James Rollins - Bloodline

With care, Gray’s team might learn something vital about Amanda’s whereabouts-or at least, narrow the search parameters. Back in DC, Painter was coordinating a satellite scan of the neighboring mountains. Between boots on the ground and eyes in the skies, the hope was to pinpoint Amanda’s location before nightfall.

Sand suddenly swirled beyond the windows, kicked up as the chopper descended. With a final, stomach-lifting drop, the skids finally kissed the ground.

Alden hauled the cabin doors open. Sand and heat pounded inside as the roar of the engines whined away. They all exited the helicopter and were met by a medical team of four, who rushed forward to help offload Major Patel. His stretcher was carried away to an idling Jeep. Major Butler accompanied his injured partner, to make sure he was properly attended to and to spread the cover story that their group were foreign aid workers.

Tucker patted his dog’s side, reassuring the shepherd after the long, noisy ride.

Kowalski merely scowled at the grim surroundings. “Once… just once… why can’t we end up at some beach where women are in bikinis and where drinks come in coconuts?”

Seichan ignored him and stood at Gray’s shoulder. “What now?”

“This way!” Alden answered, heading off, accompanied by the last member of the British SRR team, Major Bela Jain. The captain pointed toward a cluster of thatched-roof huts.

As a group, they crossed through a parking lot of rusted trucks, skeletal sand-rail buggies, and beat-up motorcycles. Guarding them all stood an older Daimler Ferret scout car, painted United Nations white and emblazoned with their blue symbol. It looked like a minitank with a fully enclosed armored cabin and mounted with a Belgian L7 machine-gun turret. A United Nations peacekeeper leaned against the vehicle, eyeing them suspiciously as they passed.

Alden noted Gray’s attention. “Camps like this need to be protected. Raids are common, for drugs, even for water. Drought has devastated much of this region, contributing to famine and death, driving the people to the coasts or up into the mountains.”

They reached the circle of huts to find a French doctor kneeling beside a long line of Somali children. A nurse prepped a syringe and handed it to the doctor, who jabbed it into the bony arm of the first boy in line.

Gray had read how the civil war going on in the southern part of the country had displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians and their children, leading to outbreaks of cholera, dysentery, and hepatitis. But a vaccination program against measles and polio, along with the administration of simple deworming tablets and vitamins, was saving countless young lives.

“Here’s the contact I was telling you about,” Alden said, pointing to the doctor. “He hears everything going around the camp, misses nothing. He’s a great asset.”

Gray studied the French M.D., a middle-aged man with bulky glasses and sunburned nose and ears. But Gray was wrong about the focus of attention.

“Baashi!” Alden called out and waved an arm, stepping forward.

The spy at the camp winced as he was injected in the arm. The young dark-skinned boy thanked the doctor in French. “Merci.”

Pulling his tunic sleeve down, the child headed over. “Ah, Mr. Trevor. You come!”

“This is your contact?” Kowalski mumbled under his breath, plainly not pleased. “What is he, fourteen?”

“Thirteen actually,” Major Jain said softly. She stared at her superior with raw admiration. “Captain Alden rescued the boy from a group of Muslim insurgents outside mogadishu. A child soldier. Only eleven at the time, hyped on bloody amphetamines, brutalized and bearing scars from cigarette burns.”

Gray’s heart ached at the sight of the boy’s mile-wide smile as he rushed forward and hugged Captain Alden, who had dropped to one knee. It seemed impossible to balance such simple joy with the horrors Major Jain described.

Alden hooked an arm around the boy’s thin shoulders and led him back to the gathered group.

“Here are the people I wanted you to meet, Baashi.”

The boy smiled, staring around, but Gray saw the hint of fear in his eyes, a wariness of strangers. He leaned more tightly against Alden. Here were the cracks that exposed the past trauma.

Tucker’s dog squirmed forward, sniffing, wanting to get the scent of the newest addition to their pack.

Baashi’s eyes got huge. A small squeal of terror stretched out of him. “Ayiiii…”

“Kane, come here,” Tucker ordered, at the sound of the boy’s distress.

The shepherd returned to his handler’s side.

“Down.” Tucker reinforced the command with a flat-handed gesture. He sank to a knee next to his dog, but his words were for the boy. “He won’t hurt you. I promise. He’s a good dog.”

Tucker held out a hand, asking the boy to come forward.

Baashi remained frozen at Captain Alden’s side.

“Just let the boy be,” Seichan warned. “He’s clearly afraid of dogs.”

Kowalski made a grunt of agreement, even Jain’s eyes pinched with concern.

Tucker ignored them all and kept his arm up.

Seichan looked to Gray for help. He simply shook his head, remembering the man’s empathy scores. They had been through the roof. Tucker had a preternatural ability to interpret another’s emotional core. And maybe it wasn’t just with animals.

Clearly bonded to the child, knowing the boy, Alden also seemed to share Tucker’s understanding. “It’s okay, Baashi. If you want…”

The boy stared at the dog for a long breath, cocking his head, perhaps searching inside himself for that lost bond children have for all things furry and warm. Finally, he stepped clear of Alden’s legs, trembling a bit.

His gaze never shifted from Kane. “He good dog?” Baashi asked.

Tucker nodded once.

Baashi crept forward, approaching as if toward a perilous cliff.

Kane remained alert, only the tip of his tail twitching with excitement. Baashi reached out the back of his hand toward the dog. Kane stretched his nose, nostrils flaring, snuffling.

Baashi moved an inch closer-it was far enough.

A long pink tongue slipped out and licked the boy’s fingertips. The tail twitch turned into a big wag.

“He likes you,” Tucker said softly.

Baashi’s smile returned, shyly at first, then stronger. He moved near enough to touch Kane on the top of his head. The dog’s nose sniffed along the length of his arm.

Baashi giggled and said something in a Somali dialect.

“Tickles,” Alden translated.

Moments later, the boy was sitting on the ground, ruffling the dog’s fur and trying to avoid an onslaught of licks. Gray stared at them both, remembering Kane’s savage attack on the commando yesterday. Likewise, he tried to picture the boy with a rifle at his shoulder. In different ways, the two-boy and dog-were both warriors, and maybe Tucker had recognized that such harshness needed an outlet of innocence and play-and also trust.

Alden joined Gray. “Baashi is slowly coming around. The base here works with such children. They try to rehabilitate them, to bring out the scared child still trapped within the nightmares of those past horrors.” He eyed Baashi and the dog-then Tucker. “You’ve got a good man there.”

Gray had to agree.

Tucker stood off to the side, studying the distant mountains. After seeing how the handler and his dog had operated back in Boosaaso, how the shepherd had tracked Seichan’s blood trail through the myriad scents and smells of the city, Gray wondered if it wouldn’t be better to simply drop the pair into the mountains, let them hunt Amanda down by themselves, and radio back her location.

But that could take days… days he felt sure the president’s daughter didn’t have.