Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr (50 page)

“Hiroshi, they have two snipers in vehicles on the north and west sides of the parking lot, armed with ninety-five-caliber silver explosive rounds. Never mind the wolves taking any of
those
rounds! I want them to take those guys first. Then there are two Terra Ultima seven-passenger armoured trucks, each with a driver and a guy riding shotgun; I want the wolves to take the agents without loss of life. Please slow the descent of this elevator, without stopping it, to give our guys time to get into position.”

“Leona, the wolves are on the ground and have spotted the two sniper vehicles. They are hitting them now.”

Leona waited to see if any of the agents reacted to any communications through the radio receivers in their ears.

“Hiroshi, so far so good—hit the rides now.”

“This elevator seems to be taking a long time,” said one of the agents.

“Everything takes longer when you’re nervous,” an older agent said.

You old fart, you’ll be sorry when I’m your boss
, the younger agent thought.

Despite the tenseness of the moment, Leona let out a snicker.

“Is there something funny?” the young agent said in a threatening voice.

“I’ll tell you the joke when you’re old enough to hear it,” Leona said.

The older agent laughed.

A cloud of anger kept the younger agent from noticing that it really was taking the elevator a long time to get to the ground.

“OK, Leona, we have taken the trucks,” reported Hiroshi.

“Anyone hurt?”

“One of our wolves was shot three times. He said he’s had worse. Two of the agents have concussions; oh, and there’s three broken arms.”

“Tell them good work. Now put a wolf in the driver’s seat of each vehicle and tell the rest of them to hide near the elevator. Tell Thor and my guard wolves that I am all right so far. Oh, and you can speed up this elevator again, before the agents get any more suspicious.”

Shortly after that the elevator doors opened. Leona stood and just looked at the agents as they gestured to her to go with them into the parking garage.

“We have spotted the convoy with Sarah and the pilots. It is three kilometers south of the airport. It looks like they are headed to a cargo terminal. We still have two hundred twenty-three wolves on the shuttle. What do you want me to do?” Hiroshi asked.

“Drop fifty wolves on the landing platform and then take the rest to that cargo terminal to get my crew back! The wolves should not disturb the First Lady and journalists—but I doubt they’re still on the roof anymore.”

Leona had not moved quickly enough, so the younger agent shoved her and she fell. The older agent helped her back up, looking apologetic.

“You’re going to regret doing that,” Leona said to the younger agent.

“Oh, I doubt that,” he sneered.

Two of the other four agents ran up to the waiting vehicles and opened the passenger doors. Only one of them managed a scream before both of them were pulled into the trucks and subdued. The wolves rushed out from their hiding places. The older agent went for his gun and then thought better of it, and just raised his hands.

The younger agent drew his gun and fired at Leona, not any of the werewolves. The bullet hit the dirt near her feet. He never got a chance to fire another round. Thor knocked the gun from his hand and picked him up by the neck.

“Calm down, big guy, let’s not kill the little pissant,” Leona thought to Thor.

“That is my husband that has you by the neck. He is not happy that you shot at me. If you can tell me about the cargo hangar, I might be able to convince him not to squeeze your head off,” Leona said to the young agent.

The agent didn’t say anything; he couldn’t with Thor holding him like that. However, his mind was racing.
How do they know about the cargo hangar?

Then he thought about the aircraft and the SWAT team guarding it inside the building. He started sweating and became afraid that he might lose control of his bladder.

“So if you were going to get the people free, how would you do it?”

The agent thought about the different ambush scenarios that had been discussed. Leona had what she needed.

“Thor, set him down,” Leona said out loud.

Thor complied and Leona walked up to the young snot.

“Remember when I said you would regret that?” she hissed.

Before the young agent could answer, she kicked him in the groin. He went down on the ground.

“I thought you didn’t want them hurt,” Thor thought.

“He was different, one of those people who misuse their authority. How did you guys get down here so quick?”

“We jumped from a window. The combination of our fur and these skin flaps under our arms slowed us down enough that we didn’t get hurt too badly when we landed. We wolves heal quickly enough that a minor fracture from a landing like that will only bother us for a few minutes,” thought Thor.

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Neither did I—until Mergnot’s guys showed me how, just now.”

Leona gave Thor a look (the “wife to reckless husband” look) and then she contacted Hiroshi.

“What is the status of the convoy?”

“They just entered the cargo building two minutes ago.”

“Drop a hundred wolves on the side of the building away from the runway. Three aircraft will come out of the building when you do that. Ignore the two jets; our people are in the old C130 cargo plane.”

Leona transmitted an image of the plane that she had seen in the thoughts of the young government agent. Hiroshi retransmitted the image directly to all the wolves on the shuttle.

The fifty wolves from the roof started landing all around Leona’s group. The older agent was the only one of the agents still standing.

“Cool,” he said.

“This grey-haired agent seems to be the only one of them with any sense,” thought Leona, “so don’t harm him.”

Police sirens started closing on the rescuers.

“Form a perimeter around this parking lot. Do not let anyone fire on Leona, but try not to kill anyone,” Thor thought to the wolves.

Leona decided that she wanted to be at the airport, so she turned to the older agent.

“Mind if I borrow your truck?”

He gave her an are-you-kidding-me look.

“Yeah, sure, no problem. It belongs to the government anyway; it’s not mine personally.”

Leona looked into the older agent’s face. Somehow, she just liked the look of him. For instance, he was the only one of the whole group of federal agents with laugh lines at the corners of his eyes.

“OK, then, Mr. Agent, please take these handcuffs off me,” Leona said.

Leona turned her back to the older agent and he unlocked the cuffs.

“Would you like to drive?” Leona asked, rubbing her wrists.

“Do I
have
to drive?”

“No, I am not going to kidnap you. I just thought you might want to see the rest of this interesting event.”

“Hell yeah, I’ll drive. My name is Dave.”

Leona smiled at him in what she hoped was a calming manner.

“Can your wolves keep up on foot?” Leona thought to Thor.

“For thirteen kilometers, which is what the map we looked at said? Sure, we will be there before you.”

“Keep my path clear. Slash the tires of any cop car that tries to follow. OK?”

“Got it.”

Leona and Agent Dave climbed into the dark-coloured glossy truck just as a police car arrived. Dave flipped on the lights and sirens, with fifty-five wolves in pursuit of the truck.

Dave drove around the police car and the cop inside decided he had better things to do than to take on so many werewolves. So he turned off his lights and tried to make himself as small as possible inside his car.

“You’re a mind reader, aren’t you?” Dave said, swerving in and out of traffic.

“What makes you say that?” asked Leona.

The speedometer of the truck was now reading 110 mph. They were losing their wolf escort. Leona turned up the vent on her side of the vehicle. She wished she could risk lowering the window to feel the wind in her hair. Agent Dave gave her a sideways look.

“You ask questions that you don’t get answers for, yet you seem to know the information.”

“I see you happen to be one of the smart feds.”

“I seem to have lost your wolves. Are you worried that I’ll take you prisoner again?”

“No, because I know that you didn’t want to take me prisoner in the first place. Also, because of
this
.”

Dave’s foot came off the accelerator, and try as he might, he could not get it to go back on again. Leona’s use of the
intrusive
mental attack meant that the truck was starting to slow down. A driver behind them blared his car’s horn.

“Neat trick, can I have my foot back now?”

“You can if you promise to be good and keep the speed down a little,” Leona said, stopping the
intrusive
attack.

The truck sped up to normal speed and the guy behind them stopped honking his horn.

“The aliens who held us captive could do that and more,” Leona continued. “They could make us do anything they wanted. It was horrible. They could make people kill themselves, or their friends and families. I learned to be a telepath just before my husband was going to kill and eat me. If anyone thinks we can make peace with those alien monsters, they are deluded. If they can’t use us, then they’ll just kill us. That is why I’m fighting them.”

Dave could feel that she was telling the truth—Leona could hear it in his thoughts.

“OK, lady, then I’m with you in this fight. Let’s get going.”

The wolves were just starting to catch up when Dave hit the accelerator and the truck sped up again.

Hiroshi contacted Leona with a report.

“Our wolves are hitting the cargo building. I am sending you live images.”

A video of the cargo building as seen from the shuttle craft showed to her mind’s eye. It was like she was on the scene. She saw the red-furred werewolves assaulting the building. A couple of them were down, but they were still moving—so not dead, then. The three aircraft left the building, and they each started moving toward the taxiway. The two jets turned right and the C130 turned left, which was the shortest distance to Runway 24.

The taxiway turned at the end, to meet with the runway. Just beyond the runway was a large open field. More than two hundred werewolves were lying in that field, waiting for the C130 to make its turn onto the runway. The cargo plane started its turn, and that was when the wolves broke from cover and ran toward the aircraft.

The wolves that were attacking the building gathered up their wounded and beat a hasty retreat to the north, running up Airport Drive.

The first wolves arriving at the aircraft ran under its wings and slashed its tires. The following wolves ripped open the fuselage like a tin can, and looked inside. The agents inside the plane did not put up any resistance when they saw how many wolves surrounded them.

The wolves found all three pilots plus Sarah on board. Sarah was unconscious on a stretcher when they carried her from the plane. A tall blond-haired doctor was attending to her, and he insisted on coming with her.

The shuttle landed and Leona broke the telepathic connection with it. She turned to Agent Dave and gave him a big smile.

“Our werewolves have recovered my daughter! And our three pilots. Please, pull over up here by the side of the road, and we’ll wait for the wolves and the shuttle.”

The grey-haired fed slowed the truck and brought it to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

At this point, they were only two miles from the cargo building, and the decoy attack wolves started to surround the truck. Leona got out and told them telepathically that the shuttle would be along shortly. She told them not to molest Dave the government agent. The shuttle arrived at virtually the same time as Thor and his wolves.

Leona headed toward the shuttle, and then she stopped and turned to Dave.

“Are you coming? I’m sure that we could use a good cop in space for something.”

“Hell yeah,” Agent Dave replied, grinning.

The shuttle landed back in the Shuttle Bay of the
Vengeance
. Leona was worried because Sarah had not even stirred on the flight back to the ship. They carried Sarah off the shuttle and the doctor that had been on the aircraft was waiting on the deck.

“Would you please tell these hairy beasts to let me go? I need to see my patient.”

“They’re not beasts. Who are you, and why were you on that plane?”

To Leona’s surprise, it was Dave who answered.

“That is Doctor Sven Jorgensen. He was your daughter’s physician in Green Bay. He started threatening us agents with major lawsuits if we didn’t take him along with her. So we figured we would bring him with us and figure it out later.”

“May I see her now?” the doctor said.

Dr. Jorgensen’s blue eyes were clouded with worry, and his blond hair was tousled from the winds of the airport earlier.

Leona nodded approval for the physician to care for her daughter. She was worried that Sarah’s condition must be something very serious if the doctor was so insistent on seeing her. Arriving beside his patient, the doctor took something out of his bag and injected her with it. He waited, checked her pulse, and then the pupils of her eyes. The doctor was obviously happy with the results because he bent down and kissed her on the forehead.