Chapter 3

…Mission Impossible…

Crouched low, the young man watched the goings on at the base with the intensity of a lion watching zebra on the Serengeti.

It was nighttime, but that did not stop him from being able to see in the dark. In fact, he could see better and farther than most humans with 20/20 vision at any time, day or night.

The first time he had come here, he had commandeered a bazooka from the armory. Subsequent times after that, the young man had needed to stock up on supplies that their group needed. No one asked him where he acquired his supply of arms and armor.

At first, the others complained about wearing the mesh armor, but after Jonathon had been tackled by a Howler Demon when they had killed its mate. The teen had been unharmed thanks to that armor.

'This is like taking candy from a baby,' he thought to himself as a troop of soldiers marched past the fence near where he crouched in the long grass across the road.

He waited patiently and listened intently, and sure enough a black clad SF, with a Doberman pincer on a leash walked passed. The razor-blade in a fur coat caught his scent and went crazy, it barked and growled at the fence line, even as the sentry looked out into the night and spotted nothing.

"Come on, you crazy mutt," the gravely voice could be heard as he pulled the dog along his path.

The dog struggled along the way since it wanted to come back and investigate the strange human-cat smell.

He waited long enough to be out of the Doby's range of senses and left his hiding place. He blurred across the road, stopped in front of the fence and leapt the twelve foot chain link fence with concertina wire topping it with a foot to spare. Landing in a crouch, he blurred further down the base to where he knew the equipment storage warehouse was located.

He smirked as he tried the handle on the door, the knob turned. Xander rolled his eyes as he complained, "They should at least know to lock the doors after the first few times."

He pulled a collapsible duffel bag from a pocket in his black jacket and shook it open. As he walked down row after row of all types of stockpiled equipment he looked at everything and thought of what they might need.

"Oh-ooo, UV flashlight," he said as he recognized the large, bulky light and pulled one off the shelf.

Further down another row of shelves, the young man perked up once more, "Sub vocal communicators," he grabbed ten of the tiny receiver/transmitters and they were small enough to shove them into an inner pocket of his jacket.

He pulled interesting things off of random shelves, like a broad band scanner, a portable bug detector, two sets of lock picking tools, a white noise generator, a camouflage paint kit, a climbing kit, not that he needed one of those, but the others might.

He walked further down another row of shelves and found several different things like a complete professional medical first aid kit, three hundred feet of nylon cord that was 600 pound tested, he grabbed a couple of packages of black battle dress uniforms, a few wool sweaters and a camouflage t-shirt or two.

He found more stuff that he shoved into the duffel bag as he continued to shop down row after row of military supply.

"Oh," he whispered in near awe as his eye caught sight of a laptop computer… 'spared no expense, Toshiba Toughbook with removable touch screen…' "Come to papa," he said as he grabbed the state of the art, advanced, for this day and age, computer, kissed the front of the casing and shoved it, none too gently into his bag. He knew Willow would drool over that nifty piece of electronic wonder, but he just had to have one.

Suddenly, the young man heard the door open and the over head lights turned on.

Where could he go? How would he hide in here? Wide eyed, he looked for a hiding spot as he shoved the bag on a low shelf near his feet.

The footfalls grew louder as the inventory clerk walked down the rows and finally turned down the row where the young man had been. He was no where to be seen. The Corporal walked up and down all of the rows then turned to leave… he turned the light out and closed the door.

Suddenly, a dark form dropped from the rafters next to the metal shelf, he crouched down and retrieved his booty from the bottom shelf and beat his own hasty retreat.