“What else did Charlie say? They took their dogs to the trailer?”
“Those K9s mostly train on air scent and find all manner of things from electronics to weapons to live and cadaver finds. Whiskey is exclusively trained on ground scent where she’s tracking a specific human.”
“Got it.”
“Their team lead, Halo, said there was too much churn from all the people who got involved. By the time the teams got their dogs on the scene, there just wasn’t anything for them to catch hold of. That’s when Emergency Management called to see if Whiskey would come. They all know the circumstances around Daniel’s recent death. They didn’t want to ask but—”
Gabriel turned his head toward the back to see Whiskey relaxing in the crate. “Of course, we’d show up. Glad to be here.”
Reaper looked into the mirror, caught Gabriel’s eye, then focused back on the road. “Sleep comes hard at this point of a loss.”
Gabriel faced forward again. “Yeah. Well. I’ve lost family before. I thought I knew what to expect. But this hits different.” He curved his fingers into the fabric of his tactical pants and gripped tightly. “My family was appreciative of all the people from Cerberus who showed up for Daniel’s funeral. Cathy talked about how proud she was that people with such dignity and standing were there to show their respect. That show of support was meaningful.”
“Daniel was a good man. We enjoyed training and working with him. It hit us hard when we found out about his diagnosis.”
Gabriel looked out the side window at the roadside memorial to someone’s beloved who died on the side of the highway. The trees that stood there as someone died still stood, still watched.
It was odd how a soul could be removed, and life could go on. It was like taking a bucket of seawater from the shore. It really didn’t matter to the ocean.
That loss sure as hell meant something to him.
“I had a teammate who passed a year ago because a piece of shrapnel that his doctor left in him dislodged and killed him,” Reaper said. “He’d been away from the SEALs for ten years. Ten years. He thought he was golden. He told me so about a week before he died. ‘I went to war, and I swore I’d die,’ he said on repeat. He said that coming home was one of the most astonishing things that had happened to him in this life. Next thing you know, he’s got a sobbing widow and a bunch of kids who now have more dads than they know what to do with. The Team is rallying around to make sure everything’s taken care of for them. They won’t want for love and attention.”
“They’ll still want for their dad. Man, that’s tough.”
“Daniel said you had some shrapnel floating around in you. It must be something you think about from time to time.”
“Mostly, I think about it on stormy days. When it rains, I ache. I try to put it to good use. Mymomento mori.”
“How are you feeling right now?”
“Shrapnel-wise? I’ve got a sting, nothing that’s going to hold me back on the mountain. I’m squared away.”
“No, Gabriel, I’m asking how your emotions are doing right now. I’m sure you know this already. Daniel would have told you his stories, but it’s more likely than not that it’s going tobe Whiskey who finds those kids. And they might not be found in good condition. I’m going to lay it flat out: there are bears and wild hogs in this part of the mountains.”
“Ah, that’s why you wanted me to bring my gun?”
“You thought we might need to kill a bad guy?” Reaper asked.
“Maybe just intimidate them.” Gabriel let his gaze sweep the horizon, then focused out the side window at the woods, rushing past. “But yeah. I’d go to prison to save a kid.”
Chapter Twelve
Gabriel
Gabriel stood under the field tent set up that served as the Emergency Management TOC—tactical operations center.
Sitting on a folding metal chair, he watched as teams came in from their task assignment, looking tired. They were handing in their GPS systems so the information could be fed into the computer. Every step the team took on that mountainside was recorded, so the managers would know exactly where someone had walked and where the holes remained.
“They have a lot of teams out tonight?” Gabriel asked.
“They had a full call-out for the area searchers,” Reaper said. “They’ve come in from all over the tri-state area. Others are still coming in to relieve those who were up all night searching. Because these are kids, they put out a call for local volunteers, too. They have a bunch of hiking clubs who know the trails doing the hasties – the quick searches along the marked trails. That frees up the trained searchers to work through the leaf litter between. They told me they had their manhunters—the tracking team that follows footprints—out. But with the light weight of the children, the bare feet on dry soil—I checked it out when we drove up—I don’t think there’ll be anything for them to look at. The trackers will hang out and link up with a team if the searchers think they found something useful.” Reaper focused down on Whiskey with her attention on everything going on around her. “But since they called for Whiskey, I think they’re getting to the edge of hopeful and started looking around for another tool.”
“I’ve been called a tool a time or two. It’s never been a pleasant conversation after that,” Gabriel said without any weight in his words.
An area map was on the portable screen behind the manager’s table.
There, Gabriel could see the new data populating. This team had walked a grid—out and back and back and out and back—in a tight formation, meaning almost every inch of that task area had been searched.
