Abandoned Treasure

Council Enforcer Vic Knightly’s POV

Denali Pack Alpha Conference Room

Monday, January 22nd, 2007

Chairman Eric Gruber was frustrated with the lack of progress, and it showed. “Somebody tell me we have SOMETHING. A lead, a sniff, a fucking trail of bread crumbs?”

The Alphas on the videoconference all waited for someone to talk, and no one did. The Chair looked around the table, where the other Council members, his Chief Counsel, and three senior Council Enforcers sat. As a bodyguard for the visiting Council, I was stationed by the wall behind him, trying to blend into the background as the camera focused on his face. “Alpha Blackstone? Where was the last place you detected the two rogues?”

“The Lost Trail Hot Springs. The stolen van was left there, and he had either a swap car or someone waiting to pick him up. We missed him by a few minutes, and his scent led to an empty parking space. There was no camera covering that portion of the lot.”

“And the trail led nowhere?”

Todd shrugged. “With a vehicle and a full tank, they could get four or five hundred miles away before getting out again. I appreciate the help from the other Packs, Mr. Chairman. They did their best to set containment, but with so many back roads and Nathan’s head start? If he planned his route like he planned his escape? He could be anywhere.”

“That’s my problem with this,” Alpha Michael Olffsun of Oxbow Lake replied. “We’ve had my trackers and warriors out there for a month now with no leads. I can’t afford to keep up an active search with no boundaries and no indication that the rogues are in my territory.”

“Agreed,” Denali pack Alpha Alan Robinson said. “It’s a waste of my time when we know they didn’t enter Canada by car.”

“I agree with you,” the Chairman replied. “I’m calling off the national search. If Nathan Storm presented an imminent danger to other Packs, he would have shown up by now. I presume he and his mate are smart enough to go into hiding and stay there.” The other rogue had to be his mate; no wolf would break command for anything less. “My Council Enforcers will continue the search under the direction of my Chief Enforcer. If they are in your Pack areas, please support them as requested. If you have additional trackers or warriors you can lend to the search, provide their names, and we will incorporate them into our efforts. Any questions?” There were none. “End of call.”

The techs turned the video equipment off as the men at the table relaxed. “What a fucked-up situation,” Councilman Craig Forrest said. “How can a Pack Wolf spend over a year planning his escape without the Alpha knowing?”

“I’m more interested in why an Alpha would let the situation get that far,” Councilman Royce Waterman responded. “If a rogue female finds his mate within the Pack, you’d think she’d get a chance to join.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the Chairman said. “They killed a wolf during their escape, and you can’t let that go unpunished. We have to find him.”

The three Senior Enforcers looked back at him expectantly. Unlike me and the other Enforcers who were Warrior or Tracker ranks, the Senior Enforcers were all strong Betas or Alpha blood wolves. Council Enforcers were volunteers from the warrior ranks and above. We served five-year terms after six months of training, but it was similar to the reserves in the Army. We remained in our home pack unless we were ‘activated’ by the Chairman, like with the search for Nathan Storm.

Council Enforcers were tasked with enforcing Werewolf laws and could cross Pack boundaries when required. The Council Chairman would call Enforcers from neutral Packs to assist if a dispute arose with one or more Packs. We would shift allegiance to the Chairman to join his pack link, and the Chief Enforcer would hand out job assignments as needed.

That didn’t make it easy. Alphas protect their people and territory and resent interference in their affairs. Even as a Council Enforcer, I would ask for the Alpha’s permission to enter his territory. While there, my authority only extended to my assigned Council duties. Anything else, and the Pack Alpha has the final say. The only exception is to carry out the arrest of an Alpha on a Council warrant.

It was an elegant way to maintain Council supremacy while not having a ‘standing’ police force. Since the Council had no fixed location and Denali wasn’t close to other Packs, I hadn’t gotten much action until recently.

Mark Trestman, the Chief Enforcer, leaned forward in his chair. “What are your orders, sir?”

Chairman Gruber leaned back, pinching the bridge of his nose before looking at the men. “When the normal plan fails, we do the abnormal,” he said. “Mark, you’re in charge of the search.”

Paul Strom and Victor Ciatti were the other two Senior Enforcers. They spent most of their time tracking down and killing rogue werewolves, as their very existence risked the humans finding out about us. Nathan Storm was more dangerous than most, as he knew the locations and details of all North American packs.

Mark Trestman nodded. “How much time and effort do you want me to put into this, sir?”

“All of it,” he said before his voice got deep. “I’m prepared to scour the earth for that motherfucker.If Nathan goes to Indochina, I want a wolf hiding in a bowl of rice ready to pop a cap in his ass,” he responded. I barely held back a laugh, recognizing the lines from Pulp Fiction. Who said wolves couldn’t be funny? “Assemble your team as soon as possible. Contact the Packs and get information about where they’ve searched and haven’t searched. Put together a plan and brief me on it tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Sir, what did you mean about ‘doing the abnormal’ earlier?”

“If Nathan Storm is running, he’d be on our radar by now. He’s made no contacts, phone calls, bank withdrawals, credit card use, or anything else we could track in a month. What does that tell you?”

“He’s disciplined and prepared, sir. He found a remote place he could hide out in until the search played itself out. He can’t hide forever, though. They always fuck up something.”

The Chairman nodded. “That’s one possibility. The other is that someone is hiding the two,” he replied. “Staying off the radar isn’t cheap. Make sure you investigate the contacts each of them had before they disappeared. Do they have extended families, friends, or associates who could hide them? Who is funding them, and how? Find the answers to that, and you find them.”

“That’s good advice, sir,” Mark replied.

“Take your men and leave.” I was shocked when Mark waved for me to follow, but the Council didn’t object to stripping their bodyguards. The Council was placing their security in the hands of my Alpha.

We followed Mark past his office to the room Victor was using to collect intelligence from the search efforts. As it was a Bitterroot problem, Alpha Todd Blackstone had coordinated the active search until now. The Council Enforcers sent to Montana had been working under the direction of the Bitterroot Beta.

After a short conversation, Victor Ciatti picked three Enforcers to work with him and staff the intelligence center 24/7. “I’ll fly out to Montana tonight and get a turnover from the Bitterroot Beta. While there, I’ll interview Pack members and see what I can find about their contacts outside the Pack. I’m pretty sure Alpha Todd isn’t giving us the whole story on why Nathan left.”

That left four of us following Mark as he went to a smaller conference room. I noticed we were the four junior enforcers left at Headquarters; David and Steve were from my class, while Erin had been here three years. We sat down as Mark logged into the computer, eventually displaying a map of North America with all the Pack and other territories on the smartboard. “We’re taking this search back to the beginning,” Mark started. “Look at this.Nine-and-a-half million square miles of land in North America, much uninhabited or sparsely inhabited. What does that tell you?”

“Finding them in a search would be like hitting the Powerball,” I replied. “Their scents might travel a mile over open ground. Grid searches would take forever, and we don’t have the people or resources.”

Mark nodded. “Correct.It’s even worse in the cities; they stink so bad you’d have to get within a block to find them. So, sending people out to sniff is a loser unless what?”

“We have an idea where they are,” Steve said.

“Exactly. Get it down to a hundred-square-mile search area, and it’s doable. We have to target areas that Storm might hide in, rank them by probability, then use Pack and Council assets to search them systematically. Victor will gather all the search data from the Packs and map those areas; it rules out some places, leaving us to focus on others.”

“Unless he’s moving around,” I said.

“True, but if he’s smart, he’ll stay in one place.Moving around only raises the chance of detection.” He was right; the other part was that a moving target would make things damn near impossible for us. “You probably noticed I kept junior Enforcers instead of picking more experienced guys. I did because you’re closest to your time at the Packs. You still think and plan more like a Pack Wolf than a Council Enforcer, and we must put ourselves in Nathan Storm’s head. You want to escape with your rogue mate, a prisoner of your Pack, and you’ve had plenty of time to plan it. You only get ONE chance to escape; failure or capture means a painful death for you both. Let’s start with where you DON’T go.”

“Pack territories,” Erin replied quickly. “The borders are patrolled regularly, which makes them difficult to cross. If you enter their territory, it won’t be long until patrols pick up strange wolf scents. Going anywhere near an established Pack would be suicide. Hell, I wouldn’t want to be within twenty miles of the border.”

“I agree,” David said.“Anywhere within twenty, even fifty miles is bound to have a Pack Wolf going through at least once in the past month. It’s way too dangerous to stay that close.”

Mark smiled. “Progress,” he said. He took a minute to highlight the territories, superimposing a fifty-mile radius exclusion area around their boundaries. “Where else?”

“We aren’t the only threats,” I said. “Werecougars, Werejaguars, Werebears, and Werelynxes all have territories they guard jealously. No werewolf would dare to hide himself that close. I’d put the same fifty-mile radius around them.” I didn’t mention Werecoyotes because they were nomadic, meaning no fixed territories.

It took a few minutes more to get this done.

There were only two Werelynx territories. One is in northern Idaho near the Canadian border, the other three hundred miles north of Banff Pack in the Canadian Rockies. Werelynx are reclusive, rarely venturing outside their territories. In human form, they are the size of gymnasts, rarely more than five feet tall and a hundred pounds. Lynx have never caused the Council trouble, so we leave them alone.

The Werecougars were in the American Southwest, mainly in California and Colorado. Powerful jaws and sharp claws make them dangerous opponents. We train using four or more wolves working together to take one down. The truce with them over the past thirty years was holding. Werejaguars were easy to find; they ran the Sons of Tezcatlipoca motorcycle gang, which ranged from California to Texas. They were the only Werecat species to settle in the big cities.

That left the Werebears. Bears live in individual family units that control a large property and its surroundings. Werebears are fucking HUGE in either form and extremely dangerous. Our training is to send every warrior you can find at them and hope you can get him down before he kills you all. In human form, they look like football linemen with an attitude. Thankfully, they rarely leave their territories and don’t go looking for trouble. Every Pack knows where bears live and stays away.

Mark put a bunch more circles on the map.

With that, we all sat back and studied the display. “Think about what you would do if you had to get away and hide somewhere.”

“I’d run like hell,” Erin said. “Time works against you, and distance is your friend. Looking at the map, I’d calculate how long it would take to reach each Pack. Then I’d allow an hour for Bitterroot to raise the alarm with the Council and the other Packs to send patrols out. I can draw an exclusion circle based on how far the Pack wolves can travel before I’m gone. I’ll make it if I drive past them before their trackers and warriors set up a roadblock.”

We had to go on Google Maps to calculate drive times before calculating the coverage circles, but more of the map changed to the grey color we were using for exclusion zones. Erin pointed to the interstates. “Casper is well-position to block Wyoming and Interstate 90, but they are too far south to prevent Nathan from making Interstate 94 to North Dakota.”

“And that’s where the female rogue lived,” Mark nodded.

“Her house and family are gone, and it’s too obvious a destination,” Erin countered. “Interstate 15 is wide open to them, north to Canada, and south as far as Las Vegas. They won’t go west on 80 because of Donner Pack, but they could go east to Chicago.”

“Would that be your play? A big city?”

She nodded. “Easier to blend in, find a place to stay, and find work. Hell, if I could, I’d keep driving to the Southeast. There aren’t any Packs south of West Virginia. There are plenty of woods, swamps, and towns to hide in.”

“Not to mention snakes, gators, and mosquitos,” Mark said. “There’s a reason wolves don’t like the South.”

“It’s a good place to hide, sir.”

He nodded. “David?”

“The safest location would be to leave North America. Did we have anyone check with Customs and the FAA?”

Mark nodded. “Nothing.”

“Same idea as Erin, but a different endpoint. I’d go south to Salt Lake, then east to Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, or Missouri. No wolves or cats on the plains, and plenty of small towns with cheap real estate.”

“You two have any other ideas?”

Steve didn’t, but something didn’t add up for me. “I’m not so sure that a long road trip is the right call,” I said. “Any friends or contacts he is using are in the area. Drive too far, and you’re on your own.”

We all looked at the map. We’d spent all this time ruling out areas, and the map was almost all open space still. “Get some food and come back in two hours. By then, I should have areas searched on this map as well. I want everyone to have a go-bag ready for three days if we get a lead. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Dismissed.” We filed out of the room and headed back to the dormitory. We talked about it over dinner and well into the night. The question remained the same.

Where the hell did they go?