Claiming Treasure

Rori King’s POV

Arrowhead Pack House

There would not be a lot of time before law enforcement arrived. Per our plan, Chase had called 911 as soon as we saw the wolves rushing through the trees along our southern boundary. It didn’t take much longer for our cameras to pick up the groups of cars and trucks filled with armed warriors heading our way. They couldn’t attack us with wolves in broad daylight, not with all the people nearby. Even the wolves were likely there only to cut off our escape routes. Since our Pack held the southern corner of a large and populated lake, the gun battle would attract a lot of attention quickly.

Chase and Ron were coordinating the defense in the security center, and there was no room left there for me. A Luna would be in the safe room with the non-combatants, but I was an Alpha, and I needed to lead. I ran up to the top of the Pack House, where the rooftop firing positions were manned by Pack Omegas. From the flat roof over the third floor, I had the best views of the attacks now coming on three sides. Chase and I had spent a lot of time with our many Omegas, training them to be expert marksmen. All of them were now deadly accurate at these ranges. We wanted to divide the warriors from their Alphas and Betas; to do that, we needed to scare them out of attacking.

The opening volley of gunfire had not been into the first lines of enemy Pack warriors charging forward in their vehicles and on foot. We didn’t want a bloodbath if we could avoid it. Instead, the shots detonated pre-placed charges of Tannerite near the entrances. The two-part explosive was legal to purchase and popular with long-distance shooters; it made a lot of noise and flame when a bullet would strike it. Put enough of it together, and you could rattle the windows and leave a nice fireball. Our opening volley was, as Sheriff Buford T. Justice would say, an ‘attention getter’ without causing any deaths.

The approaching vehicles stopped near the vehicle barricades, while the charge of the armed intruders stopped as they all hit the ground. Chase made the announcement we planned over the loudspeakers we had on the roof and near the gates. “WE KNEW YOU WERE COMING, AND WE’RE READY FOR YOU,” he said. “LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS AND SIT DOWN, AND YOU WILL LIVE.”

I looked towards the front gate to see the reaction. Men continued to pour out of the cars behind the locked gate and the barricade we had in place. Chest-high landscaping boulders sat in a line between the treeline and the lake, connected by heavy black chains drilled and secured into the glacial rock. The decorative gate was of heavy steel and padlocked closed, and behind it was a reinforced steel lift bar capable of stopping a truck.

“YOU HAVE YOUR ORDERS! ATTACK,” Alpha Kirk urged as he ran forward, assault rifle in hand. His men were looking at each other, but not all got up and followed him.

Our people are well-disciplined; Chase and I made clear the rules of engagement last night. We applied the legal standard in Minnesota for the use of deadly force. We would fire only in response to a threat of death or grievous bodily harm against ourselves or another. We would not shoot an unarmed man, and we would wait until they crossed the border (or fired on us) before we would fire back.

Most of his warriors were smart enough to realize that without the element of surprise, attacking a fortified defensive position with infantry was suicide. We had all the advantages in the fight; home territory, reinforced fighting positions, elevated firing points, and numbers. About half of the men at the main gate sat down, while the others followed their Alpha. They started firing at us as one of them used boltcutters to remove the padlock and open the gate. “FIRE AT WILL,” Chase sent as the first men ducked under the vehicle barrier and started running towards the Pack House. “Ten coming in the back entrance, and a dozen wolves are two minutes out to the south.”

I heard the women behind me opening up with their scoped rifles on the attackers at the back entrance, while I watched through the port to the front. My stomach flipped as I watched the slaughter; once past the gate, there was no cover and no mercy. The shots tore through their bodies, leaving fatal wounds behind. The bullet design was for use on big game, expanding and punching fist-sized holes out the other side. The ones who wore bulletproof vests survived the chest shots thanks to the plates, but not the head or neck shots. At less than two hundred yards, they had no chance of making it to the Pack House, and not enough time to lay siege to it. Those that sought cover in the trees lasted a little longer, but it didn’t matter in the end. A minute after they passed through the gate, fifteen men lay dead or dying.

The firing behind me slowed down as the ten coming in the back gate became two, then none. It had taken longer to drop those attackers since we were firing at long ranges, but my Omegas were relentless. It took another minute before they ran out of targets.

“Wolves approaching from the south have turned around and are heading back for the border,” Chase sent to everyone. “Cameras show no remaining threats.”

I could see that Alpha Matthew Kirk was no more; his brains scattered over our access road. His body lay face down on the blacktop, his rifle underneath him. “Alpha Kirk is down; does anyone have eyes on Alpha Blackledge?”

“Back entrance next to the green Jeep,” Chase replied.

I moved to the other side of the roof. “Let me see,” I said to Ophelia. She quickly handed me her rifle. All Arrowhead sniper rifles are the same, simplifying training and maintenance. The bolt-action Remington 700P rifles in .308 Winchester, similar to those used by SWAT teams and military snipers around the world. The aftermarket stocks accepted 10-round detachable magazines and bipods. On top were 4.5-14x50mm Leupold scopes that cost more than the rifles, and at fourteen times magnification were suited to long-range shooting. Highly accurate and hard-hitting, in the hands of a trained shooter, they were effective out to a thousand yards. The front entrance was only two hundred yards away from the Pack House, an easy shot, while the back entrance was closer to five hundred yards. My Omegas were deadly out that far, as the Katahdin Pack warriors quickly realized.

I rested the stock on top of the steel plating that protected the firing position and looked out through the scope. I quickly located Alpha Paxton Blackledge walking among the seated men, out by the parked vehicles. “You seeing this, Chase?”

“Yeah. Paxton’s not too happy with the boys sitting down.”

I watched for another fifteen or twenty seconds as he yelled at his men on the ground, but when he leveled his pistol at one, I had to act. I knew exactly how much bullet drop there was at 492 yards, and I held two dots left for wind before I sent the round downrange.

It hit Blackledge in the center of his back just before his pistol fired. He dropped like a puppet with his strings cut, and the man he was about to shoot looked my way. He bowed his head in thanks. “My shot, my responsibility,” I said to the Pack. It would be the only shot at someone outside our territory, making it more difficult to justify. Shooting him in the back didn’t help either.

“Law enforcement will be here soon,” Chase said.

“It’s over. Let the warriors take their dead back home. All Betas, report to Alpha Chase with status and injuries.”

Chase got on the loudspeakers again. “RETRIEVE THEM AND GO HOME. IT’S OVER,” he said. The men relaxed as they realized they would survive the day. They rose from their sitting positions and used the cease-fire to walk unarmed into our territory. Their Pack mates were picked up and carried back to their vehicles, their weapons left on the ground. None of them would challenge our goodwill by appearing to be a threat again.

It didn’t take long for them to load the dead into the backs of pickups and SUVs, covering them as they drove away. They were out of sight as we heard the first sirens; I would need to meet them as they arrived. I started walking for the staircase. “Two dead Alphas and all those men,” I sent to Chase. “What do we do now?”

“We let a new Council figure it out. We’re out of Nygaards,” he replied. “I’m glad we followed your idea to give them a chance to survive. The mercy we showed them today will keep the new leadership from holding a grudge.” If all had attacked, they would all be dead, and we’d have more people wanting vengeance.

Still, I was sick to my stomach about the waste of life that had just taken place here. Good men died because they followed bad leadership. There would be widows and orphans to deal with, and two Packs were changed forever. The dead Alphas were stubborn, pushing forward even when they had neither surprise nor superiority. None of the men got close enough to the Pack House to do any damage, and we had no injuries or deaths on our side. “Nobody goes outside, leave the weapons where they are. Unload and safe your weapon. If you fired a shot, remain at your post. If you didn’t fire it, return your rifle to the Armory before gathering in the dining hall. Everyone not in the safe room will speak to our lawyer before giving any statement to the Sheriff’s Department or other investigators. We defended our Pack with skill and honor; we gave them every chance to walk away.”

I went down the stairs and to the front door, calling Vic to my side as a bodyguard. “Leave your pistol by the door, we’re going to meet the Sheriff.” The first two patrol cars had arrived at the blocked-off access road. They looked confused; they could see the weapons scattered on the ground, the blood, and the smell of burnt powder, but they couldn’t see any bad guys. They were standing outside their cruisers with their patrol rifles, one talking on the radio, as we walked up with our hands in the air. “I’m Rori King; I own this land. It’s over, deputies. They took their dead and injured and left.”

I recognized Deputy Parker, who was one of the first to arrive a previous time our Pack House got attacked. He was staring at the battlefield. “Rori, what the fuck happened here?”

“Armed force of thirty-plus men in a coordinated attack on the east and west entrances. We had enough of a warning that we were ready for them. We have no casualties and need no assistance.”

“Jesus,” the younger Deputy said. “I haven’t seen the aftermath of a battle like this since Afghanistan.” He looked around. “We had 911 calls about multiple explosions.”

“Tannerite placed near the entrances. We tried a little shock and awe to convince them to give up on the attack, but we only got half of them to listen. The ones that crossed onto our property with guns, we took them out. We have women and children inside to protect.”

Parker was counting rifles. “Where are they?”

“When the attack was over, the others came in and retrieved them. We don’t shoot unarmed men under a white flag, and we can’t arrest them from on top of our buildings either. They took off a few minutes before you arrived. You’ll have to check the surveillance video to see if you can get license plates.” The ‘guard shack’ near the entrance had a camera with a self-contained low-definition camera and a lens that wasn’t that clean. They could take that video along with the one at the back gate. We had a lot more cameras, but we didn’t record those, and we weren’t about to let law enforcement into our Security Center.

I could tell they were a little upset at having no victims. As a Werewolf, it was an easy decision to let them go. If bodies were here for the cops, it would lead to the Packs, and our people couldn’t have that. I didn’t need the humans thinking we were bloodthirsty or prone to violence. “We got an anonymous call about five minutes before they showed up. It said that people were coming to kill us. After all the other shit we’ve been through, we were ready for them this time.”

“Good thing you called 911 before this started,” he said. “They overloaded the call center after the shooting started. Every law enforcement officer within a hundred miles is heading this way.”

“It’s over here now except the cleanup. Can you call off the dogs? I’ve got a lot of nervous people inside that I should be reassuring.” More sirens were coming fast.

Deputy Parker updated the situation on the radio as more cruisers arrived. “You know the drill, Rori. This whole area is now a crime scene.” The younger Deputy was already putting up police tape, and one of the cars stopped to do crowd control at the turnoff from the main road. A television crew pulled in across the street from them and started to set up.

“I’m gathering the residents in the dining hall now. Make sure you send cars to the other side of the lake too.” I watched as more and more cars pulled in, including the Sheriff. “Chase, we need to get the Feds involved.”

“I’ve already called Frank and Colletta. They will talk to the FBI director personally. The attackers were mercenaries, probably hired by surviving Sons or the drug cartel to take you out. As long as the Pack members don’t get caught on the way home, they’ll never know. Cascade is too remote to draw attention.”

”Are we still broadcasting to the videoconference?” When the attack had started, we routed our security camera feed to the conference so the others could watch the attack live.

“I just ended it. You’ll have to see it to believe what happened at Cascade,” Chase said.

I had hours and hours of crap to deal with before then.