Call of the Wild (15 page)

“Yes, ma’am,” both brothers said before bursting into laughter. They laughed at the long-standing joke, and they both laughed in relief because both of their worlds had suddenly become right again.

Now that he could speak, Doug filled them in on how he and his family had tracked down Laura, and his surprise and joy to see her up and walking again without her wheelchair.

“She still has a ways to go. The physical therapist works with her daily, strengthening the muscles. Her legs have lost that spindly look, though they are still skinny. It’ll take another three to six months for Laura to be completely well again,” he said as his eyes got misty.

Carrie didn’t try to hide her tears. She let them fall as her husband handed her his handkerchief, and put his arm around her shoulders. He didn’t try to stop her; they were happy tears. He didn’t say anything; he was too choked up.

After they finished eating, Matt decided it was time to talk about the upcoming attack in West Virginia.

“I’m not sure what the FBI can do to help, Matt. There will be people all over the place, shifting as the need arises. We can’t take the chance of them seeing something they shouldn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to nail these bastards to the wall as much as you. It’s just too risky,” said Doug.

Doug had told them about how he’d learned about shifters. Matt hadn’t told Doug his own story; now was the time.

“Let me tell you how I discovered shifters existed. Then you’ll understand how the FBI can help in this situation. About twenty years ago, when I was the SAC of a field office in Virginia, I was hunting some perps who had crossed state lines in a spree of convenience store robberies. They were known to use trained attack dogs—or so we thought at the time—and three clerks had been killed.” In deference to his wife, he didn’t mention their throats had been ripped out.

“Those poor people, what a horrible way to die,” Carrie said, unconsciously stroking her own throat with her hand. “What?” she asked, seeing the look in both men’s eyes, “You can’t keep everything from me. I read the newspapers and watch the news on the television, same as everyone else.”

Shaking his head at his wife, Matt continued telling his story. “I was out interviewing witnesses when I got a lead. Supposedly this witness believed he recognized one of the trucks the perp was driving. The address that corresponded with the license was back in the woods. I wanted to check it out, and if I saw anything worth further investigation, I was going to call in a team. What I found was an agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.”

“What was the ATF doing there?” Doug interrupted to ask.

“He was after the same guys as me. I found out later they had a thriving illegal arms business, as well as robbing convenience stores. Anyway—and this was the weird part—before I could say anything, the guy started undressing, right there in the woods.”

“The perps?” asked Doug, because he had already assumed the bad guys were shifters.

“No, the ATF guy—pay attention. Not knowing how close we were to the perps, I whispered, ‘I’m FBI. Hey, agent, whoever you are, this is not the time for a nude nature walk!’ I’m telling you, bro, I was starting to get a little weirded out. I mean, you see all kinds of things on the job; this was a new one, though.

“The man spun around at the sound. He had snuck up downwind of the Skinner brothers’ cabin. That was the name on the truck registration I had tracked. And now I had snuck up on him. You should have seen the look on his face!” Matt chuckled at the memory. “It was as if he couldn’t believe I’d gotten so close without him realizing it. Of course, now we both understand why. Anyway, I could see he was trying to come up with a story to explain why he was taking his clothes off, when suddenly he stiffened up. This guy, who I found out later was named Rick, whispers back to me, ‘Shit, the wind has changed direction. They’ll be able to smell us.’ I whispered back, ‘You mean their dogs?’ I was really hoping he would say the dogs were all chained up or something. I had come prepared. In addition to my vest, I was also wearing Kevlar sleeves on my arms…”

“What about a Kevlar cup?” joked Doug, interrupting his brother’s narrative.

“Yeah, I’d like to keep making use of the family jewels,” said Carrie, with a gurgle of laughter. She’d already heard this story before; now, ten years later, she could joke about it.

“Sorry, no such thing existed all those years ago; although there is now. I figured if this lead panned out, I’d try to come up with something. At the time, I didn’t have any contingency plan; so back to the story. I asked about the dogs and Rick says, ‘Uh, yeah, they’re dogs.’ Only he knew they weren’t dogs; they were shifters who turned into wolves.

“I pulled my sidearm. This was back in the day, there was no such things as cell phones, no way for me to call for more back-up. A low growl to the left had me swinging my arm around. No hesitation—I’d seen the crime scene photos. Bang! There was one dead dog. From the howls, I could tell more were coming.

“Not bothering to whisper now, I said to Rick, ‘I’m not sure what your problem is, buddy, but I recommend you pull out your rod—and not the one between your legs.’ Rick bent over to get his gun from the holster on the ground, just as another huge dog flew over the boulder—the rock we’d been hiding behind. Bang! That’s two dogs down.”

“How many rounds did you have in your gun? I can’t remember what kind of service weapon you carried back then,” said Doug, interrupting his brother’s story yet again.

“I had a full load—nine rounds before I would need to reload. ‘Do you know how many animals these guys have?’ I asked Rick.

“He moved, going back-to-back with me. ‘There are seven of them,’ he said, as we both scanned the area. Suddenly, we were rushed from all sides. Before I could shoot the one on the right, and one on the left leapt at me. I put up my arm to protect my head and neck, as I finally shot the animal on the right—just in time, too. My arm felt like it was in a vise. The Kevlar sleeves I’d purchased from the home improvement store were doing the job, though. It bought me enough time to swing my free arm around and shoot the animal trying to pull me to the ground.

“This time I got a close look. This was no dog. It looked like a wolf, a huge growly slavering wolf or wolf-dog, at least! Now I know they were wolves. Spinning around, I saw Rick crack the neck of one wolf with his bare hands as another leapt onto his naked back. I tried to get a clear shot. I didn’t want a bullet to go through the animal and hit Rick. Finally, my brain kicked into gear. I let myself fall to the ground to get a better angle, and shot the last wolf.

“I knelt down and pushed the dead animal off of Rick. I tried to find a pulse. I could see he’d tried to protect his neck with his hands, and they were all chewed up too. I was actually happy to hear the groan when I shifted him to his side, wishing all the while that I wasn’t causing irreparable damage to the man’s spine.

“Yellow-brown eyes filled with pain stared back at me. He had his bleeding hand clamped down on his neck. It looked like the wolf had nicked his carotid artery. He was going to bleed out right in front of me in a matter of minutes.”

“Damn, Matt, that’s harsh. I’d yell at you for not taking back-up with you in the first place, if I didn’t already know the outcome,” said Doug.

“Don’t interrupt the story, Doug. I love this part,” said Carrie.

Giving his brother a wry look, Matt went back into his memories and returned to the story.

“I had no way to get help. At the time, I believed we still had criminals to contend with. I had no idea we’d just taken them all out. A quick check of my ammunition made me realize we were in between a rock and a hard place, literally. Most importantly, I needed to get medical attention for Rick. My plan was to rig up a pressure bandage and then commandeer a vehicle from the bad guys. There was no way Rick was going on a hike back through the woods to where I’d stashed my car.

“Putting my gun down beside him, I grabbed up his shirt, thinking to make some type of pressure bandage, when I heard more growls! When I started to reach for my gun, the growls got louder. Believing we were both totally fucked, I completely lost it. ‘I’m a federal agent! Call off your animals! I have a wounded agent here. If he dies, I promise hell will rain down on you like you wouldn’t believe!’ I shouted. I knew my words were futile; criminals like this wouldn’t care whom they killed. I was trying to bluff my way out of the situation. I had to take that chance. ‘We’ve already killed seven of your wolves. Do you want me to keep shooting?’ I shouted out, thinking they didn’t know I wasn’t holding my gun.

“That’s when it happened. I thought I must be bleeding out somewhere after all, because I started hallucinating—or I thought I was. One of the dogs, a white German shepherd, went a little blurry. Moments later, this naked man walked over to me. I mean, what the fuck was that?”

“Language, Matthew James Donahue,” admonished Carrie, though she’d heard much worse over the years. It seemed her husband and his colleagues couldn’t reminisce about cases without dropping the F-bomb in every other sentence. Her six nephews were just as bad. She hadn’t given up the battle to civilize them, and they’d mostly kept their language PG around her.

“I’m sorry, Carrie. Anyway, this absolutely huge guy—and I mean
huge—
he must have been six-six and three hundred pounds of pure muscle, growls at me. He actually growled and said, ‘Explanations will come later. Right now, I need you to move; that’s my younger brother.’ I moved to get out of his way, automatically reaching for my weapon; not to shoot, just out of habit. Then I froze, because all the others, who hadn’t changed into naked muscle-bound men, started growling and showing off all their sharp teeth.

“‘I’m just going to holster my weapon. I’m not going to shoot,’ I explained. Part of me wondered where I was hit and if all this was real. I must have spoken out loud because the huge guy—whose name I later discovered, is George Soyez, said, ‘Yes, it’s real. No, you’re not bleeding out; my brother is.’ Then he turned back to Rick and I could see that even though the guy was also pretty big, he was actually a lot younger than I thought. ‘Come on, Rick! You gotta shift! Don’t you fucking die on me! I’m not about to take your scrawny-ass body home to your mate—shift!’ George yelled, and damned, if my vision didn’t grow blurry again. Only this time, it was Rick. When the blur ended, there was a white German shepherd lying on the ground. I found out later they were all arctic wolves.

“Rick—at least, I assumed it was Rick—was lying on the ground panting hard and almost immediately fell asleep. George ran his hands over the animal and smiled when he didn’t find any wounds. Then he turned his attention on me and I wondered what could possibly happen next. Kneeling on the ground, I was at eye level with the man’s junk, so I went ahead and stood. I left my weapon alone as a gesture of good faith.

“George said to me, ‘So you’re a federal agent? Which agency are you with?’ Looking down, I saw the dog or wolf or—whatever had attacked me—had shredded my jacket and you couldn’t see the FBI logo on my chest. Thank God for Kevlar! ‘My creds are in my right rear pocket,’ I told him and slowly reached for them with two fingers. I didn’t want to do anything to provoke an attack. ‘Are you going to explain what the hell’s going on here? What the hell just happened?’ I asked him.”

Matt paused in his story to take a long drink of the beer his wife had brought over to him.

“It turned out that ‘Rick’ was the younger brother of George Soyez, who was the actual ATF agent. He had been wearing his brother’s jacket and had been doing some reconnaissance. George and I became friends after that. I recruited him to join the FBI; asked him to locate and recruit more shifters. When I became a director, I had him set up a shifter unit within the Bureau. We’ve learned to stay within the law while making sure members of The Society and Shayatin saw the inside of a prison cell. We’ve also gone after rogue shifters like the Skinner brothers. That’s the story of how I found out that there was more going on in the world than most people realize. I had to agree to be under surveillance to make sure I didn’t reveal their existence.

“That was the easy part. I had no plans to derail my career by sounding crazy. No one would have believed me and I’d find myself on permanent medical leave. I did insist on being able to tell Carrie. We’ve never kept secrets from each other and I wasn’t about to start. George had me hold off on that for a bit. I didn’t know he needed to check in with others and get permission. He’d broken a few of their laws in order to save his brother’s life. George also knew that Carrie would need to see to believe, and I insisted she wasn’t going to be looking at any naked men. We drove down to West Virginia and met up with Alex Marasov. Yeah, I know Laura’s mate,” Matt said. “We’ve had a couple of meetings over the years.”

“It sounds like you’ve been a lot deeper into the culture than me. I never really had any contact with them after I found out,” said Doug.

“Once I saw what shifters could do, and once George explained what they were up against—well, that’s when I first got the idea of a shifter unit within the FBI. I knew it would be years before I could implement it. That gave me time to work on my relationship with George. After I put away some members of The Society, he was on board with the plan.

“So now you know how we found out about shifters. Next on the agenda is the upcoming attack in West Virginia. I met with George and Alex today. They filled me in. George’s unit will be there, supposedly on a fishing trip. They’ll be on hand to gather evidence and make arrests. Setting fires on Federal land, even if the fires don’t actually get set, is still a crime. Laura has gathered plenty of intelligence. We just need to find a way to get it to the FBI so it can be used as evidence of a conspiracy without revealing shifters exist; it is one thing my team excels at.”