Without Warning

by Darrell Maloney

  Back home one didn’t dare venture into the woods without the repellent. It was as important as a hunting rifle, or bullets for the rifle.

  Why didn’t the handlers who set up this mission think about such things?

  He looked at his hands and forearms. They were covered in tiny welts and pink smears of blood.

  Some of the blood was his, he knew.

  Much of it came from… who, exactly?

  He wondered how the mosquitoes filled their bellies with blood when there were so few men in the forest.

  Maybe they caught up with Ilov and Fidor. He hoped the tiny creatures drained them dry.

  Then he realized the blood smeared all over his arms from crushed mosquitoes must have come from another source. That there weren’t enough humans around to sustain them.

  Was it deer blood, those little pink smears all over his body? Caribou, maybe?

  Perhaps bear?

  That thought made him shudder just a bit.

  He looked around, wondering whether he was being watched at that very moment.

  It suddenly occurred to him he dropped his rifle in the fall.

  It hadn’t been important before.

  Now it was… somewhat critical.

  He didn’t see it. Had he somehow dropped it at the crest of the cliff as he’d fallen over it?

  What the hell good was it back on the cliff?

  He tried to stay calm as he scanned the area around him.

  He saw it… or at least a piece of it. A few inches of the wooden stock, sticking out from beneath a bush.

  Fifteen meters away.

  It might as well be fifteen miles for a man who couldn’t move more than a few inches without incredible pain.

  He had to overcome the pain. He had to get that rifle. It was only a matter of time before something… something bad… stumbled upon him or followed the scent of the blood that had soaked his pant leg from his open fracture.

  The worthless appendage which used to be his leg.

  He was told there were bears in these woods.

  But that wasn’t all. There were also wolves and wolverines. An occasional mountain lion too.

  He was doomed unless… unless he could get that rifle.

  He held his breath, drew all the courage he could muster… and lunged toward the butt of the rifle.

  And almost instantaneously passed out from the pain.

  -34-

  When Vlad regained consciousness his face was in the dirt, he was drenched in sweat, and the unprotected parts of his body were covered like a blanket in mosquitoes.

  Some dead, others feasting.

  His hands were swollen to twice their normal size from dozens of welts.

  He wasn’t sure he could fire the rifle if a passerby picked it up and placed it in his hands.

  He examined his new position.

  It was just a few inches closer to the rifle than he was before.

  The sun had passed over him and was still high in the sky.

  Fourteen, maybe fifteen hundred hours.

  He’d been out for a couple, maybe three hours, and was unmolested save the mosquitoes.

  That was an encouraging sign.

  Wasn’t it?

  Then he remembered that the largest predators… the bears and the wolves and the mountain lions… they typically didn’t hunt on hot summer days. Covered in heavy fur as they were, they preferred to lie in the shade beneath trees and save their hunting for later in the day.

  He wasn’t off the hook yet.

  He heard a fluttering off to his left and turned his head to look.

  That was the first time he discovered he wasn’t alone.

  The vulture had been sitting there, perched on a large boulder a stone’s throw away. If he hadn’t fluttered his wings to chase off the mosquitoes, Vlad wouldn’t have heard him, wouldn’t have known he was there.

  For a couple of minutes they watched each other.

  Studied one another.

  Glared at each other.

  “Go away, you bastard. You’re not eating me today.”

  The bird didn’t fly. Didn’t move. Didn’t even twitch.

  Apparently he disagreed.

  One thing Vlad could reach, strapped into a holster on his left side, was the 9mm Ruger handgun he was given when he left the boat.

  It had been inaccessible, wedged between himself and a rock, until he made the desperate lunge for the rifle.

  He’d pulled away from the rock and could now reach the weapon with a little bit of effort.

  He wasn’t sure how effective a 9 mm bullet would do against a black bear or a fast-moving mountain lion.

  But he was sure of two things.

  First, that it was better than no weapon at all.

  And second, if one bullet wouldn’t stop such a beast, several bullets just might.

  He dragged the weapon out of its holster and used both hands to take steady aim on the vulture before him.

  The scavenger held his ground.

  Maybe he didn’t know what a handgun was or what it meant.

  Or maybe he saw Vlad’s hands shaking badly in the miserable condition he was in.

  Vlad pulled the trigger.

  The weapon fired in a thunderous roar.

  He missed the bird by a considerable amount, which frustrated him mightily.

  The fact it was startled by the sound of the shot and flew away didn’t brighten his disposition a bit. He knew it would be back.

  Or others like it.

  Half a mile or so west of him, a team of four Canadian Mounties and three tracking dogs stopped short.

  They heard the shot and looked at one another.

  It didn’t sound like a rifle.

  But from that distance, in heavy woods, sounds are distorted.

  It could have been a hunter.

  Or it might be the man they were hunting for.

  Without a word they went on. Perhaps a bit more cautious now.

  The dogs, they weren’t cautious at all. They were hot on a trail that had yet to go cold. In fact, it had gotten stronger since they started, as Vlad dropped more and more sweat on the ground the farther he went and the faster he ran.

  Vlad couldn’t hear the dogs, barking and baying and practically dragging their handlers through the shrubbery. From half a mile away the forest took the sounds and swallowed them whole.

  But soon… very very soon… he’d hear them.

  The vulture came back, this time with a friend.

  Vlad cursed them both, the cheeky bastards.

  He leveled the handgun at them again, then thought better of it.

  He wasn’t sure how many bullets the gun held, but they’d given him no extra magazines.

  He remembered hearing two of the other soldiers arguing about how much ammunition they’d be getting.

  He seemed to remember one man saying their handgun held fifteen shots.

  Another argued, saying the correct number of bullets was seventeen.

  Vlad, he hadn’t a clue. He was a good shot with the rifle, but had only fired a pistol twice in his entire life. Once to kill the two hunters.

  The second time, three minutes before.

  Russia isn’t a nation which allows its citizens to run around carrying handguns.

  That’s true of all communist countries, by the way. Those are nations in which the leaders are brutal, but also cowardly.

  They know that if they give their citizens weapons, some will decide to get even.

  And that just wouldn’t do.

  Whether the gun held fifteen bullets or seventeen or even fewer (nobody said the magazine had to be completely full), he’d already wasted nine shots.

  He’d save the rest for the bear.

  -35-

  Exactly what Vlad was waiting for was anybody’s guess.

  The instructions he’d been given directed a bullet to the head if he was wounded or if capture was imminent.

  The Russians, it was apparent to all, preferred their
soldiers kill themselves rather than be taken alive. Suicide was preferred over being captured.

  Apparently Mother Russia didn’t raise her sons so well and fully expected them to spill the beans on the operation if they were captured and interrogated.

  And Vlad almost certainly would have, for he was weak in both mind and body.

  If he were waiting for his comrades to rescue him, it wasn’t gonna happen.

  If he was waiting for his badly fractured leg to miraculously heal before he ran out of water… well, that was just as likely as the Red Army rescuing him.

  In other words not…

  The pain in his leg subsided now, as the nerves in the leg started to shut down. It was one of the human body’s mercies. When a limb is so badly injured the pain is unbearable, the pain sometimes goes away. The pain is replaced by a tingling feeling or a feeling of numbness.

  The problem is that this usually doesn’t happen until the injured is close to death.

  The truth was, Vlad knew he had only one option left: to put the gun against his temple or in his mouth or under his chin and to pull the trigger.

  He was just scared to take that step.

  Vlad was a coward. He always had been.

  Oh, he tried to convince himself he was big and bad and brave.

  But deep down inside he was a scared little man, afraid to do anything which caused himself pain.

  He was staring at the pistol, pondering the last act he’d eventually take, when he heard something in the distance.

  It sounded like… dogs.

  But that made no sense.

  Dogs didn’t live in the forest.

  Did they?

  He was confused.

  Perhaps he’d heard wolves. Wolves were like dogs. Yes, they were much bigger. And much more dangerous. But they were essentially canines, right?

  Wait a minute. But wolves don’t sound like dogs. Wolves howl. They yelp. But they don’t bark. At least not the wolves Vlad had encountered in zoos or seen on television.

  Vlad was confused. He was close to delirium now. When he fell it wasn’t just his rifle that was thrown beyond his reach. His backpack, which he was stupidly carrying in his hand when he fell, was flung far beyond his reach.

  He couldn’t even see the damned thing.

  The backpack is where he carried his water as well as his rations.

  He’d gone for twenty hours or more without a drink of water.

  It was taking its toll.

  The barking and baying of the dogs was getting closer now.

  They were almost upon him.

  He readied his handgun, sure they’d find him at any second.

  This time his hand would be steady, his aim would be true, he tried to convince himself.

  Even as his hands were shaking like leaves in the wind.

  In his confusion, in his delirium, he pictured himself a mighty warrior.

  And if he never had the chance to shoot down an Amerikan, the next best thing, maybe was…

  Shooting down a pack of dogs.

  As it turned out, the dogs were much smarter than Vlad himself was.

  They were smart enough to stop at the edge of the cliff instead of tumbling over it.

  Vlad looked up, toward the sound of the barking.

  On the cliff’s edge he saw not only three tracking dogs, going crazy because they’d finally found their prey.

  He also saw two Canadian Mounties, pointing rifles at him.

  Wait a minute, he thought to himself.

  Canadian Mounties don’t carry rifles, he thought in his confused mind.

  Ah, but they do when they’re in pursuit of a murderer.

  He raised the handgun in their direction, though he wasn’t sure whether he was going after the dogs or the Mounties.

  He furiously pulled the trigger, not once but several times.

  And wondered why nothing happened.

  It finally occurred to him, even as the Mounties fired back in self-defense and their bullets tore poor Vlad’s heart to shreds…

  That he finally knew how many bullets he’d been given.

  Nine.

  Vlad’s very last thought before his brain shut down forever was rather odd.

  It wasn’t, “Oh my gosh, I’m gonna die!”

  Or, “Farewell, Mother Russia! Please tell my mom I love her.”

  Or even, “Screw you, world! You won’t have me to kick around anymore!”

  No, his final thought wasn’t any of those things.

  It was, “Why in hell would they give me such an odd number of bullets?”

  In the end it didn’t matter whether the gun had fifteen, seventeen or nine bullets.

  Vlad was just as dead.

  The Mounties didn’t know that Vlad’s pistol was empty.

  They only knew he was pointing it at them.

  And that, by anybody’s standard, requires an immediate and deadly response.

  There was only one winner in this spectacle.

  It obviously wasn’t Vlad the Snorer, who lay dead in a heap while the Mounties buzzed around him, securing the scene.

  It wasn’t the Mounties, for they’d hoped to take him alive so they could ask him why he murdered the hunters.

  It wasn’t the vulture and his friend, who’d have to look elsewhere for their next easy meal.

  It wasn’t the mosquitoes which swarmed around them, for while the Mounties and search dogs would make for tasty temporary snacks, they’d soon be gone. And they’d take what remained of Vlad, who they’d been feasting on for days.

  No, the only true winners in this episode were the dogs, who’d be rewarded back at the Mountie station with all kinds of things: praise, neck rubs, doggie treats.

  All were prime rewards in tracking dog world, and let’s face it: Those things are really the only reason they do what they do.

  Otherwise they’d lie in the shade and sleep all day, like normal dogs do in the summertime.

  Within two hours, spurred on by the mosquitoes, the Mounties recorded everything at the scene on digital cameras and old-fashioned notebooks.

  After another half hour the helicopter finally arrived to recover the body and everyone left.

  The buzzards swooped in, just in case some pieces of human flesh got left behind, but they were disappointed.

  Vlad left behind an impressive amount of blood, but nothing more significant.

  The body was taken to a nearby morgue, where Mountie detectives would pore over it for days.

  The incident was written up in the local papers, and eventually word would get back to Russia. The article would include an artist’s rendering of Vlad’s face, as it was considered poor form in Canada to print an actual photo of the deceased.

  Still, Russian authorities would match the artist’s rendering against their file photo of Vlad. They now knew why he failed to report at his first checkpoint, and would eventually report to Vlad’s family that he died a hero instead of a deserter.

  Vlad finally achieved something unique in his family. He did something none of his brothers or sisters had.

  He died for his country and was considered one of Mother Russia’s heroes.

  Perhaps, in the end, Vlad was a winner after all.

  -36-

  The following day Vlad’s body lay on a slab in the Regina, Saskatchewan morgue.

  It had already been fingerprinted, and x-rays of his teeth had been taken. A DNA sample was easy to take, for he was covered in blood.

  Detectives had already determined he had no police record. At least not in Canada.

  Interpol and FBI requests would be in by the end of the day, but of course they wouldn’t show anything.

  The man lying before them, as far as they were concerned, was a less-than-law abiding Canadian citizen.

  Canadian citizens are supposed to carry identification on them at all times.

  Vlad didn’t.

  Canada has stricter gun laws than the United States. All handguns in Canada must have a unique se
rial number, which must be registered to an individual.

  The serial numbers on both his hunting rifle and his handgun were filed off and the weapons were therefore untraceable.

  Still, they were both models which could be purchased at any Canadian gun store.

  So was all his clothing and gear.

  There was absolutely nothing which indicated to the detectives that Vlad was Russian.

  For all they knew he was John Bennett from Toronto.

  Still left to be determined was why the man killed two hunters three days earlier.

  And that would remain a mystery forever.

  The Mounties closed their case a week later, determining the man was likely a Canadian rebel, a scofflaw who thought silly things like regulations and laws didn’t apply to him.

  They determined he probably lived off-the-grid, somewhere in the woods near where the hunters were shot.

  They guessed the hunters probably surprised him while he was doing his own hunting, and so angered him that he shot them both dead.

  Nothing else, really, made any sense.

  In the end, Canadian authorities had one chance, and one chance only, to discover the Russians’ plot to attack the United States from Canadian soil.

  And that single chance was frittered away.

  -37-

  June 10, 1035 hours local

  Anaheim, California

  Cyndee Mason’s world had just come crashing down, and she couldn’t for the life of her understand how her parents could be so cruel.

  It was a week before her high school graduation. Anaheim High was decorated from one end to the other in its school colors. There were plenty of banners here and there congratulating its newest crop of graduates.

  It should have been one of the best times of Cyndee’s life.

  But her parents had… well, they’d just ruined everything.

  Cyndee and her boyfriend Jared Whitaker had been sweethearts since junior year.

  Jared was a good kid. An athlete and scholar with above average grades, a car and a job to boot.

  He was by far the most mature boy she’d ever dated. He seemed to actually have a future, unlike many of the boys she’d gone out with.

  Initially, Cyndee’s parents approved.