Operation

by Tony Ruggiero

“Bastard!” Dimitri swore. He had been right. He only hoped that it was not too late.

  Moving as quietly as he could in order to preserve the element of surprise, Dimitri moved further inward until he could see the beast and Josip. Josip was perched precariously on a thin ledge. From what Dimitri could see, it was taking Josip every bit of strength and balance to maintain his position. This also explained why he had not fired the gun. If he tried to get it off of his shoulder, he might lose his grip and plummet. The huge bear was standing on its hind legs and swinging its razor sharp claws within inches of Josip’s feet.

  Dimitri removed his father’s gun from his shoulder; its discolored stock and rusted gun barrel giving him a disquieted moment. What if it didn’t fire this time? He had fired the gun before with his father at targets; it had worked—most of the time.

  He aimed squarely at the back of the bear. If he could hit the beast in the heart, a second shot wouldn’t be necessary. Taking a deep breath and holding it, he fired.

  Josip, exhausted from keeping his awkward position, was on the verge of falling off the ledge as Dimitri’s shot struck the bear in the shoulder, clearly missing its heart. The crazed animal turned toward Dimitri.

  Dimitri ejected the round and loaded another. As he threw the bolt forward, it got stuck halfway.

  “Damn! It’s jammed,” he said as fear slammed into him, numbing his body. He tried to turn to run, but couldn’t move. Everything around him slowed down to a horrific crawl. He became aware of his own breathing and the beating of his heart. With a surprising but calm matter-of-fact manner, he knew his life would soon be over.

  Looking toward the bear, he saw it was watching him curiously. As a wind blew by Dimitri, the bear raised its head and sniffed. As if the beast could smell his fear, it uttered an ear-shattering growl, lowered its head and charged.

  Dimitri shut his eyes.

  Josip fell to the ground, and even though badly cramped from his holding position on the ledge, he un-shouldered his rifle, aimed and fired as the bear surged toward Dimitri.

  The bear fell within inches of Dimitri’s feet.

  Dimitri opened his eyes and looked at the animal. He watched as its blood began to soak the ground around it and he finally realized that the creature was dead. Dimitri staggered over to Josip and collapsed next to him. They sat silently and stared at the eight hundred-pound carcass. They hugged each other as their feelings of having escaped death surfaced.

  “We have looked at death,” Dimitri said.

  “Yes,” Josip replied.

  “I’ve never realized how precious life is to me until faced with death. That moment when I thought I would die, I would have given anything to continue to live. Anything for another chance…”

  * * * *

  Anything for another chance…the words drove Dimitri from his troubled sleep and he arose from his crypt. His anger from the previous night came back, the result of the significance of the dream and the foolish action of Josip: the killing of the young girls and now the soldier. The other three vampires of the group were also wakening, but it was Josip that he wanted. He spied him along one of the walls preparing to exit the cavern. Dimitri was next to Josip with lightning speed.

  “How could you have been so foolish, Josip?” Dimitri demanded. He pressed Josip against the stone wall, his anger evident from his extended nail and fangs as well as the intensified red glare from his eyes. “First it was the two little girls instead of the father, and now—”

  “It was for Franjo that I did it!” Josip shouted and pushed away Dimitri’s arms. Andre and Iliga watched in the background with their usual indifference. “The fool human suffers more this way by seeing the deaths of his daughters. Franjo has been avenged.”

  Franjo has been avenged…the phrase drove Dimitri into the remembrance of his friend’s death.

  * * * *

  Dimitri sensed that something was wrong. Franjo had left their cavern about thirty minutes ago to scout the area. This had become their custom of late upon rising because of the pair of humans that had been discovered carrying the deathly substance. He should have returned by now.

  The thought of the deadly fluid brought a fleeting remembrance about the conversations he had with his mentor, Alexander, about the old books that held the secrets of their deaths.

  Books that we cannot look upon, written in God’s light of day…

  He summoned the rest of the group and they headed out in search of Franjo. The last thing Dimitri needed right now was more problems. Things had gradually taken a turn for the worse the past several months. Since the time that they were made, they had been content to stay in their mountains, reading the books in the extensive library, and exploring the other ruins in the vicinity.

  However, a gradual restlessness had begun among their group, a restlessness which could no longer be denied because Dimitri felt it himself. But what had happened six months ago had jeopardized the entire group and reflected the troubled times that had settled upon them.

  Their appetites had gotten out of hand, causing them to raid some of the villager’s cattle in the valley below. Dimitri knew this was wrong, but his reasoning had been clouded, as had the others’, by hunger. Then Franjo had gone after the two humans with such viciousness that he destroyed them both instead of scaring them off. Their custom was to avoid all contact. They had, on occasion, frightened away curious on-lookers by appearing as ghosts, but that was about the extent of their dealings with the humans.

  Alexander had mentioned that this restlessness could happen and the best thing to do was take a long sleep and hope that the troubled time would pass and the humans would forget. There was a method by which they could impose a self-trance that would allow them to sleep for years. Dimitri had given this a lot of thought during the past several weeks and the likelihood of them doing it seemed even greater now.

  As they emerged from their underground lair, they spotted Franjo coming toward them, screaming wildly as he clawed at the erupting bursts of flame that consumed him. They struggled with him and wrestled him to the ground as he fought and screamed. As they looked upon him, they saw his skin dissolve around his bones as the flames increased in intensity.

  “A cow in the clearing...bad blood!” He screamed as he continued to writhe in horrific pain. “Don’t drink! Aaahhhhhhh!”

  “Franjo...Franjo!” Dimitri shouted. But it was too late. The body burst into flames, then crumbled and fell into a heap of ash that was swirled away by the evening breeze. They stared at what had been their comrade, shocked at what they had just witnessed. The fear that this might someday happen to them, to die such a horrible death, gave them a fresh look at their mortality.

  “He’s gone,” Dimitri said quietly. “This madness is done.”

  “Done?” Josip asked. “What do you mean done? We must…we will avenge his death! Kill them all…the entire village!”

  “No,” Dimitri said firmly. “We have entered a time that is dangerous and filled with a madness on both sides, the villagers and us. It is time to sleep and let the madness pass.”

  “We must kill the one that has done this!” Josip exclaimed. “Franjo was our friend—your friend!”

  Andre and Illiga stood next to Josip in a show of support.

  “Again, I say, no,” Dimitri said. “What has been done is done. Yes, Franjo was my friend, also.” He looked upon the ash-strewn ground. “Who do you think has done this? Clear the craziness from your minds and think. Do you not remember the words that the dying man said to us? Did he not beg for mercy for their son, Idriz?”

  “The son,” Josip said, shaking his head in acknowledgement. “Yes, it was he. He found someway to put the elixir into the animal.” Then with an air of disdain he continued, “But what do we care about the words of these humans?”

  The way Josip used the word human struck Dimitri strangely.

  Had we not been human not so long ago?

  “You easily forget that you were once just like these people,” Dim
itri said. “Just like this farmer’s son. Would you not have done the same thing to avenge your father?”

  “Yes. But that—”

  “You seek to make this worse? Franjo is gone. Who will be next? You? Andre? Maybe Illiga or even myself? Maybe all of us. You go and kill the son, then his friend will come for you. The cycle goes on until everyone is killed. Even if we destroy the entire village—do you think the other villages will not do anything? They know about us. Everyone knows about our kind. We have been a part of this country’s history since anyone can remember. Do you understand?”

  Andre and Illiga took a step away from Josip.

  “He is right.” Andre said. “It has turned into another war. That is all this country and its people know how to do.”

  “Yes,” Illiga agreed. “We should mourn Franjo’s loss. He was a good friend.”

  “They don’t know how many of us there are,” Dimitri continued. “If we sleep for some years, they will believe that they have killed the one creature that has spawned the myths of this place.”

  “And when we wake?” Josip asked.

  “We can start new again. If things haven’t gotten any better and the people are still wary of us, we can change our location, find a new place. Maybe even search out others of our kind.”

  “A fresh start, eh,” Josip said. The tone of his voice was not convincing, but fraught with sarcasm. “That will cure all our worries in your mind?”

  Dimitri didn’t like what he was hearing from Josip. Alexander had said sometimes the change affects the disposition of the person, highlighting their strengths or weaknesses. Andre and Illiga had remained the same, quiet and nonassertive, whereas Josip seemed to be more excitable then he had been in his human life. But then again, he and Franjo had been close—perhaps that led to this abrasive and contradictory attitude.

  “We must agree as a group—a family,” Andre said.

  “I agree,” Dimitri said. “If you cannot agree to what we plan, then you must leave us.”

  Josip stared at Dimitri with a look of shock.

  “You would oust me? Cast me out?” Josip asked.

  “If it means the safety of the rest of us, yes,” Dimitri responded coolly. It hurt him to even suggest; they had been friends since childhood, but if Josip would not back down, Dimitri saw no other choice.

  “Then I have no choice but to submit to the will of the group,” Josip said, without any emotion in his voice.

  “Then we shall return to our sanctuary and commence the sleep,” Dimitri said. He wanted to believe Josip more than anything at the moment. His loss as a friend would be a tragic result and he didn’t want it. “Let us go.”

  The group began their return to their underground sanctuary where they would entomb themselves. They returned to their crypts and began the process of slowing their bodies and their minds to a hibernated state where they would consume none of their bodily resources. Dimitri sensed all but Josip and himself had already begun the process.

  Josip was not relaxing his thoughts for sleep just yet. Dimitri knew he was bound to follow him and what he had suggested, for it was for the good of the group. But Dimitri felt the hatred of Josip already plotting the revenge of Franjo for when he awoke; he sensed that Josip engraved the name Idriz on his mind so he wouldn’t forget it and that he vowed to hunt the man down and not just kill him, but to torture him. Josip also hoped that when they awoke, Idriz would have a family, a large family, so that he could kill each and every one of them.

  Dimitri knew that one of the most dangerous thing that one like him could do was sleep with the thought of revenge fixed upon one’s mind. It would only mean more trouble when they awoke that if not careful would surely get them all killed. He would have to watch Josip closely.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dimitri returned his thoughts to the present and his failure of controlling Josip and his revenge. Josip stood defiantly before him.

  “And the other soldier who was snooping around?” Dimitri countered. “The American is dead—did he deserve to die for something he was not involved in? Now they will come as well to investigate the death. And the man that you hate so much...this Idriz...do you think he will stop now? He has nothing to lose because you have taken it all from him. His daughters were all that mattered to him!”

  “He will die eventually as well,” Josip said. “But I want him to suffer. He will agonize over the death of his daughters tonight as well as later.”

  Dimitri released his hold on Josip and turned away.

  “Have you forgotten he knows how to make the poison? The poison that killed Franjo and that almost burned us all tonight? You fool! You have jeopardized all of us by doing this.” Dimitri rubbed his forehead as he tried to regain his composure. “We cannot expose ourselves if we are to survive. We agreed. We all agreed to stay away from the humans.” Dimitri looked at Andre and Iliga then back at Josip. “We have gone to the village every couple of months to buy the cattle we need. No one suspects anything. We can go on with our lives. But now they have seen us, and there are the Westerners involved now, the Americans.”

  “Our lives? You call this way of life living? Hiding like animals?” Josip asked. “I am tired of the blood from the cattle. The human blood raises my awareness as it burns its way through my veins. We should feed on them, make them fear us and respect our bidding. We can control them.”

  “Control them?” Dimitri said, incredulous. “You are a fool! If you think you are superior and indestructible, you will become careless and surely die. We must stay together now more than ever. Remember what Alexander told us: Beware the false power of the human blood. You see how it makes you think—wild and reckless! You forget all that we agreed upon—all that we were taught. Is this the way we repay the chance at life? We should all be dead!”

  Josip looked embarrassed by Dimitri’s comments about the blood and the humans. The words of Alexander floated in his mind with the lessons he had taught them through the many centuries of life he had possessed. Slowly his disposition softened and he nodded.

  “We have entered a dangerous period in time because others have seen us,” Dimitri added, glad to leave the topic of human blood.

  “No one will believe the crazed fool Idriz,” Josip said, his voice not as rambunctious as earlier. “He will spin the stories and they will think that he has gone mad by the loss of his two daughters.”

  “That may be true, but we should still leave this place,” Dimitri said.

  “And return to the mountains? There is nothing there but wilderness and emptiness. We do not want to go,” Josip said. “Here there are people and they interest us with their doings. There are new books and things to amuse us.”

  “Is this true?” Dimitri asked, as he looked at Andre and Iliga. They both nodded.

  “But we are not as well protected here—”

  “You worry too much,” Josip said. “What has been done, has been done. I may have been wrong but there is no changing what happened. The Americans will no longer bother us; we are myths and will soon be forgotten amidst all the fighting that is going on. We can make it look like the wolves tore the American apart, a freak accident. They will come and look at the body and think the same thing.”

  They gathered around Dimitri: Josip, Andre and Iliga, placing their hands on him in a reassuring manner. They were a family and he was their leader. He still thought it wrong to stay, but he would acquiesce to their wishes.

  “It is dark now,” Dimitri said. “There are cattle in the pen. Let us drink ourselves full of life. Then we will take care of the remains of the American. They will be back soon to investigate.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lieutenant Mark Johnson sat at a table in his quarters caught in the memories that continued to haunt him. He was a skinny young boy cornered by three large boys on the playground of the high school.

  “We’re going to kick your ass,” one of the large boys said.

  “Why? What have I done to you?” Mark
didn’t know why he had been singled out. He’d transferred into the school only a week ago. His alcoholic father had moved to this area after losing his job, again. His mother had died years ago from cancer.

  “You don’t look right,” one of them said. “We don’t know you and you’ve been walking around all week with this high and mighty attitude. We think it’s time you got your welcoming so you know who is in charge around here.”

  “No, wait...please,” Mark begged.

  But they refused to listen to his pleas and beat him ferociously. After a while, when he could no longer stand, one of them took out a knife and cut him along the side of his face.

  “There, you’re labeled now,” one of them said and they all laughed. With a final kick, they left him lying in the blood-soaked dirt.

  His father refused to listen to his “petty” problems. Mark withdrew from all school activities. When not in school, he lifted weights in his basement and went out to places that he knew the other school kids didn’t hang out at. He studied martial arts at the local YMCA.

  By his senior year, Mark was in terrific physical shape. Not only had his muscles hardened, so had his personality. He had no friends and associated with other students only for school projects and class work. After graduation, unsure of what to do with his life, he saw a recruitment ad on the television for the Special Forces of the United States Navy. They were called SEALs, which stood for by the Sea, Air and Land; the manner by which they were introduced into hostile environments. He was fascinated by the organization of men that were the pride of the Special Forces for their discipline and perseverance.

  The next day, he was at the recruiting office and the following week he was off to boot camp. Physically unchallenged by the basic training, he applied and passed the entry test for Navy SEAL training. Once in the environment that challenged both the mind and body, he excelled and received accolades from the instructors and classmates. He even surprised himself by making friends with men who were just like him.