Still, to Tucker, it all boiled down to something far simpler, a coda summed up by Sigmund Freud: I prefer the company of animals more than the company of humans. Certainly, a wild animal is cruel. But to be merciless is the privilege of civilized humans.
That last part had been reinforced tenfold during Tucker’s decade in the army. The battlefield often revealed the best and worst in a person, sometimes at the same time. He did not exclude himself from that judgment.
Again, he pictured blades flashing through the air, stealing more and more of the life from Kane’s littermate.
He shook away this memory as he reached the Jeep Wrangler. Before leaving the rental agency, he’d had the doors and roof panels removed, leaving the four-by-four stripped down to its essential frame. His gear was stored in the back. He quickly pulled on a pair of dusty jeans and a short-sleeved khaki shirt. As he shoved his feet into a pair of beat-up Timberland boots, he caught a glimpse of himself in one of the side mirrors.
It took him a breath to recognize the stranger in the reflection. The face was too young, a man in his early thirties, with shaggy, disheveled dark blond hair, and a lean muscular physique, more befitting a quarterback than a linebacker. It was like he was staring at some younger version of himself. He felt far older than the lineless face in the mirror. But the eyes staring back at him from the mirror—those he recognized—the haunted, angry glint to his blue-green eyes. As he dressed, he also noted the crisscross of scars over his body, the puckering of old bullet wounds in his shoulder and upper thigh.
Unbidden, his hand rose and touched the small black paw print tattooed on his upper left arm, a permanent reminder of Abel, of the dog’s sacrifice. Grimacing, he reached to the back of the Jeep and pulled on a desert-khaki windbreaker over his shirt, as if covering the tattoo would dim that pain.
It didn’t.
Now dressed, he turned his attention to the packs stored in the back of the Jeep. From one, he shook out a steel box buried at the bottom. He carried this with him in case of the direst emergencies. He stared at the panting German shorthair, at the blood drying on the dog’s fur.
This counts as one of those times.
He flipped the clasp and opened the box. Inside rested a black Desert Eagle, and a pair of magazines loaded with .44 Magnum rounds. He slapped one of the magazines into the pistol and shoved the gun into the back of his jeans. He then removed the compact satellite phone from inside the box. The phone was packed with the latest military tech. The device was a gift from Sigma Force, a covert team of DARPA field operatives whom he had helped in the past.
I could use their backup now . . . if only from a distance.
He placed the battery back into the phone, tapped in a code, then balanced the phone on the Jeep’s blocky fender. While an encrypted connection was being made to Sigma’s headquarters in D.C., Tucker used a long rope to secure the German shorthair to the trailer hitch. There was enough length to reach a small cool stream running alongside the campsite with shade offered under the Jeep’s raised chassis.
As the satellite connection was made, a small voice rose from the phone’s speakers. “Captain Wayne?”
Tucker retrieved the phone and brought it to his ear. “Director Crowe.”
Painter Crowe was the head of Sigma. Tucker pictured the man seated in his office under the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall.
“What can I do for you?” the director asked.
Tucker glanced over to Cooper. The German shorthair wandered over to the stream and took two nervous licks. “I need you to dog-sit for me.”
“Happy to oblige. But it looks like you’re calling from the middle of Arizona. Not sure I can get anyone out there with a bag of kibble anytime soon.”
Tucker glanced skyward, knowing the call had revealed his location. It was why he normally kept the phone locked up in its steel case with its battery removed. He preferred to keep his tracks hidden. But considering where he was headed next—and knowing there was a possibility he might not return—he did not want to leave Cooper tied to his Jeep, to slowly starve to death.
I lost one dog on my watch.
He didn’t intend to lose another.
“I think I’m about to intrude where I’m not wanted,” Tucker explained. “If you don’t hear back from me within the next hour, send help to this location.”
“If you’re in trouble, I can rouse emergency services out of Sedona. Get a chopper out there in half that time.”
Tucker stared at Cooper, at the dark crimson patch on the dog’s flank.
He feared he could already be too late.
Still, he knew that if anyone was still in danger, held at gunpoint, the noisy intrusion of a helicopter to this remote corner of the desert could result in the immediate execution of any captives.
“Hold off for now.” Tucker gave Crowe a thumbnail account of the gunshots, the sudden appearance of a bloody dog. “Give me the hour to investigate quietly before you raise the cavalry.”
“Understood, but the name you found on the dog’s collar, Jackson Kee.”
“What about it?”
“That must be Dr. Jackson Kee.”
Tucker tried not to roll his eyes. Of course, the director had already tracked down the dog’s owner in less than a minute, using Sigma’s considerable intelligence resources.
“He’s a doctor of holistic ministry, teaching at both the University of Sedona and at Yavapai College. According to his bio, he’s lived in the area all his life, with a heritage going back generations and tied to the tribes of the region, both the local Yavapai and Hopi Indians.”
So the guy would certainly know these deserts.
“While you check on those gunshots,” Painter said, “I’ll see what else I can dig up on Dr. Kee.”
Tucker ended the call, set the ringer to silent, and slipped the phone into an inside pocket of his jacket. Outfitted and dressed, he assisted his partner in doing the same. From the back of the Jeep, he removed a K9 Storm tactical vest and fitted it over Kane’s shoulders. As he strapped the waterproofed and Kevlar-reinforced vest in place, he felt the pounding of Kane’s heart, the tremble of excitement in the dog’s muscles. Kane knew he was being called to duty, preparing to transform from furry companion to stealthy warrior.
Tucker scuffled and rubbed Kane’s ears, physically bonding by touch. As Tucker knelt before him, Kane stared into his eyes, deepening that connection. Tucker leaned closer, touching noses in an ageless ritual, acknowledging what he was asking of the dog, to put himself in harm’s way to save others.
“Who’s a good boy?” he whispered to his best friend.
Kane licked his nose.
That’s right, you are.
Tucker leaned back and reached to the webbing of the vest’s collar. He flipped up a camera hidden there and slipped a wireless radio plug into Kane’s left ear. The gear allowed the two of them to be in constant visual and audio contact with each other.
To test the equipment, Tucker positioned the camera’s lens to peer over Kane’s shoulder and turned it on. He then seated a pair of DARPA-designed photosensitive goggles over his own eyes. He tapped a button on the side of the glasses and live feed from Kane’s camera appeared on the inside corner of the lens: a low view of pinyon and rock.
Finally, he slipped a wireless radio transmitter into his own mouth, fitting it behind his last tooth. The device—nicknamed a Molar Mic—was new tech used by soldiers in Afghanistan. The tiny radio allowed men and women in the field to communicate to each other in whispers, while incoming transmissions reached the receiver’s ear directly via bone-induction through the jaw.
“You ready, buddy?” Tucker said softly, testing the communication channel.
Kane glanced back and wagged his tail twice. His partner’s eyes glinted with suppressed excitement, knowing what was coming, anxious to get moving.
Tucker stood and stepped over to the path the German shorthair had taken to get here. He pointed to the trail of paw prints in the sa
nd, then out to the open desert. Even before he whispered the command “track,” Kane was already moving, anticipating the instruction.
As the dog swept off into the desert, Tucker followed in his wake. As they ran, Tucker studied the terrain both through his eyes and through the image transmitted to his goggles from Kane’s camera. It was disjointing for several breaths—then quickly became second nature. The bobbling view of brush and rock from his partner’s perspective merged with his own. Kane’s panting filled his skull, coming to match his own breath. Even the tread of his boots settled into an easy harmony with the padding of Kane’s paws. In that timeless moment, the two became one, a perfect harmony of action and intent.
This bond between them ran deeper than any training, beyond any high-tech communion of senses.
This was a union forged in blood.
They were both survivors, wounded and scarred together into one, bound to each other’s heart, through loss and grief, but also joy and companionship. Still, even now, he sensed another’s paws running alongside them, a ghost chasing them through the desert, begging them not to forget.
Never, he promised, never.
Tucker raced along a path that wound through fields of fading pink fairy dusters and around red-and-purple patches of flowering hedgehog cacti and prickly pear. His eyes continued to discern scuffs in the sand, broken branches of brittlebush, all marking the panicked passage of the German shorthair.
He lost the trail for stretches at a time over bare red rock, but Kane’s senses were far keener, never flagging from the invisible track of scent markers.
As bonded as they were, Tucker could almost appreciate this skill.
Almost . . . but not completely.
* * *
Kane forges ahead, untangling the weave of scents in the air to follow one thread. What sight fails him, scent fills in, layer upon layer, marking time backward and forward, building a framework of old trails around him. He takes in more smells, drawing them upon his moist tongue, deep into the back of his throat and sinuses.
Bitter musk of spoor . . .
Acrid sting of a rabbit’s urine marker . . .
The perfume of pollen . . .
The wisp of moisture from a nearby stream . . .
As he runs, his ears swivel at every hushed whisper: the howl of brief gusts through rock, the slap of his own pads, the rustle of branches.
As he paints the world around him in scents and sounds, he tests a change in the breeze with an upraised nose. It flows toward him from ahead. He lets the fresher scents wash over him. With it comes a rank undercurrent . . . reeking of sweat and ripeness of body.
Men.
Two of them.
His legs slow.
He forces his panting to grow quiet.
His ears track toward the pair as they approach; his nose picks out oil and old smoke amid the musk of these men. The threat buried within that odor sets his hackles on end.
Kane knows guns—by scent, smells, and sound, he knows guns.
He stops and lowers to his belly, nose pointed forward, signaling his packmate.
His message is understood.
Trouble is coming.
(2)
6:04 a.m.
Trembling, Abigail Pike kept her eyes fixed on her grandfather, who was seated across the dying embers of their campfire. She fought to keep her gaze away from the dead body sprawled to her left, from the dark pool of blood steaming on the cold desert sand. Her ears still rang from the gunshot. She felt the heat of the same pistol’s barrel near her right ear.
“Let’s try this again, Dr. Kee,” the gunman said next to her, glaring across at her grandfather. “Or Abbie here will be next. Where did that old bastard find that rock?”
Despite her best effort, Abbie’s eyes flicked toward the body of Brocky Oro, an old prospector from the Yavapai-Prescott tribe. She had known the irascible loner—who she always called “Uncle Oro”—since she was a young girl. For two decades, she had listened to his tales of forgotten silver mines, of the lost city of El Dorado, of his endless searches for treasures hidden in the trackless wilds of the deep desert. It was those campfire stories that had likely inspired her in part to pursue a geology degree from the University of Colorado, to continue Uncle Oro’s hunt, only from a more scientific angle.
And look where that’s got us.
She sat on a gnarled log, her wrists bound by zip ties behind her back. Her grandfather was tied up in the same manner. So was the other captive, a middle-aged man seated next to him, Dr. Herman Landon, a physicist from the University of Sedona.
Their group’s camp had been raided just before dawn. The bandits had ambushed them while they were still in their tents and bedrolls. The only warning came from Cooper, who had barked outside. The shorthair pointer had been tethered by a long lead to a stake screwed into the sand, to keep him from chasing rabbits into the desert. At the time, believing Cooper had spotted one of his long-eared prey, Abbie’s grandfather had yelled for the dog to quiet down.
If only we’d listened to the dog . . .
Still, the end result might have been the same. A six-man team of bandits had swept swiftly upon them, armed with black pistols and semiautomatic rifles. After they were subdued, a beige Ford Bronco had rumbled out of the desert and parked next to her grandfather’s battered Jeep. From the Bronco, another two men joined them. One was the group’s leader, a man the others called Hawk.
It sounded like a Native American name, but none of the bandits looked to share the same ancestry as Abbie and her grandfather. The bandits all wore similar uniforms: dusty jeans, untucked flannel shirts over stained T-shirts, and some manner of trucker’s hat or cap. She had seen such lowlifes for years, haunting the shadowy corners of bars and saloons across Arizona, hard men who lived harder lives of desperation and frustrated anger. She had noted the twitchiness of a couple of them, their stained teeth, clear signs that they’d steeled their nerves for this ambush with hits of crystal meth.
As Abbie and the men had been dragged out of their tents, she had sensed the menacing danger of this group. Her grandfather had not—not until it was too late. He had tried to play dumb when Hawk confronted him about the source of the fist-sized fire agate discovered by Uncle Oro last week, a massive gem worth a small fortune. Uncle Oro claimed it was but a pebble from a far larger find, hidden deep in the desert.
But that was not all he claimed to have discovered . . .
Her gaze shifted to Dr. Landon.
Clearly word of Uncle Oro’s discovery had reached more ears than theirs—which was not hard to imagine. Uncle Oro had an unfortunate fondness for cheap whiskey and for spinning tales atop barstools. And now it had gotten him killed.
Her grandfather had reacted to the sudden execution of Uncle Oro by slipping out a hidden switchblade from a cargo pocket of his trousers and slicing Cooper’s lead, sending the shorthair running. The dog—already panicked by the gunshot, by the splatter of blood—took off into the desert. As punishment, Hawk had pistol-whipped her grandfather and had bound them both more securely with zip ties.
“One last time,” Hawk pressed, punctuating his seriousness with the heavy click of a pistol’s hammer being pulled. “Where was that big rock found?”
Her grandfather cringed, his right eye already swelling shut. “I . . . I’ll tell you. Just don’t hurt Abbie.”
“Tellin’ ain’t good enough.” Hawk stepped around and waved his pistol. Two of his men yanked her grandfather to his feet. “You’ll show us.”
Her grandfather knew better than to fight, having learned the bloody lesson sprawled on the sand. Still, he resisted long enough to cast a guilty look at her, for dragging her into all of this. Then he was forced at gunpoint toward the Bronco, its engine still ticking and cooling next to their Jeep.
“If you try any funny business,” Hawk threatened, following behind, “we’ll kill the scientist first. Then we’ll have fun with your granddaughter—all of us—before I put a bullet in her skull
.”
Her grandfather promised to cooperate, while Landon looked terrified. Abbie watched her grandfather as he was shoved into the back seat of the Bronco.
Hawk turned toward the dying campfire. The man had shoulder-length auburn hair, half hidden under a Diamondback baseball cap, its rim curled down into a horseshoe, and a rust of dark stubble on his chin and cheeks, looking as if his face was perpetually in shadow. He pointed at the pair of men still at the campfire.
“Randy, Bo, you keep an eye on these two. Wait for Buck and Chet to come back. Let ’em know where we went. I’ll be on radio.”
Randy—who was the twitchiest of the bunch—nodded vigorously. “What if’n they don’t find that damn dog?”
Hawk shrugged. “The coyotes will probably take care of the mutt for us. If not, we’ll be long gone before anyone’s the wiser.”
Bo chuckled, adding a “Damn straight.”
Hawk circled to the Bronco’s passenger side and climbed into the front seat. The SUV rumbled to life. The Bronco turned toward the high desert, ground sand and rock under its four tires, and headed off.
Abbie followed its path for a few breaths, then found Bo eyeing her, a leer exposing his meth-rotted teeth. She turned away, staring across the embers of the campfire. She spotted the trail of paw prints vanishing into the pinyon brush—and the heavier tread of the two men who hunted the dog.
She prayed Cooper escaped, hoped for even more.
Please find someone to help us.
(3)
6:10 a.m.
Tucker crouched in the long shadow of a red rock boulder. His ears noted the crunch of sand approaching his hiding spot. In a corner of his goggles, the feed from Kane’s camera showed two men picking their way across a rocky patch decorated with a swath of Mexican gold poppy. One led with a pistol in hand; the other followed with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder.
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