“Move out,” I ordered.
I looked back at Sarah and Yoofi to check their spacing and then scaled the side of the building the last death dog had jumped down from. At two stories, I had a good view of the town. The only structure taller was the three-story municipal building that stood over the square. Across the way, I could see Takara settling onto a rooftop, her M4 in firing position as she scanned the surrounding streets. I searched my sector, but there was no sign of the final death dog.
I was wondering if it had returned to Dabu’s realm with the others, when Rusty cried, “Damn!” The outburst was followed by the popping of semi-automatic fire. I heard the deeper thudding of Olaf’s MP88 join in. The sounds from both weapons ended abruptly.
“Contact?” I asked.
“For a second,” Rusty answered. I could all but hear his heart beating through his words. “Then the thing disappeared in a cloud of smoke.”
I nodded and lowered my MP88. “That’s all of them, then.”
“No,” Olaf said in his Eastern European monotone. “Rounds did not strike dog.”
“Say again? You didn’t hit it?”
“No,” Takara replied. “And neither did Rusty or I.”
I was considering what that meant when Yoofi hollered. I looked down to find the death dog seizing his forearm in one set of jaws and his staff in the other. How in the hell had it crossed the town that fast? I took aim at one of the dog’s heads. Before I could squeeze off a shot, the dog vanished in a sudden burst of smoke. Yoofi remained behind, steam rising from the contact.
“You all right?” I called down.
“I think so,” he answered through gritted teeth. “But, owie, that hurt!”
“Watch the saliva. Like Rusty observed, it’s boiling hot.”
“What happened?” Takara radioed.
“The dog showed up over here,” I said.
“I thought only one remained.”
“It must be jumping back and forth to its realm.”
And if its strategy was to use guerrilla tactics, then it was time to adapt.
“Everyone to the town square,” I ordered. “Backs to the main building. Cover the square in sectors. Hit anything that drops in. I’ll provide overwatch from the roof. Takara, take the rooftop across the square.”
We moved into position, Takara and I going from rooftop to rooftop—her flying, me leaping—and covering our teammates until they were breaking into the town square. Rusty and Olaf took up positions at the municipal building’s corners, while Yoofi and Sarah stood in front. With a final jump, I landed on a ledge running around the municipal building’s upper level, my talons punching into mortar. From there, I scaled my way to the top. A gust of cold air hit my face as I swung my legs over the retaining wall and scanned the streets.
I brought up Yoofi on a secure line. “Are you sure your lingos can keep this thing inside the town?”
“I think so,” he answered.
“You think so,” I repeated dryly.
I preferred certainty—I didn’t want the dog getting out into the larger base—but the creature had pegged me and my teammates as a threat. Something told me it wouldn’t try to escape before dealing with us first.
With that thought, black smoke burst around Olaf. He grunted as the death dog appeared and seized his throat with one head and his trigger hand with the other. With a grunt, Olaf staggered backwards.
Takara and I took aim, but the dog disappeared—only to reappear at Sarah’s side. As Olaf dropped to the ground, the dog buried its heads into Sarah’s left arm. By the time I switched aim, the dog had left Sarah and, in a fresh explosion of smoke, was taking Yoofi to the ground.
It’s going down the line, I realized.
The rifle barrel of my MP88 moved past Yoofi and steadied on Rusty.
When I heard Takara pop off a shot, I pictured the round breaking harmlessly through smoke. I took it as a cue to squeeze off my own shot. My target was the space immediately in front of Rusty.
Sure enough, that’s where the death dog manifested next. My incendiary round drove into its head and exploded in a flash of salt, fire, and death-dog matter. The creature’s broken body wobbled backwards. Takara, who had been denied the decisive shot a moment before, finished it off with a tight burst of gunfire.
When the dog broke apart in a final dispersion of smoke, I keyed my radio. “Mission accomplished.”
Time to check the casualties. I dropped from the top of the building and landed in a plume of dust. Takara seemed to pedal air as she descended from her own perch and crossed the square. She came to a running stop in front of Olaf. I went over to Sarah. She had removed her helmet and was rubbing the arm where the dog had bitten down.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Deep contusions, but no bleeding or breaks,” she answered as if she were diagnosing someone else.
“My bad. I didn’t know they’d be able to appear and disappear.”
But Sarah was shaking her head. “No, that was good. We won’t always know what we’ll be facing in the field.”
“You’re starting to sound like me. I like that.”
Her lips twitched into a semi smile, which I liked even more.
Yoofi limped over, steam rising from his staff. “Ooh, that makes me remember how much I hate Dabu’s dogs,” he said. “So mean.” He looked from Sarah to Olaf. “Who needs healing magic?”
“I’m good,” Rusty said.
Though our tech approached in a swagger, I picked up a sour bite of fear coming off him. To be fair, having a massive two-headed dog intent on ripping out your lungs manifest right in front of you was enough to rattle anyone. “Nice shooting, boss,” he said. “I owe you a Bud.”
“Heal Sarah,” I told Yoofi. “And then see what you have left for Olaf.”
Though Olaf remained down, he possessed innate healing abilities, thanks to Centurion’s tissue regeneration protocol. I waited until smoke began spilling from Yoofi’s staff onto Sarah’s arm before heading over to where Takara was still checking out Olaf. I could hear the big man breathing, but it was coming in choppy gasps. I took a knee beside him.
“You all right, buddy?” I asked.
“Crushed windpipe,” Takara answered for him. Though she wasn’t a doctor, I trusted her assessment. Crushing an opponent’s windpipe was among her many aptitudes as a ninjitsu-trained assassin.
Olaf’s pale eyes shifted to mine. “Did we do well?” he managed, the words sounding like they’d been stomped on.
Ever the soldier. But who’s in control of him?
Rising, I answered loud enough for everyone to hear. “Team Two eliminated three dogs at first contact, and my team eliminated two. My team also maintained good movement, shooting, and communication throughout. Takara?”
“Mine as well,” she said. “Even Rusty.”
“Thanks for the honorable mention,” he muttered.
“And against an opponent that was savvier than expected,” I said. “Everyone passed. That’s the result of eight weeks of drilling and hard work. I’m proud of you guys. Take the rest of the weekend off. We’ll review the video Monday morning.”
Rusty’s face lit up and he chucked his helmet into the air.
“Las Vegas, here I come!” he whooped.
3
I met Sarah as she was stepping out of the infirmary where we’d taken Olaf earlier. She had shed her tactical vest and pack and was wearing a white lab coat with a stethoscope hung around her neck.
“How’s he doing?” I asked. Yoofi had applied healing magic to him—the first time he’d ever done so—but it hadn’t taken, possibly because of the unique makeup of Olaf’s non-living tissue.
“He’s on recovery protocol now. Twenty-four hours bed rest.”
“He’s not in any pain?”
“Olaf doesn’t feel pain.”
The wolf in me bristled at the challenge in her tone. “I’m still not convinced.”
“He forewent a week of training to be teste
d,” she reminded me. “The EEGs and functional MRIs—”
“Yeah, I know what the report said,” I cut in. “You gave me a copy. But it doesn’t explain why he was determined to join our final push in El Rosario despite being injured and a potential liability. That would have gone against his training. When I questioned him, he teared up.”
“That’s going to happen.”
“What, tears?”
“Emotional displays. They wouldn’t even need a thought to incite them. A random discharge of neural activity could set them off. Without higher brain centers to override—”
“Sure. Olaf’s just a ball of emotions.”
“I said random, not frequent,” Sarah replied stiffly.
“So you think the taps just happened to open when I implied he’d wanted to make up for the bombing in Waristan? C’mon, Sarah, that’s a huge stretch. I think even you know that.”
“It’s possible.”
“So is hell freezing over.”
We were rehashing an old argument, just using different words, but I wanted her to hear the improbability of what she was saying.
She shifted her stance. “No one’s doubting what you saw, Captain. I’m prepared to send Olaf back for testing as often as you request it, but I can only base my conclusions on the reports.”
“And you trust them?”
“What’s the alternative?”
And that was the fundamental problem. While I relied on instincts and subtle cues, even more so since becoming the Blue Wolf, Sarah depended on intellectual analysis and hard data. She could believe what I was saying, but couldn’t accept it as a basis for decision-making.
I grunted. On the topic of Olaf, we were at an impasse.
Sarah looked at me another moment, then stepped past me, her ponytail lashing the collar of her lab coat as she headed toward the compound’s main building, where her office was.
I entered the infirmary and made my way to Olaf’s room. A rectangle of light grew over him as I opened the door. Sarah had restrained his wrists and ankles to the bed frame with metal cuffs. The restraints were to keep him from disturbing the various monitoring lines and infusion tubes attached to him, but the sight kicked my heart into a claustrophobic gallop. Olaf, who had been staring at the ceiling, rolled his eyes toward me.
“Hey,” I said. “How are you doing?”
“I am fine,” he answered, his voice still raw from the damage to his throat. Despite what Sarah had said, it sounded painful.
I eyed the bandages over his Adam’s apple, where Sarah had had to perform minor surgery. I saw the dog gripping his neck in one of its powerful jaws and shaking him. How necessary had the exercise been? I wondered now. A way to challenge my teammates, as I’d told them? Told myself? Or had I wanted to give the Blue Wolf the fight he’d been craving ever since learning we could be facing werewolves?
I had forgone the use of drones or access to the live surveillance feeds this exercise. Important not to depend on them, yeah, but also a good excuse to hunt, to lead my pack to the kill.
“How are you?” Olaf asked, breaking up the thought.
My eyes had drifted to the monitors over the head of his bed, but now they dropped back to my teammate. I couldn’t remember him asking about someone else’s status before.
“Why do you ask?”
Olaf stared back at me. His dull eyes could have been implants.
“Were you worried about me and the others?” I prompted.
He blinked once, then continued staring. Still nothing. At last his eyes rolled back toward the ceiling. On the monitors, his abnormally low vital signs hadn’t changed at all. I sat with him, trying to come up with a surefire way to test whether he was still human. Before long, I heard someone enter the infirmary. My nose caught Sarah’s scent before she spoke.
“Jason?” she called.
I craned my neck toward the door. “In here.”
“Director Beam’s on the line,” she said, entering the room. She looked between me and Olaf with a taut expression, as if bracing for another debate. “He wants to video conference.”
“Right now?”
She nodded. I followed her out of the infirmary and into the main building. The LCD panels that curved around one end of the conference room were already on when we entered, casting the space in blue light.
We took a seat at the table. Sarah pulled her small tablet from a pocket and, with a series of efficient taps, established the connection. A moment later, Director Beam’s thin, aristocratic face appeared on the center screen, his gel-parted hair glistening beneath an overhead light.
“Good evening,” he said with an affable smile.
“Good evening,” Sarah answered mechanically, but I only grunted. I hadn’t talked to Beam since he tried to abort our mission in El Rosario, which would have condemned a vulnerable population of several thousand to their deaths. The mission was operating at a loss, he’d said. And that’s why I couldn’t stand the man. He was running the Legion Program like a CFO, everything reduced to dollars and cents. The thought made my temples throb.
“How’s the weather out there?” he asked. “I imagine you’re starting to see some chilly nights. We’re—”
“You wanted to meet?” I interrupted.
His eyes hardened above his fading smile. “Yes, very well. I’m calling about the situation up in Canada. It’s now a formal mission under Centurion’s jurisdiction. We’re sending Legion in.”
Despite my dislike of Beam, his announcement sent a healthy surge of adrenaline through me. Everything seemed to sharpen.
“Did the mayor finally relent?” Sarah asked.
“Not exactly. We weren’t getting anywhere with him, so as circumstances changed, so did our approach. A New York businessman took his girlfriend up there on a fishing trip. He left her alone one evening to night fish, and when he returned, she was gone. The empty cabin showed signs of a savage forced entry, fitting the pattern of the other attacks.”
“How much?” I asked.
The dimple in Beam’s chin deepened as he frowned. “I’m sorry?”
“How much is he paying you?” The price tag had to be well over a million.
“The transactional terms aren’t your concern,” he replied tersely. “What is are the mission info and objectives, which I’m sending over as we speak. We have the opportunity to end a threat that has already claimed seven lives, possibly an eighth. Wasn’t that your overriding concern in El Rosario, Captain?” A thin smile touched his lips. “Protecting the innocent?”
“My concern was finishing what we started,” I said.
Sarah interjected herself between us. “When do we head up?”
“I have a crew putting the final touches on the flight plan. A personnel carrier will pick you up at 0600 tomorrow to take you to the main base, where a cargo plane will be waiting.”
I could see Sarah looking over at me as I checked my watch. That gave us a little over six hours to review the information, brief the team, pack, and prepare our equipment for loading. And that was with one team member in the infirmary and another in Las Vegas.
“You’ll be ready, right?” Beam asked.
I met his challenging gaze. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
“One other thing,” he said. “To avoid a repeat of El Rosario, I’ve had the engineers isolate your equipment on a subnet that I’ll control.”
I felt my hackles go up. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The next time you ignore an order to return home, I will shut down your drones, your computers, your communication equipment, and certain weaponry—basically anything that would enable you to continue the mission. I trust that won’t be necessary, but in the spirit of full disclosure, I thought you should know.”
I felt my muzzle wrinkle back. “If you cripple us mid-mission, you’re gonna have a lot to answer for, bud.” In the military, I never would have spoken to a superior like that, but this wasn’t the military, and the Blue Wolf was reacting as
much as Captain Jason Wolfe.
“Obey orders, and you’ll have nothing to worry about,” Beam replied. “And if you’re thinking about calling Purdy, don’t waste your time. He’s in full agreement with the decision.”
My nostrils flared. We’d see about that.
“Was there anything else?” Sarah asked, once more, it seemed, to put herself between us.
“You’ll find everything in the files I’m sending over. I’ll sign off so you can start reviewing them. I can’t stress enough how important this mission is. These are the very jobs we’re after, so—”
“Don’t screw it up?” I said bitterly.
“Oh, I know you won’t do that. Not with so much on the line.”
Beam could have been referring to the mission stakes, but I knew he meant me and my situation. Command Legion for the rest of the year and Centurion would restore my humanity. I had accepted the terms as my best shot to return to Daniela in the shortest amount of time. But I had also included some provisions of my own, including having control on the ground.
Director Beam lording over our equipment went against that.
“I look forward to your reports from the field,” he said. “Good luck.”
Sarah nodded. Beam’s eyes shifted over to me as though expecting some sort of acknowledgment. But if I had to look at that douchebag’s face another second, I was going to say something I couldn’t take back. I reached over to Sarah’s tablet and killed the connection.
“No need to drag it out,” I muttered.
“You don’t care for him, do you?”
“What gave it away?”
“Rapid breathing, pupil dilation, a deepening of your voice,” she replied, completely missing my sarcasm. “And I could feel heat coming off you. At first I thought it was the anticipation of the mission, but then I observed the way you were locking eyes with him on the monitor. Your canines were showing as well. That’s a very lupine response to challenge, often seen among competing Alphas.”
I wasn’t in the mood for a psych eval, especially one that hit so close to home. “Well, how do you feel about Beam having authority over our equipment?” I said, making sure my teeth weren’t showing. “If he’d had that power in El Rosario, we’d be talking mission failure.”
Blue Howl (Blue Wolf Book 3) Page 2
