Vampire's Day (Book 2): Zero Model (2 page)

6. Butterfly and Bumblebee

“Butterfly - Hive, the guests arrived.”

The first part of operation was executed; she had brought the car to the right place, making sure that the army vehicle had entered the warehouse. Then the waiting began, and Sarah raised Butterfly another fifty meters, circling the port on a wide range, locking the lower lens on the security guards at the gate, the machine guns on the roofs and other usual details.

People down in the port didn’t pay any attention to the drone. The inhabitants of the city had become accustomed to aircraft constantly circling overhead. Proximity to the US military base imposed certain conditions. Sarah didn’t even remember when there had been an attempt to shoot down the Butterfly – perhaps a year ago or so, probably some kid who decided to try his first AK47.

“I’m so bored,” said the drone pilot, arranged comfortably in an ergonomic chair with massage capabilities and taking a couple of sips of grapefruit juice. She hadn’t been able to stand this juice from childhood, but, during the hours of remote operations, Sarah would drink only this juice. The acidic liquid helped her to be constantly on edge, and the taste discouraged any desire to sleep.

The red mark on the screen continued to move. She knew the staff officer, but had never seen the four others. They were recently arrived and had immediately headed to the city, clearly needing something urgently there. In such departures car always accompanies an air observer, so she wasn’t surprised when received orders to raise Butterfly in the air.

Sarah was surprised when, along with the Butterfly, the Bumblebee took off. It was another drone, only bigger and more powerful, carrying four guided missiles and a machine gun, and, if necessary, Butterfly would find the target for Bumblebee. Sarah hasn’t remembered such precautions, she was aware of the relationship between the Cartel and her commanders, these relations are strong and mutually beneficial, so usually saber-rattling isn’t welcome. But today everything had gone wrong.

Bumblebee stayed behind Butterfly, which described a large figure of eight in the sky on autopilot mode. Sarah periodically glanced at the screens, thinking about her upcoming new job. A small calendar on the wall showed the thirtieth day of the month marked with a red circle and three exclamation marks. On the thirtieth the month ended, and with it, her military service. On this day her contract expired, and she was not planning to renew it. She was tired of trips to faraway places, and couldn’t give up the opportunity to change jobs and go home. Experienced drone pilots were now needed everywhere. She had been offered a chance to go to border control and pilot the Butterfly over vast expanses of Texas.

But the boundary of Texas would not see her; Sarah was determined to engage with the state service and go to work for a private oil company, which also required pilots for civilian versions of Butterfly. She would fly around oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico; making sure that crazy environmentalists didn’t enter the territory and break equipment. It would be the same air observation as it was in the naval service, but private owners paid nearly sixty percent more, the benefits package was better, and she will not have to travel far away from home. So, she was going to hang up her uniform and go home.

“Interference, I have strong interference!”

This was the Bumblebee pilot; he was a beginner and hadn’t yet mastered all the details of the job.

“They just went inside a protected area, there, in the middle of the warehouse. It looks like a normal hangar with thin walls, but inside there is actually a reinforced concrete dome that skips bad signal. I see them, all right.”

She wondered how long the messengers would stay inside. They didn’t have any large luggage, only a small attaché case, and nothing that couldn’t be thrust into an inner pocket. But they hadn’t used a Humvee to arrive in, but a two-ton truck, which is why Sarah concluded that the messengers had come to take something large, return it to the base and immediately load that mysterious cargo on their transport aircraft. That aircraft stood in readiness for take-off seventy meters from the control module, where Sarah and the Bumblebee pilot were sat.

The hangar with the antenna on the roof exploded. Sarah saw an internal explosion ripping the thin metal wall and overturning the cars standing on the pavement. One of the messengers filed an SOS, and then the red dots went out one by one, individual sensors indicating that their owners were dead.

“Alarm!”

7. Emergency

“Requesting permission to open fire!”

“Stand down, wait for the order!”

Sarah reprimanded the Bumblebee pilot, who was ready to shoot in all directions. She had a clear order not to shoot on the main hangar, where the messengers were located. Weapons could only be used if the car was attacked on streets or in suburbs. No one had considered an attack inside the warehouse.

The messenger’s personal sensors went out almost immediately after the SOS, but a new signal started instead, much more powerful, easily overcoming the concrete cocoon. An unregistered transmitter actively signaled its presence inside the warehouse, and then Sarah realized - it was for this transmitter that the messengers came, that's why they couldn’t shoot. That transmitter was what the messengers wanted to take.

“Request urgent instructions!”

She received the standard response - continue monitoring. The commanders continually requested new data, and she could only transmit pictures from cameras. Sarah didn’t know exactly what to call what was happening in the port. There was a fight, that was all she could say.

Mike couldn’t remember exactly how it all began. A minute ago, he was sat behind the wheel, looking at naked girls in the magazine and thinking about whether to buy some weed from a guard, and then resell it in the barracks. Let top brass makes its mysterious affairs, and in the meantime he made his little business, cash aren’t redundant. He had almost decided to call the guard, but then the guard’s radio set came to life.

The guard heard something, and Mike saw his face change. The guard raised his Uzi, and Mike felt hot; he knew what could happen if messenger’s mission failed. But the guard didn’t pay any attention to the driver. He went to the back door, where the passengers had gone, unlocked it and carefully looked into the corridor. And then fell on his back. Mike saw his head had been pierced by a bullet. He reached for his holster when a man in a bloodstained shirt appeared in the doorway, a small revolver in his hand. He saw Mike just as Mike saw him, and they both raised their guns. Then the lights went out, and a thundering roar could be heard.

Consciousness returned slowly and painfully, as Mike barely lifted his head from the bloody steering wheel. It was his blood from his nose and lips. The windshield was gone, and glass shards were strewn in the interior of the car. The garage was filled with yellow, iridescent light, in which he saw two dead bodies lying in the open door. The light became stronger, and then Mike finally saw its source in the rearview mirror. A puddle of burning gasoline was spreading from the broken cars, almost severed in half by a concrete slab fallen from the ceiling. The burning lake expanded, taking to the gasoline tank on the far wall.

With great difficulty, Mike opened the door and fell out. He didn’t attempt to try to start the truck: even if the engine came to life, he wouldn’t be able to leave the garage. It was necessary to go on foot through a small door in the gate, which was also locked, although the guard lying at the door has the keys.

Limping, Mike went to him, looking back at the lake of fire – he must hurry. From the hallway he heard screams, and the sound of shooting getting louder, but he doesn’t think about it. Where are the keys?

He turned the corpse over and, with trembling fingers, tried to remove a bunch of keys from his belt, not noticing as a second corpse in a blood-stained shirt began to stir.

“Fuck!”

The man in the white shirt wasn’t a corpse; he was alive and clings to Mike’s hand with a steel vise grip. A little more and he would break the driver's wrist
,
as he scratched Mike’s skin with his nails. He didn’t try to pull the gun out of the holster; instead Mike picked up the Uzi and shot the living dead at point blank range. Blood flew in all directions, some of it falling on Mike's face, but he didn’t think about it, as he was able to remove the keys. Bingo!

It was getting hotter, smoke burning his eyes, so with great difficulty Mike went to the far door, clutching his nose with a handkerchief. The door swung open, the midday sun striking his eyes, and he fell to the pavement, greedily gasping down fresh air. There was shooting from all sides, and over the neighboring warehouse raised a column of smoke. From speakers on poles something was shouted in the local lingo. He didn’t want to get up, so Mike rolled several times and fell into a drainage gutter, which went along the entire complex. There had been no rain for a couple of weeks, and the gutter was completely dry. The rough concrete scratched his hand, but the driver didn’t stop and promptly crept forward. Mike didn’t know exactly what had gone wrong, and he didn’t know what had happened to the passengers, but it was certain that if he held out a little longer, then rescuers would come. Help would come for his passengers, and would also save him if he managed to stay alive up until then.

Behind him there was once again the thundering roar, and a wave of hot air hit him in the back. Turning in fright, he saw the broken garage door and flames – the burning fuel had got to the gas station. Explosions continued one after the other, gasoline detonating in expensive cars. A fire swept all around, the explosions knocked out windows and blew the roof off. He couldn’t wait for rescue here, the temperature was rising rapidly, any more and he would be fried. It was necessary to leave.

Mike’s attention was drawn to the UAZ standing motionless, with a dead driver at the wheel, engine idling. Mike made a desperate leap forward, jumped up and ran to the car. Luck was on his side - someone shot at him several times, but missed.

The UAZ took off, Mike leaning forward, crouching low in the driving seat and trying to occupy as little space as he could. Ahead on the road popped up one of the local bandits. He saw the approaching car and raised his AK47; Mike put his foot on the gas. The windshield burst into pieces, and he felt a blow on his shoulder at the same moment as the UAZ threw the bandit off the road.

Mike rushed to the city border, not wanting to take any time to stop and inspect the wound. Breaking his shoulder, the bullet went right through; the pain isn’t too bad, probably because of the adrenaline. He can’t stop; he has to get to the base. The doctors there would help him.

Sarah saw Mike on the outskirts, having recognized the familiar form of the man behind the wheel of an unidentified SUV. From this distance she couldn’t distinguish faces, but Sarah remembered that a driver was with the messenger; someone who didn’t have a transmitter and whose fate remained unknown. She was sure it was him.

“Bumblebee, cover the SUV, it’s our man! Bring him to the base, and shoot anyone if they try to stop him!”

8. Call-2

“Status?”

“The situation is getting worse. Fire is covering a lot of buildings; and the scouts reported that there has been a fight at the harbor. We can confirm the messenger’s death.”

“What's happened to our cargo?”

“The transmitter is still working, and the lander is in a sealed hangar. The fire won’t get in there.”

“Who killed our people? Who is fighting in the port?”

“Unknown. We can’t communicate with any of our Cartel allies to clarify the situation – they might be dead.”

“Bronson’s team has taken over command of the base for the moment. We’ve ordered that they immediately remove the cargo and deliver it to the base. No witnesses.”

“Bronson’s team is not carrying combat biological defense suits, so I don’t know if we can send them to pick up the capsule.”

“The cargo will burn while we await the arrival of suits. They have to start the operation immediately, while the capsule is still intact. They will be threatened mostly by smoke, and gas masks provide protection. The cargo must be on the base in two hours; you are responsible for it personally!”

9. Combat mission

It was his first combat mission. He had long waited for this day, hoping to use the entire ammunition of Bumblebee, thinking about it during many hours of observation flights. The Bumblebee pilo
t
had wanted to shoot from the moment that the messenger’s personal sensors had disconnected, but nerdy Butterfly’s pilot had not allowed him to open fire and then requested support for the SUV.

He was keen to fulfill this mission and led the Bumblebee over the car, eager to shoot anyone who tried to stop the SUV. To some his frustration wasn’t these fools, and jeep drove out of the city and raced toward the base. The pilot was about to follow the UAZ when a new order set him free from this boring business. He received the order to destroy the target located within the city limits.

“Guidance!”

Butterfly flew slightly above the Bumblebee, its camera focused on a small two-storey building with a flat roof, from which rose a high steel mast. He had seen this building many times before. The high mast served as a reference during flights. It was a familiar area to him; there, at the turn, was his favorite brothel, and a popular wine shop. There was a civilian telephone and internet connection centre in this building, which was now the only one in the city, after the communications center in the port had been destroyed in the first seconds of battle.

Mounted on the Butterfly a laser pointer illuminated the two-story building, and a bright red dot appeared in his sight.

“Fire!”

Bumblebee swayed slightly as the missile fell and shot towards the target. The pilot counted the seconds.

“One, two, three…”

At the count of “four” the building with the flat roof burst apart in a powerful explosion. He could see the diverging hemisphere of the blast wave, like dry leaves blown away pedestrians on the pavement. It was a good shot. The missile had flown into a window on the second floor, and the pilot watched with satisfaction as the high mast fell on its side. The enemy communications center is destroyed with the first shot, he thinks about to put a victory mark on the fuselage after landing.

“The first group is on the way!”

The Bumblebee pilot saw four Black Hawks, flying low over the tin favela. Helicopters headed towards the burning warehouses, and Bumblebee and Butterfly follow the same direction. Half an hour ago the tough guys from the transport aircraft had left the plane and decisively taken the command on their small base, beginning a large-scale military operation with unknown task. Staff officers ran like rats with singed tails, and commandos were already loaded into helicopters and armored vehicles, rising in the air.

Apparently, it was going to be a serious clash, and he was well aware that the enemy communications would be jammed by precision strikes in the case of full-scale war.

“The fight in the warehouse continues!”