As he always did, the dog waited. He was hungry, but he stood over the bowl looking up at Michaels, waiting for permission. Whoever had trained him had done a good job. 'Go ahead, eat.'
Scout bent and gobbled the stuff up as if he'd never been fed before.
When the dog was done with his meal and enough water to wash it down, he followed Michaels into the living room. Michaels sat on the couch and patted his lap. The little dog leaped up and into his lap, and began to lick one of its paws as Michaels scratched behind Scout's ears.
It certainly was soothing to sit and pet the little critter. Susie had always wanted a dog. Megan had told her she had to wait until she was old enough to take care of it. She was getting there — faster than he liked. Eight, his daughter was, going on eighteen…
Michaels liked dogs. He hadn't gotten one after he'd moved to D.C. because he hadn't wanted to leave it alone while he was at work, but as small as Scout was, the house was plenty big enough to roam around in. The previous owners of the condo had owned a cat, and they'd left a litter box stuck up in the rafters. Michaels had bought a sack of kitty litter, and during the day the plastic tub full of litter sat by the sliding glass door. So far, the dog had used that faithfully when he couldn't get outside.
Scout licked Michael's hand. The man grinned at him.
'You don't care if I had a crappy day at work, do you? You're perfectly happy to see me no matter what, aren't you?'
The dog gave out a small yip, almost as if he understood what Michaels said. He snuggled his head under Michael's hand.
Michaels laughed. That was the thing about dogs — you didn't have to be anything special to impress them. He liked that. If you were as good a person as your dog thought you were, you'd be able to stroll across the Potomac without getting your ankles wet.
Well. Time to get moving. Better shower and shave and get dressed.
He had a thought: Why not take the dog with him to work? He could let him run around the office, take him out to pee once in a while. There wasn't any policy against it. He was the boss, wasn't he? At least for another day or two he was. Sure. Why the hell not?
John Howard wore an Army-green T-shirt and faded, frayed cargo-pocket fatigue pants over his Kevlar combat boots. He also wore a black headband — he sweated pretty good once he got going, and keeping a garrison cap on was hopeless — but otherwise, he looked like any of the other fifty troopers doing the obstacle course this early Sunday morning.
John Howard was no armchair commander ordering his troops to do something he wouldn't — or couldn't — do himself.
He was last up.
Fernandez blew his whistle. 'Go, go!'
Howard felt his belt transponder buzz, starting his personal clock. He sprinted toward the water hazard, jumped, caught the thick rope and swung out over the pit, more mud than water. The trick was to let your momentum swing you back and forth, pump a little with your arms and crunch your body, then jump on the
Howard released the rope, fell, landed two feet beyond the edge of the pit. He ran for the razor-wire tunnel. There was a backstop at the end of the razor-wire approach, enough to stop machine-gun bullets. The gunners had the day off, but during the graduation run, a steady stream of jacketed full-auto fire, every tenth round a tracer, laid a roof over the wire. This would scare the crap out of a green recruit, but most of his troops were old hands: They knew you couldn't catch a bullet unless you stuck your head up through the razor wire, a difficult proposition even if you wanted to do so.
'Clock is running, Colonel!' Fernandez yelled.
Howard grinned, dropped prone, began knee-and-elbowing his way under the razor wire. As long as you stayed low, the only thing you'd get is dirty. If you got uppity, the razor wire
Clear!
Ahead was a fifteen-foot-high wall with a rope draped over it. If you got there at speed and jumped high as you caught the climbing line, you could make it over with two or three pulls, roll and hit the sawdust pit in three seconds. If you had to climb eight feet of rope, it took longer.
Howard leaped, grabbed the two-inch hawser with both hands a good ten feet up, reached high with his right hand and caught the rope again, did it on the left side, and was over.
The next obstacle was essentially a forty-foot-long telephone pole lying in a series of six-foot-high, X-shaped, four-by-four supports. You had to boost yourself up on the end — there was a short step built in there — mount the pole and walk the length. If you fell, you had to go back and start the walk over. The trick was to move steady, not too fast, not too slow. It wasn't that high, but a fall from six feet could sprain an ankle or break an arm. Once, they'd had a man break his neck when he slipped and landed on his head.
Howard reached the step, bounced up, stood on the pole. He had walked this hundreds of times, he had the pace down. Steady — not too slow, not too fast.
At the other end, there was another sawdust pit, though the archaic term was not really appropriate — the dust was not wood, but reconstituted buckyball-plastic. The best way to land on the stuff without sinking to the bottom, a good three feet, was to do so in a sitting position or stretched out and supine.
The colonel reached the end of the pole walk, jumped outward, lay back and hit flat on his back, hands extended, palms down. Buckyball-plastic splashed, but quickly settled back. Howard rolled, sank a little, but reached the edge of the pit and came to his feet.
The trooper in front of him was slower than he was. He had just gotten free of the pit himself, and was on the way to the minefield.
Howard came up behind the man. 'Track!' he yelled. The trooper moved to the side and allowed Howard to pass.
He was making good time. Not his best, but not bad, he felt.
The minefield was a twenty-foot-wide corridor of sand thirty yards long. The mines were electronic, about the size of a softball, and not dangerous, but if you stepped on one, you knew it — it let out an amplified scream that would wake a man six days dead. Every one you hit cost you fifteen seconds. You could see where the mines were; there were little depressions that dropped the sand a half inch or so over them. If you were first through, it was easy, you could see them and run the field in ten or fifteen seconds, but after a few people went through ahead of you, it got harder to spot the mines among all the boot prints.
There were two troopers still walking the sand when Howard got there. Newbies tended to think they could run in the old boot prints and get home free, and if the mines had been real, that would have worked. But the traps reset randomly every two minutes, and stepping where somebody had gone before might earn you fouls. You couldn't be sure.
You couldn't learn a pattern, because Howard had his techs change it every week or so.
Again, steady was the key. Try to hurry, and you'd get sonicked good. Too slow and you started worrying, seeing traps where there weren't any.
He stepped into the sand.
Forty seconds later, he was clear, without triggering a sonic blast, and feeling pretty good since he had passed one of the troopers in the sand and caught the other on the way to the final obstacle.
The last test this day was Sergeant Arlo Phillips, a six-foot-four-inch 240-pound hand-to-hand-combat instructor. Phillips's role was simple: You tried to get past him to slap a buzzer button mounted on a post in the middle of a white circle marked on the soft ground; he tried to knock you out of the circle before you did it. Troopers were only allowed to enter the circle one at a time, and if you got thrown out, you had to go back to the end of the line and try it again. While your timer stopped when you reached the circle — your belt transponder clicked it off when you lined up in the quay zone — and resumed only as long as you were
