Claire’s father was an ex-Navy pilot. He dragged Aiden out to the BBQ along with Siles, leaving the “womenfolk” inside, where he regaled Aiden with stories of his service. It was all in peacetime, but he had the tales all lined up. At one point, he handed Aiden a long fork, telling him to check the steaks. Aiden didn’t know anything about cooking. He could nuke a Hot Pocket, but that was about it. He was just about to stab one of the steaks when out of nowhere, something Dontrell has said one day at the DFAC surfaced. He was going on and on about how to grill a steak, and that you should never cut it or pierce it, letting the juices run out.
“Do you have some tongs?” he asked Mr. Record.
“Oh, sure. Here,” Claire’s dad said.
Aiden took the tongs, barely catching the nod Mr. Record gave Siles. He’d been testing him! Aiden figured they were seeing if he knew the manly arts, at least the Texas version of them.
Dinner was actually pretty good with BBQ brisket, ribs, and grilled steaks. He put down two longnecks as he settled back to watch the family interplay. He and his mom had always been pretty quiet, but this family never stopped talking!
He was a little disappointed that he was given a guest room later that night in which to sleep, but that had to have been expected. Claire came in to give him a towel, whispering that they would have time alone together later in the week. She gave him a kiss on the cheek before leaving, a promise of things to come.
Waking up early in the morning, Claire had taken Aiden to the Alamo, then to Randolf Air Force Base. Randolf was much, much bigger than Nellis back in Vegas. Claire told him it wasn’t even technically an Air Force base. It was just one part of a “joint” base along with some Army and a few other Air Force installations.
After going back, they’d gone for a dip in the family pool, where Claire looked great in a leopard-print bikini, after which she took him down into the center of town, keeping their destination a secret. She parked the car in a pay lot, and they walked up South Presa Street, a street which looked a little rough to Aiden. This was where he’d jumped when the man came up in back of him. As they came up to a bridge, Claire led him to the side and down some steps.
“What do you think?” she asked him.
“Wow, I never would have guessed!” he said.
From the somewhat run-down street, they had entered a Disneyland ride, which was all to which he could compare it. Twenty feet below them was a small river. The river was bounded by huge trees and paths on either side. Restaurants and other shops lined the paths, and there had to be a couple of hundred people wandering up and down the paths just within his line of sight.
“What is this place?”
“Riverwalk. It’s the heart and soul of the city. That’s the San Antonio River, there. It starts just like you see it, a little bit upstream, fed by springs. This and the Alamo are our two big attractions. Well, maybe the Spurs, too, I guess.”
She had his right arm in both of hers, hands clamped possessively around his bicep. Aiden liked the feeling.
They started walking along the path. He certainly didn’t expect anything like this in Texas. It had a tropical feel with the big trees, plants, and what he figured must be more springs feeding the river.
He was very impressed with the area, but there was still an edge to him. With so many people walking, anyone could be sent by the Council. Intellectually, he knew no one was going to shift into a werewolf right then and there with all the witnesses, but still, he couldn’t help but looking at everyone, wondering. He hated that he couldn’t completely relax in this place, even with Claire on his arm.
She led him to the Saltgrass Steakhouse for dinner. What with steak on the menu yesterday, he could see Texans sure liked their meat. If he had been shifting lately, he would have welcomed the diet for the protein. As it was, he’d just enjoy the beef like a normal person. The meal was good; the steak at Claire’s home might have actually tasted a tiny bit better, but this one was fine, and the French-fried onions were great! Most of the pleasure, though, was with the company.
Claire looked fabulous. She had on a tight pair of jeans, which seemed to be the official uniform for Texan women, and a flimsy white and lilac cotton print top. Whenever she leaned forward to make a point to him, he got an eyeful of the curve of her breasts cupped by a light blue bra. Claire didn’t have the curviest figure around, but she was very fit, and the size of her breasts complimented her figure. Aiden tried not to stare, focusing on keeping his eyes locked on hers. His thoughts did drift to her promise of them having time alone together later on. He wasn’t sure what that actually meant, and he didn’t want to seem too anxious by asking, but he could hope.
After dinner, Claire led him along the paths. It seemed that simply strolling was what most people were doing. The river sort of intertwined with various cross-branches, so there were picturesque bridges to be crossed. Aiden stopped Claire at the apex of one to take her photo. An older man was walking by with his family and saw that.
“Here, sir, let me take one of you together,” he offered.
Aiden wasn’t used to be called “sir,” especially by someone older, but he gave the man his little Canon. He sidled up to Claire, just standing beside her before she took his hand and pulled it in back so his arm was around her. She felt good in his grasp.
The man gave back the camera with a “Thank you for your service.”
Claire checked out the photo, and then made Aiden promise to give her a copy. They continued their walk, slowly going to nowhere in particular. They came up on a gift shop, crowded with tourists. Claire literally dragged him in.
“You’ve got to get a T-shirt, and you’ve got to promise to actually wear it,” she said. “What do you want? Riverwalk? The Alamo? The Spurs?”
“I don’t know, maybe the Alamo?”
She started pulling out shirts from the rack, holding them up against him, giving a running commentary on each one, but more to herself than to him. He knew Claire as the no-nonsense Marine, the PT stud. This was another side of her, that of a more “typical” girl, whatever that was, and one he was enjoying.
She finally selected a brown shirt with the Alamo on the chest and a Texas flag on each sleeve. It was a little too in-your-face Lone Star State, but he’d wear it to make her happy. He pulled out his wallet, but Claire insisted that it was her treat.
He leaned up against the glass counter as she paid. Under the glass was a selection of jewelry, which he barely noticed. Something did catch his eyes, though. On a little stand was a bright, engraved knife.
“Hey, can I see that?” he asked a harried clerk.
The young woman pulled it out without a word and placed it on the top of the case before rushing to the side to help someone else.
The knife blade was about six inches long, the handle another five inches. The blade was polished to a bright sheen. On the side of the blade was an engraving of an eagle with a rattlesnake in its talons, perched on a prickly pear cactus. It was very touristy, very kitschy, but it drew him in. He reached to turn it over. As his hand touched the handle, which looked to be braided leather, he felt something, or more like the potential for something. Turning the knife, he saw the wolf sitting and howling at the moon. It was probably a coyote, he knew, but he wanted to think of it as a wolf.
With one finger, he reached out to touch the wolf. He jerked back as his finger was not actually shocked, but it felt weird, almost-but-not-quite pain, but definitely a tingly discomfort. He steeled himself and touched it again. The discomfort was still there, something that almost resonated somewhere in the back of his brain, but he traced the raised edges of the engraving.
“What’s that?” Claire asked him as she handed him the t-shirt in a plastic bag, ready to go.
“Just a knife,” he told her, unsure as to why he was attracted to it.
“That’s just tourist junk. If you want a real knife, Siles can take us to a blacksmith who makes his own blades.”
“I just like the way it looks,” he told her.
She took it out of his hands and examined it.
“Eh, it’s not a real knife. It won’t cut worth its salt, but I guess it looks nice as art. That eagle is the Mexican symbol, so it’s aimed at the Mexican tourists. You can get better there, though, real silver. This is only plated.
Silver. That explained the feeling when he touched it. He should have realized it, of course. It looked like silver, but that hadn’t even crossed his mind. He should put it back and leave. Silver and werewolves didn’t mix. But he didn’t put it back.
“I want it,” he said. “For a souvenir, you know. To remember this place.”
That wasn’t really true. He just wanted it, Riverwalk or not.
“Really? You want that? I never thought my boyfriend had crappy taste,” she said with a laugh.
Boyfriend? He was her boyfriend? He didn’t know that, but the he felt a rush of emotion. That made her his girlfriend, right?
She didn’t seem to realize the significance of what she’d said. They’d never actually talked about what they had, if it was even anything of significance.
“If my little Aiden wants his little knifey, then OK, mommy will get it,” she said in a raised voice as if she was talking to a toddler, even pouting out her lips.
She picked it up and gave it to the cashier, pulling out her credit card. Aiden pushed her hand down and pulled out two hundreds from his wallet. The knife was somehow personal, and despite what she’d just let slip out, and despite how happy that made him feel, this touristy, ornamental blade, only good to look at, was something he didn’t want to share.
He took the bag from the cashier and slid it into the larger bag with his T-shirt. He took his girlfriend’s hand in his as they left the shop.
TEMPERING
Chapter 31
LCpl Aiden Kaas scanned the area beneath them, intent on picking up any movement. Since they were so soundly beaten in the Battle of Fallujah, a good number of the insurgents had relocated to Ramadi, and the big city had almost become a free-fire zone. But whereas in Fallujah, the mujahideen had tried to meet the Marines in face-to-face combat, here in Ramadi, they tended to use indirect attacks or quick hit-and-runs on the coalition soldiers and Marines. If they were too cowardly to meet them in combat, then it became imperative to spot them before they could plant their IEDs. That was why Aiden’s team was high in an abandoned building, watching Route Michigan[43] below them, the first time the team had actually conducted a recon-type mission, and as a team, since arriving in-country. They would be out for about a week, then go back to Hurricane Point for a day, then head on back out.
During the invasion, recon units were essentially used as infantry, spearheading assaults as the coalition forces raced to Baghdad. This wasn’t the job for which they were trained and organized, and everyone in recon knew it, but you didn’t argue when given a mission. You just saluted and marched on.
After arriving in Iraq for this tour of duty, the platoon had conducted mostly mounted patrols, no different from what other infantry platoons conducted. There hadn’t been much “snooping and pooping,” as the older salts described it. Still, it was recon, and that had a certain cachet.
Aiden wasn’t sure how it had been done with recon during the initial invasion, but when Aiden’s battalion had deployed, the Marine AO[44] had basically been divided into six sectors, with each platoon, including the reserve Force Recon platoon that had been attached to them, getting their own piece of the pie.
Aiden turned to look at the other five members of the team. Four were catching some z’s while Cpl Therwait watched out an adjacent window. It was still hard to believe that he was part of the team. It was battalion recon, not Force or MARDET-1, the real Marine snake-eaters, but still, it was recon. This was where all the others started before they became high-speed, low-drag, wonder Marines. Prove yourself in battalion, then other doors could open up for you.
Aiden didn’t really understand all the political maneuverings dealing with recon. The three recon battalions, with their long history, had been deactivated in the 90’s with the companies being attached to each division’s headquarters battalion. Then after 9-11, when SOCOM, the Special Operations Command, went into Afghanistan, the Marines had no one in-country, having previously decided not to get into the special ops game. That led to the reactivation of the three recon battalions and the creation of MARDET-1, or as it was officially designated, Marine Corps Special Operations Command Detachment, which took in many of the Force Recon Marines. When Force was used as regular infantry in the Iraqi invasion, most Force Marines, highly disenchanted, actively sought MARDET-1 billets. As battalion recon Marines gravitated to fill in Force, that left billets open in battalion for new Marines. Aiden had applied, and while the PFT scores he’d received back before deployment to Iraq were not “recon worthy,” the Silver Star that had finally been approved gave him the benefit of the doubt for the screening.
Overall, Aiden was in much better shape than before his deployment to Iraq. He easily scored first class on the PFT[45] during screening. What surprised him was that he was a slightly weaker swimmer than before. At boot camp, swimming was the one area in which he excelled. At the recon screening, he passed the requirements, but with much more effort than he would have expected. Just as being transformed made him stronger and a better runner, it did something to make him a worse swimmer. If he hadn’t been such a strong swimmer before, he doubted he would have passed the swimming tests.
Aiden and Cameron Gormish were the only two Marines in the team to have been assigned to RMAT, which stood for Recon Marines Awaiting Training. RMAT was something new. The other Marines had gone into RIP, or Recon Indoctrination Platoons, and both Aiden and Cam were regularly berated as recon “boots” for never have being assigned to RIP. RMAT had been pretty tough, even given Aiden’s endurance and ability to heal and recover, so he wasn’t sure how RIP could have been any tougher.
Actually, Aiden didn’t think it was exactly his endurance that gave him an unnatural advantage. He still sucked wind, he still hurt, but the same ability to heal from injury worked to heal muscles that were full of lactic acid. He got tired, but he recovered in seconds, only to get tired, then recover again. It was a never-ending cycle. This was probably philosophical BS, he knew, but when a person had 80 pounds on his back for an eight mile ruck run, or if he was loaded for bear on a 25 mile hump, well, the mind had time to wander, and he tried to examine just how he felt and how his body reacted. The bottom line, though, was that while a few other recon wannabes were stronger and a couple were faster, none could hump or run as long as he could. Call that endurance, call that continuous recovery, it didn’t matter much as long as he could perform the mission.
RMAT was tough, but it couldn’t hold a candle to BRC, the Basic Reconnaissance Course, where they learned how to be recon Marines. They were taught recon doctrine, concepts and skills, Combat Rubber Reconnaissance Craft skills, land and nautical navigation, amphibious entry and extraction, patrolling, scout swimmer techniques—just about everything except for mounted combat operations, the mission they had been almost exclusively given since their arrival in-country.
After BRC, it was off to the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE School, where he had excelled. He was never captured during any of the exercises, much to the instructor’s dismay. But when he actually escaped the course prisoner of war camp, that dismay turned to embarrassment. Aiden had toyed with shifting to assist him, but he never needed to do it. He blended into the background, then hiked back to base, getting a meal at the chow hall before going back to the classroom to wait for the others.
After SERE, it was straight to the battalion just in time to deploy with his new company to Iraq. It felt like he’d just left, and here he was back again. When they got back from this pump, he hoped to go to the Combatant Divers Course and earn that wicked-looking gold diver’s badge to put on his chest.
From returning to the US, volunteering for recon, going through the
courses, and re-deploying to Iraq, Aiden barely had time to catch his breath. Now he was in combat with a highly-skilled recon team, some of the Marine Corps’ elite.
Aiden watched the street below him. Almost every day, an IED was discovered, either by alert Marines or soldiers or by the explosion which maimed and killed them. He would love to spot someone emplacing one, not only because of his experience losing friends from IEDs, but also because it would justify Lt Miller’s incessant pushing for the platoon to conduct real recon missions. First Lieutenant Miller had served with an infantry platoon in Afghanistan before going to BRC, and now that he was with recon, he was an almost religiously-fervent proponent of the reconnaissance mission. The infantry battalion to which they were attached had their own Scout Sniper section, and they did conduct this type of observation mission on a daily basis. Aiden was sure the lieutenant wanted his teams to go deeper in the field, to more extreme recon-type missions, but as SSgt Hong, his team leader continually said, “baby steps.”
Aiden glanced in back of him. Cpl Therwait was watching out his window. He was pretty clear to Aiden, but he knew the corporal could not see as well in the dark without night vision goggles, so Aiden would just be a blob to him.
He knew he shouldn’t be doing it, but he focused on his right index finger for a moment, picturing it as it would look if he was in varg form. This was actually more difficult than a wholesale shift. That was pretty easy. But to limit the shift to just one finger had taken Aiden almost six months of trial and error. He hadn’t dared a full shift since that day in the Nevada desert, but something drove him, so he sublimated that need by focusing on this tiny shift, something he hoped would be too small or insignificant to be picked up by other members of the Tribe.
With a small snap that reverberated in his head, his finger became shorter and thicker, the nail forming into a blunt claw. He didn’t have to look down to know the shift was successful. He shifted back to the human finger, then back again to the varg and back once more to human, all in the space of about 10 seconds. He still felt the urge to shift more of his body, to do a full shift, but at least this was something.
The Werewolf of Marines Trilogy Page 17