Blue Howl (Blue Wolf Book 3) Page 4

  “So acting like a jackass is your solution? How about being a man and trying to fix it?”

  “Harsh words, boss. I’d say fighting words, but there’s no way I’m tangling with you.”

  “And what kind of example are you setting for your kids?”

  “My kids are … are three thousand miles away.” I watched Rusty’s face crumble as the reality took hold in his mind. He began to sob. “Aw man, I miss them. I miss them so damn much. Little Hodge doesn’t deserve to grow up without a daddy. And if he starts taking after his momma…” Rusty cried harder. “You’re right. I’m a … I’m a poor excuse for a man.”

  Oh, Jesus.

  With Rusty’s constant joking and comic relief, it was easy to overlook how hard it was being separated from his children. I tempered my voice. “C’mon, man. Hold it together. Listen, after the mission, I’ll see about getting everyone some leave. Then you can go home and spend time with Hodge and the rest of your kids. How does that sound?”

  After another minute of sobbing, Rusty wiped his face with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. “Sounds good, boss,” he managed. “Real good.”

  And maybe by then Biogen will have a fix that’ll let me see Daniela, I thought.

  5

  I arranged for Sarah to meet us in the infirmary, where she hooked Rusty up to a bag of saline as well as a solution to break down the alcohol in his blood. By the time we reached the conference room, his eyes looked a little clearer, even with a hand propping his head.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked him.

  “Like a jackass. Sorry about that mess back there.”

  Yoofi took his cigar from his lips and leaned toward us through the smoke. “Did I miss something?”

  “Nothing worth getting into,” I said, partly to spare Rusty the embarrassment, but I also didn’t want word of the vampire’s beheading going up the chain. “Let’s focus on the briefing.”

  “I’ll make it up with mission execution,” Rusty whispered to me.

  Takara, who had been sitting perfectly erect with her eyes closed, glanced over at Rusty’s portable IV pole, then oriented herself to the screens. The team was all present, save Olaf, who remained in the infirmary.

  Sarah stood from the head of the table and gave her tablet a pair of hard taps. The lights dimmed as the wall-mounted LCD screens came to life. They showed a satellite shot of a small community set in dense forestland along Hudson Bay. It was the same shot I’d been studying for the past couple of weeks. The one I believed had given me the hunting dreams.

  “This is Old Harbor, population twelve hundred,” Sarah announced. “It’s located in the northern part of Canada’s Manitoba Province. In July, Centurion’s computers flagged a pattern in the area that suggested Prodigium 1 activity. Subsequent findings have placed the case in the high probability category.”

  “What kind of activity?” Takara asked.

  “Disappearances and killings,” Sarah replied, tapping the tablet.

  Seven headshots appeared over the satellite image with a paragraph of information beneath each one. I read them quickly. These were the victims: four men and three women, all locals, all of them middle aged except for the first victim, a twenty-one-year-old named Connor Tench. I felt a connection to the young man as I eyed his photo, his dark hair cropped to military standards, face browned by the sun. His profile said he’d served in the Canadian Armed Forces. Given his age, he’d probably done time in Waristan.

  Red lines connected his and the others’ headshots to locations on the map where they were last seen and where their remains had been found. The only clear pattern were the intervals between attacks. They were shortening.

  “The attacks appear opportunistic,” Sarah continued. “Each victim disappeared at night when he or she was believed to be alone. Their remains turned up later.” She tapped her tablet. One of the screens changed to show a wooded crime scene scattered with bone fragments.

  Yoofi gave a shudder. “Ooh, I don’t like this.”

  I looked at him sidelong, remembering how his god had turned tail almost every time we’d encountered the enemy in El Rosario. Yoofi insisted he and Dabu had come to an understanding, but I wasn’t entirely convinced—especially with Yoofi staring bug eyed at the screen now.

  “In most cases, the victim had been deceased for several days,” Sarah continued. “Being exposed to the elements and scavengers complicated the forensics, but the Centurion team was able to establish times of deaths. Frankly, the local investigator is more of a game warden. His investigative skills are lacking. He’s been calling them bear attacks.”

  “So how did Centurion settle on werewolves?” I asked. In going to fetch Rusty, I hadn’t had a chance to look over the info Beam had sent. The briefing was as much for me as the rest of the team.

  “The mode of abduction, for one,” Sarah answered. She scrolled through several images until we were looking at a cabin whose front door was hanging askew. The next shot zoomed in on the doorframe, scored with what appeared to be deep claw marks. “Though the marks have animal features, they’re too sharp to have been inflicted by a bear,” she said, “the only native species that would have produced marks of that size. But they’re close matches to those left by other werewolf attacks in Centurion’s database.”

  The image changed again until we were looking at a close-up of a human femur. A deep groove ran down one side. “While many of the remains showed post-mortem signs of gnawing by bears, wolves, coyotes, and the like, the team was able to identify marks left by teeth on an order larger than those belonging to the common scavenger species.”

  “Damn,” Rusty muttered.

  “Any trace evidence?” I asked.

  “By the time our advanced team arrived, a system of storms had pounded the outdoor crime scenes clean. They found nothing conclusive there or indoors. No eyewitness sightings, either.”

  “Then what’s ruling out a bugbear or other Prod 1?” I pressed.

  “Nothing rules them out, but an absence of a history of their kind in the area lowers the probability. Werewolves are another story. An indigenous group in the region, the Woods Cree, have an oral history of encounters with a pack dating back several hundred years. The Masked Wolf People, they called them.”

  Yoofi repeated the name in fearful wonder.

  “The Cree saw them as demigods and left them food offerings after every big hunt. It’s unclear whether there were conflicts. The human/werewolf relationship definitely turned adversarial with the arrival of the first Europeans. There are several written accounts of wolf attacks on the settlement.” Sarah consulted her tablet. “‘The wolves here are unlike the ones back home,’ one Scottish account reads. ‘They are larger and more intelligent. Deadlier too. Bullets scarce harm them, and Parson Ross swears he saw one running on two legs on full moon last.’ When the settlers discovered the werewolves’ vulnerability to silver, the attacks tapered off. The surviving wolves were believed to have fled to more remote territory. Over time, locals dismissed the stories as legend, but occasional sightings suggest werewolves persist in the region.”

  “Why would they be attacking now?” I asked, as much to myself as anyone.

  “Shrinking territories, perhaps,” Sarah replied. “The area remains remote, but it’s become more populated as more Canadians turned to homesteading following the Crash. In addition, much of the province’s seasonal water sources dried up early this year due to low snowpack in the mountains. That may have driven the werewolf pack closer to the bay.”

  “Are we looking at multiple wolves?” I asked.

  “That’s what the claw-mark evidence suggests. Though the marks are consistent at each scene, the Centurion team noted a discernible size difference between scenes, suggestive of a pack. One of our first jobs will be to determine what and how many we’re dealing with.”

  “And then put them down,” Takara said.

  The red crescents around her irises flashed in a way that told me she was anticipating th
e hunt and ensuing battle as much as the Blue Wolf. But to Jason Wolfe it was more than taking on a pack to establish dominance. Monsters were preying on the innocent, a fact the faces of the victims had slammed home. Though it burned to admit, Beam had my number there.

  “Guess this won’t be like El Rosario, then,” Rusty said despondently. “At least those victims had a chance of still being alive.”

  “There might be one,” I said, remembering what Beam told us.

  “That’s correct.” Sarah scrolled to a picture of a smiling blonde woman in an evening gown, diamonds sparkling around her neck. Whoever’s arm she was holding had been cropped out. “Caitlyn Welch, age twenty-eight.”

  Rusty perked up for a better look. “Whoa.”

  “She and her boyfriend, Karl Berglund, arrived in Old Harbor last Friday. They rented a cabin in the woods north of town.”

  “They were not warned about the attacks?” Yoofi asked.

  “Old Harbor’s economy depends heavily on guided hunting and fishing,” Sarah said. “While the town and guide businesses issue the standard disclaimers about safety, no, they did not warn clients about these attacks.”

  Might also explain why the mayor declined Centurion’s help, I thought. Didn’t want it getting out that they had a man-eater on the loose. Would’ve hurt business.

  “As I said, local authorities believed they were dealing with a rabid bear, and they’ve been trying to address the problem with traps and flyovers,” Sarah continued. “But the disappearance of Ms. Welch changed the equation. On Wednesday, Mr. Berglund left the cabin after dinner to fish in the bay. He invited Ms. Welch along, but she stayed in. When Berglund returned later that night, he found this.” The new picture showed a door to a log cabin completely ripped off. The subsequent series of photos inside the cabin showed smashed lamps and an overturned couch, broken in half. Blood droplets and blond hairs littered the floor.

  “Geez Louise,” Rusty said.

  “Ooh, I don’t like this either,” Yoofi added.

  “Dogs tracked a scent, but they lost it at a river crossing. Another day of searching turned up nothing. Welch’s disappearance was just over two days ago.” A graph appeared on one screen plotting the shrinking times between the disappearances as well as the killings. “If the pattern holds, the creature or creatures will keep her alive for two more days before killing her, presumably to eat.”

  “Is that consistent with werewolf behavior?” I asked. I couldn’t remember anything in Sarah’s lectures or the large binders about a werewolf keeping its victim alive. Werewolves were among the most lethal Prod 1s out there.

  “They’re isolated, but yes, there are cases of werewolves storing their prey as a food source for later.”

  I nodded. There was hope then.

  “With the mayor declining Centurion’s help, the reps approached Mr. Berglund directly. Earlier tonight, he signed a contract to employ Legion’s services to recover his girlfriend. The mayor knows we’ll be operating in the area, so there should be no conflicts there. We’ll be meeting with him, the warden, and Berglund following our arrival.”

  Sarah adjusted her glasses and turned to me. “Captain?”

  I stood and took her place. “We’re on a tight timetable, so we won’t drill before we leave. We’ll review once we’re on the ground. Rusty and I will ready the weapons, ammo, and equipment for loading. Takara, I want you to assist Sarah with her prep.” Sarah started to say she could manage, but I gave her a subtle head shake. It was an opportunity to start cross-training Takara in the event Sarah ended up in Olaf’s position before a mission.

  “And me, sir?” Yoofi asked.

  “Make sure Dabu’s one hundred percent on board. You have your personal packing list too. Everyone does. Double and triple check them.” I would need to take care of Olaf’s packs. It was going to be a busy next few hours. I couldn’t foresee even a sliver of time to call Daniela.

  “Do we have a flight schedule yet?” I asked Sarah.

  “It just came. Still departing at 0600.”

  I turned back to the team. “That means everyone packed and in the armory by 0500. Any questions?”

  Clutching his IV pole for support, Rusty wobbled to his feet. “Can I make a pit stop before we get started?”

  I looked over the weapons and magazines I had heaped across two of the armory’s large tables and checked them against my list. The stringent scent of silver coming off the ammo triggered alarms in my wolf brain, but the entire team, including Yoofi, had met basic proficiency with weapons. The chance of a friendly fire incident or negligent discharge was low.

  Back at the ammo bins, I pulled out stacks of magazines of conventional rounds as well as those containing salt. Though the evidence pointed to werewolves, we were still talking probabilities. As El Rosario had taught us, we needed to be ready for anything.

  I was rolling out the big containers to pack it all when something crash-landed in Rusty’s office.

  “Dad-flipping-gummit!” he shouted.

  I exhaled hard. Rusty had insisted he’d sobered up enough to handle the computers and commo equipment, but when I arrived at his office doorway, he was looking down at a shattered monitor.

  “Darn thing was greasy from when we had fried chicken on Friday,” he complained. “Slipped right out of my grip.”

  “Maybe you should wash your hands after lunch next time.” I looked around the office. To Rusty’s credit, he’d gotten most of the equipment packed despite being tethered to an IV pole. I would have to double check it all against his list, of course—a fact that still ticked me off.

  “Is there a replacement?” I asked.

  Rusty nodded toward a closet. “Top shelf.”

  I lifted down the replacement monitor and slid it into a foam slot in a container that already held several other monitors, hard drives, laptops, and yards of coiled cables and wires.

  “All that’s left on my end are the drones,” Rusty said, closing and securing the container’s lid.

  “I’ll handle those. And the missiles,” I added. I didn’t want him handling any weapons.

  As I pulled one of the hundred-pound drones from storage and carried it into the armory, I eyed its blunt antenna. My shoulders bunched as I remembered Beam all but crowing over having root control over the drones and our other mission-essential equipment.

  “Hey, Russ?” I said as I set the drone down.

  “What’s up?” He arrived beside me, wheeling the container he’d just closed.

  “Most of this stuff links to Centurion’s servers, right?”

  “Yeah, by way of the satellites.”

  “How hard would it be to circumvent them?”

  “Without losing functionality?” He blew out his breath. “I mean, I could probably hack into a private company for the global positioning. Course I’d also have to reconfigure the equipment on our end, which could take awhile. The servers, though? I don’t know. What we have is basically the front end. The real functionality is on the back end, and you can’t just go in and copy that stuff. Not with their security tighter than a nun’s cooch. What’s this about?”

  “Probably nothing.”

  I could see in his eyes that, even inebriated, he was reading between the lines. He lowered his voice. “I could, you know, diddle around with it, come up with a plan for just in case.”

  “Would Centurion know?”

  “Naw, I’d just be running models. Nothing that would trigger any alarms.”

  I would take the responsibility, regardless. There was no way in hell I was going to let Director Beam cripple our team just because the final column on his spreadsheet fell short of a target.

  “All right, I’ll let you know,” I said.

  6

  Spruce forests glowed and lakes sparkled in the late-morning sun as we flew north over Manitoba. After more than four hours cooped up in a cargo plane, the cold air that leaked into the rattling bush plane felt like freedom. And the terrain below looked so much like the
lands in my hunting dream that my heart thudded vigorously. I even caught myself eyeing a river valley in search of large game.

  Last night was the first night in weeks I hadn’t had the dream, but only because I hadn’t slept. Immediately after completing the packing and weighing, I’d had the team report to the armory for outfitting and final inspection. Centurion denied my request to send Olaf separately—too expensive, they said. I had a few choice words prepared, but I held my tongue. Sarah and I made arrangements to fly Olaf in the medical hold of the cargo plane instead. When we arrived at a Centurion base outside Winnipeg, we left Olaf in their care.

  I used the short layover to call Daniela from a private sat phone I’d picked up after the El Rosario mission. Centurion didn’t need to be listening in on our calls.

  “Hey, lovely,” I said when she answered. I checked my watch. It was close to eight a.m. in East Texas. “Hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.”

  “There’s never a bad time when it’s you.”

  “That’s only because you don’t have to put up with me twenty-four seven … yet.” When it came to our future, I tried to keep the tone light. I needed it to sound more definite than it was—for both our sakes. “On your way to work?”

  “Yeah, just backed out of the driveway. I’m not used to you calling in the morning.”

  “Well, an assignment came up at the last minute. I’m going to be out for a few days.” We’d been talking most nights, in part because I wanted to make sure she was all right after gunning down her ex in self defense. She had good days and bad, but she was in a better place than she’d been two months before. “I didn’t want you to worry when you didn’t hear from me.”

  Dani went quiet. Her car engine rumbled through the feed.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Sorry. Just remembering this awful dream I had last night.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Might make you feel better.”

  “You called to tell me you weren’t coming back,” she blurted. “Not because you couldn’t, but because you didn’t want to.” My body grew warm as I thought about my own dream of hunting with a wolf pack.