G.H.O.S.T. Teams (Book 2) Shifters

by Bobby Brimmer

  “Time is in short supply right now. I want to take him upstairs. See if Danny can get anything out of him.”

  “If you think you’re taking another interviewee away from us…”Jeff started.

  “Look, this isn’t a ‘you versus me’. We’re on the same side. Besides, you’re welcome to join us. Use your psychobabble to get him focused on the right thing. You’re welcome to be part of this. If Danny weren’t injured he’d already be down here trying to help you. What do we have to lose?”

  “Fine, but this is still our interview,” Mutt said.

  “Ours,” Jeff confirmed.

  “Whatever. Can we go now?”

  They agreed, which saved them the headache of me overruling them. We un-cuffed Dougie from the table and made sure the chains on his hands and ankles were secure. He was weak and I didn’t think he would be much of a threat. But, in Sickbay, with several of my teammates lying helpless in bed, I didn’t want to take any chances. Vector joined us as we made our way up the elevator to sub-level two.

  Kara was on one of the far beds, sound asleep. I guess she wanted to keep away from the constant noise and check-ins from the doctors. Erika was awake and laid down her book the moment we walked in. It looked like another cheesy detective novel, the lady on the cover wearing a fedora and trench coat. She greeted us with a smile, but quickly hardened her face once she saw Dougie.

  Danny was in the bed next to her, fast sleep. His machines were beeping and his heartbeat looked exactly as TV shows had led me to believe it should look. I waved one of the doctors over, the same Asian gentleman from before.

  “Hey, doc, is it okay if we wake Danny?”

  “As I told your friend,” he said, pointing at Vector, “Mr. Frost needs his rest. I would prefer you did not disturb him right now.”

  “It’s important, doc, or we wouldn’t ask.”

  “He is on heavy pain medication. It’s unlikely that he will be of much use,” he said.

  “Only one way to know for sure.”

  With that I walked over and squeezed Danny’s good shoulder, trying to stir him awake. After the fourth time I said his name, he finally started to come to. His eyes fluttered open and shut a few times as he tried to focus on the scene in front of him. Once he was awake, I locked onto his eyes.

  “Danny, we need your help.”

  “BD. Of course, of course,” he said, patting my arm, “I’m always here to help.”

  The doc was right; Danny was very drugged. But, he knew who I was, and hopefully had enough of a clue to help us out. His eyes darted around the room at all the faces in front of him. I leaned in so that I was the only one he was focused on.

  “Danny, I need you to read this man’s mind,” I said, pointing at Dougie, “We’re going to ask him some questions. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Of course. It’s what I do.”

  “Okay, and then I need you to show Vector what you see. We’re looking for the place where the kids are being kept. Okay?”

  “Got it BD. I got it,” Danny smiled.

  His eyes closed, but his head nodded a confirmation. We brought Dougie closer, hoping to make it easier for Danny to focus. Then, Mutt and Jeff started their questioning. They had to work slowly and methodically, and that took time. It turned out that Dougie, like the rest of the skinwalkers, rode in the back of large tractor-trailers when they were transported back to their “home”. Obviously the lack of windows in those trailers made finding the path home problematic. The views Danny was getting of the inside of the warehouse where the kids were being held were also fairly useless. He saw the kids in cages, but nothing on the inside of the warehouse gave any clue as to its location. Except for the kids and a lot of skinwalkers, it was empty. Danny also let us know that Dougie’s memories were mostly from times when he was wearing the wolf pelt, and that did weird things to his vision and the colors he could see. Nothing is ever easy.

  After a lot of arguing, we convinced the doc to give Danny something to make him sharper. I don’t know exactly what they gave him, but I think it was a shot of adrenaline. All I know is that right after they injected him, he just about jumped out of bed. Again Mutt and Jeff questioned, and again Danny probed. Again time passed. The process of making sense of Dougie’s mind was slow and tedious. Even in a focused state, Danny let us know it that it would take a lot of time to piece things together.

  Meanwhile, Vector added tractor-trailers to his list of vehicles to look for. Unfortunately, there are a lot of trucks on the road and he was going to need more to work with. Plus, it seemed our kidnappers used the woods behind the warehouse to move their captives through the park. Dougie’s mind was so scattered, there was no telling where they met up with those tractor-trailers.

  We all jumped to our feet with hope when Danny finally found out what the truck looked like. Sadly, it was a generic vehicle from one of the largest trucking companies in the country. Vector immediately gave them a call and got what information he could. He also checked on any stolen trucks, but our villains didn’t even need to go that far. It turns out that most truckers are independent contractors. This means a lot of them come and go and choose routes as they please, and so they are hard to track down. We all settled in as Danny and Vector kept searching.

  I can’t begin to explain to you how hard it was to wait there, knowing the answers were so close, but not having any way to get at them. Kara woke up and joined us at one point. She tried to help focus Dougie’s mind, but didn’t have much luck. That guy had fried more brain cells than he’d kept. Freddy was back with us by then, after learning that the Brazil team had nothing helpful. They promised to keep looking and get back to us if they found anything. Sitting there was driving me nuts. I needed to do something. So, I headed down to the armory. Once they found this place, I wanted to be armed for bear.

  I returned, my arsenal fully stocked, ready to go. Nothing had changed in the room. Danny and Kara were still working together on Dougie, desperately probing him for information. Mutt and Jeff were asking questions and working with them as best as they could. Vector’s hands were moving with speed and purpose. He was clearly pushing things as fast as he could. Erika was next to him, sharing anything she could think of which might provide a clue. Then, when we were about to give up hope, we got something.

  “There!” Danny screamed.

  “What?”

  “Ask him that again,” Danny said.

  Jeff shrugged, “You mean about their big feet?”

  “There, that’s it. He’s looking down, there’s a puddle, and I can see it in the reflection. The warehouse,” Danny said.

  “Show me,” Vector asked.

  “Okay, okay. Relax your mind. Relax your mind,” Danny breathed.

  Vector closed his eyes and waited. After a moment he started nodding and his eyes danced behind his lids. It was almost like we could see him watching it in his mind. Then, his eyes snapped open and he smiled.

  “Okay, let’s see what we can do.”

  Vector slid his goggles back on as Danny collapsed onto his bed. Sweat was rolling down his forehead as the machines next to him started beeping. The doctor came over and gave him something, trying to sooth him. I nodded in his direction and he nodded back. Kara was talking to Erika and they seemed occupied. Mutt and Jeff were holding Dougie, waiting to see if we had it. Freddy stood next to me, watching as nervously as the rest of us.

  Vector’s hands were a blur of motion, his movements almost hypnotic. I was so focused on him that I almost missed Kara falling towards the ground. Lunging forward, I caught her just before she smacked the floor. Her eyes were closed and a blue glow faded from her hands. She gave me a smile just before going unconscious. I looked up at Erika.

  “What happened?”

  “I told her I was going. She tried to help,” she said.

  “You’re not going. Freddy, give me a hand.”

  We carefully put Kara into the next bed, and the doc made sure she was just sleeping. When I turned
back towards Erika to scold her, she was standing up, heading for the door. I didn’t want to chance reinjuring her, so instead of grabbing her arm, I followed her out the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Downstairs to change. I’m going with you,” she said.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Look, they are skinning shifter children. Children.”

  “I know that. But you’re in no condition…”

  I didn’t finish my sentence before she slammed me into the wall, hard. One thing was for sure, she was still stronger than me. I sighed heavily.

  “Bruce…they’re children,” she pleaded.

  I sighed heavily, “Fine. But you stay behind me, you got that?”

  She kissed me on the cheek, smiled and headed to the locker-room to change. I shook my head and walked back into Sickbay.

  CHAPTER 27

  After hours of searching Dougie’s mind, it was almost another hour before Vector’s search turned up anything useful. At one point he projected the image he was working with on a wall so we could all see just how tough it was. But finally we had a ping. Mutt and Jeff had taken Dougie back down to holding and it was just us, my team, left talking. Erika had returned and, thanks to a few painkillers, her movements almost looked normal. I thought about arguing again, but I saw that look in her eyes. She wasn’t staying behind.

  “Okay, I found the warehouse and according to current satellite data… we’d better hurry,” Vector said.

  “You heard the man, let’s move. Freddy, we’ll head down in Vlad. Grab the troops and get there as fast as you can. As soon as we have eyes on the scene, we will give you a call.”

  Freddy nodded as Vector, Erika and I headed for the garage. Kara and Danny were out cold, and there was no reason to wake ‘em. Erika was back in work clothes, a nice pair of tight jeans, tucked into her knee-high leather boots. She had the sleeves rolled up on a white button up shirt, a black vest over top. There was a long silver knife in a sheath on the left side of her belt and a tomahawk on the right. A shoulder harness held her sidearm and several spare clips.

  Vector was wearing his black slacks tucked into his boots. His jacket and tie were gone, replaced by a plain tee shirt under a black tactical vest. A shoulder rig held his pistols, one under each arm. He’d pulled his hair back into a small ponytail and he looked ready for a fight.

  I also wore jeans, my white sneakers dulled a bit by the silver treatment they had been given. My polo was black and held in place by a plethora of straps and harnesses. I wore two swords across my back, one on each side. Both of my forearms and biceps were wrapped in various blades and shuriken. The harness that held my swords also had several sheaths across the front of my chest, knives sticking every which way. Both of my large silver daggers where in their ankle holsters, and I wore my silvered gloves on my hands. All in all, I’d say we were ready to go.

  We jumped into Vlad and took off. I let him drive as I prepared myself for what we were about to face. Full sirens and lights would make getting through traffic easier. We’d wasted hours finding their location and it was past eight in the evening. On the plus side, rush hour traffic had died down considerably. But, this was still DC, so we had to drive around a lot of cars. The summer heat was in full swing and Vlad had the AC blaring to keep us cool.

  We made our way over to 295 South down to 95 North. A quick exit onto 210, Indian Head Highway, and we were on our way. Our destination was someplace called Accokeek, Maryland. Honestly, I’d never heard of it. There was a warehouse south of the National Colonial Farm and that’s where we were heading. Vector was the first to speak.

  “According to satellite data, they are pulling up several tractor-trailers right now. Looks like they’re ready to transport an army,” he said.

  “Then we better get there fast.”

  Vlad hadn’t needed any prompting, he was already driving like a bat, or I guess dragon, out of hell. He zoomed around a few cars and our lights were still blaring. We killed the sirens far enough out so that we weren’t alerting the skinwalkers to our presence. Once we turned off of 210, I looked over to address my team.

  “Okay, I’m going to say it because it needs to be said. I want to make sure we’re on the same page. If we can get to the kids fast and keep them from harm, then we will keep this non-lethal. But, if the time it would take to knock out fifty wolves means that those children have to suffer one more skinning, we don’t take the time. Understand?”

  They both nodded, neither of their faces making me think they disagreed. A big part of me really hoped we could keep things civilized. But I knew myself too well. If we got there and I saw those kids suffering… if they were in the process of being skinned… it was going to take all the strength I had to keep myself from killing those responsible.

  Vlad turned down a few side streets, and we were finally approaching the warehouse in the distance. We debated stopping early and making our way on foot. But Vector’s satellite images made it clear they were leaving soon, so we couldn’t spare the time. Vlad killed the lights and we decided to hit ‘em fast and hard.

  The warehouse itself was huge and boring. It was at least a hundred yards long and eighty yards wide. You probably could have fit a football field in there if you tried. The ceiling was a good fifty feet high and the sides were painted a dull red. There were a series of loading docks on the end, and four tractor-trailers were backed up to them. We were heading in the front door, hoping to surprise the skinwalkers if we could. So far no one had spotted the car, so I figured we were ahead of the game. Vector transmitted the pertinent information to Freddy and the caravan and I patted Vlad on the dash.

  “Okay, pal, keep an eye on those trucks. We can’t let ‘em leave.”

  “Got it, boss. Good luck,” Vlad replied.

  We made our way over to the front door and I didn’t see anyone moving around outside. Even the area down by the trucks was still. After I used my ninja skills to help our team move stealth-fully inside the front door, I knew why.

  The warehouse was a wide open space, the occasional support beam the only thing breaking up the open floor plan. On the far side we could make out about twenty cages, each of them hanging about two feet off the ground and occupied. Although hard to get much detail from this distance, there appeared to be a man and a woman wandering around them. Between them and us, there were more skinwalkers than I could count.

  The floor was covered in blood and what appeared to be the remains of three bodies. There wasn’t enough left to identify them, but if the scraps of red cloak were any indication, they were female. It seemed that the Reds had gotten here first. Although I wasn’t a fan of theirs, I at least appreciated the effort. They’d taken out a dozen or so of the skinwalkers before getting themselves killed. I hoped we’d do better. The wolves were so busy fighting over the scraps of their kill that they didn’t notice us right away. But, the only way to get to those kids was through them.

  “That’s a lot of wolves.”

  “Two hundred and seventeen,” Vector said.

  “How can I not make a Rainman joke at that?”

  “Because you need me to save my bullets for them.”

  “Good point.”

  Right then, a sound I hope you never have to hear in your lifetime reached our ears. One of the children was screaming out in pain. He was being skinned right now and there was nothing we could do about it. Their numbers were too great and allowing them the chance to recover could prove fatal for the kids and for us. So, we all knew what to do.

  “We don’t have time to be nice.”

  The wolves turned towards our conversation and were greeted by fire from Vector and Erika. Erika was taking her time, making every shot count. My brother was also making every shot count, but he didn’t have to take his time. Headshots were dropping wolves left and right as I drew the two swords from my back. Leonardo would have been proud. The wolves were charging as a horde and I was planning to do my best to keep them off of my team
. I burst forward, my blades decapitating two lycan instantly.

  Being astronomically outnumbered is a funny thing. The logical part of your brain is torn. It knows you are almost certain to die, so it wants to run. But it also understands that when you are being charged by this many opponents, there is nowhere to run. So, for the most part it leaves you alone as it deals with its own internal struggles. The savage part of your brain is licking its chops, ready for its final showdown. But the tactical part of your brain, the part that knows it has to try and find a way out of this mess... it reminds you that people are really good at getting in each other’s way. Keeping this in mind, we moved as a unit.

  My brother was amazing. His shots were dropping, twisting, and turning the proper wolves in order to keep the charging masses from overrunning us. Erika did what she could, easily taking out two dozen wolves before she ran out of ammo. Grabbing her knife and tomahawk she joined me on our makeshift front line.

  My final confrontation with the ninja clan had been very similar to this. I was wildly outnumbered and fighting for my life. Luckily these creatures weren’t as skilled as ninjas. But, I learned a valuable lesson in that fight. When you have to move fast and do the most damage, you can’t be fancy. Less is more. So, as I swung at the charging wolves, I aimed for throats. If your blade bites deep enough, it’s just as effective as decapitation, while requiring much less force. As the bodies pilled up at our feet, we shifted right again. We did our best to cause the falling bodies to hinder them while keeping the area around our feet clear.

  Since the wolves were charging from various places in the warehouse, we were pretty lucky. We didn’t have to deal with more than ten to twelve wolves per wave. But even so, they were getting closer and closer with each surge. And then, one of the wolves broke through her defenses and dropped Erika. With her on the ground we couldn’t keep shifting, which meant we were in real trouble. It was only a matter of time before they overtook us.

  “Any bright ideas?”

  “Yup. Was just waiting for the right moment,” Vector replied.