Vampire's Day (Book 2): Zero Model (3 page)

10. Surgery

It was easy to win fights in the movies. In the movies, the enemy was always stupid and cowardly, and even if not cowardly, would not be able to hit a barn door with short range AK47 shooting. In the movies, everything worked without problems.

The reality was always different and not for the better, and Bronson didn’t expect anything good coming from this job – hoping just to escape all the shit with as few losses as possible. They would seize the big burning warehouse, where the fight was occurring, although between whom was unknown. It was necessary to carry out this operation in the middle of a gangster city, where every second inhabitant had a gun. They had no information about the enemy, no information about the object, they were just ordered to go there and grab the cargo as soon as possible.

Their helicopters flew over the favela so low that they almost knocked down satellite dishes, with the gunners looking for possible threats, and powerful speakers broadcasting the voice of the local authorities. Taken into custody and forced to cooperate, the drug lord ordered citizens not to leave their houses and not to resist the military.

In the city this threat, backed by the roar of helicopters and the sirens of armored cars, worked well, and they didn’t have to open fire. But outside the port gates the fear of threat clearly lost its strength and Bronson’s group met with machine gun fire, initially inaccurate. Cartel fighters defended the main gate, and they didn’t dare to enter any further, so Bronson ordered his men to kill anyone inside. He remembered the instructions not to leave any witnesses.

Gunners laid down a hail of lead, for a short time crushing the resistance, but when the column of armored vehicles entered the territory, the shooting started again. The bandits were shot at out of the windows and roofs of burning buildings. One of them had an RPG and didn’t miss. The shooter was immediately killed, the but rocket-propelled grenade flew a hundred meters and stuck the second Humvee, giving no chance to the bulletproof armor or crew behind it. The armored car crashed into a pole at full speed.

Machine-guns weren’t enough, and Bronson used drones as well, destroying enemies with missile attacks. The final clearing out took about two minutes and then there was no resistance – Chief gave the order to land. Black Hawks landed on the unloading area, already occupied by the Marines. Fighters were leaving the helicopters, carrying bright red fire extinguishers, which had been requisitioned on the base. Fire-fighting equipment now would be more useful than rifles and machine guns, when it came to the hardest part of the operation.

“Chief, we’ve found a fire truck. It’s being driven over here!”

The city had only one fire truck, and Bronson’s men were searching for firefighters to force them to head to the port and begin to fulfill their duties.

“Can you stretch the fire hoses?!”

“There is no water; a pumping station was burned down. We’re carrying pumps from the base, and will get sea water!”

Covering his face with a hand from the unbearable heat, Bronson looked at the wall of rising fire. The target was somewhere in the central hall, and at this moment all sides were covered by fire.

“I didn’t hire for firefighter here!”

11. Surgery-2

Withstanding the elements, be it water or fire, is much harder than dealing with human beings. Fire can’t be forced to retreat and surrender, fire will fight to the last, blocking the path to the target and striving to devour the precious cargo. Bronson and his men weren’t professional firefighters, they didn’t have the relevant skills and equipment, and they only had an order telling them to get the cargo out of hell. The transmitter worked properly, so it was clear the cargo remained in the central hangar, a concrete sarcophagus shielding it from the fire, but because of this protection, they couldn’t get the cargo through the roof on the helicopter.

“We have to wait until the buildings around the hangar burn down, and then go!”

Bronson would have liked to go with this tempting plan, but he remembered the order, and knew who had given it, knew that these people would not forgive the loss of cargo due to his delay. He couldn’t wait until the fire extinguished by itself, they would have to break through.

The fire truck, with lights flashing and siren sounding, entered the port, an old tent truck moving behind it, followed by a luxury SUV.

“Chief, reinforcements have arrived!”

A bandit who was already familiar to Bronson got out of the jeep. He had arrived here as a representative of the local authorities, and was meant to provide all possible assistance to Gringo.

“Who is with him?”

Thugs open the tailgate and the old truck started to discharge excited people, men and women, with fire extinguishers, and some with axes or shovels.

“They will help you!”

“They aren’t firefighters and will not go into the fire.”

“They all owe me a lot of money and will go anywhere I order. Working hands aren’t redundant!”

These debtors, hired as firefighters against their will, could be usefu
l
for removing the debris, so Chief decided to accept the proposal. Less risk to his men. The pump would soon start bringing in sea water, and meanwhile the firefighters tried to chase the flames from the entrance, ready to go inside. The "voluntary" helpers poured water over their clothes with the hoses and handed out helmets, gloves and fire extinguishers.

The senior firefighter charged a couple of hoses with sea water, and then indicated that he was ready. The wind increased, fanning the flames, the situation complicated by the fact that no one had a precise plan of the hangars. It was not clear where the entrance to the sarcophagus was located; they only knew the approximate direction. They would have to take the risk, playing with fire in a deadly Russian roulette.

Bronson sent four of his fighters with the civilians, they would retrieve the cargo. Each of them had a kit with a protective mask, fire extinguisher and machine gun, just in case the civilians tried to retreat.

“GO!”

12. Lines

He dreamed about lines all night long. During the day Walt tried not to think much about it, but at night, when his brain was absolutely calm, he couldn’t help returning to the lines. It was starting to annoy him, Walt didn’t enjoy insoluble problems.

Up until this point, he has had no insoluble problems in his life. He has successfully coped with everything, overcoming thousands of obstacles and barriers on his way to success. That way was very long.

For a start he hadn’t been lucky with his parents. He didn’t know his father at all; there were a lot of options, taking into account the fact that his mother was a whore who actively worked on a giant parking lot for truckers. She used to spend the money she earned on crack and methamphetamine, so it was a miracle that the chemicals had no devastating effect on his brain.

With the rest of his life he was even less lucky. His mother’s roommates changed one after another, and most of them hated Walt. The last one, when attempting to rape him, broke a couple of ribs and almost broke his neck, but Walt managed to escape and get to the phone. The roommate was sent to jail and his mother too. Since he had never seen her, and never regretted the fact.

His foster family was much better than his real parents, but they had a bad habit of trying to convince him about religion. It was a big mistake, since his previous life had fostered in Walt an aversion to the gods and their followers – he considered that belief in a good and merciful creator was complete idiocy after what he had seen as a child. So, as soon as possible, he ran for an independent life. Although when he escaped, Walt didn’t go wandering, or start stealing or selling drugs; he went to work. By that time he already knew what he wanted in life.

The next seven years he didn’t like to remember: years merged into one long day. Day after day, without holidays or weekends, working from dawn to dusk, and then hiding in his room to work on lessons. He learned in absentia, making every possible effort to become truly educated. It was hard, but he knew what he was working towards and was eventually rewarded – he got the opportunity to learn at the Faculty of Mathematics in a polytechnic university. He had to work even harder than before while he was there, but he enjoyed the study, and he knew that his efforts would be rewarded.

In the middle of the first semester, he joined the Physics Faculty as well, much to the surprise of his teachers, who believed that no one could get a diploma in physics and mathematics at the same time. With the current volume of knowledge, the era of the great scientists, genius’ in several subjects, remained in the distant past.

But Walt continued his studies, passing final exams in both subjects, and received a personal scholarship at the beginning of the second course, which freed him from his job in a restaurant. In the third year Walt had a customized training program developed for him, because the usual training program was too simple, and didn’t give him the opportunity to reveal all his talents.

By the fourth year recruiters from leading technical corporations were lining up to tell him about the brilliant prospects that awaited him in their firms. He listened carefully and politely, knowing it was in vain, because another customer had given him an offer as well, one who was waiting for Walt.

Working for the government in those early years didn’t bring him the highest possible income; working for a private office, he could have earned ten or even a hundred times more by selling his development to large capitalists. But such work couldn’t give Walt what he needed the most, which had burned in his mind since the days of miserable childhood living in a dirty trailer – this work couldn’t give him greatness. He wanted greatness, true greatness, and he got it.

He hadn’t had any popular computer programs named after him, his face didn’t look out from glossy magazines, famous directors didn’t shoot movies about his life, and hordes of teenagers around the world didn’t know anything about Walt. But he wasn’t concerned about this. Walt always considered such glory false and temporary, a cheap imitation of reality, like rhinestones which unsuccessfully try to copy diamonds.

He didn’t need fake greatness, his glory and status are real, the proof of which is his circle of acquaintances. Why did he need glossy magazines, films and teenagers, when the most influential and powerful men in the world knew about him? When the presidents, general secretaries and heads of major financial institutions were asking for his opinions? Making the most powerful and influential men in the business world hang on his words, making them depend on him – that was force, that was power!

In recent years, Walt hadn’t had a specific area of work; his previous achievements and the reputation preceding allowed him considerable freedom of action, and so he had tasks that really challenged his genius. He and his carefully chosen team were involved only in the most severe cases, where others had failed.

If today was the end of the thirties or the early forties of the last century, Walt would have worked in Los Alamos on the creation of the first nuclear bomb, trying not to be late with his invention so that he could help end the war. In the fifties and sixties he would have been in intense correspondence duel with Soviet designers of rockets and spacecraft in the space race. But it was present day, and he was busy instead with a project that should be the greatest scientific breakthrough of the century. Perhaps not just this century, but of all time.

13. Lines-2

He required greatness and glory and he got it, as much as he wanted and more. Walt dreamed of a place in the history of science next to Copernicus, Newton, Mendeleev, Einstein – and he achieved this place. And he had so much money that he would never be able to spend it all, his life now richer than any celebrity, whether rock music or movie stars. He had everything.

So, why wasn’t he sleeping well? Why were the lines coming to him every night? Apparently this was some sort of game of his high-powered and intelligent brain, which had turned against its master, trying to drive him crazy. This was a reminder about the first insoluble problem in his life, the barriers that Walt couldn’t overcome and may not be able to overcome in the future. This was a memory, like the old Russian tanks which he had seen in Berlin, clear evidence of defeat and capitulation. The lines that came to him in a dream, clearly showed that even his mind could fail. But Walt didn’t intend to throw in the white flag; the battle with the unknown was just beginning.

The lines were gone with the night, as a new day begun. Walt regretted that he’d sent away the girl yesterday, although he always did it, the habit becoming a rule. Despite the absence of wife or mistress, girls need him constantly as a necessary factor for the successful operation; long ago he understood that the young woman's body perfectly relieves stress.

He has no wife, or mistress either, instead the girls were constantly changing. First Walt had been constantly surrounded by a variety of prudent girls who wanted access to his money and position in society, but over time he became tired by their growing demands, and switched to the employees of a very expensive escort agency, operating under the wing of his bosses and specializing in VIP clients. Girls were beautiful and professionals – they knew everything about sex, had good manners and could entertain customers in other ways, holding conversations on any subjects. And they didn’t ask questions about his work; they were under a strict ban.

Walt was satisfied with this state of affairs, but he never stayed with the girls at night, afraid to speak in a dream, afraid that he would reveal the Lines. Fear was the real cause; he remembered the pilot of the first rover, who detected the Object. Despite all instructions otherwise, the pilot blabbed to his excessively persistent and insightful girlfriend. Having learned that they both were victims of armed robbery, Walt wasn’t surprised, but it made him even more entrenched in his desire to limit contact with the uninitiated. One of his principles was the complete elimination of unnecessary risks.

Yesterday he sent the girl away, and calling her in the morning didn’t make sense; it was better to order two for the evening. Now it was time for breakfast. He had spent his childhood and adolescence eating fast food, so Walt was now attentive to his diet, eating the best natural products prepared to the highest level of culinary art. However, he wasn’t the one who cooked, since finding the time to cook was an unnecessary luxury. Instead he had an experienced Vietnamese chef feeding him. Today his breakfast consisted of an omelette with mushrooms and sea lettuce, and Walt ate on the enclosed porch overlooking the ocean. He didn’t open the window because by the looks of the persistent rain, a storm was approaching.

The sound of the Beatles singing “Eleanor Rigby” rang out and Walt turned to his phone. He changed his telephone every month to a new model to avoid being bugged. This particular phone had been set up four days ago, and he still hadn’t used it, since he rarely called anyone. One of his rules was that all minor calls should be taken by a secretary; Walt picked up only when it was really necessary. But he had to take this call; this song played for only one incoming number, which couldn’t be ignored. The clock, a built-in wooden case of an old-fashioned radio, show 10:55. It was too early, even with the time difference – he shouldn’t be calling now.

“Walt, we have a problem!”