Patriot

CHAPTER 47

The campfire was still burning in the dark heart of the forest. Night had fallen swiftly beneath the canopy of tall timber where they’d pitched camp. Above the treetops, the moon blazed in a blue-black bowl of Siberian skies studded with sharp white stars. After sunset, the temperature had dropped to near freezing, and the sounds of the dense forest were amplified by the cold. The colonel threw another log on the fire, shuddered, and suddenly went very still.

Then he bent down and picked up his automatic weapon.

“Tolstoy,” Beauregard said, “you hear that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What the hell was that?”

“Wolves.”

“Wolves? They got wolves in this forest?”

“They do.”

“Well, the hell with them. Let’s eat our supper. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

“I guess I am, sure.”

In the waning hours of sunlight, the colonel and Corporal Tolstoy had pitched a two-man tent over a soft cushion of pine needles, then cleared a spot for a fire to keep them warm and cook their supper. They talked little, both men exhausted from the rough passage overland to the Chinese borderlands. Both men, alone with their thoughts, ate the meal of spit-roasted chicken and cornmeal porridge in silence.

After the feast, the older man sat back, wiping the grease from his lips and jamming a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Lighting it, he leaned back against the trunk of a mammoth evergreen and watched the sparks from the fire rise on a column of smoke and hot air. They rose high, only to disappear in the dark tangle of branches high above.

“Tolstoy,” the colonel said, sitting up and tossing a chicken bone into the fire. “You hear what I’m hearing?”

“Yes.”

“That’s howling, I believe. I don’t like wolves howling nearby.”

“No one does. Especially here.”

“Now, why is that, do you suppose?”

“Fear, sir. Too many Hollywood films, maybe. The sudden leap from the shadows, the snarl, the tearing rip of those razor-sharp teeth. I don’t know. But that fear is a human survival instinct.”

“You trying to scare the old colonel, roughrider? Telling ghost stories around the campfire?”

“I sometimes wish they were ghost stories, Colonel.”

“Meaning?”

“I grew up in Eastern Siberia, sir. Wolf attacks on remote settlements were not infrequent. Mine was attacked one night.”

“How many of them?”

“Maybe two hundred, someone said. No one could believe the size of that pack. Maybe it was a number of packs that had joined forces for some reason, or just decided to work together for their own good. Maybe it was just the ominous light of a full moon overhead. Like tonight.”

“Is that common? Packs hooking up like that? Attacking a village.”

“Well, normally, as I said, they’ll kill horses or dogs, or babies if they find one unattended. You have to understand, sir. These are animals that can crush a human skull and snap thighbones like sticks. Got a bite twice as strong as a German shepherd and that’s no lie. But nothing had happened like what happened that night. Nothing. It was like a horror movie only worse. Women and children were screaming so loud you could barely hear the wolves.”

“But wolves like to stay away from humans normally, right? You’re saying these Siberian wolves seem to have lost their fear and…”

“They’re not afraid of us anymore. No, sir.”

“The wolves in this forest. They scare you?”

“Not yet.”

“How many you figure are out there?”

“A pack, maybe.”

“But it could be larger?”

“Cooperation among some wolf packs is very common. Usually, packs are small. A nuclear family with waifs and strays of some ten to twenty animals.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about wolves for a young soldier, Tolstoy.”

“Yes, sir, I do. Most of my village was wiped out. Torn to shreds. I’m the only one in my own family to survive. I dove into a well. The wolves knew I was down there at the bottom, a big she-wolf in particular. I could see her in the moonlight, up above at the mouth of the well, looking down at me, snarling and gnashing her teeth. Very frustrated, I’m happy to say. They can hear your heartbeat from six meters away, you know. Uncannily powerful hearing. They even judge the moment when the prey is most petrified — that’s the moment they go in for the kill.”

“Jesus.”

“Oh, God, sir — watch out!”

Beauregard saw it happen in slow motion. The black shadows, maybe twenty, maybe more, leaping from the darkness into the light… circling cautiously around the perimeter of light thrown by the fire, their heads lowered, their teeth gleaming white in the firelight.

They drew closer.

The old man tried desperately to slow his heartbeat, knowing wolves can hear fear. He cradled his weapon, his finger inside the trigger guard applying gentle pressure.

“Tolstoy,” he said softly. “Where’s your weapon?”

“Inside the tent.”

“Shit. We’re going to need two weapons at least…”

“Yes, sir, we will.”

“I need to do something, okay? These bastards have picked up our fear scent… Think you can make it across to the jeep? To the .50 cal.?”

“Maybe, sir.”

“I won’t order you to try.”

“It’s our only chance, Colonel. I’m fucking petrified and they know it. Look at them!”

“Wait, I’ll try to distract—”

But Tolstoy was already on his feet and running for the jeep at the edge of the clearing. He got maybe twenty yards. In the blur of a second he went down, buried beneath four or five of the frenzied beasts, the boy’s screams silenced as the wolves ripped him apart in chunks… a frenzy of blood and snapping bones.

“Leave him alone, goddamn you!” the colonel cried, leaping to his feet. He had his weapon on full auto and he cut loose on the animals attacking the young soldier. Because of the intensity of his focus he didn’t see the rest of the pack. Didn’t see the wolves slinking around and coming up on his blind side until it was almost too late.

“Oh, no you don’t,” he said to them, whirling around and eyeing the jeep’s .50 cal. on the far side of the clearing. Wolves were advancing right toward him. He was now the sole focus of their attention and he knew he couldn’t possibly kill them all.

On they came. Their eyes were fiery red in the firelight, their bloody teeth gleaming white with loopy saliva hanging from the jawbones. Coming for him from both sides of the campfire now, more of them than before it seemed, their heads low to the ground now. Waiting for an opening. Beauregard whipped his head around and looked behind him, seeking an escape route. Nothing but dense columns of tree trunks forming a wall behind the tent.

Nowhere to retreat, you have to advance, his military mind yelled at him.

He squeezed the trigger and started spraying lead at the startled beasts as he ran straight ahead into the fire.

“You’ve got me surrounded, you poor bastards!” he cried out to the encircling wolves, flames licking at his boots.

He ran right through the burning embers, straight for the jeep. In the clear at last, two of them snapped at his trousers, but he already had one foot planted inside the vehicle. He grabbed the swivel-mounted fifty and started spraying at everything that moved. He killed and killed, and still they came. More wolves emerged into the clearing, new arrivals attracted by the noise and the smell of blood and the fear. They leaped up at him and he dropped them in midair with quick bursts of concentrated fire.

And still they came.

Worried that his ammo was running out, he grabbed his sidearm and started firing with that, too…

And just that quickly, it was over.

Dark humps and blood-soaked piles of dead wolves lay everywhere he looked around the campfire. He climbed down from the jeep and surveyed the scene. The ones who’d survived now slunk off back into the forest. Would they rally the troops and mount another attack?

He looked at his watch.

Another two hours till daylight. Colonel Beauregard lit a cigarette, smiled grimly in the darkness, and reloaded his weapon. In the morning he’d bury Tolstoy. Then he’d crank up the jeep and cross the border into China. Captain Koczak would meet him at the rendezvous coordinates and they’d begin deploying the Vulcan weapons system.

Meanwhile, he’d developed a taste for wolf blood. He heard some movement two or three hundred yards away. He jammed a cigarette between his lips and lit up, smoking furiously to get the nicotine rush.

“Bring it, you bastards,” he said softly. “Bring it.”