Kitty Goes to War (5 page)

I waited, keeping my mouth shut. What monster
had they discovered frozen in some forgotten NIH closet? My imagination failed me.

Shumacher continued carefully. “You remember that Flemming was particularly interested in military applications, and whether the military could effectively utilize soldiers possessing paranatural traits?”

I might not have figured it out if Stafford hadn’t been sitting next to her looking guilty. But the pieces fell into place. Shumacher was talking about nearly indestructible werewolf soldiers, immune to gunfire, physically strong, possessing immense stamina and wicked killer instincts. When the CSPB went public, Flemming had been disgraced before Congress and vanished. All his secret projects had supposedly been shelved. That had been my understanding. Weaponized werewolves were such a bad idea.

I tried not to be furious. “Are you telling me Flemming’s lycanthrope soldier program went forward?”

“No, it didn’t,” Shumacher said quickly. “At least, not officially.”

“But unofficially?” I said. I was starting to understand the looks of chagrin.

Colonel Stafford pulled a five-by-seven black-and-white photo from his manila folder and slid it across the table to me. Looking like a snapshot that had been cropped and blown up, it showed a youngish man, maybe thirty, supremely confident, his shoulders square and solid. He looked at the camera
lens with an adventurous glint in his eyes and a curl on his lips. He wore a beret, a dark T-shirt, and camo fatigue pants. The colonel didn’t have to tell me—this was one of the army’s best and brightest. The photo radiated it.

“This was Captain Cameron Gordon,” Stafford said. “Top five percent of his class at West Point, went on to Special Forces—Green Berets.”

“And he did it all while infected with lycanthropy. He was a werewolf,” Shumacher said.

“How did he manage that?” I said, in awe of the man. Sometimes I barely managed to keep my life functioning, my werewolf and human identities working together, without running screaming into the woods. Captain Gordon must have been superhuman.

Stafford answered. “Near as we can figure, a lot of careful planning. He always had favors to call in so he could get time off on nights of the full moon. People covered for him, he never got caught. He was careful. And he was too good for the army to let him go the time or two he did screw up.”

I could also speculate that Gordon had been infected with lycanthropy young, as part of a well-adjusted, functional pack where he learned a high level of control. He’d known exactly how to handle his werewolf side.

Shumacher picked up the story. “When Flemming was exploring . . . possibilities . . . regarding lycanthropy and the military, he recruited Captain Gordon.
I don’t know how Flemming knew about him, but he did. I believe the two worked together until Flemming was forced to go public. By that time, Gordon had deployed to Iraq. You know that Flemming destroyed many of his records. I’ve been trying to reconstruct what work the two of them did, but I haven’t had much luck. Then Colonel Stafford called me.”

I said, “So Flemming really did it. He really did put werewolf soldiers in the field—”

“That’s just it,” Shumacher said. “Flemming didn’t have anything to do with this. He never authorized any implementation of his plans. He never did anything but interview Captain Gordon—but that put the idea in Gordon’s head. Captain Gordon did everything else on his own. He independently created his own squad of werewolves, without authorization.”

Stafford pulled out another photo, this one showing seven men, including Gordon, all fully decked out in badass army gear—helmets, backpacks, rifles, boxes of ammunition—posing as a group for the camera. They were all fit and strong, holding rifles in assured grips; a couple of them smiled confidently. If I hadn’t known they were all werewolves, I might have missed some telltale signs, or attributed those signs to their military background. But studying the picture, I could tell: Gordon was the only one standing, putting him in the position of dominance—he stood like an alpha. The others crouched, knelt, or leaned around him. A few of them didn’t look at the
camera at all. They instinctively didn’t stare, which is an expression of challenge among wolves. I could almost smell them.

“Gordon wasn’t stupid,” Stafford said. “He took his time and picked likely candidates from the Special Forces. He maneuvered to get his people transferred to the same base, if not the same unit. He infected them himself, and trained them himself, all on the sly. He was in Afghanistan by this time. I think he saw a need in the mission, and he set out to fill it.”

I looked at the colonel. “When did you find out about this? How much did you know when it was happening?”

“Not enough. Gordon acted on the principle that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. And he was right, to a point. His squad had an amazing record in Afghanistan. It was one of the most successful units we’ve fielded out there. They handled the terrain like it was nothing, they could travel for weeks without support, get to places nothing else could, track down damn near anything. They didn’t need body armor or NVGs—”

“NVGs?”

“Night-vision goggles,” Stafford said. “We had them hunting Taliban leaders in the Kunar Province, in the high country. Their success rate was . . . was worth everything, we thought.”

“And then what?” I said, a chill twitching my spine. They kept using the past tense.

“There was a mortar attack,” Shumacher said. “Captain Gordon was one of several people caught in the explosion.

“It turns out a big enough explosion can kill a werewolf just fine,” Stafford said, deadpan.

“I know,” I said, my own bitter experience tainting my voice.

“The folklore doesn’t say anything about werewolves being killed by explosions,” Shumacher said.

“That’s because most of the folklore was in circulation before explosions of that scale existed,” I said.

“After Gordon’s death, everything fell apart,” Stafford said. “The remaining members of Gordon’s unit became unruly, I guess you’d call it. Rebellious. Insubordinate. We tried to appoint another commander—they refused to follow orders. Then Vanderman killed Yarrow.” He pointed out the two faces on the unit photo. The two biggest guys there, of course. Vanderman was a burly no-neck white guy. Yarrow was equally burly, with lips turned in a half grin, half snarl.

Stafford continued. “We wouldn’t have known who killed Yarrow, except Sergeant Crane reported the murder. He went to the base commander and asked for help. In the morning, he was dead, too. Ripped to pieces, same as Yarrow. That’s when we drugged the rest of the unit, took them into custody, and brought them home until we could figure out what to do with them.”

“That must have been some picnic,” I said. I didn’t want to imagine what that must have looked like and resisted an urge to look over my shoulder, as if the army werewolves were nearby, waiting to pounce. I didn’t want to get anywhere near them, not if they were as dangerous as I thought they were.

Shumacher gave me a grim frown. “That’s when Colonel Stafford called me. Unfortunately, I’m not much of a werewolf psychologist. I’m guessing that what happened in Afghanistan was some atypical pack behavior—”

“Gordon was the alpha,” I said. “He held the pack together. As long as he was there to lead them, the others had a center, a reason to stay in control. His word was law, and without him—no law.” I tapped the photo, pointing to Vanderman and Yarrow. “These two look like the strongest left in the bunch. I bet they fought it out to see who would lead them next. Vanderman won. After that, I’m thinking Crane deferred to his human side. He stayed rational, saw what was happening, and reported it to get help. Vanderman killed him for insubordination.”

“That was my feeling,” Shumacher said. “I’m glad to have the validation.”

I shook my head. “These guys had no independence under Gordon’s leadership. Without him, they don’t have a clue. They’re running on pure instinct—especially if Vanderman killed Crane for going outside the pack. That shut down any chance of sanity
they had. I’ve seen this kind of thing before—do you realize how dangerous those men are?”

Stafford looked even more uncomfortable, if that was possible. Holy crap, we weren’t done with the story yet?

“We thought we could work with them, rehabilitate them, maybe even return them to the field,” the colonel said. “From a training and tactical standpoint, these men are incredibly valuable. We had to try something.”

“Not to mention the fact that they’re too dangerous to release on a medical discharge,” Shumacher said more softly. “We had to either find a way to retrain them or find a way to heal them.”

Neither of them mentioned a third option, but I could see it in their expressions, in the way their gazes kept dropping, in the tang of anxiety touching them. Oh, God, they hadn’t already . . . what did I even call it—terminate the experiment? I glared at them, my hands resting in front of me, my shoulders tense. Aggressive body language, daring them to stand up to me. A stalking wolf. Stafford’s eyes widened—he recognized the stance. He’d probably seen in it his rogue army wolves.

“It’s time for you to tell me why I’m here,” I said. “You don’t think I can help these guys become happy, well-adjusted werewolves, do you?”

“It’s more complicated than that—” Stafford started.

“It’s more urgent than that,” Shumacher said, leaning forward. “We never had any intention of bringing an unauthorized civilian in on this. If all I needed was advice I’d have just called you. But I needed to warn you, and we need your help. Kitty, Gordon’s unit escaped custody. They left Fort Carson this morning. They’re on the loose, and they’re heading north.”

O
KAY.
P
ACK
of highly trained Green Beret werewolves are heading north, toward my territory. My city, my family, my wolves. My pack, which the wolves of Gordon’s unit would see either as followers to be recruited, or rivals to be destroyed. They had to be stopped, and Stafford and Shumacher didn’t have a clue. Right. I could handle this.

Maybe.

“You’re the fucking
army
,” I said. “You couldn’t stop them?”

“It’s not that simple,” Stafford said, speaking calmly to hide that he was just a little flustered—sweating, tapping his fingers on the table. He probably didn’t even notice he was doing it. “These men have the best escape and evasion training in the world.”

“But you know where they are?” I said.

“We lost them in the foothills north of Colorado Springs.”

“They’re fast,” Shumacher said. “They might even be moving as wolves in wilderness.”

Stafford said, “We tried microchipping them, but their bodies . . . rejected the microchips.”

“It’s the superimmunity,” Shumacher explained. “Werewolf physiology rejects invasive technologies.”

“Really?” I said. “So if I ever wanted to do something like, oh, breast implants?”

Shumacher gazed at me warningly and shook her head. Oh, wow, that was kind of sick. She may not have been up on the psychology, but I was always learning new medical tidbits from the doctor.

“The way Dr. Shumacher is talking,” Stafford continued, “this isn’t just a matter of getting my people back under control. She says they could pose a threat to the civilian population.”

“Yeah, they could, if they’re out of control enough to attack people,” I said. “Not to mention
my
people. Werewolves are territorial, just like the wild version. They might go looking for my pack to take them out.” This was sounding worse all the time.

“That’s part of why I called,” Shumacher said. “I thought you should be warned.”

“For what purpose? So I can worry about it?”

“That wasn’t the only reason,” Stafford said. “Doctor Shumacher says you have a lot of experience, that you’ve encountered some similar problems with violent werewolves, and that you might
know how to handle this. We wanted to ask for your advice.” Stafford tightened his jaw; he probably didn’t ask people for advice very often.

Resisting an urge to rant, I leaned my head on my hand and considered. If these guys couldn’t figure out how to stop the rogues, I had to do it. Or face an even bigger problem in, oh, a day or so. I had to call Ben and the rest of the pack, to warn them. I could even call Cormac—he knew more about hunting werewolves than anyone I knew. Stafford and Shumacher ought to be talking to him.

I tried to get at the problem step by step. We had a group of out-of-control werewolves. What did they want? What were they after? If they were operating mainly on instinct, which they seemed to be, they’d be looking to set up a territory. Maybe even looking to join an existing pack—if they were between Colorado Springs and Denver they’d probably get a whiff of mine. The thing was, they were big, aggressive, dominant werewolves—they wouldn’t just want to join—they’d want to take it over. That was what we were trying to prevent. I had to work with Stafford to head these guys off, to protect my pack. And then what? What did wild wolves want after they set up a territory?

Oh. I had an idea. A crazy idea. But not any crazier than the rest of this situation.

“Let me make a couple of phone calls,” I said to them.