Home of the Brave (Raine Stockton Dog Mysteries Book 9)

by Donna Ball

  Another child sobbed, “I want to go home. My mommy said I could go home …”

  And everyone, adults and children, swiveled their heads toward us when the door opened and we stumbled in. A collective sob of horror seemed to go around the room when they saw the police officer bound, gagged and bleeding. Even the barking of the dogs became more hysterical.

  Someone shoved me hard on the shoulder. “Get those dogs in cages.”

  The other soldier pushed Jolene into a sitting position against the wall. Her head lolled. I could tell she was about to pass out. A plump woman in a white uniform spoke up. She was the camp nurse, whose name I had never even known. It was Kathy, I learned later, and simply by speaking up at that moment she became one of the bravest women I had ever known.

  Beneath the generalized fear and disbelief in her voice, there was a note of sharp alarm as she looked at Jolene. “She can’t breathe! Can’t you take the tape off?”

  The soldier stared at me and I understood. Until Nike was secure, he was taking no chance that Jolene might order her attack dog into action. I said quickly, breathlessly, “Okay. Yes, I will. Right now.”

  Melanie clung to me. “I need to see Pepper. Can’t I—”

  “Melanie, stop!” I jerked away from her, my heart pounding my tone sharp. “Go sit with Counselor Haley. Now!”

  I clucked my tongue to Nike and Cisco and led them away at a brisk clip, not wasting a moment to see if Melanie complied. The dogs’ excited barking accelerated as I approached with the two strange canines, and by instinct I shouted in my booming kennel voice, “Dogs! Quiet!” In the face of authority, the dogs were reassured, as they usually are, and all but a couple of yippy terriers settled down.

  I found an empty crate against the wall and led Nike into it, unclipping her leash and snapping it onto the side of the crate. The average person might think that at this point I would have thought of some heroic measure that would release Nike into action and save us all. The average person might think that the last thing I would have been so meekly willing to do was to lock up our only hope in a steel cage. The average person has never been held hostage at gunpoint by a roomful of soldiers in gas masks with automatic weapons.

  There were no more empty crates, so I had to put Cisco in the ex-pen with Pepper. Pepper wanted to escape and Cisco did not want to go in, so I had to drag him by the collar while holding a bucking Pepper with the other hand. I finally got them both inside and shot the bolts on the exercise pen. I scanned the room for Mischief, and found her, looking alert and interested but completely unruffled in a crate on the other side of the room. Lee knew about her propensity for unlocking doors and had secured her crate with two heavy-duty snap clips. I breathed a sigh of relief that all three of my dogs were safe—Magic being the safest, back in my cabin—and turned to walk away.

  The next thing I knew all the dogs were barking again and I heard the scrabble of claws on the cement floor behind me. I turned to see Cisco racing toward me. The dog trainer in me sprang into action and I held up my hand, palm out, in the automatic “distance come” signal. Cisco skidded to a sit in front of me.

  I had absentmindedly looped Cisco’s leash around my neck when I left him, just as Jolene had done when she’d released Nike to find her target. Now I bent to quickly clip the leash to his collar and when I looked up a rifle barrel was pointed at my cheek.

  It was at that point that I did the only heroic thing I’d done throughout the episode and it was, of course, in defense of my dog. “He’s a golden retriever, for God’s sake!” I cried. Cisco panted his most endearing pant at my feet. “He’s harmless!”

  Golden retrievers are the second—or maybe it’s the third?—most popular breed in the AKC. The soldiers in their Darth Vader masks who surrounded us now might be twisted, messed-up, trained killers today, but the chances are that at one point in their lives some of them had owned, and been loved by, a golden retriever. Or had at least known one.

  When I found myself still alive after my outburst, I pressed my advantage. “He doesn’t like to be crated,” I pleaded. “He won’t stay. But I can keep him out of your way. He’s a good dog. Look.” I then gave Cisco his oldest, and most reliable, advanced command. Still, I held my breath until he completed it. “Cisco, go place.”

  I pointed toward the wall where Melanie was being comforted against the shoulder of Counselor Haley. Cisco looked uncertain for a moment, but he must have been moved by the deity of dogs to whom my prayers had been forwarded, because he got up, trotted over to the wall, found an empty place close to Melanie, and lay down.

  “Please,” I repeated. My breath came light and fast. “He’s a good dog.”

  After a moment, he lowered the gun. “Over there,” he said, and gestured toward the wall where the adults were seated.

  I sank to my knees in front of Jolene and, without thinking, ripped off the duct tape from her mouth. She sagged back against the wall, gasping for breath. Kathy, the nurse, got up and came over to us. She touched Jolene’s forehead and then swung her head around to the soldier nearest. “I need a first aid kit,” she said. “There’s one in the restroom.”

  The soldier was impassive.

  “She’s unarmed,” I said. “Her dog is confined. Let us help her.”

  He said nothing. But he made no move to stop her as Kathy moved quickly to the restroom.

  Jolene, breathing hard, focused angry eyes on me. “Are you—crazy?” she demanded at last in a hoarse rasp. “Why did you stop her?”

  It took my poor battered brain a moment to wind back the reel of the past few incredible moments to find the incident to which she referred. “He would have shot her!”

  “And then I would have shot him,” she said through gritted teeth. “I could have stopped this. Nike ... could have stopped this. We’re here … because of you.”

  My hands and feet started to tingle with cold, the shock was that severe. I stared at her. My fault, my fault … I sat back on my heels. “What kind of person sends her dog to die?” I whispered.

  “That’s her job!” Jolene spat at me, her chest heaving. “These dogs are not pets … they’re weapons! Damn it …” Her head sank back against the wall and her eyes closed. “I could have stopped this.”

  Indian Drum Mountain Road was one of those long country roads that led nowhere, dotted by pretty valley farms and horses behind unpainted fences, white farmhouses and rickety barns. There were signs for campgrounds, boiled peanuts and fresh produce, and in the summertime Banks General Store did a brisk business supplying tourists with bundles of campfire wood and jugs of water, not to mention all the kitschy things nobody left the mountains without buying: jars of homemade preserves with checkered cloths tied over the caps, waterfall guide maps, stick candy from a big jar and tee shirts with pictures of bears on them. But when Buck pulled up, the Jeep Cherokee was the only car in the gravel lot; the two Hanover County Sheriff’s Department vehicles were idling nose-to-nose on the berm across the road.

  When he got out of the car, Les and Wyn pulled their unit behind the Jeep, blocking its exit, and Lyle, who was riding alone today, pulled in on the other side. The three deputies got out. Buck peered inside the windows; Lyle checked the passenger door. “Unlocked,” he reported.

  Buck grunted an acknowledgement, but made no attempt to open the car door. Nothing that he saw inside gave him cause to.

  He walked around the jeep to the front of the store. “Les, you and Wyn check around back. Lyle, see if there’s a side entrance.”

  As his deputies dispersed, Buck shook the locked door handle. “Willie!” he called out. “You okay? You’re missing business out here!”

  He peered in the front windows and saw movement in the shadows. He stepped away from the door as Lyle opened it. “The delivery entrance was unlocked,” he explained.

  Buck stepped inside and glanced around for a light switch. He found it and a bank of overhead fluorescents flickered on, illuminating four short aisles stocked with merchandise,
a cash register, and not much else. “Willie!” he called out again. “Sheriff Lawson! Are you here?”

  They split up and started to walk the aisles, but hadn’t made it much past the end caps when Les came in from the back, his expression grim. “You won’t find him here, Sheriff,” he said. “He’s sitting in his truck out back with a bullet hole in his head. And Buck,” he added before Buck could react, “you need to see what’s under the tarp in the back of his pickup.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Cisco had managed to creep forward until his head was in Melanie’s lap. I left Kathy to do what she could for Jolene’s injuries and went to sit beside them. Melanie’s head was bent forward as she stroked Cisco’s head, and her tangled hair obscured her face, but I saw a tear form a dark blotch on Cisco’s fur. I said, “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Melanie.” My throat hurt with the effort to speak. Everything inside me hurt. She was just a kid, frightened and alone, and I was supposed to protect her. Instead I had yelled at her. “I was scared.”

  After a moment, she nodded. “Me too,” she whispered. And then, brokenly, “I want my mom!”

  “I know,” I said. I tried to smile. “But hey, you’re going to see her in a couple of weeks, right? And you’re going to love Brazil.” I frantically tried to remember something about Brazil and came up with a scrap of a documentary I had seen on television. “Parrots fly wild in the streets there, and they have these festivals where guys put on ten-foot-tall stilts and wear long ruffled dresses and big hats and walk in parades.”

  Melanie sniffed. “I think that’s Argentina.”

  She would know.

  She pushed up her glasses, wiped her eyes with her fingers and looked up at me. She sniffed. “I’m sorry I cried.” Her eyes were still swimming and her voice was broken. “I don’t want my daddy to go to war! What will happen to Pepper and me?”

  I scooted close and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into me. She was trembling with the effort not to sob out loud. I said, with all the firmness I could muster, “Your dad is not going to war. I promise you that. I don’t think …” I looked around the room uneasily. There were four men in combat gear with rifles, one guarding the children, one guarding the adults, another standing over Jolene and Kathy and one guarding the door. The soldier guarding us marched up and down our little row, and every time he did the dogs would launch themselves into a new frenzy of barking, giving cover to our voices. Cisco’s ears remained permanently pricked with the commotion, but he was not about to leave Melanie’s side. “I don’t think these are real soldiers.”

  Haley, the counselor who had been trying to comfort Melanie, overheard this. “But those are real guns, aren’t they?” Streaks of mascara across her white cheeks betrayed her own tears, and she still looked terrified.

  I said, “Yes.” My arm tightened around Melanie’s shoulders.

  Haley watched as the soldier guarding us walked down the row. When his back was to us, she said shakily, “Why are they wearing gas masks? Are they—do you think they’re going to gas us?”

  “No,” I said quickly, aware of Melanie’s frightened gaze on me. In fact, I thought that was exactly what they planned to do; it was cleaner and easier than shooting and why else would they be wearing respirators? But as I spoke I found I was convincing myself. “They have no reason to do that. I think—I think the masks and goggles are for disguise, so we can’t describe them later. And if we can’t describe them, we’re no threat to them. They have no reason to kill us.”

  The other two teenagers were listening, and all of them, including Melanie, looked anxious to believe that. So was I.

  Haley whispered, “They shot the police woman.”

  I nodded, and shifted my glance toward Jolene. “She’s okay.” She did not look okay. One eye was swollen almost completely shut and her lip was split and as the nurse tried to clean and bandage her hand, her face had gone an ashy color I had never seen on a human before. I said, “And she’s supposed to report back to duty in a couple of hours. When the sheriff’s department doesn’t hear from her, they’ll know something is wrong and they’ll send somebody out. We’ll be okay.”

  I hoped I was the only one who heard the hollowness of that. A single team of deputies against a dozen men with automatic rifles? They’d be walking into a massacre.

  Margie, sitting next to Haley, said anxiously, “We can’t keep these kids calm for two hours. They’re practically hysterical now.”

  Her husband Steve said lowly, “There are as many of us as there are of them. If we …”

  “No,” I said sharply, and Margie hissed at the same time, “Shut up, Steve! They have guns!”

  Bill ventured uncertainly, “Twenty-five dogs. If we let them all out …”

  I shook my head adamantly, remembering how effortlessly the soldier had turned his gun on Cisco and Nike. “No. No, we don’t want to do anything to start gunfire, because once we do there’s no going back. Just … we just have to stay calm. We don’t know what they want yet.”

  “She’s right,” Lee said. “This is not a random thing. They waited until lunch time, when all the dogs were crated and all the kids and most of the adults were in one place. They knew it would be easier to move us all in here that way. They didn’t even search the kids for phones. They must’ve known they’re all locked up in the office during the day. This was well thought out, carefully planned. They’ve got to have a reason for it. We just have to wait and find out what it is.”

  The soldier had turned and was walking back toward us. I spotted a half-empty bottle of water on the windowsill above my head, and I pointed to it, then inclined my head toward Jolene. I raised my voice to be heard above the din. “Can I take it to her?”

  He paused, then stepped back. I tried my best to get a look at his face, even the smallest of glimpse of something that might let me guess his age. Nothing.

  I told Cisco to stay, and added to Melanie, “Hold on to him, okay?” just as I had done dozens of times before, just as though it was just another normal day, just as though walking those six or seven steps from here to Jolene didn’t mean taking my life in my hands.

  Kathy had just finished wrapping Jolene’s hand in gauze, and when I knelt beside her she handed me a roll of adhesive tape. “Tear off some strips, will you? About three inches long. They took the scissors.”

  I started tearing the tape into strips and handing them to Kathy. Jolene avoided my eyes.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” the nurse said. She tried to smile at Jolene. “A couple of broken fingers, but the bullet just tore the fleshy part of the thumb. We need to get you sewn up, but you’ll be fine.”

  “The bastard was a marksman,” Jolene muttered. “He shot the phone right out of my hand.”

  Of course that should have been my cue to make some remark about how she could blame me for saving Nike’s life when she clearly could not have fired her weapon with a broken hand—or even held it—but I was too fixated on the word “marksman” to say anything for a moment. I tore off another strip of tape. I could feel the soldier’s eyes on the back of my neck. I said as quietly as I could to her, “When are you due to report in?”

  Jolene’s lips compressed and she said nothing. She didn’t have to. I could see it in her eyes.

  I let the truth sink in, one horrible moment at a time. “You’re not,” I said at last, dully. I stared at her. “You have the weekend off. You lied.”

  No one was expecting her back. Buck wouldn’t raise the alarm when she didn’t report in. No one would know anything was wrong.

  No one was coming for us.

  Kathy must have grasped the significance of this as well as I did, because I saw a flash of alarm in her eyes which she quickly tried to hide. She turned back to the first aid kit and took out two small paper packets, tore them open and shook out the pills into Jolene’s good hand. “All I have is ibuprofen,” she said.

  I took the cap off the water and handed it to Jolene as she popped the pills i
nto her mouth. She drank. “Thanks.” She made a small gesture with the bandaged hand and winced with the pain of it. “I’m okay now.”

  I said quietly, “Better keep that information to yourself. I think you and Nike are the only ones they’re worried about here, and thinking they’ve put you out of commission might be the all that’s keeping you alive.”

  Kathy’s face was rigid with distress. “What do you think they want?”

  Jolene looked from one to the other of us, a darting gaze that was disconcerting because of her one swollen eye. “There was a briefing this morning,” she said. “The FBI uncovered a radical militia cell operating around here somewhere. One of their agents …” she swallowed hard, “a man named Carl Brunner, was killed trying to infiltrate them, and his body was placed in a stolen car and burned.”

  I caught my breath. “Jessie Connor’s car.”

  She nodded. “That’s one of the reasons Nike and I were assigned here. The FBI thought the terrorists were planning something for Monday, maybe something to do with Jeb Wilson’s appearance, but that must’ve been a smokescreen. This was the real operation. The FBI never would have been expecting anything out here.”

  “My God,” whispered Kathy.

  “This must have been their training camp,” I murmured. “And any of these buildings would have been a good place to store munitions.” I glanced at Jolene. “I think Willie, the caretaker, might have been moving them this morning. He knew Nike was coming, but we all expected you later. And he didn’t know we had moved the demo site down to the lake. He just didn’t finish before Nike found the stash.”

  Kathy said uncertainly, “But … all these children! Why would anyone take all these children hostage?”