Chapter Two
Creed
Rougarou was a ragdoll of a dog. Floppy and gangly at eighteen months, she was about as tall as she was going to get; she simply hadn’t caught up yet with muscles and coordination.
Petite for a lab, Creed took her size as a bonus, because Rou had passed the assessment for urban search and rescue with flying colors, the type of rescue needed in disaster situations where buildings collapsed, potentially with people inside.
For this, being small and limber was a bonus.
It was a fact that the biggest thing about Rou was her heart.
At Cerberus, Rou had a doggy mentor, Truffles, who was part of Team Bravo.
A butterscotch-colored lab, Truffles, wasn’t comfortable in wide open spaces.
She got anxious in the woods and fields.
Truffles was a burrowing dog who liked tight, dark puzzles; the more complex the maze, the more eager she was to solve them.
Showing no fear in collapsed buildings and natural disaster piles, Truffles climbed and wriggled her way through her job of finding people trapped in the crush.
Truffles became nationally famous when a U.S. senator, a member of her security team, and Remi Taleb, Auralia’s mentor, had found themselves trapped in a Lebanese blast.
In that rescue, on the other side of the world, Creed had one degree of separation with almost every single American player: Auralia had just taken up a new place in his heart, he knew Cerberus Bravo and their K9s from a cookout he’d attended with Gator and fellow Marine Raider Deep Del Toro, and Creed had been on assignment the month before with Delta Force Echo, the same team that had been safeguarding the senator during that disaster.
Those kinds of connections made Creed sit up and pay attention.
Folks say it’s a small world, but the truth of it? The world, in every measurable way, was expansive. What was small was the magnetic energy source that pulled certain folks together into the same sphere.
Creed remembered reading the news article, seeing the players involved, and leaning down to lift the skirt on his sofa to look under where Rou liked to hide.
“Rourou, I bet you’d be a good fit for a job like the one Truffles does.
What do you think? Should we talk to Gator and see if there’s a place for us over on Cerberus? ”
Rou responded by wagging her tail so hard her whole body jiggled.
Of course, Rou had just been weaned from her mom, so Creed took her puppy enthusiasm with a grain of salt. Not every K9 had the right constitution to be a working dog.
It took Creed a while to assess Rou and decide she’d be happiest with a job to perform, rather than simply being a beloved family member who goofed off in the backyard and went on hiking adventures.
Sweet little princess that she was, her soft, concerned eyes stared at a person with compassion—was that the right word?
Yeah, there was a nurturing quality about Rou.
Like when Auralia had her monthly cramps, Rou would always jump onto the bed or couch and, landing lightly, she’d use soft paws as she moved up to curl up against Auralia’s stomach.
Warm and kind, lying there very still, Auralia could nap comfortably.
Rou had the same presence that Creed felt around his mémère, his mother’s mother.
Mémère had a deep caring for her loved ones, but made no attempt to fix a mood—witness a mood, hold space for a mood, sure.
But it was a rare man or beast who had the fortitude to sit with someone’s discomfort as a buttress instead of a remedy.
When Creed had his days made dark with remembrances, he liked Rou’s quiet company.
Yes, Rou had a sixth sense, going where needed and doing what was required.
And while she was a softy, she was as brave as the tactical Malinois and German shepherds on the team, training alongside them.
Her K9 teammates - massive war dogs - treated her as one of them.
But at eighteen months, the Cerberus K9s clearly saw Rou as the puppy she was, and they took on an important role in guiding and training her.
Of course, Rou’s task list didn’t include tactical takedowns; she was purely a sniffer dog—explosives, human live find, and human remains.
Like the German shepherd and Malinois, did Rou train to jump out of helicopters and dangle from a harness on Creed’s backpack?
Absolutely. Team Charlie’s job was to go into areas devastated by natural disasters and man-made events like the explosion in Lebanon that trapped Remi.
Under those circumstances, with blocked roads and hazardous terrain, often the only way in was by air.
Did Rou love parachuting?
She put up with it.
What she didn’t like was the sound of helicopters.
So Cerberus fitted her with doggy noise-canceling headphones. Problem solved.
Rou loved to wear her badass tactical gear. When she was dressed out, Rou would swagger about, even if it was just a working dog vest like the one Creed was pulling from his day pack.
Creed crouched beside Rou as he snapped her vest into place, adjusting it so that the Iniquus patch and “Working K9 Do Not Touch or Distract” patch were properly in place. This tactical vest would protect against most stab strikes, but would do nothing about gunshots.
Of course, there was no reason to expect that today, other than a delivery of bullet-resistant vests to Auralia at the bed and breakfast last night.
Though Creed still wanted to check in with Gator about the why of that gift, it made some sense that it was a joke referencing the brouhaha that happened in this very dell after Auralia opened the Price-Morrison can of worms. Once the Marines had escorted Auralia and Doli to safety, there were a few skirmishes in the dell that had landed folks in the hospital.
This property was part of a retreat owned by a corporation that rented the outdoor amphitheater space for local events. Concerned that Morrison was expected on the stage today, the corporation that owned the property reached out to Iniquus.
That corporation had an ongoing Iniquus security contract. However, since no part of that contract included crowd control, Iniquus was asked to be a presence that day but was instructed to remain hands-off with the people.
The Strike Force team was basically at the event to convey a sense of decorum.
They were window dressing.
Easy day.
Responsibility for the attendees, along with newly elected Representative Braxton and the long-standing Mayor Early, both of whom were slated to speak, landed squarely on the shoulders of the sheriff’s department.
It didn’t look like the sheriff felt there was a significant threat, because she only sent two deputies to an event that was anticipated to have a three-hundred-headcount.
Creed observed that both attending deputies seemed to have reached the point in their careers where they didn’t really give a crap—not about their own bodies and health, and not about their public duties.
Right now, they could be found lounging against the oak tree, gabbing it up.
But what did Creed know? Maybe they’d been here for hours, readying the site and making their plans, and this was their coffee break before the flocks landed.
Or maybe they’d decided they could lean on both the tree and on the team from Iniquus.
Rou was here to practice working in a crowd and building her attention span as she sniffed the eventgoers as they passed by the sheriff’s deputies checking bags.
There was a big sign out front that told folks to leave their weapons locked in their cars; this was a weapons-free site.
Rou stuck out her pink tongue as she watched Auralia walking toward them. The closer she got, the more Rou wriggled and squirmed.
Creed reached out and rubbed Rou’s ear between his thumb and fingers the way she liked.
She was velvety soft on her ears, and the action slowed Creed’s breathing and quieted the blood thrumming through his veins.
Today was the day Auralia had decided to tell Gator about them.
He couldn’t imagine this going wrong. “What do you think, Rou?” Creed asked as he sent Auralia an “are we doing this now?” lift of the brow and tilt of the head.
She sent him back a grimace, clenching her fists and drawing them to her chest as if she were terrified.
Auralia was afraid of nada.
The only reason she’d made the decision was that their families were going to be over the moon, and Auralia never wanted to cause pain to her loved ones.
She was right, sometimes chemistry came and went, but shoot, Auralia knew him like the back of her own hand. If there were any red flags, any reason to self-preserve and run for the hills, she already knew.
Did their families need to be managed with kid gloves?
Nope.
Both came from a bloodline of strength and resilience.
But expectations from their loved ones might influence their way of growing their relationship, so they kept it preciously, selfishly to themselves. And as of today, that would no longer be the case.
From the magnetic comms Creed had dropped into his ear canal at the beginning of the day, he heard. “Striker for Creed.”
Creed depressed the mic taped to his sternum. “Go for Creed.”
“We have a situation. A mother was playing with her toddler on their picnic blanket while her seven-year-old ran in the field. She saw him disappearing into the woods. We need Rou on it. Over.”
“Copy.” Creed held up a hand to stop Auralia’s progress in his direction.
“Operations has programmed your shirt to meet the mother at her spot. She has a scent source and a PLS. Over.” Striker used the acronym 'PLS' to indicate the point at which the child was last seen.
“Creed, moving. Out.”
Sitting at Creed’s feet, Rou wriggled with anticipation. They say a handler can send a thought down the leash to his dog. That was why it was so important for the handler to stay calm and in control when they had a K9 on lead.
Though she wouldn’t have been able to hear Striker’s command from his magnetic comms—they’d been designed so that even with a parabolic listening device and computer amplification, those communications were private—Rou knew she had been called up for a job.
“That’s right, Rou. We just need to follow my shirt and find the mom.”
Today, as required on missions where there was a crowd, and team members would be separated without a clear line of sight, they wore upgraded tactical compression shirts.
Because of Iniquus’s close relationship with DARPA, the R&D branch of the US military's preparedness, they got to try out a lot of cool new toys in the field. They then conferred with the scientists who had imagined them, so that adjustments could be made.
And these tactical shirts were the bomb.
From Iniquus Headquarters, Logistics could program coordinates into the shirt.
The shirt would determine the best route to direct the wearer.
So, for example, as he jogged forward, if he saw something that needed a brother on the spot immediately, Creed could simply tell Logistics, “Send Striker here stat.” Logistics would plug the information into its computer, and Striker would simply follow the shirt's directions.
Veer right, the right sleeve would inflate a bit.
Turn left, and the left sleeve would inflate with more air.
It took a bit of practice. The brain had to release some of its visual control.
Creed had to build in some trust. He had been in the woods under a cloud-covered, dark moon sky with nearly zero ambient light.
And though he’d been slow as Christmas molasses at the beginning, working hard to follow the instructions sent to his sleeves to follow a trail.
In his youth, Creed, along with his brothers and sisters, helped put food on the table.
Since his mamma wouldn’t let him have so much as a BB gun, he’d learned to stalk small game with his slingshot, so he could bring home a rabbit for a stew.
Creed had let his muscle memory from his youth resurface as he focused on his sleeves.
Step by step, he learned to trust the system.
Soon he sped up to a normal walking pace, and then a soft jog.
The exercise helped him to trust the technology and the idea that Iniquus had his back. The shirt could either work him out of his labyrinth or help his team find him.
Not to say there weren’t drawbacks.
The system worked by connecting GPS satellites. Tree canopies, foul weather, and cell-tower-free spots meant that the shirt often couldn’t optimally work in environments where Iniquus took assignments. Sometimes the system stuttered when intermittent information got through.
So in locations like this one, with its sketchy cell reception, Creed wouldn’t lean too heavily into shirt directions.
As he jogged past Auralia, he said, “Missing kid.”
And as he would expect, she said, “Yup. Go! Go now. Bring that baby back to their mama.”
Auralia pivoted to go back to her videographer, Doli, probably to report this as a possible story.
But there was a noticeable air of relief that changed her posture.
Maybe she wasn’t ready for this revelation to Gator. And despite what they’d shared on the canopy bed that morning, maybe she wasn’t fully convinced about them.