by Ronie Kendig
“Hey, beautiful,” he mumbled as her keen gaze locked on the wilderness. Legs dangling over the ledge, Heath tugged the bite valve from the CamelBak and took three long drags from it. As the cool water swirled around his mouth, he aimed the valve at Trinity and squirted her.
Her head snapped around, and she lap-licked at the water. Sated, she shook out her fur.
“Hey.” He shielded himself as water sprayed him. “Payback, huh?”
She nudged the paper sticking out of his waistband.
“Can’t ignore the inevitable, huh?” Heath plucked the white envelope and stared at it. The U.S. Army logo stamped in the left-hand corner. Inside, words that formed his future. They had to let him in. It made sense, having been a Green Beret, to get assigned to SOCOM as a chaplain. It was his dream. His yearning.
What if they rejected him? He should’ve had his new stats sent to them. That would have given him his clear shot. They didn’t know, though, how much better he was doing. How improved he was.
Trinity sniffed the envelope.
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled as he shoved his finger between the flap and the envelope, ripping it open. The wind tapped against the paper, crinkling it in his hand. Heart in his throat, Heath scanned the words, his courage slipping, pebble by pebble like the dirt on the ledge.
“We regret to inform you …” Lips moving with no sound, Heath shook his head. “Augh!” He balled up the letter. What? Even God was rejecting him? Telling him he wasn’t even good enough for the chaplaincy program?
How could that be? He grew up Baptist. Knew scripture—he’d won every Bible drill in youth group! Faithful and Christian. How could he get denied?
Just like everything else. Shut off. Cut off. Closed off.
He punched to his feet, paced. What type of person got rejected from the chaplaincy? With a growl, he kicked the dirt off the ledge. Trinity stared at him, ears perked. He ran a hand over his face and the back of his neck. “Unbelievable!”
A few minutes later he returned to Trinity’s side and they sat in quiet solitude. It brought back so many memories of doing the same—in combat. Sitting for hours on end, watching a settlement. Waiting for a target. Climbing into heavy air as they tracked down Taliban rebels in the brutal hills and mountains, where the fighters had the advantage over the team but not over Trinity, who’d seized many a bad guy.
Expelling a long breath, Heath stared out over the land. Those days were long gone but maybe not as much as he’d feared. The chaplaincy …
But isn’t it hard to preach what you don’t believe?
Heath shook off the thought. “Why are You doing this to me, God? You keep closing doors….”
A sparkle snagged Trinity’s attention. She craned her neck forward, watching the sun glint off a windshield. Digging his fingers into her coat, Heath watched Jibril’s SUV lumber up the drive to the house. He’d worked with the guy for less than a year, but even then, Heath figured out Jibril was made of steel inside. Now, with this ranch, Heath knew he’d been right. Now that he didn’t have the chaplaincy, this ranch, these gigs, were his only chance to feel like he had a purpose.
Heath patted Trinity’s side. “C’mon, girl. Let’s see how he’s doing.” The jog down was no less treacherous, but it was less arduous. They cleared the trees and made their way to the fenced-off arena.
Jibril stood at the gate waiting. “Morning!”
Panting and mouth dry, Heath nodded as he let Trinity inside. “You’re here early.”
Trinity trotted to a small trough, where he lifted a hose and provided the water. She lapped as he sipped from his bite valve.
“You must like the ranch,” Jibril said. “You’ve been here every day for the last four weeks.”
Heath eyed his friend.
Jibril shrugged. “The security logs show you accessed the gate every morning at the same time—except on Sundays, when you come earlier.”
Retrieving Trinity’s ball, Heath tried not to read into Jibril’s happiness—or nosiness. What was the guy doing tracking his movements? His buddy was a dichotomy at best. On the phone or through e-mail, you’d never guess he’d grown up in a home with an Iranian father. Or that his first language was Farsi. And you’d never pick him out of a lineup as a terrorist with those green eyes and light brown hair, unlike his sister who had most of their father’s features with black hair, brown eyes, and an exotic look. Heath had to admit she was a beauty.
The anger over the rejection needled him. He was stuck here. With them. As a nobody. He whipped the ball down the arena.
“Are you well?”
Trinity bolted, her body streamlined as she tore up the ground getting to it.
Heath jerked a glance toward Jibril. “No. Not really. They refused me for the chaplaincy. Said my last eval rated too low.” Tail wagging, pleasure squinting her amber eyes, Trinity trotted back to him. “Trinity, out.”
After a few more chomps on the ball, her teeth squeaking over the rubberized toy, she deposited it at his feet.
“Good girl,” he said, rubbing her ear. He shifted in front of her and held out a hand to her. “Trinity, stay.” He backed up several paces, then shifted and flung the ball down the grassy stretch. “Trinity, seek.”
Again, she launched after it, her gait firm and purposeful.
Heath let her get about halfway, then called, “Trinity, down.”
She went down, her nails clicking on the pebbles as she flattened against the ground. It seemed her body trembled with the broken anticipation of retrieving her toy. But her attention never wavered from her target that lay so close yet out of reach.
“Good girl.” He waited and let a few seconds fall off the clock. “Trinity, seek.”
She lunged into the air and closed the distance, seizing her toy.
“Trinity, heel!”
At his side within seconds, she kept the ball.
“She’s magnificent,” Jibril said.
Heath ate up the praise. He loved his dog and knew she was an impressive animal. She made him proud.
“Will you take her through the course?”
“Yep. You wanna put the bite suit on?”
Jibril’s eyes widened. He swallowed. “Uh, sure.” A fake smile. “She won’t hurt me, will she?”
“You just said she’s magnificent.”
Arm held out, Jibril rotated it. “So is my arm! I’d like to keep this limb.”
Heath’s intestines cinched. Smooth move, ex-lax. “Aw, man. I’m sorry.” The guy already lost his leg and Heath wanted to put him in a bite suit so Trinity could attack him? “I didn’t—”
“No,” Jibril said with a stern expression, gaze darkening. “We’re friends. Don’t do this. I’m very grateful for my life.” The light returned to his eyes. “I just make it with one skin-and-bone leg and one microprocessor-and-noble-anthracite leg.”
“Microprocessor?” Okay, it sounded space-age just saying it. Something like the movie I, Robot.
“It senses my full body movement and compensates.”
“No kidding?”
“Nope.” Jibril crossed the yard and retrieved the padded bite suit that made him look like a trimmed-down Michelin Man. “Just remember—”
“Ya know, this may not be a good idea, you getting in that suit. You’ll have to run, and she’ll chase you.”
Jibril laughed. “I know how to run.” He stepped into the thick suit.
Something seemed inherently wrong with this. Heath had been trained to protect guys like Jibril, who might think they knew what they were doing but really had no idea what they were getting into. “Okay, listen, just hold your arm out—she’s trained to go for the part that’s sticking out the farthest. We won’t have her chase you.”
“Are we doing this or not?”
“Trinity, heel.” Heath waited as she sat beside him. Eyebrows bobbing as she peeked at Heath, then back to Jibril, she seemed to ask, “Now? Can I? He’s getting too far away … you’d better hurry or he’ll get away.”
Anticipation rippled through her coat as she awaited the command.
Jibril held out his arm and nodded to Heath.
“Trinity, seek!”
With a bark, she burst into action, straight for the would-be attacker. Sailed through the air with a grace and elegance that belied her purpose.
Her jaws clamped on the suited arm.
Jibril grunted but pulled away, making sure she had a good bite. He turned a circle, Trinity tugging and growling. Whipping her head side to side.
Heath jogged over to them. “Trinity, out!”
After another test bite, she released and unhooked her teeth from the material and returned to her handler.
“Good girl, Trinity. Good girl. Heel.” On the other side, he rewarded her by tossing her ball. She sprinted after it, tackling the thing, then chomped it before returning.
Jibril laughed as he shed the extra heat. “She’s amazing. You both are. I’ve always admired how well you work together.”
Heath grinned, an arm hooked over a training window. “She’s my girl.”
After Jibril returned the suit to a hook, he joined Heath, all seriousness and business. “I was contacted about you and Trinity.”
Stilled by the news, Heath waited. More bad news? Did someone else say he wasn’t good enough?
“The PAO would like you to go over and speak to the troops. Show them what Trinity can do. Tell them your story.”
Public Affairs Office. Great. They wanted his story—a sob story. “I don’t know …” He’d hated the people who came over acting like they knew all about military life, knew what it was like to be soldiers in combat. In some of them, he saw the judgment. The thinly veiled belief that he was a killer. In most, he saw fear mixed with awe.
“They know you, Heath. You’ve been there, done that. You got hurt but came back stronger.”
“Stronger?” Heath snorted, hands planted on his belt, gaze on the field, on the emptiness before him. “I don’t think so.”
“It’s true. They need to see that if something happens, if they lose something—a piece of their heart, mind, or”—Jibril tapped his prosthesis—“body, it’s not over.”
Yeah, you’d have to believe that to dish it out.
“Will you go?”
It’d all be a sick reminder that he could never be the man he wanted to be. But he couldn’t say that to Jibril. Especially not Jibril. Mr. MicroKnee.
“Yeah, I’ll go.”
Four
Soldier & Airmen’s Home
Washington, DC
I’m going back,” Heath whispered into the semidarkened room. Bent forward, elbows on his knees, he threaded his fingers and stared at the form lying on the bed.
Crisp white sheets tucked in around the once-strong body peeked out from a gray wool blanket. Hall light stretched across the darkened room and snaked over the safety bars and myriad tubes and cables surrounding the hospital-style bed. The silent feed of oxygen pumped the vital air into the lungs of the sixty-two-year-old man.
General Robert Daniels.
His uncle. More like a father. The man who’d raised him, loved him, nurtured him after his parents’ deaths in a car accident when he was two. Uncle Bobby was Heath’s hero. He’d served more than thirty-five years in the Army, a short stint in ‘Nam, Panama, the Gulf War, and the War on Terror—the war that ended his career and trimmed a year or two off his life.
Well, if you could call breathing through a machine and being fed by someone else a life. It wasn’t much by normal standards, but it enabled Heath to hang on to his uncle a little longer. Clinging to the hope that Uncle Bob might come out of this. They told him it wasn’t possible. It’d take a miracle.
And Heath was too aware of how rare those were.
“Not to war—well, yeah, to the combat zone, but not as a soldier.” He snorted. “They wouldn’t even let me be a chaplain.” The wound over those words was still raw. He rubbed his knuckles, aching for the man who’d guided him through many a bad decision to speak up, tell him if this was the stupidest thing he’d ever done. “Trin’s goin’, too—I know how much you like her, got a kick out of her.”
A cool, wet nose nudged his arm.
Heath slid his hand around Trinity’s shoulder and patted her chest, massaging his fingers into her dense fur. The staff at the home allowed her as long as he let her “perform” for the veterans and wounded. It was a small highlight in their day, and seeing those faces light up after, no doubt, hours of boredom, made his day, too.
He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face as he slumped back in the chair. Head against the wall, he looked at his uncle. Two years like this. Moments of amazing clarity suffocated by long stretches of comatose-like absence. More gone than not in recent days.
If Heath went back in this condition, would he end up like Uncle Bobby? What if he wasn’t better, improved? Just because Heath wasn’t with the military in an official capacity didn’t stop attacks. Americans were Americans—prime targets. War dogs and specialized search dogs were high-value targets. Terrorists paid big for dead military working dogs. Couldn’t exactly explain to an RPG that you had peaceful intentions.
Then again, hadn’t he wanted to be like Uncle Bobby all his life? Wasn’t that why he joined up in the first place?
“Heath, live your own life. You don’t have to follow in my boots, son.”
That willingness to let Heath pursue any career, that care and advice, was the reason Heath joined at seventeen, with Uncle Bobby’s approval and signature for an early sign-up. Heath walked the stage at his high school graduation with honors, skipped the parties, and flew to Fort Benning Monday morning.
Leaving his uncle now, after vowing to take care of him for the rest of his life—he felt a deep conflict. He owed his uncle. Owed him the respect of seeing him live out his remaining days with dignity after all the hours he’d invested in Heath, in the nation. What if something went wrong—if the Old Dawg finally gave it up after all this time? What if the doctors needed Heath to sign off on something?
Dude, chill.
He was overreacting. It wasn’t like his missions with Special Forces where he didn’t have contact with his family for months at a time. This was a PAO gig. Two weeks over, then back home.
No big. No worries.
A shadow broke the stream of light and Heath’s concentration. Straightening, he glanced to the side and smiled at the brunette leaning against the door.
“I thought I could smell wet dog. Oh, and you brought Trinity.”
Her tease pulled a smile from Heath. “Hey, Claire. How’s it going?”
Nails clacking against the vinyl, Trinity sauntered over to Claire Benedict and nosed her hand.
Heath pushed out of the chair.
The fiftysomething woman smiled. “Good.” She tossed her chin toward the bed. “Has he been awake at all?”
Surprise lit through him. “Awake?”
“Yep, the Old Dawg woke up this morning when I was here.” Her voice, always filled with honey, held a fondness that made Heath ache. If his uncle had been … well, not been laid up, would he have remarried after Auntie Margaret died ten years ago? Maybe married Claire? She’d entered his life right before the general headed over for his final tour.
Heath grinned. “He always was partial to you.”
“That’s only because I didn’t let him treat me like one of his recruits, nor did I let his bark scare me off.”
He laughed. “There is that.”
Eyebrow arched, she gave him a look. “You okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You’ll have to do better than that if you want to convince me.” Always ready with cheese cubes, Claire tossed one to Trinity. “So, what’s eating you, Heath?”
He leaned back against the wall. “I have a gig for me and Trinity. It’s a morale-boosting thing.”
“For you or them?” Wariness crowded her mature but attractive features. “Where?”
“Northern Afghanistan f
or a week, then heading south.”
She sighed and tossed another cube to Trinity. Standing, Claire folded her arms. “He’d tell you to go, that you have a warrior’s heart.” Her gaze drifted to his uncle’s bed, and her lips twisted and tightened. “War didn’t scare him. Being weak did.” Her eyebrow arched again. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? That because you’re not over there, you’re somehow weak, or less?”
Heath stared at his boots. “Wasn’t thinking anything of the sort.” Though it might seem odd, him talking to a woman not related to him, they’d both spent many hours watching over his uncle. She had leverage in his life not many did. “Besides, I wasn’t looking for it. This gig came to me.”
“How?”
Still … talking to this woman always made him want to close up. Claire had an uncanny ability to read him, to cut open his heart and expose things he hadn’t seen or didn’t want to see. But he told her about A Breed Apart, about Jibril, about his new training regimen that had helped him overcome most of the TBI effects.
“I feel good, focused, for the first time in eighteen months.”
Quiet draped the room, punctuated by the bleeping and hissing machines. When seconds turned into minutes and he felt the bore of her gaze drilling him, he finally closed his eyes. “Go on. Get it out. I know you want to say something.”
“You’re not weak, Heath.”
His attention snapped to hers.
“Going back, doing this—it may be a good thing—but it’s not going to give you back what you think you lost. You’re a strong, amazing young man. Bobby always said that. He was very proud of you.”
But Uncle Bobby didn’t know today from ten years ago. He didn’t know that Heath had lost all he’d worked for, all the general had lauded and clapped him on the back for.
“Yeah, he was.” Heat and pressure built in his chest. He rolled it up and stuffed it away with his humiliation and shattered pride. “I’d better get going.” He called Trinity and started down the quiet hall.