Page 32 of ELITE Justice
Kane cut him off. “Who the hell is she? Mr. Wolf’s girlfriend or fuck-buddy?”
Jonathan bristled at the contempt in Kane’s voice. “No. She’s one of the owners of the company, although I think she and Mr. Wolf are now engaged.” Jonathan glanced at Kane. He needed to warn the man without revealing too much. “She’s also an officer in the Navy.”
“Great,” he said unenthusiastically with an eye roll.
“She’s not like any woman officer you’ve ever met,” Jonathan warned. “Don’t ever let her feminine status fool you. She and the members of her team are not what they seem.”
“I never saw any female Navy officers crawling around in the sandbox, eating MREs for days, and getting fired at by the enemy.” Kane took the lead as they approached the first red dot on the map.
Jonathan had seen Katlin and her entire female team crawling in the dirt in Iraq, fighting house to house, and hand to hand. They were some of the toughest women he’d ever seen. But he couldn’t tell Kane any of that. He couldn’t tell the newcomer much of anything about Ms. Katlin. “Do yourself a favor and wait until you meet Katlin Callahan before you judge her.”
Kane simply grunted in reply.
Stopping mid-step, Kane held his fist in the air at his shoulder.
Jonathan immediately stopped all movement.
Kane pointed to the base of the largest tree in the area.
Cigarette butts. The area had been tramped down by big boots, depressions in the soft ground still evident.
Jonathan sniffed the air. No smell of sulfur from a recently lit match or cigarette smoke. They both listened to the natural forest noises. Bugs buzzed. Leaves softly brushed each other. Standing frozen in place, the forest soon returned to its native activity. A squirrel scurried down the side of a tree and continued to forage in the dry leaves and pine needles.
Neither man moved.
When Jonathan’s watch buzzed, he knew they needed to get moving. They had several more spots to check out before they could return and report. After tapping Kane on the shoulder and pointing to his watch, he moved in on the tree, scanning for booby-traps. Finding none, Jonathan took several pictures with his phone camera while Kane climbed the tree.
“Near the top, there’s almost a perfect configuration of limbs,” Kane explained several minutes later when his feet were back on the ground. “There’s a large branch for him to sit on and another to rest his long rifle on. Direct line of sight to the podium. I got a couple pictures of it.”
“I’ve already marked the map.” Jonathan pointed to the closest red dot. “We need to get a move on.”
After three hours, the two men were at the furthest point in their search area. They’d hit every red dot, identified two new cuts in the fencing, and found three positive sniper hides.
Jonathan slapped Kane on the shoulder. “Great work this morning.” He noticed Kane didn’t carry a backpack, so he handed the new Guardian employee a bottle of water.
“Thanks, man. I needed this.” Kane downed nearly the entire bottle.
Oh, shit. Jonathan should have thought about Kane’s condition and asked earlier. “Look, Kane, forgive my ignorance but I don’t know anything about your…disease.”
“Not many people do,” Kane huffed. “Most people think diabetes is diabetes. They have no idea the difference between type 1 and type 2. As you heard back at the restaurant, mine was caused by a virus. Some kids are even born with it. Mine has to be constantly controlled or I’ll die. I get low, I get slow.” He lifted his now-sweaty Guardian shirt and pointed to a small black box. “Gwen helped me get a new pump within a few days after an asshole kid stole mine. This little device monitors my glucose and feeds my body what it needs.”
In the quiet of the woods, they could hear the quiet whir of the tiny pump. Kane chuckled. “It’s working pretty hard right now. Since I’ve been living on the streets, I haven’t been working out like I used to.” His gaze met Jonathan’s. “Did Alex tell you that he hired me to work at the Dallas Center?”
“No, but he told Quin, the manager, who told me.” He held Kane’s gaze for a long minute. “I’m one of the three assistant managers. Once you’re working in the office, you will be expected to call any managers on duty, ‘sir’.”
“I understand, sir.” Kane looked around the woods as he finished the bottle of water. “Is this the kind of shit we do every day?”
It was Jonathan’s turn to laugh. “Not hardly. But we do get involved in some interesting situations.”
“How often do we work for USSOCOM or Homeland Security?”
Again, Jonathan wasn’t sure how much to tell him. He was brand new to the company and might not make it through the probationary period. Although Jonathan would do everything in his power to help Kane. The more time he spent with the former SEAL, the more he wanted to see him succeed.
“Since Katlin is assigned to Homeland, they know they can call on Guardian. Alex knows the brass at USSOCOM. They’ve contracted us before.” He needed to change the subject. “Alex and Katlin recently bought the Dallas office, that’s why both Quin and I are new. In case he didn’t tell you, we’re moving into a new building in a couple of weeks. I think you’ll like working for Guardian. Back in Miami, we did a lot of personal protection. I’m sure Quin did a lot of that in Los Angeles where he used to be an assistant manager.”
The two chatted amiably all the way back to the front of the airline headquarters. Once there, they gave the reports and uploaded the pictures to the corporate laptop.
The Army soldiers shook their heads slowly as they returned to the staging area. “That fucking place is filled with bombs!” The platoon leader knelt down and poured a bottle of water for his panting dog into a drab green dish. Looking up at Alex, he reported, “The dogs hit on so many places, they’re exhausted. When Sergeant Ben immediately hit on a place in the wall, then started scratching at it, I knew we were in trouble. I’m sure the dude in the blue blazer didn’t like it when I cut out a piece of his wall, but he ran like a scared rabbit when I carefully removed the bomb. They are set up to go off when the attached cell phone rings.” He slowly shook his head from side to side. “Our terrorist is somebody on the construction crew.”
