“What are you going to do if I say no?”
Straight to the point, as always.
“You really want to ask me that question, sir?”
“Cole, you know I have no command authority over you right now. It doesn’t really matter what I say, does it?”
“Sir.”
“But if you’re confident, and you think these Virunga rangers of yours will give our guys a better chance of success, then go for it. I trust your judgment.”
Cole exhaled.
“Thank you, sir. Which team is over there, anyway? Anyone I know?”
“Didn’t want to tell you this earlier, but yes, the team leader is someone you’ll get along with. I think you and Jake Russell got to be pretty buddy buddy up in Afghanistan, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir, he’s a good friend.”
Cole could barely get the words around the massive grin plastered across his face. Jake wasn’t just a good friend, he was one of his best friends in the world. Ten months of combat had a way of doing that. He knew Jake had followed the colonel over to this Kony task force, but last he heard his friend had been playing desk jockey in Kampala.
“One more thing,” Alsina said. “You know this conversation never happened, right?”
“Roger that, sir.”
“Bike’s in the garage.” The defense attaché had a look of resignation on his face as Cole took the single key from his outstretched hand. Their eyes met, and held. “Be careful, Cole.”
“Will do, and thanks. It’ll be waiting for you up in Musanze, just as pretty as ever.”
“I wasn’t talking about the bike, but yes, it better be.” Dave Wong smiled, and looked to the door.
Cole started slow on the winding road leading out of the neighborhood, getting a feel for the black Ducati Monster beneath him. He still couldn’t believe the senior officer had brought this beautiful machine to Rwanda, of all places, but he wasn’t complaining now. Except for a dog barking in the distance, the street was silent. What a difference from the nocturnal symphony he knew to expect high in the Kabara meadow the next night. He passed one compound after another, each guarded by an imposing iron gate topped with concertina wire and multiple remote cameras watching, waiting. The sleeping ruling class of Rwanda. No combination of concrete and metal would protect them if this virus got out of hand. Cole was glad to be leaving the illusion of safety behind. Glad to have a purpose, to be on a mission that would require him to push past the comforts and limitations of the day-to-day routine.
He turned out onto the main commercial stretch, passing coffee shops and restaurants that most of the country’s population would never be able to afford. He’d taken Marna for sushi a month earlier. Sakae—the best raw fish in Rwanda. She was skeptical, but it wasn’t half bad, and killer views over the city made up for any deficiencies in the cuisine. He remembered the lingering conversation now, discovering their shared vision for future life and work in Africa, and the way she’d looked at him when they finally said goodnight. Why hadn’t he taken the hint and made his move right there? It all came back to his own selfishness, and not wanting to risk the time, effort, and emotion that a relationship would require. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but it was an unavoidable truth.
That month together would have been heaven.
Cole revved the engine and felt the bike leap with expectation as he left the city behind. For the first time in nine months, the Kigali-Musanze road was completely deserted. It’d been too long since he’d looked out on a lonely road like this with a powerful bike underneath him, ready to do his bidding. Ever since his first night back home at Fort Carson, only hours after climbing out of the huge C-17 that had flown them all the way from Afghanistan, and he couldn’t sleep. He’d only been responsible for one person on the deployment, just one soldier. Not a whole team, or even a company, like most non-veterinary captains. And yet he’d failed to bring his tech, Ben, back home.
Screw it
, he remembered thinking.
I need to ride
. Minutes later, he was flying up I-25 North, the cool Colorado night air rushing past him. It was good to be back on the 1958 Harley Panhead again. Best present he’d ever gotten, especially because his dad had been the bike’s only owner since it first came off the lot. Denver, Fort Collins, and Cheyenne all passed by in a blur before he chased Ben’s demon across the wide open spaces of Wyoming in record time. He finally crossed the cattle guard onto his parents’ ranch just north of Jackson, right as the sun’s first rays lit up the snowy heights of Grand Teton.
Home. It was a world away right now.
He picked up speed, tearing across the dark hills of Rwanda, and embraced the memories of the lost again. Ben, and now Marna. Both gone. So what was the answer? Stop letting people get so close, and do an even better job of focusing solely on Cole McBride, selfish bastard number one?
Not this time. Not any time. He needed to get back in the action. Back to where he could measure the results of a day’s work in lives saved and justice dealt.
Time to tear a little corner off of the darkness.
He was headed into the park.
Wait for it…wait for it…” Anna held the Frisbee next to her waist. “Good boy, Tyson. Okay, go!”
The disk shot from her hand like a bullet, and the dog was right behind it, tearing across the lush grass of the Capitol’s West Lawn in a brindle blur of strength and speed. She lifted one hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes from the setting sun at the other end of the National Mall.
There, almost fifty yards away. The Frisbee had reached its highest point now. It stopped and floated for the briefest second, then took off at another angle, almost as it was purposefully trying to fool its pursuer. But it didn’t have a chance. As soon as Tyson got a reading on the new trajectory, he took off again at a sprint and was waiting in the perfect position to make a beautiful but completely unnecessary leaping catch.
Success.
“You’ve got quite an arm there,” Danny said. “I mean, it’s not often…“
“…you meet a girl who can actually throw a Frisbee?”
“I was thinking a little more generally, but you said it, not me.”
The Secret Service agent looked at her with a wry smile, as if he were daring her to take their flirtatious banter to the next level. Anna had never really been attracted to a black man before, but that probably had more to do with their relative scarcity back home than any underlying prejudice on her part. At least that’s what she wanted to believe. When Special Agent Danny Walker stopped her as she left the White House the day before, asking if she’d like to play with Tyson off the clock sometime, she jumped at the chance. This was a summer for new experiences, right?
“Well I can’t take all the credit for it,” Anna said. “I wouldn’t have survived in my family if I didn’t keep up with my brothers’ athletic prowess.”
“Oh yeah? So what sports did they get into way out there in Wyoming?”
“You make it sound like outer space or something!” Anna laughed and gave the impatient Tyson a scratch between the ears. “They’ve all played at least one type of college ball, but my oldest brother Cole was the only real standout. Two-time All-American defensive back, and the Cowboys even made it to a decent bowl game to finish out his senior year.”
“Very cool,” Danny said. “I played football in college too—sounds like I was lucky never to meet this brother of yours coming across the middle of the field.”
She knew it. There was something about the way he moved that reminded Anna of all her athlete crushes over the years. And the thick arms emerging from his form-fitting white polo looked like they were more than just a recent acquisition at the gym.
“But no luck in the draft for you, either, I guess?”
“No, there was never really a chance. Not quite fast enough to be a running back in the big leagues.” He bent over to lift the Frisbee from where it rested on Tyson’s front paws. “That’s okay, though, I never would’ve gotten to work with this guy if there had been a place for me in the NFL.”
Tyson jumped to his feet, dark eyes completely focused on the disk in his handler’s hands. His rippling muscles trembled under a short hair coat streaked with every shade of brown. The brindle pattern, combined with tall ears always on the alert and a long dark muzzle, gave the dog an almost unearthly appearance—a wild creature of the night, straight out of one of those silly paranormal romances Anna had been reading too much of. Danny gave the Frisbee a quick backhanded flick, sending it sailing out across an open stretch of grass. Tyson didn’t move though, his eyes now locked on Danny’s, waiting for the cue. And then the spell was broken, and he went flying off in another sprinting burst.
“I missed it!” Anna said, her mouth gaping and eyebrows furrowed in unbelief. “What did you do?”
“Ha, we have our own little system. Gotta keep those bad guys on their toes, right?”
“Well that was pretty impressive, I have to admit.”
Not just the uncanny communication between man and dog, but also that this football-playing black guy even knew how to hold a Frisbee, let alone toss it with such finesse. She had a feeling the surprises would only keep coming.
“That’s nothing,” Danny said. “You should see him doing bite work. Might make you rethink all those little pats on the head you keep indulging him with.”
“Oh, that reminds me! I keep meaning to tell you why I was so excited to meet Tyson a few weeks ago.”
“Other than the fact that his handler seemed like a pretty nice guy, and wasn’t bad to look at either?”
“Right.” Anna tilted her head to the side and gave him her best accusatory look. “No, it’s because my brother Cole is actually a vet in the military. He convinced my parents to adopt one of the working dogs he treated over in Afghanistan a couple of years ago, and it was basically love at first sight for me and Solo.”
“That’s cool. What’d Solo get retired for?”
“Not a fun story, since his handler didn’t make it out. But Solo got hit pretty bad by some kind of explosion and lost one of his back legs and most of his tail. He gets around just fine now, though. Might even give Tyson here some decent competition in the Frisbee-catching department!”
“I highly doubt that, but maybe we’ll get ‘em together one day and see.” Danny paused for a second, eyebrows raised, like he wanted her to read every possible implication into that loaded statement. “We use the Army clinic down at Fort Belvoir for all our routine vet care, you know. Tyson’s probably given a few of your brother’s friends a good scare.”
“Meaning what?”
“He’s just not a big fan of going to the vet, that’s all. Tends to save his scariest growls for when they’re going in for the old prostate exam.”
“I don’t blame him!” She knelt down beside the handsome dog, already back and waiting for the next game. “Such indignity, huh, Tyson?”
He looked up at her, tongue hanging out one side of his mouth. Not even the slightest sign of being tired after all that running on this warm summer evening.
“He’s a Belgian Malinois, right?”
“Yes ma’am,” Danny answered. “That’s pretty good—most people have never even heard of them.”
“Oh, I only know because my brother told me that’s what you guys have. The special ops unit Cole was with switched over to the malligators too, even though the rest of the military seems to be mostly sticking with German shepherds for now.”
“Yeah, some of the older guys weren’t so sure about the breed, but now they’ll never go back. These dogs are just the perfect combination of size, speed, and drive.” The special agent gazed at Tyson with open admiration. “They’ve got a nasty bite, too.”
“Pretty cool that he gets to go home with you at night. I don’t see why the military hasn’t caught on to that concept yet, still keeping them kenneled up on base all the time.”
“Exactly,” Danny said. “You can see how happy he is to be out here right now, not cooped up in some noisy kennel. And he knows when he’s off duty, too—I can trust him completely even in a public place like this.”
Anna looked up just in time to see a smoldering orange sun dip behind the towering Washington Monument in the distance. It was a quiet evening on the Capitol grounds, with only a few tourists wandering around taking pictures. She had noticed a young couple when they first arrived, seated on a blanket and enjoying what appeared to be a blissfully romantic picnic. They were finished now, stretched out on their backs, laughing and talking easily. Maybe that would be her in a few weeks?
She realized where the daydream was going and blushed.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, silly.
Even if the internship did leave enough time for a real relationship to get started—which seemed unlikely—she had absolutely no reason to believe Danny was interested in anything more than friendship at this point.
A mechanical buzzing sound interrupted her thoughts, and Tyson cocked his head slightly, watching as one front paw lifted slowly off the ground. Then he jumped up, on the alert and staring at the small black sprinkler head that was now poking out of the grass.
“Run!”
Danny grabbed her hand and took off at a jog just as the sprinkler system turned on. Within seconds, the air was filled with a fine mist that felt incredibly refreshing as it settled on Anna’s exposed skin. Her eyes met Danny’s, and then they both burst out laughing. Unable to run and laugh at the same time, she pulled him to a stop and then let go of his hand, waving both her arms high in the air. Tyson was bounding across the grass from one sprinkler to the next, pouncing at each one and sticking his face right in the center of the spray before looking back to his handler and moving on to the next spot. The mist coated Danny’s face and arms, leaving a glistening sheen of tiny droplets that only served to make him even more attractive in the glowing evening light.
“I guess we can blame the federal government, then, for all this humidity?” Anna said. “And here I thought it was a natural phenomenon all along!”
Danny still hadn’t stopped laughing. It was a full, natural laugh, the kind that made you want to join in just for the fun of it. He finally paused and raised a hand to motion around them.