To the Rescue!

Ewan had never considered himself a praying man. Right now, cooped up in a tiny flying saucer zipping toward Colorado miles above the ground, he was seriously rethinking that decision. He muttered a few syllables to Chaos on the off chance it would help. After an ill-considered glance out the hatch at the blur of earth far below, he added a second prayer consisting of much stronger words.

“Yer lookin’ a little green there, mate,” Dugger said from behind the controls. “These skimmers take getting used to. Y’might want to steer clear of the windows.”

Too little too late there, Ewan thought, while just managing to keep last night’s dinner in his gut where it belonged. “Where the hell’d Dante get this E.T. mobile anyway?”

“Dante knows people.”

“He never told me he knew Luke Skywalker.” Dugger was right; the flight went far better if he didn’t try to look at the scenery. “I don’t suppose he’s got a couple lightsabers stashed in the glove compartment?”

“It’s not that kind of a run, mate. We’re just supposed to buzz the place, find out if your sheila’s there, then give Dante the lowdown and let him make the tough decisions. That’s why he gets the big bucks ‘stead of us.”

Ewan growled to himself. He found he could keep his meal down better if he thought about Maureen instead of how far below the nearest terra firma lay. Trouble was, he could only think about Maureen in the hands of Damien Hancock’s twisted Doctor. His hackles had been stiff for a good hour now and showed no sign of settling. He wanted her in his arms again, with his mouth firmly latched onto her tits and her wolf-human scent in his nostrils. If he didn’t get her back he was going to rip somebody’s throat out.

Chaos bite it! Was this how wolves lived all the time, with their stupid macho alpha genes sending them charging blindly after their mates? No wonder they had no sense of humor.

“Scat on that,” he said. “We find the place, park this thing, slip inside and get her out, and then we call in Dante. If we can blow something up along the way, so much the better.”

Dugger bared his teeth in a grin as wide as the Outback. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

# # #

Dante’s intel was spot on the money. Once on the ground they found the hidden access door with very little trouble. Dugger went to work on the seals while Ewan kept watch.

Ewan felt uneasy, and not because of the heavily-armed troops who might or might not be waiting for them on the other side of the door. He’d managed to wrestle his stomach into compliance so he could scan the roads from above during their flight to Colorado. He hadn’t spotted anything that looked like a delivery truck. Maureen and her fellow captives should be well on their way to this installation by now. Damien Hancock didn’t hire henchwolves who stopped for beer and a burger. And shouldn’t a place so painstakingly hidden have surveillance out the wazoo? Shouldn’t alarms be going off?

“Call me a scat-faced optimist,” Ewan said, “but does all this strike you as just a hair too easy?”

“Never look a gift roo up the bunghole, I always say,” Dugger replied. “There! That’s got it.”

The hatch swung open easily, with no betraying creaks. Dugger led the way inside. Ewan followed him into a narrow corridor lined by raw rock walls. He smelled metal and machine oil up ahead, and heard a few drips and clinks, but no noises from living beings.

“Easy peasy,” Dugger whispered. “Wonder where they are?”

“On break, maybe?” Ewan said. His mind kept conjuring images of foxes, henhouses, and farmers with shotguns.

“According to the blueprints,” Dugger said, “prisoners are usually kept—”

“Dante had blueprints?”

“More like a map. Dante—”

“Knows people. Gotcha.”

That was it for talk. Dugger conveyed through body language that they were coming up on a possible inhabited area. He pulled a handgun out of his waistband. Ewan would play it by ear.

They crept up to the corner and peered around it. And saw—

TO BE CONTINUED (ain’t I a stinker?)