Blue Howl (Blue Wolf Book 3) Page 6

  “Sarah is trying to lay out the best chance of recovering your girlfriend,” I said calmly. “Alive.”

  When he started to cut in, my wolf voice drowned him out. “You can either listen to what we have to say, and we’ll answer your questions when we finish, or you can hunt Ms. Welch and whatever took her yourself. Maybe your little rifle there will get the job done.”

  “L-little?” he sputtered. “It’s a Winchester Model 70.”

  “Just powerful enough to piss off a Prod 1.”

  “With silver rounds?” he challenged.

  “Do you have some?”

  “No, but you do!”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  As Berglund stared at me, I watched the meaning sink in. Silver ammo was rare, even more so in a remote town like Old Harbor. Without us, Berglund would have no access to our armory or ammo.

  A blue vein wriggled in his temple. “But the terms—”

  “The terms were that you’d be involved,” I interrupted. “Not planning the mission.” He blinked at me, not accustomed to being challenged. “This isn’t a weekend hobby. We do this for a living. The combo of our weapons, technology, training, and knowledge of these monsters surpasses anything out there. We’re your best chance, but it has to be our way.”

  The vein wriggled some more as he looked from me to Sarah and back. After another moment, he gave a hard exhale.

  “Fine. You have my attention.”

  With Berglund where I wanted him, I nodded for Sarah to continue.

  “As I was saying, from the evidence at the abduction sites, we have estimated sizes of the creatures in question. We also have a defined area in which they’re operating.” She hovered her pen over a red circle rendered on the map prior to printing. “With a radius of three point eight miles, that’s a little over forty-five square miles. Part of our team will set up a surveillance grid. If anything within the creatures’ size range moves through the area, we’ll know the instant it happens, and our drones will lock in.” Berglund’s chest rose as if he was going to interject, but I showed him a finger. “The other half of our team,” Sarah continued in a clipped voice, “will begin tracking Ms. Welch and whatever took her.”

  “Do you have something that beats a dog?” Berglund challenged. “’Cause we tried that.”

  Testing had shown that my nose as the Blue Wolf was more sensitive than any domesticated dog’s. But I was still learning to use the heightened sense to its full potential. “Yes,” I replied without elaborating. “Did you bring some of her belongings as instructed?”

  Berglund reached into his pack and pulled out a long cotton night shirt as well as a hairbrush. When he handed them to me, I automatically lifted them to the fake breathing apparatus that hid my muzzle, my mind already storing the distinct combination of skin, oil, and a floral perfume.

  “You’re smelling them?” Berglund asked, incredulous.

  Sarah cleared her throat. “There are highly calibrated sensors in the helmet.”

  Nice save, doc, I thought. And not total BS, either. My big schnoz is technically inside my helmet.

  “Thanks,” I said, handing the items back to him.

  “You have her scent, let’s go,” Berglund said as he stuffed the shirt and brush into his pack.

  “I need to visit the cabin.”

  “What for?” he erupted.

  “Karl, remember what we talked about.”

  He exhaled and lowered his shoulders. “What for?” he repeated in a calmer voice.

  “Based on the condition of your cabin, chances are good the creature carried Ms. Welch out.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “That means the creature left a stronger scent trail than your girlfriend’s. Where it stepped, branches it brushed against, places it set a hand. Having its scent won’t just double our chances of locating Ms. Welch, it will increase them by multiples. But I need it first.”

  “Yeah, all right. Then we start tracking, right?”

  I nodded and turned to Sarah. “Was there anything else?”

  “That’s it for now,” she said thinly.

  “Good, where do I ammo up?” Berglund peered around as we all stood from the table.

  “I’ll take care of that,” I said. “Pull your vehicle up to the front. I’ll join you in a minute. I want to meet with the team.”

  “Hey, I’m supposed to be a part of any planning!”

  “We’ll be speaking in technical terms you won’t understand. I’ll give you the gist on the ride to the cabin. It’ll save time.”

  In addition to towering over the man, I adjusted my body and voice to establish my dominance. That was the only way this would work—him doing what I told him to, when, where, and how I told him to do it. Sarah walked past him, punched a code into a panel beside the front door, and then opened the door with something like satisfaction.

  “I’ll join you in a minute,” I repeated.

  Berglund compressed his lips in frustration, but he lifted his rifle case and pack and plodded out the front door. When Sarah shut it behind him, I summoned Yoofi and Rusty. Wanting Takara to remain on overwatch, I made sure she could hear us through the commo system.

  “All right,” I said when Yoofi and Rusty arrived and we were all around the table. “Berglund crashing our arrival changes things slightly. I spoke with Director Beam, and apparently Berglund’s involvement is stipulated in the contract.” Sarah accessed the document on her tablet and began to scroll through it, eyes racing back and forth. “But let me worry about him. Everything else will go ahead like we’ve outlined. How’s the setup going?”

  “Computers are up and running,” Rusty said. “Just need to install the surveillance around our base, but that won’t take me more than fifteen, twenty minutes. I can have the drone airborne too.”

  “Yes, and I will install the lingos,” Yoofi said, referring to his defensive wards.

  “Good. When you finish, I want Rusty and Takara to take the cargo van and set up a grid in the hot zone.” I pointed to the circle on the map. “There’s a copy on your tablets with coordinates.” I picked up a scoffing sound from Takara. Standing guard while Rusty worked was well beneath her skill level, but until Olaf arrived, I was having to shift the pieces around.

  “I’m going to ride with Berglund to the cabin and see what I can pick up,” I said.

  Sarah looked up from her tablet. “The scheduled meeting with the mayor is in thirty minutes. Should we postpone?”

  “See if he can move it back another thirty and take Yoofi with you.”

  I felt okay with her leading the interview with Mayor Grimes. Unlike El Rosario, the town wasn’t the client. The purpose of the meeting would be to coordinate our actions with the local authorities as well as tease out any additional info that might narrow down the Prod 1 we were dealing with.

  “Me?” Yoofi asked in surprised.

  “I want everyone out in teams of two,” I explained.

  Picking up on the fact I would be the exception, Rusty said, “When I finish here, I’ll get a drone over to you.”

  “Sounds good. Questions?” When no one answered, I turned to Sarah. “See if you can get an update on Olaf’s status and an estimated TOA. Takara, what’s Berglund doing down there?”

  “He’s on his phone, yelling at someone,” she said.

  Hopefully not Centurion. I couldn’t keep going back and forth with Beam on this.

  “Everyone has their assignments,” I said. “I’ll be in radio contact.”

  In the back room Rusty had selected as our armory, I loaded my vest with additional mags, frag grenades, and slid a pair of metal stakes into my tactical belt, just in case. I looked over the silver ammo. We had cartridges that would work in an M70, but there was no way I was arming Berglund with them. Instead, I grabbed a box of salt rounds and left the lodge.

  He’d never know the difference.

  8

  As large as Berglund’s SUV was, the cab wasn’t built for someone my size. By hun
kering my head, I was just able to fit into the front seat. Hot air blasted from a dozen vents to stifling effect. Setting my MP88 between my legs, I cracked the window, allowing fresh air to slip in.

  Beside me Berglund was shouting into his phone, but not at Centurion. This had to do with “currency exchanges” and “stop trades.” He maneuvered the steering wheel with one hand until we were turned around and rumbling away from the lodge.

  “Sort it out, Jack. I’ve gotta go,” he said after another minute. He hung up, scrolled through some text messages, swore, then slid the phone into a vest pocket. “Work shit,” he explained.

  “These are yours.” I held up the box of salt rounds and set them in the back seat beside his rifle case. Berglund’s face followed the box before returning to the road.

  “War injury?”

  “Hm?” I grunted.

  “The helmet and suit. Were you burned or something?”

  “Or something.”

  I thought he was going to press the issue—he hadn’t been shy about asking—but he fell into an uncharacteristic silence.

  “My father was military,” he said at last. “Marines. He was the one who taught me to shoot. Every year we’d go on a week-long buck hunt. Big deal for me growing up.” His hairy fingers kneaded the steering wheel for a few moments, then he reached into a console for a vial of aspirin. Thumbing off the lid, he shook what sounded like two or three tablets into his mouth.

  “Hey, I’m sorry for blowing my stack back there,” he said as he crunched them up. “My pressure runs high to begin with, and with everything that’s happened … Look, I can’t promise I’ll always be on my best behavior, but I hear what you’re saying. I know you guys are my best shot. Just bear with my mood swings on this, all right? We’re after the same thing.”

  I nodded. That was pretty much what I’d needed to hear.

  “So I’m assuming the meeting was to delegate tasks?” he said.

  “It was. Probably something you know a little about as a CEO.”

  He grunt-laughed as if my remark had caught him off guard and dropped the aspirin container back into the console. “Yeah, you could say that. Getting them to do what you want is another matter.” He ran his tongue over his teeth. “That was my partner just now. One of the new guys flubbed an order that set us back two mill in the time it took me to say that.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Ouch is right. These aren’t exactly high times in finance, especially after the shit show in Lower Manhattan last summer with the big banks. Crackpot mayor claiming they were run by vampires.” His cheeks reddened and he swore under his breath. I could see in his eyes that the surrounding forest had faded out, probably replaced by a wall of monitors flashing buy and sell signals.

  “Karl, why don’t you tell me everything that happened, from the night Ms. Welch disappeared to our arrival.”

  With two blinks, he returned to the vehicle. “Well, like I told your reps, I left the cabin a little after eight. I had some luminescent lures I wanted to try out. The walleye are more active at night, and I was itching to bag some this trip. I’d packed a pole for Caitlyn, but she wanted to stay in and read.” Berglund gave me a rueful look. “She’s one of those types who likes the idea of the outdoors more than the cold, damp, and insects of the actual thing. I stayed out till midnight, but the damn walleye weren’t biting, so I packed it in. The instant my beams hit the open door of the cabin, I knew something was wrong. I grabbed the rifle. It wasn’t until I reached the porch that I saw the door had been torn from the frame. After that, everything slowed down. It was like I was living it through someone else’s body.”

  I nodded, remembering my first intense firefight in the service.

  “When I ran inside, my heart was pounding so hard, I thought it was going to break through my chest. I shouted her name over and over. No answer. The couch where Caitlyn was curled up when I left had been ripped in two. The lamp was knocked over. Crap everywhere. I searched the rest of the cabin, but she wasn’t there. When I came back to the main room, I started picking out strands of Caitlyn’s hair. When I saw droplets of blood, my legs gave out. Couldn’t breathe. Thought I was having a heart attack.” He snorted dryly. “I probably was.”

  I felt my own heart pounding as my protective instincts ramped up.

  “There’s one guy out here who carries a badge, but he handles wildlife issues mostly—fishing and hunting regs, that sort of thing. People out here pretty much police themselves, I’ve been told. Anyway, when I called the emergency line, he’s the one who answered.”

  “Wabberson,” I said.

  “Yeah, Shane Wabberson. When Wabberson showed up, he took some video with his phone, including the marks on the doorframe. And then he dropped the bombshell that there had been other attacks on humans in the area. A rabid animal, he said. Bear, probably.”

  As the SUV hit rougher road, we seemed to bob and weave through the tall conifers on both sides. Though I was listening to Berglund, I kept my senses attuned to our surroundings.

  “Wabberson got on the phone and had a pair of local hunters bring their dogs over. The dogs sniffed around the cabin and then picked up a scent outside. We followed it through a couple miles of forest till we hit the Platt River. The water was waist high, cold as shit. The dogs had to swim it, but on the far shore, they lost the trail.” He punched the ceiling in frustration.

  “We spent the rest of the night going up and down the banks, into the trees. Nothing. I told Wabberson to bring in more help, even offered to pay him, but you know how it is with these fucking government types. Would have to get permission from higher up and that would take a while. In the meantime, he went up in this little bush chopper. While he was searching by air, I contracted a couple extra hunters with dogs to widen the ground search. I was going to find her. But that evening, when we hadn’t turned up anything, Wabberson pulled me aside and said the bear had probably dragged her into a den. Without a trail, the chances of finding her were going to be slim to none.”

  Berglund stopped and wiped his eyes aggressively.

  “I lit into him big time. The son of a bitch was giving up on Caitlyn. I sent him packing, told him I never wanted to see his face again. I could have used the chopper, but I was too out of my head to be thinking straight. One of the guys helping with the hunt told me about a group of what he called ‘bush crazies’ about thirty miles north of here. Former military who had gone off the grid, really backwoods. He couldn’t promise anything, but he thought they’d have a better chance of finding Caitlyn than the guides around here. He drew me a map of how to reach them. I headed back to the cabin for my car, and that’s when your people found me. They told me we weren’t dealing with a rabid bear, but werewolves. Said Legion was the only force in the world that could kill them and recover Caitlyn.”

  When Berglund looked over at me, his eyes hardened in a way that said, They better fucking be right. The wolf in me stiffened at the challenge. I forced my gaze back to the road.

  “Have you had any contact with the mayor?”

  “Naw, your people said you were going to handle all of that. Besides, what was he going to do? Issue an edict that the werewolves bring her back? But I’ll tell you what. When I do get Caitlyn back, I’m going to sue that son of a bitch and this entire town for not saying anything about the attacks. You think I would have brought her up here if I’d known? Left her alone?”

  I remembered all the fishing going on at the main pier when we landed. Again, I suspected the town had remained silent so as not to hurt the tail end of the outdoor season. But even if Old Harbor needed the money to get them through the winter, it was no excuse. A beast was hunting humans, and the mayor had known. Berglund had every right to be furious. Hell, the thought made me furious.

  Ahead, a cabin that rivaled ours in size appeared through the trees. I could already see the missing front door.

  “That must be your rental,” I said.

  “Yeah, I stayed in town last night. The thoug
ht of sleeping in the same bed Caitlyn and I had been sharing for the past week, knowing she was still out there … I couldn’t do it.” Tires crunched over a gravel drive as Berglund pulled in front of the cabin and killed the engine. “Now what?”

  “I’m going to do a walkthrough. I need you to stay outside on guard duty.”

  I expected another argument, but his chest swelled with importance. “You got it, Captain.”

  The strong wind that hit me when I stepped out of the vehicle pelted my suit with grains of snow. Dark clouds had moved in, and the temperature was dropping. While Berglund uncased his rifle, I climbed the cabin’s front steps with my weapon and moved around the ripped-off door.

  The deep claw marks that scored the doorframe were even more impressive than in the photos. They spoke to the Prod 1’s strength and violence. I leaned closer, trying to pull in the creature’s scent, but all I picked up was wood and the chemical smell of varnish. I peered back at Berglund. He was standing at the rear of his vehicle facing out with his rifle.

  Good.

  Inside the cabin, a short hallway led onto a main room with a stone fireplace and ribbed walls of timber. Something large had rampaged here. I sniffed over the couch that had been torn apart and made a circuit of the room, noting the scattering of blond strands. I could see the book she had been reading on the floor, a trade paperback by Patricia Briggs.

  Drafts of Ms. Welch’s scent had reached me outside, but now, suffused with the tang of her blood, it was overwhelming. I could also smell the woman’s terror.

  As my heart kicked up a notch, I imagined the scene. I all but heard Ms. Welch scream at the creature’s sudden appearance. I watched her flail off the couch, maybe going for the iron poker that now lay in the far corner. The creature leapt from the doorway and landed on the couch, breaking it in half. It grabbed her by the hair, its talons raking her scalp.

  As I eyed the scatter of red-brown droplets, I hoped that’s where the blood had come from. With the scalp’s vast network of vessels, even a superficial cut could cause extensive bleeding. The alternative—her being seriously wounded—lowered the chances of finding her alive.