CHAPTER TWO
David lowered the phone and wiped a tear from his eye before he put it back in his pocket.
Next to him, a bag of potato chips crackled as his captor and companion, Lieutenant Jayce Broward reached in for a pinch of the fried snacks.
David frowned at him, and he smiled sheepishly. “I eat when I’m nervous.”
The sheepish smile and the compulsive consumption of snacks did little to encourage David, but this man had kidnapped him from the FBI Academy’s parking lot after easily disabling two far larger and more intimidating men, so he could clearly handle himself in a fight, healthy eating and timid personality notwithstanding. “Okay, so what now?”
His voice trailed off when he saw David’s face.
He cleared his throat and said, “Point is, we need to get into that facility, get the information, and get out. It is absolutely critical that we only get information. No trying to be heroes. Honestly, I wouldn’t even be doing this if my security clearance allowed me access to the proof I needed to bring everything down.
I wouldn’t be bringing you except I need someone to watch my back, and…
well, I trust that you’ll see this through. ”
David thought of Faith, and a pang ran through him. He would see this through, but he wouldn’t take unnecessary risks. “Why would we try to be heroes?”
“They might have the dogs there.”
David’s frown deepened. “More dogs?”
“Maybe, but also the ones from Quantico. They know that they’re not the ones who kidnapped you, so they’ll at least suspect that you ran and are trying to do something stupid.
It’s actually a good thing that the FBI freaked out and came after you.
They’re going to retreat deep into their shell.
If the dogs aren’t moved here, then they’ll be moved somewhere, but they’re going to end up here eventually. ”
David thought of Sierra, the German Shepherd who visited his office and gave off signs of trauma and depression that first clued him into the fact that something was going on at the base. If he saw her suffering, could he really just walk away?
“You have to,” Jayce said, almost as though he could read David’s mind.
Which, considering what the 93rd was trying to do with dogs, wasn’t out of the question.
“You try to rescue the dogs, you’ll just get us both killed.
And they’ll probably kill the dogs too if they can’t just take them back.
Please keep in mind that you’re a veterinary doctor, and this is a CIA facility. ”
“Right. Get in, get info, get it to the authorities, make a lot of noise, convince the CIA it’s not worth the headache. Then how do we make sure the dogs don’t get euthanized?”
“Part of the information we’ll be looking for is footage of the dogs.
The world will see them being abused. They’ll see the locations where testing took place.
There will be mobs of people here livestreaming their protests.
The CIA isn’t a group of vicious murderers.
Like I told your wife, they’re not vindictive.
This is just business. They knew going into this that it was a risk.
Now the risk is going to be too much for the reward, which, let’s be frank, isn’t very great.
In the modern world, it’s all about drones.
Telepathic bonds between agent and dog are cool, but it’s a relic of the past that Chastain’s trying to hold onto because he has delusions of grandeur that he can translate that to telepathic bonds between handler and agent. ”
“What?”
“Yeah, guy’s nuts. All PsyOps guys are.”
Jayce turned the laptop so David could see an image of the facility.
Sure enough, it looked like an abandoned oil field.
There were fifteen derricks scattered across about thirty acres of flat dirt, sparsely inhabited by tufts of grass and low shrubs.
A long, low-ceilinged building had probably once served as a bunkhouse and now, presumably, contained records on the 93rd Testing Brigade’s activities along with the dogs being used to conduct those experiments.
Other than a chainlink fence topped with razor wire, there was no visible security.
“Getting through the fence is going to be challenging,” Jayce said. “Getting back over it is going to be more challenging.”
“We could wear motorcycle gear,” David suggested. “The thick cloth and leather should handle the razor wire if we’re not too clumsy.”
“That would be an excellent idea if there weren’t eight hundred amps of electricity being pumped through that entire fence.”
David blinked, trying not to imagine what eight hundred amps of electricity would do to his body. “Ah.”
“Once we figure that out, the rest actually won’t be too hard.
I can fool the infrared sensors and security cameras long enough for us to get inside and get out.
I’ll only need five or ten minutes at any computer terminal to crack in and download all of the information we need.
Figure twenty minutes, thirty tops, from enter to exit.
You’ll watch my six and tell me if the guards notice us while I focus on getting the information. ”
“Infrared sensors,” David breathed, slumping back in his chair.
It hit him, not for the first time, but for the hardest time, that this was going to be very difficult. What Jayce was describing sounded like the plot of an action movie. It made what Faith did look like parking cars at a shopping mall valet lot. He was orders of magnitude underqualified for this.
Jayce glanced at him. He smiled sympathetically and held the chip bag out. “Take a couple. It’ll make you feel better. Seriously. Junk food’s designed to overstimulate dopamine receptors. It’s literally medically addictive.”
David didn’t think the potato chips would help, but he ate a couple anyway. He was right. It didn’t help.
“We’ve got this,” Jayce said. “Trust me, dude. Bravery is by far not my strong suit, but I’m doing this anyway.”
David managed a smile, but he was keenly aware of just how far Faith was from him and just how likely it was that the conversation they’d just had was the last one they would ever had.
What if it was Turk?
His jaw firmed. That question had sustained him through several periods of uncertainty since he started this investigation, and it sustained him now.
If Turk was in this position, then he would want someone to help him.
So would Faith. That was why, even though she was worried about him, she was agreeing to let him finish this.
He ate a few more chips. It still didn’t help but knowing that he wasn’t going to lose his courage did. Whatever awaited him on the other side of that electrified fence, he would face it with his shoulders square and his head held high.
And if he died in the attempt, then he would die knowing that when it really counted, he didn’t lose his courage.