CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“That’s unacceptable, staff sergeant.”
“Can you find out when he’ll be at work?” Colonel Randall Chastain, the commanding officer of the Brigade, asked in a peevish voice.
Unfortunately, all had not gone well, which was why Chastain was so upset with Miranda. Not that there was a damned thing she could have done about it.
“I asked,” Miranda explained patiently. “They said they didn’t know. He called in feeling under the weather. That could mean he has the sniffles and he’ll be back tomorrow, or he has COVID and he’ll be out for two weeks pending a clean swab.”
“We don’t have two weeks to wait, staff sergeant.”
Miranda rolled her eyes again. Chastain waffled unpredictably between brilliance and idiocy and just as unpredictably between calm and petulance.
Maybe it was the curse of genius that caused him to be so mercurial.
Maybe it was just the fact that he was an officer and officers never learned how to handle disappointment like adults.
Then again, Chastain wasn’t really a Marine.
He joined the Brigade through the CIA, not the Corps, and his rank was only a procedural necessity to ensure he had access to certain resources at Marine Corps Base Quantico.
Maybe his petulance was because he’d earned his eagle in a lab and not a battlefield.
Either way, she’d have to manage him the way she managed every officer with more brains than sense. “Sir, our options are to wait for Dr. Friedman to return to work or to attack him at his home. I suggest that we attack him at his home because—”
“No. We’ve been through this. Policy is concerned about the visibility of an attack on his home.”
“Does Policy think we’ll be invisible somehow if we kill him at the FBI Academy?”
“Policy thinks, as do I, that his death at the hands of a patient is an uncommon but explainable tragedy. Thirteen veterinarians have died from animal maulings in the past twenty years. Rare, but again, not unheard of. On the other hand, if we break into his home and sic Asset Sierra-9 on him, then that looks an awful lot like homicide, and guess who will be investigating that homicide?”
“Which is exactly why I think we need to kill Faith Bold too, sir.”
“And who investigates her death? I’ll give you a hint. It’s a three-letter word for the most powerful law enforcement agency in the country.”
Actually, FBI was an acronym, not a word, but that was just Miranda being petulant now. “Yes, sir.”
Chastain sighed. “He’s running. The bastard’s running.”
Miranda frowned. “No, sir. I don’t think so.”
Chastain was quiet for a long moment. “You think he’s working.”
“Yes.”
Another pause. Then, “I see. I’ll reach out to Policy. In the meantime, keep looking for him. If he shows up at the office, do what you need to do.”
“Of course.”
He hung up, and Miranda sighed and shook her head. “I work with fucking idiots.”
She got to her feet and sent a mental command to Asset Sierra-9 to follow.
The dog did, falling into step behind Miranda.
So far, the Brigade had succeeded at training four dogs to receive and follow basic commands like come, follow, sit, and stay.
They hadn’t succeeded at more nuanced commands, and they’d achieved success with the attack command only in training.
If they were to carry this project to its conclusion and move on to the human phase, they needed to work through that obstacle.
But they would succeed. Miranda wasn’t a scientist, but she knew dogs.
Sierra-9 had refused to kill that homeless person because she had refused to, not because she’d misunderstood.
She knew better than to do that again. Miranda had painted some very clear mental pictures of what would happen to her if she refused such a command again.
She would do her duty. They both would.