Callsign: Rook - Book 1 (A Stan Tremblay - Chess Team Novella)

by Robinson, Jeremy

  Nothing happened until about two in the morning. Then, as Rook passed by one of the goats and started to leave it behind, he heard something. Just the faintest trace of sound, but still something different from the wind he’d listened to since beginning his rounds. He stopped and sniffed the air.

  He picked up a smell, something like rotten eggs, but even sharper. As he inhaled, the smell grew stronger, as if the source had moved nearer. He turned his body slowly until he could see back in the direction of the goat, though the darkness prevented him from actually seeing the unfortunate animal.

  His hand flexed on the Desert Eagle as the smell became even worse. He couldn’t have said how he knew, but the source of the odor seemed to be in the same direction as the goat. He envisioned a large creature, unaware of Rook’s presence, moving in for the kill. If Rook could just find the right place to aim…

  Instead Rook let out a roar and started sprinting toward the goat. Then he switched on his light. Lying in wait to try to shoot something he couldn’t even see would never work, and in any case, Rook preferred the direct approach.

  A second later, he heard a roar in response that was loud enough to drown out everything else, even the sound of his own breathing. The light shone on a huge creature standing on two legs. At least eight feet tall and as thick as a hundred year old maple tree, the massive beast had brown fur that almost seemed orange in the light. Definitely bigger than Red, Rook thought, comparing the creature to the Neanderthal queen that had tried to take him as her own. The roar got even louder, and Rook could see huge teeth in the open mouth, mostly flat but with pointed canines. Then it started sprinting toward him.

  Rook fired three shots with the Desert Eagle. The range was only about forty feet, but between the disorientation caused by the roar and the mix of light and darkness, he suspected only one shot hit home. With quickness foreign to such a huge mass, the beast turned and started running the other direction. Rook got off a couple more rounds, but neither of them hit, and he didn’t want to waste the two remaining shots in the magazine on low percentage shots.

  He continued the chase, but he could sense the distance between them increasing. As the flashlight swung forward with each pump of his arm, it shone on the fleeing giant, but when his arm swung back, he could no longer see it. He tried to get more onto his toes to squeeze every ounce of speed out of his legs, but he knew he could only maintain the burst for a few seconds.

  Suddenly, the creature seemed to dart to the right. Rook tried to estimate the path it had taken and follow, but a tingling in his head told him he was missing something. He grabbed onto the only small tree in the area as he tried to change directions, and his legs flew forward even as his hands and arms held him in place. His legs floated for a second before dropping.

  And hit nothing but air.

  The slick grease on his hands served as good camouflage but now it betrayed him. His hands slid down the tree and he tried to reach further up to lock his hands around his forearms. He managed it, but only just in time for his chin to smash into the dirt. His legs…well he’d now figured out where he was. His legs and torso dangled off the side of a cliff.

  He’d seen this place earlier, the far edge of Peder’s land, where the earth surrendered to a two hundred foot drop down to the ocean’s rocky edge. Now, a single narrow tree was all that kept his considerable bulk from a free fall. His arms started to burn, and he tried to pull himself up.

  He knew the first foot or so was the hardest, and he let out two or three curses that sounded neither Norwegian nor Russian. He didn’t care about that just now, he cared about getting his ass back onto solid ground. Soon enough, his strength prevailed, and he pulled himself over the top.

  He got to his feet almost immediately, breathing in great lungfuls of air as he did so. The creature could still be around. He could see the flashlight a few feet away and he pounced on it. With the light, he found the Desert Eagle as well. He had dropped both mere feet from the cliff’s edge, and he knew that only luck could explain why neither had gone over.

  Rook sniffed the air, and the rotting smell seemed a lot less strong. He suspected the smell emanated from the creature, and its diminution meant that his quarry was still on the run. The odds of engagement again tonight were low, and he knew that even for future nights, he’d lost the element of surprise. Hell, one of his bullets was in the bastard’s leg, something no animal would forget.

  For tonight, he had only one option left: Return to the barn.

  Five minutes later, he opened the barn door, calling out before he stepped in.

  “Peder, it’s me, don’t shoot.”

  Rook shined the flashlight into the loft and saw the old man stand and head for the ladder. He went to meet him.

  “What a goddamn night.”

  Peder looked at him, “Did you get him?”

  “That depends on what you mean. I hit him with one of my shots.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Didn’t slow him down, not even a little bit. The son of a bitch was roaring like a son of a bitch. As soon as I hit him, he turned and ran, and I couldn’t keep up. I tried, but I had no chance.”

  “So what is it?”

  He looked at Peder, and could see excitement in the man’s eyes. Rook shook his head. “I have no idea. It looked just like you described, eight feet tall, fur, huge arms and legs. But its teeth looked sort of human, and the eyes showed some definite intelligence.”

  Peder nodded. “Like I said. Yeti or whatever you want to call it. Did you smell the smell?”

  “Damn right I did. That was one foul stench. And before you say it, yeah I know a lot of the legends talk about a foul smell. I’m not buying it. There’s something more going on here. Maybe related to some of those secrets you don’t want to tell me about. Maybe something about wolves. You almost shot me that first night when I said I saw the wolves.”

  Peder let himself down onto a hay-covered seat against the wall and fixed his eyes on the floor. “Stanislav, there are things I simply can’t tell you.”

  “Tell me this, then. Why do you think the wolves keep the creature away from town but not your place?”

  “I do not know. I do not know how wolves could stop a creature like that anyway.”

  “You’re right, there’s no way they could. How did anyone come up with the idea that they were?”

  “It was Eirek. He is the one that told us he had managed to get the wolves and they would stop it.”

  “And this made sense to you?”

  “You have to know Eirek. This is the kind of thing he does. Even now, I do not have any doubts about that.”

  “Well you should. There’s something he’s not telling you, even beyond whatever secrets you’re holding back.”

  “If you are right, Stanislav, then what is it?”

  Rook inhaled through his nose. “I don’t know, but I intend to find out. I just thought of Plan B.”

  “What does this mean, ‘Plan B’?”

  Rook chuckled. “It’s an American expression that made its way to Russia a while back. Plan A is the first choice, Plan B is the second choice.”

  “And if Plan B fails?”

  “Hell, in Russia we have thirty-three letters in the alphabet, so we keep on going down the list.”

  “All right, Stanislav. What is your Plan B?”

  “I won’t be able to kill the beast unless I get lucky. I doubt even the fifty caliber bullets would penetrate that thick skull. I’ll either have to unload a whole magazine into its legs and hope they do enough damage to take it down, or get close enough to shoot through the eyes or under the chin. None of those seem likely. So I need to go at this from another angle. Those wolves are part of all this, making Plan B pretty simple.

  “Tomorrow night, I capture the wolves.”

  5

  Rook lay down in his bed of hay just after three in the morning. One of the old-timers had told him right when he was starting out in the military that for any soldier, sl
eep is a weapon. Use it when you have the chance and you never know when it might give you a small edge. Rook fell asleep in just a few seconds.

  He didn’t dream this time. His eyes opened some time later, and he sensed…a disruption. Maybe a noise had woken him up. He didn’t move, but he listened for any additional sound. He heard none.

  A minute later, he tried to close his eyes again. This time though, he couldn’t fall asleep. The back of his neck tingled with the sense that he was missing something. Screw this, he thought. In one motion, he grabbed the Desert Eagle and switched on the flashlight.

  A man stood over him, a straight razor in his hand.

  Rook fired a shot, but the light had caused the intruder to stumble enough that the shot went wide. Rook cursed and jumped to his feet. The man’s arm swung back, and then he flung the razor sidearm at Rook. Rook raised the flashlight to block the blade, and it bounced off the flashlight and nicked him on the chin. He felt no pain, but he roared in anger and redirected the flashlight.

  The intruder was running, almost at the barn door. Rook raised the Desert Eagle, but the man ducked behind a large cart with a frame of iron and wooden sides. The bullets would penetrate, but probably wouldn’t do much damage, especially if the man had crouched behind the wheels.

  Rook growled, and thought, Fine, no problem. Try to cut me, I’ll settle this the old fashioned way.

  He charged at the cart, but then had to dodge a huge saddle that came flying over the top of the cart at him. During that second, the intruder made a bid to cover the four feet left to the door.

  Even off-balance, Rook fired the Desert Eagle. He didn’t have the angle for a reliable torso shot or the stability for a head shot, but he put a bullet in the vicinity of the man’s legs. A scream of pain confirmed that it had found its target, but the tall figure disappeared out the door anyway, slamming it closed behind him.

  Rook sprinted for the door, ripped it open and then paused. He replaced the now empty magazine with a fresh one, and caught his breath. If the guy had anything else to throw at him, waiting a second might draw him out. Nothing came, so Rook burst through the doorway and leaped to his right. The flashlight illuminated the man, as tall as Rook and dressed in black. He had only managed to get fifteen feet away, hampered by a limp that appeared to affect both legs.

  Satisfied that the shot had struck flesh, Rook pounced. A few steps and he crossed his forearms and delivered a tackle any middle linebacker would have appreciated. The man’s cry contained unmistakable pain, and his legs slipped out from under him as his face planted in the frozen dirt. Rook dropped, drove a knee into the man’s back and pushed his hand into the back of the man’s head, forcing it further into the ground.

  Despite his anger, Rook did remember to speak in Norwegian. “Who the hell are you?”

  He couldn’t make out the muffled response, so he flipped the man over. He put his knee on the man’s chest and stuck the Desert Eagle under his chin. “Answer the question.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Rook put down the flashlight and let his fist smash into the man’s nose. When he picked up the light again, blood streamed from both nostrils. “Let’s try that again.”

  “I am going to kill you, foreign asshole. Do not ever close your eyes.”

  “And why would you want to do that?”

  The man spit in his face, and Rook could feel the saliva dripping down his eyelid. “We do not want your kind here. You are filth that needs to be cleaned.”

  “Look who’s talking, pal.”

  Rook had known that trying to pin a strong man to the ground while holding a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in another was risky. So he wasn’t shocked when the man’s hand shot up, holding some sort of knife. Rook dropped the flashlight and grabbed the man’s wrist to keep the knife away. Rook literally had the upper hand, and he could feel the man’s resistance failing.

  A second later, the resistance stopped. The knife dropped as if the man were pulling it toward himself. With only a wayward beam from the dropped flashlight for illumination, he couldn’t make out exactly how it happened, but the intent seemed clear enough: The man had turned the blade on himself.

  Rook tried to pull back on the man’s wrist, but it was too late. The knife buried itself in the man’s throat, and Rook felt warm blood spurt onto his hand. As his hand finally pulled the knife away, some drops of blood landed on his cheek. The smell hit a few seconds later, a heavy odor that reminded Rook of so many prior battles.

  He grabbed the flashlight. The man’s eyes had opened wide, but the gash in his throat and the huge volume of blood still leaking out confirmed the only possible outcome: The intruder was dead.

  Rook stood up, still holding the gun and flashlight.

  “Damn it!” He swore in English. Corpses didn’t often answer questions. Where’s Richard Ridley when you need him, Rook thought. Ridley, as head of the now shutdown Manifold Genetics, had not only developed a serum that regenerated the human body and extended life indefinitely, but he could also animate the inanimate. Rook wondered if that applied to dead bodies, too.

  A moment later, a light came on near the door of the house, and Peder came out. “You okay, Stanislav? I heard the shots.”

  “Yeah, Peder, I’m fine. This guy here, though, he’s not doing so well.”

  Peder reached the body, and when he saw it, he gasped. “Dear God, what have you done?”

  “I didn’t do anything. He cut his own throat.”

  “Please, Stanislav, do not take me for a fool.”

  Rook raised his voice. “Hey, it’s the damn truth. I woke up with him standing over me with a razor. He ran when I shined the light in his face, and I hit him in the legs with a shot. I was trying to find out why he wanted to kill me, then he tried to hit me with another knife. When he couldn’t do that, he slashed his own throat with it.”

  Peder stared at the body, shaking his head. “This is very, very bad.”

  “I don’t know; I’m still alive. That’s got to count for something.”

  “Stanislav, do you know who this is?”

  “No, who?”

  “The man you just killed? This is Jens Fossen.”

  “Wait a minute. You don’t mean…?”

  “Yes. This is Eirek Fossen’s son.”

  “I’ll fucking kill him.”

  “Stanislav, you already killed him.”

  “Not Jens. Eirek. You said it yourself that Dad runs this town. There’s no way Junior came up here on his own.”

  “Stanislav, killing Fossen is not a good idea.”

  “Sure it is. I might be a stranger in this town, but when someone tries to kill me the first night I’m here, I’m gonna respond. You guys’ll be better off without your own little Stalin telling you what to do.”

  “You do not understand me. Killing Fossen will unleash terrible things.”

  “Come on, what terrible things? How bad can it be?” Even as he said it, Rook knew he didn’t mean those words. He’d seen some stuff that made disaster movies look like uplifting films. But some dude in a small town in Norway couldn’t possibly be that bad.

  “You don’t know Eirek Fossen. He is a scientist. He has discovered both terrible and wonderful things. And that is all I can say about it.”

  Rook sighed. “After I kill him, you’ll feel different.”

  Peder shook his head. “No. Stanislav, I begged you to leave, but you did not. Now I beg you, do not try this.”

  “Look, he’s dead, end of story. We have to figure something else out. What do we do with the body? We need to dispose of it where no one will ever find it.”

  Peder frowned. “The ground is too hard to dig. I do not think we can rely on animals to do the job. How about the ocean?”

  “I don’t know the currents around here, but too much chance of it floating somewhere. I guess we’ll just have to burn it.”

  Peder met Rook’s eye. “We cannot create a fire in my stove hot enough to burn the bones.”

 
“It’ll be hot enough to serve our purpose. It’s a crappy job, but the alternative is that someone finds out. Better everyone thinks he disappeared, especially Eirek.”

  Peder didn’t say a word. Instead he dipped his head in a nod, then turned and walked slowly to the house. Unlike the first time Rook had seen him, the old man looked his age, a frail and tired specimen nearing the end of things. Rook felt a small bit of regret, but not a lot. Things would probably get worse before they got better. “Story of my life,” he muttered under his breath.

  Then he looked down at the body. The flow of blood was slow now, just a gradual oozing. Soon it would stop entirely. Nevertheless, he needed some sort of old blanket or sheet to wrap the body in to avoid getting blood anywhere else. He followed Peder into the house to ask for one.

  By nine in the morning, they’d taken care of the body. Plenty of charred bones remained, but those Peder would drive twenty miles up the road and scatter into the water at various locations. The specifics of how they managed the burning—well, Rook preferred not to think about those ever again if possible.

  Rook could feel the fatigue from two nights of no sleep weighing on him. So he made his way into the barn and lay down on his blanket in the hay. He could hear low sounds from the animals in the barn, and it helped calm his mind as he closed his eyes. Just before falling asleep, he could have sworn he heard a faint roar in the distance, the sound of the creature carrying from several miles away.

  Then again, he might have just been dreaming.

  6

  Rook returned to town in the middle of the afternoon. Peder had allowed him to take the car, but had refused to come along.

  “No, Stanislav. I am an old man, so I will not try to stop you, but I will not be part of it.”

  Four hours of sleep had served only to fuel Rook’s anger. Between a mysterious creature that could shrug off a fifty caliber round and a man who would rather take his own life than answer questions, the town had proven far from a quiet place to hide. Now it was time to take the action right to the source of power: Eirek Fossen.