Chapter 13: The Timber Wolf

Our heroes are attacked and the assailants take something that the team wasn't expecting. Nick makes a phone call which upsets Fangmeyer. Fangmeyer and Oates get into an argument, as Chief Bogo finds out about one of Jake's little jokes.

As they stepped out onto the street, Nick reached into his pocket and snapped open a pair of mirrored sunglasses before he set them on his muzzle. Alan Wolford wanted to laugh because Jake did the same thing with a much more expensive pair of sunglasses. If those two weren't different species, I'd swear they were brothers, he thought.

Judy was the first to hear the squealing tires as two black vans slammed their brakes, jarring the vehicles to a stop besides them. "We've got company!" she yelled as she turned towards the dozen armed grey jackals in black uniforms that were spilling out of the vehicles.

Drawing his tranquilizer pistol he snapped off a round two rounds into the first jackal, to his left he heard Judy's dart gun fire. It was then that they were hit from behind by another group of jackals, a blow made him stagger and drop his pistol. Turning towards his attacker, he saw the jackal fall after a series of powerful kicks from the rabbit. To his left, Nick was struggling with another assailant.

The wolf drew his baton just in time to block a knife. "Judy!" he yelled as he blocked a series of blows, which drove him back. She bounced off the wall and into the knife welding jackal's back, sending it sprawling into a parked car. As she stood, he shoved the file into the rabbit's paws. "They want the notes," he growled. "You're the fastest of us, take them and run!"

"No!" she protested.

"Do it Judy!" Jake yelled as the raccoon flipped a jackal over this shoulder and slammed her into the pavement. "Run!"

She looked wide eyed at her husband who now was fighting for his life. "Carrots run!" the fox yelled. Her ears drooped and then with a determined look, she sprinted down the street weaving between traffic.

"No!" a female jackal commanded as several of the assailants ran to follow the rabbit. "Not the rabbit, get our target!"

Wolford drove another knife welding jackal back with a series of punches. Hearing a yip, he glanced over and saw that Nick was sprawled out on the sidewalk, obviously hurt and a jackal stood over him preparing to stab a wicked looking curved blade into the fox. There was the snap of a tranquilizer gun and two rounds slammed into the attacker and a third into the face of another, as Jake stepped over his friend's fallen body. The raccoon had picked up the fox's fallen gun and now that it was empty, threw it at another jackal.

"Get him!" the female jackal yelled. "Get the raccoon!"

Wolford had sent his assailant sprawling with a series of blows and turned toward the raccoon, just in time to see Jake chattering with anger as he went down under a pile of the jackals. With a snarl, the wolf began to lunge forward to rescue the raccoon, but was blocked by a large rhino. "Remember me?" the rhino bellowed.

"I always remember ugly," the timber wolf growled. He could hear the sound of sirens in the distance as he looked the larger mammal in the eyes. "Ready to dance?"

He landed a blow with his baton across the rhino's face, which actually caused the beast to stagger, but then he was hit in the chest by several sharp pains and looked down to see the stains the tranquilizer rounds left on his uniform. Staggering, he looked up to see the female jackal aiming his own gun at him. He growled at her, but then the rhino's hoof hit him and there was darkness.

"Partner…" a voice spoke to him from the out of the darkness. "Wolford, wake up!"

Groaning, he blinked at the bright hospital lights only to see the face of his friend and former partner Richard Fangmeyer looking down at him with concern. "If I'm dead, they screwed up and sent me to cat hell," he tried to chuckle, but it came out more as a slurred groan.

"Bad jokes, that's a good sign," Nick said from across the room. The fox stood with his left arm in a sling and standing next to him was an agitated rabbit.

"They weren't after the file," she snapped. "They were after Jake."

"Why did they take Runnel?" he slurred out the question.

"He's a raccoon!" Nick yelled and began pacing around almost in a panic. "We have to find him before they kill him!"

"We have an APB out for him again, every officer is searching the city for him," Fangmeyer sighed. "It's all we can do!"

"Where's my phone!" the fox snapped. "I need to make some calls."

"Here's your phone pard," Detective Oates said as he entered the room. "I reckon you wanted this phone, so ya'll can call someone I don't want to know in private." The tiger gave the horse a look of agitation. "We're above our manes in the one detective and need all the help we can get, no matter from which stable."

Wolford watched as the fox tore the phone out of the horse's hoof and ran out of the room. "If anything happens to that raccoon, this city might just burn," he muttered.

"If this stone does what I was told it can do by the mythologist I just interviewed, this here town is gonna burn," Oates muttered.

"Stories? Legends? Tales? Is that all you're going to bring to this investigation!" the tiger roared as he turned to face the horse. "We need more than that kind of shit. What's next Oates, a physic?"

"Runnel was kitnapped by grey furred jackals from the Sarah region," Oates answered, he didn't look offended, but the wolf could smell the horse's agitation. "They are from the Bweha Pack and they are here for the stone. Jasmine wasn't murdered in Little Amir, but in a desert area and so was the nun. If they are going to kill Jake, it will be somewhere around Sahara Square. If you're gonna understand who is who, you need to up and find out why they're trotting the way they're going."

"But magic!" the angry cat snapped. "You're wasting your time with tales of magic!"

"Just because ya'll don't believe in magic, don't mean others do," the horse sighed. "It's motive, detective! They up and believe that the stone is magic and that is their motive to kill! Do you know why they're killing coons?"

The tiger stopped and looked at him with curiosity.

"Ah reckon you don't," the horse sighed. "That stone is called the Serpent's Stone and the tale goes that during the age of the great king Mufasa, its magic was used against his army by invaders called the Others and they almost destroyed his kingdom. The night before the final battle, a thieving raccoon crept into camp and stole it from the wizard, the next day the king's army defeated the invaders. The stone was sent across the sea to be guarded by the island raccoons, who refused to give it to the king because they feared that it would corrupt him too."

"So they kill raccoon's as a sacrifice?" Wolford asked. He winced because his muzzle was sore and swollen. "But why do they kill one every twenty-one years?"

"They up and believe that their evil serpent god sheds his skin every twenty one years," the weary horse said as he sat down in a chair. "This city ain't the only place they've been killing coons either."

"When was the last time you've slept?" Judy asked as she came back into the room, she gave the horse a concerned look. "You look exhausted."

"Ah reckon, I haven't slept much since my filly passed away," the horse chuckled. "Did you're fox make his calls to your friend?"

Judy looked over at Fangmeyer and Wolford and then she sighed, "Mr. Big is a friend of Jake's and one of his customers, he needed to know."

"Big is a gangster!" Fangmeyer growled. "Now we are working with the mob!"

"No one has pinned a crime on Big," the horse muttered. "I'd dance with the devil herself to put this crime six feet under and save that coon. As I said, we need all the help we can get."

"He's right Fang," Wolford added. "We were attacked just after we left interviewing Eddie Woods, Wilde thought he could read the Smuggler's Code and he was right. You know that there are rumors that he was the infamous smuggler The Grey Ghost."

"Woods is dead, he died of a heart attack just after the interview," Bogo said as he entered the room. "The doctor says you're lucky and didn't break your jaw Wolford, why didn't you use your taser projectile launcher on the rhino? We issued those, along with the new Mk.3 pistols to the team weeks ago."

"They don't work," the tiger sighed. "I've reported that to the armory."

"Damn, next time we have an equipment malfunction let me know!" the cape buffalo cursed. "I don't care what protocol is when it comes to the lives of my team."

Judy's ears drooped as the Chief saw Nick's gun belt sitting on the counter and picked it up, he pulled out the taser launcher tube. Then noticing the spray canister of mace, he frowned as he read the professionally printed label that had been affixed. "Cape Buffalo Repellent and it even has my frowning face on it, cleaver. I take it your husband got this from Runnel?" he asked.

"It was a gag gift," the rabbit replied. "A joke, but it is the best mace on the market and better than the standard issued mace sprayers."

"I wonder if Runnel has any more of these laying around?" Bogo mused. Wolford noticed there was a small smile on his snout. "A triple dial top which regulates the amount of spray per shot, a great way to control the dosage based on the mammal's size. This might not have brought down the rhino, but it would have made his eyes hurt."

"Jake had to order a full case," Judy replied. "Sorry, about the joke, I told him it wasn't funny."

"Call Ratzolli and see if there are any more canisters still around and if so, see if we can get some for the remainder of the team."

"But what about the label?" the rabbit asked.

"Burying an officer would hurt my feelings more than a gag gift Hopps," Bogo replied. "Officers always make fun of and gripe about the guy in charge, I it did when I was in the field. Just tell them I don't know, you know a good humorous group gag kept secret about the boss never hurts moral. Besides it would be coming from a guy who already calls me buffalo-butt."

Judy was about to respond when a snort was heard from the chair and everyone quickly looked over at the sleeping horse.

The team receives their new Mark 3 tranquilizer guns in Chapter 2 of Sins of Our Fathers. Because of his size Nick's gun only has three rounds, whereas Fangmeyer's larger gun has a dozen. Due to her much small size, Judy still uses the old standard issue patrol officer's dart gun. Nick also discusses Jake's gag gift with the police quartermaster.