The Werewolf of Marines Trilogy

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  Chapter 32

  Keenan’s instincts told him there was probably someone around the next corner. He scanned the area, trying to pick up a clue. He took a moment to check his ammunition. It was getting low, and the only way to get more was to charge on. He sidled up to the wall, moving cautiously.

  To hell with inheriting the earth, he thought. I’m going for it!

  He pushed forward, rounding the corner, and pulsing red filled his vision. He was hit!

  He tried to bring his chaingun to bear, but his health quickly dwindled to zero, and that was that. He had a glimpse of a ludicrous spotted cow dashing off, the sounds of MT laughing a dagger into his heart. He looked over his laptop screen to see him smirking.

  This is what we’ve become reduced to, he thought. Playing Doom 2 with avatars from South Park.

  MT was one of the cows, Keenan was Starvin’ Marvin. MAJ Stan Pucini, USAF, similarly tasked with a dead-end job, was scrunched in a little field desk in the corner, his Cartman desperately trying to search out MT’s cow. Keenan didn’t give him much hope. MT was the Sun Tzu of Doom.

  The Marines used to actually authorize Doom on official computers. Keenan had begged and old copy from a Master Guns who was up in an office on the third floor dealing with getting the Iraqi oil industry back on its feet. MT had gotten an IT contractor to make a small network in the office for his and MT’s computers along with two other laptops MT had managed to scrounge up. Their little office had become a meeting place for the detritus of the war effort, those who had no real job. Despite the occasional visits of his CIA buddy, who still seemed to think there was something to their mission, Keenan had long ago come down on the other side of the fence. Now, he and MT were just marking time until they could go home.

  They should have been home already, but Big A[46] had decided that all tours, which had already been 13 months, needed to be extended to 15 months. This was all part of the president’s “surge” to have a bigger, more robust presence in the country.

  Twenty-nine days and a wake up, although the exact date was dependent on an actual seat on an aircraft. Then he’d be back home, and he could see if there was a real job for him in the Army. This werewolf hunting sure wasn’t it. He and MT kept reading the reports, but over the last month or two, when they should have already been home, all of their investigations took place right here in the office. Not once had either one of them made a trip to check out a report.

  “Shit!” Stan shouted, signaling that Cartwright had met his electronic maker in the guise of a spotted cow.

  “Don’t get down on yourself, Major,” MT said cheerfully. “You survived longer than our Ranger over there.”

  Keenan barely had the gumption to lift his right arm and extend his middle finger towards his assistant.

  Chapter 33

  Aiden stood to the side, providing security as Gonzo, PFC Greg Whittier, that is, and Sgt Yarrow searched the beat-up Fiat. Both Gonzo and the sergeant were in First Team, but the platoon had been split into two elements for these VCPs.[47] Element A was First and Second Teams, along with the platoon sergeant, the gear NCO, and a corpsman. The lieutenant, the comms chief, and the platoon corpsman were in Element B with Teams Three and Four at another VCP about five kilometers to the west.

  The “recon” missions had come to a halt pretty quickly. The platoon had been assigned knock and talk patrols where they would go out into the ’ville and ask the locals for intel, go on mounted patrols, and like this mission, conduct VCPs. For a VCP, they would be helo’d out to a remote area where they would set up the checkpoint and try to interdict the movement of weapons and ammunition. So far, with four VCPs under their belts, absolutely nothing had been found. SSgt Hong was under the impression that the mere presence of a VCP was making a difference in the flow of weapons, but Aiden wasn’t so sure about that.

  The scuttlebutt was that the lieutenant had fought the reverse mission creep hard, hard enough to have the battalion commander come down on his head like a ton of bricks. He was told in no uncertain terms that the missions the platoon was assigned were vital to the overall mission in Al Anbar.

  Aiden was surprised that the Fiat was even moving. It looked like it had been pulled out of a junkyard and fitted with hamsters running in a wheel instead of an engine. An old Iraqi, his face heavily weathered, was driving it. It had crept up to the checkpoint at about 20 MPH, which was probably its top speed. The old man stopped the piece of junk and sat with a weary expression on his face while the Marines checked him out. He was heading south towards Ramadi, and in another world, he could be a retiree fighting the evening commute to get to his local watering hole’s happy hour. Instead of Des Moines, though, and instead of a nice new Ford Focus, he was out in the Iraqi desert in a barely-moving Fiat.

  Sgt Yarrow stepped back and gave Gunny Despirito a thumbs up. The guy was clean. Gunny nodded, waving his arm forward, and Cpl Therwait stepped aside from where he’d been blocking the road. The old man turned the ignition on the Fiat, but the starter was just too slow for the tired engine to catch.

  “Shit, we’re going to have to push-start that raghead now, in this fucking heat,” Sgt Johns said beside Aiden. “Get an American car next time!” he shouted at the man, who obviously didn’t understand a word of what had been said.

  The old man had a goofy smile on his face as he tried again. The engine turned, but didn’t catch. Just then, the light breeze that did nothing to cut the heat shifted, coming at Aiden instead of from his right. Something caught his attention, but he couldn’t quite place it. Something familiar.

  SSgt Gracey, the First Team leader, started to gather a couple of Marines to push-start the Fiat when just then, the engine caught. The old man smiled, waved, and lurched forward into gear.

  Something clicked in Aiden’s mind.

  “Stop him!” he shouted, sprinting to get in front of the car as it shifted into second.

  He turned into the car’s path, his M4 leveled at the driver who slammed on his brakes, the car easing to a stop not a foot from Aiden’s knees.

  “What the fuck, Kaas?” Gunny Despirito shouted as everyone else jumped into high alert.

  What had been tickling Aiden’s mind was a scent. Not a scent Aiden Kaas, human, had ever smelled, but Aiden Kaas, varg. It was from back in Fallujah, when he had tracked down the guys who had killed Rico taken Dontrell’s leg. The breeze had brought him the smell of plastic explosives.

  “Something’s not right, Gunny. This guy’s packing. I’m sure of it,” he said with as much conviction as he could muster.

  “You sure? He’s been checked already,” the gunny said.

  “Positive,” Aiden answered, hoping that he really was.

  The breeze could be bringing something from across the sand, but Aiden was sure there was C-4 in the Fiat. He wished he could shift. With his varg nose, he could pinpoint from where the scent originated. His weaker human nose, while probably better now that any of the other Marines’ noses, just wasn’t that capable.

  “You heard the man. Let’s check it out. And Kass, you’d better be right,” the gunny said.

  Two Marines opened the driver’s door and pulled out the protesting man, taking him face down on the ground and zip-tying his wrists together in back of him. They stood over him while four more Marines started a much more thorough search of the car.

  “What did you see?” SSgt Gracey asked Aiden.

  “It was the old man. His expression when he started to leave,” Aiden said, an out-and-out lie.

  “You stopped him because of a fucking expression?” the First Team leader asked.

  Aiden didn’t answer. Instead, he moved from in front of the car and started walking down its side. He took in as much air as possible, trying to follow the barely-noticeable scent. Gonzo, who had the rear passenger door open, stepped back to let Aiden walk around him.

  “You sure about this?” he asked quietly.

  Aiden rounded the back of the car, barely glancing in the open trunk. He
started up the left side. When he passed the front driver’s door, he stopped. The smell was slightly stronger, almost enough to really register.

  “Right there, Gunny,” he said, pointing to the front quarter panel, just behind the front tire.

  “Right there, what?”

  “That’s what we want to see. We need to open it up.”

  Gunny Despirito walked up and kneeled, examining the area Aiden had indicated. He reached out and touched the sheet metal.

  “Here?”

  Aiden nodded.

  “You better be right there, Kaas. I don’t want to have to go to the SJA and tell him he has to pay off this guy because we fucked up his car. Whittier, grab the gorilla bar and have at it.”

  Gonzo went and picked up the spiked bar, and jamming the two prongs between the car frame and the sheet metal making up the car’s exterior, levered the two materials apart. The sheet metal peeled back. Several heads leaned in.

  “Well, fuck me royal,” SSgt Gracey said.

  With the metal peeled back, several plastic and duct-tapped packages could be seen. Gonzo dropped the gorilla bar and reached in, grabbing a package. Jerking it up and down, he worked it out. There was no mistaking it: C-4.

  “Holy shit, Kaas, you were right! But how the fuck did you catch that? You some sort of explosive ordinance dog?” the gunny asked.

  “No Gunny, nothing like that. I just saw his expression, and it wasn’t right. Then I just looked and saw that the car had some work right there. It just had to be there.”

  “You saw that it had ‘work there?’ On this rolling piece of shit?”

  “Yeah, right there,” he said as he pointed at the area Gonzo had destroyed with the gorilla bar. “I saw that before on Discovery Channel, on a show about the border patrol. That’s where the smugglers hid the drugs,” he added, his mind scrambling for any excuse he could use other than that he was a werewolf.

  The gunny stared at him for a moment before he shrugged.

  “Whatever. Good fucking catch, Kaas. That’s 10 fewer IEDs our guys are going to have to find. Let’s get this reported in. The intel guys are going to want to talk to our friend here. Leave the car for now and let the engineers take it apart to make sure it isn’t hiding anything else.”

  Maybe the Discovery Channel excuse had worked. Somehow Aiden doubted the truth would have gone over as well. He had to suppress a smile that threatened to appear as he pictured telling the gunny what he was. For a moment, he was tempted to come clean, but only for a moment. He kept the smile off his face and stepped back, the picture of the alert Marine ready for whatever came his way.

  Chapter 34

  Let me know what you think, OK? I want to know what you think we should do.

  Those lines in Claire’s e-mail stuck in his mind. She had been transferred to Camp Smith in Hawaii after the deployment and was chafing at the routine clerical work. The girl wanted action. She’d been offered a chance to go forward to Afghanistan, but that would mean she’d still be there when Aiden’s Iraq tour was over. They had briefly discussed the possibility of Aiden getting a billet in Hawaii when he got back, but he wouldn’t be up for reenlistment for awhile, and the talk had never gotten serious. This, though, was different.

  . . . what do you think WE should do?

  Aiden was amazed that there was a “we” here. He was excited, but the idea scared him just a bit, too. Was he ready for a “we?” He liked Claire, sure. A lot. His week with her in San Antonio, especially the last two nights up in Austin, had been fantastic. While Teri had been great in bed, he couldn’t compare the experiences. With Claire, it was both physical and mental, with the mental driving the equation. She stayed in his mind whereas he barely thought of Teri, and when he did, it was regret that he never followed through and rejected her to her face.

  A relationship in the Marines was difficult, especially when two people were separated by continents, in this case. But there was more to this. He wasn’t just a Marine. He was a werewolf, and he was still alive only because the Council hadn’t decided to kill him yet. How could he really consider a future when he may not have one, and even if the Council finally decided to let him live, how could he go about telling someone what he was?

  Oh, I forgot one thing, honey. You know when I said we had some differences? I didn’t mean I like rock and you like country. What I meant was you are human and I am a. . .

  He wished he could discuss this with someone, but the only one he knew was Hozan, and who knew where he was? He’d left word with one of the guys in Second Platoon, stationed back at Fallujah. He told him he owed Hozan some money, and if he ran across him, to tell him he was in Ramadi.

  He had several emails, but he’d checked Claire’s first. His mom sent one, full of mom things, including no less than three “be carefuls.” Dontrell had sent an e-mail from the Wounded Warrior Battalion. He was anxiously awaiting his new leg. He’d had a temporary one already as he learned to use it, and now the one made specifically for him was almost ready. He sounded surprisingly upbeat, and that made Aiden feel good.

  There was yet another e-mail from Teri. He deleted it without opening it. She’d probably sent a hundred e-mails since he’d been back in Vegas with her. He’d responded back to the first 20 or so with brief, non-committal messages, then just quit writing back. His desire to confront her had faded away, and now he just hoped she’d get the hint and leave him alone.

  There were a couple spams that had gotten through the filters, and he deleted them, but one e-mail from an unknown address caught his eye. The subject line read “Aiden, Please Read.” Spam normally didn’t use his name, and it could be from one of the guys from his old unit.

  It wasn’t.

  As the thumbnail for the attachment resolved, he recognized the naked girl blatantly exposing herself. It was Chloe. There was a message there, something about her being 18 in only two months. Aiden didn’t see the rest as he smashed down the delete button. He sunk in his seat, looking right and left to see if any of the other Marines on the computers around him had noticed. No one was paying him any attention, so he went into the deleted folder, then deleted Chloe’s e-mail from there, hoping that it was really, truly gone. It was common knowledge that all e-mails were monitored, and the list of don’ts was pretty detailed. One of the first things on the list was no porn, and he had to think that a naked photo from a not-even-an-18-year-old had to be court-martial material.

  He hadn’t actually opened the attachment, thank goodness. It had only been the attachment thumbnail, but still . . . .

  His shock and panic faded just a little, enough for anger to seep in. What the hell did she think she was doing? He wanted to tell her off, but the e-mail was gone, and he didn’t remember the address. If she sent him another e-mail, he’d report it to the computer guys. He had to cover his ass, and in this case, he really was innocent.

  The Brubaker girls will be the death of me, he thought as he logged out of Hotmail.

  He glanced at his watch, then hurried back to the platoon office. He and Gonzo had been told to report to Gunny Despirito for some scutwork, probably cleaning the office. If he was still in an infantry platoon, he wouldn’t be the boot and get stuck with these details. But in recon, ranks were inflated. Gonzo had enlisted under a UZ contract for recon, something more than a few Marines did, but he was one of the few who made it through screening, MART, and BRC. The vast majority of the Marines who came in on a UZ contract washed out and reverted to a UV contract, which meant combat arms. Most ended up being 0311’s, or basic infantry Marines. Gonzo was the only Marine in the platoon who went straight from SOI, the School of Infantry, to RIP (yes, he’d gone RIP, a member of the last one while the more senior-in-rank Aiden and Cam had gone to MART). So he was even a recon boot to a PFC.

  During his last pump, he’d been assigned more than his share of work details. Here he was, a decorated combat Marine, in recon, and he was still the boot. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

&nb
sp; Chapter 35

  Hozan took his time cleaning up outside the DFAC. If Aiden wasn’t out on an operation, he would almost certainly pass by to get his chow. This was his third day in a row waiting for Aiden to show up. Hozan could feel a slight degree of excitement, and that puzzled him.

  After Aiden had rotated back to the US, Hozan had lost all contact. No longer the point man on the scene, he was out of the loop. He had heard a few vague rumors centering on an incident back in the US, but he could never get a clear picture, and asking too many questions could make others wonder why he was so interested. He often thought of the young man, though, wondering how he was assimilating and how others were treating him. Had the Council formally welcomed him into the Tribe? That would be a huge step, removing any threat that had been hanging over him.

  Life at Camp Fallujah was a dead end. Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, “Chemical Ali” was dead. Saddam himself had been convicted of genocide, but not for Halabja yet. That trial was still to come. Hozan didn’t know what would become of Hussein, but it was almost certainly out of his hands now. His chance to exact revenge had passed.

  Without a goal, Hozan just kept at his job, not knowing why. He knew he should quit and try to put his life back together, such as it was. He had just about convinced himself to leave when one of the other workers told him a Marine had asked for him by name. For a moment, he thought it could be Aiden, but this was a black Marine, not white. Wary, Hozan tracked the Marine down, and when he was alone, approached him, nerves tense for an immediate shift if necessary. There were still hunters out there, and Hozan had not lived to his ripe age by being careless.