by Jade Alters
“Then take Lee. He’s chomping at the bit.”
“Lee it is, but I’m not waiting up for him. Tell him to meet me at the lean-to.”
I left Darkhorse to explain the slight change of plans to the others while I pounded through the forest as quickly as my legs would carry me. My body wanted to shift, desperately. I stopped with a groan and tore off my clothes, rolling them into a ball. I heard someone panting behind me and wheeled around.
“Reporting for duty, Captain Josh,” announced Lee cheerfully.
I let out my breath in a whoosh. “Am I getting old? I had a five-minute start.”
“Number one in special unit long-distance track. Your island is but a spot in the Denali region.”
“All right.” I placed my hand on his shoulder so he would pay close attention. The one thing that kept Lee from moving up the ranks as quickly as Ray was his astonishing selective hearing. “You circle around to the left of the burn site and I’ll circle to the right. Stay in the woods, though. If they see a bear sniffing around in the open, they might shoot at it. I want to draw them far enough inland that they can’t make it back to the boats.”
“Do we kill them?”
“No, no. Not right away. We need information, first.”
“But we will kill them.”
“We arrest them.” I couldn’t hold back the change any longer. Hair began popping out of the engorged muscles, my snout grew long, my teeth sharp and jagged. I shook with the power of eighteen hundred pounds. A guttural call rose from my throat, startling the small, wild creatures. Branches crackling behind me, I galloped through the woods as fast as my back legs could kick my front legs forward, chewing up the land in front of me with four-inch, sharper than steel claws. I had to reach the burn site before the slave traders had time to examine it and see that Natalia had not been alone, and that the helicopter team had survived. I needed to be there before they went back to their boats.
A bear isn’t the fastest land animal on earth, but at a good sprint, he can tear up some miles. I was starting to feel a little winded by the time I got a good whiff of the site. Bears are amblers. They can cover huge amounts of territory just roaming along, but they are seldom in a hurry. If you were pushing along a body as big as a freight engine, you wouldn’t be in a hurry, either.
I couldn’t see Lee on the other side, but I knew he was there. When I circled just right, I caught his scent.
I also caught another scent, and then another. Both human. I crept through the brush, my dark coat blending in with the shadows. Two men, both in dark, knit caps and leather jackets. They were carrying rifles but leaned against them casually as they examined the recent footsteps disturbing the site and wandering off into the forest. After a short argument, they turned toward the beach and pointed along the eastern shoreline.
It was now or never. I raced toward the beach ahead of them, then made a sharp U-turn, charging them directly from in front. They were too surprised to react quickly and took too long fumbling for their rifles. The instant the lead man had raised his weapon to his shoulder to take aim, he was bowled over by a giant ball of teeth, claws, and fur. His sidekick forgot he had a rifle at all. He dropped it, scrambled backward two feet, then bolted for the speedboat. I took off after him.
The bugger was fast, I have to hand him that. He had already fired up the engine and was headed out toward the bay when I caught up with him. Desperate, he grabbed a paddle and tried beating me on the head, which was pitiful. I’ve got the cranium of a brick wall. I roared and flipped the boat like it was a toy. He gasped and thrashed around in the icy water, panicking more with each passing second. I tried to rescue him. I grabbed at the back of his jacket with my teeth, thinking I would haul him to shore, but he tore his jacket loose and began swimming. I let him go about thirty yards, then pushed my front paw into the middle of his back. He spluttered, floundered like a fish with a hook in its mouth, then went under, face down. I could have brought him in, but I didn’t. I swam back to shore, while the body floated gently and lifelessly on the water.
Lee still had the fearless leader pinned down. He was slobbering over him, nudging the petrified man with his snout and making woofing sounds. “I arrested him,” he growled in bear language. It was impossible to speak human in bear form.
I roared into our victim’s face just to watch his eyes bulge and his face turn white in terror, then shapeshifted into human form right in front of him. His mouth gaped and he tried to cry out, but no sound came. I squatted beside him. “Where is Denisovich?” I asked.
He wet his lips and croaked, “I don’t know.” Lee dropped some of his weight down on his prisoner’s legs, causing him to moan. “Take the bear off me and I’ll tell you.”
Lee got up grudgingly, swatting at the slave trader’s face and leaving two light shred marks. As soon as he was free, the trader rolled over and tried to escape. I tackled him and straddled his chest. “Where is Denisovich?”
“On his way to Seattle right now. We’re recruiters. We stay on the mainland. We only came back to get rid of the girl.”
“There’s no ‘we’ anymore, just you. Where did Denisovich get the boat?”
“We bought it at a very good price.”
I made a fist and slammed it into his jaw. “Where did he get the cutter?”
“Sitka. We picked it up in Sitka.”
“Where is the captain?”
“He’s dead.”
I hit him again. “Who was the captain? Who was it?”
“Alan McCarthy. I didn’t kill him. I’m a recruiter. I don’t go out on the boats. It was Denisovich.”
“But you were willing to kill a defenseless girl.” The rage rumbled deep inside. Unable to hold back the change, I shifted back to bear form and slashed him again and again, the hot anger churning and boiling into my pads. The fury splattered in red hot blood. With his head rolled to one side, his body convulsed, then straightened.
“He’s dead,” growled Lee in bear language.
“Yeah.” Two dead slave traders, either mauled by humans or mauled by bears. Forensics could sort it out. I’d gotten what I came for. “Let’s go.”
It was nice to amble back to the cabin. Lee was a good-looking kid, but in bear form, he was magnificent. He would never get as large as a Kodiak brown, but his shoulders had a powerful girth, accented by a golden-tipped fur collar. He was sleek, with the plush velvet coat of youth and a jaw that was only beginning to widen. He would top twelve feet someday.
The crew had been getting impatient for our return and let out a cheer that was half-jest, half-genuine when we walked back out into the clearing in our human form, pretending we had just gone for a stroll. Once we had been welcomed aboard, however, the atmosphere grew serious. My team, along with Natalia and Commander Swensen, met in the captain’s cabin.
“Where to?” asked Pete.
I studied the navigation maps. “We drop the young lady off in Valdez, then we set a course for Sitka.”
Natalia responded with all the good grace and decorum I had come to expect of her. “Oh, hell no! You are not leaving me alone in Valdez. Josh, we don’t know who is on Denisovich’s payroll. If you take me to Valdez, I’m dead. You know it’s true.”
“I’ll stay with her,” volunteered Lee.
The others were making similar offers. I lifted my hand. “Natalia is right. Valdez is too dangerous for her right now. Pete, who did you talk to before leaving base?”
“Only the harbor master when I clocked out.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way. The fewer people who know where we’re going, the better. Ladies, we have a crook to catch.”
Roy
It felt good to be onboard ship again, nice to be home. That was how it felt to me. I had family in Nome that I visited with every three months or so, when we weren’t too busy with search and rescue operations or patrolling our borders. Border infractions had become fewer in recent years, although there had been a run of them shortly after the Soviet Union
fell. The biggest problem these days was floating canneries trying to steal our fish, process them, and get out before we discovered them in our waters.
Most military and law enforcement divisions were busiest during the summer months when tourists flooded in by the thousands, but not the Coast Guard. Illegal entries and criminals were usually caught by the harbor master or by mainland law enforcement. Our biggest busts were in the cocaine trade, traveling port to port.
The seas were calm during the summer months, with only a few mild storms, giving the fishermen and the big cruise ships no grief. It was those iffy months between October and December that we were busiest. Boats—any boat—will push the limits to how long they can stay in the water, watching the clouds like the hands on a clock, but those storms can blow in with so little warning, you’re an icicle before you see what’s coming. That was when our services were needed the most.
We were the icebreakers, the toughest team in the fleet. We went into the wailing arctic zone where the sun remained over the horizon for only three months, and temperatures plunged forty degrees below zero overnight. We rescued barges, cruise ships, and fishing vessels imprisoned in ice. We had the highest success rate at arctic operations because… well, we’re bears. We don’t mind sub-zero temperatures. Also, because I was the only one in the fleet who can swim with ease between the ice floes.
Still, as much as I like being a bear, I also like being human. While we were on the island, our instinct had been to retain bear form as the most comfortable means of survival, but with a human in our care, we had to abide by protocol. The protocol was, no shapeshifting in front of faint-hearted citizens. The protocol had flown out the window, but it wasn’t really our fault. I guess it wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just three days and two nights of exposure to pouring down rain and northern winds, huddled together with the kind of woman you dream about—long-legged and blonde, her eyes taking in the entire wilderness as a backdrop for her milk-and-honey skin. We could keep up the human part during the day, but at night, we needed our blubber-rich, fur-covered hides; and when hunger struck, we needed the fish. I was just glad Natalia had gotten over it. I didn’t want her thinking back on us as monsters.
Now that we were on boat, we could be fully human again, and I could appreciate the fine points. I had a marked preference for my own small cubicle on ship than a damp cave burrowed into a mountain. I don’t talk much, but I do like socializing. I enjoy live music, beer, and dancing. I like sitting around a table for dinner and shooting bull. And I really like human girls. They are so soft, even when they are swinging around clubs.
I also like tinkering with things—radios, computers, cameras—which would be very hard to do with paws. After a shower and a hardy lunch, I retired to my cabin to continue working on a gaming computer for the idle hours we spent at sea. I found it more difficult to concentrate than usual. Natalia kept entering my thoughts. While we were waiting for our ship, I couldn’t help thinking how sad it was that it would be over soon. I don’t kid myself about things. No matter how passionate an affair a seaman has, there are few women who are willing to wait weeks, sometimes months, for him to come back to their arms, especially ones you’ve known only a few days.
I had come to terms with it. I was willing to let it rest, but Natalia opened her mouth. She had directly opposed the captain’s decision to drop her off in Valdez, telling him, with as few expletives as possible for polite company, that he would be a dickhead to leave her behind. Josh doesn’t mind being called a dunderhead. He doesn’t mind being called a thick head, but to be called a dickhead was a very undesirable outcome, especially with the added threat that she would be dead if he left her behind. He agreed to keep her on board, and all the resolve I had gathered to wipe her from my mind crumbled around me like ashes.
From the look in Josh’s eyes as he brushed past me, I suspected he had made the same failed resolution. “Women,” he growled at me in frustration. “Are they just naturally right? Or are they right because they won’t allow themselves to be wrong?”
My mouth flapped a few times before words would come out. “I don’t know, sir. I know less about the whole species than you do.”
He swept by, muttering to himself and waving around his hands, with Darkhorse right behind reassuring him it was all for the best. “She’s a noncombatant,” he growled.
Darkhorse did one of those little dance steps he used to keep up with the captain and maintain his attention. “She’s a state trooper, sir!”
“Well, I hope she doesn’t troop all over our investigation.”
Those were the last words I heard from them before entering my cabin. I set the motherboard carefully into place and dropped in the screws. “She can troop all over me any day,” I whispered.
As though listening, Natalia gave two knocks at the door, then barged in. “Oh! Is this your room? It’s little. The one they gave me is bigger.”
“I think they gave you senior officer quarters. We’re working at half-crew.”
She dismissed the information with a shrug. She tiptoed around, noticing my Klingon battle cruiser and scale model Mars cruiser. “I was curious about the way you live. You really are a nerd, aren’t you? I looked in Lee’s room first. All he has is a Playstation, some superhero comics, and a Janis Joplin poster. And he sleeps on a bunk.”
She stood at my shoulder and peered at my work, making it difficult to concentrate. “He’s a petty officer,” I explained. “He usually has a roommate.”
“He’s been a bad boy, then?” she asked in a sultry voice. “He doesn’t get a big room?” I didn’t know if she was joking or not. I demagnetized my screwdriver for probably the fifth time, thinking oddly to myself, I couldn’t seem to go beyond the simple act of touching it to the mat and applying it to the tiny, waiting screw. “It’s his rank,” I mumbled. “He needs an officer’s rank.”
Something told me she already knew, but she was flirting. She patted her wavy hair and fluffed it away from her shoulders. “I’ve never been in the military. The only boats I’ve been on have been fishing vessels. I think I like this life. Do you think I could join the Coast Guard?”
She blew into my face and it smelled enough like alcohol to give me a second-hand buzz. l laughed at her. “You’ve only been on board for two hours. That’s not long enough to think you like it.”
She leaned over my worktable, allowing me a peek inside the open collar of her blouse. “Josh says we won’t reach Sitka until tomorrow. Until then, there’s not much to do.”
It was useless. I couldn’t work on the computer tonight. I set the case over it so I could pay attention to my lovely company. “It’s pretty calm sailing through here. Even the northerners are a snap.”
“There’s nothing except leisure time until then?” She dimpled when she smiled.
I was acquiring a few ideas. I locked my wrists at the back of her neck. “The commander has it covered.”
Her eyes lit up and she bounced once on her toes. “Then Darkhorse is free, too? Let’s go visit him.”
Before I could gather my wits about me, she had taken me by the hand and was dragging me to the door. “Wait. Wait,” I pleaded. “This is down time, unwinding time. Everyone likes to be alone for a few hours.”
She continued tugging. “Not this time! This is let’s-celebrate-because-we-got-off-that-damned-island time. C’mon, now. Party like a state trooper!”
It was only then that I noticed she had a bottle of champagne that she was shaking vigorously. “Open wide!” She giggled as she lifted her thumb and hit me with the spray. The door flung open. On the other side, Lee was laughing his dick off. He was similarly drenched and brandished three more unopened bottles.
I was astonished. “Where did you get those?”
Natalia gave me a big grin. “Pete gave them to me when I asked if there was any celebratory champagne for successful missions.” She dropped her voice and whispered conspiratorially, “He gave me these from the captain’s stash! I saw. It was
from the cabinet on the pilot’s deck.” She giggled some more and tucked a hand through each of our willing elbows. “I believe he was hitting on me, but I told him I was taken.” I beamed. That was a solid! Alaskan girls don’t say that type of thing unless they’re holding a full house.”
Since she didn’t think she could get anymore fizz out of the champagne after shaking it twice, it was only practical to finish the first bottle off before continuing to Darkhorse’s cabin. The more I thought about it, the more I looked forward to a visit with Darkhorse. He was the boldest, the most reckless, and the captain’s best friend. If anyone knew how to party, it was him.
We opened a new bottle, shook it, then waited outside while Natalia worked her magic. It didn’t take him long to come bursting out, already in full swing. That man could drink a bottle of wine poured off the Eiffel Tower. He caught a considerably larger amount of the spray than I had managed and grabbed the bottle, guzzling it down. “We’ve got to save some for the captain,” pleaded Natalia.
“How many bottles do you have left?” he asked.
“Two and what you have in your hands.”
“Well, I’ve got to catch up with you guys, don’t I? We’ll finish off this one, let the captain catch up on the next one, and still have one to spare.”
Darkhorse was our lieutenant. Who were we to question his decisions? We polished off what Darkhorse didn’t drink of the second bottle, then popped open the third and handed it to Natalia. She knocked once at the captain’s door and walked in. We waited, shuffling our feet and looking at each other expectantly. I felt we needed to get things moving before our buzz died off. “She must be having a hard time convincing him to go outside. You know how he can be about his private time.”
“Oh, fuck that,” said Darkhorse. “She’s in there with him. That’s not private. Let’s go inside.”
He kicked open the door, expecting Josh to be cantankerous about sharing good cheer among his fellow men, and ready to defend our rights to feeling jolly, but instead saw the captain and the lady in a very passionate embrace. “Well, shit,” he said.