"All they've got up here is some kind of dinky operations ferrying sport hunters out over the mountains," Calix said. "This can't be the main effort. It's too small."
"That may be so, but we know they were connected to John Tell, who is connected to Rick, and so it's likely that operation is a front for their continued pursuit of our biomorph." The way she explained it seemed pretty logical. Karen continued. "I'd like to start here, with some initial surveillance."
"I don't know, it seems like we have limited resources and time," Calix returned. "We may make a better use of those resources by starting with one of the larger branches. Maybe even the headquarters."
"Good point, but we're going to have to make a trade off." Karen clicked through a few screens until she came to a PowerPoint slide. I stifled a moment of panic that we were going to have to sit through another briefing, but this one simply displayed a wire diagram. "Black Mountain hosts hundreds of smaller organizations under its umbrella. Some, official stamped, aboveboard, legal, all that. Some, we only have a few hints at their existence."
"Some, they allow you to see, so that you will not look any harder," Dmitri interjected.
His interruption threw Karen off for a moment. If she were on her game, she would have rolled with it, but instead, she took a moment to re-gather her thoughts.
"And … uh … yes. Sorry. That is why we'll start with some basic surveillance of their operation here." She turned to Calix. "You and Dmitri will approach them, posing as vacationing father and daughter. Dmitri–is there any way that they might recognize you? Know you?"
"Is always a danger," Dmitri said. "But the people running these disgusting bullshit tours? No. They will not."
"Dmitri, this language–es geht nicht."
He chuckled, drily. "Danke, Herr Wolf."
"All right, while you're doing that, check out as much of the grounds as possible. Ask questions, see where the areas are where you're not allowed–"
"Karen, it's not my first op," Calix reminded her.
"Understood," Karen acknowledged with a nod. "Sorry. While you're doing that, I'll work the phones and the Web, see what information can be found on Black Mountain. From MONIKER and whoever else."
"And then I'll go back in at night, find out what's in all the areas we're not allowed in?" Seemed a pretty safe guess. After all, the ability to change was what endeared me to the agency in the first place.
"No," Karen said, surprising me. "You'll stay here. Wait. We'll–"
"Like hell I will." Off her game or no, friend or no, I'd just about had it with this bullshit. "Look, we've worked together before. Covert is what I'm good at. Give me a good reason why I'm not going to be following up with a furry visit to our Black Mountain comrades."
"MONIKER has not given you authorization to change," Karen said. "There's no reason, either, for me to take that cuff off you."
Oh, the cuff. That made it all clear.
"Dr. Willet," I began, formal and unpleasant, biting at each word. "I do not give a shit what you think you will allow me to do. I gave my word I would come to help Dmitri. I didn't think you would need more than my word to believe that I would do what you need me to do."
The change inside me growled along, fueling the bitterness that poured out of me. "This–" lifting my hand to show the cuff, "–is pure, utter crap. You don't need it to control me. You have the tracker. And my word, which I may have mentioned." Calix and Dmitri stared at me intensely. Karen stared at the tablet screen.
Hoping my poker face was good to go, I spread out all my cards on the table in a giant bluff. Hey, they'd just taken me on a vacation to the strip. Viva Las Vegas, baby.
"Here's the deal." I stood up and stepped to the table, leaning on it, forcing Karen to look at me. "I will not work for MONIKER while this cuff remains on my wrist. And if you leave me behind on this mission, I will go find Randall and have him remove my hand with his chainsaw, and then I will change into myself right in front of him to see if my body will cleanse me of this tracker."
"Will your body heal itself from that?" Calix asked.
"I have no idea." I really didn't. I've had body parts mangled beyond recognition, but never completely removed. Thus, the bluff.
My words dropped a curtain of silence over the room. A minute passed. Then another. Someone in another part of the house flushed a toilet. Finally, Karen nodded.
"I will take the cuff off. On one condition."
"And that is?"
"The first time you disappear on me, I will track you back down, ship you back to the Las Vegas facility, strap you down to the table in Gratusczak's lab, and leave you there."
Close enough. "Deal."
Karen ignored the hand I extended, leaving it hanging awkwardly in the air. She fished in her bag and pulled out a small, plastic and metal box with a square touchpad on one end. Depressing the pad with her thumb, Karen waited until something inside beeped, and a hidden drawer clicked open.
She withdrew a thin, circular piece of metal, with raised ridges engraved in a sort of wavy pattern all over one side.
"Give me your wrist."
Karen slid the piece of metal into a slot on the cuff. The device beeped and whirred, and then the pieces separated. She slid the cuff off my wrist and shoved it in her bag.
The full force of freedom hit me with a gale of longing for the change.
"Rick." Karen gave me a warning glare. "Stay with us."
"I'm staying. Woof." I stuffed both hands into the pockets of my jeans and sat back down.
I meant every word of the condition she extracted from me. I wasn't going anywhere. But with the cuff off, I could move ahead with not just Dmitri's mission, but my unspoken plan. That, and the promise of a chance to sneak around in someone else's highly secure facility, had me almost bouncing with anticipation.
Also, it hadn't escaped my attention that Karen–not MONIKER–had made the decision to set me free. Perhaps, out here, away from Gratusczak's shadow, she could become herself again. Perhaps, between Calix and myself, we could in fact get her out of there. Things were looking up.
∞ ∞ ∞
We decided the risk outweighed the rewards if we sent Dmitri and Calix in wearing any kind of digital tracking or recording devices.
And by "we decided," I mean Dmitri suggested casually something along the lines of Black Mountain likely being the paranoid type of outfit that would screen even the most innocent-seeming of visitors, and it didn't make sense to jeopardize the mission when you had two people who were trained in observation and surveillance. Everyone just kind of nodded along and found it impossible to disagree with such logic, presented so reasonably. And that is why I find Dmitri so damn scary.
Calix and Dmitri jaunted off to see about going on a helicopter ride. Karen and I were left hanging out in a dead man's apartment, staring at the walls in an effort to avoid staring at each other.
"I need one of those tennis balls Steve McQueen had in The Great Escape."
Karen sat hunched in her chair, arms folded, head down. I wasn't sure if she were napping or not until she looked up at me. "Huh?"
"Steve McQueen? Great Escape?" No recognition. "Only one of the greatest movies of all time."
"I've heard of it." Karen sat up, stretching her back "Never saw it."
I feigned shock. "Your education in the classics is sadly lacking."
"Now you sound like my mom," she retorted.
"She sounds like a smart woman." I hid a smile, not wanting to jeopardize this tentative repartee we had going on.
"She was," Karen answered thoughtfully. "She was highly intelligent. Disappeared into the ivory tower after I was born, was suitably horrified when I chose the military for a profession." She shrugged. "I somewhat redeemed myself when I took–"
I waited, but that was all she had. With an unreadable look on her face, she ignored the awkwardness of the hanging conversation, and went to dig her weapons out of one of the bags. She set her M4 on the table, along with two pisto
ls, a few knives, and assorted cleaning equipment.
"Want some help?"
Wordlessly, she handed me the knives, a cloth, and a sharpening set.
"Excellent!" I stared straight at her, calling just enough of the change to me to pop a hand full of claws. Picking up one of the sharpening stones, I began running the claws up and down. "But really, are you sure you don't just have a nail file I could us?"
"You are…" Karen paused in disassembling the M4 to show me how she was not laughing. "Such an ass."
She had much too strong a poker face to let on, but somewhere, deep under her words, I heard a ghost of her old self stir to life.
An alert sounded on her tablet, breaking up any chances of the moment going anywhere.
"Finally." Karen pushed her hair back from her face, tying it back with an elastic from around her wrist.
"Your eHarmony profile went live?"
"Rick, you keep disappearing into the woods and coming back out ten years later in cyber years." She didn't spare me a look as she started using both the keyboard and touchscreen to start manipulating whatever commanded her attention.
I scooted my chair around to see what she was doing, then immediately scooted back. The program she worked with, CRIMAN, was a criminal analysis software that networked research from a bunch of sources into a wire diagram. The last time I'd watched her work her magic with the data, I'd almost gotten sick from the motion.
This time, she browsed through the data much more slowly, clicking, reading for a moment, manipulating something on screen, clicking again.
"There's not much here," she muttered.
"Are you talking to me?"
Karen looked up from the screen. "Sorry. Talking to myself."
"And what are you saying?"
"That this corporation is really good at making themselves look … good." She clicked again, scanning through, her eyes twitching back and forth. "I've got some of the cyber whizzes back at the NY agency connecting dots all over the globe, crawling all over the dark web, trying to make sure we get as complete a picture as possible. Every single little …"
She dove back into the screen. This whole trailing off mid-sentence and leaving me hanging was starting to get annoying.
"And what does the picture look like?"
"Like a fucking Thomas Kinkade English cottage. All pretty and sparkling, and I know it's fucking fake." She sat back, grabbed her M4, and started to disassemble it again. "I just can't figure out …"
"How? Why?" I prompted.
Karen stared into space, her hands falling at rest on the pieces of the weapon.
"Karen, what the fuck is going on with you?"
As soon as I said it, I wanted to punch myself in the face. Dumbass. She wasn't the only one off her game.
She didn't answer right away. Instead, she carefully put the M4 back together. With practiced movements, she performed a functions check, locked the bolt back, and laid it on the table. Then, she looked up at me, gazing straight at me.
"Rick. Back off."
Without another word, she got up, shrugged on her jacket, and headed out the door, letting it slam behind her.
∞ ∞ ∞
Karen walked back in about ten minutes before Dmitri and Calix returned. She carried a cardboard box full of take-out from the diner, and completely ignored me and everything that had passed between us. Instead, she plopped the box of food down on the table, pulled out her tablet, and started back again reviewing intel.
Not one to wait for an invitation, and starving once again, I helped myself to a couple of burgers and a plate of fries.
"Hey, you two, shame you missed the adventure." Calix stamped her feet as she came in the door. Dmitri, holding it for her, did the same. It had started snowing, and the fresh powder clung to their boots and the bottoms of their pants.
Karen mumbled something and sat back down in front of her tablet, diving deep into her data. I didn't miss the look Calix threw her before meeting my eyes. Her eyes tightened in an imperceptible shrug before sitting down with Dmitri and I to make a dent in the food. Not that I needed any help. In fact, I was considering helping myself to pieces of them if they got too greedy with the fries.
"The facility is much as expected," Dmitri began. He smoothed his napkin on his lap, brushing away an imaginary crumb. "Very comfortable, with beautiful women to bring us fresh coffee and convince us to spend all of our money to remain in their presence."
"Damn," I said. "Sounds like my kind of place."
"Mine, too," Calix responded without missing a beat.
I snorted. Dmitri kept going without acknowledging either of us.
"There was very nice presentation," he said. "Not much information, but lots of pretty pictures."
"Did they show their fucking hunting parties?" The words came out spitting. "The blood and fur in the snow? Nice white and red for the perfect contrast."
"As a matter of fact," Dmitri said, "they mentioned they are having quite the season. Talked lots about all the rich people they fly out on their special tours."
"Didn't mention the ones who didn't come back," Calix said, again without missing a beat.
"Did you get any useful information?" Karen looked up from her tablet. The uncharacteristically harsh note and impatience in her voice grated up and down my spine.
Calix threw her another look, but she ignored it.
"Time is finite, and we need to go in. Tonight." Karen turned the tablet off and adjusted her chair to face us. "Let's cut the shit and get to business. You," she pointed to Calix. "I want you two to run ops. Rick and I will go in."
That didn't make tactical sense. Why would we not bring Calix, who had the benefit of having laid eyes on the facility? I thought it, Calix said it.
"I've just spent the day wandering around their facility, trying not to stab people who kept staring at my ass, and you want me to stay here instead of running point?"
"Do you want to argue with me some more? Or get this mission going?" Karen stared at her.
I kept eating. Everything was awkward, but I had hunger. Dmitri also ignored the interplay between the two and meticulously finished his dinner, wiping imaginary crumbs away from the corner of his mouth with the precision of European table manners.
Finally, Calix rolled her eyes. "Fine. We'll run ops. You two go have fun getting lost."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The rest of the time before we left was filled with an uncomfortable silence. No one wanted to talk about their feelings in a big group hug, so we just prepped as best we could and avoided saying anything to each other outside of the few words necessary to do our mission prep.
Mission prep, for us, involved Karen strapping on a variety of weapons of different shapes and calibers. We typically moved unencumbered, except for what we carried on our bodies, and this mission was no exception. Of course, for me, that meant an ear bud. Usually.
Except now, Karen handed me a vest and a pistol.
"What the hell is this?" I stared at her. Wolves don't have opposable thumbs.
"You're not going in furry," she told me. "Ramirez' orders. You're supposed to be still wearing the cuff, remember?"
I did remember. I'd hoped she didn't. Still. Maintaining eye contact, I took off my shirt, then my pants. Dmitri and Calix both pretended they weren't looking.
Karen's face didn't show me anything. I swear, if we got back to Vegas, I was taking her to play the tables.
Waiting for her to shoot me or spray me or tase me or whatever, I called the change, nice and slow. It came this time in a wave that was so slow as to be wiseass enough for me. Fun effect, slow motion, even as the usual pain of the change ripped through my body. I sweated, trying not to whimper, until the last bone had rearranged itself and I stared at her with teeth bared.
"I hope it was worth it." Karen didn't smile or acknowledge the joke, but the ghost of a chuckle whispered in her deadpan tone. She rolled her eyes and checked to make sure her earbud wasn't going anywhere. "Let's
go."
∞ ∞ ∞
We drove to a secluded road not too far from the compound, but out of sight of prying eyes. With little delay and no conversation, we left the vehicle, ghosting out past the outskirts of the town, and cutting a wide swathe through the woods to come up on the facility from where the rear of the building faced off into the wilderness.
The waxing moon threw half shadows over our paths as Karen and I made our approach. The soft powder under our feet left me incredibly glad I had taken wolf form, able to run without sinking too far in. Karen, on the other hand, cussed and swore–tactically of course–as she slogged through the damp flakes, every once in a while breaking through the crust of the snow below. Luckily, the snowfall kept up, blanketing our tracks and deadening any noise we made.
Karen had foregone her usual black in favor of cargo pants and long-sleeved tactical shirt in mottled grays and whites. I mean, I assumed that was the camo scheme she was going with, as true grays show up a little more intensely in my monochrome sight.
It took us a little more than a full hour to get situated. Karen scanned the facility with a night vision optical device, a mono lens that sat on her helmet and came down over one eye. I scanned the facility the usual way.
"Ops, we're in position." Karen's whisper barely carried to the radio mic at her lips. "I'm detecting no movement." She looked over at me from where she lay in the prone position. "Rick hasn't alerted on anything."
What the hell was I–a drug-sniffing dog?
Thinking uncharitable thoughts, I raised my head, prowling back and forth, careful to stay out of her line of fire. We had circled so far around, we were now surveilling a loading dock. From the aroma of rotting vegetables and sour milk, they apparently used this primarily to stock their cafeteria. The wind picked up, and another scent snuck by. Hm. Caviar. Been a while since I'd found myself in the vicinity of that delicacy.
And vodka. Oh hey. I dropped to my belly. A man dressed to ward off the weather approached. I'm not going to say he was drunk at work, but he had certainly taken a slug to ward off the cold. Maybe two slugs.
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