The Shack: A Parable of Wolves

On a quiet night, well after dark, Thomas and I found ourselves sitting with Pogo, Howard, and Chief.

Pogo drummed his fingers on the table. "We may have a problem. Wendy called."

I'd never met Wendy, but I knew she was a very expensive smuggler of sorts.

Pogo continued. "Somebody is shopping for transport. Three weeks from today. Six men and they'll be guarding a thousand pounds of uninspected cargo."

"Headed here?" Howard cocked one eyebrow.

"That's the strange part. From here. To the Sudan."

"That doesn't make sense."

"That's why she called. Wanted to see if it was us using a Russian cover."

"Russian?" Chief looked over at me.

Pogo nodded. "That's what she said. I don't like it. Whatever it is has to be coming in by ship or plane."

Thomas gripped my hand. "Or it's already here. Bobert might have cached weapons on one of the little islands."

Howard looked thoughtful. "Maybe MANPADS," he glanced at me and noticed my confusion, "shoulder launched anti-aircraft missiles. They'd bring damn good money with some of those Middle Eastern groups. Not sure it would be enough to cover Wendy's prices. Even with a 'family discount,' she's damned expensive."

Chief grimaced. "If something bad happens and a shipment gets tracked back to here, it'd be bad. Besides, this could be really bad, maybe a commercial airliner."

A flash of pain washed over Howard's face. "Grease, you and Angel need to make a list of every place Bobert could have put something, probably the size of a pallet container."

I shook my head. "I was only with Robert two weeks of the month; he could have put things anywhere when I wasn't around. The only place I ever stayed was at the house on Komi Key. Other than that, I was on the boat here."

"Who did you sell the Key to?"

"Wing Ho Development. I don't think they've ever done anything with it, they just bought up a bunch of little islands for investment."

"Christ, I hope it isn't a PLA cover. I'm going to ask Evie to find a way to buy that island back through one of her front companies, just in case."

We'd made almost seven million dollars from the sale of the island, but for Evie, that would be like a normal person buying a candy bar. Even if it wasn't, she'd do it for Howard.

Chief pulled out his notebook and flipped it open, pulling out a chart that had the Key on it. "Not much area to hide a pallet container on, really just the house and a couple small beaches. I'll have my guys keep an eye on it. We'll have to watch visitors. Six guys, probably mercenaries, won't be too hard to spot."

####

It was two days less than three weeks when they showed up.

I knew it was bad when I arrived at the Shack and found Chief wearing a gun. He never wore a gun, ever.

Howard and Pogo looked grim.

"They arrived this morning. Spooky's been on them all day. They're looking for you, Angel. They have a couple old pictures. You and Bobert."

I felt myself panicking. "Thomas is out on a charter and the girls are at school."

Pogo smiled. "The goons are hunting for you, but the first things you worry about are Thomas and the girls? That's why we love you Angel. Monster is headed over to the school to pick up the girls, and Chief already called Grease, sent a police boat over to keep an eye on him."

"They must have no idea we're here. Nobody who suspected we were here would be stupid enough to be this clumsy." Howard looked more bemused than anything.

Pogo shrugged. "Probably Bobert's old playmates looking to tie up loose ends. They may not believe the report that Bobert died and think he killed Dmitri."

"Feels wrong, and it doesn't explain the shipment." Howard looked through the table, trying to see the logic.

"I guess we're going to have to ask them then. We could gauge their intentions, have someone tell them where Angel lives, and wait to see what they do."

"Make sure Monster knows we need one alive." I understood Howard's concerns. Monster's implacable one track logic; any threat to the children was a threat only until he made sure it wasn't.

Chief shrugged. "I need to stay out of this. Some things are better off the record." His voice trailed off.

They came that night. Only Thomas and I were in the house, making the right noises, making the house look normal. But the six men would never come in. Pogo and Monster were waiting outside, flickering patches of living darkness. I'd seen Monster kill before, and I had no doubt what would happen.

Thomas and I heard nothing at all, but around midnight Pogo and Howard came in.

"We need to dump six bodies in the Deeps tonight. This really is about something Bobert had stored away. The one guy we talked to didn't know what it was, just that they had to pick it up from 'the house.' He really didn't know. He'd have told us if he did."

Pogo wouldn't look at me. "First they were supposed to find out if Angel knew anything and get rid of her."

Shards of ice clipped up my spine. I knew how they "questioned" people, how they'd treated Robert. Though I doubted Monster was any gentler with the lone, temporary survivor. And I didn't feel bad about that at all.

Howard "It has to be the house at the Key. We need to head over there in the morning. I'll let Evie know."

####

As we finished checking the rooms on the first floor, Pogo looked at me. "What's the layout of the basement?"

I pointed up the stairs to the second floor. "Kisa and I were kept up there. I was never in the basement and I just wanted away from here after that. I didn't want anything that Robert had."

"Pogo?" Spooky's voice drifted up the stairs. She must have slipped down there earlier while everyone was looking through the ground floor. "There's a damn big hollow spot in one of the walls."

Pogo and Thomas pulled sledgehammers from the boat and headed down.

####

"The wolves gathered around the box and saw that the magic inside it was so terrible, so wicked that they could not stay in peace their forest and ignore the evil Troll King. But even though their pack had grown, they would need help to defeat him. They gathered at the top of a hill in the forest and began to howl, to call to other wolves."

####

"Fuck." I felt a chill. Pogo's voice had a cold finality to it. I'd never seen Pogo genuinely angry or upset before.

"Is that what I think it is?" Chief looked through the hole in the basement wall.

"Goddammit. They must be insane."

Howard stared wordlessly for a minute, then echoed Pogo. "Goddammit. Why couldn't it have been MANPADS?"

My Thomas studied the odd barrel shaped thing. "I'm afraid I can guess, but what exactly is it?"

Pogo shook his head, trying to make something make sense. "It's a MADM. A Russian copy of one, anyway. Probably stole the plans somewhere along the way. A Medium Atomic Demolition Munition. Yield could be anything up to the same size as the Hiroshima bomb, probably with a lot of fall out. Don't touch the fucking thing. It probably isn't armed, but the KGB and GRU used to put 'Lightning' booby-traps on important shit, things like this. Probably bring the house down and scatter radioactive shit all over the place. Jesus Christ."

Howard nodded. "I'm going to use the satellite phone from the boat. We have to bring in Maria. And Donna. Grease, I need you to radio Ex. Have her get Monster over here. Tell her to get the two footlockers in the supply room of the Shack marked 'water pump parts'. There are some heavier weapons in those and I'd be a lot more comfortable with them here."

The next hours were frantic.

####

"Shadowy black wolves of the night, the bright grey strong wolves of the mountains, even the dark red wolves of the Troll's own kingdom gathered together. They held council under the moon and it was decided that the Troll would have to be brought down, no matter the cost, for he was a threat to all, a threat to everything."

####

It was almost two days before Donna arrived, and she didn't come alone. It took all three of our charter boats to take her entourage to the little island. She had forty heavily armed men; they changed into Russian uniforms on the way.

Pogo was standing on the dock when we arrived. "Tell your men to stay out of the house."

She glared at him. "If it's what you say, we need to secure it immediately."

"Monster is in there with Howard, Donna. He's loaded for bear and not in a receptive mood. This is too goddamn close to home, too goddamn close to the kids. They'd probably take him down eventually, but you'd be burying a hell of a lot of your boys for no real reason. We don't need that."

"Goddammit." Donna signaled to one of the men. "Secure the island but keep everyone away from the damn house. Unless I say different."

Her soldiers sprinted in either direction to encircle the island, but four stayed with her.

"You should put him down, Poz. One of these days you're going to lose control of him."

"Where would I get a babysitter to replace him?"

Donna glared at him for a moment. "What are you playing at?"

"Nothing. We found a fucking nuke sitting in our back yard and we don't want anyone to do anything stupid. Monster may be a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them. We'll deal with this, I just want everyone here first. Maria is on the way, she's catching a ride with Chief, so when she arrives try to make sure your men don't shoot her. And if anyone shoots up the boats, they get to swim back."

"So what's the plan?"

"That's what we need to figure out. Maria is bringing a couple guests."

"Who?"

Pogo shrugged. "Don't know for sure, but I'm hoping one of them knows how to make sure the damned thing is disarmed." Pogo and Howard had told me more -- in fact that's why I was going to stay while Thomas took the SEA ANGEL back to reconfigure her. My heart twinged at the thought of being away from him, even for that little while.

Donna looked darkly out over the ocean. "You know, I had to use Wendy to get here. 'Hi, I'm Wendy, fly me.' Mercenary little bitch cost me an arm and a leg."

"It isn't your money Donna, and she's worth it. You want to move a platoon of infantry with weapons halfway around the world, with no notice, and do it discreetly? Nobody will hear a word from her."

"Still annoying."

Pogo grinned. "I spent most of my childhood figuring out how to get under your skin. This is a win for me." He made a motion like a checkmark in the air with one finger.

"You're still a jerk." But she smiled a little at her brother, then looked over to me. "Angel. If you have any more children, keep having girls. Little brothers are a pain in the butt."

####

Maria Hawthorne, Deputy Director, FBI, arrived with her guests; a tall, well-groomed man, clearly used to power, and a stooped older man in a cheap new suit who looked even more tired than his obvious years.

Donna nodded a greeting to Maria then cocked her head to one side and walked straight toward the taller man, with a disconcertingly real smile.

"Yuri. I suspected you'd end up involved."

He shook his head, chuckling, and genuinely amused. "Danika. I knew you'd be here when I saw the Russian uniforms on American soldiers. How is it, whenever there is trouble, you seem to pop up?"

"Nature of our business, Yuri." She looked back to Maria. "Good choice. He can make decisions, and he only answers to one man."

Maria smiled pleasantly. "I'm glad you two know each other, but we can all catch up later. I think we all need to know what we are dealing with."

Maria introduced everyone and we waited in the living room, until the old stooped man -- Aleksei -- came back up the stairs, pale and shaken. I had to translate for him. Howard wanted to be sure nothing was misunderstood. On accident or on purpose.

"He says it's safe now. The device wasn't armed, but the links were in place and the 'Molniya' -- 'Lightning' - boobytrap was set. He says it was big enough to destroy the house and scatter the..."I paused for a second looking for the right word, "core."

Maria shook her head. "How many of these damn things are there out there, Yuri?"

"We don't know. It was a special program, with very limited access, and the records were destroyed in the 90s. This is a fragment of madness from the Cold War. As far as I can tell, only Aleksei is left and he was just a technician. He was never even told the full scope of it. I'm afraid I have to force him out of retirement. He'll be very well paidthough."

Donna looked over at the stairs to the basement. "We have to be in on this, Yuri. As long as it was in Russia, it was yours; now it's everybody's problem. Maria, at least, has to be kept in the loop."

"We can do better. You know how protective President Putin is of our territory. But I talked with him before I left. He feels that stonewalling on this could irrevocably erode what trust we have left, especially if we miss something. I'm authorized to include you in everything we know, which, unhappily isn't much more than we have already discussed." He grimaced. "We may have to cut a deal with Gregor Ivanovich to get the information we need to eliminate any further problems."

I stared in shock. After all this, my Piotr would not be avenged. I felt the cold fury of winter boil through my veins.

"No." My voice sounded strange, as if it wasn't me speaking at all.

He looked over, really studying me for the first time. He must have thought I was just there to translate.

I went on. "No. Gregor Ivanovich suffers for the rest of his life. For this, and for murdering my husband."

"Young lady..."His voice was condescending, as if speaking to a child.

"Don't you dare. I know you can make him talk if you want."

"We don't do that kind of thing these days."

I laughed. Even to me, the laughter was mocking, hollow and cold. "Don't tell me what people will and will not do. Piotr deserves justice. If you do not make that happen, I will. I'm not helpless or alone anymore."

Howard leaned forward, expressionless. "We're her family now. We will get to him. After what he did to her, we'll stack up so many bodies, you'll be able see them from orbit."

Howard understood vengeance, he'd shaped his life around it. He was quite mad, in his own way. Over three decades of kidnapping, extortion, and murder as he hunted down everyone connected with his wife and child's death. I think that's only considered sane in Sicily.

Pogo stretched and smiled, the same way a tiger does when it sees something that might be tasty.

Donna frowned. "Trust me on this one, Yuri. They're not bluffing. They have far more resources than you'd think and no scruples at all. They'd even enjoy it. In any case, I suspect Mr. Ivanovich is involved a great many other things you don't want to give him a blanket pardon for." She went on to explain who I was and how I had ended up in the islands, asking me to clarify a few things.

Yuri glanced from Donna to me. "What citizenship do you hold?"

"When I married Thomas, I think they said it made me a dual citizen. Here and Russia."

"You're still technically a Russian citizen, we will also bring charges on your behalf, as long as you are willing to submit an affidavit on the murder of your husband..." he paused, trying to remember.

"Detective Piotr Ivanovich. And, yes, I will."

"Piotr? And you said your maiden name was 'Volk'?"

I saw a twitch on the corner of his mouth, but he suppressed it well. I still felt pain at Piotr's loss, but he and I had laughed so often at the same thing that Yuri was trying hard to ignore. Donna had caught the twitch and raised an eyebrow.

I smiled a little. "Yes, Piotr." I looked at Donna. "'Volk' means 'wolf' in English. So Piotr and I were 'Peter and the Wolf'."

Yuri nodded with a quiet chuckle, though Donna just gave a half-hearted tic of a smile. It's probably funnier in Russian.

"We have some details to clear up. I would like to remove the device from here and get it back to proper hands."

Maria nodded. "Giving you back the device is no problem -- if we kept it, sooner or later the question of where it came from would probably come up. Probably from some congressman who wanted to be in the news. And once it leaked that a nuke got loose, things could get of control diplomatically."

Howard spoke up. "Grease is fitting up the SEA ANGEL with extra tanks to give her extra legs; he can meet one of your ships or subs wherever you agree, as long as it doesn't head back in the direction of Fiji. Monster would have a problem with that. We don't want that."

Yuri looked thoughtful. Unlike most people, I could tell he'd recognized Monster for what he was instantly, not fooled at all by the façade when Monster had escorted Aleksei down the stairs. "That would be unfortunate and unnecessary. We can have a submarine in the area in a couple days. There's also the matter of the delivery point in the Sudan, I think we have a line on that -- it appears to be a mutual antagonist of our two countries. Although we don't know what the target was. And we still have no idea where this came from or if there are more. Unless Gregor Ivanovich can tell us."

####

"The wolves ran through the night, pouring silently into the forest, more and more wolves of every kind. The ogre army never had a real chance, the soundless wolves leapt from darkness and tore them down relentlessly until not a single ogre was alive. Only the Troll King remained, sitting alone on his throne when the golden wolf who had been a dog arrived. She stood before him and pronounced his doom, giving him over to the red wolves of his own kingdom to bury away in darkness, forever."

####

Over the next several weeks, strange and terrible things happened. Warehouses burned in Moldova. There were police raids all over Europe. Quiet, ruthless men from the FBI and the FSB pursued leads and men relentlessly -- often together.

A terrorist training camp in the Sudan was utterly destroyed, with no survivors, by two groups of men in Chinese uniforms, none of whom looked remotely Chinese. Pogo and Howard laughed about that for hours. It seems half showed up in PRC uniforms, and half in Taiwanese uniforms. Even Donna and Yuri apparently occasionally misunderstood each other in small ways. Or maybe they hadn't misunderstood each other at all.

And Zascha Knight, formerly Zascha Sandoval, formerly Zascha Ivanovich nee Volk, flew to the cold winter of Russia and was very respectfully escorted to a country manor house by several very high-ranking members of the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB.

When we arrived, the door to the mansion was standing open, waiting as we crunched through the fresh white snow. A single light was burning in a room at the end of the entrance hall. Gregor Ivanovich was seated stiffly at his desk staring at us with his hands carefully spread out on the desk before him. Spooky and a number of stern-faced Russian internal security police officers stood off to the side, although their attention seemed as much focused on Spooky as on Gregor. Both Yuri and Donna had wanted insurance that Gregor would be taken alive; there was a chance that some powerful members of the government would be implicated. And there were still too many unanswered questions.