Home of the Brave (Raine Stockton Dog Mysteries Book 9) (21 page)

The other two teenagers were listening, and all of them, including Melanie, looked anxious to believe that.  So was I.

Haley whispered, “They shot the police woman.”

I nodded, and shifted my glance toward Jolene.  “She’s okay.”  She did not look okay.  One eye was swollen almost completely shut and her lip was split and as the nurse tried to clean and bandage her hand, her face had gone an ashy color I had never seen on a human before.  I said, “And she’s supposed to report back to duty in a couple of hours.  When the sheriff’s department doesn’t hear from her, they’ll know something is wrong and they’ll send somebody out.  We’ll be okay.”

I hoped I was the only one who heard the hollowness of that.  A single team of deputies against a dozen men with automatic rifles?  They’d be walking into a massacre.

Margie, sitting next to Haley, said anxiously, “We can’t keep these kids calm for two hours.  They’re practically hysterical now.”

Her husband Steve said lowly, “There are as many of us as there are of them.  If we …”

“No,” I said sharply, and Margie hissed at the same time, “Shut up, Steve! They have guns!”

Bill ventured uncertainly, “Twenty-five dogs.  If we let them all out …”

I shook my head adamantly, remembering how effortlessly the soldier had turned his gun on Cisco and Nike.  “No.  No, we don’t want to do anything to start gunfire, because once we do there’s no going back.  Just … we just have to stay calm.  We don’t know what they want yet.”

“She’s right,” Lee said.  “This is not a random thing.  They waited until lunch time, when all the dogs were crated and all the kids and most of the adults were in one place. They knew it would be easier to move us all in here that way.  They didn’t even search the kids for phones.  They must’ve known they’re all locked up in the office during the day.  This was well thought out, carefully planned.  They’ve got to have a reason for it.  We just have to wait and find out what it is.”

The soldier had turned and was walking back toward us.  I spotted a half-empty bottle of water on the windowsill above my head, and I pointed to it, then inclined my head toward Jolene.  I raised my voice to be heard above the din.  “Can I take it to her?” 

He paused, then stepped back.  I tried my best to get a look at his face, even the smallest of glimpse of something that might let me guess his age.  Nothing.

I told Cisco to stay, and added to Melanie, “Hold on to him, okay?” just as I had done dozens of times before, just as though it was just another normal day, just as though walking those six or seven steps from here to Jolene didn’t mean taking my life in my hands.

Kathy had just finished wrapping Jolene’s hand in gauze, and when I knelt beside her she handed me a roll of adhesive tape.  “Tear off some strips, will you?  About three inches long. They took the scissors.”

I started tearing the tape into strips and handing them to Kathy.  Jolene avoided my eyes.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” the nurse said.  She tried to smile at Jolene. “A couple of broken fingers, but the bullet just tore the fleshy part of the thumb.  We need to get you sewn up, but you’ll be fine.”

“The bastard was a marksman,” Jolene muttered.  “He shot the phone right out of my hand.”

Of course that should have been my cue to make some remark about how she could blame me for saving Nike’s life when she clearly could not have fired her weapon with a broken hand—or even held it—but I was too fixated on the word “marksman” to say anything for a moment.  I tore off another strip of tape.  I could feel the soldier’s eyes on the back of my neck.  I said as quietly as I could to her, “When are you due to report in?”

Jolene’s lips compressed and she said nothing.  She didn’t have to.  I could see it in her eyes.

I let the truth sink in, one horrible moment at a time.  “You’re not,” I said at last, dully.  I stared at her.  “You have the weekend off.  You lied.” 

No one was expecting her back.  Buck wouldn’t raise the alarm when she didn’t report in.  No one would know anything was wrong.

No one was coming for us. 

Kathy must have grasped the significance of this as well as I did, because I saw a flash of alarm in her eyes which she quickly tried to hide.  She turned back to the first aid kit and took out two small paper packets, tore them open and shook out the pills into Jolene’s good hand.  “All I have is ibuprofen,” she said. 

I took the cap off the water and handed it to Jolene as she popped the pills into her mouth.  She drank.  “Thanks.”  She made a small gesture with the bandaged hand and winced with the pain of it.  “I’m okay now.”

I said quietly, “Better keep that information to yourself.  I think you and Nike are the only ones they’re worried about here, and thinking they’ve put you out of commission might be the all that’s keeping you alive.”

Kathy’s face was rigid with distress.  “What do you think they want?”

Jolene looked from one to the other of us, a darting gaze that was disconcerting because of her one swollen eye.  “There was a briefing this morning,” she said.  “The FBI uncovered a radical militia cell operating around here somewhere.  One of their agents …” she swallowed hard, “a man named Carl Brunner, was killed trying to infiltrate them, and his body was placed in a stolen car and burned.”

I caught my breath.  “Jessie Connor’s car.” 

She nodded.  “That’s one of the reasons Nike and I were assigned here.  The FBI thought the terrorists were planning something for Monday, maybe something to do with Jeb Wilson’s appearance, but that must’ve been a smokescreen.  This was the real operation.  The FBI never would have been expecting anything out here.”

“My God,” whispered Kathy.

“This must have been their training camp,” I murmured.  “And any of these buildings would have been a good place to store munitions.”  I glanced at Jolene.  “I think Willie, the caretaker, might have been moving them this morning.  He knew Nike was coming, but we all expected you later.  And he didn’t know we had moved the demo site down to the lake.  He just didn’t finish before Nike found the stash.”

Kathy said uncertainly, “But … all these children!  Why would anyone take all these children hostage?”

Jolene said simply, “Can you think of a better way to negotiate for something big?”

I felt the sharp jab of steel in my shoulder and I stiffened. What does it say about me that I know too well what the barrel of a gun pressed into my skin feels like?  The soldier said harshly, “You!  Make those dogs shut up!”

I got slowly to my feet.  Kathy stopped fussing with the first aid kit and watched me.  Jolene watched me too.  I turned to face him.  “They’re dogs,” I said.  I couldn’t believe how steady my voice was.  “They’re going to bark.  If the kids weren’t so upset, the dogs would quiet down.”

“Do something!” he insisted.  “You did it before.”

I went over to the crating area, still clutching the roll of adhesive tape in my hand.  The soldier followed a few steps behind.  I unzipped my pack, dropped the roll of tape inside and took out my clicker and treats.  I stopped in front of the first row of cages, bellowed again, “
Dogs!  Quiet!
”  And in the first breath of silence I clicked, dug into my bag of treats and tossed one into the first cage.  The sheltie inside gobbled up the treat and sat, waiting for more.  I moved quickly to the next cage, and the next, clicking and treating as dogs sat in anticipation down the line.  When I got to Mischief, I gave her an extra treat and a kiss on the nose, whispering thickly, “Some vacation, huh, girl?”  Pretty soon the only sound that could be heard was the sound of my clicker and the happy snuffling of treats.  When I came to Nike’s cage, I could practically hear the soldier’s finger tighten on the trigger.  I dropped a treat into her cage and moved on.  She ignored it.

I had used that technique before to calm the kennel dogs, and it usually worked.  Contentment among dogs is contagious, and as long as there is the expectation of something good coming their way, most dogs will wait for it.  When the dogs were mostly calm, I turned to the soldier and said, “It won’t last long.  Why don’t you let the kids sit beside their dogs?  They all have clickers and treats.  They can keep them quiet a lot longer than I can.”

He jerked his head back toward the opposite wall where the adults were huddled.  I swallowed hard but did not return to my place.  Instead I took a step toward him.  “Come on,” I said, pleading, “they’re kids and they’re scared to death.  Can’t you …”

I heard Melanie cry shrilly, “Cisco!” and I whirled to see my dog trotting toward me, trailing his leash, wagging his tail and smiling his sweet smile, wondering why all those other dogs had gotten treats and he hadn’t.

Before I could draw a breath for a command, the soldier swung around and leveled his rifle on my dog. I screamed something inarticulate and lunged at him while at the same moment Melanie surged forward, grabbing for Cisco’s leash and stumbling hard.  She fell, and someone grabbed my shoulder and spun me backward so hard I almost landed on my rear.  He faced off against the other soldier and I heard him rasp through the mask, “Soldier!  This is not our mission!”

I stumbled across the slippery cement floor to Cisco and Melanie, and only when I had one arm around my dog’s neck and the other arm around Melanie did I cry angrily, “Is this what you do, then?  You shoot children and innocent dogs?  Is this what you trained for?  Is this what you’re so damn proud of?”

One of the soldiers—I couldn’t tell them apart now—turned to me.  His words were distinct even through the muffling mask.  “Lady, you have no idea who we are.  We’re your saviors.  We’re the ones that’re going to protect you when your government goes up in flames!  We’re the ones you’ll be calling out to!  One day you’ll be thanking us.”

I wanted to scream a profanity at him, but the children were watching me.  Everyone was watching me.  The dogs were barking again.  I took Cisco’s leash and Melanie’s hand and hurried back to the wall with the other adults.  I told Cisco to sit and reached into the treat bag with trembling fingers, feeding him treats one after the other until my heart stopped pounding.

Melanie sat close to me, her eyes big and terrified.  “Raine,” she whispered, “I think I did something bad.”

I reached for her hand and gave it a quick reassuring squeeze.  “It’s okay, it’s not your fault.  Cisco gets away from me all the time …”

“No, it’s not that.”  She shot a quick frightened glance toward the soldiers, who were too far away to hear us now beneath the renewed cacophony of barking dogs.  “I didn’t want to, but when I thought he was going to shoot Cisco, and I fell down, I didn’t know what else to do.”  She looked up at me, the fright in her eyes magnified behind the glasses.  She whispered, “I pushed my panic button.”

There were ten or twelve vehicles now crowding the parking lot and lining the road in front of Banks General Store; Buck had stopped counting when the state ME’s van arrived to process the body.  There were crime scene photographers, evidence analysts, munitions experts.  And far too many federal agents for him to even make an attempt to remember their names. 

One such agent took a long look beneath the tarp that covered Willie’s truck bed and remarked, “There’s enough C4 and blasting caps here to blow up a small city.”  Then he glanced at Buck and added, “Sorry, Sheriff.”

Buck said, “Yeah.  Looks like that’s what somebody had in mind, huh?”

“Could be,” agreed the agent.  “Could be they were planning on trading for something bigger.”

Buck did not ask what the “something bigger” might be.  He had a lot of guesses, and none of them were good.

The agent said, “We’ve got a truck on the way to transport this stuff to the command center.  Can you spare us a couple of deputies to load it?”

“Yeah, sure.”  He glanced around for Manahan and didn’t see him, but Wyn caught his eye.  He excused himself to the nameless agent and made his way through the throng of lawmen and women—some looking busy, some looking lost—to Wyn.

She turned her shoulder to the crowd, indicating he should follow, and lowered her voice to keep the conversation private.  Maybe it was paranoid, but it was something local officers had learned to do when federal authorities took over a case.  She said, “So we may have some info on what Reggie’s jeep is doing here.  I made a few calls, and it looks like he’d been working part time at the store the last few days, keeping it open while Willie was helping out at the camp.”

Buck frowned.  “Was he still taking care of that place? I’d’ve thought he was too old ten years ago.”

She shrugged. “Apparently the people who rented the place for the weekend thought he was still capable of mowing the grass and running errands.  Anyway, neighbors say Reggie opened up the store at seven a.m. yesterday and closed it at seven p.m. last night.  We’ve got a report that the parking lot was empty at nine p.m. so I’m guessing he came back here this morning to open up and never did.  Or maybe he did and closed again.  I haven’t been able to track down anything after nine last night.”

“Good work,” Buck said.  “Stay on it, will you?  Let me know what you find out about Reggie’s whereabouts after seven this morning.”

She nodded and started to turn away.

“Hey,” he said.

She looked back at him.  His expression was surprised and pleased, and he was looking at her hand.  Specifically, he was looking at the ring on the third finger of her left hand.