deftly, it might have worked, enabling them to recruit large numbers of ex-military into their ranks. That did not even consider the rumors they could spread that would have attracted many of the garden-variety thugs. Loot a town under the guise of suppressing those who wish to topple the government would have been a great draw for those types of criminals.
It didn’t matter what Konrad’s plans had been. Through luck, Boris had delayed them. If it held, he would end those plans tonight.
Konrad was likely to lead his men personally. An attack on his forces this close to his base was a personal affront he could not ignore. He’d lead from the front, so Boris had to as well. All the troops had magazines pre-loaded with sintered metal and silver ammunition. A fifth of them had those magazines already seated in their rifles. They would not be as effective against humans, but it was a necessary precaution against a force that had already shown it had a number of Weres incorporated into its ranks.
The Spartans (as Boris had designated his small Spetsnaz force) reported that a column of trucks was moving out of the base towards the ambush site. That was something of a relief to Boris, although it made a lot of sense tactically. His forces had shown proficiency with anti-armor weapons and, since the battle north of Romanovka, had used no booby traps or prepared explosives. The number of APCs that they had taken out had to be hurting the NVG. Those couldn’t be cheap, even if they were getting post-service discards. He was lucky they didn’t seem to have tanks. But political troops such as the NVG rarely had armor or artillery. For them, it was a numbers game as often as not.
Boris checked his position again. His original body armor for both forms he had passed on to Janna when Alecta sent him a new set that she and ADAM had designed together. Janna had checked that it didn’t restrict her too much. She had insisted he wear the newer armor over every objection he raised. The new armor had overlapping plates that would spread to provide more effective protection in his Pricolici form. She also knew she was to keep clear of Konrad. Her skills had improved rapidly, but he doubted there was another Were who could take on a third generation Vampire like Konrad. Peter and Nathan together probably could, but that was it as far as he knew. Janna’s assignment was to cover his back from Weres and would be supported by Paul.
Paul had opted to wear a relatively thick ceramic-insert vest. He was the base of fire, or designated shooter, for the pair of them anyway. It was their job to protect him and his to shoot the head off any other Weres in their area. That was why he would be firing single shots tonight, to make sure that the attackers that came close to his friends did not survive.
Boris heard the trucks moving down the road towards them. It was probable the infantry was planning on dismounting a couple of klicks from the ambush and coming in on foot. Without APCs, that was the only logical action. He really hoped that Konrad was in the lead truck, but he doubted he would be that lucky, especially when he saw the fourth truck in the line. It had armor plates on its side. That was where the vampire would be. He could smell the odor of old, rotting blood coming from the column now, and was sure Konrad was in it. He was unlikely to have tried for deception on a rescue mission, even if his arrogance and ego would allow it.
The lead truck rolled over one of the mines and practically disintegrated, throwing its load of men outward in a bloody spray of body parts. There were yells from the column as the remaining seven hundred troops quickly exited the vehicles. They were moving far more smoothly than those that had been ambushed weeks ago. It looked like they had been practicing responses, or had training beyond what the first group had received. This was going to get bloody
quickly. He just hoped that there were enough doses of the nanites to keep the fatal casualties down.
He heard a group of howls coming from the back of three of the trucks. That made things worse. At least thirty, probably more like fifty, werewolves. It was time to change. He nodded to Janna and picked up the AA-12. About ten werewolves were charging in his direction as he transformed. Once his sight cleared he saw that the wolves were concealed by a cloud in his mind. He knew that Konrad wasn’t as powerful as Michael. This must be a trick he’d thought up. Still, concealment wasn’t cover. He held down the trigger on his AA-12 and emptied the thirty-round drum of silver coated buckshot into the cloud, hoping to hit as many as possible. He was grimly satisfied when he heard four yelps and some cursing in German. He’d managed to at least hit the bastard. That left six that would be worrying more about him and Janna than the silver burning in their bodies.
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