Silent Creed (4 page)

Haywood County, North Carolina

C
reed breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the yellow hard hats of rescue workers and at least one Caterpillar excavator. A staging tent flapped in the wind, secured with concrete blocks. A mobile medical van was parked on the only paved road into the area, nose pointed out and ready to leave.

The thirty miles from the airport had taken them an hour and a half. Even the detours included roads with monster-sized gashes in the pavement, as if a Godzilla-like creature had chomped and stomped a path before them.

Barricades blocked their entrance and a sheriff’s deputy dressed in a rain slicker with plastic stretched over his hat signaled for the SUV to stop. Isabel leaned across the driver with her ID wallet to the window. The deputy motioned for the window to be rolled down for a better look, which drew a sigh of aggravation from Isabel. The rain had eased to a pitter-patter, so Creed could clearly hear her mumble under her breath, “Don’t these people have a clue who we are?”

“Good afternoon,” the driver said as the deputy reached in and took the ID to examine.

He pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket and squinted as if looking for Isabel’s name on a list. Creed could see Isabel’s jaw go tight, holding back her impatience.

“You’re not on the list,” he told her as he handed back her wallet.

“What? That’s impossible. We’re with the Department of Defense.”

“Sorry, you could be with the White House, and unless you’re on this list, I can’t let you through.”

The deputy glanced into the backseat, and when he saw Bolo his expression changed. “Is this the search-and-rescue dog?”

“Yes, and we need—”

“Why didn’t you say so?” he interrupted her. “Big guy with the gray mustache is Oliver Vance. He’s the emergency management director for the state of North Carolina. I think he might be under the tent right now. He’ll check you in and get you up-to-date. There’s some solid ground to your left. Go ahead and park up there.”

As soon as the SUV slid to a stop, Creed gathered his gear and Bolo. He could hear Isabel and her driver still arguing about why she wasn’t on the list even as he slogged his way to the staging tent, leaving them behind. Oliver Vance met him before he reached the tent.

“Welcome.” Vance stuck out a gloved hand that was as big as a catcher’s mitt. “I’m Oliver Vance. Everybody around here calls me Ollie.”

“Ryder Creed. And this is Bolo.”

“Bolo?” He chuckled at the name. “We’re sure glad to see you two. Somebody mentioned you were a marine and a dog handler in Afghanistan?”

“That’s right.”

“Conditions on the slide field are still unstable, but knowing what you probably dealt with in Afghanistan, you’re used to unstable territory.”

Creed remembered what they had said about dog handlers every time he led a unit beyond the wire. “First out. First to die.” Their job was to accompany the platoon and clear a path through hostile territory, making themselves the first targets—not just first targets of hidden Taliban fighters, but also first to trip over buried IEDs.

“At least here nobody will be shooting at my dog,” he told Vance.

“Bastards,” the man said, shaking his head. “I was in Desert Storm. Still think we should have taken care of them back then. Saved us a heap of trouble. Hated that son-of-a-bitching place. Some days I feel like I still have sand up my ass.”

That made Creed smile. Vance showed him to a dry bench in the middle of the tent. He petted Bolo while Creed pulled out gear from his duffel. Around them, men called to each other and worked the area.

“How many do you have still missing?” Creed asked.

“Unaccounted is at forty-five.”

“He’s here to search an area for Lieutenant Colonel Logan,” Isabel told Oliver Vance as she slogged her way under the tent.

She stood in front of him, a foot shorter, arms crossed over her chest as if that might give her the needed authority. Before they’d left the Gulfstream she had changed into jeans and added hiking boots that looked brand-new. Her rain slicker looked like she had never worked a disaster site.

“Who’s this?” Vance pointed a thumb at her and asked Creed.

Before Creed could respond, Isabel continued, “Mr. Creed was hired by the Department of Defense to search a particular area.”

“Bolo and I can only search what’s been cleared to search.” Creed moved between the two, but he stared down Isabel. “That’s why I asked who was in charge. I have to follow protocol.”

“Protocol?”

“Your boss should have told you that.”

“We have instructions—”

“When Logan gets here,” Creed interrupted, “he can see about changing the protocol. Until then, Bolo and I search wherever Mr. Vance tells me he and his people have cleared.”

“We’ll see about that.” She pulled out her cell phone and wagged it at him, as if the threat would change his mind.

Creed turned to Vance. “I need to see a map of the area we’re talking about.”

Vance watched Isabel stomp back to the SUV as he pulled a tin of tobacco from a pocket. He opened the lid and offered some to Creed. When Creed shook his head, Vance pinched a wad and tucked it under his lower lip, adding to the lump already there.

“Hard thing to get over,” he said, “when the one you brought to the dance won’t dance with you. She won’t likely forget this.”

Creed tamped down his impatience. With the thick cloud coverage and intermittent rain, they’d be losing daylight soon.

“How about that map?”

Vance yanked a laminated one from inside his rain jacket and unfolded it on a makeshift table. With his index finger he outlined the area they had cleared.

“Where do you suspect the slide began?” Creed wanted to know.

“We haven’t been able to send up a helicopter for any aerial views. Weather’s been a bitch. I’m estimating it started up here.” He pointed to a line just below the top of the mountain.

“And it ends where we’re standing?”

“For now. We’ve felt some additional debris flow off to our right. This rain don’t stop, even the area we cleared can’t be considered safe. Everything is still unstable. We tried to start in the most populated area. This thing gave way about ten-thirty last night. Some folks were already in bed.

“Houses that used to sit about three acres above slid or toppled down this far.” Again, he ran his finger over the map. “We have one house still intact. Slid clean off its foundation and rode down until it slammed into another house. But the other houses . . .” He let out a long sigh. “Hard to even recognize any of the mess. You’ve done a slide before?”

“Oso.”

Vance nodded. Nothing else needed to be said. Oso, Washington, had been one of the worst.

“Then you know what you get with these things: septic tanks, insulation, propane, a truckload of glass. A wicked brew of toxins that used to be homes.”

“What about survivors?”

“We’ve pulled fourteen. Two didn’t make it. Five were taken by ambulance. Some of the survivors are telling us they have family still in the rubble. But that’s just this area. We’re hoping you and your dog can help find them.”

Creed pulled the yellow fluorescent vest over Bolo’s head and secured it in place. The dog wiggled in anticipation. This particular vest had a strap running along the top from side to side that could be used as a handle if Creed needed to yank the big dog up and out of the muck.

“I didn’t realize there was so much gear for the dog,” Vance said from behind them, standing back but watching as Creed attached a tiny waterproof GPS unit inside a mesh pocket in the vest. It would sit just over Bolo’s right shoulder.

“Normally I’d rather not have him off leash, but in this case being attached to me will slow him down.”

Then Creed prepared himself. He tucked his pant legs into his hiking boots and ran four-inch waterproof tape around his ankles, sealing the seam. He already had on special socks that would wick the wetness away from his skin. He knew the tape wouldn’t necessarily keep his feet dry, but it would discourage snakes and other insects from climbing up his legs.

He strapped on his helmet, a ballistic shell that sat just above his ears. It was similar to the helmets Vance’s crew wore, only Creed’s didn’t include a communication headset inside. He chose to leave his gloves in his rain jacket pocket. In the other pocket he stuffed a knotted rope toy and zippered it in while Bolo’s eyes grew wide and his tail wagged. Most of Creed’s dogs were trained with toy rewards. Food was never used. Too many things could go wrong with food rewards. Last, he tugged on a small backpack with other items he or Bolo might need along their search. This particular pack had a one-snap release in case he got caught up in debris and needed to wrestle free.

Ready, he turned back to Vance. Something just occurred to him and he asked, “How did you know I was coming?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ms. Klein wasn’t on the admission list but you sounded like you were expecting me. Even knew I was a marine.”

“One of the guys told me early this morning.” He scratched at the thick mass of gray hair under his hard hat.

Creed shrugged it off. It probably didn’t matter. Instead he asked, “What about the DoD’s facility?”

“Don’t know much about it. It’s secluded on federal property. Classified crap. Nobody around here can even tell me what the facility was for, let alone how many people worked there. I’d say it’s about an acre northeast of these homes.”

“You think it was affected?”

“Oh yeah. That’s probably gone. But that late at night, I’m hoping there wasn’t anyone in there. We don’t even have it on our unaccounted-for list because nobody’ll give us any information.”

“My biggest challenge is the scent area for my dog,” Creed told him. “He’ll be confined to this area, but the scent could stretch all along the slide or at least as far as it’s been dragged. Where Bolo ends up alerting could be a part of the field, but it might not be exactly where the victim is.”

“No matter how far off he is, I’ve got to think he’ll still be saving us time.”

“There is one other thing,” Creed said. “From what you’ve described, this slide was powerful.”

“And fast. Never seen one like this before. We get our share in these parts but rarely one like this.”

“I have to warn you. There’s a good chance the houses aren’t the only things that have been ripped apart.”

Washington, D.C.

S
enator Ellie Delanor stared at the stack of files on her desk. In the corner of her office were a half-dozen boxes with more. Senator Quincy, who was heading the congressional hearing, had sent them over just that morning.

Her chief of staff stood in the doorway. The note he had handed her was supposed to prepare her for this.

“Was there some mistake?” she asked Carter.

She knew the answer but still hoped he could explain the delay as a simple mix-up. She didn’t want to believe that her colleague—the four-term senior senator from Illinois who had allowed her to be on the committee—would sabotage her before the hearings even began. But considering what she had put up with in the past, she shouldn’t even be surprised. The Senate was still a good ole boys’ club. She’d been warned. She already knew she would be the token woman for the camera crews at the hearings. Wasn’t this just another way of reminding her of her place?

“They said that the DoD only just released them,” Carter told her, pointing to the boxes. The stack on her desk had been delivered yesterday morning.

She met his eyes, looking for any hint of whether he believed it. Sad, but these days she found herself relying on a twenty-eight-year-old glorified clerk as her bullshit monitor. That’s what happens when you discover your ex-husband has lied for most of your thirteen years of marriage. You don’t know who to believe.

“I skimmed through a few files,” he continued. “Blocks of blacked-out copy. Pages of it in some instances.”

“So what are you saying?”

“We never would have found much even if we’d received them two months ago instead of today.”

From the labels adhered to the outside of the boxes she knew the copies were from documents dated between 1951 and 1975. It was amazing to think how records were kept before computers. Hundreds of thousands of documents, sorted page by page. There was no easy way to access information from these bulging boxes of stack upon stack. It would take months to physically look through them, let alone read them.

And what good would it do? The DoD, the very agency that was being investigated, was the same agency that determined what was too sensitive, too classified, and needed to be blocked out.

Or was that exactly what the DoD wanted them to believe? She wondered if hers and Carter’s responses were what the DoD hoped for—that they would take one look and think that all of the important information was still classified. And maybe they wouldn’t bother to look at all.

Carter’s cell phone bleated its annoying ringtone. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen.

“It’s Senator Quincy’s office,” he told her, even as he tapped the faceplate to take the call, not waiting for her permission. “This is Carter.”

He listened, nodding as though the person on the other end of the line could see him. Ellie watched him, realizing the kid had become a player—poker face, eyes steady, face expressionless, body casual and free of any fidgeting or ticks. When had he gotten so good at this that even she couldn’t read him? He had been such a sweet, innocent kid when she hired him, all bright-eyed and ready to adore her.

“Senator Quincy’s called an emergency meeting,” he said, interrupting her thoughts so suddenly she didn’t notice that he had ended his call.

“About the files?”

“Something about Dr. Hess not being able to testify tomorrow.”

“What?”

Colonel Abraham Hess was one of her witnesses. A brilliant biologist and medical doctor, he had earned an indisputable reputation in his fifty-five years in the army. A friend of her father’s, Ellie had known Hess since she was a child.

“There was a landslide in North Carolina.”

“He doesn’t have any family in North Carolina.”

Carter shrugged, already gathering his messenger bag and waiting for her.

“Something about a research facility,” he told her.

But all she heard was that her star contribution to these hearings was bailing on her, and she couldn’t let that happen. She grabbed a file folder, pen, and leather portfolio, always conscious of looking unburdened and in control. At the door she stopped and turned to Carter, who was ready to follow her. She pulled out a sheet of paper and jotted down several names and phone numbers, then handed it to him.

“Before you join me in the meeting, make a few calls for me. By this afternoon I want a subpoena delivered to Colonel Hess.”

“A subpoena?” He said it like he’d never heard the word before.

“Yes, Carter. It’s a congressional hearing. I can do that. He’s my witness and he will be there tomorrow.”

She didn’t wait for him to ask any more questions. Truth was, she had no idea if it was possible to do what she was asking. But she was tired of people bailing on her, tired of having boxes of files dropped off to be read in less than twenty-four hours, tired of being treated like a skirt who should simply be happy to sit and be pretty. If Colonel Hess thought he could take advantage of their family friendship to screw her over, he was sadly mistaken. Senator Ellie Delanor was finished being screwed over.