Kitty Goes to War

Chapter 3

I COULDN’T DO much else about the lawsuit business, at least not for a while. The wheels of justice were turning, and it was in the lawyers’ hands. There’d be response, counterresponse, deal making, and all I had to do was stand aside and look innocent. What were the odds?

Or maybe Cormac would come up with something interesting, in which case there might be fireworks. I didn’t know which outcome to wish for more.

During my office hours the next day, I tried to stay focused and avoided calling Cormac, even though I wanted to, to see if he’d learned anything yet. It had only been a day. This would take time. My phone still sat on my desk, taunting me, luring me.

When it actually did ring, I jumped out of my chair to pounce on it. The voice on the other end wasn’t Cormac’s.

“Kitty, this is Elizabeth Shumacher, from the CSPB.”

That was Dr. Elizabeth Shumacher, who headed up the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology, the research clearinghouse for all things supernatural that was part of the National Institutes of Health. I’d had a long and not always wonderful association with the center, but I liked Dr. Shumacher. The center had become much more rational and useful—rather than clandestine and paranoid—with her at the helm.

I sat back down and calmed myself. “Hi, Doctor. What’s up?”

“I’m afraid . . . well, there’s no good way to put this. We have something of a problem, Kitty. We need your help.”

I recognized the tone of voice; she sounded like someone calling into the show. “Who’s we? Is it something with the lab?”

“We—” She sighed. “I guess you could say it’s the U.S. government.”

Okay, that sounded heavy. My impulse was to vehemently deny that I could possibly be of any help whatsoever. Then hang up and refuse to pick up the phone when her number showed up on caller ID. Then maybe flee the country so she could never find me again. That might have been an overreaction. “What is it? What’s going on?”

“It would be much easier to explain this in person. Would you be willing to meet with me? The sooner the better. Today, if possible.”

“I’m not sure I could get out there on such short notice,” I said.

“I’m not in D.C. right now, Kitty. I’m at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs.”

About eighty miles away, in my backyard practically.

“What are you doing there?” I said.

“I’d rather explain it all in person.” Clearly spoken in a tone of bureaucratic stubbornness.

“Is this a werewolf problem?” I said, fishing.

After a hesitation, she said, “Yes.”

Color me intrigued. “It’ll take me a couple of hours to get there, but I think I can make it.”

“That would be wonderful,” she said, clearly relieved.

I agreed, and she gave me directions about getting to the huge army base south of Colorado Springs, then what to do when I got there. I had the impression she’d set up a temporary office at the hospital there. This made me think that her problem was military in nature—or maybe she just felt more at home at any government installation, whatever the flavor.

THE NOONTIME drive to Colorado Springs was crisp, wintery, and clear. I managed to miss rush hour.

I didn’t spend much time in the Springs. It had started life as a quiet, respectable enclave for the state’s nouveau riche a hundred-plus years ago, and since then had turned into an almost Lovecraftian behemoth of urban sprawl. It’s also home to something like half a dozen major military bases and even more fundamentalist Christian organizations, which established a rather dubious reputation for ultraconservatism, giving the place a weird vibe. A couple of our pack members lived here, and it marked what we considered the southern boundary of our territory.

After pulling off the freeway, I wound my way along side roads to the main gate at Fort Carson, which looked simultaneously innocuous and aggressively military. Chain-link fence strung with barbed wire, then tall black fences, lined the street. But behind the fences lay normal-looking suburban tract housing. The gate looked like a toll plaza, but the attack helicopter parked on display outside it indicated that this wasn’t so ordinary.

Dr. Shumacher had given my name to the security guards on duty. I still had to hand them my ID and car registration, and they inspected my car’s trunk and undercarriage. I supposed it was comforting, but I still felt twitchy. There didn’t seem to be any problems, though. The guy handed my driver’s license back, gave me helpful directions to the hospital, and ordered me to have a good day.

Very carefully, I pulled away. Five minutes of driving on a long, winding road brought me to a modern building of tan brick and narrow windows. Again, I might have mistaken the area for a typical suburban hospital and neighborhood, except that in the parking lot, a lot of the cars had “Army” and “Infantry” stickers in their windows.

Dr. Shumacher was waiting for me outside the building’s glass front entrance.

She looked like a scientist, in a cool way. In her fifties, she was short and brisk, her dark hair going gray, cut in a bob around her ears, and had smart wire-rimmed glasses. Her gaze was intense, her expression serious. She wore a dark fitted sweater, a skirt, and sensible shoes.

When she saw me, she smiled. “Kitty, it’s so good to finally meet you in person.”

“Likewise.” I offered my hand for her to shake.

Inside, she guided me down a hallway to a windowless conference room, with a tile floor and off-white walls, white boards, signs of AV equipment, and a table. Nothing too sinister yet, except maybe the guy sitting at the table. He wore a crisp green army uniform, with all the bells and whistles, lots of insignia I didn’t know the meaning of. He had eagle pins on his shoulders. He was tall, broad, with short cropped hair and a drill-sergeant stare. He stood when we entered the room. His stance was aggressive, shoulders back, spine straight, ready to leap. He was probably never anything but aggressive.

“Kitty, this is Colonel William Stafford. Colonel Stafford, this is Kitty Norville.”

As I had with Shumacher, I reached my hand for him to shake before he could decide not to offer me his. He studied me hard, assessing me, and seemed skeptical. Worried. But maybe he wasn’t worried about me.

“Thank you for coming, Ms. Norville,” he said, firmly and politely, and some of the tension left me. He sounded genuine. We all sat at the table.

“I’m happy to help, but what is this all about?” I said, my curiosity becoming overwhelming.

They glanced at each other, the confident scientist and assured colonel, and looked chagrined. As if they were debating over who was going to explain it. As if they were embarrassed. The colonel fidgeted with the corner of a manila folder in front of him. I waited. I could stare them down.

Dr. Shumacher started. “You remember Dr. Paul Flemming, don’t you?”

“As much as I would like to forget about him, I remember.” Dr. Flemming had been Shumacher’s predecessor at the CSPB and one of my least favorite people ever.

“I believed that none of his projects had advanced past the conceptual stages. My intention had been to start the center on a clean slate, with complete transparency. Do some real science instead of Flemming’s secret project version of it.” Her half-smile was too pained to show real amusement.

I waited, keeping my mouth shut. What monster had they discovered frozen in some forgotten NIH closet? My imagination failed me.

Shumacher continued carefully. “You remember that Flemming was particularly interested in military applications, and whether the military could effectively utilize soldiers possessing paranatural traits?”

I might not have figured it out if Stafford hadn’t been sitting next to her looking guilty. But the pieces fell into place. Shumacher was talking about nearly indestructible werewolf soldiers, immune to gunfire, physically strong, possessing immense stamina and wicked killer instincts. When the CSPB went public, Flemming had been disgraced before Congress and vanished. All his secret projects had supposedly been shelved. That had been my understanding. Weaponized werewolves were such a bad idea.

I tried not to be furious. “Are you telling me Flemming’s lycanthrope soldier program went forward?”

“No, it didn’t,” Shumacher said quickly. “At least, not officially.”

“But unofficially?” I said. I was starting to understand the looks of chagrin.

Colonel Stafford pulled a five-by-seven black-and-white photo from his manila folder and slid it across the table to me. Looking like a snapshot that had been cropped and blown up, it showed a youngish man, maybe thirty, supremely confident, his shoulders square and solid. He looked at the camera lens with an adventurous glint in his eyes and a curl on his lips. He wore a beret, a dark T-shirt, and camo fatigue pants. The colonel didn’t have to tell me—this was one of the army’s best and brightest. The photo radiated it.

“This was Captain Cameron Gordon,” Stafford said. “Top five percent of his class at West Point, went on to Special Forces—Green Berets.”

“And he did it all while infected with lycanthropy. He was a werewolf,” Shumacher said.

“How did he manage that?” I said, in awe of the man. Sometimes I barely managed to keep my life functioning, my werewolf and human identities working together, without running screaming into the woods. Captain Gordon must have been superhuman.

Stafford answered. “Near as we can figure, a lot of careful planning. He always had favors to call in so he could get time off on nights of the full moon. People covered for him, he never got caught. He was careful. And he was too good for the army to let him go the time or two he did screw up.”

I could also speculate that Gordon had been infected with lycanthropy young, as part of a well-adjusted, functional pack where he learned a high level of control. He’d known exactly how to handle his werewolf side.

Shumacher picked up the story. “When Flemming was exploring . . . possibilities . . . regarding lycanthropy and the military, he recruited Captain Gordon. I don’t know how Flemming knew about him, but he did. I believe the two worked together until Flemming was forced to go public. By that time, Gordon had deployed to Iraq. You know that Flemming destroyed many of his records. I’ve been trying to reconstruct what work the two of them did, but I haven’t had much luck. Then Colonel Stafford called me.”

I said, “So Flemming really did it. He really did put werewolf soldiers in the field—”

“That’s just it,” Shumacher said. “Flemming didn’t have anything to do with this. He never authorized any implementation of his plans. He never did anything but interview Captain Gordon—but that put the idea in Gordon’s head. Captain Gordon did everything else on his own. He independently created his own squad of werewolves, without authorization.”

Stafford pulled out another photo, this one showing seven men, including Gordon, all fully decked out in badass army gear—helmets, backpacks, rifles, boxes of ammunition—posing as a group for the camera. They were all fit and strong, holding rifles in assured grips; a couple of them smiled confidently. If I hadn’t known they were all werewolves, I might have missed some telltale signs, or attributed those signs to their military background. But studying the picture, I could tell: Gordon was the only one standing, putting him in the position of dominance—he stood like an alpha. The others crouched, knelt, or leaned around him. A few of them didn’t look at the camera at all. They instinctively didn’t stare, which is an expression of challenge among wolves. I could almost smell them.

“Gordon wasn’t stupid,” Stafford said. “He took his time and picked likely candidates from the Special Forces. He maneuvered to get his people transferred to the same base, if not the same unit. He infected them himself, and trained them himself, all on the sly. He was in Afghanistan by this time. I think he saw a need in the mission, and he set out to fill it.”

I looked at the colonel. “When did you find out about this? How much did you know when it was happening?”

“Not enough. Gordon acted on the principle that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. And he was right, to a point. His squad had an amazing record in Afghanistan. It was one of the most successful units we’ve fielded out there. They handled the terrain like it was nothing, they could travel for weeks without support, get to places nothing else could, track down damn near anything. They didn’t need body armor or NVGs—”

“NVGs?”

“Night-vision goggles,” Stafford said. “We had them hunting Taliban leaders in the Kunar Province, in the high country. Their success rate was . . . was worth everything, we thought.”

“And then what?” I said, a chill twitching my spine. They kept using the past tense.

“There was a mortar attack,” Shumacher said. “Captain Gordon was one of several people caught in the explosion.

“It turns out a big enough explosion can kill a werewolf just fine,” Stafford said, deadpan.

“I know,” I said, my own bitter experience tainting my voice.

“The folklore doesn’t say anything about werewolves being killed by explosions,” Shumacher said.

“That’s because most of the folklore was in circulation before explosions of that scale existed,” I said.

“After Gordon’s death, everything fell apart,” Stafford said. “The remaining members of Gordon’s unit became unruly, I guess you’d call it. Rebellious. Insubordinate. We tried to appoint another commander—they refused to follow orders. Then Vanderman killed Yarrow.” He pointed out the two faces on the unit photo. The two biggest guys there, of course. Vanderman was a burly no-neck white guy. Yarrow was equally burly, with lips turned in a half grin, half snarl.

Stafford continued. “We wouldn’t have known who killed Yarrow, except Sergeant Crane reported the murder. He went to the base commander and asked for help. In the morning, he was dead, too. Ripped to pieces, same as Yarrow. That’s when we drugged the rest of the unit, took them into custody, and brought them home until we could figure out what to do with them.”

“That must have been some picnic,” I said. I didn’t want to imagine what that must have looked like and resisted an urge to look over my shoulder, as if the army werewolves were nearby, waiting to pounce. I didn’t want to get anywhere near them, not if they were as dangerous as I thought they were.

Shumacher gave me a grim frown. “That’s when Colonel Stafford called me. Unfortunately, I’m not much of a werewolf psychologist. I’m guessing that what happened in Afghanistan was some atypical pack behavior—”

“Gordon was the alpha,” I said. “He held the pack together. As long as he was there to lead them, the others had a center, a reason to stay in control. His word was law, and without him—no law.” I tapped the photo, pointing to Vanderman and Yarrow. “These two look like the strongest left in the bunch. I bet they fought it out to see who would lead them next. Vanderman won. After that, I’m thinking Crane deferred to his human side. He stayed rational, saw what was happening, and reported it to get help. Vanderman killed him for insubordination.”

“That was my feeling,” Shumacher said. “I’m glad to have the validation.”

I shook my head. “These guys had no independence under Gordon’s leadership. Without him, they don’t have a clue. They’re running on pure instinct—especially if Vanderman killed Crane for going outside the pack. That shut down any chance of sanity they had. I’ve seen this kind of thing before—do you realize how dangerous those men are?”

Stafford looked even more uncomfortable, if that was possible. Holy crap, we weren’t done with the story yet?

“We thought we could work with them, rehabilitate them, maybe even return them to the field,” the colonel said. “From a training and tactical standpoint, these men are incredibly valuable. We had to try something.”

“Not to mention the fact that they’re too dangerous to release on a medical discharge,” Shumacher said more softly. “We had to either find a way to retrain them or find a way to heal them.”

Neither of them mentioned a third option, but I could see it in their expressions, in the way their gazes kept dropping, in the tang of anxiety touching them. Oh, God, they hadn’t already . . . what did I even call it—terminate the experiment? I glared at them, my hands resting in front of me, my shoulders tense. Aggressive body language, daring them to stand up to me. A stalking wolf. Stafford’s eyes widened—he recognized the stance. He’d probably seen in it his rogue army wolves.

“It’s time for you to tell me why I’m here,” I said. “You don’t think I can help these guys become happy, well-adjusted werewolves, do you?”

“It’s more complicated than that—” Stafford started.

“It’s more urgent than that,” Shumacher said, leaning forward. “We never had any intention of bringing an unauthorized civilian in on this. If all I needed was advice I’d have just called you. But I needed to warn you, and we need your help. Kitty, Gordon’s unit escaped custody. They left Fort Carson this morning. They’re on the loose, and they’re heading north.”