Blood Lines (62 page)

Thunder rumbled across the sky.

“We may get an early start,” Victor said, “if this storm rolls in within the next hour.”

>> 1823 Hours (Local Time Zone)

Rain spattered against the broad leaves of the trees. Will thought it sounded like he was surrounded by footsteps. His nerves jangled because he wasn't used to being in enclosed places like the jungle. The only enclosed environment he'd dealt with had been aboard ship. But there he could always go up on deck and feel the world open up around him.

Rainwater collected on the ground. It was the rainy season, and the earth was already saturated. Pools formed first; then they began tiny rivulets that gathered more volume and became miniature streams.

The historical remains dog ahead of them suddenly took on renewed energy. The animal hardly ever lifted its head from the ground as it became a flesh-and-blood vacuum cleaner for scents.

Rain wouldn't hamper the dog. The water actually reactivated the smells trapped within the earth, making them sharper and stronger and more easily detected.

Mud clumped to Will's boots and made his feet feel like they weighed a hundred pounds apiece. Walking became a physical toll, and that was without the constant threat of slipping.

“Sir,” the handler called.

Will tore his gaze away from searching the trees to keep watch and glanced at the young man working the dog.

The dog had stopped moving forward and was zigzagging through the trees. The sensitive nose never lifted from the ground.

“I think Rusty's found something, sir.” The handler was a young man with a forthright manner and a shy smile. His name was Neal and he'd been working with the historical remains dog program for eight years. He wasn't chatty, preferring to get his job done, but he seemed to express himself enough for people to get to know and trust him.

Will stood in the rain. Although his rain poncho had a hood, he didn't pull it up because it would have restricted his hearing and his vision.

“I'd like to give him some time,” Neal said. “Let him sort through everything. Kind of a confidence vote. He's been working hard today.”

“All right,” Will told the handler.

The dog kept wandering around through the nearby jungle, but the outside journeys grew smaller and smaller. Finally, a few minutes later, the dog chose a patch of muddy earth between two towering trees and lay down.

“He's found something,” Neal said excitedly. “That's his signal.”

Will walked forward and studied the ground. When he squatted and looked across the lay of the land, he saw where an irregular oval had filled up with water where the dog lay.

The oval was definitely man-size.

“Let's close it in,” Will said to Maggie. She stood twenty feet away. “See if we've got anything. If we don't, we make camp. We're losing the sun anyway.”

>> 1856 Hours (Local Time Zone)

Although the night hadn't yet arrived, they were working by lantern light in the thick copse of trees. Shel used one of the trenching tools they'd brought. Will used the other.

Nita stood at the prospective graveside. Although Will had wanted her to stay at the base because of her pregnancy, she hadn't agreed. She'd told him that she'd been praying about the situation and felt she needed to be on hand. Besides, as the team's medical examiner, her testimony about the recovery of the body—or bodies—was important.

Shel was glad she had stayed with the rest of the team. There was safety in numbers, and they could better protect her with them than if she was off somewhere else.

As he worked, Shel's muscles warmed. Even with the storm, the air remained muggy. When the fabric of his shirt kept slowing his efforts, he'd taken the shirt and Kevlar vest off. He'd seen Will glance at him and expected that Will might tell him to put them back on, but he didn't.

“It won't be too deep.” Neal squatted beside his dog. “Rusty got a good hit, so you can expect to find something within three or four feet at the most.”

Shel kept turning dirt that was just short of qualifying as oozing mud. Every shovelful felt heavier, but he only worked harder.

He thought of the forty years that his daddy had lived with the guilt of accidentally killing a man—a fellow soldier—and burying his body so the family wouldn't know. Of that same forty years when Tyrel McHenry had been mentally prepared to go to military prison for the rest of his life or to be executed. Of all the years that Shel had grown up not understanding why his daddy hadn't taken any real interest in him.

Pain shivered through Shel's heart. All those years of misunderstandings and arguments and hurt feelings hadn't been because of him. Or his daddy. If the situation had been reversed, if Shel had accidentally killed a fellow soldier during a firefight—and such things happened—he honestly didn't know how he would deal with it. Or if he'd be able to live with himself.

And that was now, when he had nearly twenty years of experience behind him.

How could anyone expect a fresh-faced kid away from his home country to handle something like that? More than that, Tyrel had been drunk and been led by Victor Gant. Nothing good could have come of that.

Nothing good did come of it,
Shel reminded himself.

Then his shovel pressed against something hard.

Shel got down on his knees and searched for the object with his fingers. The falling rain pooled in the bottom of the excavation. Several times before, he and Will had been forced to saw through tree roots that had grown through the area. This felt different, not as big, not as solid.

His fingers uncovered something round. Hope swelled in his heart.

“Nita,” Shel called, trying to keep his voice calm. “I need more light here.”

Nita moved immediately and brought the light to bear.

As Shel brushed away the mud and grit, the object became very clear. It was a human skull.

60

>> Eleven Klicks Outside Qui Nhon, Binh Dinh Province

>> Socialist Republic of Vietnam

>> 1903 Hours (Local Time Zone)

“Everybody out of the grave,” Nita ordered.

Shel stared at the prize he'd found. It was definitely a human skull, and there was definitely a bullet hole beneath the right eye socket.

It remained to be seen who was buried there, though. With the fleshless state the skull was in, Shel knew it had to have been in the grave for years.

Reluctantly he clambered from the three-foot grave. “Rainwater's filling it up quick,” he said.

“We can cover the grave.” Nita handed him the lantern as she crawled down into the grave with his help. “If need be, we can pump it out tomorrow to finish the reclamation.”

Out of habit, not liking standing in dangerous territory without a weapon in hand, Shel took up his M4. He canted the assault rifle against his hip and watched Nita set to work. He leaned in and adjusted the angle of the lantern.

“I need a bucket,” Nita said.

Will passed one down.

Slowly and carefully, Nita scooped handfuls of mud from around the skull and threw them into the bucket.

“Dump everything we extract from this point on into the trash bins we brought,” she directed. “We're going to have to go through all of it for evidence.”

Shel knew that all of the team was aware of that, but Nita was thorough. He waited impatiently as Nita filled the bucket a half-dozen times and Will emptied it. The rain washed the skull cleaner with each passing moment. Nita continued unearthing the body.

All the flesh was gone, carried away by nature's disposal system of beetles and other insects, as well as broken down by the chemical processes within the body.

Estrella stood nearby and ran video of the recovery. Maggie stood near her with an M4 canted on her hip. The two men Phan had sent gazed implacably into the grave. If the sight of the skeleton or the rain bothered them, it didn't show.

A moment later, Nita uncovered the stainless steel dog tags that had been on the body. She used a penflash to read them.

“PFC Dennis Hinton,” she said, looking up at Shel. “I'll have to make a comparison of the skeleton to his medical and dental records to confirm that.”

“There's no reason to believe anyone else was buried there,” Will said softly.

Relief and sadness passed through Shel at the same time. If they hadn't found the body, there was a chance the military might have dismissed charges against his daddy. But now that the body had been found—

“We've got visitors,” Remy stated quietly over the radio headsets they all wore.

The announcement jacked Shel's adrenaline. He leaned down easily and picked up the Kevlar combat vest. He shrugged into it without looking away from the grave, as if he were just putting it on.

“Skyview,” Will said calmly, “do you copy?”

“Skyview copies,” Director Larkin replied over the frequency. “Stand by for computer link.”

Before leaving the United States, Will had set up a combat-ready computer support team at the NCIS headquarters in Camp Lejeune. Linked to a geosynchronous satellite over the area, the team was able to scan down and provide information on the site. The satellite's scanners were powerful enough to pick out individual movement by heat signature.

“Standing by,” Will said. Then, raising his voice slightly, he said, “Lights out and regroup.”

As one, every member of the team switched their lanterns off and shifted.

The trap had been set. Now it was time to see who the true predators and prey were going to be.

>> 1909 Hours (Local Time Zone)

Victor Gant knew immediately that something had gone wrong when all the lights at the gravesite extinguished. Somehow, the NCIS group had become aware that they were being stalked.

Prior to the darkness settling over the scene, all the people present had been clearly defined in the bright white electric glow of the lanterns. They'd stood out against the darkness of the trees, shining in the silver rain.

Now they were gone.

Victor glanced to the side. The light had poisoned his eyesight. Black suns dawned in his gaze. His direct vision was dead in the darkness, but he still maintained some of his peripheral vision. Looking directly at something in the darkness was next to impossible anyway.