by Alex Kava
The fifty-acre property was surrounded on three sides by forest. The privacy and seclusion it afforded them was one of the reasons Creed chose this place in the northern part of the Florida Panhandle. It also provided endless training ground.
His cell phone started to vibrate as he watched Jason disappear into the woods. He glanced at the screen to see it was Hannah. Less than an hour ago they’d had coffee and Hannah’s fresh-baked cinnamon rolls in her kitchen.
“Already miss me?”
“I ought to feed you sugar more often in the morning, you gonna be this sweet.” Then without missing a beat she went on to business. “Landslide in North Carolina. Some man from the DoD. We got a request for you specifically.”
“Me or Grace?”
Over the summer there had been a lot of media attention, most of it centered on Grace, their amazing Jack Russell terrier. The scrappy little dog had won the hearts of the nation when she helped make several drug busts and stopped one human trafficking incident, resulting in the rescue of five children.
“Actually, you. No specific dog.”
“When did the slide happen? Are we talking rescue or recovery?”
“Late last night into this morning. It’s still raining, and from what I understand, there’s still potential for more slides. Possible rescues. Definitely recovery.”
“I’ll need to leave right away. What is that? A five-hour drive? Can you come finish with Jason?”
“Already putting on my dungarees.”
That made Creed smile. Hannah was the only person he knew who referred to blue jeans as dungarees. She’d hate it if he called her a Southern belle, though her mannerisms sometimes fit. She would say she was corn bread and black-eyed peas and certainly not a lady who lunched.
“But no need to drive,” she continued. “They’re sending a jet. A Gulfstream 550.”
“They’re sending what?”
“I know I got it right. I wrote it down. Gulfstream 550. That’s one of the pretty ones, isn’t it?”
“Wait a minute. I thought you said the request was from the Department of Defense.”
“That’s right.”
“What interest do they have in a landslide in North Carolina?” Creed didn’t like the sound of this.
“That is not on my list of questions. Maybe they had some training personnel in the area. The gentleman said he knew you. That you two had worked together years ago.”
“I don’t know anybody at the DoD. And I haven’t worked with a military dog in a long time.”
Creed could hear her flipping pages. She kept impeccable records and always got more information than she actually needed before she confirmed an assignment.
“Here it is,” she finally said. “Logan. Lieutenant Colonel Peter Logan.”
Afghanistan. Creed felt like acid had slid into his stomach.
Over seven years ago, and yet just the mention of Peter Logan brought back images and memories he had hoped were long buried.
3.
Pensacola, Florida
Emotion runs down the leash.
It was one of the first things Creed taught dog handlers and something he reminded himself of constantly. As a handler, whatever you were feeling, you needed to tamp it down. Keep it under wraps as much as possible because a dog could sense it immediately.
As Creed walked down the aisle of the Gulfstream, he glanced back to see Bolo practically tiptoeing behind him at the end of his leash. It was exactly the way Creed felt—uneasy in the luxurious interior, like he didn’t belong there. And the dog was copying him.
He patted the big dog’s head, then ran his hand the length of his back, over the thin streak of coarse hair that stood up and grew in the reverse direction. The line was a defining characteristic of the Rhodesian ridgeback, and for some reason when Creed petted him there, the dog tended to calm down.
“Hello.” A woman greeted them from the back of the plane, looking up but not interrupting her tasks.
Glasses tinkled. He smelled fresh-brewed coffee. She wore a navy blazer, matching skirt, and black heels. Probably the flight attendant.
“Are you traveling with Mr. Creed?”
“I am Mr. Creed.”
That stopped her.
He watched her take a step back to get a better look at him. He expected to get right to work as soon as they landed, so he’d worn his usual uniform: blue jeans, hiking boots, a T-shirt, and a long-sleeved oxford left unbuttoned with the tails untucked. His tousled hair crept over the back of his collar and he kept his face unshaved but trimmed with fine lines that made it look groomed instead of like he had just gotten up. But he figured appearance wasn’t the only thing that stopped her.
“I’m sorry, it’s just that I expected—”
“Someone older?”
Her face flushed the answer before she admitted it. “Yes, I suppose so.”
And in that moment he could tell she was younger than he initially had thought. In fact, she was much closer to his age, somewhere between twenty-eight and thirty. Maybe she expected her uniform to give her gravitas. So many people did. He worked with a lot of uniforms—official as well as unofficial—and titles. Law enforcement and government loved titles and badges and knowing whose title or badge won jurisdiction. Creed wasn’t interested in their pissing contests, and he simply didn’t care what others thought of him.
But now, realizing he was her official passenger, not just some casually dressed lackey, she left the galley and the flight preparations to greet him properly.
“I’m Isabel Klein, Mr. Logan’s assistant.” She held out her hand.
After a firm, brisk handshake she offered her open palm to Bolo to sniff. And because of that small gesture, Creed decided to cut her some slack for her initial mistake. He took a second look at the woman.
She noticed. Caught his eye, and he swore there was a hint of a blush, but it didn’t stay long. She reached out and took the duffel bag from his hand and swung it up into the luggage compartment with little effort. He wouldn’t allow her to take anything else and started pulling straps from his shoulder, then shrugging out of the backpack.
“Sit wherever you’re comfortable,” she said as she looked around behind him. “What’s his name?”
“Bolo.”
She smiled. “Like the acronym BOLO?”
“Yep.”
That was exactly where the name had come from—Be On the Look Out. It suited him perfectly. The dog pitched his ears in response to his name and Creed motioned for him to sit while he swung the rest of their equipment up into the overhead bins. He was overly protective of Creed. So much so that Creed had to be careful how and where he used the dog.
Bolo was muscular with great stamina and would be able to handle the long hours as well as the brutal terrain of a landslide. He was one of Creed’s multitask dogs and could search for live victims as well as find those not so fortunate.
Ridgebacks originated in Zimbabwe, where they were used in packs to hunt lions. That’s where their nickname “the African Lion Hound” came from. They could withstand the long heat of the day and the damp, cold nights. Bolo would do well for this assignment, if only Creed could keep the big dog from flattening anyone who might raise a voice to him.
Isabel glanced behind him, looking to the entrance. “Is someone bringing the other dogs?”
“No other dogs. It’s just Bolo and me.”
“Just one dog?”
“One handler, one dog.”
“Mr. Logan made it sound like there would be several.”
That was the other thing—people were always looking for there to be more. More dogs, more magic.
Creed pulled his electronic tablet and a paperback from his messenger bag and placed all three items on the seat beside the one he planned to sit in. He directed Bolo to sit next to the leather captain’s chair
so the dog would be tucked against his legs, at his feet. He wanted him as close as possible for takeoff.
He removed a harness from the bag and slipped it on the dog. It provided a handle instead of just the leash in case the dog got nervous in flight. Bolo hadn’t flown before. One of his other dogs, Grace, had her first flight aboard a Coast Guard helicopter a month ago. She’d loved it. Grace would be bored with this luxury ride. Creed directed the air vent to flow across Bolo’s back and the dog lay down.
Isabel, however, was still standing beside Creed as though waiting for someone or something more. He stopped himself from taking his seat and turned to look at her.
“Can I get the two of you something? Wine? Scotch? The jet has a well-stocked bar.”
“Couple of bottles of water would be great.”
“Oh, certainly. Of course.”
And finally she turned on her heels and left for the back galley, obviously trained to be accommodating, which probably suited Logan just fine.
He looked around the wood-paneled interior as he sank into the soft leather. All of this seemed a bit extravagant for someone who was a platoon leader in Afghanistan. Logan was probably trying to impress him, but Creed couldn’t stop wondering how much this pickup was costing taxpayers.
Hannah had said that Logan was now a lieutenant colonel, but because it made no difference to Creed he hadn’t asked what Logan’s title was or who in the government he was trying to lead now. He imagined Hannah had included it in the briefing material she’d stuffed in his messenger bag. That’s where it would stay. Creed found it was best for him to know only the bare essentials.
If a handler got caught up in details, he could find himself misleading his dog and looking for signals or targets that weren’t important. Too many times handlers drove their dogs to find what law enforcement, or the officials who had ordered the search, expected to find. In this case, Creed didn’t even want to know how many people were missing. He didn’t want his mind focused on statistical rates of survival or calculating how many hours victims could stay alive buried beneath mud and debris.
Facts were fine, but Creed liked to leave room for those few cases that dispelled all rhyme or reason. Maybe it wasn’t practical—perhaps some would argue, silly—but he’d never have gotten through the last seven years in this business if he hadn’t believed in miracles.
Still, when Isabel brought the water to him, he decided to ask.
“What exactly is Logan’s job these days at the DoD?” He tried to make it sound casual, as if they were acquaintances who’d simply lost touch with each other.
She raised her eyebrows, surprised at the question, but without hesitation said, “He’s a deputy director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”
He nodded, thanked her as he took the bottles of water, again pretending it was no big deal, and waited for her to go back to her flight duties. At the same time, his mind was trying to grasp what in the world a deputy director of DARPA had to do with a landslide in North Carolina.
Ten minutes after takeoff Isabel was back. Without waiting for an invitation or permission, she sat in the captain’s chair across from Creed, careful not to disturb Bolo, who stayed at Creed’s feet.
“I was told to answer any of your questions or concerns once we were in the air.”
“So I couldn’t back out if I heard something I didn’t like?”
She smiled, adjusted herself into the seat, and crossed her legs. She wasn’t leaving, even if he had no questions for her.
“I’m not sure how much area is affected,” she said, deciding to give him what information she had prepared whether he wanted it or not. “The major slide happened around ten-thirty last night. From what I understand, there’s been at least two more, smaller debris flows. Are you familiar with landslides?”
“A bit.”
She waited for more. He figured, they hired him, they had to know his résumé. If Isabel didn’t know, then she hadn’t done her homework.
When he didn’t offer anything else, she continued, “The region that we’re concerned about is a research facility on five acres. So we have a much smaller search area. The main structure was a two-story brick building.”
“Where was it in the slide? At the top or bottom?”
“They’re telling me it’s close to the middle.”
“How many people?”
“I’m not sure. It was after business hours. We’re still trying to contact the director. We fear that she and some of the staff may have been inside.”
“Has anyone seen what condition the building is in?”
Her eyes left his, trailed down to Bolo, and glanced out the window before they came back.
“A colleague at the scene said he couldn’t find it,” she told him.
“He couldn’t reach it?”
“No, he couldn’t find it. It’s gone, buried under the mud and debris.”
4.
Washington, D.C.
Senator Ellie Delanor followed her aide as the two of them pushed their way through the protesters and up the steps of the Capitol. Of all things, she found herself thinking the next time she hired an aide she needed to seriously consider brawn over brains. Amelia Gonzalez was brilliant and efficient, but at five feet and maybe a hundred pounds, the woman became little more than a distraction and not even close to the defensive force Ellie needed to lead her through this mass of bodies.
At least today’s protesters didn’t shove back, but they didn’t step aside, either. Ellie watched Gonzalez squeeze her tiny frame in between people without creating a hint of a seam for Ellie to follow in. There was no respect in this city, and less if she was recognized as a senator.
But in fact, she noticed these protesters were downright polite compared to what Ellie was used to. She saw that many of them wore patriotic gear and waved miniature flags. They were older than the typical political demonstrators or activists, and as she glanced around at faces, making eye contact with several and giving them a nod as if in agreement, it struck her how they looked like her constituents back home in Florida. Move them to a conference room at a local Holiday Inn and they could easily pass for members of her reelection campaign.
These were her people—veterans in T-shirts and ball caps, mothers and grandmothers, business owners and civic group leaders. They weren’t on the steps of the Capitol to block her entrance. Instead, they were there to remind her of her duties.
It should have been reassuring. It should have invigorated her for the congressional hearings that were slated to start tomorrow. She had fought to be included in them. But it hadn’t been these people or even thoughts of defending them or speaking up for them that had motivated her to be on this committee. It had been all about acquiring political clout and arming herself with positive sound bites to win a reelection campaign that had quickly tightened and become messy.
There was a time when her Colombian-born husband—no, ex-husband. She needed to remember that. She couldn’t chance mixing that up again. There was a time when George Ramos, with his Hollywood good looks and his charms, had been a guaranteed vote-cincher. But now . . .
Thirteen years of marriage. How could she not have known that he was running drugs? Not just running them! For God’s sake, he was the head of a Colombian cartel’s southeastern territory in the United States. His upcoming trial could derail her entire career if she wasn’t able to change the narrative somehow.
She had done everything she could to publicly show that not only had she done the hard and painful thing of seeing to it that her husband—damn it, ex-husband! She had seen to it that her ex-husband—and the father of her two children—had been indicted. There would be no favors, no exceptions, absolutely no help from her during his trial. In fact, she would see to it that he got the harshest sentence possible. As a United States senator, she still had enough influence in her home state to make sure
George Ramos paid for his crimes.
But none of that would be possible if she wasn’t able to find some positive optics to help her win reelection, and that’s what she hoped this congressional hearing would do.
She elbowed her way up the final stretch of steps and made it through the doors without having to make a comment and, more important, without hearing a single derogatory slur hurled at her. A good start to the day. Yes, crazy that no one calling her a drug whore or puta was enough to count as a good day.
Ellie’s chief of staff joined them in the entrance, taking his usual place, walking alongside her. His greeting was curt. Instead of a customary cup of coffee, he handed her a folded piece of paper without breaking stride.
There were too many people around for her to ask about it, especially after he had taken such pains to hand this message to her without attracting any attention. And because she didn’t trust her reaction to not attract attention, she’d need to wait. But she already knew her good start had just been upended.
5.
Haywood County, North Carolina
Creed had left behind a sunny, warm day to plunge down into bruise-colored gray that made the afternoon look like night. The pilot managed to land before the lightning kicked up again. Creed asked Isabel Klein how long it had been raining.
“It hasn’t stopped.”
Creed had worked the aftermath of three hurricanes, helping to search for survivors as well as those who weren’t so lucky. Weather could often be your biggest adversary during a search. Rain and wind affected scent by dispersing it. Temperature added more challenges. Heat helped advance decomposition, but hot and humid weather could wear down a dog and the handler. September in North Carolina should be manageable. He had checked the forecast to see seventies during the day and fifties at night. The rain could change both.
Landslides brought a bunch of other challenges. It might seem counterproductive to want the rain to continue, although a mist would be preferable to this downpour. But as soon as the rain stopped and the dirt and mud began to dry, it would be like hunting for scent through concrete. Last year he’d spent six days in Oso, Washington, after a landslide that claimed forty-three lives.