Wolf

For Mike Noriss

Radmer never liked the desert. He just couldn’t go home. After serving in Desert Storm, he finished college but stayed in the National Guard, then went back to full active duty after that. Tours in Iraq again, then Afghanistan until an IED put shrapnel in his leg and he was sent home. But home to what? He barely talked to his family and the only girls he knew were fellow soldiers and local women who would hang around base trying to attract GIs. So he came back on his own, with the piece of shrapnel that on most days dug into his knee, wedged snug in the middle of everything like an unwanted passenger.

He tried joining Blackwater, to come back as an official black ops subcontractor of the US military, but for various reasons, they weren’t particularly interested in him and he was only vaguely interested in them, so he became a fixture of Afghani villages around the American bases. Each base was like a modern American city, with fast food courts and stores, and the villages were where dirty business got done. Business where a former sniper might be needed. And he had fairly regular work. Usually he was just paid to report what he had seen or heard in the area, but sometimes he was paid to remove a target on sight or to track one down. He even came to make a few friends.

One such friend was Firash Abagull, a man he saw at Camp Barvo’s Starbucks from time to time. The Starbucks was primarily used by enlisted mean and the children and young women who wanted to make money off of them. Firash was the the only Afghan who went there because he liked the coffee, and Radmer liked him.

Firash was a shepherd. He considered himself a food one and for the first time he was losing sheep. Worse yet, he had lost two dogs.

“My friend, I tell you, to lose a sheep is nothing. It is money and meat and wool, that’s all. Sheep are stupid, it is why we herd them. But to lose a dog is to lose an arm, a child. I have lost two dogs. Good dogs. I can’t afford to lose more sheep, but I can’t stand to lose another dog. Perhaps you help me. You come over, we make you dinner, we talk.”

Radmer shook his head and sipped his chai. “Don’t bother with dinner. I’ll find whatever is after your sheep. It will be nice to kill something that isn’t human for a change.”

Radmer expected it to be an easy job, done in a week, maybe less. Physically it was one of the least demanding jobs he had taken on. No running, so his knee was okay. The job was just dull. To protect the flock and Firash’s remaining dog, a German shepherd named Bindi, Radmer essentially became a shepherd himself, going where the flock went, monitoring the hills for movement, and watching for signs of predators.

He quickly learned nothing happened during the day, when Firash’s youngest sons, tended the flock. It was bright, visibility was good, and it was hot. So on the third day he switched to observing at night, and on the fourth he saw movement at the edge of one of the hill surrounding the valley where the flock was kept at night. Looking through his night vision binoculars, Radmer saw the shape of a dog or wolf moving slowly from west to east. As he watched, he saw two, then three others of near the same size.

They weren’t very big, but to be on the safe side, Radmer decided to deter them from hanging around. He put down the binoculars and shouldered his rifle, training his scope on the head of the wolf in front. Obligingly, it turned to look at him, its eyes glowing white in the scope. He took a breath and squeezed the trigger gently. The rifle shot sounded with a crack, and on the side of the hill the lead wolf fell. One wolf behind it took a step forward and sniffed in the direction of the leader, and Radmer fired another shot near the body. The sniffing wolf yipped, jumped, and ran over the edge of the hill.

Radmer rode the horse Firash lent him across the valley and up the hill to where the dead wolf lay. Carefully watching for the remaining members of the pack, he wrapped the carcass in a blanket, slung it over the back of the horse, and rode back to the flock. At day break he went to join Firash for coffee and a cigarette by the tree where his friend typically greeted the morning.

“I got something for you,” he said.

Firash smiled. “I thought so. I heard your rifle and saw you ride away. The sniper does not miss.”

“I didn’t,” Radmer said. “He dropped the bundle in front of Firash and pulled back the blanket to reveal what remained of the wolf’s head. “Got one. But this isn’t your culprit.”

“It’s not?”

“Nope. This wolf is too small to take down one of your dogs without alerting the sheep. It could take down a sheep, because as you said, sheep are stupid. But a dog, especially a big dog like you lost, would put up a fight. Small wolves like this one hunt in packs. I saw the pack. They were sneaky, but you would have heard them out there, especially after losing even your first dog. What I’m looking for is a big wolf.”

Firash sipped his coffee. “Then you should get some sleep and chase your big game tonight, yes?”

Radmer poured himself some coffee and gulped it. “Yes.” He handed the tin cup to Firash. “See you tonight.” He turned and headed for his Jeep.

“Hey!” Frash called after him.

Radmer stopped and turned around.

Firash gestured at the wolf in the blanket.

“What should I do with this beast?”

Radmer shrugged. “I don’t care. You paid for it. Skin it. Make kabobs or a stew. I don’t give a shit.”

Firash laughed. “But I haven’t paid you!”

Radmer smirked. “You just gave me coffee. So far that’s good enough. I’ve been bored. If this takes me longer or gets tough we’ll see.”

The next night he saw nothing.

Nor did he see anything for two nights after. The night after that, as Radmer was scouting the hills around the valley, he heard a scratch, then breathing on the rocks behind him. He turned and heard scrambling and the sound of paws in dry dirt. He gave chase but saw nothing. As he ran he could smell hot breath and fur, but still he saw nothing. Then he heard the growl and was slammed to the ground on his belly.

Claws tore at his back but were stopped by his Kevlar vest. Jaws snatched the cap off his head and raked the back of his scalp. The wolf weighed at least 150 lbs., as much as a man.

Radmer got his arms beneath him enough to gain leverage and push up on a knee. He jerked an elbow back into the wolf’s side, then again, harder, into its belly. He pitched to one side and lurched out from under it. He left his rifle on the ground and drew his bayonet, expecting the wolf to pounce. The back of his neck and scalp burned and throbbed as he looked at the wolf’s yellow-gold eyes looking back at him. The wolf snarled.

Radmer drew his pistol and fired just as the wolf pounced. The wolf barked in pain, landed past him, scrambled, and ran. Radmer turned and fired two more shots with his sidearm and missed. The wolf was out of sight.

Taking a moment to check himself for serious damage, Radmer rubbed hand sanitizer in his scalp and neck wounds and used his bandanna to staunch the bleeding before picking up the rifle and giving chase.

The wolf was fast, but wounded. Based on the angle of the wolf when it jumped and the blood splotches on the ground, Radmer guessed he’d hit it in the right side or ride leg. He hadn’t hit any arteries or vital organs, but it was bleeding badly. The wolf would get slower, but it was going to be a long night.

Radmer didn’t want to corner the wolf or overtake it. He knew it was smart enough to circle back to target him if he let it, so he lagged behind enough to be careful, knowing soon it would be too weak to run, which also kept him from the unpleasant task of aggravating the shrapnel in his own knee.

He watched for fresh spatters of blood on rock and hard ground, and for large paw prints on soft ground and sand. He rubbed more sanitizer into his scalp and neck, fearing the infection more than the bleeding, which was slowing. Scalp wounds always bled but he knew his weren’t fatal, the wolf’s was. Wounds aside, he was having more fun tracking the wolf than anything he had done in years, probably in more than a decade. He hoped the hunt would never end.

But getting towards dawn, he knew it would. The spatters of blood were getting smaller and the paw prints were less even. The wolf was staggering, and twice he saw imprints on the ground that indicated it had fallen and gotten up. Radmer thought he knew where the wolf was going. It was thirsty. About half a mile ahead was an oasis. He and his unit swam there a couple of times, back in the day. It wasn’t much more than a few date palm trees and grass around a small pond, but when you’ve been fighting or patrolling in the heat, or when you’re a wolf bleeding out from a gunshot wound, it was paradise.

When Radmer was a quarter mile away from the oasis, the Sun started to crack over the horizon. When it died, he saw the tracks in the sand stop. All four paws were clearly defined. Then there was another imprint of the wolf’s body, with a splatter of blood. After that, distorted, elongated tracks, which Radmer guessed were from the animal crawling. Then the tracks were gone.

Radmer gasped.

There were now footprints in the sand.

He rubbed his face, drank water, splashed more on his aching head. But the footprints were still there, leading to the oasis. He ran now, following them. As the Sun chased away the relative cold of night, he closed in and saw a figure sitting at the edge of the oasis, leaning against a palm.

Firash tiredly lifted his head to look at him and he managed a smile. He was naked. Blood crusted his hands and his right side.

“Hello my friend. It seems you have found your prey.”

Radmer shouldered his rifled, aimed at Firash’s head, and fired.