Chapter Twenty-Five
Dakota
Tuesday
“He’s there,” Kumar’s voice boomed triumphantly over the phone.
“What do you mean he’s here?” Dakota said from the top of a rubble heap.
“McLeod’s got a newsletter on his website.
One just pinged in my in-box. He was in Israel taking photographs, and Israel was sending a response team on a boat.
Somehow, he wiggled himself on. He didn’t say where the Israeli’s went to help, but McLeod said he was heading to the Turkish-Syrian border south of Kilis. Sound familiar?”
“Is there a date? I mean, I’ve been here. He hasn’t stopped by to say hi.”
“You said there are still standing buildings?”
“Standing and habitable shouldn’t take up the same space in your mind. Though no one was able to convince the folks to stay out. Until the tents get here, it’s shelter.”
“When is that, do you think?” Kumar asked.
“This afternoon. I had planned to go help Team Mike, but now I think I have to stick around and try to find McLeod.”
“Are the teams finding people alive?” Kumar asked.
“It’s a mess. The students that Iniquus went after are all alive.
They’ve worked about a dozen out from the tangle of building material.
The ones that are out are all living on the plane.
Bravo has food, water, and air supplies going to the others.
They’re good at what they do. Patient. Doing it right. ”
The ground rumbled beneath him. It was a very strange sensation.
Every time the Earth shifted, so did the walls and rubble in the village.
Dakota moved away from the debris pile onto the roadway.
The Earth reverberated again.
This time, it was aggressive enough and long enough that he crouched to the ground and put out a hand for stability.
Screams erupted from the village, and Dakota couldn’t tell if it was fear or pain. Both. It had to be both.
“Got to go,” he called into his phone, then hung up.
He dialed Rylee. She was in the supply tent, and this morning she was having trouble walking. She thought that she probably fried her circuitry over the last week. But this just wasn’t the environment to be immobile.
“I’m fine,” she said. “A couple of boxes shifted.”
“Okay, I’m going to help in the village. Call me if you need anything. Help getting to the restroom or whatever.”
“I’ll pee in a bag. I’m not taking someone off rescue for something that stupid. But thank you. Go. Goodbye.”
A damned amazing woman. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was in love.
Did he know better?
Could this be love?
Whatever the label, it was cellular and intense.
Dakota had never felt this way about anyone ever, nothing even close.
“What do you think, Tank? Too soon to name it?”
“Hey, Dakota,” George called over to him. “Can you take this down to AJ?”
Dakota grabbed the webbing, checked the direction George was pointing, and took off at a steady jog.
He was in a new part of the village. This had all been standing this morning. That last tremor must have been the shake that collapsed this street.
Dakota hated that Kumar had called him. Hated that he knew McLeod might be around. That meant Dakota needed to focus on his mission, finding McLeod and trying to find the counterfeit money on him to tie him into the distribution. He’d prefer helping with he rescue.
Dakota’s phone rang, Rylee. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said.
“Quicksand?” He shot for levity since he’d learned that was her and Neesa’s coping mechanism.
“Close. Hailey called me. Guess what she discovered.”
“McLeod is here.”
“You knew?” Rylee sounded disappointed.
“Kumar just got McLeod’s newsletter. Did you see him, Rylee? Is he at the camp? You said Hailey.” Dakota jogged past people standing in the bare patches, their hands on their heads, shocked by the new circumstances.
“Iniquus has contracts with most of the major universities. So on the off chance he was on their roster, she checked to see if McLeod’s school had an Iniquus contract.”
“Does it?”
“Yes. So when students or faculty travel, by contract, they’re covered for extractions. His college doesn’t cover him for kidnap insurance, just extractions from dangerous situations or medical emergencies.”
“So how did Hailey know that he’s here?”
“When they travel, the participants have to sign in to their app and let Iniquus know when they’ll be out of the country.
The app sends updates and advisories. She checked to see if he was still in Israel, and McLeod updated last night that he was in Turkey, specifically our little village.
She’s very excited. His place didn’t have an address.
But the app did register a coordinate when he was updating his status. I’m texting that to you.”
“But you haven’t seen him.”
“No.”
“Keep the money with you,” Dakota said, “like on your back. Listen, more people will be heading your way. The village took a big hit with that last tremor. Things are a lot worse than they were.”
Dakota stretched out his hand to give the webbing to AJ, who snatched it and ran toward a backyard.
“I wonder if it affected Team Mike and the train rails. They should be getting into the station soon. The airport staff are rallying vehicles and people to help transport the supplies back to our camp. If anyone asks, our tents are all fully occupied now, and people are wandering over with rugs and blankets, making do. Sanitation is a situation. And the first aid station in the hangar is also full. Egypt can’t get here fast enough.
Mandy didn’t tell me how they’re getting here.
I’m assuming a container ship. That takes about twenty-four hours. ”
Dakota looked at the string of GPS numbers that pinged in his messages. “Thanks for the update. Hey, Rylee, Bravo has McLeod’s coordinates, right?”
“Yes. Hailey put McLeod on their roster. They have twenty-two to evacuate. They’ve pulled out fourteen.”
“Okay, I’m going to go see if I can’t take one off Bravo’s list for them. I’ll check in later.”
It wasn’t an easy path to get to the red pin on his map.
When he got there, he found a family huddling together in the backyard, in shock.
Pulling his pack from his shoulders, Dakota dragged out his bottle of water. One by one, he helped them tip their heads back and rinse their eyes, hoping to protect them from corneal scratches, starting with the baby cradled in his mother’s arms.
Then he encouraged them to drink and clear their throats.
One by one, he checked them over for breaks or bleeds and concluded that they hadn’t been hurt, though their hair and skin were caked in dust and they were obviously in shock.
At this point, there was little he could do to stabilize the family other than point them toward the airport, where there might be enough water for them to wash.
Tank had lain out of the way like a good boy, but his tongue was out, and he was stress panting.
As soon as the family left, Dakota moved over to crouch by Tank, checked Tank’s video camera, and then checked his own. If this was where McLeod was supposed to be, everything they found might be evidence in a court trial.
“Do you want to show me what’s wrong? Tank, show me.”
Tank stood, shook, and trotted over to what had once been a one-story building. The walls in this back corner had been painted bright Kelly green. The bedcover was purple with silver threads. There was an overturned chair and broken glass visible.
Dakota looked to make sure Tank hadn’t pulled off one of his booties.
Tank’s snoot was working hard as he chuffed the debris. This was the part of their work that concerned Dakota: all the things Tank would pull into his system, all the ways it could harm him.
Coming back to the same spot for a third time, Tank sat and looked at Dakota. He alerted that a scent was detected.
Dakota lifted the slab of wallboard and set it aside. There he found a backpack.
Aiming his camera to capture his search, Dakota unzipped the top and pulled it wide. There he found McLeod’s passport and cell phone. There were snacks and half a bottle of orange soda. Some cords. Earphones. A leather-bound journal held shut with a loop closure.
“McLeod!” Dakota called. “McLeod, rescue. Can you hear me? Call out or bang something with a rock.”
Dakota stilled. He didn’t trust his ears, damaged through the years by explosives, but he could trust Tank. So he watched to see if Tank swiveled his ears toward a sound.
Nothing.
“McLeod! Rescue! Call out!” he stilled again.
Again, nothing.
But Tank’s nose stretched out toward the journal. His nose chuffed the air. Responding to Tank’s whine and a stomp of his foot, Dakota opened it.
There, he found that the pages had been glued together, and a hole had been neatly cut out of the middle. In the cavity was a banded stack of what appeared to be hundred-dollar bills.
Hundred-dolla’ bills, ya’ll.
Dakota walked out of the space onto clearer ground, where he pulled Tank’s reward towel from his backpack, though it felt absurd to be high-pitched celebrating amongst the destruction.
To Tank, the search for chemicals was a game. It had to be fun and happy to keep Tank excited to go to work.
With McLeod’s pack dangling from his shoulder, Dakota made one last call. If McLeod was in the house, it would take Bravo’s expertise to successfully extract him.
Hopefully, the guy was safely walking through the village, focusing his camera lens on the brutality that Mother Nature could inflict.
The phone made Dakota question that possibility.
Dakota joined Bravo to let them know what he’d discovered about McLeod. He stuck around to replace Mace on the hotel rescue, as Mace and Diesel jogged up the street to sniff-search the rubble at McLeod’s rooming house.
To his elation, Dakota was there to help widen a hole and drag five desperate students out to the fresh air.
It must have been hell to be trapped for days that way.
Now that Dakota had his evidence, he could set his mission aside and put 100% of his efforts into helping the teams pull people into the light.