Christopher Farnsworth - Blood Oath

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Table of Contents

To my mother and my brother, and to Jean, who believed in me when I didnt believe in myself

Some time in the year 1867, a fishing smack sailed from Boston. One of the sailors was [NAME REDACTED]. Two of the crew were missing, and were searched for. The captain went into the hold. He held up his lantern, and saw the body of one of these men, in the clutches of [NAME REDACTED] who was sucking blood from it. Near by was the body of the other sailor. It was bloodless.

[NAME REDACTED] was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged, but President Andrew Johnson commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.

CHARLES HOY FORT, Wild Talents

ONE

REPUBLIC OF KOSOVO

After two extended tours in Iraq, Army Specialist Wayne Denton thought hed never be cold again. A That was before he was sent to Kosovo. He stepped off the plane and realized it was, in fact, possible for Hell to freeze over. The war in Kosovo, supposedly over for ten years, seemed to have been preserved under a thick layer of ice.

There were still bomb craters and rubble in the streets where the U.N. peacekeepers patrolled. Armed bandits still hijacked cars at night. The Russian Mafiya smuggled guns and drugs. All the while, the Serbian army waited at the border, pacing like an angry dog behind a fence.

Wayne had been at a window in an abandoned building behind his M24 sniper rifle for six hours now. The boredom he could handlebut the cold was killing him. He wasnt even allowed to use chemical hand warmers; his sergeant said the bad guys had thermal imaging capability.

They didnt look that sharp, Wayne thought. He checked them again through his scope, careful not to touch his skin to the freezing metal.

They waited in the courtyard of the bombed-out apartments, sixteen stories down from his position. Bunch of big, unibrow, Cro-Magnon SOBs, their hairlines almost meeting their beards. All wearing trench coats. The cold didnt seem to bother them at all.

They were called the Vukodlak, which was supposed to be Serbian for the Wolf Pack, or something. He hadnt been paying attention to that part of the briefing.

They looked as bored as Wayne felt. He wondered, not for the first time, why his Army Ranger unit was babysitting a bunch of former death-squad thugs. Surely the locals could handle this.

Hell, Wayne could end it right now, all by himself. The Wolf Pack was a little over a hundred yards away-point-blank range for any sniper. He could kill each man on the ground before they knew what was happening. Hed done it before.

Back home in Casper, Wyoming, Wayne was the quiet kid in the back of the class. He wasnt unpopular, he was just there. Sort of taking up space, drifting along in life.

Then 9/11 hit, and everyone in his family assumed hed put off college and enlist, because they were at war now, and thats what kids do in a war, right? They join the army. He put his community college application away, unfinished, and signed up at a recruiting station in a mini-mall.

He was surprised to find his talent for fading into the background becoming useful for the first time. He was selected for Sniper School, then joined the Rangers.

He never thought hed get used to the blood and deathmuch less delivering it. He found he could simply focus on the quiet place in himself. That was where he pulled the trigger, and that was where he stacked the bodies. Sometimes he worried about what would happen when he got homeif the bodies would all spill out into the rest of him, or if the quiet place would just sit there, untouched, and hed go on as normal as ever, for the rest of his life.

He wasnt sure which was worse, actually. He tried not to think about it too much.

He kept his shit together. He survived. By the end of his first tour, the other guys in his unit looked at him like a veteran. They depended on him.

He was no longer just a placeholder. In fact, he was kind of a badass. After three years, he thought hed seen it all.

Which is why he was annoyed, but not surprised, when his unit was pulled off the active hunt for an al-Qaeda cell and sent to this winter wonderland. The army had its own way of doing things. Orders were orders.

Waynes CO had been more tight-lipped than usual, but the rumors made their way down.

When Kosovo declared independence, that didnt go over too well with the Serb neighbors. A bunch of Serbian nationals walked past the shack that served as a border checkpoint, and immediately began rioting in front of the U.S. Embassy. Some buildings got torched, and in the confusion, someone lost something important. Something big. It turned up with the Wolf Pack, who offered it to the highest bidder. The U.S. wanted it back.

Above all, the whole thing had to be kept quiet. The Rangers were good at quiet.

After they got to Kosovo, they spent a day and a half tracking the Serbs. But when they found the Wolf Pack, they were told to stay back and wait.

All the sergeant said was, move in, set up a ring, and make sure none of the Serbs left it. Questions were met with the kind of silence that implied a court-martial in the near future.

The CO got a message from way up the chain of command. A flight came in from Ansbach in Germany, and he sent a couple of Rangers to the airfield. They came back with a duffel full of cash.

Wayne figured it out then. The U.S. might not negotiate with terrorists, but it would sure as hell bribe them. He had seen plenty of it first-hand in Iraq, with CIA spooks giving away stacks of hundred-dollar bills stuffed in the aptly named Halliburton briefcases. Just one of those stacks could have bought his parents a new house. But the funds were ear-marked for the people busy shooting at their son.

The only other thing they brought back from the plane was what the army called a transfer case. But everyone knew what it was: a casket, used to take the bodies of dead soldiers home.

It gave Wayne the creeps. He was glad to take his sniper position and get away from it.

Wayne decided he hated this James Bond crap.

But orders were orders.

The sun dipped behind the empty buildings. It would be full dark in a matter of minutes. Wayne began to worry about his toes falling off, like loose ice cubes inside his boots.

Then his radio crackled to life. Stand ready, the CO told the unit. Were going to open the package.

The sun vanished completely behind the horizon. The dark came down like a sudden rain.

Wayne switched his scope to night-vision and checked on the Wolf Pack againand nearly jumped back. One of the Serbs was staring right up into the window. As if he could see him there.

Impossible. He was totally concealed. The Serb would have to be able to see in the dark. He looked back through the scope.

The Serb was still staring. Had to be a coincidence. People stare at things, look around aimlessly, when theyre bored. It didnt mean anything.

Then the man made a gun with his thumb and forefinger, and pointed it directly at Wayne. And winked.

Waynes finger twitched involuntarily on the trigger, because every instinct he had screamed to kill the man.

Despite the cold, Wayne started to sweat.

The man moved out of the range of the scope. Wayne dialed back the magnification quickly, to get a view of the whole courtyard.

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