Survival Instinct
Chapter One
Trip
Harrison “Tripwire” Williams reached for the Kong, covered in slobber. “Release.” He ducked his chin and lifted his brow as the word whispered from his lips.
His German shepherd partner, Valor, complied instantly. She wasn’t really a toy kind of gal, anyway.
Tripwire thought she probably chewed the Kong to please him. Play drive wasn’t Valor’s thing. That was the reason Lackland’s Military Working Dog program released her for adoption. In the military, play drive was an absolute requirement in dogs deploying to foreign soil.
Food worked to get Valor’s attention, especially bits of dehydrated duck or salmon. But there were few dog jobs where food rewards were a good idea.
Luckily, Trip had discovered that Valor was driven by love and attention. If she got a high-pitched, “Good girl!” and a vigorous fur scrub, she was motivated to work whatever job he gave her.
The biting needed for takedowns, though?
Yeah, that might be a stretch.
When Valor was released from the military training program, Trip flew out to Lackland Airforce Base to see if she might make a good addition to Iniquus’s Cerberus Tactical K9 team. In the demonstration, Valor would race out and bite the guy wearing the thick protective gear that saved him from the worst of the onslaught. Valor was an amazing, powerful athlete as she sailed through the air to make the tackle. She did as her handler asked, one hundred percent. But when Valor got her release command, she’d whine and rub her body up against the “bad guy” as if she were trying to apologize and offer comfort.
It was pretty funny.
And it was how she got her nickname, “Little Mama”. Valor was willing to mete out a necessary punishment even if it hurt her heart to do it, like mothers do.
No, Valor wasn’t meant to go to war. She was way too much of a love bug. Valor was born to do the job that they were here training for, tactical search and rescue. Together, Trip and Valor were honing their skills, so they’d be ready for the calls that would certainly go out.
Inevitably, they’d be jumping into the fray, heading out into the storms, and saving those in desperate straits.
“Hello, beautiful.” Trip laughed as Valor pushed her wet nose up under his chin and gave him a string of tongue licks. He scrubbed his fingers into the caramel and black fur at her neck, down to her haunches, and back up to her ears, where he pressed and rotated his fingers until she made deep moaning sounds at the base of her throat and peddled her back paw. This was what Trip called her “expensive reward.” She wanted ear massages more than anything else. Dried duck on the ground or the chance of an ear rub? The massage won out every time. He offered this up when Valor did the hard stuff.
Staying calm and centered while they got ready for their skydive was the hard stuff. Trip wanted her to feel relaxed, rewarded, and safe. If he could do that for Valor, then this training mission would be golden.
When Trip rested his hand on Valor’s scruff to let her know the massage was over, Valor thanked him with another lap of her wet tongue up the side of his cheek.
Trip reached for her goggles. “Ready to go to work?” He raised his brows, and Valor comically raised hers, too. Yeah, she was ready. She was always ready. Bred for strength and tenacity, she was a proud descendent of a Czech line of war dogs. She liked nothing better than to hunt for a missing person, and she didn’t mind at all the tactical side of things—fast-roping down cliffs and what have you.
Valor and Tripwire had been up here in West Virginia for the last week, training with international search teams called up and deployed in natural disasters worldwide. They’d been working the search dogs on and off helicopters, fast roping into ravines, getting them ready to deploy in hard to reach areas should a disaster strike.
Today, they’d be jumping out of planes.
“You ready to show them how it’s done?”
Valor stood still while Trip adjusted the straps of her mirrored dog goggles into place. “Looking mighty badass, Miss Valorie.” He reached down and scooped up the new CAPS—Canine Auditory Protection System—developed by the Army to protect military working dogs’ sensitive ears. It fit like a hoody over her head to form a seal against the noise. It was Valor’s least favorite piece of equipment, so Trip stopped to reward her with a kiss and a full-body hug once he’d adjusted it into place.
He knew she was ready for the next step when her tongue reached out and gave him a swipe.
Trip held out her muzzle. Valor would never bite him, not in a thousand years. But the training organizer required muzzles on transports with other dogs. Sometimes, in cramped quarters, dogs could spook. On the plane, they’d be packed in tight with all those sharp teeth and crazy strong jaw muscles—no good reason to take chances.
“Ready, girl?”
She stuck her nose into her muzzle, and Trip tightened the straps into place.
As the other handlers prepped their dogs, the K9s whined and paced, their heads down and slobbery or yawning widely, shaking their coats, trying to relieve stress. The K9s were picking up on their handlers’ anxiety.
Most of the rescue workers were jumping out of a plane for the first time. Stressful enough without a dog. But the first-timers would be in good hands when they jumped, strapped tandem to a professional skydiving trainer.
“Let’s go, Little Mama.” Trip gathered up Valor’s lead, and they walked side by side out of the hangar to the jump plane.
When the other dogs in the group saw Little Mama’s confidence, they calmed a bit and seemed to follow alongside their handlers without shying away from the plane’s high-pitched engine noise.
Their plane had ten rescuers with their K9s on this jump run. Six trainers joined them to assist the newbies. Each aircraft was a mix of nationalities. The exercise leaders were trying to develop connections and trust between the teams.
On assignment, the Iniquus Search and Rescue Team was typically employed by a private corporation or government institution to go into a disaster zone to find and extract their people. Get them to safety. Or at least help them survive until next steps could be taken. The last disaster Trip worked had the Iniquus team tasked with pulling a group of university students out of the rubble heap when their dormitory collapsed in a South American earthquake. All the missing students in that building were accounted for. Injured, but alive.
Little Mama had made three of those finds.
Lives saved. Job accomplished.
If their search and rescue team wasn’t hired to find specific faces in dust-covered crowds of survivors, then Iniquus often sent the teams in as part of their charitable outreach. On those occasions, Trip went where he was directed.
A K9 team—a handler and a dog—was usually divvied up one dog to each search grid. Iniquus’s K9s almost never worked side by side on searches. That was why training events like the one they’d been participating in this week were a good idea.
Trip signaled for Valor to jump onto the plane. He followed her in and found space on the bench next to the two other Iniquus handlers on this same jump run. Cerberus Team Leader Ridge was with his K9 Zeus. And old-timer Bob, who handled mission tactical support, had his K9 Evo with him. The rest of the Iniquus team were loading onto the next two planes on the runway.
After settling Valor under the bench, making sure her paws and tail were safely tucked, Trip glanced out the window.
A man, with clipboard in hand, ran toward the pilot—lots of wide-armed gesticulating. Trip followed the line of the finger point to see an airport flag flapping wildly in a gust of wind. It looked okay to Trip. A little wind was good to train in. You didn’t usually get your pick of weather conditions, especially when you were jumping into a disaster zone caused by Mother Nature.
The pilot checked her watch then jogged to the plane.
Tripwire glanced between his knees, where Valor lay. Her head held high, she was alert and interested, her paws crossed lady-like in front of her. “That’s right, Mama, we’ve got this.”
The pilot took her seat, pulled on her belt, and soon they were gliding up through the clouds.
This would be Valor’s first jump from a plane. Though, the Cerberus Tactical K9s had spent some time down in Florida at an indoor wind tunnel that simulated the feel of skydiving without the risk. Before Iniquus made the trek to West Virginia for this training, Command wanted to make sure the handlers, as well as their dogs, were comfortable in the rigging, and the rescuers could maneuver with the added seventy or so pounds of K9 bulk.
Trip had had his fair share of jumping out of planes when he was still with the SEALs.
For some of the rescuers from other countries, it was their first time jumping. It was these first-timers who were freaking out. Even Trip could smell the adrenaline sweat wafting through the cabin. No wonder the dogs, with their sensitive snouts, were showing signs of anxiety.
Valor swung her head, assessing each one. Calm. Even if she was the youngest one here. She’d just had her second birthday, the time when most military working dogs had left their foster families and were finishing up their first stages of training.
“Get ready. Ten minutes,” the pilot’s voice boomed over the speaker.
Trip pulled Valor’s jump bag over and laid it out. He put his hand in front of Valor’s face and signaled “in.”
Valor stepped to the center of the bag, adjusted, and lay down.
Trip checked her leg positions before zipping the neoprene-lined bag together, leaving Valor’s head sticking out. Trip preferred this rigging to the ones that left the K9s’ legs dangling free. He thought there were too many ways the dog could get hurt if the jumper came in for a hard landing.
Trip and the Iniquus team had practiced this until their dogs had it down pat. Valor, Zeus, and Evo were packaged up just fine.
“There’s a cold front moving in fast,” the pilot said. “Don’t mess around out there. On signal, get out, get down, get your parachute gathered, and get ready for the truck to pick you up. This isn’t the time to be floating around sightseeing. Got it? Out. Down. Ready to exfil.”
The search professionals each gave her a thumbs up.
The plane dropped and lifted. Swayed and then balanced.
“See that?” the pilot asked into her mic. “We’re cutting this tight.”
Trip ran his hands over his equipment doing a mental check, imaging the steps he’d take once they were out the door. In his mind’s eye, he ran through his emergency sequences.
“We’re over the mark in five mikes.”
The men all held up five fingers to show that they understood that the door would open in that many minutes.
Trip stood. He balanced Valor’s weight that hung from him at various attachment points. He jostled around until everything felt correct, then made his way toward the door. They’d be the third in line.
Another buffet of wind caught the wings.
Trip stretched his arm out to the sides and pushed against the frame to keep his balance and stay upright. No matter what, he couldn’t face plant, or Valor would take the full impact of his weight crushing down on top of her.
No way would he let that happen.
“I’ve got you, girl.” He gave her a rub under the chin with his gloved hand. He worked to let any of his own stress about the new weather information roll off him. Fear was contagious for humans, and the cabin was already thick with that. For dogs? Yeah, they picked up on the prevailing mood and magnified it back.
Especially with Valor’s first jump, fun was the name of the game. He rubbed under Valor’s chin. “You’ve got this.”
This first imprint was the important one.
The Iniquus dogs needed this tool in their toolbox in case they ever needed to jump into remote areas cut off by natural disasters to pull people to safety.
This was imperative. Without this skill, Valor couldn’t stay on the team. Trip would be assigned a different K9.
His fellow Iniquus teammate, Ridge—now retired from Delta Force—double-checked Trip’s gear: all the straps, the altimeter, the pins in the back, and finally, Valor.
Ridge turned, and Trip did the same for him.
Three experienced jump teams out first. Ridge and his K9 Zeus had the most experience. They’d be the first team out, then Pierre from the Swiss team and his dog Hugo, then Trip and Valor.
Pierre was getting a once over now by the jumpmaster.
Since their fellow Iniquus teammate Bob, with K9 Evo, were the ones with the second most jumps under their belt, they’d be last in line, so someone with experience would be above the rest, keeping an eye out for problems.
The door slid open, and the dogs’ anxiety levels escalated as the wind battered the interior of the plane.
“You’re okay, girl.” Trip wriggled his fingers into her scruff.
Her tight muscles relaxed.
Ridge moved into the doorway, waiting for his signal from the jumpmaster.
Trip made a mental picture of wrestling around with Valor and giving her a belly rub. He projected that picture toward Valor just as he moved up behind Pierre. Trip would swear Valor turned her head and sent him a smile.
Ridge was out.
Trip loved that first step out of the plane into nothingness. Free-floating on a cushion of air. He grabbed the door frame as Pierre hugged Hugo and turned his back to the opening, ready to let himself fall away.
In that nano-second, the plane lurched in a stomach-dropping fall, then a gust tipped the plane hard, tossing first Pierre, then Trip and Valor out the door.
Trip flipped to his back to look up, resting Valor on his stomach and taking the brunt of the airspeed. He watched the tip of the plane’s wing scoop back upward and tag Pierre as the pilot righted the plane.
Pierre went limp. His mask broken. Pierre’s face was covered in blood. He hung like a rag doll, his limbs riding the current.
Hugo peddled his paws furiously, trying to gain control.
Pierre and Hugo spun toward Earth at terminal velocity.
On his back, looking up, Trip saw that the pilot had leveled out. The door was closing.
No other jumper was detaching his dog and going after Pierre.
It was up to Valor and Trip to save them.
Chapter Two
Trip
A gust of wind flipped Pierre onto his back. He was passing below Trip about twenty or so meters down.
Trip had trained to give an assist to fellow SEALs when jumps went bad. He’d never witnessed a guy impact with the plane before. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, Trip wouldn’t have believed that was possible.
From what he could tell from this distance, K9 Hugo looked physically okay, but he was frantic. His gear with the open leg holes meant he was raking Pierre with sharp claws as the K9 scrabbled for safety.
Earth was getting closer. They needed their chutes opened stat.
There was no immediate remedy other than for Trip to get to the other team and see where he could go from there.
Trip angled himself head down, legs extended with pointed toes, torpedoing through the air toward Pierre.
This was going to freak Valor but good. They were moving about a hundred and eighty miles an hour.
Trip’s helmet sliced into the air.
His streamlined body powered forward.
Valor tucked her head up against Trip’s chest, her snout following the curve of his neck. Her wet nose tucked under Trip’s chin; Valor’s warm breath displaced the cold wind.
One of the things going for Trip was the Iniquus choice of putting the dogs in neoprene lined bags. They hugged the dogs tightly like a thunder vest to help keep their nervous systems calm.
Valor wasn’t flailing like Hugo.
Count your blessings where you find them.
Pierre and Hugo disappeared into a cloud.
Trip pulled up, rounding his body like a cat jumping from a roof. This slowed his descent enough that he could search for the lost team.
The ground was ever closer.
The window of time to pull his chute and save himself was narrowing.
There! Pierre had been pulled to their left by a gust.
Trip prayed Pierre was unconscious and not out and out killed by the blunt force trauma.
Hugo clawed at his handler, but it didn’t rouse Pierre.
As he flew closer, Trip was grateful for the muzzle on the Malinois.
Little Mama was hanging in there.
She was getting a steak for dinner tonight for sure. “I’ve got you, Valor. I’ll get you down soon. I swear,” he hollered, hoping she could hear him past the wind and her ear protection.
Trip checked his altimeter, 2500. It was the decision altitude, now or never. Anything below this could kill them.
5.5 seconds equals a thousand feet of descent. That comes up quick.
Extending out, Trip swung his arm wide, snagging his gloved fingers into Hugo’s straps. Gripping tightly, Trip pulled the two teams together.
Trip maneuvered Pierre, so he was face down. He grabbed at the green ball on Pierre’s rigging and deployed their chute.
Pierre’s red canopy filled with wind. It tugged him higher into the sky.
Now, Pierre was descending toward the ground feet first.
He had a chance to survive.
Trip pointedly pushed the image of their imminent impact out of his imagination. He didn’t want to conjure the picture of what could happen if Pierre didn’t rouse by the time they hit down.
Trip hoped the ground crew had binoculars on them, had seen the emergency in progress, and would be ready. Whatever that looked like.
Trip pulled his own chute open. As he hung there, feet dangling. He rubbed at Valor’s ears. “Sorry about that, Little Mama.”
They jerked up and to the left by a gust of wind that blew him way too close to Pierre for comfort. The last thing he needed was for them to get their lines twisted together. Normally, you’d cut away and pull the emergency chute. But if it came to that, only Trip and Valor would survive.
Cutting away from Pierre would sign his death warrant.
Trip pulled at the bright yellow toggles that moved his steering lines, trying to buy them some space. The move put him into another current that lifted him and threw him even closer to the other team.
Trip’s mouth went dry. Prickles raced across his scalp. He licked at his lips, tasting the salt of his fear sweat.
The wind played with Hugo and Pierre, tossing them about like a wild-dancing marionette on strings.
Somewhere below him, Ridge was fighting the gusts, too.
Trip tilted to see over Valor’s back. The ground raced toward them.
The bright orange canopy of Ridge’s gear skated along the ground, dragged by the wind, Ridge and Zeus still attached. Trip needed to keep as far from Ridge as possible, as Ridge and Zeus got lifted and dropped again and again.
Trip scanned for the ground team. No trucks or men running, just sloping farmland and lots of trees. The three jumpers must have blown way off course, far from their targeted landing zone.
Working his toggles in micro-movements, Trip eased them away from the tree line. Getting tangled into the limbs with Valor attached would only make this day that much more dangerous.
Touching his breakaway pillow, Trip reminded himself of its exact location, so the moment he touched the ground, he could grab it and cut away from his canopy. He needed to jump into action for Ridge, Pierre, and their K9s.
This is what the SEALs would rightly label a clusterfuck.
***
The World of Iniquus
Ubicumque, Quoties. Quidquid
Iniquus - /iˈni/kwus/ our strength is unequaled, our tactics unfair – we stretch the law to its breaking point. We do whatever is necessary to bring the enemy down.
The Lynx Series
Weakest Lynx
Missing Lynx
Chain Lynx
Cuff Lynx
Gulf Lynx
Hyper Lynx
Strike Force
In Too DEEP
JACK Be Quick
InstiGATOR
Fear the REAPER
Uncommon Enemies
WASP
Relic
Deadlock
Thorn
FBI Joint Task Force
Open Secret
Cold Red
Even Odds
Kate Hamilton Mysteries
Mine
Yours
Ours
Cerberus Tactical K9 Team Alpha
Survival Instinct
Protective Instinct
Defender's Instinct
Delta Force Echo
Danger Signs
Danger Zone
Danger Road
Cerberus Tactical K9 Team Bravo
Warrior’s Instinct
Rescue Instinct
Hero’s Instinct
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