Silent Creed (23 page)

A
helicopter!
O’Dell’s jaw clenched and her stomach took a nosedive.

She hated flying, and doing it in a helicopter was a special hell of its own. She put on sunglasses and stared out the window. She’d been hoping to see blue sky for days.

Careful what you wish for.

She asked again about Logan, and again Ross told her his team hadn’t heard from the man since the day before. The young guardsman seemed on edge this morning, but then so was O’Dell. She hadn’t been able to relax the knot in her chest. Last night she had the nagging urge to crawl into Ryder’s cot. Even now as she thought about it, she scolded herself and repeated in her head,
Careful what you wish for.

She considered talking Ross out of the helicopter. She hadn’t paid any attention to the forecast, but what if the clear skies didn’t last? Did they have another mode of transportation available to come back down the mountain?

But she stopped herself. More than anything, she wanted this over and done with. There wasn’t much time to waste. She reminded herself about Dr. Gunther. Whoever set that fire last night—whether it was Logan or someone else—had meant to destroy what was inside. She had to be next. She knew that.

She didn’t think she could wait for Kunze. She did tell her boss that they needed to find Peter Logan. It wasn’t a coincidence that he’d suddenly disappeared.

All night she kept watch, flinching and rising at any sound that seemed out of place. She didn’t think Logan would risk burning down a gymnasium and taking with it dozens of rescue workers and volunteers. But she’d seen desperate men do desperate things.

It was best that she beat him back up the mountain. She needed to recover the deadly samples before someone mad enough to kill an old woman and incinerate evidence got there. She couldn’t depend on Ben. He had called several times since they talked last night. She silenced her phone and ignored his messages.

O’Dell knew what she needed to do. She only wished she could have talked Creed into staying behind.

T
he wreckage up there was more severe. Creed was glad he’d brought the mesh carrier for Grace. No way he was allowing her to step foot onto that mess.

To Creed it looked like the remnants of a bombed-out village in Afghanistan. Only rubble left. Stubs of trees stripped of their branches. Pieces of rooflines sticking up out of the ground. An eerie reminder that they were walking on top of the buried building. He imagined hallways still intact underneath. Maybe more bodies trapped down there.

The smell of diesel and propane was dangerously strong and he searched for greasy puddles even as he followed Ross and Maggie.

The pilot had stayed with the helicopter. So far no one else was there to meet them. And Ross didn’t look like he expected anyone else.

“It’s not much farther,” he told Maggie. He glanced back at Grace then asked, “What exactly can the dog find?”

“A number of things. But she hasn’t been trained with any of the viruses we’re looking for.”

If Creed hadn’t known better, he’d have thought Ross looked pleased with that information instead of concerned about Grace’s limitations.

Grace, however, was unsettled again. She had wiggled into the carrier willingly but then stared at him again and fidgeted. Now traveling securely at his side, she pawed at him every once in a while. When he looked down, her nose was twitching, her breathing rapid. She obviously had found a scent she was working.

Multitask dogs were exceptional, even phenomenal. But sometimes they could get confused. The smallest miscue or misunderstanding of what their owner expected could result in a false alert. Creed used different commands and a variety of harnesses and vests for each task. If he didn’t make it clear what he expected the dog to search for, there could be confusion.

But Grace didn’t get confused.

Still, a dog might smell something that they recognized as a scent they’d been trained to search for. When they smelled it—even though they hadn’t been asked to find that particular scent at that particular time—they might alert to it. The landslide had smeared the mountain with enough scent to drive a dog crazy. Was she smelling human decomposition?

Earlier Creed suspected she was alerting to something inside the SUV. Now she was alerting again, staring up at him. The only common denominator was Ross.

He eyed the guardsman’s backpack. Creed watched the fit and swing of his jacket. Did guardsmen always carry weapons?

He looked down at Grace. Her nose was twitching again. She pushed her shoulders out of the carrier to get a better sniff.

“Looks like Grace is onto something,” Maggie said.

And this time when Ross glanced back Creed saw that the man didn’t look pleased.

Creed patted his jacket pocket and stopped. “I must have dropped her special collar when I was getting out of the helicopter,” he said while trying to catch Maggie’s eye.

“Collar?” Ross asked.

“Yeah, no wonder she’s so unsettled. Without it, she’s not really sure what she’s supposed to be searching for. Maggie, would you mind running back and getting it? I’m a little slow after getting banged up the last couple of days.”

But he could see she didn’t understand. She knew Creed used vests and collars to let Grace know which scent he wanted her to find. He wanted to alert Maggie that something was wrong, but more than anything, he wanted Maggie away from there.

“Sure, I can do that,” she said.

“It won’t be necessary,” Ross told her. And in seconds he had a revolver pointed at Creed’s chest. “Agent O’Dell, you’ll need to give me your service weapon.”

T
he hole in the ground reminded O’Dell of the entrance to a storm cellar. Deep, dark, and narrow, with a wooden ladder providing the only steps down. In the beam of her flashlight she could see fragments of what used to be an office or a laboratory. Shattered glass cupboards, light fixtures swinging from wires in the ceiling, walls partially caved in.

She couldn’t believe that she had let Ross’s uniform fool her. She had been convinced that Peter Logan was the problem. It never occurred to her to suspect the men who had worked beside her to recover the bodies in the mud.

Ben had called them a cleanup team that Colonel Hess had sent down to help. But now she understood why the colonel had used the term “cleanup.” She and Kunze were right. Hess and maybe others at the DoD didn’t want anyone to know about this mess, especially not while they were battling Congress to keep their other secrets under wraps.

“So your job was never recovery,” she said as she handed over her Glock. “You were here to cover up all this mess. Is there even a lockbox?”

“My men found it this morning. It’s already being transported down the mountain and into the trunk of my SUV. Before nightfall I’ll have it in a safe place.”

“I understand why you need to get rid of me,” O’Dell said. “I saw the results of the experiments that were going on here. Is that why you murdered Dr. Shaw and the others?”

Ross frowned at her. “I didn’t kill them. And I don’t know anything about experiments. I arrived after the landslide. Who knows what happened here? My team was hired to recover the bodies and lockbox.”

“And make sure no one knows about any of it.” She glanced back at Grace and Creed and a knot tightened in her stomach. “They didn’t even see the bodies. Let them go.”

“I didn’t suggest they come.”

The knot moved up into her throat and threatened to choke her.
My God, he was right
.

That’s when Maggie saw something else down in the hole. A flap of blond hair, bloodied by a gunshot wound at the temple. Peter Logan.

W
hen Ross pulled out the gun, Creed had seen something else almost tumble out of his pocket. It looked an awful lot like a detonator.

And suddenly Creed understood what Grace had been alerting to. There were explosives down below. Ross must have helped set them. He still had residue on his hands or clothes. Creed kept his hand inside Grace’s carrier, petting her, reassuring her as best he could.

“Why bring us all the way out here just to kill us?” Maggie asked.

She was trying to remain calm, but Creed had already caught a glimpse of panic in her eyes.

That Ross had the gun pointed at him instead of Maggie was good. It could give her a chance to fight even if it was only seconds after he fired at Creed.

“The place is ready to blow up,” Ross told her. “Accidents happen. There’s an awful lot of spilled fuel, ruptured propane lines. It’s a shame that you two were poking around up here when it happened.”

“So you started the fire last night.”

He shrugged.

“And you killed Dr. Gunther. That was no accident.”

“Collateral damage.”

He said it with no emotion, like a dozen other soldiers Creed knew. It was drilled into them. But this wasn’t war. And then something occurred to Creed.

“The floodwaters yesterday. That wasn’t an accident, either, was it?” he asked the man.

“Would have certainly made it a lot easier if you’d both died then.”

“By ‘both’ you mean me and Logan,” Maggie said.

The stoic look on Ross’s face told Creed that Logan was already part of the collateral damage.

“So who exactly do you work for?” Creed asked.

“More importantly,” Maggie added, “who do you kill for, Ross?”

When he said nothing, Maggie added, “It’s Colonel Abraham Hess, isn’t it?”

Creed knew if Ross couldn’t force them down into the hole he’d have no problem shooting them and dropping their bodies down. He’d probably even shoot Grace. And that made Creed angry.

“I’m letting Grace go,” he told Ross as he started to bend down, making sure to put his body between the dog and the gun.

“No, don’t move. Stop right now or I’ll wound you and make you watch me shoot the dog.”

Creed stopped but stayed hunched over the carrier, protecting Grace as best he could. He kept his hand in the carrier. He glanced at Maggie and caught a glimpse of her eyes again. He expected to see regret. If not for him, then for Grace. That’s not what he saw. Instead he saw anger and fight. And while Ross was paying attention to Creed crouching down on the ground, he wasn’t paying as much attention to Maggie.

Sometimes when Creed did a search and rescue it took them to strange and dangerous places. He usually came prepared, not necessarily to protect himself but always with the thought of protecting his dogs. There were plenty of things in the wilderness that could harm them. And although he never wore a gun, he armed himself with whatever might be needed to fight off coyotes or even bears.

With his hand hidden inside the carrier he found the canister of pepper spray safely stowed in the back pocket. His fingers wrapped around it even with Grace fidgeting.

“Get back up on your feet. Now.”

Creed slid the carrier off his shoulder and rested it on the ground with Grace still in it. He’d need to shoot the spray up into Ross’s face without getting any of it on Grace. As he started to rise he heard the gunshot.

It knocked Creed off his feet. The bullet had hit him in the chest. Pain exploded inside him. Sucked the air out of his lungs. Creed fell on top of Grace. All he could think about was protecting her with his body. Just like seven years ago when he protected Rufus.

He saw starbursts behind his eyes. He didn’t even hear the second gunshot.

O
’Dell lunged for her own weapon on the ground. She expected Ross to turn his gun on her. Instead, he shot Creed in the chest.

No, she didn’t want to believe what she saw.

Seconds ticked by. Her fingers grabbed the handle. She heard Creed gasp. She heard the thud as he dropped to the ground. She was rolling onto her back while her finger desperately searched for the trigger. Ross turned the gun on her.

Too late. She’d never make it.

She heard the second gunshot and knew it wasn’t from her gun. Before she could fire she saw the blossom of blood on the side of Ross’s head. She watched, stunned, as his gun slipped from his fingers. He fell to his knees, eyes already dead before he hit the ground.

O’Dell struggled to her feet.

A man stood about ten feet away with a rifle now slung down and pointing at the ground. He wasn’t one of Ross’s team. He wore what looked like medical scrubs, dirty and torn. His feet were wrapped in bandages.

Carefully, O’Dell made her way to Creed while watching the man.

“You folks okay?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

She wanted to find out and yet she couldn’t bear to see how badly Creed was hurt. If she couldn’t save him.

Or if he was already dead.

She knelt next to him. Grace squirmed out of the carrier and circled around and around. She was sniffing at her owner. O’Dell looked for blood. He had taken a direct hit to his chest.

Grace was licking his face.

“I’m so sorry, Grace,” she told the little dog.

Then Grace started to wag.

O’Dell heard a groan. Suddenly she saw movement. Creed was flat on his back. Eyes open now, looking up at her.

“How in the world—”

“Jason,” he said through gritted teeth as he tried to raise himself up.

“Just stay put for a minute.” She put her hand against his chest and that’s when she felt it under his jacket. “Jason gave you a bulletproof vest?”

“Supposed to be the newest, lightest—” He was gasping for breath. “His buddy Tony. He’s a paranoid bastard.”

She put a finger to his lips. “Please, just stay still.” And even as she was telling him this, she meant it for her own heart, because it was galloping in her chest. “It stopped the bullet, but we need to be careful about your ribs. We need to make sure they don’t puncture a lung.”

“You shoot him?” he asked. “Is he dead?”

She wiped the hair off his forehead. “He’s dead, but I didn’t shoot him.”

She looked up and the man in the raggedy clothes had ventured closer, slowly.

“Is he okay?” he asked.

Creed craned his neck to take a look at the man.

“These guys have been up here since yesterday. I knew they were up to no good. They were planting IEDs down in the tunnels.” He held up the rifle. “They forgot this.”

“Who are you?” O’Dell finally asked.

“My name’s Daniel Tate.”

“But how did you—”

Before O’Dell could ask, Tate interrupted. “Not right, him threatening to shoot that dog.”

He bent down and offered Grace his dirty fingers to sniff.

“Just wasn’t right, at all.”