Home of the Brave (Raine Stockton Dog Mysteries Book 9) (18 page)

Jolene’s gaze darkened with suspicion. “What’s she talking about?”

“Reward your dog,” I said, disguising my relief as I unzipped my pouch.  “She’s right.”

Jolene reached for the knotted rope on her utility belt and tossed it to Nike, who jumped up in the air and snatched it like a puppy.  Cisco almost lost his cool then, and I couldn’t blame him.  Nonetheless, I gave him a brief “Ank!” as a reminder and dug out the shell casing from the bottom of my pack.

“We found a bunch of these yesterday,” I said, showing it to Jolene.  “I saved one to try to find out what kind it was.”  Then I frowned.  “Can she really smell a spent shell that’s been lying around on the ground for weeks?”

Jolene took the shell from me.  “It’s an AR-15 round,” she said.

Melanie’s eyes grew big.  “Like a machine gun?”

“Assault rifle,” I corrected her.  And then I thought,
Assault rifle?  Here?
  As anyone with television, radio or newspaper access knows, it’s possible to legally purchase certain kinds of assault weapons in many states, North Carolina being one of them.  You do occasionally see them at firing ranges, although what their owners were expecting to need them for was anybody’s guess.  Attack of the killer deer?  Assault by deadly jackrabbit?  Besides, the nearest rifle range was a good fifteen miles from here.

Jolene must’ve been thinking much the same thing because her frown deepened and her voice was tight as her hand closed around the shell.  “Where did you find this?”

“We can show you,” Melanie volunteered quickly.

But I gave her a stern look.  “
I
can show her,” I corrected.  I could see a stormy argument forming in her eyes so I passed her Cisco’s leash.  “Do me a favor, take Cisco to the doggie dorm and put him in one of the spare crates, will you?”  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust my guy around Nike, but he
was
awfully interested in her, and Jolene didn’t seem to have a sense of humor about things like that.  Besides, everything always went a lot faster without Cisco along, and the sooner we got this over with, the sooner I could get my lunch.

“But he hates being crated!” Melanie protested, pouting.

“Then put him in an ex-pen.  I’ll only be a few minutes. You can put Pepper in with him if you want.”

That seemed to sweeten the deal somewhat, and I could see her relenting.  I decided to push my luck.  “And save me a sandwich from lunch.”

She brightened.  “I’ll bring it to you at the lake! Come on, Cisco.”  And before I could correct that notion, she trotted off with Cisco in tow.  Not that it mattered.  We’d be back before she finished lunch anyway.

I said to Jolene, “You don’t really want to see the place, do you?  It’s not illegal to target-shoot, and I already threw all the casings I could find into the weeds.”

Willie put in, “If you want me to carry stuff down to the lake, I need to start loading it up.”  He looked as anxious to get to lunch as I was.

But Jolene ignored him and repeated, “Where did you find them?”

I sighed.  “It’s way over the hill in the old soccer field that we’re using for agility.”  I glanced over my shoulder at Willie.  “Come on, Willie, I’ll show you which pieces of agility equipment we need.”

But he looked annoyed and disgruntled as he stomped off in the other direction, muttering, “Gotta get the truck.”  I noticed he pulled out his cell phone as he stalked away, probably to complain to Margie.

I turned back to Jolene and, with a grand sweep of my arm, indicated the direction in which we should go.  She was clearly accustomed to taking the lead, so I let her, falling into step beside her after a few strides. 

The sun beat down upon my newly shorn head and I wished I had worn a cap.  Of course, I had expected to be on my way to the nice cool dining hall by now, not tramping up a dirt road in the heat of the noonday sun. Nonetheless, I decided to try to make the best of it.  “So how long have you and Nike been together?”

“Eight months.”

Somehow I had thought it would have been longer than that.  “Where did you work before this?  Is this your first civilian job?”

“What difference does it make?”

I shrugged.  “Just trying to be friendly, that’s all.”  We walked a little farther, the hot trail crunching under our feet, and I said, “So how did you end up here?”

“God,” she muttered under her breath, “do you
ever
shut up?” 

I tried to count to ten, but only made it to five.  “Look,” I said tightly, “if you don’t mind some advice …”

Rather predictably, she replied, “I do.”

Also predictably, I ignored her.  “This is a kid’s camp.  They ask questions.  A lot of questions.  That’s what they do.  You’re here to answer them—politely and intelligently.  That attitude of yours is going to get you nowhere fast.”

“I’m here,” she replied shortly, “because I was ordered to be.  And I don’t need a lecture on attitude from some smart-ass white bitch.”

I stopped and stared at her.  I couldn’t believe she’d said that. And, judging by the quick look that flickered over her face, she couldn’t either.  The hard mask was back in an instant and she returned my gaze like a street fighter daring his opponent to make the first move.  But this was not a fight in which I wanted to be involved.  And though she didn’t know it yet, neither did she.

I said in a voice that was almost normal, “In case you haven’t noticed, we have all kinds of kids here—Asian, African American, Hispanic—so I think everyone would appreciate it if you would lose the racial slurs.  And watch your language.  You’re not in the army now.”  I made a terse gesture toward the white ring gating that could be seen just beyond the rise.  “Over there.”

For the first time I saw something that might have been embarrassment cross her face.  She looked as though she wanted to say something, but whatever it was, her lips tightened against it and she looked away.  We resumed walking.  Nike panted between us, the sun gleaming off her coat.

In a moment, she said, “Look, I know you’re used to being the boss’s little princess—”

I interrupted with a short bark of laughter.  I’d been called a lot of things, including what she’d just called me two minutes earlier, but “princess” was a new one.

“But the last thing I’m interested in is your hokey small-town relations, where Billy-Bubba the mayor hires his brother Billy-Bob as police chief and both of them look the other way while Billy-Joe sells crack on the schoolyard because they’re damn brothers.  And yeah, you can tell your ex I said it.  He’d’ve already fired me if he could anyhow.”

I was of course intrigued by that, but felt compelled to defend my heritage first.  “In the first place, I don’t know a single person in this whole county named Billy-Bubba.  And in the second place, if anybody even thought about selling crack on a schoolyard around here every man in the sheriff’s department would be on him like a flock of ducks on a June bug and if you don’t already know that you deserve to be fired and if Buck can’t figure out a way to do it I’ll be glad to help him!”  My nostrils were flared and my breath was coming hard, and it was from more than the climb or the heat.  “This
is
a small town, and yes, everybody knows each other, and yes, we do things a little differently than you’re used to in the big city, but we get them done.  Like it or not, you’re part of that small town now—worse, you represent it!—so you’d better get with the program.  And smile at the damn kids every now and then, will you?”

I pushed aside a length of ring gating and gestured angrily.  “Here,” I said.  “Knock yourself out. I’m going to lunch.”

She unclipped Nike’s leash as I turned away, and I couldn’t resist a lingering peek at Nike’s technique.  It spoiled my dramatic exit, I know, but, my goodness, that dog was magnificent at work.  I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she crisscrossed the scent path, moving like liquid across the small fenced area and, when Jolene removed a far gate for her, straight into the weeds toward the hay bale target, and beyond, probably scenting where I’d tossed the shells.  She could really track scent objects that old?  And that scattered?  Despite myself, I was intrigued.  I followed at a distance, and was glad that Jolene didn’t even notice.

The terrain of the land was such that the high fescue grass and brambles gave way to scrub pine and tangled boulders after a couple hundred yards.  Beyond that was a sharp rocky incline that led up to the bridle path and the forest beyond.  You could easily reach the path if you were a mountain goat.  If you weren’t, you would come to a dead stop at the bottom of the cliff, where the rocky boulders had fallen when the road was cut above.  That’s precisely what Nike did.  She stopped.  She sat and she barked.

There was no way any of the spent shell casings I had thrown had made it this far.  I increased my pace until I was jogging.

When I reached Jolene, she was shining a flashlight into a small crevice she had created by digging away some of the loose rock around the boulder pile.  Nike chewed her rope toy and looked pleased with herself.  Jolene said, without looking back at me, “I thought you were going to lunch.”

I said, following the beam of her flashlight, “It looks like something is buried under there.”

She didn’t answer, just started pulling aside more of the loose rocks.  I helped her, and in a matter of minutes we’d uncovered a flap of dusty green fabric.  We moved a few more rocks, widening the hole to about two feet across, and Jolene pulled out what proved to be a green canvas bag, half filled with something that rattled as it was dragged across the stones and set on the ground.  Nike moved close as Jolene unzipped the bag.

“Holy cow,” I said, staring.  “Are those …”

“M67s.”  Jolene sat back on her heels, her expression grim.  “Fragmentation grenades.”

I took a step back, still staring. There were two dozen of them or more, round, green bombs with a lever and a pull pin attached to the brass-capped bottleneck.  They were somehow smaller than I had imagined, not that I’d spent a great deal of time imagining what a hand grenade would look like.  The ugliness of them all piled together inside the canvas bag was profound.  My voice sounded a little hoarse as I said, “But—they can’t be real.  What are they doing here?”

Jolene had turned back to the opening in the rocks, exploring the inside with her flashlight beam.  I could tell now that the way the boulders had fallen created a natural cave of sorts that extended four or five feet back to the bank.  Someone had disguised the opening by gathering up the smaller stones and wedging them between the boulders.  As I looked around, feeling chilled in the bright sunlight, I noticed something else that had only registered with me peripherally before now.  The grass had been flattened in long rows leading up to and away from the place we were standing.  Those were tire tracks, and they had been made since the rain yesterday.

What kind of vehicle could traverse this terrain without getting stuck?  A tractor.  A jeep.  An ATV.  And only one of those could crisscross this camp at will without anyone giving it a second glance. 

Willie had been standing right beside me when Nike alerted.  No, not beside me, almost in back of me.  What if it hadn’t been the day-old shell casing that had triggered Nike, but something stronger, more recent … 

Jolene crawled down from the opening in the boulders and stood up, clipping the flashlight back onto her utility belt and brushing off her hands on her pants.  “There are half a dozen cases of ammunition in there, and some other things under tarps I can’t see.  I need to call this in.  We’ll have to evacuate the camp.  Go back and let them know.”

I nodded slowly, my mind whirring, my heart beating slow and hard.  “I just don’t understand why—”

“Raine!”  I spun at the sound of Melanie’s voice, and there she was, red-faced, sweating, and looking enormously pleased with herself as she crossed the field from the agility ring, Cisco pulling on the end of the leash.  “Cisco tracked you all the way here!” she called happily.  “He really did!  He didn’t want to go in the ex-pen,” she added.

It was at this point I found my voice enough to cry, “Melanie, stop!  Stay back!”

She slowed down about a hundred feet away, but didn’t stop.  “What’s up?” she called back.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jolene take out her cell phone, but it was at that moment Cisco spotted Nike and lunged toward us with excitement, jerking the leash out of Melanie’s hand.  I drew a breath to shout at him, but the words never made it out of my mouth.  There was a deafening crack of an explosion.  I cried out and staggered back, and when I looked down my tee shirt was spattered with blood.

Chapter
Twenty

I
could see Cisco, a blur of gold and terror, barreling toward me. I could see Melanie right behind him.  I could see Jolene on the ground, grasping her arm across her chest, and I realized the blood was hers.  Nike stood stiffly at attention, her eyes on something beyond my shoulder.  I turned my head and saw a soldier running toward us, rifle in hand and pointed at us. 

All of this registered in less time than it takes to take a breath.  Cisco was still running.  Melanie was still stumbling toward us.  Nike was poised and ready, her eyes on the soldier who was now less than ten feet from us.  Jolene shouted hoarsely through gritted teeth, “Nike, Fa—”