The Dawn.VIR Day -24.
He woke up at seven o’ clock in the morning which again seemed late, but he was greeted by one of the best things he could have dreamed about seeing in the morning light. Two deep blue eyes gazed into his own with a soft warmth that he had seen only rarely in wolf females. As his eyes adjusted to the light her face came into focus and he saw the cool smile on her face that included raised brows and a great lighting effect off of her gorgeous white fur.
“Good morning,” she said in French with a tiny voice that he could barely hear. She scooched closer and kissed him on the cheek.
“Good morning mi’ lady,” he replied back in French with an imperfect accent he had yet to learn. He returned the gesture and kissed her on the cheek too, then,” When I wake up with a pretty woman next to me I usually like to know their name. Would you indulge me?”
“Angelique,” she said.
“Nice to meet you, Angelique’” he said in his soft, low voice,” My name is Johannes, but you may call me Johan if you like.”
Their eyes met again and her cheeks flushed red under her fur. He smiled at her, nuzzled her cheek, kissed the little black button she had for a nose, squeezed her flanks, and turned to look out at the position of the sun outside the window.
“Well,” he said,” by my time it’s time for chow; breakfast, care to join me?”
He turned his gaze back on her and she smiled.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said.
They got up off of the bed, the girl walked off down the hall and he heard the shower start a few seconds later and then the door was shut against the squealing hinges. He was still in his pants from the night before so he found his socks and his boots and got them on. There was one thing that he disagreed with and that was wearing the same shirt two days in a row, but that was only because he was acutely aware of his body odors and he found them on the wrong side of offensive. He turned the shirt inside out and walked down the hall to the stairs.
Learning his lesson the night before, Johan took his tail in his right hand and carefully proceeded down them one at a time. He came to the door at the bottom of the well and cracked it open to peek out, not wanting to offend anybody with his shirtless torso, but when he peeked out he couldn’t see any customers. In fact, he couldn’t see anybody.
“Hey, Miller?” he called out,” James? Trixie? Anybody out there?”
After giving himself a few seconds to listen he eased the door open and stepped out into the bar, which had be cleaned to the only standard that James, Trixie, and Martin could muster with their limited resources. The place smelled like Pine-Sol and all of the tables were stacked against the walls with their accompanying chairs. The open/closed sign was turned so that people walking by on the sidewalk would read the closed side and he could read the open side.
He walked over to the door to the bar and undid the little bolt in the in-side, pushed on it, and let himself in. He started up the sink and filled it up with scalding hot water dumping his shirt into it and setting about finding anything relatively soap-like in nature. He found a small hand pump bottle of soap under the counter with some bleach spray and window cleaner and took it out, unscrewing the cap as he came up, and dumping a generous measure of it into the water. It smelled faintly of fruit.
He heard the water turn off upstairs and imagined the wolf getting out of the shower basin sopping wet, grabbing the towel, and beginning the long process of drying off all of her fur and her silky, brown hair. He put his hands into the water, his fur buffering the heat like an insulator, and he began working the soap into the shirt knowing that he had enough time before the girl upstairs was going to be dried off and ready to head out. As he worked at the shirt he recalled a brief history of how soap had begun with someone noticing that clothes washed on the down-stream side of the seep from human sacrifices on the hill came out cleaner than on the up-stream side of the seep. He also recalled that there must have been a lot of sacrifices carried out before the seep had been large enough for it to reach the water.
After about twenty minutes he was happy with his work and drained the water from the sink, washing away all of the lingering suds in the stainless steel base. He plugged the sink back up and filled it with more scalding water, submerging the soapy shirt back into it and working out the slimy film that was left behind. He did this twice more before no more soap suds came off the shirt and he drained the sink again, pulling the shirt out and putting it on a coat hook to dry off a little. He made a quick sweep of the room and spotted the small fan in the far left corner and retrieved it, slotting the plug into the socket and turning it towards the suspended shirt. Once satisfied with the rate of airflow he went back behind the counter and found James’ shotgun.
It was an all-black contraption, pump-action, twelve gauge, and in one of Johan’s favorite configurations; short barrel with a stock and a pistol-grip and a seven round tube magazine. He pumped the weapon and a single red cartridge came out of the ejection port, flew through the air, and was caught by Johan’s right hand. James kept the chamber loaded; good to know. He flipped the gun on its side and thumbed the ejected round back into the tube. He set it on its butt behind the counter as the girl came down the stairs and into the room.
“So what did you have in mind, exactly?” she asked, still drying her hair with the towel.
“Oh,” said Johan,” I know of a little bagel shop around the corner that’s pretty good.”
“Okay,” she said, brushing her hair now,” I like bagels.”
He smiled,” good, I’m glad.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At that moment in the hotel room in Paris, Leona bit into the untoasted raisin bagel with strawberry cream-cheese she had got in the employee break room. She was reading the newspaper she had gotten from the same break room and the top story was that Russia still wasn’t won. She wasn’t interested in reading the criticism of Germany from a country that wasn’t helping with the war effort at all so she skipped the article and found a story on page three that had more to do with her than the war. It was about the train collision with the car the night before at the infamous Porterman’s level grade crossing.
George Mortimer Porterman, a wealthy journalist and respected fiction writer, had been killed in a car versus train collision at the driveway crossing that bore his name. He, his wife Marie Porterman, and two sons Josh and Jacob Porterman were on their way to a relative’s birthday party outside of Paris when, according to a witness the 17:30 Paris-bound ICE train came out of nowhere and smashed the rear of the car as it was crossing. Everyone in the car was, presumably, killed instantly when a London-bound freight train flattened the car, which had become stranded on the tracks after the first train had hit. Porterman was a known dare devil, at least three trains a month went into emergency braking status because of him and his tiny sports car, every safety worker at DB, JC&H, Foxy, and Steinherring Regional wanted to put a set of four crossing protection gates at his crossing. It now seemed that Porterman had finally gotten what he deserved, but it was a shame that his wife and children had had to pay the price of his gambling with something bigger than him. The author of the article even went as far to write ‘I seem to have found a rule that has kept me alive, if it’s bigger than me… it can go first’ softening the sentence at the end with ‘Mr. Porterman you will be missed.’
This is why people like him shouldn’t have kids.
Leona flipped to the next page as she took another bite of her bagel. Because of certain restrictions high-speed passenger services like ICE, TGV, and Eurostar only ran in the daylight. Leona and the other passengers aboard her train were put into hotels overnight at the expense of JC&H to wait for a new ICE-X power car from Germany to arrive to resume the trip to Madrid. She figured that with high-speed service starting at five in the morning that the unit would be attached to a commuter service and brought to Paris where it would be switched back on to the ICE-X consist. The call that would be made from the station would probably come at any minute. She could have taken the helicopter from the previous night, but the fuel for the Do-400 series helicopter cost more per gallon than a new tire for her car, so she decided that taking the train was better. Besides she didn’t have to be in Madrid for another sixteen hours.
At that minute the phone in the room began to ring. She folded the newspaper and set it beside her on the bed and rolled over to pick up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Am I reaching Second in Command Leona F. Hughes?” Leona’s eyes shot open in disbelief. Who the hell would call her on an unsecured line? Better yet; who the hell actually knew where she was?
“That depends on who’s calling.”
“Ma’am this is a secure line,” the voice said,” we have a Captain Markus Miller on the line, he says it’s urgent.”
Shit.
“Patch him through,” she said, knowing that Miller, with the mission he was tasked, would only call in the event of a problem or with a status report.
“Yes, ma’am.”
There was a pause and then a man’s voice came over the line,” Ma’am?”
“Yes Miller, go ahead.”
“Ma’am,” he said,” I fear that the mission might be a bust, Luftennant von Ackerman injured himself last night and damaged his eye.”
Leona blinked, her face flushed full of anger,” Come again, Captain?”
“Luftennant von Ackerman injured himself last night, ma’am.” Said Miller,” He was coming down a flight of stairs when his tail became entangled between his legs and he ruptured several veins in his right eye; the white of it is completely blood red. We’re assessing the damage done and thus far it looks as though he won’t be fit for duty in time for more training let alone the mission, ma’am.”
Leona was almost angry at herself for buying all the bullshit that Miller had told her about the Luftennant. She hated herself for buying into all the things Miller had told her about; the awards for being the best sniper in Germany, the qualifications for every rifle known to exist, the level-headed and calm nature of the Luftennant when he had been captured by the Reds on one of his first missions, his cold, calculating ability. It must have been all bullshit. Miller had just fabricated the information to get his hands on a mission and had realized that the man he had been championing was grossly incompetent and now he was tossing out some bullshit story about how Luftennant von Ackerman had injured himself.
Who the hell trips over their own tail?
But then she remembered something. In the mess hall at the base, staring that big wolf in those haunting blue eyes, she had seen something there, something she had only seen in people who had been hurt badly. He wasn’t hurt physically per se, during his stay with the Reds in the prisoner camp he was never interrogated like the other men, the only injury he sustained was from doing manual labor in the camp, a pulled hamstring and a mildly dislocated elbow; he was hurt emotionally. Had he lost someone? Leona didn’t know much about him, his dossier was sparse and things were either missing or incomplete. The only thing she knew was that a single sentence had read:
Violent tendencies noted regarding the subject of hurting/insulting females.
In those eyes was something feral and evil that was buried under the softness of his personality. It was as if he had made a decision with such harsh and cruel consequences implicated that a lesser man would have probably rushed himself to the insane asylum for fear of doing whatever it was. That was what she was most afraid of; she had no idea why he had death in his eyes, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out.
“Miller,” she commanded,” you keep him wherever he is; knock him unconscious if you have to, I’m coming to you. I need to see his eye.”
"Yes, ma’am.”
“Keep this to yourself, Miller,” she said,” I’m not supposed to go anywhere without my superior knowing where I am and I’m playing this pretty close to my chest. If he or his assistants call you, which they probably will, the last time you spoke to me I was boarding the train from Paris to Madrid, understand?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“I can be wherever you are within the next three hours,” she said,” and when they call and ask if you’ve seen me, you never saw me, got it?”
“Saw who, ma’am?”
“Good man, Miller, I’m on my way now.”
“Very good, ma’am.”
Leona hung the phone up and stood stretching herself to the sky. She reached behind her back and undid her crimson bra, letting it fall to the ground as she walked to the bathroom to take her shower. She dropped her panties as soon as the door was closed and started the water going as hot as she could stand. She ran her hands through her hair with shampoo and conditioner, washed the gorgeous fur of her face and tail, and cleaned between her thighs. She carefully lathered her vulva and breasts with the special soap her doctor had prescribed for her unusual nerve stimulation in those areas, which her daughter also had, leading most to believe that the condition was hereditary. Leona sighed heavily.
All of this shit and it wasn’t even 08:00 yet.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Johan took the last bite of his plain bagel with plain cream cheese when he heard something over Angelique’s talking. His eyes shot open and he wheeled around on his left heel bringing the post and ring sight on James’ shotgun up to his left eye, keeping his right eye open but squinted. All of his attention went to the door and the suddenness and flurry of movement caused Angelique to roll her ears back in shock and sucked all of the formulating words out of her mouth.
“Angelique,” Johan said in a low voice,” I need you to do me a favor and get down behind the counter. Understand?”
Behind him, Johan felt Angelique move back and away from him, he didn’t want her, a non-combatant, to be caught in a gunfight if one ensued. Johan was not a paranoid man, but he knew that for the highest bidder anyone he had ever pissed off would sell out anything and everything they knew about him, and he knew at least a few Reds that would like to get their hands on him. Behind that door was either an innocent person looking to see if James was hosting one of his closed door sessions that only a select number of patrons were allowed to attend, or a squad of KGB sleepers that intended to capture him and deliver him to their interrogation officers or kill him and photograph his body for their zealous communist leaders. Either way he kept his finger on the guard and kept his eyes on the door; he would tell the customer to leave or shoot the first man who stepped in with a rifle.
Bring it on you piece of shit.
The door clunked open from the top hinge being partially torn out of its place from being opened and closed about a million times a year and Johan leaned forward ever so slightly gently putting his finger on the trigger. He was not fond of shotguns; they didn’t have the range that he as a sniper would have liked, but they were better suited to defending a room like he was right now, so he didn’t complain. Add to that that James had the same taste in the configuration of the weapon and Johan didn’t have anything to complain about.
The door opened about six inches and Johan pointed the muzzle of the gun up at the ceiling because he saw a furry brown hand on the cusp of it.
“Luftennant von Ackerman?” said a familiar voice,” Are you in here, Johan?”
“I’m here,” he said.
Dominique opened the door and stepped into the bar with her suppressed handgun held up in one of her hands. Unlike a grand variety of people she could actually shoot and hit a target with only one hand holding the weapon. She entered doing a quick sweep of the room, far be it from her friend’s enemies to expect her and set up an ambush. She attained eye contact with him, saw the shotgun, and put her gun in its holster.
“Good to see you,” she said.
“Likewise,” he called out,” Angelique, it’s alright, you can get up now.”
Angelique got up from behind the bar counter and peered at the new arrival standing in the door.
“Dom,” said Johan,” this is Angelique, she took care of me last night after I fell down the stairs,” Dominique stifled a laugh, Johan ignored her,” Angelique, this is my good friend Dominique, she is a person you can trust.”
Dominique turned and closed the door behind her and said,” Nice to meet you.”
Johan put the shotgun down on its butt and leaned it against the bar counter. He stepped over to Dom and embraced her in a hug, kissing her on the forehead, and squeezing her tight.
“Would you care for a bagel, vixen?” he asked,” I bought a few at the shop you like.”
“Did you get cream cheese too?” she asked pulling her head back to look up at him.
He smiled,” I always do.”
They moved off to get the delicious rings of dough and he plopped one into the toaster for her, setting it low as not to turn the bagel dark like he liked them. The wires in the unit turned red and heated rapidly for all of a minute and a half, barely browning the bagel, but it was enough for Dominique, who was what one might call an odd duck. She slathered on some of the plain cream cheese, ignoring Johan’s recommendation that she should try the strawberry stuff completely, and began chowing down on the tasty ring of slightly cooked dough.
“So,” Johan said,” what’s a pretty little vixen like you doing in a place like this?”
Dominique swallowed her bagel,” Miller called me, told me where you were and that I was supposed to make sure you stayed here.”
“Why?”
“SINC is on her way to evaluate your condition,” said Dom,” and Miller is busy bringing one of the best eye doctors in all of Germany here to make sure you can still shoot straight.”
“Well that’s kind, Dom,” Johan said to her whimsically,” but you don’t have to protect me, I’m a big boy.”
Dom laughed,” a big, half-blind boy is what you are.”
There was a knock at the door. Johan grabbed the scatter-gun and approached it with the weapon shouldered. He motioned Dominique to open it and she approached with her suppressed pistol drawn and ready. They both were paranoid for a variety of reasons, some more understandable than others, and they were always fairly cautious no matter what they were doing, no matter where they were. Dominique didn’t trust males because she was a victim of child abuse and womanizers and Johan was fatherless and knew that the KGB, what was left of it, wanted his head on a stake. Dominique had warmed up to Johan because he was the first male to show her kindness and care and love, and Johan warmed up to Dominique because he didn’t think a girl should be treated as poorly as she had been. They were just about perfect for each other.
Dominique called,” who is it?”
“It’s Abigail,” the voice, a female, said.
Abigail.
Dominique opened the door and the beautiful woman from a few days before stepped into the bar dressed in civilian garb. Johan turned the muzzle of the shotgun up at the ceiling and Dominique put her gun back in the paddle holster on her left thigh. The woman looked like she would be better suited at a library with her hair done-up in its ponytail and the small false-glasses and the mostly form fitting blue skirt and blouse, but Johan wasn’t about to begin complaining. Leona looked at Dominique then Angelique and then at Johan.
“My, my, Luftennant,” she said,” You live a life surrounded by beautiful women.”
“I’m glad you approve,” he said putting the shotgun back in its place by the bar,” but all things aside I’d like you to begin your evaluation of my condition. I have a big day coming up, ma’am.”
“Oh yes, of course,” she said, fishing a small LED flashlight from her purse,” We must begin right away, I fear I can’t stay too long before CINC Hughes realizes I’m not on the train to Madrid.”
Johan sat on the bar counter and removed the bandage he had used to cover his eye a few hours earlier. She turned on her flashlight and shined it in the eye that was blood-red like Miller had said, fighting not to cringe at the sight. The pupil was reacting correctly to the brightness but he wasn’t trying to close his eye or squint to relieve himself of the headache it was no doubt causing. She clicked the light off.
“You didn’t flinch at the light,” she said plainly.
“I can barely see anything out of it, ma’am,” he said,” I’m afraid that I won’t be able to see in time for the mission.”
“What mission?” asked Dom, in the corner.
“We’re taking out Chekov,” said Leona, leaving all of the details out of the response.
“Jesus,” Dominique said,” And he’s the shooter?”
“Yes, I am, Dom.”
“Is this because of what he did?”
Leona was lost now. What hadn’t Chekov done to warrant his own assassination? The man tortured prisoners, sold uranium for cash, killed innocent civilians, and pressed the peasant farmers of Russia to fight for something they didn’t believe in. He was a monster. He had done just about everything to deserve death. Then it hit her.
“Johan?” she asked, tenderly,” What did he do to you?”
Johan’s eyes turned from warm to cold, from soft to hard.
He waved his hand in the air in front of him,” The myth that I had no father is greatly exaggerated,” he said,” He wasn’t there when I was born, but that doesn’t mean that I had no father. How else would I be here?” He thought for a few seconds then continued,” I did some research and found out some things. I was never able to find a name other than von Ackerman, but I found out why I never met him. He was in the security force that went over with supply convoys during the early years of the war and one day his convoy got attacked by some Russian fast movers. His truck was hit and he survived long enough to go to a prisoner of war camp in Siberia.”
He looked Leona in the eye,” Some pretty medieval stuff happened there, including, I found, a notable occasion where a man was pulled into quarters by four T54 tanks.” He grinned a little,” It turns out that my father was burned alive for stealing a dead man’s blanket. The man who gave the order was Chekov. And rest assured he didn’t just order the death of my father, he ordered the merciless torture of him beforehand, trying to squeeze the standard battle doctrine of the types of convoy the Reds liked to attack.”
It made sense to her if but for a few seconds. Johan wanted revenge for the death of his father and that was the reason he had been chosen for the mission, not because he had a good aim, but because this was personal. Chekov had deprived Johan of his father, and now Johan was going to deprive Chekov of his life or die trying.
“I’ve been a four-two-fiver for two years,” he said,” my training for this mission began back then, not when we knew what he was doing in two weeks from now. Miller understands my motives; the idea of revenge on that man is all that drives me, and soon I’m going to kill him.” He looked down at his hands,” If I had it my way I’d sneak up behind him and use these hands to shove a knife into his throat, that way when he looked back at me he’d see the eyes of my father… a man he killed twenty years ago.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Miller arrived that night with the best eye doctors in Germany in tow and they assessed the damage done to Johan’s eye. As he had figured he had popped several small veins in his eye causing the white to go red with the blood that had finally stopped flowing out of them. They all said the same thing, if he avoided any more head injury, or taking a forced shit, that the eye would be able to heal and clear out by itself in a matter of a few days. That was a huge relief all on its own. Johan rode to the base that night with Miller and they began making sure that he could shoot with his left eye just in case.
Two weeks passed and Johan was ready for the mission like no one could believe. He radiated an energy that no one had ever seen because of his intense poker-face and that night, when Miller made the selection, no one in the room was surprised that Johannes von Ackerman was the name Miller called as his shooter. Johan slept better that night than in the past ten years or more, and he knew that if things went bad he might not be alive to see another day.
When he woke up he received special permission from Miller to go see his mother and tell her what he was going to be doing and that he loved her and that he promised to be back. He took a helicopter to Hamburg and saw Dominique and told her the same things only she was able to see the grim reality that her Johan might not return from Ukraine. He told her that there’s always a bright side to everything and that she needed to look past the negative.
That night, before he and Miller boarded the CH-47 Chinook helicopter that the American’s had supplied for transport, SINC Leona F. Hughes and her father, CINC Alfred H. Hughes, arrived to wish them luck with their mission in Pripyat. They all shook hands, and then SINC Leona surprised them all by giving the young Luftennant a polite kiss on his ghillied cheek. He kissed her back in turn in almost the same spot and she wished him more luck than she could have given to any other man.
Johan thought about her for most of the flight from Steinherring to Kiev, where they would continue by foot to Pripyat and then find the weapon that the good Russians had left for them at the hotel. It was a good long walk to Pripyat but they had three days to get there, and they weren’t walking as much as they were crawling.