Free Operation by Tony Ruggiero

what she is, she is hesitant to give me complete answers.
    I have not been able to get anything further from her about her own past or the specifics of how she was created or the creature that made her. Her reluctance to go into this area is quite obvious, so for the moment, I have decided to not go any further into it.
    As she speaks I can hear a change in her perception of the world over the long life she has lived. As she comes further toward present day, she loses something - perhaps what I would define as purpose. This is why, I think, she has no great concern for the explosive device within her. She doesn’t care if she lives or dies. This I believe is the key that I shall use to motivate her—the promise of purpose.
     22 October 1944
    She has agreed to join us! I am glad of her decision on both a professional and personal level. The conversation that we had was fascinating. I have tried to recapture the essence of it in my notes.
    I was told that she wished to see me. I entered her living space and she said, “I have decided to accept your proposal.”
    May God have mercy on my soul for what I am about to do. I know that the act of my asking for forgiveness is in itself a poetic irony—yet it is all I can do. Not everyone will understand what I do; I only hope that someday my son knows the truth and that when it came to the end there was no choice. I had to do it. My son, I wish I could have been there for you but our country needs me. I hope you can understand that.
    As the CIA man spoke, the older man sat and thought. He could hear and understand the entire conversation but he was also thinking about the diary and its contents. The two words, , resonated in his thoughts. The itch to know all the pieces of this puzzle began and he knew that he would have to scratch it at some point. The only question was how?
     

C HAPTER S IXTEEN
    As Christina finished her phone conversation with John Reese about their meeting later on tonight, an odd mood settled within her. She felt strange, but what bothered her more was that she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was she felt oddly about. She knew that part of it was that she needed to feed soon, but she decided that it was important to not summon Jake for that purpose.
    She didn’t want to see Jake tonight after she had almost accidentally killed him the night before. Whether it was guilt from that or just that she was feeling something else from the memories that had arisen during that experience—she wanted to forget about it for a while—especially before she saw Reese later this night.
    At dusk, she left the abandoned naval compound in Driver and drove toward the little airport that resided on the edge of Suffolk and the border of North Carolina. She had been to the area before and had observed several homeless people who made their home on the fringes of the airport in a small stand of woods. There were some abandoned shacks that had earlier been used to store obsolete runway maintenance equipment that had been out of use for many years. The area was now commonly referred to as a transient hotel.
    She pulled her car off of the side of the road and turned the ignition off. Gazing out at the dark woods she sat there for a few minutes focusing and preparing for what she knew she had to do. To hunt required the proper mindset and being sloppy could cause her to be discovered, or worse yet, possibly injured. These skills required practice just as anything else. She had become so dependent on Jake that she didn’t have to go out and search for someone to supply her needs very often. Of course, there had been those that she had killed on her assassination missions but she had not been allowed to take their blood—only to kill them. Then there had been those who had wandered into the area she lived—the occasional teenagers and a police officer. They were unfortunate kills, but necessary for her continued safety.
    As she sat in her car, she felt her impatience