He raced along, one thong flying off his foot, and then the other. Now he could run faster. But it still wasn’t fast enough. He could tell another coyote was easily keeping pace with him on his other side. They were hunting as a pack.
He had just made it to his own driveway — Beth’s Volvo was still parked there, but he knew it would be locked — when he felt a rush of air hurtling toward his neck. And a raging snarl. Something struck him between the shoulder blades, but he didn’t turn around. He heard an angry yelp, and the sound of two animals tearing at each other in a mad frenzy.
He got to his door and threw it open, then kicked it shut behind him. There was a scrabbling sound, something clawing at the door, accompanied by wild barks and growls. A fight was going on, right outside the door. Carter, still clutching Joey, went to the window, where he saw a furious tussle of fur and fangs. But why would the coyotes be attacking each other?
He stood, gasping for breath, and realized, to his shock, that one of the battling animals was a dog — a yellow dog. That stray.
Three of the coyotes had given up and were strung out in the street; the gray one, caught up in the fight, suddenly gave up, too, and scooted away, yelping, his tail down.
The yellow dog barked ferociously, and stood, with his tail batting against the door, like a sentinel.
The coyotes took one long backward glance, as if saying
The dog barked again and again, making sure they knew who’d won.
And Carter, catching his breath, wondered what to do next.
A light went on in the upstairs of the house across the street — the first time Carter had ever seen that happen.
Beth, alarmed and standing at the top of the stairs, said, “What’s going on? Carter — what’s happening?”
“We’re okay,” he said. “We’re all okay.”
He flicked on the lights so that they flooded the front lawn and driveway.
Beth hurried down the stairs, fastening her blue robe around her.
“You’ve got Joey?” she said, puzzled.
“Take him,” Carter said, handing over the still unperturbed baby. For all Carter knew, Joey had thought this whole thing was a grand adventure.
Carter went to the door. He could hear the yellow dog, not barking anymore, but panting.
He opened the door cautiously. The dog had blood on the crown of its head.
It turned around and looked at him.
“You okay?” Carter asked. It was a mutt, but mostly lab.
The dog took a second, then wagged its tail in reply.
Carter went outside, pulling the door closed behind him, and knelt down by the dog. “You saved my neck,” he said, “you know that, champ?”
The dog, still breathing hard, just looked at him. He had no collar, no tags. He looked pretty beaten up.
“I don’t suppose you can tell me your name,” Carter said, tentatively holding out the back of one hand.
The dog sniffed the hand, waited.
“How about Champ? Can you live with that?”
The dog looked like he could. He licked the sweat off Carter’s fingers.
Carter stroked the dog under the muzzle, where the fur was damp. Then he rubbed the dog’s back. The gash on the top of its head would need stitches.
“It’s been a long night,” Carter said, getting up. “What do you say you come inside?” Carter swung the door wide open and waited, silently, to one side. Beth, holding Joey in her arms, was standing in the foyer, looking as if she had no idea what was going on. “Honey,” Carter said, as the dog hesitantly stepped across the threshold, clearly unsure if this was allowed, “I want you to meet Champ.”
CHAPTER TEN
No, that didn’t even look right.
Nah, how would he know that Greer was being sarcastic?
Christ, it sounded like something from a bill collector.
Greer stared at the computer screen, a cigarette hanging off his lower lip. If he couldn’t even get past this part, how was he ever going to figure out what kind of letter he wanted to write? Or just what it was he wanted to say?
Ever since Sadowski had told him about al-Kalli living in L.A., Greer had been consumed with questions and plans and possible schemes. He knew there was money to be made out of this, somehow, but he wasn’t sure how to approach it.
On the one hand, he could simply start with a strong appeal. After all, Captain Greer, as he had been known then, had led a patrol into dangerous territory, solely to execute a mission commissioned by al-Kalli. And in the course of that perilous mission, he, Greer, had been sorely injured. Handicapped. For life. Surely that was due some special compensation, above and beyond the fifty thousand dollars Greer had been given to cover expenses. (He’d arranged to share out twenty thousand with the soldiers he took along, but since Lopez hadn’t come back, Greer had hung on to his cut.)
But that would be counting on al-Kalli’s generosity and charity. And Greer had no reason to expect he was either generous or charitable. For starters, he was an Arab; for another, Greer had never even met the man. All of his dealings had been through some guy named Jakob, who had given him just enough information — maps and all — to proceed, but not a single thing more. Greer was a pretty good judge of guys like Jakob, and the guy’s demeanor positively screamed secret service/martial arts/M1/Savak/ Mossad, one of those. Greer had gotten back to camp, and even before he was airlifted to the army hospital in Germany, Jakob had showed up to claim the mysterious box. Greer had never even had a chance to try to jimmy it open.
Or, Greer thought, sitting back in the chair and taking a long drag on the cigarette (his mother hated him smoking in the apartment — she claimed she was allergic, but Greer didn’t buy it for a second), he could simply go straight for the shakedown. “Dear Mr. al-Kalli, I recovered some of your private property — under color of U.S. military authority — from your palace in Iraq, and unless you come across with some additional money in the amount of…” How much, Greer wondered, would be reasonable? One hundred thousand dollars? Five hundred thousand? An even million? If only he knew what it was he’d smuggled out for him. “… I will be forced to report you to…” Who? The immigration office? The State Department? The L.A. City Council?
God damn it. Greer didn’t even know what he could threaten him with. A man like al-Kalli probably had most people in his pocket anyway. And what if he turned the tables on Greer? It wasn’t, after all, a sanctioned U.S. army mission. And it could open a further investigation into the disappearance of Lopez, who’d first been listed as AWOL, and then, when he never showed up at all, as missing in action. Greer had pushed to make sure that the MIA status happened; that way, Lopez’s wife at least got the death benefit. He was proud of himself for having gone that extra mile for one of his men.
The computer screen was still mostly blank, waiting for him to come up with something. He went onto the Internet instead, visited a couple of his favorite porn sites, then figured he’d need to give it some more thought. Didn’t writers always say bullshit like that all the time — that their best ideas just came to them out of nowhere, when they weren’t even thinking about it?
“Derek, didn’t I ask you not to do that?” his mother called out from behind his bedroom door.
“Do what?” he said, waving the smoke toward the open window.
“I can smell it out here. You know I’m allergic.”
He stubbed out the cigarette and logged off. It was almost time to leave, anyway; he had a date in
