Chapter 58
“Well, that’s interesting.” Abby hung by her fingertips clamped around cold metal with her toes perched on the low rail.
She peered over the edge and looked down at what Zackie had found.
In a demolition dumpster big enough to toss a couple of jet engines, lay a man with his hands and feet bound and duct tape over his mouth.
“He’s breathing.” Derek took a step back.
Without needing to be told, Misty dropped to one knee, planting the other firmly in front of her close to the dustbin.
Derek used it as a launch point and cleared the edge like he was hurdling over a foot-tall tree stump, not the lip of a giant steel box that she had to cling onto to see inside.
Yet for all the height of his vault, he landed quietly, absorbing the shock easily.
He extended a finger to the man’s neck. “Good pulse. No signs of blood.”
At Derek’s last word, the bound man’s eyes cracked open, and he struggled to focus. His scream was sufficiently muted by the gag that all it did was rattle around the inside the dustbin. Very little of it managed to spill over the edges.
“Thoughts?” Abby didn’t have time for this.
She’d seen the unmarked helos come in for a landing down at the Base Hangar.
Not a good sign. The nearest US military force lay just fifteen kilometers away at RAF Fairford.
Being Air Force, they might know about the C-5 Galaxy transport’s arrival but not about Abby’s Army team.
Getting any useful form of support from them would probably require hours and bucking much farther up the command chain than she had time for.
Fine! The Three Colonels could delay them as long as possible to keep them from noticing what Abby was doing under their very noses. But the tide had turned and was beginning to run hard in the wrong direction.
Misty moved out of the way and Derek swung out of the dumpster as lightly as he’d swung in.
“You’ll have to teach me how to do that. Who knows when it might come in handy,” Abby told him.
“Do what?” The man didn’t have a straight face to save his life.
“Also, how you did that without stinking of garbage at the end.” She sniffed the air near his shoulder and got a snootful of a reminder of having him in her bed. “Oh, you didn’t.”
He opened his mouth to—
“What do we do about him?” She nodded toward the man grunting ineffectually against his bonds. Miss Watson had hogtied him so he couldn’t even kick the side of the bin to draw attention.
“I think we should leave him because—”
He agreed with her assessment and that’s all she needed to know. Abby twisted on her heel to face Dilya. “Keep Zackie going.”
They’d come up on the far side of the building from her team’s vehicles and she hadn’t bothered to call them in. They were afoot for now.
Dilya was watching Zackie and chewing on her lower lip. The Sheltie kept ranging back and forth around the dumpster, but the scent trail obviously ended in the middle of the pavement.
“She drove that man’s car away.” Dilya hauled herself up on tiptoes to peer down into the dustbin. “Did you have a vehicle?” Abby joined her.
He nodded, then winced. Miss Watson had probably left him with a severe headache and Derek’s intrusion hadn’t let him sleep off the worst of it.
“What was it?”
He grunted against the gag then rolled his eyes. The latter action made him wince again.
Derek was scanning the base, turning a slow circle. Misty raised her rifle and did the same thing through her scope in the opposite direction. Being Delta, they undoubtedly noticed and processed a thousand details she would miss. But Dilya had the skill.
Abby nudged Dilya, then nodded toward Derek. It only took her seconds before she too was doing the slow turn.
“If she’s watching us, she’s well hidden,” Dilya concluded.
“I don’t even know her, but trust me, she’s watching us.” Abbey knew it for a fact.
“Leaving Zackie the clue of the cookies, means she either knew or guessed that you were here.” Derek continued the thought.
“Then,” Abby nodded to herself, “she decided that warning you off wasn’t enough—which it obviously wasn’t, we’re here—and so needed to break the scent trail.”
“Which means we’ve lost her.” Dilya scooped up the dog and hugged her hard. Zackie must be used to this and snuggled her head tight against Dilya’s shoulder.
“Not…quite.” Misty spoke so rarely that it was startling every time.
Abby glanced at her to see if she’d spotted Miss Watson’s hiding place, but she was looking at the other end of the field. Abby turned and looked at the Base Hangar.
“It means,” Abby knew, “that the trouble is only just beginning.”
They’d left the DAGOR behind when they’d started following Zackie’s nose.
Abby didn’t break into a run, she broke into a sprint. Not for the DAGOR, but straight for the far end of the hangar.