SNAFU: Wolves at the Door

Semper Gumby Steve Coate

Robert Neidermeyer grabbed hold of the straps securing him in the back of the C-130 Hercules. He felt a jolting impact with each turbulent shudder of the aircraft’s hull. Around him, the other members of his squad paid no heed to the rough and tumble ride. Neidermeyer straightened in his seat and willed his hands to release the straps holding him in place. It was his first active-duty mission and he wanted to impress the others in his squad.

Lieutenant Ron Bradley strode from the forward cabin, bellowing to be heard above the roar of the plane’s four powerful engines. “Okay, ladies! The pilot has informed me we are at cruising altitude, so feel free to remove your restraints. We’ve got another couple hours before we reach the drop zone in Tikrit, so make sure your tactical gear and chutes are ready and then feel free to natter on about the latest dress your favorite celebrity is wearing, or hold a knitting circle, or whatever it is you ladies do best during your down time!”

A chorus of “Hoo-ah!” filled the cabin and the lieutenant — the LT — showed them his back before returning to the forward cabin.

Neidermeyer unlatched his safety straps, reached for his M16, and performed a quick check of the weapon then the rest of his gear. When he had made sure that all was in working order and in its place, Neidermeyer looked across to where Jack Howling Wolf sat opposite him. The big Indian held a combat knife in one hand, his eyes fixed on its silvery blade.

Neidermeyer leaned to his right and elbowed Joe Leeds. “Hey, what’s Tonto’s deal?” he whispered, tilting his head toward Wolf.

“Don’t let him hear you call him that, man,” whispered Leeds. “Wolfman’s full-blooded Navajo and he don’t take any shit about it. Watch what you say, or he’ll kick your ass, newbie or not.”

“I didn’t know.” Neidermeyer held up a pair of placating hands, leaning close to Leeds. “But what’s the deal with him and the knife? It’s giving me the willies.”

Leeds grinned, his pearly whites a stark contrast to his ebony skin. “You’re new, so you haven’t heard the story yet.” He turned toward Jack. “Hey, Wolfman! Newbiemeyer wants to hear the story about your blade. What do you say?”

Wolf raised his gaze from the keen edge of the silver blade to look first at Leeds then to Neidermeyer. With his eyes never leaving the new soldier’s face, Wolf flipped the knife into the air where it spun end-over-end until it fell prey to gravity and continued its descent, the flat of the blade slapping into Wolf’s outstretched palm. “Cuts Like a Knife. 1983. Bryan Adams. The album was released to great commercial success and few singles of the day sold nearly as well as the title track, particularly from Canadian artists such as Adams, who was made popular by love songs.”

“Wolfman Jack, baby!” Leeds thrust a forefinger through the air. “Dropping musical knowledge left and right.”

Wolf balanced the knife by the tip on the pad of one outstretched finger. “This knife saved my life in Mosul. I keep it with me for luck. And protection.” A slight movement of the finger caused the knife to topple to one side, where Wolf caught the hilt in his other hand. “Before I transferred to this unit, I was part of an eight-man squad tasked with what was supposed to be a simple rescue mission.”

“They never are,” Leeds interjected.

Neidermeyer looked to the man and saw that others in the unit were crowding close to hear the story.

Wolf looked at the lean, dark-skinned soldier. “Who’s telling this story, Leeds?”

Leeds bowed his head and his voice dropped an octave. “You are. Sorry.”

Wolf nodded. Whether in forgiveness or agreement, only he knew. “We’d just been dropped into the shit. It was 0200 hours when we hit the ground. We figured we’d catch the enemy napping, hustle our guys, a pilot and a journalist out of there and be done with it. Little did we know the shitstorm we were walking into. It was a complete eleven up, three down, eight up situation.”

Jack Howling Wolf and Lieutenant Rudy ‘Hawk’ Hawkins hustled to the next available cover, keeping their weapons trained on a fixed point ahead, ready to fire if the enemy should present themselves before the unit could reach their destination. The next fire team, comprising Jester, Hulk, and the only female soldier, ‘Swerve’ Raiborne, moved past Wolf and Hawk to the next vantage point, where they covered and waited for the third and final team — Slim, Doc, and Preacher, who moved forward to the next point.

Wolf and the LT advanced once more, but when they reached the first fire team, Hawk signaled for a squad-column movement. The fire team followed behind Wolf and the LT, who repeated the hand signal when they reached the second fire team. Moving ahead in this manner, they eventually came to a halt a few hundred meters from the camp.

Hawk turned to the rest of the unit and signaled no gunfire until absolutely necessary, or until fired upon. He was met with grim nods as several of the unit withdrew knives, their blades dulled with camo so the weapons didn’t shine in the moonlight.

Hawk switched off his night-vision goggles and slipped them up to his forehead. The others in the unit followed his example to avoid being blinded by the fire that burned in the center of the camp. The LT waited thirty seconds for their eyes to adjust to the darkness then signaled for one fire team to head east around the perimeter of the camp, and another to the west. Wolf and the LT would take the more direct route.

As the two soldiers crept closer to the encampment, Wolf spotted a lone enemy moving along the far perimeter of the camp. Two more soldiers stood sentry outside what Wolf guessed to be a command tent. While Wolf looked on, Swerve emerged from the shadows across the camp, snaked one hand around the perimeter guard’s mouth, and drove the blade of her Ka-bar into one of the man’s lungs, stealing his ability to scream an alarm. Swerve dragged the twitching body into the darkness and Wolf lost sight of them both.

Wolf and the LT stayed out of the line-of-sight of the command-tent sentries and crept into the nearest tent, where four of the enemy slept, unaware. They went to work with their knives, moving from one sleeping enemy to the next. When they had done, the desert sand drank the blood the marines had spilled.

As they exited the tent, Wolf noticed the command-tent sentries were no longer at their posts. Swerve stood outside the tent nearest and when she saw Wolf and the LT, pointed at the command tent, raised two fingers and then drew another across her neck. Jester and Hulk emerged from the tent at which Swerve stood lookout, and read her hand signals. They looked to the LT who motioned for them to clear the perimeter then converge on the command tent.

Wolf and the LT made another bloody visit to the next tent as the other fire teams finished up the rest. Once this was done, the three teams converged on the command tent. Still no prisoners, which Wolf knew meant one of two things: they were either inside the command tent, or they were already dead and disposed of. The LT signaled breach orders then Hawk unclipped a flashbang, pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade inside.

The flashbang did its work. Screams of alarm followed the explosive light and sound. The LT and Wolf rushed inside, moving around the edge to the tent’s rear. The other fire teams followed, one moving left and the other taking up a position near the entry point. At the back of the tent, two bound and hooded figures knelt on the sand, one with his wrists in gleaming shackles. The restraints lacked the dull, weathered hue of iron, or the gunmetal grey of solid steel. They could only be made of silver. There was no time to ponder this oddity. Standing behind the hostages, reeling from the effects of the flashbang, stood two enemy soldiers. One held an AK47, the other a knife. Wolf took aim at the latter and squeezed the trigger of his M16, placing three rounds in his center mass. The enemy dropped his weapon and toppled to the ground next to his ally, whom Hawk had already dispatched with his own three-round burst. Ordered chaos erupted as gunfire took out the remaining targets. One of the two prisoners found his feet and rushed toward the tent flap.

“Watch your fire,” Hawk yelled.

Against all probability, the hooded prisoner made it out of the tent without being killed by friendly fire. The LT nodded toward the tent flap. “Wolf, Swerve, go get him.”

Both marines exited the tent. Wolf caught up as Swerve took hold of one of the fleeing prisoner’s arms. Wolf nabbed the hood by one corner and yanked it free of the man’s head. “Take it easy, pal. We’re going to get you home.”

The man’s head snapped around, fear alight in his eyes as he faced the marine. The man wore a disheveled Air Force uniform. “No. You don’t understand. We have to get out of here now.”

“You’re spooked,” Wolf said as Swerve cut the ropes that bound the pilot’s wrists behind his back. “It’s understandable. You’ve been held captive and mistreated. Don’t worry. It’s over now.”

The Air Force pilot’s blue eyes widened as he looked from Wolf to Swerve. “We have to go, now. The other one, he’s not like us.” The pilot stared over his shoulder toward the command-tent entrance.

“Hey,” Wolf said. “Just be glad we showed up to save your ass. We’ll get out of here just as soon as we regroup with the others.” He tugged the pilot toward the tent.

The pilot wrested his arm free of Wolf and held his ground. “You’re not listening.”

“Stay with him,” Wolf told Swerve. “I’ll get the others.” He moved toward the tent but the bellow of a great beast stopped him in his tracks. He had been around the world, set foot on four continents, yet this … sound was foreign to him. The hairs on the back of Wolf’s neck stood to attention as the beast’s eerie cry resounded through the marrow of his bones. Wolf faltered, then steeled himself. He motioned for Swerve to stay put then advanced on the tent. Gunfire erupted. Not the disciplined ‘one burst, one kill’ shooting he was accustomed to from his unit, either. This was wild, panic-stricken fire, the kind often heard from enemy troops when caught unaware.

Wolf readied his M16, and entered through the tent flap just in time to see Preacher impaled upon the claws of a great furred beast, the man’s weapon aimed skyward and firing, indiscriminately ripping holes through the top of the tent. Wolf froze as he took in the tableau of blood, entrails and viscera that had once made up the members of his unit. The interior of the tent was covered with bodies and gore. It must have also been from the enemy soldiers they had put down — there was just too much of it.

Hawk, Jester, Doc, and the others had been ripped apart by this beast that stood on two legs like some horrific mockery of a man. Wolf did not see the body of the second prisoner as he raised his gun toward the beast. It was naked except for a pair of tattered slacks and the remnants of boots that clung to the sides of its clawed, three-toed feet. A strip of cloth clung to one side of its neck. Beneath a pair of inset eyes that burned an unnatural amber, an elongated snout thrust forward. Jaws housed ferocious fangs sharp enough to rend flesh and bone. The blood of Wolf’s comrades staining the beast’s fangs seemed to back that theory.

Near its feet lay a pair of open silver shackles.

The beast tossed Preacher’s mangled body aside and whirled to face Wolf. Crouched on its haunches, it roared its disapproval at the intruder. Wolf thumbed his M16 to full auto and squeezed the trigger, backing out of the tent as he fired. “Die, motherfucker!”

Once outside, Wolf stepped sideways, out of sight of the doorway. “Get him out of here,” he called to Swerve, as he swapped out his empty mag for a fresh one.

“I told you. I fuckin’ told you!” Wolf heard the pilot say, panic rife in his voice.

With a sound between a bellow and a growl, the beast charged through the tent flap. “Holy shit!” yelled Swerve as she unloaded on the creature. Wolf saw the chickenshit pilot run for the perimeter while Swerve defended his hasty retreat. The beast seemed at least eight feet tall and despite the fusillade of bullets, it kept coming. Swerve goggled. The inertia of the impacts pushed the beast back and she even managed to make it bleed. But not for long. Where the creature’s flesh had been pockmarked with bullets, the damage repaired itself almost immediately. “It’s healing faster than I can hurt it,” Swerve yelled.

With a swipe of one arm, the creature batted away Swerve’s M16. She had barely managed to draw her Ka-bar by the time the beast’s claws sliced her throat on its backswing.

Swerve’s eyes widened in shock. Blood spurted. She fell to one side, maintaining a death grip on the blade. The beast raised its head to the sky and howled. It then loped after the fleeing pilot. With the tools at hand, there was no saving the pilot, Wolf knew, but if he moved quickly perhaps he might be able to do something about that.

He ducked back inside the command tent, making sure to breathe through his mouth so the stench of death within wouldn’t overwhelm his senses. He moved to the back of the tent, where the prisoners had knelt when he had first entered the tent. There, he found the silver shackles and the knife — also fashioned from silver — the enemy soldier guarding the prisoners had been wielding. Wolf slung the shackles around his neck then grabbed the silver-bladed knife.

A blood curdling scream pierced the night. It was soon cut short before it could give full voice to the depth of its pain. A howl. The pilot was dead. With the knife in one hand and the M16 cradled in his other arm, Wolf exited the tent.

The creature loped toward him, red-stained tongue dangling from its mouth. If not for its intimidating size, menacing fangs and claws, and the death and destruction the marine had witnessed this morning, Wolf might have thought it wanted to play. He took aim and unloaded into the advancing beast. As soon as he was out of bullets, he tossed the rifle aside and pulled the shackles free where he began whirling them through the air like a lasso. In his other hand he gripped the silver knife, blade outward. “Bring it, you bastard,” he said through clenched teeth.

The great beast halted before Wolf and began pacing back and forth on all fours. It growled at the marine, then raised its snout to the sky and sent forth one long howl. The two locked eyes; neither the trained military man, nor the preternatural creature willing to show a sign of weakness. It gave a ferocious growl and leapt.

Wolf slashed at the beast with the knife and was rewarded with a yelp of pain as he ducked a swipe of its claws. The two faced-off again. The beast paced before him, blood oozing from a gash that ran from its left shoulder down across its pectoral muscles. The beast growled, deep and guttural.

The silver shackle whistled through the air at Wolf’s side. “Rethinking your strategy, now, aren’t you, you furry fuck?”

The beast feigned a leap then slashed at Wolf with one clawed paw. Wolf anticipated the strike, sidestepping as he looped the shackle’s chain around the beast’s arm. Wolf yanked on the ends of the shackles, ensnaring the creature. It howled in pain as its flesh began to smoke beneath the silver. The creature swiped wildly with its free paw, but Wolf dodged the careless strikes easily.

In a desperate move, the creature pulled its trapped arm inward. The silver chain bit through the flesh, severing it midway between elbow and wrist. The beast howled in agony as Wolf took a step back. This time, the force of the creature’s soul-shattering wail nearly knocked Wolf off his feet. His breathing was labored. “That was for Swerve, you piece of shit.”

When the beast dived at him again, Wolf timed his own jump perfectly, flying over the creature and latching onto its back. He drove the blade into its eye, holding tight to its neck as it bucked and swayed. Grasping the blade and using it as a pinion, Wolf swung the silver shackle around the creature’s neck like a metal collar, before releasing his hold on the knife handle and grasping the other end of silver links.

Like a garrotte, he applied pressure. The beast bucked and writhed, the stink of burning fur fouling the air, but Wolf held on, desperately sawing the chain through the flesh.

Wolf yanked the chain toward him, then threw his head back and roared all of his rage and loss and pain into the sky, finally understanding why the creature howled at the heavens. But he felt no sympathy for the freak of Nature. With each sawing motion, Wolf called out the name of each squad member felled by the beast. With one final roar, he wrenched the chain back, beheading the creature. The lifeless body thumped to the ground, Wolf riding it down. He pushed to his feet then spat on the corpse.

He bent, yanked the knife from the dead thing’s eye then went about the maudlin task of retrieving dog tags from the dead. Once done, he moved the bodies of Swerve and the pilot into the command tent and stepped outside, holding a fragmentation grenade at the ready. “You were good soldiers,” he said, pulling the pin. “I hope this Viking funeral does you enough honor.” He lobbed the grenade into the tent and hustled away.

The explosion ripped the tent asunder. Flames leapt high into the air, consuming everything within. Wolf bowed his head, then turned and began to trudge his way to the extraction point.

“Holy shit,” Neidermeyer said. “You’re fucking with me, right? Having fun with the new guy?”

Wolfman contemplated his knife. “Adapt and overcome in any situation, soldier.”

“Right, I paid attention at Basic,” said Neidermeyer. “But seriously… a werewolf?”

Wolfman shrugged. “You asked.”

Neidermeyer blew air out his nose. “Yeah, I guess I did.” The others in the unit began to disperse now the tale had reached an end. Neidermeyer admired the tips of his boots. “I realize you feel you have to put the new guy through his paces, but you should know I’m less naïve than the average FNG.”

“Good to know,” Wolfman said.

“So with all due respect,” he looked to the weathered soldier. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, son.” One side of Wolfman’s lips raised in a lopsided smile revealing yellowed teeth and an unnaturally long canine that gleamed almost as bright and sharp as the knife the soldier had been toying with.