Dog Warrior

by Wen Spencer

  Atticus hated when Sumpter finally got his head out of his asshole and used his brain; it made him so unpredictable. Would Sumpter be a raving idiot, or Sherlock Holmes's lost grandson? The most annoying thing was that Sumpter was completely right.

  "With the number of ports they have to choose from, the question becomes why Salem?" Sumpter continued his brilliance. "Either it's the port nearest to the island or one that they know well."

  "They had to know it fairly well to know you can easily reach the harbor from the parking lot," Zheng pointed out.

  "How are they buying gasoline for cars? Cash or charge?" Sumpter asked.

  "Charge." Zheng expanded the answer with, "They practiced identity theft on a large scale. After forging a change of address, they would apply for new credit cards to be delivered to a rented post office box. They've had at least twenty or thirty identities they can tap."

  "Can you give a list of known credit card numbers to Johnston to cross-reference to marine fuel stations?" Sumpter asked. "If they're making frequent runs from the mainland to an island, it's going to show up in fuel purchases."

  "I've got those here." Zheng took out her PDA and indicated she could transfer them to Kyle's laptop. "I'm meeting with the NSA to see what they have on the cult's wiretapping activities."

  "Takahashi, it would be more efficient if you visit Boston DEA and ask them about local islands. Update them on the case and keep them in the loop."

  Ru glanced to Atticus, who nodded.

  "I need to go," Zheng announced as Kyle's laptop confirmed the receipt of her files. Her plate was clean. She took the last sip of her coffee to empty her cup.

  Sumpter looked longingly at his nearly untouched steak and sighed. "I'll come with you."

  Chapter Ten

  Charles River Yacht Club

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  Wednesday, September 22, 2004

  The Charles River Yacht Club, as its name suggested, was on the Charles River alongside Memorial Drive in Cambridge. It required Atticus to hunt for a parking space and then walk across four lanes of fast-moving traffic. None of the fifty or so boats tied up seemed to be the Nautilus, so he detoured into the marina's office.

  A young suntanned woman sat behind the counter, taking a detailed message, with a series of "uh-huhs" as she scribbled on a message pad. He judged her to be nineteen or twenty. She had her blond hair braided into two short pigtails, and she grimaced with her wide, mobile mouth as the caller continued to talk. She wore deceptively simple clothes whose quality material meant money, and a large diamond engagement ring.

  She rolled her eyes, held up a finger to indicate he was to wait, and finished with, "Okay, I'll let her know. Thank you."

  She ripped free the message, shoved it into a bin on the edge of the counter, and looked expectantly to Atticus. "Can I help you?"

  "Thomas James DeMent rents a boat slip here," Atticus said, giving her Parity's real name. "Can you tell me the boat's current location?"

  She wrinkled up her nose. "I-I-I don't know if I'm allowed to do that."

  He pulled out his ID and showed it to her. "I'm not going to search the boat; I'm just trying to determine where it is."

  "Oh!" She thought a moment, eyes focused over the water, her tongue tracing over her upper lip. Atticus wondered if she knew how erotic it appeared, and if it was the cause of the engagement ring. "I suppose that can't hurt."

  A moment of checking books, and she found the information Atticus wanted.

  "He's still renting slip number ten. His boat is the Nautilus." She hiked herself up onto the counter and leaned far out to study the pier. "She's not down there."

  "She?"

  "The boat. It's the second slip to the end." She pointed.

  "Do you remember the last time it was tied up?"

  "I'm not sure. I think it was there yesterday. The phone's been ringing off the hook this morning, and I haven't been paying attention. You can check with the dock staff."

  Between the thick fog and the bitter cold, it came as no surprise that the docks were nearly empty. The only person in sight was a man waxing the flying bridge of a fifty-foot yacht.

  "Nice boat," Atticus called up to him.

  "Thanks," the man said without stopping. "It's a lot of work, though. It's taken me three days to wax the whole thing. Some vacation."

  Atticus pointed down the jetty to the empty slip. "Do you know anything about the Nautilus?"

  The man halted to look down at Atticus. "Who's asking?"

  Atticus produced his ID. "DEA."

  The man shook his head. "I keep my nose out of other people's business."

  "Look." Atticus held out Parity's photo. "The kid who owns the boat is in trouble. He fell into the wrong crowd and last weekend his parents' house was firebombed and he's gone missing. It's possible he's dead. The Nautilus might be the only clue we have to finding him—helping him."

  The man frowned at the photo. "He wasn't one of the men who took the boat out this morning."

  "This morning?"

  "Yeah, there were, like, five men and a woman. They pulled out maybe an hour ago."

  Atticus took out his PDA and brought up the scanned copies of the artist sketches for the cult. "Are any of these people the ones who took the boat?"

  The man clambered down off the boat to study the PDA screen. "Yeah. This one. And him. Maybe him. And she's the woman. I really didn't get a good look at the other two men." He'd picked off Ice and the cultists named Mouse, Link, and Ether. "They seemed to have scuba gear with them."

  "Did you see which way they headed?"

  The man waved toward the fog-shrouded river. "They would have gone downriver. The Nautilus is too tall to fit under the Harvard Bridge."

  Atticus took out his business card. "Do me a favor—if they come back, call me. Don't try to approach them—they're quite dangerous."

  The man looked dubious but took the card.

  The river water gurgled quietly under the wooden planking as Atticus walked down the dock to the empty boat slip. While it was doubtful that the cult left any clues to where they were headed, they might have slipped up somehow. Wedged in the cracks of the decking, Atticus found a hypodermic needle filled with a clear liquid, its tip capped with wax. He recognized veronol, a powerful barbiturate sedative, from traces of drug on the outside of the syringe.

  The cult was out hunting their demons again. But what was the scuba-diving gear for?

  Atticus called their hotel rooms, eyeing the hypodermic in his hand. Thrusting the needle into flesh obviously would push the tip through the protective wax. How safe would it be to carry in his pocket?

  Kyle answered with a faintly suspicious, "Yeah?"

  "Ice was here an hour ago and took the boat out." Atticus filled him in on the other details.

  "I'll get hold of the coast guard and have them keep an eye out for the boat, but in this fog, I don't know what luck they're going to have."

  The Longfellow Bridge was just a smudge in the fog, crossing the water into whiteness. Atticus heard more than saw the T train cross over it along with the heavy Boston traffic. "That's the truth. I'm going to head back and hook up with Ru at the DEA."

  "Ru called a little while ago. He's out in the Explorer somewhere."

  "Somewhere?"

  "Something about making a wrong turn onto Sorrow Drive, which is limited access. I'm not sure why he called, he hung up after telling me he was lost."

  Unlike the Jaguar, the Explorer didn't have a navigation system.

  Atticus sighed. "I'm heading for the DEA. Let him know."

  As Atticus hung up, a blare of horns came from Memorial Drive. A man was crossing the four lanes of traffic, barely noticing the cars honking at him. He had an odd, mechanical gait. As Atticus watched, a second man made his way across the street. For a moment Atticus thought them twins, and then realized with a start that body-wise, they were nothing alike—only the second man had managed to completely mimic the first man's way of mo
ving.

  ". . . it's like they're one person wearing borrowed skins."

  Atticus scanned the area quickly. If these Ontongard had the same abilities as the Pack, they'd be able to match Atticus's speed and strength. And Rennie, at least, could match him too in fighting ability. He spotted at least three more on the other side of the highway, stiff and awkward as stick puppets.

  Shit! Well, he would have to bluff his way through them. Zheng had walked into them and managed to slip away unnoticed.

  Atticus started forward. A blond boy in a black running suit crossed the highway and joined the two males on the dock. The boy met his gaze and recognition jumped between them.

  Parity?

  For a supposedly kidnapped man, he seemed unfettered.

  The boy looked startled, saying, "Wolf boy!"

  Alerted, the two adult males focused on Atticus. A presence that was like Pack, and yet totally different, hit him, and the recognition went to a full knowledge of what he was. An all-encompassing hate followed the understanding, a flood of rage with the intent to destroy.

  "Pack Dog!" The first male surged toward him.

  All of Atticus's body reacted, recognizing a primal enemy. Adrenaline washed through him, sending his heart racing. "Oh, hell."

  At least he didn't have to be worried about hurting them too much. Remembering how Rennie Shaw could anticipate his moves, Atticus closed his thoughts tight on the real him, going mentally into deep cover. I am nothing. I am invisible.

  The male actually hesitated in midstride, off balance, as if Atticus had vanished from sight. Atticus punched the male in the face, putting all his weight and strength into the swing. It broke the male's jaw—Atticus heard it crack and felt the slight shift of bone as it snapped. The male stumbled, registered pain, but kept coming.

  "Shit," Atticus swore. The second male and a newly arrived female were coming down the dock and would be on him in a moment. He realized that he still held the hypodermic filled with veronol from the demon-hunting cult. He stabbed the tip into the male's shoulder and pushed the plunger home. The male jerked back away from him—and kept falling, hitting the dock in an awkward sprawl of unconsciousness or death. Oops. Hopefully not dead. Oh, well.

  Tossing the syringe aside, Atticus ducked under the punch of his second attacker. I am void. I am emptiness.

  There was a boat hook on the dock beside where the boater had been waxing his boat. Atticus snatched the boat hook up as he dodged the blow and let it go where it wanted, flashing it through the nothingness achieved through years of martial-arts training. A power sweep shattered a knee of the second male. The woman, however, caught the hook's shaft. They stood a moment, both muscling for control of the steel-capped pole.

  Atticus sensed the second male behind him, the shattered knee reknitting itself with stunning speed. He could feel too the movements of the others around him; unlike the Pack, where the bristle of minds around him had been like electric auras of the individual Dog Warriors, these aliens merged at the mental level. They gathered around him, six bodies but one huge mental presence, like a multilimbed monster. One limb—specifically, one attached to the last man bearing down on him—held an axe. The monster planned to hack him down to mice.

  Time to flee.

  Atticus let go of the boat hook, knocked the off-balance female into the river, and scrambled over the boats to leap for the shore.

  It was a simple trap that Ukiah devised. Animal had said that his nephew never made the drops himself, and without Animal they wouldn't be able to meet with whomever Ice sent. With his flaming red hair and thin frame, Animal had been too distinct for one of the Pack to pass as him. Since most of the cultists Ukiah knew on sight were dead or in jail, the Pack wouldn't be able to pick the bagman out of the crowd. They decided that setting up a normal sale and hoping to catch scent of the drugs was too risky.

  So Ukiah decided for a straightforward tactic. Max had relayed from Indigo the result of Atticus's interview with Ascii. Apparently the cult's attack had been more than just simple malice; they wanted him to translate recordings of Ontongard conversations. Wanted him badly. The message to Ice had been simple: Wolf Boy desires to meet with Ice.

  Max had reluctantly agreed to act as the go-between, posting the messages and reporting back that the cult wanted to meet on the Longfellow Bridge at ten A.M. "Remember, kid, you don't know this city at all, and this is their stomping ground and their choice of meeting place. Get to know the area, and keep the Dog Warriors between you and them."

  There wasn't really time to learn the city well. Luckily Ukiah had Rennie's memories of Boston; they stretched from the late eighteen hundreds to the last time the Dog Warriors were through Boston. Rennie escorted Ukiah to Charlesbank Park, just downriver of the Longfellow Bridge, as the Pack roamed the surrounding area, reporting changes they found. Having never seen Boston for himself, Ukiah found himself disoriented. All of his borrowed memories—from those of horse-drawn carriages crowding the streets onward—held equal value. Every part of the city was at once familiar and strange.

  At this point the Charles River, between the Longfellow Bridge and O'Brien Highway, was dammed into a wide lake with only a narrow slit giving it access to the river's mouth and the inner harbor beyond. The park was one in a series edging the river and obviously popular; despite the thick fog and the near-freezing temperature, dozens of joggers used the path encircling the park.

  "Cambridge is over there, beyond the fog." Rennie pointed across the river as sculling boats cut out of the fog, gliding like knife blades through the water, ranks of oars dipping in time. They sliced by and vanished again into the fog.

  "Bunker Hill," Rennie continued. This too was across river, but farther downstream.

  "Wasn't there a battle there?"

  "That was before my time," Rennie said. "My grandfather fought in it. My father was a drummer boy at the battle of 1812, down in New Orleans. Seems my family has fought one battle after another to be free."

  Rennie turned away from the river to point inland. "Over there is the Old North Church; it used to be the tallest building in town. But now you couldn't see it even on a clear day—too much is in the way. That's the North End." He continued to turn, orienting Ukiah's memories as he indicated landmarks. "Beacon Hill. Boston Commons is beyond it."

  "They call that a hill?"

  "All the hills were taller once, I'm told. Again, before my time. Apparently since the first colonist landed, they've graded down all the hills to landfill the Back Bay and enlarged the city. They've always been big on urban development projects in Boston."

  That would explain the mass of road construction that the Pack found cutting off favorite streets, making the entire downtown traffic scene a snarled mess. Rennie had memories of the start of the project they called the Big Dig, but they were jumbled in Ukiah's recall with those of the original highway project in the 1950s that tore down complete neighborhoods to cut a swath through the heart of the city. After a century and a half, Rennie barely paid attention to the changing world except where it related to killing Ontongard. Born in a simpler time, Rennie found the world too complex and crowded to do otherwise.

  Now that Ukiah thought about it, he had had much in common with Rennie even before the Pack leader shared memories with him.

  Rennie had followed his thoughts and grinned now, tousling his hair. "It will be time soon. Eyes sharp. Keep yourself safe."

  The Pack gathered loosely around Ukiah, far enough out to make it appear he was alone, but close enough to rescue him out of any trouble that might arise.

  Ukiah settled on a park bench, watching the joggers. Max jogged on a treadmill every morning, along with lifting weights, to keep fit. He bemoaned the lack of a nearby park to run in—he would have liked the wide, level paths along the serene river. Even with the Pack around him, Ukiah missed his partner's sane, level presence.

  Senses filtering for the unknown and thoughts on home, Ukiah missed Ru's approach until his brother's partner
was nearly up to him.

  "What are you doing here?" Ru asked.

  The sight of Ru flushed Ukiah with surprising delight—it was like drinking down heady wine. True, Ukiah had grown to like the man at the beach house; Ru had shown him open friendliness. But somehow being exposed to his brother's memories during his test, Atticus's feelings had reinforced his own; Ukiah recognized what he felt was love—as deep and true as what he felt for his moms, Max, and Indigo. He smiled his honest joy at seeing his brother's partner.

  Ru frowned at him with open hostility and suspicion.

  Even as Ukiah's smile faded, Ru's anger changed to puzzlement.

  "Why are you here?" Ru paused, scanning the park to spot the various Dog Warriors mixed with the joggers and bicyclers. "I was going to say 'alone', but that's not the case."

  "I'm . . . we're . . ." As Ukiah formed the words, he realized it might be a bad idea to admit their plan to trap the cultists. The Pack had insisted that they exclude Indigo, and reluctantly he'd agreed. Dealing with the Ontongard ruthlessly had been one thing—that the cultists were human put her on unstable ground. "You probably would be better off not knowing."

  "Let me guess." Ru studied the park for a minute. "You're waiting for someone and you expect trouble." He turned to Ukiah and swept a gaze down over him. "You're the bagman."

  "How can you tell that?" Atticus's memories hadn't warned Ukiah how clever Ru was.

  "You're at the center of the pattern. Who are you meeting?"

  "You should just go."

  "Because what you're going to do is illegal?"

  "Because I don't want you to be hurt."

  Ru looked surprised. "Why do you care what happens to me?"

  "I like you. And Atticus loves you; it would destroy him to lose you."

  Disbelief and the desire to believe him warred on Ru's face. Abruptly he asked, "How's your arm?"

  The question threw Ukiah off balance. "My arm?" Ukiah extended his hand to Ru and showed him how he could flex and bend his arm without pain. "It's all healed."

  Ru took his hand and ran his thumb up the bone, inspecting the knits. He gave Ukiah another measuring look. "Here, let me see in your ears."