Peder nodded. “Like I said. Yeti or whatever you want to call it. Did you smell the smell?”
“Damn right I did. That was one foul stench. And before you say it, yeah I know a lot of the legends talk about a foul smell. I’m not buying it. There’s something more going on here. Maybe related to some of those secrets you don’t want to tell me about. Maybe something about wolves. You almost shot me that first night when I said I saw the wolves.”
Peder let himself down onto a hay-covered seat against the wall and fixed his eyes on the floor. “Stanislav, there are things I simply can’t tell you.”
“Tell me this, then. Why do you think the wolves keep the creature away from town but not your place?”
“I do not know. I do not know how wolves could stop a creature like that anyway.”
“You’re right, there’s no way they could. How did anyone come up with the idea that they were?”
“It was Eirek. He is the one that told us he had managed to get the wolves and they would stop it.”
“And this made sense to you?”
“You have to know Eirek. This is the kind of thing he does. Even now, I do not have any doubts about that.”
“Well you should. There’s something he’s not telling you, even beyond whatever secrets you’re holding back.”
“If you are right, Stanislav, then what is it?”
Rook inhaled through his nose. “I don’t know, but I intend to find out. I just thought of Plan B.”
“What does this mean, ‘Plan B’?”
Rook chuckled. “It’s an American expression that made its way to Russia a while back. Plan A is the first choice, Plan B is the second choice.”
“And if Plan B fails?”
“Hell, in Russia we have thirty-three letters in the alphabet, so we keep on going down the list.”
“All right, Stanislav. What is your Plan B?”
“I won’t be able to kill the beast unless I get lucky. I doubt even the fifty caliber bullets would penetrate that thick skull. I’ll either have to unload a whole magazine into its legs and hope they do enough damage to take it down, or get close enough to shoot through the eyes or under the chin. None of those seem likely. So I need to go at this from another angle. Those wolves are part of all this, making Plan B pretty simple.
“Tomorrow night, I capture the wolves.”
5
Rook lay down in his bed of hay just after three in the morning. One of the old-timers had told him right when he was starting out in the military that for any soldier, sleep is a weapon. Use it when you have the chance and you never know when it might give you a small edge. Rook fell asleep in just a few seconds.
He didn’t dream this time. His eyes opened some time later, and he sensed…a disruption. Maybe a noise had woken him up. He didn’t move, but he listened for any additional sound. He heard none.
A minute later, he tried to close his eyes again. This time though, he couldn’t fall asleep. The back of his neck tingled with the sense that he was missing something. Screw this, he thought. In one motion, he grabbed the Desert Eagle and switched on the flashlight.
A man stood over him, a straight razor in his hand.
Rook fired a shot, but the light had caused the intruder to stumble enough that the shot went wide. Rook cursed and jumped to his feet. The man’s arm swung back, and then he flung the razor sidearm at Rook. Rook raised the flashlight to block the blade, and it bounced off the flashlight and nicked him on the chin. He felt no pain, but he roared in anger and redirected the flashlight.
The intruder was running, almost at the barn door. Rook raised the Desert Eagle, but the man ducked behind a large cart with a frame of iron and wooden sides. The bullets would penetrate, but probably wouldn’t do much damage, especially if the man had crouched behind the wheels.
Rook growled, and thought, Fine, no problem. Try to cut me, I’ll settle this the old fashioned way.
He charged at the cart, but then had to dodge a huge saddle that came flying over the top of the cart at him. During that second, the intruder made a bid to cover the four feet left to the door.
Even off-balance, Rook fired the Desert Eagle. He didn’t have the angle for a reliable torso shot or the stability for a head shot, but he put a bullet in the vicinity of the man’s legs. A scream of pain confirmed that it had found its target, but the tall figure disappeared out the door anyway, slamming it closed behind him.