Trinity: Military War Dog (40 page)

With the pressure building in his head and his chest, Heath knew they were pushing into higher altitudes. This is where the Kush divided the men from the boys.

“We thought we’d lost you.” Watterboy emerged from the tunnel with a shudder. “Man, I hate those things.”

“Claustrophobic?” Bai sneered as he and Haur joined them.

“No.” Gaze dark, Watters scowled. “I saw a team get ambushed in a tunnel.”

“The path is trampled, and you can see blood spots.” Heath pointed them out.

“Seems our guys knew where they were going.” Watters made way for Candyman and formed a huddle.

Trinity nudged her way past Heath’s legs and sat in the middle, panting as she smiled up at him. He rubbed her ears, rewarding her discipline and good trekking.

“Can’t say it’s a convenient accidental detour.” Candyman winked. “Taking one of those tunnels, you could end up in South Africa. It’d be a mighty lucky guess.”

“Or perhaps the weather drove them into the tunnel, and they merely happened upon a shortcut.” Haur scooted aside so more of the Green Beret team could fill the path.

“Right.” Watterboy nodded to Heath. “Let’s get moving. We’re losing daylight fast, and I don’t want to take a wrong turn and fly to my death.”

“Agreed.” Heath reached for Trinity, and she moved into position beside him.

Dirt and rock spat at him. In the seconds it took to register, Heath heard shouts from behind.

“Taking fire, taking fire!”

Heath pressed himself to the ground, doing his best to shield Trinity.

“Where are they?”

“Anyone got eyes on the shooters?”

Heath urged Trinity closer to the rocks, and his girl low-crawled, ears flat and belly against the rocks, to the solid wall. Twisting on his side, Heath brought up his weapon and scanned the outlying area.

Seconds lengthened to minutes as they searched for the shooters.

“Think they left?” Candyman asked.

“Put your head up and find out,” Watters said, his face void of the sarcasm his words implied.

A soft pop and dribbling rocks sounded to Heath’s left. Then a hard breath.

“Who was stupid enough to lift his head?” Watterboy asked.

“What are they waiting for? They could wipe us off the map.”

“Exactly,” Heath muttered. “They have us trapped. They live to kill Americans, and they’ve been waiting for this. No way they’d give it up.”

“Agreed.” Watterboy’s gruff voice rattled the air.

“Then why aren’t they shooting?”

Haur’s question was a good one. Heath had been wondering about that same thing.

Tsing!

A whiff of gunpowder stung his nose a second before more debris peppered the back of his head. “Down.” Heath swept his reticle along the ridge. “They’re below us.” Which explained why they hadn’t been shooting—they couldn’t see the team flattened on the path.

With care, Heath scanned the striations on the opposing ridge.

A glint flashed at him. As bad as flashing their backside. He wanted to laugh. The sun had been in the favor of his team, glinting off the reticle of a weapon. Heath used the mental snapshot of where that glint appeared and homed in on the spot. Though he saw nothing that would mark a sniper, he fired.

“What’re you shooting at?”

A shape shifted in the reticle.

“Gotcha.” Heath waited and saw more forms lined up. His heart pounded. “Lower left ridge, two mil right.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, a barrage of weapons fire assaulted the position.

“Ghost, move!”

Heath grabbed Trinity’s lead and hauled it up the path and around the bend. Out of sight, he hoped, of the shooters. Using the bend for cover, he aimed in the direction of the ledge and provided suppressive fire as Watters and the rest hustled into the safety and protection of the bend. Once clear, Heath eased out of sight and slunk back to the team, who’d huddled.

“Keep moving, people. Don’t give them an excuse to find us.” Watters’s direction was met with groans but also compliance. They all knew he was right. They had to keep moving, not just to avoid getting shredded by bullets but because of Jia. She was out there, somewhere. Injured, if their guess was right.

Heath drifted closer to Haur—and noticed Bai clutching his arm. “You got hit.”

Bai shrugged. “A graze.”

“Hold up,” Heath called to the front where Watterboy and Candyman led the pack. He tugged Bai’s hand away and nodded. Seared by the bullet trail, the flesh hovered red and angry around a hole. “You bit one.”

Bai pried away Heath’s arm. “I will survive.”

“No, you need to have that looked at.”

“It is nothing.”

“Yeah.” Watterboy motioned a sergeant toward him. “Well, my guy will make sure.”

Heath tugged Haur aside, away from the captain. “Hey, Jianyu—would he be the type to seek help for his man if he got shot?”

Haur looked at Bai. “Most likely, he would shoot him and finish him off.”

Yeah. Exactly. “That’s what I thought.”

“Why?” Watterboy’s voice was close and drew Heath around.

“Jianyu’s behavior indicates he has one goal in mind. We don’t know what that is, but I don’t think he’s going to let anything get in his way, especially not a wounded soldier. It’d slow him down, cost him time and resources.”

Watterboy tilted his head to the side. “So if the wounded was a soldier, he’d kill to get him out of the way.”

Heath nodded. “That was my thinking.”

“Or it is Jianyu,” Haur said.

Heath considered Haur, the reason behind the suggestion. Was he trying to wear down their defenses, or was he legitimately trying to help them process this situation? “True, but they’re moving too fast for their leader to be down.”

“Agreed.” Watterboy smiled at Heath.

“What?”

Head down, barely concealing a smile, Watterboy shook his head. “Nothing.”

Only it wasn’t nothing. It was a grin of approval. Finally! He’d done something that merited the proverbial thumbs-up from the men he once considered to be like brothers.

“Incoming from Command,” Candyman shouted.

Watterboy clapped Heath on the back and stalked away. “Fire it up.”

Still soaking in the pleasure of gaining Watterboy’s approval, Heath stared down at Trinity. Yeah, it’d given him pleasure, but not as much as he thought it would’ve. Tides were shifting.

“My brother will stop at nothing once his mind is made up.”

To his left and behind a bit, Haur’s voice drifted around Heath in the swirling elements. Heath waited, surprised the man had opened up. But he also seemed to be telling him something, or trying to imply something. “And what is his mind made up about?”

Snow crunched as Haur came forward and his gaze slid to Heath’s.

Speaking of tides, Heath felt the tidal shift of two countries. An ominous element shrouded this night.

“Ghost!”

He pried his gaze from Haur’s to Watterboy.

“UAV has movement ten klicks north. Team of twelve, holing up in a village.” Watters ordered the men to eat and rest up before they headed out to engage or capture their targets.

“General Zheng drove Jianyu from his arms, but my brother bore a wound more grievous. One that drove him mad, changed him.”

This wasn’t just information for information’s sake. The man had thrown down the die. “I’ll play your game,” Heath said as he tugged his bite straw loose. “What was that wound?”

“A spy, one who infiltrated the highest levels of our government, dug beneath the impenetrable barriers of one of the nation’s most ardent loyalists—my brother.” Haur lowered his head. “General Zheng discovered the spy’s activities before my brother, but he did not tell him. They fed the operative false information, trapping the spy. And my brother. I think it angered the general that his own son could not see what was happening, even though all had been deceived.” Haur toyed with the tattered edges of his gloves. “They disgraced Jianyu for failing to detect and stop her.”

“Her?” Heath choked on a draught of water. “The spy was a woman?”

Haur gave a slow nod. “Known as Meixiang, she destroyed my brother’s life.”

Heath’s heart chugged through the swampy story the man had just churned.

“It is ironic, is it not, that one of the two Americans missing is a woman.” He dragged his attention to Heath. “And the only vengeance my brother has ever sought was to throw an American woman at the mercy of the Chinese government.”

“Are you telling me you think the woman we’re searching for …”

“I do not know who we are searching for, only that it is one American woman and one male.” Haur’s smile did not reach his eyes. “But the irony does not escape me.”

“No kidding.” Was it … could it be…? What if Jia was this spy? Oh man, that made so much sense. Didn’t it? Or did it? In a blink, everything seemed tenuous. Innocuous. Veiled.

“If my brother found this woman”—serene, thoughtful eyes drifted to the darkening horizon—“I would fear for her life.”

Camp Loren, CJSOTF-A, Sub-Base
Bagram AFB, Afghanistan

“Enter.”

The door creaked and musty air snuck into his office as he glanced once more at the UAV images.

“General Burnett, you have a, uh, visitor.” Otte slunk into the office.

“You know I don’t have time for this. Tell him to come back.” Was this really a Russian tanker sitting in the middle of the Hindu Kush? What were the Chinese and Russians planning? Could he head them off in time?

“Uh, sir—”

“Are you still here?” Lance threw down a pen and groaned. “Didn’t I tell you I was too busy?”

“Yes, sir.” The man shifted, nervous. “But … but I think you’ll want to see this … visitor.”

“And why would you think that?” Lance snatched some printed images from the shelf behind him. Compared the two. Flipped to the enhanced images. Confirmed twelve men and a woman.

“Because, sir, it’s General Zheng.”

His mind staggered over that name as he continued studying the images, thinking, plotting. As he did, the title of
Colonel
fell away from his expectation and skipped to what had just been said. “Wait. Did you just say
General
Zheng? As in Zheng Xin?”

Otte shifted on his long, lanky legs. “Yes, sir.”

“Why on God’s green earth didn’t you say so in the first place?” He punched to his feet. “Where is he?”

“General Early won’t let him—”

“Good for him,” Lance said with a laugh. Anything to annoy the crud out of that arrogant Asian. “Keep the Chinese on their toes.” He shoved around the side of his desk.

Lance stormed down the hall to the secure conference room, which—to his dismay—was right next door to the command center overseeing the mission to track down the man’s son and Darci.

Voices, raised but controlled, sifted out of the room and drew Lance inside. Early sat at the head of the table, leaning forward and pointing a finger at Zheng. “I don’t care what your reason is. This will not fly.”

“And what would that be?” Lance asked.

Early pushed back, eyes ablaze. “You were right.”

“Yeah?”

Nostrils flared, Early flung daggers at Lance. “I don’t like you much right now.”

“Ah.” So he’d found out about Darci. Ignoring the revelation, Lance shook hands with Zheng. “General, a surprise to find you here. You Chinese are getting mighty slippery, getting past our security forces.”

“General Burnett,” Early said with a huff. “I think you’ll find his story amusing.”

Lance stayed on his feet, opting to maintain a sense of control, of which he clearly had none if two high-ranking Chinese officers could slip into this sub-base without his awareness. “That so?”

Face red, Early leaned forward. “Go ahead, Zheng.
Regale
him. Tell him the tale you told me.”

Placid and unaffected by the hatred roiling off Early, Zheng took a long, measured breath. Then delivered the death knell. “My son is here on an unauthorized mission.”

With a hearty laugh, Lance leaned back and shook his head. “Hate to disappoint you, General, but we already know about Colonel Wu’s activities.”

The face remained unmoved save a twitch of the man’s right eyebrow. “I do not speak of Jianyu.”

Lance frowned, his heart powering down.

“I come to you to find and stop the boy I attempted to raise as my own, the boy I tried to influence and provide with a solid, exemplary upbringing.” He looked stricken. Ashamed. “It is true, as they say, ‘distance tests the endurance of a horse; time reveals a man’s character.’” Chest drawn up, he let out a weighted breath. “The one who must be stopped at all costs is Haur.”