He didn’t like the way Jugs was panting. It was hot, but this seemed to be something more. His pal limped over. Max grabbed more water, then pulled out the K9’s rehydration powder from the kit that was stored in his harness. He dropped it in, shook, and slowly upended the bottle into his collapsible nylon bowl. Jugs drank until most of it was gone, his pink tongue lapping, but Max tapped the bowl. “All of it,” he said, and Jugs finished the rest.
Jugs could easily find water, but the injury on his flank would definitely slow him down. He’d had some mild blood loss and he needed a boost.
“Come here,” he ordered, and Jugs shuffled closer. “No more running off to find me food,” he said, grateful for his friend’s unerring attention to his handler’s needs. Max reached out, captured his collar, and pulled him closer. Jugs was breathing heavily. Max lifted Jugs’s lip and pressed against his gum for less than a second and watched as the blood flowed back into the tissue. It was sluggish.
Careful not to hurt him, he slipped on his muzzle and captured Jugs underneath his armpit on the uninjured side of his torso. Max had to grit his teeth as his own pain ramped up again, but he took his time irrigating Jugs’s wound and applying another dressing. He yelped once but didn’t try to bite Max. Their bond was too strong for that. He removed the muzzle and, after administering his combat pill pack, released Jugs. Seeing Jugs in this state was unbearable. Max meticulously took care of his partner from nose to tail.
By this time, Max was blinded by the pain, exhausted. He lay back and managed to give Jugs one more command. “Behüten.” Guard and protect. Then he passed out again.
Dr. Renata Cavalcante started her day hardly being able to contain her excitement over an ancient helmet. It was proof the Spanish galleons had been in this area in the 16th Century. The find gave credence to rumors that had been running rampant in the area for decades, that there might be sunken treasure from where the ships had gone down in a storm.
Now, her excitement had been eclipsed by annoyance and anxiety as she followed a trail of paw prints to retrieve the precious helmet, her gut in knots over the significant loss. She had placed the artifact in her backpack for safekeeping along with her leftover food, and a dog had stolen it. She had broken down her camp and packed up everything into the backpack now strapped to her back and started after the thief as soon as she realized the helmet was missing. She knelt and checked the tracks again. It was clear that not only was this a domestic dog, but the thieving animal was injured.
The animal was a wily opponent, taking her back and forth, through some small creek where she lost his trail until she picked it up again farther downstream. Her main concern was getting that helmet back, but after seeing that the dog was injured, she wanted to help if she could. Damn that Hippocratic Oath she’d taken. Apparently, it extended to animals.
She wasn’t out here to be a Doctor of Medicine. She’d left that behind and had retrained, much to her family’s disgust, to become an anthropologist. She was American born, but her father was Brazilian. She straddled both worlds, speaking the languages—Spanish and Portuguese and, of course, English. Her mother came from an upper-crust Boston family full of all kinds of professionals—doctors, lawyers, bankers. She’d tried to fit into that mold, and it had chafed every second of every minute she’d had to endure it. Taking care of people and sacrificing her life to late night calls and untold hours of selfless giving wasn’t in her nature.
It was the history of dead civilizations that interested her more.
She knew that sounded terrible, but she hated holding the lives of people in her hands. By the time she finished her residency, she was sleep-deprived, anxious, had a hole in her stomach, and was close to a nervous breakdown.
She moved on deeper into the jungle and wondered at the lack of rodent activity. Not just during the day, but at night when they should have been more active. There had been a lot of human activity through here in the last week. She was somewhat protected after the Paraguayan government offered some secret incentives to the drug runners and rebels here Renata wasn’t privy to. She didn’t want to think what kind of relationship they had with the undesirables in the area to get them to agree to leave her alone. She had a pass of sorts, so the armed men who she came across didn’t bother her.
She walked quietly, following the tracks until she came to a particularly thick part of the jungle. The forest around her was like a blanket of rolling green, the air thin and the jungle so dense she could barely see a few feet beyond her footsteps. If she went through, there would be a lot of noise.
Her only alternative would be to go around. After taking a drink of her water, she turned left and walked for about fifteen minutes, then penetrated the thick overgrowth.
She came out into a small clearing bordered by a small stream and stopped dead. Of course, he heard her from a mile away. Dogs had acute hearing. She could see he was a beautiful dog, glossy coat a bit dulled, but it looked like someone had bandaged up his flank. She had to consider she was a bit lucky there. A completely healthy Malinois could take her out without breaking a doggie sweat.
He didn’t move but watched her intently. She skirted him, and he changed position to keep her in view. That’s when she saw the boots. There was a man in the brush, and it looked like he wasn’t moving.
She had to get to him. She had no idea who this pair could be, but with the camouflage pants above the boots and the tactical vest on the dog, it was most likely someone in the military.
There had been that chopper and automatic gunfire last night.
Did he and the K9 have something to do with all that activity?
Which meant the dog was lethally trained and wouldn’t hesitate to take her out of the equation to protect the man behind him.
This was going to be tricky. She had to be careful not to hurt the K9 who was only doing his best to protect his buddy, but to administer assistance, the dog had to be safely neutralized.
She crouched down and set her pack on the ground, opening it while keeping her eyes on the very alert Malinois. She pulled out a coil of climbing rope which was the softest she had. She started to loop it and fashion a large net, tying knots as fast as she could, then she threaded a long piece of the rope through the loops she’d left in place, so that when she pulled, it would act as a drawstring on a bag.
When she was ready, she started moving toward the man. The dog changed his demeanor in a blink of an eye. His lips curled away from his teeth and he barked, a low growl coming from deep in his chest. As soon as she had made it about halfway, the dog attacked.
His gait was slower but more powerful than she had imagined. He launched himself at her at record speed. She sidestepped and caught him in the net, then stumbled back as his jaws snapped, pulling the string to trap him.
She felt bad about the soft whimpering he made, but he was relentless. She sprinted toward the man. Blood soaked wrappings, drained water bottles, empty packets and the leftover plastic from her fish littered the ground. But near the man’s head, she saw her other backpack and the glint of the helmet’s metal and she breathed a sigh of relief. She saw two things that would make it safer for both her and the dog. She grabbed for the muzzle and his leash and ran back to the struggling K9, using her body to subdue him, being careful not to put any pressure on his injury, she immobilized his neck and wrestled with the animal as she worked the muzzle on his snapping jaws. Once on, she released him from the net and clipped his leash to his collar and pulled him toward a sturdy tree, where she fastened the leash tightly.