“As I thought.” She looked at the four, and they returned her gaze impassively. Cordelia watched from the side, unsure of what the gunny was getting to.
“No volunteers, huh? Let me tell you a little bit more. You know that your squad leaders and platoon sergeant had been gone. Corporal Marcie filled in while the others underwent a special medical procedure to make them more like the colonel and the major. That means they’ll be in the line of fire that much more. And now they need help. We will have ten volunteers join each one of them—Sergeant Kimber, Corporals Kaeden, Marcie, and Ramses.
“You’ll train as a reconnaissance tactical team, a tac team where you’ll be dropped into enemy territory. You’ll scout an area and then return unseen with the information you’ve gathered. Some of you have already done some of this training. Others have not, but it only gets ratcheted up from here. You’ll work hard and you’ll be gone a lot. That’s the only thing I can promise you. The rest is up to you. And remember, ladies. The word ‘volunteer’ does not have to start with the word ‘I’,” Lacy told them.
She could see the wheels turning as they mulled over the unsavory proposition. One warrior raised her hand. It was Camilla.
“I volunteer,” she said firmly.
“Fall in on the squad leader of your choice,” Lacy told them, stepping aside to let the warriors pass.
Camilla marched straight to Kaeden, nodded, and stood next to him. She’d been in his squad before.
The rest of that squad joined her. Marcie’s squad fell in on her and Ramses’s squad joined him. Kimber stood alone, until a trickle of warriors came from the second platoon.
“The sergeant needs five more, ladies!” Lacy bellowed as she stormed toward the platoon. No one moved.
“Counting down. Five. Four. Three. Two…” She hesitated, drawing out the word. The warriors remained steadfast. “One. You, you, tall guy, you, and one more. How about you, smartass?”
Kimber wasn’t sure she wanted the one that Lacy had designated as a smartass, but he shrugged and left formation. Lacy looked at the remaining warriors. She had twenty.
“Well, ladies. That settles it. I’ll take the remaining bunch, and we’re going to train with them. So you’ll get all the pain and none of the glory. Strap in, bitches, we’re going for a ride!” Lacy grinned devilishly.
Those still in formation groaned in unison, but there were no slackers in the Force. The initial training weeded them out and after that, the training and operational tempo kept them sharp. The colonel didn’t want anyone getting lax. That was a hard and fast rule.
Lacy dismissed the platoon for the day, even though it was still the morning, with a call to report at daybreak with full packs and ready for a week in the field.
She watched as the four team leads briefed their squads. Once they released the group, she waved them to her.
“What did you learn?” she asked. Lacy had spent so much time with Terry Henry Walton that she’d picked up many of his character traits.
Ramses watched closely. His guess was that he’d earned the trust of his squad, and he wasn’t the only one who thought that.
“They trust us, their squad leaders,” Kae said, convinced he was right.
Lacy shook her head. It seemed that she had something different in mind. Marcie and Kimber didn’t offer anything else.
“People don’t like change. They’re creatures of habit. When given the opportunity to do something, they’ll do it the same way they did it yesterday and the day before. Understand that and use it against your enemies. Watch them long enough that you see the routine that they will inevitably fall into,” Lacy advised.
Kaeden shook his head and smiled. “Recon-101. Look for patterns and then look for what is different.”
“Indeed. Why do you think no one chose Kimber?” Lacy asked.
No one answered. Lacy remained silent, looking from one face to the next.
“Because I didn’t have a squad?” Kim ventured.
Lacy laughed. “The real volunteers had already volunteered. There was no one left who was familiar with you to join your team. By the way, you two are ridiculously tall now. I didn’t recognize you when you first returned.”
“I have no idea how it did it, but Akio’s pod doc is like freaking magic. You go in, fall asleep, and wake up six months later completely different—faster, stronger, and taller,” Kaeden said.
“Not me,” Ramses injected into the conversation.
“Shut up! You were already tall,” Kim told him as she rose on her tiptoes to get to eye level with Ramses. “But look at you. You’re wider than any of us. Up or out, they say!”
“Who’s they and why would they say that?” Ramses asked.
“I don’t know,” Kim answered. “It’s something that Dad always says when he sees someone with no ambition.”
“We don’t have any of those here,” Ramses said offhandedly. Cory found her way to his side.
“I love your dry sense of humor,” she purred. He accepted her praise without admitting that he hadn’t been making a joke.
The colonel had told Lacy earlier to maximize the amount of time off that the warriors received. As she saw it, the four in front of her were all her juniors and in her charge.
“Go away and enjoy your time off. I’ll see you derelicts tomorrow,” she said in a friendly voice, waving them away as she headed for the barracks.
***
“I see you are all packing pretty light. You think that’s enough for a month? You may be roughing it,” Terry said.
Fu brought a small bag while Gene brought nothing. Not a flask of water, not a sandwich. Nothing.
The Weretigers showed up with backpacks, not bursting, but filled with the best beef jerky they could wheedle out of Mayra. Shonna wore revealing shorts and a tank top, neither of which Terry or Char had seen before.
“What is going on?” Terry cried in frustration as he looked at his own camouflage uniform.
Char laughed until she started to cough. The other members of the pack laughed with her. Terry didn’t see what they found so humorous.
“You see, lover,” Char said softly, “you said vacation first, and then you delivered the oh-by-the-way direction. We’re going on vacation. All of us. You’re going on a military operation. At least in your mind. Cory picked up some clothes for you in San Francisco, so you’re going to change before you blow our cover.”
Terry shook his head. Akio had suggested they take time off while he, Eve, and Yuko continued the search using the technology available to them. It was Terry’s idea to continue the search with boots on the ground.
But it appeared that they wouldn’t be wearing boots. It looked more like they’d be wearing leather slippers, homemade sandals, or no shoes at all.
“They’re all going places where they’ve been before. They’ll be fine, TH. Give it a rest and think of it as a vacation first! By the way, you never told them where we’re going…” Char let it drift off as she smiled and pulled a bikini from her backpack.
Terry saw it, but didn’t comprehend.
“I thought we’d manage things from here,” he stammered. “There’s a lot going on.”
“TH! You have no faith in your own abilities. You don’t need to control anything here. The kids are well-trained. They’ll be fine. The FDG is well-disciplined and will continue to be a ready-reaction force, take the fight where it needs to go. All of that is because of you. You’ve given them more than thirty hard years. They’ve got it. You can manage from a yacht cruising around the Caribbean by way of your comm link to Akio.”
Char stood back and assessed the effectiveness of her speech while she dangled her bikini in one hand.
“Dammit! You’re doing it again,” Terry realized. “But you’re right. A vacation for us, too. Where’d you get that swimsuit? We have a yacht?”
“Cory, and not yet, but have faith, TH,” Char replied.
***
Kimber looked at those she considered to be straggler
s. “Expectations,” she told them. She was happy that none of them interrupted. They stood patiently and waited.
“You just showed me what I wanted to see. You need to be comfortable in the silence because we’re going places where we may not speak for days on end. We’ll need to be quiet and watch. See everything that happens. We’ll need to blend in, so I think beside physical fitness, we’re going to dig deeply into cover and concealment. After today’s run and exercises, including some hand-to-hand, we’re going to start learning camouflage. I don’t know it all, so we’re going to learn this together.”
Kimber rubbed her hands together, itching to run. She found that since getting the enhancements, her body craved physical activity and she reveled in seeing how far she could push herself. She ran like the wind, just like the others. Her parents had yet to challenge any of the four to a physical competition, but Kim and Kae were up for it.
They wanted to see where they stood, compared to someone like Terry Henry Walton, who was boosted beyond what the pod doc could do because of his relationship with the Werewolf Charumati. Akio couldn’t explain how Terry and Char’s nanocytes had morphed to become something greater than the sum of their parts.
Kim still wanted to see where she stood with the best of the best, how hard she had to work to meet the high standard that her parents had for themselves.
One of her recruits raised a hand. “How are we going to test our camouflage abilities?” the blocky young man asked. He reminded Kimber of how her brother used to look.
“That is a great question. We are going to do a recon of my husband’s farm. I’m going to go home, and the rest of you are going to infiltrate, collect data on the cattle’s movements, and then exfiltrate after two days in position. I will be actively searching for you the entire time. I won’t tell Auburn what’s going on. If I have a hard time finding you, that’s a win. If he finds you, that will be a complete failure,” Kim answered. Maybe they weren’t slackers.
She wondered if she had the cerebral crowd, which meant that Gunny Lacy had been looking out for Kim in a different way than she had imagined.
I want to be like her when I grow up, Kim thought as she leaned into a hamstring stretch.
Flying in the Pod
“First up on today’s world tour is New York City! For those disembarking here, please make sure you don’t leave anything behind and that you promptly collect your luggage from the carousel on level two,” Char announced in her best New York City accent.
Butch and Skippy stood by the rear deck, waiting for it to lower.
“Next stop, Central Park. Hang on people,” Terry said as the pod swerved from the clouds and raced downward, then quickly slowed and dropped the deck as it still descended. “Don’t forget to call.”
Terry’s last request was lost as Butch and Skippy raced into the heavy overgrowth and disappeared.
The ramp started closing immediately as the pod rocketed upwards, returning to the safe haven of the clouds. Char looked at the closed ramp, hoping that the two Werewolves would be okay. Like she often counselled TH, she needed to let go too.
They’d agreed to send the pack to the corners of the world, to expand their eyes, ears, and influence. There was only so much that technology could glean in a non-technological world.
“Next stop, Russia,” Terry called out as he watched the screen that tracked their progress. When Gene stood up, Terry continued. “We have some time. Anyone want some tea?”
The Weretigers both raised their hands. When Yanmei explained in Chinese, Fu shyly raised her hand. Char poked Terry in the ribs. “I’d like some and there are only four cups.”
Terry pursed his lips, bit the inside of his cheek, and with his head hung low, went to the small galley to make tea for everyone but himself. He returned quickly and passed out the cups with a smile. Char handed hers back to him.
“I simply cannot see my baby go thirsty,” she whispered, her purple eyes sparkling in the semi-dark interior of the pod. “I want my baby to have nice things.”
Terry sat down and watched the others. The mood in the pod was upbeat, everyone looking forward to getting away by going back to where they were most familiar.
“Real vacations. How about we share the tea?” Terry asked as he took a sip and offered the cup.
She drank and then wrinkled her nose. “I prefer coffee.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Manhattan
Butch and Skippy ran into the brush to get away from where the pod could have been seen. They remained under cover in what used to be Central Park. It had deteriorated to where it was like a jungle.
And probably as dangerous, they thought. They sniffed and listened, using their Werewolf senses to the utmost.
Wild animals. A group of unwashed humans. All of them could be easily avoided. Butch and Skippy looked at each other before stripping, bundling their clothes into their backpacks, and changing into Were form.
Two Werewolves moved through the brush, barely making a sound as they circled wide of the humans. They started to run when they hit an open area, scattering squirrels and deer alike.
Once into Midtown, they slowed, found a secluded alley, and changed back into human form. They dressed, put on their backpacks, and continued toward lower Manhattan, the financial district that Akio had indicated was starting to make a comeback.
Terry and Char had been to New York City a few times, but always to Brooklyn or Queens. Manhattan was a new twist.
“Maybe they commute?” Skippy said. “Is the subway running?”
Butch chuckled out loud. “Maybe.”
When they left the alley, an older man was leaning against the wall, watching them.
“Hello there,” he said. Skippy sniffed the air, smelling the man’s faint odor. They hadn’t been paying attention when they were changing. He cursed himself for losing focus. Terry’s warnings raged back into his head.
Butch took it in stride. “You like to watch? So does he,” she said smoothly nodding toward Skippy. “Where do you live?”
He looked sideways at her, admiring her beauty. Brown hair, brown eyes, and slender. She put on her most winning smile as she walked toward the man. He took a step back.
Not a street tough, she thought. Skippy remained where he was, letting Butch make her play.
“I’m just out for a walk, but then I saw you. You’re one fine woman,” the man managed to stammer.
An older man in a place where men die young. He was exactly what Butch was looking for.
“And I’m looking for the right man,” Butch said in her New York accent. She approached him fearlessly and took his arm in both her hands. “Let’s go to your place. I hope it’s not far.”
Butch smiled adoringly at the man. He hesitated for only a moment, never taking his eyes from the Werewolf.
He started walking with Butch at his side, having completely forgotten about Skippy.
Skippy stayed back, hoping that the man would continue to ignore him.
“It’s not far, my pretty,” he said softly. “I’m set up with a small group, but it’s nice and we have plenty of privacy.”
Butch signaled behind her back, pointing and shaking her hand. Skippy had no idea what she was trying to say. She kept looking at the older man, so she never saw Skippy shrug and shake his head.
“What do you do here, where you can stand around and watch a young lady get dressed?” Butch asked.
“I work in the steel mill. Twelve-hour shifts, six days a week, and they pay us in food. It’s a good deal. I never go hungry and have lots of time to do what I want,” the man replied proudly.
They continued toward Lower Manhattan for two blocks and then turned west at the Empire State Building. Butch and Skippy looked closely, wondering if the old girl was going to fall on them. The bricks in the street suggested that bits and pieces were coming off. When would the structural integrity fail?
A question best left to engineers and philosophers, neither of whom were there.
&
nbsp; “I’m Dwayne, by the way. I didn’t get your name,” he said.
“My name is Beatrice, but I don’t think you want to die, so don’t call me that. I go by Butch. And my partner back there is Skippy.” She stabbed a thumb over her shoulder.
“Partner? As in business partner?” Dwayne ventured.
“No. As in life partner, husband, taking the bone canoe for a ride. That kind of partner. Listen, Dwayne.” Butch stopped and turned him toward her. “You’ve made me reconsider what I intended to do. I was going to kill you, move into your place, and take all your stuff. But I can’t do that now. There was never a chance of us getting together, so that’s out, but what we really want is food and shelter. If we can join your group, get a place to stay, and then maybe get jobs at the mill, that would be perfect for us.”
Dwayne was taken aback, his hopes for a wild evening with the beautiful woman dashed. He got angry and grabbed her arm. She took hold of his hand with hers and squeezed until he cried out. She continued the pressure until he fell to his knees.
“You’ll notice that we have certain skills and if your community needs people to protect them, we can do that, too. You will feel safe with us around once we give you our word,” Butch explained.
“How can we trust you?”
“I could just kill you and be done with it. I told you exactly what we want and what we can provide in return. Our actions will earn your trust if given a chance. Now, please don’t grab me again,” Butch told the older man as she let go of his hand.
He rubbed it and carefully stood up. He looked back and forth, then bowed his head. “This way.”
Petersburg, Russia
Fu shivered as she fumbled to open her small bag. She took out two shirts and put them both on. Gene draped a big arm over her shoulders, before deciding to carry her and hold her close to his chest.
Gene breathed deeply of the brisk air. He didn’t feel cold. He had been born to this weather. He threw his head back and yelled in Russian. “Ya doma!”
I am home.
He carried Fu to the outskirts of the new Petersburg. Some had been destroyed during the fall, but the Russians were a hearty sort and many people had survived and kept parts of the city alive.
Nomad's Force: A Kurtherian Gambit Series (Terry Henry Walton Chronicles Book 9) Page 3