“I want a big one! That little thing up on the rocks won’t even make a decent hat!”
They had killed Yipper. Drunken Nazis with submachine guns, hunting wolves out of sheer boredom. The black wolf knew this, without knowing how he knew. Four soldiers, from the garrison that guarded the chemical plant. Shadows stirred in his mind; things moved, and sleeping memories began to awaken. His skull throbbed-not with pain, but with the power of recollection. Iron Fist. The Flying Fortress. The five of six.
The fifth of the sixth month, he realized. The fifth of June. D Day.
He was a wolf. Wasn’t he? Of course! He had black hair and claws and fangs. He was a wolf, and the hunters were almost upon him and Golda.
A light streaked past them, then came back. They were caught in its glare. “Look at those two! Damn, what coats! Black and yellow!” A submachine gun chattered, and bullets marched across the ground beside Golda. She panicked, turned, and fled. The black wolf raced after her. She went into the house where the skeletons lay.
“Don’t lose them, Hans! They’ll make fine coats!” The soldiers were running, too, as fast as their unsteady legs could manage. “They’re in there! That house!”
Golda backed against the wall, terror in her eyes. The black wolf smelled the soldiers outside. “Get around to the rear!” one of them shouted. “We’ll catch them between us!” Golda leaped for the window as bullets whacked into the frame and splinters flew. She fell back to the floor, spun madly in a whirl of yellow. The black wolf started out through the door, but a light blinded him and he retreated as bullets knocked holes in the wall above his head.
“Now we’ve got them!” a coarse voice crowed. “Max, go in there and clean them out!”
“Not me, you bastard! You go first!”
“Ah, you gutless shit! All right, I will! Erwin, you and Johannes watch the windows.” There was a clicking noise. The black wolf knew a fresh ammo clip was being loaded into the gun. “I’m going in!”
Golda again tried to get out through the window. Splinters stung her as another burst fired, and she dropped back with blood on her muzzle.
“Stop that shooting!” the coarse voice commanded. “I’ll get them both myself!” The soldier strode toward the house, following his light, the courage of schnapps in his veins.
The black wolf knew he and Golda were doomed. There was no way out. In a moment the soldier would be at the doorway, and his light would catch them. No way out, and what would fangs and claws be against four men with submachine guns?
He looked at the knife.
His paw touched the handle.
Don’t fail me, he thought. Wiktor had said that, a long time ago.
His claws struggled to close around the handle. The soldier’s light was almost into the room.
Wiktor. Mouse. Chesna. Lazaris. Blok. Names and faces whirled through the mind of the black wolf, like sparks escaping a bonfire.
Michael Gallatin.
I am not a wolf, he thought, as a blaze of memory leaped in his brain. I am a-
His paw changed. Streaks of white flesh appeared. The black hair retreated, and his bones and sinews rejointed with wet whispering sounds.
His fingers closed around the knife handle and drew it out of the skeleton. Golda gave a stunned grunt, as if the air had been knocked from her.
The soldier stopped on the threshold. “Now I’ll show you who your master is!” he said, and glanced back at Max. “You see? It takes a brave man to walk into a wolf’s den!”
“Two more steps, coward!” Max taunted.
The soldier probed with the light. He saw skeletons, and the yellow wolf. Ha! The beast was trembling. But where was the black bastard? He took the two final steps, his gun ready to blow its brains out.
And as the soldier entered, Michael stepped out from his hiding place beside the doorway and drove Kitty’s hooked blade into the pit of the man’s throat with all the strength he could summon.
The German, strangling on blood, dropped the Schmeisser and the light to clutch at his severed windpipe. Michael scooped up the submachine gun, planted a foot against the man’s belly, and shoved him backward through the doorway. Then he fired at the other man’s light, and there was a scream as the bullets mangled flesh.
“What was that? Who screamed?” one of the men at the rear of the house hollered. “Max? Hans?”
Michael walked out the door, his knee joints aching and his spine stretching. He stood at the corner of the house and took aim just above the two flashlights. One of them weaved toward him. He sprayed fire at the Nazis. Both lights exploded and the bodies crumpled.
That was the end of it.
Michael heard a noise behind him. He turned, an oily sweat leaking from his pores.
Golda stood there, only a few feet away. She stared at him, her body rigid. Then she showed her fangs, snarled, and ran away into the darkness.
Michael understood. He did not belong to her world.
He knew who he was now, and what he had to do. The transport plane had already taken the bombs of carnagene away, but there were other crows on the field: the night fighters. Those each had a range of about a thousand miles. If they could find out exactly where Iron Fist was hangared, and…
And if it wasn’t too late. What was the date? He had no way of knowing. He hurried to find clothes that might fit him from the four dead men. He had to settle for the shirt and jacket from one soldier, the trousers from another, and the boots from a third. All of the clothes were damp with blood, but that couldn’t be helped. He stuffed his pockets with ammo clips. A gray woolen cap, free of bloodstains, lay on the ground. He put it on, and his fingers found the gash and the scabbed crust on the right side of his head. A fraction of an inch more, and the bullet would have smashed his skull.
Michael strapped the submachine gun around his shoulder and started along the road to the rocky slope. The fifth of June, he thought. Had it passed already? How many days and nights had he been here, believing himself a wolf? Everything was still dreamlike. He quickened his pace. The first task was getting into the plant; the second was getting to the stockade and freeing Chesna and Lazaris. Then he would know if he had failed or not, and whether tattered bodies lay in the streets of London because of it.
He heard a howl, a floating quaver, behind him. Golda’s voice. He didn’t look back.
On two legs he climbed toward his destiny.
9
They had made a meager effort to fill up the hole he’d dug under the fence, but it was obvious their shovels had been lazy. It took him a few minutes to scoop the loose dirt out, and he winnowed under again. The thumping heartbeat of the plant was in operation again, light bulbs glowing on the catwalks overhead. He went through the alleys, threading his way toward the edge of the airfield, where the stockade was. A soldier came around a corner and strolled in his direction. “Hey! Got a smoke?” the man asked.
“Sure.” Michael let him get close and dug in a pocket for cigarettes that weren’t there. “What time is it?”
The German checked his wristwatch. “Twelve-forty-two.” He looked at Michael and frowned. “You need a shave. If the captain sees you like that, he’ll kick your-” He saw the blood, and bullet holes stitched across the jacket. Michael saw his eyes widen.
He hit the German in the stomach with the gun butt, then cracked him across the skull and dragged his body to a group of empty chemical drums. He took the watch, heaved the body into a drum, and put the lid on it. Then he was on his way again, almost running. Forty-two minutes after midnight, he thought. But of what day?
The stockade building’s entrance was unguarded, but a single soldier sat at a desk just inside the door, his boots propped up and his eyes shut. Michael kicked the chair out from under him and slammed him against the wall, and the soldier returned to dreamland. Michael took a set of keys from a wall hook behind the desk and went along the corridor between several cells. He smiled grimly; the log-sawing snore of a certain bearded Russian reverberated in the hallway.
As Michael tried various keys in the lock of Lazaris’s prison, he heard a gasp of surprise. He looked at the cell
