War Hawk: A Tucker Wayne Novel (6 page)

Pruitt knew better than to exchange small talk with the man. “So where do we stand with Garrison?”

Senator Melvin Garrison chaired the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which was currently studying a bill that would allow American defense manufacturers to use imported rare-earth elements in their products. Through a series of agents, Pruitt had been encouraging Garrison to ensure the bill never got out of committee.

Lyon shook his head. “He’s not budging.”

Pruitt smiled ruefully. “Is that so? Tell me about him.”

“No vices or skeletons that I could find. Divorced, never remarried.”

“Children?”

“A son and daughter. She’s at Harvard premed. The boy is spending the summer backpacking across Europe. He’s currently in. . . .” Lyon took a notebook from his pocket and flipped a few pages. “In Rome.”

“Do you have anyone out there?”

Lyon thought for a moment, clearly knowing what was being asked of him. “I do.” His gaze hardened on Pruitt. “How bad do you want him hurt?”

“No permanent damage, but enough that Garrison doesn’t mistake the message. Let me know when it’s done, and I’ll call the good senator with my sympathies.”

Lyon nodded.

“Good. Now where are we with the last of our wayward geniuses?”

“Snyder and his wife went off the road outside of Asheville. Faulty brake line. Not so original, but effective.”

“And the last two?”

“We’re closing in on one of them as we speak. The other—Sabatello—fell off the grid for the moment. We’re working other leads. We’ll find her.”

Pruitt frowned. He had read the dossier on Jane Sabatello. “Given her background, that might be challenging.”

“We’ll find her,” Lyon repeated. “She vanished with her son. Should make tracking her easier.”

“Make sure you don’t fail.”

“For these last two, I assume you will want the same protocol as before?”

Pruitt nodded. “Their deaths must look accidental.”

The truth must never get out
.

4

October 12, 7:33
P
.
M
. CDT

Huntsville, Alabama

Welcome to Rocket City . . .

Less than a day after parting ways with Jane in Montana, Tucker found himself on the opposite side of the country, cruising in a rental Ford Explorer through the wooded outskirts of Huntsville, Alabama. The place had earned its nickname, Rocket City, due to its proximity to the neighboring Redstone facility, home to both the military’s missile program and NASA’s space flight center.

Kane sat up front with him, his head out the window, taking in the scents of the surrounding Tennessee River valley. After being cooped up in a crate for the cross-country flight, his partner clearly appreciated the wind whipping through his fur, his nostrils drawing in the world.

Tucker reached over and patted the dog’s flank.

Wish I could learn to live in the moment like you
.

Instead, a nagging worry had formed a knot behind his eyes. He had hated to leave Jane behind at the motel, but she had insisted he go on ahead, wanting to get Nathan somewhere safe before rejoining him. Besides, Jane was too well known in this area. No one here knew his face. For now, he would have to take the lead alone.

Still, he had promised Jane that he would keep her abreast of his investigation. To that end, she had given him two telephone numbers that she called safe.
Leave a message on the first number—something anonymous about the birth of a baby or a family reunion or something
, she’d instructed him,
then wait ten minutes and call the second number
.

Though she had put on a brave face as he left for the airport, Tucker knew she was more frightened than he’d ever seen her.

Up ahead, a sign glowed alongside the interstate, half buried at the edge of a swampy woodland: F
ALLS
V
ALLEY
M
OTEL
.

“Almost home,” he warned Kane.

He had chosen this place due to its remote location at the far western edge of Huntsville. Off to the left, the decaying remnants of an old concrete factory sat out in the swamps. Back in 1962, a levy had broken in a bend of the storm-swollen Tennessee River and flooded the shallow valley in which the factory sat. Rather than try to reclaim the already-abandoned factory, the state decided to make the best of a bad situation. Like the hulk of a sunken ship that becomes a reef, the factory had become the heart of a flourishing new ecosystem.

But it wasn’t just the colorful seclusion of the motel that drew Tucker to rent a room here. Gate #7 of the Redstone Arsenal lay only two miles farther down the road. Whether this would make any tangible difference to his investigation, Tucker didn’t know, but having the post within eyeshot would help him focus.

Reaching the motel, he pulled into the parking lot. The facility was made up of individual cabins spread through the neighboring forest. He checked in, asked for the most remote spot, and then drove to the far end of the lot to his room. Once inside, he found flowered wallpaper and an avocado bedspread straight from the 1970s, but everything was clean and smelled faintly of Lysol.

As he unpacked, Kane did a full inspection of the room. After seeming to find it passable, he plopped down on the queen bed, but not without a long, disappointed sigh.

“Yeah, not exactly the Ritz, is it?”

Tucker crossed and pulled open the drapes at the back of the cabin. The window looked east toward Redstone. Above the tree line, he could make out two hills—Weeden and Madkin Mountains—that rose from the forty thousand acres that made up the massive facility, over half of which were test grounds for missiles, rockets, and space vehicles. He had read that there were over two hundred miles of roads, and tens of thousands of square feet of buildings.

Redstone Arsenal was a city unto itself.

And somewhere in all that, Sandy Conlon had worked, perhaps on a project that had something to do with her disappearance.

But what?

There was only one way to find out. Though tired from all of the travel, Tucker was also jacked up by the prospect of the challenge ahead. And he suspected he wasn’t the only one.

Kane watched him from atop the comforter, those dark eyes studying him as if anticipating what he would say next.

He smiled at his partner, which earned him a tail thump. “How about it, Kane. Ready to go to work?”

Kane bounded off the bed and headed to the door, his tail flagging high.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Before departing, he removed Kane’s uniform from his duffel. The K9 Storm tactical vest was mottled to match the shepherd’s black and tan fur. Not only was it waterproof, but it was also Kevlar reinforced. He checked the pinpoint night-vision camera folded next to his collar and its wireless transmitter. The equipment gave Tucker a two-way streaming visual and audio feed of the shepherd’s surroundings. He could also communicate to Kane via a small custom-fitted earpiece.

He slipped the vest in place over Kane’s shoulders and tightened the straps, feeling the dog’s muscles trembling with suppressed excitement. After examining the vest for any rub points and testing the comm link, he did one final check. He cupped Kane’s cheeks between his hands, staring deep into his partner’s eyes.

“Ready, buddy?”

Kane pushed forward, touching his cold, wet nose to Tucker’s.

“Who’s the best dog?” he whispered.

A small lick to his chin answered him.

“That’s right . . . you are.” Tucker straightened and turned toward the door. “Let’s go explore.”

9:19
P
.
M
.

Night had fully fallen by the time Tucker’s SUV passed through the gates of a small subdivision. His headlights swept over the bronze lettering at the stone entryway.

CHAPMAN VALLEY ESTATES

According to Jane, Sandy lived in this neighborhood. His rental’s GPS led him through a maze of streets. The houses he passed appeared to be small mansions, none less than five thousand square feet, all on lots well over an acre. Each yard was neatly manicured, the homes set well back from the road. Through the open window, the evening smelled of lilac and freshly mowed grass.

Sandy, whatever you were doing, it must’ve paid well
.

He slowed down as he neared his destination, then stopped when he was a hundred yards away. All of the driveways in the neighborhood were marked with identical rustic lamps, each bearing the street number. He noted the lamp at the foot of her driveway was dark.

A faint alarm bell went off in Tucker’s head.

Maybe something, maybe nothing . . .

He sat for a moment, taking everything in. The warm air buzzed with mosquitoes and creaked with the calls of a thousand crickets. The road was otherwise quiet. No cars, no pedestrians, no barking dogs. Through a few neighboring windows, lights flickered from television sets or glowed from bedroom windows.

“Looks like everyone is settling in for the night,” he whispered to Kane.

Except for us
.

Tucker grabbed his shoulder pack and climbed out of the car with Kane. Together, they strode over toward her driveway, passing along Sandy’s front yard as if just another local walking his dog.

Fifty yards from the street rose Sandy’s home, a modern two-story French château with gabled windows and an attached three-car garage. There was even a tall stone fountain in a front courtyard.

Definitely paid well . . .

As he reached the driveway, he noted that all of the windows were dark. The fountain lay quiet and still.

With the street still empty, Tucker took ten quick strides down the driveway, then stepped off into a patch of oak trees. Kane kept to his heels as he dropped to one knee on a thick bed of damp leaves. He dug his night-vision monocle from a side pocket of his pack and panned it across the front of the house.

He counted four motion-triggered spotlights along the eaves, all evidence that Sandy likely had an alarm system.

But was it still operational?

Time to find out.

Twisting to the side, he powered up Kane’s comm system, then donned his headset. He palmed the shepherd’s cheek and pointed to the house.

“S
COUT
,” he whispered aloud, then circled a finger in the air. It was a command that Kane knew well:
CIRCLE
AND
RETURN
.

Kane took off toward the dark house, running low, already sweeping wide to make a full pass around the grounds. Tucker had worked alongside other military war dogs. He knew their capabilities, but Kane outshone them all, with a tested vocabulary of over a thousand words and the comprehension of a hundred hand signals. And while Kane’s brain couldn’t interpret full sentences, he could string together words and commands to complete a linked sequence of commands. But best of all, after working in tandem since Kane was a pup, the pair had grown to read each other beyond any spoken word or motioned signal.

They had come to trust each other implicitly.

Tucker watched proudly as Kane swept over the lawn, a dark arrow through the warm night. He also noted that none of the motion lights activated as the shepherd passed.

System must be off
.

Suspicions jangled through him.

As Kane vanished around the corner of the garage, Tucker slipped his satellite phone into his hand. He thumbed on the feed from Kane’s night-vision camera. A bobbling, washed-out image of tree trunks flashing past appeared on the screen.

When Kane reached the far side of the house, Tucker touched the microphone of his headset and sent a command to his partner’s earpiece: “S
TOP
.”

Kane immediately obeyed, dropping down onto his belly. The shepherd kept his focus—and the camera’s—on the rear of the modern château.

Tucker stared at the screen for several long breaths.

All seemed quiet.

“C
ONTINUE
,” he ordered.

Kane pads through the damp grass, angling around bushes and flowing through the deepest shadows. Ears stand tall, swiveling to every noise: the whir of insects, a distant feline hiss, the rumble of a car on a neighboring road. His nostrils flare with scents both familiar and strange in this new place.

A squirrel darts from his passage, but he ignores the fire to give chase.

He remains on the path given to him.

He circles around the house and back into the woods out front. A faint breeze carries the tang of familiar sweat. He moves swiftly toward it. His body craves the warmth behind that scent, the promise buried there, of pack and home.

He finally reaches his partner’s side.

Fingers find his scruff and welcome him with their touch, with the dig of nails.

He leans closer, nudging the other’s thigh with his nose.

Together again
.

“Good boy,” Tucker whispered in both greeting and reward, acknowledging their partnership.

With Kane panting lightly at his side, Tucker sat back on his heels and debated his next move. He had come here in the hopes of searching Sandy’s residence. With the house dark and the outside motion detectors off, it might be safe to proceed, but such a move was not without risk. Still, it wasn’t in his nature to lie back.

“On me,” he finally ordered.

Keeping close to the trees, he headed toward the rear of the house. During Kane’s surveillance, he had spotted a back door into the garage. He approached it cautiously, only to discover it was locked. But the door’s upper half was made of mullioned glass.

Using a small penlight, he searched through the window for alarm wires and found none.

Good enough
.

From his pocket, he withdrew a spring-loaded glass punch. He folded a bandana over its steel head and pressed the tool against one of the windowpanes and touched the button. With a muted crack, the glass shattered. He quickly tapped away the loose shards, then groped through until he found the dead bolt and flipped it.