The Werewolf of Marines Trilogy

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  Part of Aiden’s heart sank at the words, but another part of it reveled. He wanted to personally extract revenge, not leave it to chance. He knew Colonel Tarnition—the “cat” in Aiden and Claire’s somewhat paranoid little code—was a threat to all of them; Hozan had about beat it into his brain before it had sunk in. The best thing for all of them would have been for the man to die at Bethesda, but once again, to Hozan’s amazement, the bastard had pulled through, like all of those Aiden had infected.

  And Aiden knew he was the colonel’s patron. He had no knowledge of how it had been done, but coincidences like this didn’t happen in real life. Keenan had called it Occam’s Razor, that when faced with something, the most probable explanation was probably the correct one.

  It had taken both Hozan and Keenan several hours to convince him not to drive up to Bethesda to eliminate the threat, and he’d given his word not to act without consulting them, but they evidently did not completely trust him. Well, Aiden didn’t trust himself, either, so he could hardly blame them. The next day, Aiden’s orders to freefall school in Yuma were hurriedly cut, and he was on a plane, joining the class already three days into training. Now, five days after the colonel took “sick,” Keenan had relayed to Claire that the man was going to live.

  Hozan didn’t think the colonel would ever be able to shift on his own, but then again, he had insisted that Keenan would never be able to, either. Aiden loved the man, and he knew Hozan loved him in his own way, but the blood werewolf seemed a bit miffed that Aiden, a mere kreuzung, had managed to infect not one, not two, but now three people who had survived transformation. It wasn’t “natural,” as he’d said more than once. He attributed their survival to modern medical science and nothing more.

  Claire hadn’t shifted yet, either, despite numerous attempts, and she was getting a bit bitchy about it. They’d talked about shifting together, and they’d dreamt up some unique fantasies involving vargs, but if she couldn’t shift even with Aiden’s help, then surely the colonel wouldn’t be able to figure it out on his own.

  Aiden had to put the colonel out of his mind. After Yuma, he and Claire were going to try and settle down somewhat and have as normal of a life as they could, all things considered. He and Claire needed the time to regain some normalcy in their lives.

  And outside of the stress they’d been going through, in a more relaxed atmosphere, if he managed to help Claire shift, then all the better.

  Chapter 11

  Colonel Jack Tarnition pulled down on his blouse and adjusted his tie before opening the door to his office.

  “Colonel, welcome back,” Areetha said, actually looking concerned. “I’ve got your files on your desk ready for you.”

  The colonel merely grunted. Areetha might have looked concerned, but he knew it was an act. The woman cared not one whit for him, and the feeling was mutual. The mere sight of her raised the bile in his throat. He’d tried to fire her once, but the mighty civilian employee mafia had taken him on, and to his disgust, it had won. The Pentagon was the heartbeat of the armed forces, not the government bureaucracy, yet he couldn’t get a slacker fired.

  “Get me Dr. Seagal and Major Ward,” he told her before opening the door to his office.

  It had a stale smell that he’d never noticed before.

  Probably because I’ve been gone for a week, he thought. And this crappy air conditioning here in the bowels of the Puzzle Palace.

  He started to take his seat but then changed his mind and remained standing as he waited for the two men. He didn’t think much of either of them. One was another bureaucrat just putting in his time and one was a one-legged minion, a spear carrier in the grand scheme of things. But the colonel did care what others thought of him, even these two, and it embarrassed him to have been helpless in front of them. It galled him even more that he might have the major to thank for his survival. The doctors had told him that he’d been on the very precipice, and any further delay before treatment would probably have resulted in his death.

  That realization had sobered him. He’d infected himself to become a werewolf, never really believing that his life was in any danger. So, he’d underestimated the process.

  But I survived, damn it! I made it!

  And if he’d made it, he could guide those who would later go through the process and become members of his special unit.

  Aiden Kaas would eventually have to go, of course. He wasn’t a bad kid, all told, but the colonel could not have anyone around who had any degree of control over him, and from what the kid had said about the relationship between patrons and those they’d turned, the Marine had unknowingly sealed his fate.

  But that wouldn’t happen until later, once the colonel had wrung the kid dry of every piece of knowledge the boy possessed. And that was something the colonel intended on starting immediately. He didn’t know how long before he could shift into a werewolf, but he was going to be ready for it.

  A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts.

  “Enter!” he bellowed out as he puffed up his chest ever-so-slightly.

  The two men entered together, Major Ward saying, “Welcome back, sir.”

  The colonel ignored the statement knowing it was insincere.

  “Take a seat, both of you,” he ordered.

  He remained standing and said, “This last week was a pause in our mission, and on a personal level, I want to thank you, Major Ward, for calling the EMTs.”

  It galled him to have to say that, but a true leader gave out kudos almost as easily as chewing ass.

  “But I’m back now, in perfect health. I trust that both of you have been carrying on, and I’ll want a full brief as soon as I’m back from upstairs.”

  The colonel never told anyone in the office to whom he ultimately reported, preferring simply to say “upstairs.” The E-ring on the second floor of the Pentagon housed most of the highest ranking men and women in DoD, so he rather enjoyed leaving it at that and to their imagination even if most of his meetings were in a deck below them, not on the second floor’s rarified atmosphere.

  “But for now, I want Corporal Kaas on his way up here from Bragg this morning. I want him here by 1600.”

  “Uh, sir? The corporal is in Yuma now, at freefall school,” Ward told him.

  “What? Under whose authority?” the colonel said, anger rising.

  “Yours, sir. You told Areetha to get him in the class,” Bret Seagal reminded him.

  “Well, yes, but not now. I looked at the schedule, and he’d already missed the first day before I . . . before I got sick. So how did he start? Those snake eaters are pretty anal about their schools.”

  “I’ll have to take the blame for that,” Major Ward said. “When you said you wanted him in trained, we thought that was a priority. And since we didn’t know what else you had planned for him, we thought this would be a good opportunity, so I made some calls and got him accepted on T4.[110]”

  The colonel felt a slight rise of panic that he beat back down. He wanted Kaas there beside him to let him know what to expect.

  “Well, something’s come up. Get him back now,” he ordered.

  “What came up, sir?” the major asked. “I mean, I have to give them a reason. You know JSOC, sir.”

  The colonel did know JSOC, the current fair-weather darlings of the civilian side of the government. And that infused them with an undeniable sense of hubris and feeling of primacy in the military. And that made them very prickly when others did not follow their rules. He thought about it for a moment. One call, and the four-star JSOC could pound sand, but was it worth it? Should he waste a silver bullet on getting Kaas back now? If his boss knew what Kaas was, the Marine would be flown back immediately, but the colonel had not shown his hand yet.

  No, let it go. He’ll be back in a few weeks, and if I need him before that, I’ll cross that bridge then.

  “So you think it was OK for him to miss four days of training? If the Army thinks those days are important, then you,” he said, poi
ntedly glancing at the major’s prosthetic leg, “know better about jump school?”

  The colonel knew the first few days of any school could be made up, but he needed to blame someone, and Major Ward was his target.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I just thought—”

  “That’s the problem, Major. You ‘thought.’ Well, no use ruffling JSOC’s feathers, and we do need Kaas trained. I wish he was here, but since you’ve taken it upon yourself to interfere, just let him stay for now.”

  The colonel made a show of looking at his watch, then said, “I’m out of time here. I’m needed upstairs. When I get back, I want a full report of what went on during my absence. I need to see what else you two just decided to change while I was gone.”

  He watched the two men leave, then pulled down on the corner of his blouse again. He was not looking forward to his meeting. It had been three years since his small task force was formed, and he had nothing to show for it.

  Correction, he did have something to show for it. He just chose not to reveal that just yet. But each time he reported in, he was afraid that the plug would be pulled, and he’d be forced to reveal that he’d found Kaas in order to keep the project alive.

  And knowing how things worked, the second that happened, Colonel Jack Tarnition, US Army, would be shunted aside while others took over. Before that happened, he had to be completely and totally enmeshed in the project. The only way he knew to do that was to be a werewolf himself.

  Just give me a couple more weeks, he prayed. Let me learn how to shift, and they can never get rid of me.

  Chapter 12

  Aiden wanted to howl into the sky. This was the bomb! The vertical wind tunnel during Module 1 had been fun, the big fans pushing him in the air while he learned how to hold his position with full military gear. But he’d only been suspended a few feet above the ground while instructors and fellow students watched from just on the other side of the glass walls of the tunnel. It had been a carnival ride, fun, but nothing amazing.

  This, though, plummeting through the air at over 100 MPH, the wind pushing at his googles, and facing certain death unless his parachute deployed, this was amazing! Aiden forgot about COL Tarnition and all the headaches back home.

  And to think, the Marine Corps was paying him for this!

  He looked to his right where Harris Fox, a newly minted Navy SEAL, was in free fall. The look on Harris’ face probably was mirrored on his own. Harris caught his eye and gave him a thumbs up.

  With all the secrecy surrounding Aiden, he’d begun to feel isolated and alone. Without Claire and Hozan with him, and without knowing that Keenan was up in DC watching out for him, Aiden didn’t think he’d keep it together.

  He may have joined the Corps for all the wrong reasons, but after being turned, he’d come to realize just how important the brotherhood was, how important it was to be part of something bigger than the individual. And he missed that tremendously. He didn’t want to be some secret agent. He wanted to be part of a team again.

  The free-fall course wasn’t the Corps, and he’d be saying goodbye to most of his classmates upon graduation, but for now, the soldiers, sailors, and Marines in the class were his team, and he was going to embrace the feeling again.

  He returned Harris’ thumbs up before looking down at the ground so far below, reveling in the fact that he was flying where humans just weren’t supposed to be. It didn’t get much better than this.

  Chapter 13

  Jack Tarnition grunted with the effort, but he successfully pulled down 150 lbs on the lat machine ten times. He looked in the mirror on the other side of the universal, wondering if his lats had gotten bigger.

  I think so, he told himself before switching to flex his biceps, eyes focused on his reflection.

  There was no doubt that he was getting stronger. He hadn’t come close to shifting from human to werewolf yet, but he knew it was coming. And tomorrow, Corporal Kaas was slated to return. The colonel was determined to pick the boy’s brain. He was getting antsy, like when he didn’t get his morning coffee, but a hundred times more intense. He knew something was happening to him, and he was anxious to make the leap.

  The gym helped burn off some of that nervous energy, but it had proven to be quite an ego boost. He’d never been physically as capable as his peers, so this sudden increase of strength was gratifying.

  Maybe I can get back to the POAC, he thought.

  The Pentagon Officers Athletic Club was the gym at the Pentagon, and the colonel had felt self-conscious there, fully cognizant that he was able to lift far less than most men and more than a few women. That was why he was at his condo’s less-than-optimum fitness center. It had a universal and some light dumbbells, but its biggest advantage was that there were rarely any others using it.

  With his increased strength, he might not make such a bad showing, and the POAC was a good place to network and help his career—something at which he excelled.

  Jack Tarnition’s career had always been at a disadvantage. He had tried, but he hadn’t been able to get a nomination to either West Point or Annapolis. He’d been turned down for an ROTC scholarship. He knew the military was the path for him, but no one else seemed to realize it. He ended up spending two years at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland before transferring to National University. Once graduated and armed with his degree, he applied for and was accepted to OCS[111] at Fort Benning where he’d only finished in the middle of the pack, but that had been more than enough to get his commission.

  The Field Artillery Basic Officer Leadership Course at Fort Sill followed, then his first tour at Fort Lewis. It was at Fort Lewis that his dreams of brotherhood and kinship began to erode. He just didn’t fit in with the others. He didn’t have the same interests, he didn’t hit the gym or go running with them, and he frankly didn’t know how to connect with his fellow lieutenants. He’d always had problems making friends, and he felt foolish that he’d thought wearing the Army uniform would somehow change that. After a particularly embarrassing incident in a bar, something he still remembered with smoldering anger, he’d given up the friendship and started looking out for himself.

  The colonel almost smiled as he recalled his decision. The Army had adopted the slogan of “An Army of One” a number of years back (now replaced by “Army Strong”) and the colonel had been ahead of his time, becoming a “Use the Army for #1.”

  And that is what he’d done. He forgot learning how to perform all the extra military skills, from being able to build a fire by rubbing two sticks together to using moss on trees to navigate in the forests to making booby-traps and deadfalls. He forgot about learning the specifications of every weapon in the world just to be able to take part in the inane small talk about rifles that seemed to encompass every conversation with the others. He quit trying to become a super soldier to focus on what he did best: working the system and politicking.

  He ignored his peers and focused on making himself indispensable to his senior officers. He determined what they needed before they even knew he needed it. He brown-nosed until even he was almost sick of it. He went to the dark side as well, unearthing things that three different senior officers would rather be kept a secret. And he did keep the secrets—for a price.

  And it worked. He made every promotion, all the way to colonel, and without ever having a command. He knew he needed help, though, if he was going to pick up his star, and this job was going to provide that boost.

  Still, he had an unabashed pride in making O6. Jerry Ferguson hadn’t made it. The cretin who’d de-pants him in the bar back in Seattle, shook a full beer bottle and then stuck it up his ass, and then loudly proclaimed to the laughing crowd that the “fucking fag loves it,” got passed over for major.

  “Hah, for major! And look at me! A colonel!” he shouted out in the small fitness center.

  “I’ll stick a beer bottle up your ass and see how you like it!” he went on, swinging his arm in an arch as if he was ramming the bottle into the hapless Fergus
on.

  He thought of the incident almost every day, but what had been a smoldering, not-quite-anger anymore but more of a regret suddenly blossomed into a raging inferno. Twenty-six years had passed, but to the colonel, it somehow felt as if it was happening now, that he was bent over the pool table once more, helpless and exposed.

  “Fuck you, Ferguson!” he screamed, unwilling to let it happen again.

  Motion in the corner of his view caught his attention, and he swung around with all his might. His fist went right through his reflection in the mirror, sending shards of glass everywhere. Pain lanced through his arm as the glass shredded him, but he didn’t care. He was about to explode.

  And then more pain registered, not just in his hand and arm, but a pain that pulsed through his body, a pain that wrenched his thoughts away from Jerry Ferguson and that Seattle bar and to the fact that he was dying.

  The colonel fell on the floor curled into a ball as spasms wracked him. He cried out, more of a whimper, as he knew that this was his comeuppance. That asshole Kaas had been right, he couldn’t survive the transformation. All his underhanded dealings, all the tricks and bullshit he’d been dealing were coming home to roost.

  Fire lanced through him, from forehead to toes as his body tried to tear itself apart.

  “Please save me!” he prayed just before darkness mercifully took over into nothingness.

  Chapter 14

  Keenan quietly entered the office, glancing at COL Tarnition’s office to see if his late arrival had been noted.

  “Don’t worry,” Bret Seagal said, coming out of his office with a folder in his hand. “He’s not in yet.”

  “Really?” Keenan said, happy to have gotten away with being late. “Miracles do happen, I guess.”

  Then he looked back, wondering if the colonel had taken sick again. He took a step towards the office, suddenly unsure of himself.

  “Do you think we should check the office?” he asked.