The shots had been clean, raising not even a cry.
Tucker gathered his gun and leaped to the ground. “TO ME,” he ordered his two partners.
Marco and Kane broke free of the soldier, though Marco gave the man a final shake, like a dog with a snake.
Once together, Tucker dropped to a knee, offering pats and reassurance. “Good boys.”
He stared off toward the city ahead of him, where the barrage of grenades had waned into occasional blasts, suggestive that the enemy was closing in on it.
Got to get back there.
Tucker had lured this trio far into the labyrinth, but now he had to return. Earlier, he had caught the lightshow by the waterfall. Even from a distance, the twirling light had blazed through his enhanced vision like a solar flare.
Someone had made a break for it.
Gray? Seichan? Maybe both?
He knew the commander must have heard the earlier firefight up top. The man would’ve come to investigate—running himself full tilt into trouble. And now someone had to get him out of it.
Tucker straightened and pointed in the direction of a rocket blast. “MARCO, KANE,TRACK FRIENDLIES.”
They set off together. By now, the two dogs had spent enough time with this crew to hopefully register the others’ scents, to know who was friendly and who was not, odors distinct from the borscht-swilling Russians.
The trio rushed swiftly, moving in unison.
But Tucker knew the battle ahead would be tougher than the one played out here. There were many more soldiers, likely hunting with night-vision and thermal gear.
Knowing this, Tucker needed a wider scope of view.
“MARCO,FLANK CLOSE RIGHT. KANE,FLANK CLOSE LEFT.”
The two dogs split off, forging their own paths across the dense urban jungle. Through his goggles, their eyes became his. He followed their camera feeds, while whispering orders, coordinating their paths.
He found an easy rhythm with the pair.
While this might be new for Marco, for Kane and Tucker, this wasas familiar as an old dance, one they knew well, a cadence forged in the sands of Afghanistan. As Tucker ran, he sensed a fourth flowing with him, the one who had once danced with them, but no longer.
You were a good boy, too, Abel.
Tucker ran onward.
Some called him a lone wolf, but he knew the truth.
I’m never alone.
Especially now.
Kane races over raw rock and across carved stone. He lifts his nose as he fords a bridge over a chasm. The air rising from below burns his nose. Not from heat, but acid. His ears prick to the deep-throated belches calling from down there. He feels the heat buffeting through his fur, even with his body covered in a hard vest.
He spans onward. His pads find rough rock, and he is off, nose dropping low or riding high, sifting through each note.
—the melt of ice that releases old musk.
—the mold off rock that is fungal and ancient.
—a nest of desiccated bones that still have the iron scent of marrow.
None of it is what he seeks.
