Apex Predator

by S. M. Douglas

  Which tunnel, dummy?

  Rumbling growls edged closer.

  Brody pivoted to his left. The lamp on that corner was sending wisps of smoke drifting around the corner behind it. He didn’t have a clue which way to go, and couldn’t come close to making up his mind. In despair, he turned to face back the way he had come, weapon up and ready in a two-handed shooting stance. He decided to put the creature down with the .45, using the werewolf’s recovery time to open up more distance between them while taking whichever tunnel his legs carried him into.

  At least the light from the lamps provided a clear line of sight.

  Brody braced himself to shoot.

  Seconds ticked by like hours.

  He waited for the beast, but only a slight breeze whispered around the corner, chilling his sweat slicked face. Still shivering he glanced over at the third lamp. Then he glimpsed back to peer along the gun’s barrel and down the tunnel again. He still didn’t hear or see anything. After another moment he edged closer to the nearest lamp’s welcoming heat, only then noticing the greasy tendrils of smoke drifting back—

  His eyes widened in stunned realization.

  The smoke. It drifted back.

  He twirled around, the smoke from the other lamps flowed in the same direction, across the intersection and toward the tunnel leading to the left.

  The smoke was being pulled!

  The hair stood up on the back of his neck the same time Brody realized that his bad ear had been turned in the direction he had come, leaving him deaf to the approaching—

  He whirled as his healthy ear picked up the scraping of claws on rock and dirt. He fired before he even saw his target. A huge clawed hand reaching for Brody’s head jerked away, a piercing howl of pain echoing down the narrow tunnel. The snarling werewolf didn’t go down however, the red streak flowing from his bulging deltoid drying in an instant. Worse yet, his frenzied face showed no evidence of having been shot at close range less than fifteen minutes before.

  In the hazy darkness Brody slammed another round between the creature’s furrowed eyebrows. The flash from the jerking barrel lit up the tunnel, the echoing muzzle blast sending dirt cascading down from the ceiling. This time the werewolf jackknifed into the ground with a loud thump.

  Brody ran, following the smoke. As desperately as he wanted to bolt all out, every so often he stopped and listened. However, he heard nothing other than the growling from his relentless pursuer. Frustration mounting, he ran for as long as he dared before stopping once more, straining to hear.

  There!

  He grinned as he heard water gurgling behind the tunnel wall. Then it vanished, drowned out by a roar bursting from dismayingly close behind. Brody pivoted and fired. The bullet slammed into the beast’s chest. Brody accelerated away as the tunnel flattened into a long straight away widening in height and breadth. Knowing the additional space worked against him he slowed enough to spin and backpedal while winging off another round.

  He missed.

  The werewolf bounded close, arms outstretched, eyes glowing with need—

  Brody centered his gun on the target and tapped two rounds smack into the beast’s mouth. Blood and teeth exploded everywhere. With only one bullet left in the pistol he sprinted off, lungs and legs burning. His thoughts were turning to the Vis stuffed in his waistband when he slewed around a corner, senses assaulted by the deliciously deafening sound of rushing water.

  His flashing grin of triumph and joy turned to terror however, when his feet slipped out from under him. Brody slid at least a dozen feet on the wet rock before crashing to a stop against an outcropping. Bright lights flashed behind his eyeballs, a loud gasp of pain hissing free from his lips. He staggered upright, his back aching horribly. Stalagmites hung like immense icicles from an arching rock ceiling. The dank grotto like cave sloped down to dark water in front of him. Brody winced again when his foot slid an inch, his tightening back radiating pain. He glanced down at the underground river flowing several feet below his toes and across the cavern’s width. It slipped under a solid stone wall stopping roughly one foot above the churning surface. He shook his head in confusion.

  There had been a lamp on the tunnel wall outside the cavern, but it shouldn’t have been kicking off enough brightness for him to see so well.

  Then he understood. Moonlight was reaching inside.

  Brody jumped in surprise as a furry shape tumbled behind him, arms and legs reaching everywhere before snagging the wall with a clawed hand. Straining for leverage, the raging werewolf pulled itself up. One side of its mouth had healed. But the other was a tangle of rent flesh and shattered canines stretching into a flapping open tear along his cheek.

  Brody drew the Vis. He had no idea how well a werewolf could swim and he was not about to find out. The pace of healing seemed to quicken every time he shot it. He leveled the Polish semi-automatic on the werewolf, praying he wouldn’t have to use it as he yelled to be heard over the water, “I HAVE SILVER BULLETS. STOP, GODDAMNIT.”

  The werewolf’s ears pointed toward him, ripped cheek stitching itself together.

  Brody wanted to believe enough Owen remained to consider what he said.

  Fuck Vukovich and his choices. There has to be another way.

  Brody risked a quick glance down.

  The werewolf growled.

  Brody settled his feet on the slick rock, finding his purchase at the same moment an idea clicked inside his head. He turned his attention back to Owen, knowing what he wanted to do, how to do it, but far from certain he could pull it off.

  The werewolf’s powerful legs twitched, propelling him into the air, mouth agape, fangs and claws shining against the gray and black background of the cavern’s ceiling and a pulsing red light affixed high on the wall.

  Brody’s mind worked in slow motion, his feet pushing off and back flattening above the water. He aimed as carefully as he could even as the creature plummeted toward him. Brody fired, the roar of the gun drowned out by a high pitched keening yelp unlike anything he had heard before from the werewolf.

  Brody smacked into the brutally cold water, the impact ripping his breath away. The rushing current yanked his legs into the numbing depths. As his torso was pulled under he strained his neck upward to take one last desperate gulp of air, catching sight of Owen’s crumpled form on the water’s edge, a deep red furrow running across his chest and the side of his throat.

  A ray of hope flashed through Brody before the water splashed over his head.

  Chapter 34

  October 2016 – Washington D.C.

  Jimmy Donnelly shifted in his seat, trying to control his anger.

  “I appreciate your visit.” Senator Emily Wayne said. “Nonetheless, as evidenced by this summer’s Congressional hearings your bank is out of control. Given its importance to the global financial system I have a problem with your failure to understand that’s an issue.”

  “Look here, Senator—”

  “No, you look here. Your bank is loaded up with unacceptable levels of risk.”

  “Risk?” Donnelly sneered. “That’s called leverage, and it’s what our bank does.”

  “If you ask me, it’s more like a cash advance thrown down in a casino.” Wayne said, “Your commercial deposits might be leveraged at ten to one. But the investment side takes that, and the hot money coming in from god knows where and cranks it up to something like two hundred to one. You have the nerve to call what you do banking, but that’s not what I see. I see a hedge fund, and a poorly run one at that.”

  Donnelly couldn’t remember the last time someone had the nerve to talk to him in such a manner. “You hold on a goddamn minute.”

  “I haven’t even mentioned the laws that your bank has broken.”

  Donnelly fumed at the direction the meeting with his biggest public critic had taken. She was so fucking naïve. It wasn’t his job
to give a rat’s ass about anything but returning value to his shareholders, time to put this uppity bitch in her place.

  “Law breaking?” Donnelly said. His eyes blazed with a creepy energy, lips parting as his anger intensified. “Then why don’t you hit us with another fine. The shareholders can afford it.”

  Senator Wayne’s eyes widened at not only the expression in Donnelly’s eyes but the sight of his unusually large teeth.

  “If we get in trouble I can stick my hands into Uncle Sam’s pockets any time I want,” Donnelly said with a smirk. “So spare me the bullshit about the law and stay the fuck out of my way.”

  He abruptly stood and strutted from the room.

  The first thing the Senator did after he left was to lock the door behind him.

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  October 2016 – UC Davis Lab, California

  Exasperated beyond belief, she once again refocused the electron microscope. The subject came from a perp suspected in a young woman’s grisly rape and murder and it was taking her far too long to finish the forensic analysis. Behind her two lab assistants were chatting away about last night’s adventures at the local watering hole. If that wasn’t bad enough, the news had been left running on the TV: “Attorney General trumpets settlement against America’s largest bank. Questions linger as to why no top executives were indicted—”

  “Turn that off,” Dr. Cynthia Davila snapped over her shoulder as she mixed the subject material with a dilute solution of ammonium molybdate, and focused in again, annoyed with herself for losing her temper. She had seen what happened to other professional, albeit minority, women who expressed their anger. Time and again, she had willed herself to overlook various indignities lest she be labeled as some sort of brown-skinned-bitch, but not this time.

  Besides, she couldn’t stop thinking about Owen and Brody. Though, that was only part of it. By returning home when she did she had abandoned Kateryna to a fate nobody deserved. Least of all the determined and earnest librarian who had suffered so much but may have been the difference between her coming home at all or ending up in an unmarked grave in the Carpathians. She once again considered the highly unique agreement she had agreed to just before being given a first-class ticket for a flight home from Kiev.

  At that thought Cindy refocused the microscope again even though it didn’t need it, telling herself she was doing important work. Nevertheless, she couldn’t hide from the truth. It was not nearly as meaningful as the work she had turned down.

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  October 2016 – London, England

  Cusick stared as the ceiling, his wife snoring next to him. Shadows from the ebb and flow of the moonlight danced on the bedroom walls. As usual, he couldn’t sleep. He had already checked on his kids, he would check twice more. It had been like this ever since he quit on Vance. At that Cusick thought of the homeless guy, Patrick. He glanced at the nightstand, his service pistol like a lump of coal in the semi-darkness.

  It was loaded.

  Cusick’s heard pounded in response to what he was thinking about doing. He breathed deep, fighting back against the panic attack before it got going. He was getting better at controlling them even as they came with greater frequency. He sat up, grabbed his smart phone and walked into the bathroom.

  The house was quiet, but he glanced out the bathroom window anyway. Before he went back to bed he would walk his home’s perimeter as had been his habit each and every night since Patrick had been killed. He was about to turn away from the sink when he stopped. He turned back to the mirror, staring at his reflection, his face shadowy but clear enough in the silvery-blue light.

  He didn’t know how long he stood there, thinking of his wife and kids and what it would mean for them if he made the call. He thought about what it would mean for them if he didn’t. He shut the bathroom door.

  Vance answered on the first ring.

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  October 2016 – Kiev, The Ukraine

  “A good day to you, sir,” Brandner said, the bell jingling as he stepped into the English language book store. Tucked into a narrow side street, it was a gathering spot for the few non-military American ex-pats who remained in the city.

  An employee looked up from a leather ledger, his large glasses lending him an owlish appearance in spite of the broad shoulders straining his shirt, “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to pick up my order. Your associate called me earlier this morning,” Brandner said.

  “Ah yes,” the employee said. “That would be the Soviet General Staff Study on the Battle for Lviv?”

  “Not exactly,” Brandner replied. “I ordered the study of the Second World War Korsun’-Shevchenkovskii Operation.”

  “Quite right, my mistake,” the employee noted. He appeared not a bit chagrined and almost bored as he reached under the counter, past a fully loaded sub-machine gun to snatch up a brown paper wrapped parcel.

  Brandner nodded and took the proffered package. He didn’t pay, nor was he asked. The bell over the door jingled as he left, travelling opposite the direction he came. He stopped every few store fronts, pretending to shop, using the glass to scan the street behind him. After a half-hour of this he was sure he wasn’t being followed. He relaxed, swinging back around to take a more direct route to his office. Inside the parcel was a special report from Roberts and instructions regarding his remuneration, however he didn’t hurry. The report was a formality.

  Though they never did find out why Brody had shaken his surveillance, it didn’t matter. Brody had reappeared in Kiev ready to play nice, checking in regularly with his MVS liaison while working out of the Bureau’s offices at the consulate in Kiev. The calls between Brody and Quantico had been tapped and conclusively showed that the professors Brody visited with had not been helpful. Moreover, he had failed in his mission to track down Karlovic.

  Roberts bought all of it and ended the operation. Though Brody’s conversations with the Bureau seemed legit, Brandner hadn’t survived forty years in this line of work being the believing sort of person. Nor had he spent the same amount of time hunting Karlovic only to see an FBI agent twenty years his junior move in at the last minute and steal away what was his Holy Grail. As such, he had made sure word got out to the right people that Brody, and possibly the Bureau, were still on the hunt.

  The payoff was more than he could have imagined. Forewarned, Karlovic had eluded Brody. The FBI agent ended up leaving the Ukraine empty handed. For Brandner, who had been tailing Brody, things couldn’t have turned out better. He had just about given up hope he would ever get near Karlovic. Now, not only did he have a fresh trail but he would follow it wherever it led.

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  October 2016 – Detroit’s Western Suburbs

  Brody stood in the home’s book shelf lined front room. The sky unloaded in fat pounding drops as the booming echo of thunder reached through the rattling window. He gazed at an old maple tree, its crimson leaves showering down onto the slightly overgrown lawn. Somebody bumped into him, grunting an apology. The home had been good sized when built, but it wasn’t 1977 anymore.

  It was the loss of this home that finally broke Mr. Granger. His wife had tried to cheer him up, explaining that it wasn’t his fault; that they would win on appeal; that the kid from two doors down had grown up to be an FBI agent and that he would figure out a way to help. None of that mattered. Donnelly’s bank stole the house anyway.

  Late one night Mr. Granger took the shotgun that once belonged to his father, a proud Marine and combat veteran of Guadalcanal. That night, seventy years after his dad’s war ended, Mr. Granger strode down his driveway one last time, having lost a new war he never knew had been declared. He crossed the street and walked into the park carved from the woods. There the proud father of three and grandfather of four kneeled on the baseball diamond, and blew his brains out.

  Now,
less than one week later, Brody stood in the Granger’s dark front room, hands clenched tight behind his back. It had been raining for days, seemingly since Mr. Granger had died. Brody figured he had spent enough time hating himself. Besides, one of the side effects from being hunted and nearly killed by a werewolf is that it tends to focus the mind.

  He spun hard on his heels, accusing faces finding something of interest to contemplate on their paper plates. His neck prickled with the thought he was no longer welcome in his hometown. Walking from the kitchen and down into the family room he glimpsed Mrs. Granger sitting on her couch, her proud back drooped in the face of shattering loss. His onetime best friend sat holding her veiny hands. Chris was a veteran of the second Iraq war, but he looked like the same skinny kid from a childhood spent so long ago. Both looked away as Brody approached.

  He marched past, anger simmering as he slid open the door wall and strode outside onto the small covered deck. The rain hammered at the wood roof, the staccato sound melding into a roaring rush pounding at his ears. Brody stood there as droplets pressed through gaps in the slats, running into his eyes. He didn’t blink, inhaling the cool wet smell and once again thinking about the lie that had been his career.

  After several moments he reached into his pocket and fingered his old Swiss army knife. His parents had found it in a box of his childhood mementos. They gave it to him just before the funeral. They meant well, but the only memory it dredged up was that of his failed raid on Frank Castro’s fort.

  Brody’s smart phone began buzzing in the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

  The wind picked up, shrieking now.

  It was going to be a hard winter.

  The phone continued to ring.

  Two months before he had memorized the number splayed across the display. Still he let it ring. A small part of him couldn’t believe what he was about to do, but he didn’t know any other way. At that, he thought of past promises and realized that losing hope in the system was strangely liberating. He swiped the smart phone’s screen, a feeling of anticipation and dread sweeping through his body.