Telling Kaas it was later than it really was, he suggested that he gets some rest. He assured him that he would leave the Pentagon in the morning, that they only had a few more things to do.
Kaas agreed, and after pacing the room for 30 minutes, laid down in bed and closed his eyes. The colonel watched him until the steady rise and fall of Kaas chest indicated that he was asleep.
There were a few hidden capabilities of these rooms that were not immediately obvious, but were very useful. What went on in these rooms was highly classified, but the colonel’s imagination ran wild as he wondered what had gone on in them over the last 70 years. It buggered the imagination.
He checked on Kaas one more time, then flipped a switch. From a vent at the top of the room, an odorless gas descended to envelope the kid. Kaas gave a grunt, but then went quiet. The colonel waited for ten minutes, watching for any sign of movement. He had no idea how a werewolf would react to the gas, but he put enough in there to knock out an elephant.
He slipped on an oxygen mask and carefully opened the door into the room. Kaas didn’t stir. His nerves were jumping as he walked up to the sleeping form.
This is it! he thought.
Taking the syringe he’d prepared, he pressed the needle into Kaas arm and pulled back. Nothing showed up. He repositioned the needle, trying to hit the kid’s artery. This was harder than he’d thought it would be, especially while trying to see out of the mask. He tried twice more before he was rewarded with the bright scarlet blood filling the tube.
Kaas gave another grunt and twitched, which almost caused the colonel to jerk back and drop his precious blood. He had enough, he hoped. He didn’t want to try and find the artery again.
The colonel hurried out of the room and back to the control room. He turned off the gas and turned on the exhaust fan. He wasn’t sure if he saw any difference in Kaas’ sleep, but it really didn’t matter anymore.
He took off his shirt and bared his arm. The colonel barely hesitated before he plunged the needle into his arm and pushed the plunger home. He’d already checked blood types, and both Kaas and he were O+. But Ward was B+, and he was fine, so he wasn’t sure blood type mattered. What mattered was what made a werewolf a werewolf. And now that was inside of him. He was going to be one!
Let some asshole try and shoulder him out of the way now! As the commanding officer of a werewolf legion, he would hold all the cards.
World, stand the fuck by! Colonel Jack Tarniton is about to make his mark!
BOOK 3
PAX LYCANUS
Chapter 1
“Are you . . . is this OK with you?” Sergeant First Class Mike Tolbert asked as Corporal Aiden Kaas, USMC, dropped his pack at the base of a black palm.
Aiden looked up at Tolbert, a thin smile on his face. “Sure. It’s no thing. I’m just in for a look, and I’ll be back ricky-tick.”
The sergeant first class didn’t seem convinced, not that Aiden could blame him. He and his team were there only as escorts. Somewhere in the jungle before them, a cocaine lab was hidden, and Aiden’s mission was supposedly to get some eyes on the target.
The special forces team had been in-country for four months, and they were well aware of the means the drug lords took to protect their investments. This was dangerous territory, bad enough for a full team, but almost suicide for a lone Marine, especially one so lightly armed. Tolbert was a hard man with a wealth of clandestine experience, and he seemed uncomfortable with letting Aiden disappear into the undergrowth alone. But with many of his own missions still classified, he’d also learned to keep his mouth shut. He seemed about to say something else, but then he simply shrugged.
“We’ll be here until 0300. I hope you make it back.”
Aiden nodded, and armed only with his Tavor TAR-21,[103] he stepped off farther down the trail. Within moments, the eight soldiers were left behind as the jungle closed around him. Aiden’s senses were on full alert, but he felt hemmed in, almost claustrophobic. Las Vegas born and raised and with tours in Iraq and the ’Stan, he’d never been anywhere like this, where his view was limited to a few meters in any direction. He imagined drug soldiers behind every bush and tree.
After only 200 meters or so, he’d had enough of trying to extend his human senses. It was time. He dropped his battle rattle, took off his boots, and then removed his digie top and T. After a few more moments of consideration, off came his trou. As he’d been going “commando,” he was now almost stark naked with only the small cam strapped to his arm, standing in the Columbian coastal jungle. Almost immediately, something bit him on his ass, and he instinctively slapped at it hard, only belatedly regretting the noise. He needn’t have worried—the jungle swallowed up all sound.
As he bent to pick up his gear to move it out of sight, his arm brushed up against another black palm, the thorn cluster digging into his upper arm. This place was not made for naked humans—at least Americans.
Fuck this shit. It’s time, he thought.
With barely an effort, Aiden shifted. Seconds later, Aiden Kaas, human, disappeared, and Aiden Kaas, werewolf appeared. Instantly, his nose was assaulted by the fetish, rotting jungle. He took an involuntary step back into the same black palm, but this time, the thorns broke against his back.
The coastal jungle was not the high triple canopy he’d imagined it would be. It was low, extremely dense, and full of stagnant water that oozed with death and decay. Aiden opened his mouth to try and minimize his intake of air through his nose, but that was almost worse. It felt as if his mouth was being coated with slime.
Come on, Aiden. Man up!
He reached down and picked up his Tavor. As an operator, he’d had access to any weapon known to man, and he could have had others custom pimped up for him, but with the quick mission that COL Tarnition had insisted upon, Aiden had picked the Tavor because of its long, extended trigger guard, a trigger guard that did not block his varg hands from the trigger itself. In other words, he could easily use it after shifting.
The horrid stench was either numbing his nose or he was just getting used to it, so Aiden tentatively sniffed in the direction he was headed. Nothing. He hadn’t expected much, but intel was only what was thought to be most likely true and not concrete facts. He’d have liked to have known the camp’s exact location, but he’d just have to make do.
Aiden started moving through the jungle, trying to avoid the vines that seemed to want to grab and hold him. High grasses with sharp, serrated edges managed to cut into his thick skin, making him glad he’d already shifted. Even with his clothes, the grasses could have done a number on him. Luckily, the cuts were not deep, and his healing abilities closed them up quickly.
Aiden pushed through another stand of the tough grass, his face turned up and away to protect it, and he fell into a small pool of water, only a foot deep, but with another two feet of mud beneath it.
Oh, my God! he thought as he gagged at the sudden rush of nastiness that was released.
The mud might have been undisturbed for centuries, for all Aiden knew, incorporating every dead thing that had fallen into the mud since then. He’d thought his nose was deadened to the stink, but this was enough to overcome his nasal defenses. “Rank” was too light a term for what roiled out of the miasma. Aiden almost went down as his feet plunged into the muck, but luckily, he kept upright, and with several lurching efforts, managed to scramble up onto a patch of dry ground on the other side. From the waist down, he was covered in black, stinking mud. Even humans would be able to smell him if he tried to approach the drug camp like this.
Wiping himself off with leaves he grabbed was useless. It got off some of the bigger gobs, but it merely smeared the rest. He didn’t want to do it, but he moved downstream (or upstream—the water was not really moving one way or the other) a few meters to where the water was merely black and not full of the mud he’d disturbed and sat down at the edge. Carefully putting one leg in the water, he tried to lean forward and get rid of most of the muck. As top-heavy
as his body was with his huge chest and arms and tiny waist, he almost fell over a few times as he lost his balance. It took several minutes with each leg, but finally, he was about as clean as he could get sans a nice hot shower.
He’d fallen into the water because he’d been looking up to protect his face from the grass—which was a good way to trigger a booby-trap. The drug lords weren’t stupid, and they made booby traps a big part of their security. Werewolf or not, a booby-trap could pretty much ruin Aiden’s day—and it could even end up with his death. His fellow Marines had killed Omar Muhmood, his patron, and the drug lord’s soldiers could do the same to him if he wasn’t careful. Aiden knew he had to ignore the feeling of invulnerability he felt when he shifted and get back into his Marine mindset if he was going to survive the night.
And almost as if on cue, with the suddenness of a light switch, it was night. Dusk was almost non-existent in equatorial rain forests, something about which Aiden had read, but it still took him by surprise. His varg eyesight, though, was adapted to the dark, and while he couldn’t see as well as in daylight, he could still make his way through the undergrowth.
Aiden carefully moved forward for another hour, all his senses on alert as he hoped he wouldn’t miss the camp. He knew he had to be getting close when he reached the deeper river that had at least a sluggish flow. The camp was on the river, according to Intel, where the canopy extending over the water hid the camp from prying eyes (and drones) while still provided egress to the ocean some 10 kilometers away.
Upstream or down? Aiden wondered.
Choosing incorrectly could cost him time, time he needed if he was going to accomplish the mission and still meet up with the special forces team for extraction. Aiden strained his senses, listening and smelling for something, anything that might give him a clue.
Nothing.
With zip to guide him, he flipped a mental coin and turned right. Downstream it was.
Along the riverbanks, there were patches of almost impenetrable grasses and vines. Aiden was able to bypass most of them, but one soggy marsh effectively blocked his way, and he couldn’t tell just how far in it extended. He made the decision to forge through the swamp, his senses heightened as he imagined all sorts of things below the surface. He didn’t know what might be able to hurt him, but he’d seen a show on Discovery where an anaconda had killed a crocodile, and he didn’t relish one of the big snakes wrapping him up and dragging him under.
Are there even anacondas here? he wondered. I should have Googled it before I came.
If there were any big snakes in the marsh, they left him alone, and five minutes later, tufts of dry(-ish) ground started to pop up out of the water. Moments later, he was out and back on solid ground.
During his trek through the jungle, Aiden had been surrounded by an ever-present cacophony made by insects, frogs, and who knows what else. His brain took in the sounds, then ignored them as non-threatening. Suddenly, though, a low laugh from up ahead registered through the normal sounds of nature. How far ahead the voice was, he couldn’t tell, given the jungle growth. A stiff varg smile crept over his face. It had to be them.
He calmed his breathing as he slowed his pace. Part of him wanted to howl a challenge and then rush the camp, but all a howl would do would be to warn them. A werewolf might install fear of the unknown, but from his briefings, the drug lords themselves tended to install their own kind of fear into their minions, a very real, known fear. That might trump any fear of Aiden-the-werewolf that might make them flee or be unwilling to fight.
There wasn’t much of a breeze, but even in the still air, the acrid smell of chemicals became evident. If Aiden’s had any doubts as to who was up ahead of him, that squashed them. This was a drug camp, no question about it.
Aiden edged forward as the low mumbling and laughter became louder. The unmistakable whoosh of a beer can being opened reached him. Several men, at least, seemed to be in party mode instead of protecting their camp mode. The flickering glow of a campfire reflecting off some of the trees ahead pinpointed their position. Given the terrain Aiden had just covered, however, he figured not too many people would approach the camp from anywhere else but up the river. They undoubtedly wouldn’t expect anyone approaching from the jungle.
Their mistake, he thought as he started to move forward, only to stop short as he caught the slightest bit of movement in the shadows of a big bush of some kind.
Not everyone is so lackadaisical, he realized. Without his low-light abilities, Aiden would never have seen the soldier until he walked right up on him, and by then it would have been too late. The man didn’t have a night vision device, but with the glow of the fire 15 meters behind him and illuminating anyone approaching, he wouldn’t need it at that close range.
Aiden crouched where he was. If there were one guard, there’d be others. For five minutes, he probed into the darkness the best he could. He counted five probables at the campfire, someone snoring in a tent, the guard in front of him, and two more guards along the perimeter. There could be others in the tents, and there were assuredly armed guards at the submarine and guarding the downstream approach. Make it a dozen or more men.
And one werewolf to face them.
Hozan’s constant admonitions to remain quiet and unnoticed flickered briefly into his thoughts, but he was able to squash them. They were too far into the uninhabited jungle for a local werewolf to pick up his shifting, and COL Tarnition had said this mission was vital. The special forces team had been briefed that this was a simple recce, getting visual confirmation on what was there. That was a lie. This was a kill mission, pure and simple. The Perro Negros were new on the drug scene, but they had already established themselves as sadistic, relentless murderers as they carved out their territory. More than that, though, there were links between them and Middle-Eastern terrorists, a new twist on the scene. COL Tarnition hadn’t been able to go into detail due to Aiden’s low security clearance (something the colonel said he’d fix), but the link between the drug lords and the terrorists had more to do with profits and a triangular trade in oil, drugs, and arms than with any political or religious leanings.
The Perro Negros were bad men, to put it succinctly, and they needed to be put down. And Aiden was to be the tool for that.
Aiden wasn’t stupid, though, and he realized that this mission was a test of his abilities, an audition for whatever top-secret organization Colonel Tarnition was building.
Aiden instinctively reached for the watch he kept in his utility blouse’s pocket—which, of course, he’d taken off and left back on the trail. He wished he knew what time it was and how much time he had to get back to the team. He didn’t want to miss the pickup and spend days trekking out of the jungle on his own.
Aiden only hesitated a moment as he blocked out his assault in his mind. The guard under the bush was his priority, and he didn’t want to fire his Tavor until he had to. The second guard was next, then the five men by the fire. After that, he’d have to play it by ear.
The Tavor was designed in a bullpup configuration, where the receiver, bolt carrier group, and magazine were placed behind the pistol grip. This allowed for a full barrel but a reduced overall length. This was great for pushing through a jungle or for MOUT[104] operations, but it diminished the weapon’s efficacy as a hand-to-hand weapon. Still, with Aiden’s enhanced strength, he figured it would be enough.
His decision made, Aiden launched into the attack. He rose up and rushed through the darkness to where the first guard was sitting. It took only seconds to close with the man who probably didn’t comprehend just what had suddenly appeared before him. Aiden’s single buttstroke caught the soldier under the jaw just as the man started to shout out.
Bullpup or not, the power in Aiden’s stroke crushed through the man’s jaw and drove the stock of the weapon up into the man’s brainpan. Blood, bone, and brain burst up into the air as the man died even before his body thudded back onto the ground.
Aiden didn’t hesitate as
he homed in on the second guard. He knew about where the man was, and as the man’s stink hit him, he knew he was close, but he couldn’t actually spot the guard until two flashes appeared before him and slightly to his left just as a couple of rounds zipped past his head. Aiden corrected his rush, and before the man could get off another round, he fired a quick double tap centered where the flashes had appeared. The dark shape in the shadows slumped to the ground.
The conversation by the fire stopped dead for a moment before shouting broke out. As a Vegas boy, Aiden knew a smattering of Spanish, and he understood the commands to the men to get their weapons, that they were under attack. With half a dozen leaps, Aiden burst into the circle of light as the men stumbled around, two reaching for rifles with three trying to get away. A couple of the men seemed to be more than half drunk.
Aiden’s varg paws were not adept at flipping the selector switch on the Tavor, so he didn’t try, and on semi-auto, took down the two lunging for their rifles, one after the other.
“Diablo!” one man shouted out, pulling a huge Bowie knife out of an ankle sheath.
Aiden had to give the man credit. Faced with a creature from his nightmares, the man stopped trying to run and moved into a fighter’s crouch, knife at the ready. Given another time and place, Aiden might have challenged the man, but there were more men there, and he didn’t have the time. Two more rounds in the chest dropped the guy.
One of the other men tried to dart back around Aiden. Aiden lunged and caught the man by his collar, jerking him off his feet. The smell of alcohol filled Aiden’s senses as the man let out a wail or terror.
The Werewolf of Marines Trilogy Page 42