Love Lost (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 3) Read online

  He looked up and caught her eyes, his face one of somberness while he remembered that time.

  “I gave her my oath in the old way, Gabrielle. Then, when I stopped taking her blood, I fell asleep right here on this couch. She stood guard over me the whole time while I slept and I woke up with her standing over me, concern on her face.” It was obvious to Gabrielle that her father was truly taken with this Vampire. It wasn’t the respect he would show his own maker, Michael. No, this was of a man who was following his liege.

  Gabrielle couldn’t help herself but be captivated and curious about this woman. Her father had been dying slowly for centuries. He wasn’t made to be a vampire in his heart. He hated the act of changing a human to the existence of a vampire in exchange for helping him grow young again.

  Yet, here he was in the best health she had ever seen. Healed both physically, emotionally and mentally. She had finally believed he was not crazy in age, but truly happy and excited in ways she could not remember before.

  “And her blood changed you to this?” She looked at him, truly noticing how young he looked. Like he was in his mid twenties.

  “No.” Stephen smiled at that.

  “Then you have created another child?” The look of concern was back on her face. She knew her father from way back. His choice in who he rejuvenated had caused her to slap her head more than once. Petre’ was just a recent screwup. Well, centuries recent.

  He just shook his head, “No.”

  Now she was confused. “How?”

  “That would be one of those things that I cannot share unless you join me. I’m sorry, but I gave a promise to Bethany Anne.”

  She just stared back at her father. Her mind was just too confused now with all of the new information he had thrown her way. She had decided maybe a rest would be good. Wait! “Did Ivan mention blood is in the house?”

  “Yes, if I remember correctly he mentioned he would warm it up for you.”

  “So, you do not drink of people now? She has you drinking from bags, not people?”

  “No, I choose not to drink from people. I have spent a while away, I might or might not have a bite or two when out on a date. I shall find out soon enough.”

  “What? You are going to go out on dates? Who are you going out with?”

  “I don’t have any dates setup, but get with the times Gabrielle. There is this app I found. It is called Tinder and the women in there are available and who can resist such as I?” He just about lost his composure when he saw how Gabrielle reacted to that statement.

  If Gabrielle had thought she was shocked before, she damn near fell off of the chair.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Atlantic Ocean, 7 hours out of American Waters

  Sheikh Robban Rahid was in his cabin on his super yacht, the Polarus. Oil profits in his country had been getting smaller and smaller as the price of a barrel of oil kept going down. He had been unhappy with the tactics that the Saudi Royal family had undertaken to drive out the American competition and their shale drilling success. At a low price per barrel of oil, the American shale companies could not be profitable and would shut down.

  Those in charge had dropped the price too low and the pricing got away from them. Now, his monthly allowance was less than ten million US dollars a month and he was taking his frustration out on a woman who joined him at his last port.

  She had found him so gallant and exotic with his traditional kaffiyeh and Armani suit. It was a very good disguise for the sadistic man he was when out of the country.

  It wasn’t a well kept secret that he was not loved. His predilection to hurt woman had shown up early. At first, the guards would pay off the girls he had been rough with. Once they had to take a girl to the hospital in a session where he had been too aggressive.

  When he went too far on a cruise out at sea, it was a simple expedient to throw the body overboard. Now on his boat and for his crew, it was known that your life depended on your ability see nothing wrong and never speak of what you hear. What happened in International Waters would stay out there unless you wanted to be left there as well.

  The woman was on his bed, but barely aware of her surroundings. He had received notice that his monthly stipend would be reduced each month just minutes before. He had checked email while she was changing into something ‘a little more comfortable’. He was addicted to his email and messages, even checking them in bed before he was going to have sex.

  She had barely got into bed with him when he turned her over and forced a gag in her mouth. It had gone downhill from there. She was starting to get frantic before he had slapped her head so hard it rebounded off of his poorly cushioned headboard. She lost most of her awareness after that abrupt hit. It was sadistic rape, pure and simple.

  Atlantic Ocean, 6.5 hours out of American Waters

  Bobcat flew Shelly with a focus. Nathan had uncovered the dirt on the owner of the SEA AXE which Bethany Anne wanted to purchase. Unfortunately for the Sheikh, the negotiations were going to be very one sided.

  There wasn’t one person on his yacht that wasn’t complicit in his activities. Nathan had tracked no less than 9 deaths that he was positive happened on the Sheikh’s larger Super Yacht. The SEA AXE was a support yacht only and was actually an hour ahead of the Super Yacht on it’s way into Miami where the Sheikh was looking to port.

  The team had flown Shelly to a small island a half hour from where the yacht would pass. There, they had filled Shelly back up with the spare gas canisters they had brought along.

  Nathan had reached out to the Royal Family and asked if they would consider selling the Super Yacht and the SEA AXE through a drop account that was untraceable if anything ‘were to happen’ to the asshat.

  The reply was very circumspect. Reading in between the lines you could reason that if it didn’t make them look bad, they would be happy to sell the craft and show a financial responsibility Sheikh Robban had been completely unable to accomplish in his lifetime.

  It took a little more time to finalize the deal as each side checked out the bonafides. Bethany Anne’s $2 million down payment towards the purchase, pursuant to the original owner not being able to make the payment within 45 days or give up the $2 million was a significantly strong verification tool. Twenty years back, the Saudi’s would scoff at that amount of money. The truth was that Sheikh Robban was a disgrace to the family and at $120 million a year in stipend a waste of money as well. If that tree limb was trimmed everyone in the family would throw a large party. While mourning his death, of course.

  Now, Bethany Anne was dressed in her ‘go to meeting’ clothes and had added black face paint to the mix to keep the shine down. She wanted to get to the Sheik’s bedroom without interruption. She planned on dropping from the helicopter and parachuting within site of the boat. At that time, she would slip through the Etheric to get on the boat herself. Her job was to quickly incapacitate the crew with gas for those under the deck and physically for those up top. After that, Bobcat would bring the rest of the team in to help get the boat under control.

  Bobcat lit the light in the back cabin, it was time. John opened the door and nodded to Bethany Anne who gave a thumbs up and jumped out. She found the running lights of the boat to the south and angled her flight in that direction. She pulled the chute and then her guiding lines to place her descent on track to close with the boat. She was coming in from the aft section. There was a handy area outside of the main captains bridge to land on the boat.

  She considered the location and decided to slip and come in about ten feet above. She wasn’t sure how to compensate for the rolling of the deck not having ever been on a super yacht before. She unclipped her chute and disappeared.

  Atlantic Ocean, 6.25 hours out of American Waters

  John was a little anxious until he heard the clicks over the team comm. Everything seemed like a good idea with using Bethany Anne as the primary attack. She would start the op by slipping through the etheric to land and incapacitate the crew. She had
a bottle of the sleeping gas, a modified set of chemicals based on Nathan’s research into the October 2002 Russian hostage crises. It would take a little while for the ventilation to get the gas throughout the ship and for her to hopefully hit the commands that would cause the ship to come into the wind for Bobcat to land Shelly.

  It took a little bit of time, but the General found that plenty of Bethany Anne’s companies did scientific research and one had a Russian office with persons of interest. This office employed two scientists which had tried to ascertain what the military had used back in 2002. Both had been interviewed and told to drop the efforts by government officials. The scientists had decided they didn’t need to be told twice, and had resumed their previous research.

  Now, most people don’t even remember the hostage crises and the efficacy of the Russian Military effort. Of those that do, they don’t think about losing 100% of the hostages from the total destruction of the theatre, but rather the 16% of the hostages which passed away from using such a lethal concoction. As a comparison, in World War I the gas attacks had a 7% lethality rate.

  The gas would not bother Bethany Anne at all. Since TOM had already reviewed the chemical composition, he had prepared the nanocytes in Bethany Anne to compensate when she inhaled the chemicals.

  She needed to get to the main ventilation intake and disconnect the air scent injection and replace it with her gas tubes.

  Bethany Anne appeared ten feet in the air above the top most helipad, which was fortuitously empty. That was what the SEA AXE was for, she guessed. She landed lightly with hardly any sound. In the dark night with her black outfit and face paint, she would be hard to spot. When she switched to moving at her Vampire speed, anyone looking out of the corner of her eye would find nothing.

  The boat wasn’t moving at her fastest speed. She was doing a sedate 10 knots or about 11.5 mph. She was roughly 260 miles out from Miami and was outside even the furthest 200 mile Economic Zone of the United States. This zone was created in 1982 by the United Nations. While Bethany Anne could have attacked closer to land, she didn’t want to be within any jurisdiction of the United States on this operation. Shelly had a confirmed combat radius of 360 miles, however; they had flown as low as practical trying to stay off of as many radar screens as possible. She knew that if a tasked satellite was looking down on them, there wasn’t much she could do. Hopefully, they would be able to land Shelly on the Polarus and that would help them so the helicopter had no return track back to the United States.

  A mile away, her parachute finally slipped under the water.

  Bethany Anne glided up right outside the bridge. She could hear two men speaking arabic inside the compartment. The room was dark with only monitors lighting the space. She quickly glanced inside and decided that even at a faster speed, she really didn’t want to open the door to get in. She weighed whether or not to kill the men or incapacitate them. She decided that incapacitate would work for now. She looked through the night to all of the other areas on the deck she could see. She spotted one lookout at the front of the yacht, just staring out into the night. It was a pretty night, she conceded. To die.

  Standing up, she slipped through the etheric and walked right into the bridge. The second man must have noticed something out of the corner of his eye as he started to turn and look in her direction. He never made it past a quarter turn of his head when Bethany Anne shot him and the captain with her tranquilizer gun.

  Now, there is no known tranquilizer that is reliably safe without fear of side effects and overdose to knock a human out quickly. Most humans would have to be able to reliably gauge the weight of the target and how many darts to use to shoot them effectively.

  However; when you have a Kurtherian and a Kurtherian computer the ability to modify the dosage goes up exponentially. TOM had the team build two clips of darts for Bethany Anne and then she used a syringe to place one drop of her blood with the Etorphine. By the time Bethany Anne had dropped out of the helicopter, the darts would be 100% effective on humans within 2 seconds.

  TOM didn’t promise they wouldn’t be lethal, just that they shouldn’t be lethal. When Bethany Anne asked him to clarify, he said she might kill when she frightened someone with her red eyes and fangs, so what did she want from him? He had a point. He could only do so much unless she wanted him to add Stage 1 commands as well. She agreed that wasn’t a good plan.

  The second mate and the captain had been so surprised at the black clad woman that even after the darts hit them, they were still trying to figure out what was going on. Both fell down, the second mate bouncing his head off of a monitor before crumpling to the floor. Bethany Anne never looked back.

  It took her two more minutes to confirm that the deck was clear. She found three guards. The one up front she had noticed earlier and two in the back of the ship. She didn’t know all of the correct terms for a boat. She needed to learn them quickly, she figured. She had shot all three of the guards with a dart each. Two ended up tied up. However; the last guard was watching a video when she shot him.

  She had gone to zip-tie him and the video was still playing. It was a snuff film. She grabbed the drugged guard in her right hand and tossed him off the boat to drown below. His body slipping under the water. “Sorry, you should have been watching where you were walking, you bum-banging spum biscuit.” She tossed the phone off into the waves as well, wiping her hand on her leg. If she had a paper towel, she would have used that to grab the phone.

  She was sure there was a mom who might shed a tear that he was missing. Bethany Anne figured the mom should have done a better job raising that cock-stain.

  Within five minutes, she had found the right air equipment and connected her hose to start the gas. With TOM’s help, it shouldn’t be as deadly as the Russian version, but if she had a little breakage on this op it wouldn’t bother her.

  She waited five more minutes and checked three state rooms, everyone was sleeping. She notified John she was ready for them to join her and went back up to the bridge.

  It was a very advanced bridge. Fortunately, there were software programs that allowed you to virtually captain your own super yacht around the world. She had used the programs enough with three different bridge layouts to confirm she could put the yacht on a heading into the wind at two knots. Bobcat mentioned you never wanted to land a helicopter with a tail wind and with a minimum of speed it would help keep the rolling down on the ship.

  She made sure her two previous captives were tied up and set the captain in a compromised position with his second mate. The more she thought about the late guards snuff film, the more angry she felt.

  She left the bridge to go find Sheikh Robban.

  Atlantic Ocean, 6.00 hours out of American Waters

  Bobcat gently put Shelly down on the massive yacht. With the calm winds and beautiful night, it was almost a pleasure to do this operation. His Black Hawk wasn’t your normal Bell Helicopter and the weight was substantial.

  First, he landed enough to not jump around the landing pad, but kept some of the weight on the engines as John and the team jumped off. Pete was to stay with him and the helicopter. This time, Pete had a bull-pup FN P90 that John had been providing lessons on how to use properly. Unlike the punky kid of a couple of months ago, Pete was reserved and making sure that his area was given the attention that it deserved and didn’t allow Bobcat to get him involved in a conversation, just in case John was testing him.

  Which was a very good decision for Pete. John had talked with Bobcat before they left the mainland and asked him to try and trip Pete up from his duties. The conversation was a good test and Pete had passed it.

  John and Eric went up, pulling down their breathing masks before entering the bridge, Eric covering John. John had to smile as he took in the scene in front of him. Apparently, Bethany Anne was making a comment about the crew.

  John stepped past the two men and checked out the rest of the bridge and looked inside any doors. While Bethany Anne probably would have fo
und anyone, John and his team had plenty of practice with unexpected problems that were manageable when found early. Nothing like a nosferatu you weren’t expecting to pop up when you had finally let your guard down. That situation had resulted in a good friend loosing his right arm about ten months back on an op in the Western United States.

  “Clear.” John turned back around to see Eric pulling at his mask, staring at the captain and the other crewman.

  “John, why does the captain look like he is sucking off the crewman?” Eric’s face had a look of disbelief.

  “Focus, Eric. I imagine it is Bethany Anne venting a little. You have the bridge.”

  Eric put his mission mask back on, “I’ve got the bridge, aye”