Radclyffe - Price of Honor

*

Viv waited in the doorway of a small equipment room while Dusty pulled a navy nylon bomber jacket from a locker and shrugged into it. Atlas sat beside her, the cadence of his tail swishing back and forth increasing when she donned the jacket.

“He seems to know what’s about to happen,” Viv commented.

“He does.” Dusty zipped the jacket and murmured a command. Atlas followed at her side as Dusty joined Viv in the hall. “There’s nothing he’d rather do than work.”

“Sounds like a perfect partner.”

“Couldn’t find a better one.”

Clearly Dusty Nash meant every word. She and the dog were more than a team, they were a unit, apparently self-sufficient in every respect. Viv knew dog people. She’d been raised around them. Her mother bred champion Labradors. Some were used in police work but more often they worked in service areas. Their gentle nature and less threatening demeanor made them better choices where a great deal of social interaction was required. The Malinois were far more aggressive and tended to work better one-on-one with their handlers in solo situations, like Dusty’s, or in small units, as they’d been employed in the Middle East.

Dusty was like a lot of dog people she knew, more comfortable with animals than people. But she got the feeling it went further than that, as if Dusty had an invisible barrier around her that kept her apart. Viv had always been drawn to the quiet solitary types, like her father. She’d come to recognize at an early age that when praise or a smile or a gentle touch was given from someone like him, it meant even more. She wondered if there was anyone Dusty smiled for. Realizing she’d been daydreaming, Viv put her game face on. “How often does he need to train, now that you’re a working unit?”

“We train a little every day,” Dusty said, leading the way through a set of double doors into an open lot behind the group of low buildings. “Requirements are a minimum of ten hours of active training every week unless we’re deployed.”

“I don’t imagine he thinks of it as work,” Viv said.

“For him it’s just fun.”

“How about you? Is that what you do for fun too?” Viv realized a second too late her comment might be construed as flirtatious, and maybe it was.

Dusty regarded her solemnly, the merest hint of question in her eyes. “It’s not work for me either. It’s what I enjoy doing.”

“He lives with you, I take it?”

“That’s right.”

“And how is he…” Viv searched for a way that wouldn’t make it too obvious she was probing for personal information. “With family?”

“He behaves himself with strangers. He’s good with people, but not overly friendly. That’s just normal for his breed.”

That was nicely sidestepped. Viv made a noncommittal noise and followed along, hunching her shoulders against the brisk wind. The training area looked to be a hundred acres of field bordered on one side by woods. They veered away from the woods and along a narrow path that led to a group of buildings, more like sheds really, where a number of vehicles were parked haphazardly in tall grass.

“I already placed a hide earlier today,” Dusty said. “I was planning to bring him out for a little work before the Office of Public Affairs contacted me to meet with you.”

“A hide?”

“An explosive-impregnated package.”

“Is it dangerous?”

Dusty shook her head. “There’s nothing to arm or trigger the explosives. It’s the odor we care about. Atlas detects bombs by scent. He’s incredibly good at recognizing just about any kind of explosive.”

“Right. He alerts to the scent cone, isn’t that it?”

Dusty gave her a long look. “That’s right. Not many people actually know that.”

“I did a little reading before I came,” Viv said. “And my family’s in dogs. My mother raises and trains Labs, mostly for service but a couple go to handlers for law enforcement. Usually search and rescue, cadaver, sometimes protection.”

“Really? Labs?”

“Uh-huh.”

“They’re good dogs. A little distractible.”

Viv laughed at the understatement. “Oh my God, don’t you know it.”

“That’s why they’re not the best dogs for bomb detection.”

“How old was Atlas when you got him?”

“The pups are separated from their mothers earlier than normal so they bond with the human from a really early age. After I worked with some of the graduate dogs for a while, I got to choose my own for training. He was three weeks old.”

“He’s been with you his whole life.”

Dusty leaned down and unclipped Atlas’s lead. He panted softly, his ears perked and his eyes bright.

“Atlas, find it.” Dusty pointed at a bus twenty-five yards away, and he tore off like a missile fired from a fighter plane.

“Yeah, his whole life,” Dusty murmured as she trotted after him.

Viv ran to keep up, cursing the heels on her suede boots. She hadn’t anticipated anything quite so strenuous. She clutched her recorder in one hand and kept her coat closed at her throat with the other. The wind bit through the wool as if it was sheer cotton. Dusty, hatless with her jacket partially unzipped, appeared impervious, her gaze riveted on the dog. She slowed and Viv pulled up beside her, trying not to gasp. A few more weekly sessions at the gym seemed in order.

Atlas trotted along beside the bus, halting occasionally to hunker down and crawl partway underneath, then backing out and resuming his methodical foot-by-foot search along the carriage.

“What’s he doing?” Viv fumbled her camera out and got a picture of Atlas sniffing along the wheel well with Dusty a few feet away, her hands on her hips, her face in profile, staring into the wind in utter concentration. They were both beautiful animals.

Dusty glanced over. “Checking the exterior, the undercarriage, the wheel wells, the body, the places where someone could plant a charge. He’ll finish inside if he doesn’t find anything outside.”

“Will he?”

Dusty grinned and that breathtaking transformation happened again. She went from remote and cool and icily striking to warm and sexy. Viv stared as Dusty tilted her head much as Atlas had done earlier, studying her in return.

Viv’s face heated against the cold wind, and she hoped Dusty would write off the flush in her cheeks to the weather and not her embarrassment at being caught staring.

“There,” Dusty murmured, her focus back on Atlas again. “That’s a good boy.”

Atlas sat and woofed once, his head extended and his nose pointing to the grille at the front of the bus.

“Different breeds, different dogs, will alert in different ways,” Dusty said as she strode toward Atlas. “Once he alerts, he sits, his focus on the find.”

“How often does he miss?”

Dusty grunted. “Never.”

“And that’s what you’ll be doing during the president’s trip? Atlas will be checking the train?”

“Atlas will be checking everything.”

Chapter Four

Hooker slid onto the stool next to the county sheriff’s deputy and motioned to the bartender to refill the deputy’s beer. Early afternoon, the place was almost empty, the lights turned down low and the windows too grimy for much of the low, flat winter light to penetrate. The deputy, wearing two days’ worth of beard, mud-caked boots, and a sweat-stained, rumpled uniform, glanced at Hooker and grunted in greeting. The man was Hooker’s best source inside the local law-enforcement network, and he’d been combing through the wreckage of the militia compound just like every other LEO in that part of Idaho for the better part of a week. Hooker wanted to know what they’d found and, even more importantly, what they suspected, without giving away his stake in the game.