The Werewolf of Marines Trilogy

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  Aiden whirled back to the second man, or maybe boy. Aiden didn’t think he could be more than 15 or so. The young insurgent stumbled back, his hand still wrapped around the hose of the hooka. His eyes were wide with fear. He held out his hand, whether offering the mouthpiece for Aiden to puff or to ward off the demon who’d appeared in the hut, Aiden wasn’t sure.

  Despite himself, Aiden broke out into the laugh typical of vargs, which could be quite terrifying to humans. The boy jumped back at that, falling on his butt and then trying to scramble back. He opened his mouth to scream, and Aiden lunged at the youngster, trying to reach him before he could shout, and knocking down the hooka from the table. The boy got out one cut-off yelp before Aiden connected with a paw on the side of his head. The blow knocked the boy out cold.

  Astride the boy, Aiden bent to tear out his throat. His varg demanded it. But his human clamored for attention. He was supposed to leave a witness, and the boy had been scared shitless. Whatever story he told probably would be much more fantastic than that of a more seasoned fighter.

  He looked at the smooth face beneath him, a face that had never seen a razor yet. He yearned to bite, to taste the young blood, but he controlled himself, getting up and moving back to the first man.

  That man was still alive, barely conscious, and struggling to breathe. A gash from the top of the man’s bald head bleed freely. Aiden pushed on the man’s forehead, exposing the neck before biting down, tearing as much of the throat out as he could. With blood spraying, he stood up with both hands around the man’s mandibles. He put one foot on the man’s chest, then heaved. The head popped off easily, throwing Aiden, who had expected it would take much more force, backwards and on his ass. He crashed into the table and landed on the hooka, breaking it into several pieces.

  The severed head dripped blood over him as he got back up and went to the unconscious boy. He placed the head in the boy’s lap, facing it to look at the youngster for maximum impact when the boy would open his eyes. Aiden took a moment to admire his handiwork.

  He started for the door, but something made him stop and pick up the broken hooka. He put it back on the table, arranging it the best he could.

  What the fuck am I doing? he wondered. Just leave it!

  With one more glance at the hut, he moved to the door and stopped, sending his senses out to see if an alarm had been raised. It was quiet.

  Too quiet, he realized just as he pushed open the door. He jumped back as a burst of fire raked the front of the hut, splinters flying from where some of the rounds hit the door.

  Shit!

  It was unreasonable, he knew, to think he’d have a carte blanch to kill the insurgents one-by-one without anyone else noticing. Still, he’d really liked to have gotten into the other building before anyone saw him.

  Another round burst through the night, knocking chunks of stucco out of the walls. Aiden kept low and crept back over the body of the dead insurgent and back to the far corner of the shack. The young insurgent was still in repose, an almost peaceful look on his face as he slackly held his comrade’s severed head.

  Going out the door would likely get Aiden shot. While he could survive a round or two, he didn’t relish the idea, and enough rounds or just the one seeing-eye round that found something vital could take him down.

  In Afghanistan, there had been a shkaarzan, a werewolf hunter, who knew how to target and kill them. Aiden doubted that any of the five men in the other building were the Iraqi equivalent of a hunter, but they were seasoned fighters, and that could be enough.

  The front door was out of the question. There was no back door. But there was a back window of sorts.

  Aiden crept to beneath the window. It was small, and while Aiden thought he might be able to squeeze through, that would hold him up enough to be an easy target if any of the men had a line of sight on it. So the window was out, too. That left making his own exit.

  Aiden looked at the back wall, the one away from the third building. It was stucco like the rest, and he was pretty sure he could break through it. But he had to do it quickly. He wasn’t sure if the other insurgents would stay inside their building or not. If Aiden were in charge of them, he’d send his men out to surround the attacker, but the dark could be a fearful place for the superstitious, especially when the coalition forces still ruled the night.

  At least Aiden hoped they were fearful.

  Fortune favors the bold! he thought as without wasting time to contemplate it, Aiden stood up and charged the far wall, hitting it low and hard with his shoulder.

  And he bounced back, wincing in pain. The wall had bulged outward, but somehow, the stucco had held together, unlike his shoulder. It was on fire. If he were still in human form, he knew he’d have broken it. As it was, it had taken a pretty serious hit.

  He gingerly rotated his arm, and the shoulder grudgingly obeyed his commands. It was hurt, but still operable. He pushed the pain aside and compartmentalized it, still present, but not interfering with what he had to do.

  He looked at the bulge in the wall. One more blow would break it down, but he didn’t want to risk his shoulder again. He tentatively gave the bulge a soft kick, but he realized his foot wouldn’t fare any better than his shoulder.

  Use all your resources! he reminded himself.

  When in varg form, werewolves tended to rely on pure muscles and teeth. They ignored the basics of technology and civilization. Aiden was still far more human than varg, though, and he strove to keep that human connection. He had survived the fight with the Council assassin in Ramadi because he had not remained mired as a varg when his opponent had.

  Aiden picked up a chair and swung it clumsily against the bulge, where it smashed, barely damaging the wall any more. He needed something stronger.

  There were two AK’s in the room, one on the floor and one still on the table. The AK-47 was known for being almost indestructible, which was a huge benefit for ill-trained soldiers who did not know how to care for weapons.

  Aiden picked up the one on the table, clumsily dropped the magazine, then ejected the round in the chamber. It wouldn’t do to shoot himself.

  He stepped back to the bulge, and after contemplating the weapon for a moment, took it by the barrel, and swinging it like a golf club, hit the bulge with the heavy stock.

  Vargs were not as good at punching or swinging as humans were. Their shoulders were not constructed that way. But a golf swing was something they could do. The first swing broke out a chunk of stucco. The second swing shattered the stock of the AK, but blew out enough of the stucco that Aiden could fit through.

  Aiden dropped the ruined weapon, crouched down, and with a short prayer, dove through, rolling on the dirt outside before jumping up and sprinting around the first shack. No fire reached out to follow him. The insurgents in the third shack had evidently stayed put, or at least, they were not anywhere where they could see him.

  With his back against the first shack’s wall, Aiden stopped for a moment to plan. He could just leave. He’d killed three men in a most gruesome way and left one witness. That was half of the mission right there, and he had full authority to cut the mission short if he deemed it necessary.

  But the other half, that of the captured operative still stood. He knew the Air Force or CIA had drones ready to strike to take care of that “problem,” but that just didn’t seem right. There really was no choice. He had to continue.

  He loped in a broad circle through the saltbushes, using them to block the view of the five insurgents in the third building. A baby was crying in the last building, and a woman was trying to hush it, and both were interfering with Aiden’s concentration. He had to know if the five insurgents made a break for it. He tried to focus on the insurgents and ignore the baby.

  As he reached the path, Aiden made a quick detour to the dead insurgent on the ground. He picked up the man’s AK, and then keeping the second hut between him and the third, took a prone position and low-crawled to where he could just see it. He aim
ed the AK at the building, but his claw would not fit in the trigger guard.

  Very carefully, Aiden shifted only his right forefinger into its human shape. This actually took more effort than the almost mindless full shift, but he needed to be able to fire the weapon. He leveled the AK at the building, then let loose with ten rounds.

  To his surprise, he heard a shout of pain from inside the building as he jumped up and sprinted 20 meters further to his right. He unslung his Tavor as he ran and emptied a magazine at the building. There weren’t any repeats of the yelp after the first rounds, but Aiden hoped that by firing two different weapons, the insurgents would think there was more than one enemy out in the dark. That could keep them buttoned up inside the shack.

  The five buildings were not aligned, but were in sort of a semi-circle. The front door of the third building, where the five insurgents were, was kitty-corner but facing the front door of the second building. The still-crying baby was in the shack on the other side of the third with the fifth shack curving around again to almost face the first. The first was empty, the fifth, which was out-of-bounds to him, had at least four people inside, three being female. There were also two goats inside it, which didn’t surprise Aiden much.

  Aiden had taped another magazine to the stock of his Tavor, so he ripped it off and re-loaded. He fired two more rounds for good measure, then took off at a sprint, crouching to reveal as little of himself as possible. No one fired, so he didn’t think he’d been spotted as he ran along the back arc of the shacks until the fourth shack, the one with the baby crying, gave him a clear approach to his target. He realized that there could be an insurgent in the fourth shack, but the raw fear which emanated from it seemed to indicate that all the living insurgents were together in the third.

  Now, the crying baby was an asset. The noise drowned out any slight sound Aiden made as he turned and ran to the shack’s walls. He risked a glance around the corner of the shack to take in his target. He was facing the back left corner of it. The front door was out of sight. Two windows, though, would give anyone inside a good view of Aiden if he dashed up. Even in the dark, they couldn’t miss him. And that still left the problem of getting inside. His shoulder still hurt from smashing out of the second hut, and more than that, if he had to batter his way in, the insurgents inside could simply fire through the walls while he was doing that.

  He couldn’t just dash over and turn the corner to enter in the front door, either. Even if no one saw him through a window, they would certainly have the front door covered. He regretted leaving the grenades back with his pack; they’d have been a nice help.

  Another thing on my list, he made a mental note. A varg combat harness.

  He looked around, fishing for ideas. He saw a large plastic barrel filled with water, but he discarded the idea of using it as a battering ram almost immediately. Even if he got it rolling, it would simply smash open against the shack’s wall. A metal pole was on the ground by him, but while he thought he could jam it through the stucco, that would only give him a one-inch hole, not an entry.

  Inside the shack, he could hear talking. The more Aiden waited, the more time the insurgents had to come up with a plan.

  Never, ever give the enemy the initiative. In combat, action almost always trumped inaction, and he knew he couldn’t just stand there like an idiot in the dark, waiting for them to call for reinforcements or simply come up with an effective plan.

  Think, Aiden!

  He caught sight of an old, beat up donkey cart sitting behind a discarded transmission. It wasn’t very big, but the locals tended to over-engineer things like this, making the carts from whatever they could scrounge. He looked back, and he was pretty sure the cart was not within view of the insurgents. It was worth checking out.

  He passed the glassless window opening of the shack as he moved out, and whether from his passage or just a slight breeze, the ragged cloth that acted as curtains blew apart. He looked in to catch the eye of a middle-aged woman sitting on the floor and holding the now-snuffling baby to her breast.

  Aiden jumped back, knowing the oil lantern inside had lit him up.

  Shit! he thought as the woman screamed, one hand up and pointing at him.

  The shouts from the insurgents raised in tempo. They knew where he was.

  It is what it is, he told himself. So just work this out!

  He ran to the donkey cart, jumping over the transmission. It was only about six feet long, a wooden platform mounted on four mismatched tires. Two simple shafts, to which Aiden figured the donkey was harnessed, were wired to the front of the cart. Aiden gave it a light shove with his foot and grunted in surprise at its mass. He took a look underneath. The wooden platform was mounted on what looked to be truck leaf springs. He pitied the donkey that had to haul this thing around, but the heavy weight was just what the doctor ordered.

  Aiden took the cart by the shafts and horsed it around so it was pointing in the general direction of the third and fourth huts. It took a bit of effort to get it moving, but it was easier than he’d expected to keep the cart rolling. He had to dig his feet into the dirt to stop its momentum as he pulled up alongside the shack with the woman and baby. He glanced in the window opening, but the curtains looked to have been secured.

  Aiden contemplated the cart again. It probably weighed 300 or 400 pounds, or over twice his own weight. If he could get it fast enough, it should smash right through the poorly made walls of the shack. The shafts, though, worried him. He didn’t want them to take up any of the force by breaking.

  That should be easy enough to fix, he thought, as he reached down, grabbed the first shaft, and pulled up on it while simultaneously pushing down on the front of the cart with his other hand.

  The shaft shattered. He moved to the other and broke it as well. He got behind the cart and started to ease it up to the corner so he could start his charge, but while pushing from behind, the front wheels seemed to have a mind of their own and started turning, guiding the cart away from the protection of the wall.

  He stood there, stymied. It had seemed like such a good idea, and he knew he was running out of time for any other idea to pop into his mind. He moved to the front of the cart to see if he could rig some sort of steering mechanism, but he gave that up quickly. In disgust, he kicked at the front of the cart—and it moved back almost in a straight line.

  From the back!

  He quickly horsed the cart around once more, this time with the back of the cart facing forward. He pushed it to test, and while it was much straighter, it still faded to one side. He’d have to lift the front end while he pushed it.

  Aiden was strong—very strong. But to lift one end of a 400 lb cart while pushing it at top speed might be pressing his capabilities. There was no getting around the fact, though, that he’d have to try if he was going to accomplish the mission.

  He swung his Tavor around so that it hung in front of him. He took one deep breath, lifted the front end of the cart, and started pushing for all he was worth like a lineman on a blocking sled. He cleared the corner of the shack, and almost immediately, he heard a shout from one of the window openings in the third building. Aiden was building up speed, though, and he hoped it would be too late for any insurgent to take action.

  A burst of gunfire belayed him of that thought. Aiden lifted up his end of the cart a little higher as he crouched a little lower, and two rounds slammed into the wood of the cart’s platform, the heavy planks stopping them cold.

  Four or five seconds later, Aiden lowered his end again for one last push, and 400 pounds of cart and 160 pounds of werewolf slammed into the side wall just under the window. The wall never had a chance, exploding into a million pieces as cart and werewolf exploded into the room.

  The shock of entry dazed Aiden, but as if in a snapshot, he saw one insurgent being dragged under the cart, another alongside the near wall, a bloodstained leg propped out in front of him, and three very angry-looking insurgents, swinging their weapons toward him. If his gra
nd entrance had surprised them, they had recovered quickly.

  The cart gave a bounce, and a second later, Aiden stepped on the limp body that had taken the brunt of his entry. He instinctively knew that was one down. He vaulted over the slowing cart, swinging his Tavor in front just as the fat insurgent directly in front of him opened fire. He might have recovered from the shock, but the sight of Aiden in mid-flight made him jerk his aim high. Several rounds went over Aiden, but not all. One round pierced his ear, the pain almost non-existent in his battle fury.

  The fat man never got off another round as Aiden drilled the big target before landing on the floor and rolling. There was no furniture in the room, only a hodgepodge of rugs covering the floor. But while that made maneuver easy, it also left the fields of fire open for the remaining three insurgents. As two of them fired, Aiden stuck out one foot, altering his direction, and continued to roll, cutting the legs out from one of the standing insurgents. He reached over and pulled the screaming man towards his chest, holding him as a shield in the best Hollywood tradition so his own man could shoot him. It didn’t quite happen that way, though. The other insurgent, a 30-something scarecrow of a man simply stopped firing and scuttled to the side to try and get a clear shot. The man ins his grasp was screaming bloody murder as he batted at Aiden with his one free hand. It might as well have been a kitten’s paws for all the good it did.

  Aiden struggled to keep his shield between the scarecrow and him while the scarecrow juked and jived to get a clear shot. Aiden couldn’t even shoot back as he’d lost his Tavor during his roll, and it lay on the other side of him across the room.

  The insurgent in his arms was convoluting like a beached salmon, and Aiden was afraid he’d slip free. He struggled to his feet, still using the man as a shield, still whirling to face the scarecrow.

  “Fuck this shit,” he said in his varg growl as he launched the hapless insurgent right at his companion.

  Aiden followed the launch with a leap of his own, crashing into both men a split second after the two bodies collided. All three went down.