Chapter Fifteen
Creed
It was bad. Really bad.
And the worst of it was that the cars on this four-lane highway kept coming.
Looking back over his shoulder, Creed could see massive Jack, nearly seven feet tall, standing at the top of the hill in the middle of the damned street with his high-vis neon limon—the eye-catching color that looked like a lemon and lime had a baby—rain gear pulled over his Iniquus uniform with flares in his hands, waving them as a signal, wasn’t having much success.
Physics says a body in motion tends to stay in motion, and Creed would be damned if he hadn’t seen it time and again. Someone comes upon something that doesn’t make sense to them; perhaps their inner child got scared by what might seem like a giant asking them to slow down for no apparent reason.
Then, over the hill, they’d go, and all bets were off.
They’d see the pile up; they’d stomp their brakes.
Some were able to bring themselves to a stop. Some were even able to start a three-point turn just to get T-boned while trying to head back in a safe direction. BAM! They got bowled into the crisis by the next guy, who wasn’t going to be dissuaded from their route by some guy in a neon jumpsuit.
Creed held his phone off to the side for Logistics to view and record the situation in real time.
When Creed was going through his orientation, the tour of Iniquus Logistics reminded him of something out of a sci-fi movie.
The people sitting at their computers with large boards that could bring up real-time maps that locked in the movements of personnel—both human and K9—as well as vehicles, the satellite feeds that would make the intelligence communities salivate at the clarity of detail both day and night, and the systems managers that protected the operators' cover stories.
“Movies and fiction novels,” he repeated to himself as they showed how a call would come in to a dedicated line.
The people who sat in front of those lines were not only trained as improv actors but also by the intelligence community to extract information while revealing little.
They could be anyone that the operator had set up in advance to protect their cover story.
One of the stories they told was about Honey Honig, an operator in Panther Force (the first field operations team that Creed trained with after signing with Cerberus).
Honey had the cover of being a high-dollar executive.
When Honey was captured by terrorists, he had the kidnappers call the line to prove he was worth a great deal of money.
Whatever the actor said was believable enough that the threatened decapitation was postponed.
Iniquus knew this cover was for extreme circumstances, and they were able to pinpoint his location halfway around the world.
Strike Force was in the air, and Honey came out the other end whole and healthy.
“Stuff of thrillers and novels.”
Iniquus Security ran on a golden reputation. Men and women were held to the highest of personal ethos and moral code.
All of it was damned impressive.
Creed was a lucky man. He had a dream job, his dream pup, and, most cherished, his dream woman in Auralia.
Could there be anything deeper and more satisfying than loving someone all your life as smart and kind, rock-solid, and fearless, and then discovering there was magic laced beneath the surface that wove them together, like ribbons of gold and sweet like honey?
Those thoughts were the opposite of what he ran past.
This looked like the streets of Afghanistan after a bomb went off. The lifelessness in the eyes that turned toward him told him that the injuries were severe, and the passengers focused all of their energy on surviving the pain.
He wanted to pull open the doors and render aid to each one.
But orders were in place for a reason.
One thing Creed hadn’t been prepared to include in his survey was, “They’re going to need the jaws of life.” And a step farther down. “This one’s standing on end. They’re going to need some kind of crane to get it off the one in front. I can’t see how many were in that car.”
Sometimes the computer couldn’t differentiate Creed’s voice from the wailing and the calls for help. He’d have to step back and repeat the information slowly and clearly so that it could be hand-entered into the system.
Looking over his shoulder, Creed focused on Gator coming up behind him with a much more challenging job. He had to look at each person and make the call. He might well be writing their death sentence and all from a glance in the window.
The men were used to this kind of life-or-death situation. But used to it didn’t mean anesthetized. It was something that they’d need to process after the fact.
Creed could hear the snap crinkle as Deep busted a window. “Tourniquet,” he’d yell toward his phone dangling in its waterproof pouch from a lanyard around his neck. His Logistics professional would put a pin in that exact spot.
Creed took another step. “Single male, sixties.” Two more steps, he swiped his hand over the window to see past the raindrops. “Two middle-aged males.”
With a squeal and crash, another car hit the pileup, jostling and repositioning the mound.
Creed remembered having a collection of cars as a child and how he liked to roll them into each other, making crashing, exploding sounds that mimicked what went on in his imagination.
He liked to sling them along so they would flip and roll.
It had been his goal to see if he couldn’t get them to pile high like crawdaddy chimneys in the mud.
Creed moved further, pushed himself to go faster while getting the data right.
At least the storm seemed to have eased a bit. The sun wasn’t out, but the rain that had come down in fat droplets at stinging velocity turned to a vision-obscuring mist.
His phone buzzed.
Doli was on his line. It was against protocol, but he had to break communication with Logistics to find out about Auralia. “Logistics, stand by. I have an incoming urgent communication.”
“Standing by.”
He tapped the line open. “Creed here.”
“Doli.”
“You two down the road?” he asked hopefully. “There’s a pile-up north of the dell.”
“Yeah, it started on the bridge. A semi-truck plowed into the mayor’s SUV. We were two cars back. I couldn’t see in his tinted windows to assess. There are laws against that for a reason.”
“But you’re okay? Why isn’t Auralia calling?
” His heart stopped mid-beat, his breath clawed its way back into his lungs, unwilling to release.
Gripped and suspended, Creed couldn’t feel his body.
He was momentarily unable to process the other side of the question, if it meant anything other than Auralia was alive and unharmed.
“Okay,” she started, “you can’t freak out on me.”
Creed’s soul left his body. He felt it fling itself free and then a moment later popped itself back like a rubber band, like his boyhood slingshot. And there he stood, as he morphed into a beast that wanted to race forward, ripping and tearing away anything that would keep him from Auralia’s side.
“She’s unhurt,” Doli pronounced clearly.
The words sifted into his brain.
He repeated the word through a dry mouth, “Unhurt. You should lead with that one next time.”
“Here’s the situation, though,” Doli said. “I’m going to put you on video so you can sort of see what I’m saying to you. The rain, though …”
His phone buzzed, asking for permission to take the encrypted video call, and he punched the button.
“Behind Mayor Early and Representative Braxton was Mrs. Morrison driving the family SUV. Her daughter was sitting beside her, and Shithead Morrison was crouching in the back so no one would see him leaving. I guess he thought that speaker bullet was aimed at him.”
“I’m not getting much but geometric shapes and rain.” Doli was talking to him and didn’t lead with ‘get here now,’ so he planted his feet firmly on the belief that if Auralia was ever in need of him, he’d know it in his gut, and he’d race to her side.
He sent a feeler out in her direction, and he got “nervous” and he got “busy,” but he didn’t pick up on any pain with what his battle buddies called his “mother’s intuition.”
That intuition had saved many of their hides on more than one occasion, so he didn’t give a rat’s ass what they called it.
“I thought that might be the case,” Doli said.
“There’s not really a good way to show this to you right now.
Just listen. When Mrs. Morrison plowed into the mayor’s SUV, Auralia was swerving to avoid hitting them – it doesn’t matter.
It was more complicated than that. It was a mess.
The point is Auralia’s car hit Mrs. Morrison’s SUV, and it went through the rails into the river. ”
“Okay, three people are in the water. Let me get that information to Logistics so they can send a fast water rescue team out here. The river’s bound to be roiling from all that rain in the mountains.”
“Yes. Creed, listen. Auralia’s car went through the bridge rail.
Listen. Before you panic, just listen. It rocked, then it stabilized.
She told me to get out through the back window and start filming.
I crawled out first. She’s going to crawl out, too.
I stopped to help some folks before I called you.
Because … well, there are a lot of people doing really badly.
Auralia, though, is unhurt. She’s taking it slow and careful, and she asked me to let you know where we are and what’s going on. ”
“List her injuries.” Creed could sprint to the bridge and get to her in a matter of minutes. Were “minutes” good enough?
“Listen again. No injuries. Well, yeah, Auralia’s face was abraded when the airbags went off. But no cuts, no complaints.”
“She’s okay.” He pressed the words through a dam of agitation.