by Myke Cole
“We found a waypoint in a computer GPS system associated with an arcane target. We think it was deliberately set, and we want to understand why.”
“Can you tell me more about this target?” Desmarais asked.
“Can you tell me more about what the fuck is going on?” Ghaznavi asked. “Why my call was immediately routed from CSIS to your task force and why you’re here instead of talking to me on the phone? And why you’re not General MacDonald?”
Desmarais exchanged a glance with Nicole, who snapped open the case and removed some papers.
“I’m sorry”—Ghaznavi cocked an eyebrow—“is your laptop broken? Are you actually handing me printed paper? Are you going to ride back to HQ on a stegosaurus?”
“You can’t hack paper,” Desmarais said.
Ghaznavi scanned the pages, Hodges leaning over her shoulder. “What’s the TL;DR here?”
“We’ve been tracking some rumors for a long time about arcane developments in the Northwest Territories, and the most interesting ones are specific to the Great Slave Lake region. It was interesting enough for CSIS to put some collection on the target and it backed the rumors up . . . to a degree. Let’s just say we’re interested.”
“Interested enough to circumvent CSIS and put JTF2 directly on it?”
“The rumors go back decades. There’s a lot of them.”
“How many?” Ghaznavi asked.
Desmarais looked over at Nicole.
“Documented?” Nicole said. “Three thousand six hundred and eighty-two.”
Hodges cocked an eyebrow. “Is that . . . a lot of rumors? Because it sounds like a lot of rumors.”
Desmarais shrugged. “You have to keep in mind that this is folklore going back decades.”
“And the content of these tales?”
“Are publicly available. I’ve included some of the better ethnographic articles in that packet. It centers around the reincarnation of ‘Lived-With-The-Wolves,’ an Athabascan hero. The Athabasca Chipewyan are a First Nations people who live in the region.”
“Dene,” Ghaznavi said. “That’s what they prefer to be called.”
Desmarais nodded. “You know something about Canada’s native history.”
Ghaznavi waved the compliment away. “I know they’re not Eskimos. That’s about the extent of it.”
“Well, the point is that Lived-With-The-Wolves is supposedly constantly reborn in one person or another, and is supposedly able to do the usual stuff, heal the sick, tell the future, turn into a wolf, et cetera. Nothing that ever got us to pay attention.”
“But you’re paying attention now,” Ghaznavi said.
Desmarais nodded. “Around the time I was getting out of academy, the folk tales changed, specifically around what it was that Lived-With-The-Wolves could do. The healing stories and the clairvoyance petered out and the rumors took on a remarkable consistency.”
Desmarais gestured at the packet.
“This is the Internet era,” Ghaznavi said. “Reading ink on paper is an admission of old age.”
“Just tell us, Colonel,” Hodges said.
“The stories are all the same, that Lived-With-The-Wolves brings back the spirits of the dead and unites them with the bodies of animals so that their loved ones live on inside them. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police first got wise to the stories when they were busting a drug ring out in Whitehorse, but the consistency was startling enough that they alerted CSIS, and they brought us in once they were convinced that the source was arcane. JTF2 is handling anything magic now—”
“I know,” Ghaznavi said.
“Right, well. That’s a really unusual and really specific story to suddenly penetrate the folklore. So, we put people on the ground to find out what we could.”
“And what did you find?” Hodges asked.
“So far? Nothing,” Colonel Desmarais said.
“Nothing? It’s your country!” Ghaznavi said.
“Not out in the Northwest Territories,” Colonel Desmarais said. “It is in the cities, if you can even call them that, like Yellowknife. They’re mostly set up to handle tourist trade from outdoorsy types coming to see the aurora borealis, but once you get outside that? ‘Remote’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. You’ve got less than fifty thousand people living in over a million square kilometers. Finding one man is like finding a needle in a haystack.”
“You’re sure it’s a man?” Ghaznavi asked.
“Sure as we can be from the stories. We’ve got a couple of people on the ground out there, but to be honest, the JTF has been lax about recruiting from the Dene people.”
“They have to be Dene?” Hodges asked.
Desmarais nodded. “They’re around forty percent of the population. You don’t score points in what we do by sticking out. Anyway, Lived-With-The-Wolves is a Dene figure, and he’s not working his magic for white folks or Inuit up that way. So, yeah. We need Dene to run the op.”
“And you don’t have any.” Ghaznavi looked irritated.
“Cut him some slack, Jala,” Hodges said. “We had the same problem with Arabs and Persians right after 9/11.”
She sighed. “Yeah. Manpower is always the biggest hurdle in this business. All right, what do you have?”
“This.” Desmarais flipped through the package to a glossy eight-by-eleven photograph of a grainy gray figure hunching across a shoulder of rock pushing out of the snow.
“This is a wolf,” Ghaznavi said, looking unimpressed.
“No.” Schweitzer finally spoke, his augmented vision picking out the details in the photograph from across the room, even through the weave of the hood that covered his face. “Look at its eyes.”
Desmarais stiffened at the rasping sound of Schweitzer’s voice, and Schweitzer could hear the quickening of his heart, but to his credit, he didn’t move.
Ghaznavi and Hodges bent over the photograph. A moment later, Hodges cursed and Ghaznavi sucked in her breath.
Desmarais grunted in satisfaction. “I take that to mean that you know something about this.”
“Colonel Desmarais,” Hodges said, “you’ve got to get us on the ground wherever this photo was taken. I think I know what’s happening here.”
Desmarais clucked his tongue. “I can do that,” he said, “provided that it’s a joint operation, and provided you tell me what the hell is going on.”
“You’ve noticed the eyes, I take it,” Schweitzer said.
Hodges and Ghaznavi looked sharply up at him. “Jim, please,” Hodges said.
“No.” Schweitzer raised his good hand, letting the blanket fall away from him, revealing the torn STF armor. He brushed the hood off his head, lifted his metal chin, and watched Desmarais’ eyes narrow as he took in Schweitzer’s face. “I don’t work for you,” Schweitzer said. “I work with you, and I am choosing to reveal myself now, because secrets aren’t going to win here. Truth is.”
“Jesus Christ,” Desmarais whispered. “Is this some kind of a joke?”
“Look at the eyes, Colonel,” Schweitzer said. “Tell me what you see.”
Desmarais took a long time to answer. “Our . . . our imagery people are still puzzling over it,” Desmarais said, “but so far, the verdict is that they’re made of fire.”
“Like mine,” Schweitzer said.
Desmarais picked up the photo, his eyes never leaving Schweitzer’s. He glanced down at the photo and then back up. “No,” he said slowly. “These are a darker color.”
“They’re gold,” Schweitzer said. “Mine are silver.”
“What does that mean?” Colonel Desmarais asked. “Is it a different color for people and animals?”
“I’m not sure myself,” Schweitzer answered, “but I think it has more to do with self-control. When you’re in control of yourself, when you retain your humanity, the color is different.”
“Retain?” Desmarais asked. “The gold-eyed lost it? Wait, does this mean there are other people like this? How many? Where?”
“We don’t have exact numbers,” Ghaznavi said, “but quite a few. Some are in that building out there.” She pointed in the direction of the Entertech cover facility. “We’re worried that some of them might be on their way to the Great Slave Lake.”
Desmarais finally looked away from Schweitzer and met Ghaznavi’s eyes. “To find Lived-With-The-Wolves?”
“The target we’re working,” Schweitzer said, “it’s looking for a host. There’s a certain arcane transfer that has to occur to get it into one. I killed one of his people capable of facilitating that transfer. It’s possible she was his only one. If I am guessing correctly, your Lived-With-The-Wolves has the same ability. The proof is that wolf.”
“Are you dead?” Desmarais asked. “I’ve heard of some . . . people with the ability to raise the dead, but never . . . thinking and talking like you do.”
“Yes, I’m dead. And I still think and talk. My name is James Schweitzer; you may have heard of me.”
“The SEAL? Yes, we’ve heard of you. We heard you were . . .” Desmarais smiled.
“Well, you’re right. I was. I came back.”
“Through magic, a kind we’ve never seen before,” Desmarais said.
“You have seen it before,” Schweitzer said, tapping the photograph. “You just didn’t know what you were looking at.”
“So, is Lived-With-The-Wolves a man?” Desmarais asked.
“Jim, you don’t have to—” Ghaznavi said, then quieted at a gesture from Schweitzer. “Jesus Christ, Jim. You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.”
“On the contrary,” Schweitzer said. “When I was alive, I dealt with secret-squirrel crap all the time. I know exactly what I’m doing.” He turned back to Desmarais. “Yes, Lived-With-The-Wolves is probably a man. You said the stories say he’s putting the spirits of loved ones into the bodies of animals?”
“That’s what they say. We don’t have any hard evidence, though. We haven’t captured any of these animals yet.”
“If their eyes are gold,” Schweitzer said, “then they will probably be just that, animals.”
“So, is that wolf dead?” Desmarais asked. “Like you?”
Schweitzer looked at the photograph. His augmented vision brought the picture into sharper focus, picked out details the living people around him would surely miss: brightness of the animal’s coat, the wet gleaming around the muzzle that indicated saliva, a tiny cut on the hock that was still scabbing over. “No,” Schweitzer said in amazement. “It’s alive.”
“I’m confused,” Desmarais said.
“So am I,” Ghaznavi added.
“Does it work for both living and dead creatures?” Desmarais asked. “The magic?”
“I’ve never seen it work on someone alive, but I heard talk that it did. Our target certainly believes it does, and it is definitely not a coincidence that there’s a wolf with burning gold eyes in the exact area indicated by the waypoint in the helo plotter. Either the Director is there or he’s going there, and that means we have to go there and fast.”
“Who’s the Director?” Desmarais asked.
Ghaznavi ignored him, staring at Schweitzer. “Yeah. You’re right. We’ll need to put together a team.”
“Reeves is still spun up and wanting to make good on what just went down,” Schweitzer said. “I don’t exactly need prepping. Let’s go.”
“Wait a minute.” Desmarais thumped his fist on the table. “I know you think of Canada as a client state, but you’re not going anywhere, certainly not anywhere in the sovereign territory of Canada, without the knowledge and consent of my government.”
“Oh, come on, Colonel,” Ghaznavi said, “you’re not telling your government about this any more than I am mine. This isn’t my first rodeo, and you’re going to help us and take us to wherever we can find . . . this.” She tapped the photograph.
“No, I am not,” Desmarais said. “I am—”
“We are going to work together on this,” Ghaznavi interrupted him, “together and inside your borders, and nobody is telling anyone about it outside of SAD and JTF2, and that’s final.”
Desmarais’ jaw clenched, the most emotion Schweitzer had seen him display since he came in. “What makes you so sure?”
“Because”—she stabbed a finger at Schweitzer—“there’s only one living-dead guy here with burning eyes who can think and talk. And he, like everything else good and right and wonderful in the wide circle of the world, is American.”
• • •
“That was a hell of a thing, decloaking like that,” Ghaznavi said as Schweitzer hovered over the team. True to his prediction, Reeves took the news like rain in a desert and was currently hunched over his laptop, writing up a new loadout plan for extreme cold weather.
“There’s roads out there,” Reeves said. “Yellowknife’s a big city.”
“Define big,” Hodges said.
“A little under twenty thousand,” Reeves said.
“On what planet does that qualify as ‘big’?” Ghaznavi asked. “That’s less than a tenth the size of Arlington.”
Reeves said nothing, squinting into the laptop’s glare.
“Jala has a point.” Hodges turned the conversation back to Schweitzer. “That was one hell of a risk you just took, Jim. Not just for yourself but for the nation.”
“I lost patience with the dance of a thousand veils you had going on,” Schweitzer said. “We need to be out there yesterday, and we all know that Desmarais wasn’t going to budge unless you put your cards on the table.”
“As long as we’re using your metaphor,” Hodges said, “you don’t open with your whole stake, Jim. You ante up and raise slowly. You reel them in.”
“Yeah, except you have no stake,” Schweitzer said. “You have one chip. Me. And you either play me or you don’t. Sorry for skipping the foreplay, but thanks to my ‘decloaking,’ as you put it, we probably saved a day.”
“We have rules regarding this stuff,” Hodges began.
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t buy that particular line,” Schweitzer said. “Do the rules say that you can just reach out to the government of Canada on your own accord and set up an op? You’re committing the United States to a foreign policy position. Doesn’t the President or the Secretary of State get to weigh in?”
Ghaznavi snorted, “POTUS? SECSTATE? They’re just public servants.”
“Who the hell are you, then?” Schweitzer asked.
Ghaznavi and Hodges exchanged a knowing glance. “We’re the people who run things while the public servants make speeches and cut ribbons. Been that way since people decided they were willing to give up some power to tough customers in exchange for being kept safe.”
Reeves kept his face neutral, eyes on the laptop screen. “You sure you’re supposed to be having this conversation in front of me? Sounds top secret.”
“Have you met Schweitzer?” Hodges asked. “He doesn’t believe in secrets.”
Reeves puffed out his cheeks. “Welp, I think I’ve got it. Nearest armory that can fill this order is in Maryland, and it’s probably smart if we go in wearing Canadian gear and under their cover. You want me to socialize that with the good colonel or—”
“I’ll handle it,” Hodges said. “Just print me out the loadout sheet and I’ll see what his people can fill.”
“God knows what concessions he’ll want for that,” Ghaznavi added.
“We’re wasting time,” Schweitzer said.
“What’s the rush?” Ghaznavi asked. “For all you know, the Director isn’t even going there.”
“He’s going there,” Schweitzer said. “Or he’s already there.”
“You know that?” Hodges asked. “Is it from the magic?�
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“No.” Schweitzer shook his head. “This time, it’s just a gut feeling.”
“Do you even have a gut?” Reeves asked.
Hodges stared at him.
“What?” Reeves asked. “Might’ve rotted away.”
There was a knock at the door, and Ghaznavi opened it. Desmarais entered, Nicole beside him, carrying a blue three-ring binder. “I want to get in the air,” Desmarais said. “Since the op’s in our backyard, I think it’s best if your people load out with our gear. I’ve got the sheets here.” He gestured to the binder. “I hope this is all okay.”
Reeves cocked an eyebrow at Hodges. “I think we could be persuaded.”
“Good.” If Desmarais noticed Reeves’ tone, he didn’t show it. “I’ve got a fixed-wing at Reagan ready to go. We can be in Yellowknife in roughly ten hours.”
“We’ll load out there?” Reeves closed the laptop and stood up.
Desmarais nodded. “Canadian Forces Northern Area HQ is in Yellowknife. I’ve already arranged for everything to be ready when we arrive.” Desmarais looked at Schweitzer. “I’m just concerned that—”
“No offense taken,” Schweitzer said. “I’ll make sure I’m covered up.”
“Thanks,” Desmarais said. “I want to keep the footprint as small as possible. Three operators, Schweitzer, and—”
“And me,” Ghaznavi said. “Senator Hodges will be staying here.”
“Like hell I wi—” Hodges began.
“Colonel, will you please excuse us for just a moment?” Ghaznavi smiled.
Desmarais nodded and left, Nicole trailing him.
“I’ll excuse you too,” Reeves said. “Need to go round up Frank and Sharon.” He followed after Desmarais, looking grateful to be out of the room before the fireworks started.
“I’m sorry, Don,” Ghaznavi said. “We’re all going and you’re staying here. That’s how this goes.”
“Why?” Hodges asked.
“Because I need this facility kept hemmed in, and I need to make sure it’s done in a way that keeps the public from ever knowing about it. You’re the right man for that job.”