visual.”
“Francis?” she asked.
“Nothing, Ma’am.”
“Gimme your NVD,” she told Caleb, who hadn’t even the presence of mind to remember to use it. He handed her his Night Vision Device, a binoculared AN/PVS-14. She made a short show of using them, scanning the dark, wooded hillside below her Squad.
Her people needed an order. She obliged them.“Don’t shoot unless you’re sure of a target,” she said. “You’re Squadsmen, not dumbass Army. So think first and then shoot straight.” Her own shotgun felt heavy in her hand. She saw nothing and heard nothing.
Caleb’s fear did not subside. Instead of offering her real information, he became more talkative. His thin blonde head bobbed up and down on his skinny neck as he sought reassurance from his Captain. “Ma’am? I did see something. I did. Could be a rug, Ma’am. I swear I’m not fucking hallucinating. Movement there.” His eyes fixed on some point in the southeast, rigid and yet uncertain.
Caleb was weak, frightened, and the least reliable of her Squadsmen. Another Captain would seek to calm him, quiet him, gently counsel him into being quiet enough not to endanger the rest of the Squad. Rebecca almost tried that.
“Ma’am…” Caleb said, again too loudly. “I …”
“For God’s sake, Caleb!” she hissed. “Don’t speak!”
Her instincts took hold of her.
“We’re moving,” she told Owens. “Now. Ditch the tents – ditch everything except ammo. Un-ass the AO. We’re moving to the pickup point. Now.” She turned to Staff Sergeant Adrian Smalls. “Smalls, cover our six.”
Her people were smart enough and experienced enough to follow her orders quickly and quietly. They were also smart enough and experienced enough to question her response. She saw that in their eyes, as they grabbed their ammunition – most of all, in Francis’ eyes.
“Just do it, okay?” It was worded as a question, but it was voiced as an order. “Load up and move to the pickup point!” Her people followed. The 54th was on the move.
Movement. Movement felt good. Movement kept you alive. A wolf couldn’t take a bite out of your ass if you were moving at fifty miles per hour, could it?
Since childhood, movement had been her salve. She had always been physically small – smaller than the boys, smaller than the other girls, smaller than anyone in her classes in school, smaller, always, than she would have liked. She was small, but she was also fast – preternaturally fast, it sometimes seemed. She’d learned to walk at age one, and she’d once outrun her own father at age five, at an unexpectedly eventful picnic in Prospect Park. She’d won the Brooklyn races for her age group at age 13, despite the competition of athletes that were the best of the borough. At age 19, she’d humiliated her own drill sergeant at boot camp. In her most private moments, she’d liked to imagine her scarlet hair as the bright red tail of a comet.
Rebecca and her people were moving – running. They were moving fast – as fast as they could, anyway. The trees snapped by them; the bushes brushed their knees. Their tents and their food were behind them. Their guns were in their hands, and their ammo sacks smacked painfully against their hips.
They ran. Air filled her lungs. The continent was a deadly, terrible place but, oh, how the crisp forest air kissed her mouth and asked to be consumed. The air in New York City had always blessed her when she ran, with its intoxicating, life-giving oxygen. But here in hell, the air was, paradoxically, even better, unbetrayed by the scent of living man.
They ran. They still weren’t certain that wolves had marked their position, so their flashlights were turned off, and they struggled to recover their way through the wooded hillside as they were trained to do in the dark – hands in front, proceeding from memory, eyes straining to rediscover the path they had made to get to their hilltop camp.
A howl arose from the darkness. Rebecca and her people stopped.
It began deeply. It began to the west, behind them, but definitely not far enough behind them so that they could hope that they hadn’t been followed.
It began as a low moan, like the moan of a once powerful but now dying man. It rose, both in volume and in pitch. As it grew louder, it became the wail of the banshee, the plea of the damned. It reached crescendo. And then it was answered.
A dozen – then two dozen – other voices joined it out of the night. The moans rose now not only from the west, behind them, but from the east, before them. The moans rose from the north. The moans rose from the south. It was a chorus of moans, and now Rebecca and her troops knew that they were surrounded.
To a civilian, the sound would have signalled death. But Rebecca and her troops were not civilians. They weren’t even regular Army. They were SAWS Squadsmen. They had more than a nodding acquaintance with the methods of their enemy. To them, tonight, the moans were a tactical mistake.
“Ma’am?” Owens smiled, as he dropped to one knee and pointed his weapon. “Not more than 15 or 18 of them. All sides.”
“Maybe a few more, Ma’am,” Francis told her. “I’d say 20 to 25 rugs, Ma’am. Nothing we can’t push back at.”
Rebecca felt some of her old courage return to her. Wolves were smart. But people were smarter. The wolves had meant to intimidate them, to frighten them, to let them know that they were surrounded and that a confrontation was inevitable. They had achieved that.
They had also given away their positions, and the strength of their numbers. Rebecca now knew that she had 20 Squadsmen against maybe 24 of the enemy. And she had a clear idea about where the enemy was. This was shaping up to be a fair fight.
“Lights,” she commanded.
Twenty strong flashlight beams hit all sides of the woods surrounding her Squad.
“I want the sharps to shoot first and the front men to hold back until necessary,” Rebecca said. “Fire at will when you have to, but only after it’s necessary. Let’s see what they’ve got before we give them the full treatment. You know what to do.”
And they did. The first charge didn’t happen until five quiet minutes later, and it was repelled at once. It was one drone at first – thin, desperate, and starving. It was white-furred, and it rocketed toward them from the underbrush to the north. Her people’s flashlights found it quickly.
By its looks, it was a Melville Island Wolf – Canis lupus arctos, Rebecca’s mind flashed – which was fairly unusual this far south. Owens cut it down when it was fifty feet away.
The next two charges came instantaneously with the first wolf’s death – one from the northwest and one from the south. Bushes rustled, and black ravenous forms shot forth like hungry bullets from both directions. The charges happened quickly enough that Rebecca knew she wasn’t dealing only with drones. There was a lieutenant operating here, she decided, coordinating the enemy’s movements. It was probing her defences, using the less intelligent animals as Judas goats.
Owens squeezed off two – then three – shots, and missed the attacker to the northwest. It barrelled toward the Squad. The beams from the flashlights seemed to make it more difficult to follow. Her people were the best, but they weren’t machines. Their hands wavered and searched, and the beams from the flashlights made confusing shadows flash across the trees. As it raced toward Rebecca and her people, it – or its shadow – seemed to jump sideways, forward and back again. For a moment, Rebecca imagined, it moved as fast as she could.
Francis’ single gunshot announced the end of the attacker from the south.
“Front men!” Rebecca screamed. Seventeen shotguns sounded, firing in all directions. The New Jersey woods around her were filled with flying metal.
The thunder from her own defences stung her ears. She resisted the urge to cover them.
When she recovered her equilibrium, she saw that the wolf from the north still jumped, but harmlessly now, and easily visible. It shook and gyrated in a newly wet patch of wild grass ten feet away. Most of the drone’s hindquarters were now missing, but it still stru
ggled to move, to leap, to pursue. Rebecca didn’t know if it was reflex or instinct or just the rabid hunger that always characterized its caste.
It had white fur, but the way its mortally wounded body twisted and shuddered in the still-dancing shadows, she couldn’t yet identify its subspecies.
Besides, she had other concerns. The lieutenant here was a sharp one. It would have had to prepare the drones in advance for so well timed attack. She waited for the next charge.
She waited for a full seven minutes. They all did.
When nothing happened, she decided to move her people again.
“Move!” she ordered. “To the pickup point!” She led the withdrawal of her troops by moving quickly, as always. She was the fastest of her peers, as always. And, as such, she was the first of them to see the wolf lieutenant.
It was proud. It was strong. It was beautiful, in an abstract sense, she decided.
It stood between two pine trees, maybe thirty feet from her Squad to the north-east. It was one of the big greys, a Canadian timber wolf. Its coarse grey fur shone in the errant light that her Squadsmen’s flashlights cast during their hasty exit. Its yellow eyes reflected that light like angry twin stars. It was muscular. Its upper body was sinewy and pronounced, and its thick neck supported a broad, fog-coloured head. Its eyes met her own.
Its eyes didn’t show the singular imperative – the overwhelming