He shrugged. “Thought you might want an accountability call. I can imagine it’s not something you’re looking forward to.”
Her throat tightened at his perception. “That’d be amazing, Geo. And yeah, I’m pretty much dreading it.”
The understatement of the year. The thought of sitting in a room full of total strangers and sharing her deepest, most private pain with them made her stomach tie itself into knots.
“There’s strength in numbers,” Maura had said. “In finding a community of people who’ve been through exactly what you have, who understand it, and are surviving it.”
Aware of Geo’s gaze, Lani made a concerted effort to relax. She was not going to ruin their night together.
After navigating through the sentry gate, Geo turned down a side street and parked in front of what she assumed was the kennel. Like every other building on every other military base in the country, it was an unassuming dun-colored block, the only identifying feature the large number on the corner of it.
“How many dogs are here?”
“Right now? I’m not sure. Three or four, maybe.” He unlocked the front door and led her inside. “The kennel master’s room is right there.” He pointed. “And he has a couple of assistants who live here, too. There’s always someone on-site who checks the dogs, feeds them, exercises them, does some light training. I try to work with Bosch every day, too.”
When they reached Geo’s assigned kennel area, Lani couldn’t help but tense and move a tiny bit closer to him. He stopped short, then turned to look at her.
“Are you afraid of dogs?” he asked gently.
She shook her head, her voice a tiny bit tremulous as she said, “I’m not usually, but all of a sudden I’m thinking about what you told me, about him chasing the decoy up a fence and jumping out a window to pile-drive that guy. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
Geo didn’t answer, just snagged a folding chair that was leaning up against the wall and set it up well away from Bosch’s cage. “Why don’t we sit for a minute?”
After she’d lowered herself onto the chair, Geo crouched at her feet, his face solemn. “I would never bring you around Bosch if I thought he was in any way a danger to you. Never.”
“I know.”
She must not have sounded all that convinced, because he rested his hand on her knee and waited until she met his eyes. “On our last deployment, right before coming home, we were out clearing this compound, looking for bad guys. We found some.”
Lani darted her gaze over his shoulder to where Bosch lay quietly.
“There was a firefight, and the drone pilot saw some people running away—just heat signatures in the dark, leaving the compound. We knew from earlier surveillance that there were a ton of irrigation ditches out in this field they were headed for, some palm groves.”
She gulped. “Lots of places to hide.”
“Yeah. Because of the threat of ambush, it was too dangerous to just blindly charge out there after them, so I sent Bosch first to try and track them down.”
As he spoke, Geo moved his body around so they were both facing Bosch’s cage. The dog was on his mat, ears up, his head cocked slightly to the side, for all the world looking like he was enthralled with the story, too.
Geo squeezed her knee. “Try to picture this if you can. It was pitch dark, the middle of the night. Our guys at the compound were fully engaged with the enemy there, our combat controller was trying to coordinate some air strikes, and we had squirters hiding somewhere in ambush territory.”
His voice grew tight with remembered excitement.
“Fuck, we were totally amped, adrenaline pumping, ready to neutralize the threat. Suddenly Bosch veered off, and I could tell by the way he was running that he was locked on a target. We followed him, weapons up...”
When he paused, Lani reached out and dug her fingers into his shoulder. “Oh, my God, don’t leave me hanging. What happened?”
“He stopped,” Geo said simply. “Planted his feet at the edge of this ditch and stopped short, wouldn’t engage. The whole point of using K9s is to give ourselves the element of surprise, a split-second advantage with someone aiming an AK-47 at us.”
“Because they don’t expect a dog to be coming at them?”
“Maybe they’re expecting it, I don’t know, but they never see or hear him coming. All of a sudden he’s there, teeth clamped on your gun arm. When he full-on bites, those teeth slice through skin, and muscle, all the way to the bone.”
He lifted his forearm to display his own scar.
“You’re flailing, trying to get him off you, but his grip is too tight. Everything is ripping, blood is flying, you’re screaming...”
“And you’re too busy to get a shot off,” Lani said breathlessly.
“Some guys try. They try to shoot the dog, or reach for a grenade, or clack off a vest. Those guys don’t live very long.” His eyes looked straight into hers. “Not because he kills them, but because I do.”
She nodded. That was his job, after all.
“Some give up, and then I call Bosch off. Those guys are put in flex-cuffs and taken back to base. That particular night, he stopped, went into what we call a bark-and-hold. Usually that’s not something we want. We want him to go in, no hesitation, put the hurt on the bad guy.”
“So why didn’t he?”
“Because the people in the ditch weren’t bad guys. They were women and children.”
She gasped. “Oh, no!”
“In that instant, when he was in full attack mode, with four SEALs behind him ready to shoot to kill, he stopped.” Geo paused. “He saved their lives. He recognized in a split-second that they weren’t threats, and he stopped.”
“How does he know?”
“Because he’s trained. Exhaustively. He can run through a crowded bazaar and ignore everyone except the person he’s chasing. If he corners a guy and the guy surrenders, he doesn’t bite him. He’s not some loose cannon I send out there to bring the pain to whichever random person he can run to ground.”
“I know. But what if I do something wrong?” she whispered. “Something he doesn’t like?”
“Well, let me tell you the two rules I have when it comes to interacting with Bosch.” Pushing to his feet, Geo unlocked the cage and opened it. “Wait for me to introduce you, and don’t try to kiss him.”
With an incredulous laugh, Lani said, “Don’t worry about that, Jesus.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Did someone—”