Page 5 of Seamus: Unconventional
“It’s not a call we had to make. Copper said maybe the worms but we haven’t gone past three months and we know they don’t have worms now. They have a shower that uses dog soap so they don’t really need the bars for that, it’s more for if they’re off the compounds or on jobs. The blood aversion is a plant Harky uses for his enhanced dogs.”
That gets my attention. “K-9 jobs?”
“The enhanced dogs.” Chris comes through the door answering me with Shadow and a huge black shepherd I’ve seen before, along with a soldier that looks familiar.
“Orion, Perses?”
“Zeus. I’m Harky. Zeus has been keeping your dogs in procedures but he says they know them. You’re not a Marine?”
“Never that one, but reassigned to Green Beret. We were based out of Brazil until they brought us over to an EU base. My K-9 was reassigned and I was going to retire but found Shadow and Light. They offered to train them for my next four but didn’t mention the chips, changing my command, or hunting us when they found out we survived.”
He shakes his head. “Jesus. South America, you know Perses?”
I nod. “I worked with him but only for a couple of months. Before that was Nike and Aeolus. They were good partners but moved to different units. Orion was on a JASOC base.” He was the only one I worked with in the EU because I had my own partners for jobs.
“You’re a K-9 trainer?” The giant asks.
“Cort Masters, we call him Cort or Boss,” the colonel says and I realize two things, Chris meant Cort, not court, earlier and the colonel is a seer.
I look at Chris, our young VP. “Seer?”
He smiles with a quick nod that tells me he knows of my judicial gaff from earlier. “Readerwe call it, but, yeah.”
“Boss it is. No, I’m a black ops operator but worked alone or with a K-9 partner for a couple of months at a time. It could have been me training them but no one ever said. We got orders and dropped over borders. When we were done, we’d make it back to base.”
Cort looks at the colonel. “That’s normal shit?”
The colonel isn’t happy but nods. “I had a team but knew two operators that ran with small teams. Delta Force does highly classified ops that are known only to a few. Smaller team Black Ops operators are few, highly specialized, focused and deadly without carrying shame or blame. They’re multi-use. Meaning some operatives were trained for use by other branches and agencies.”
I nod my head. Delta isn’t a job we talk about. I give him what I can. “We weren’t ever that big. I only ran classified, never a team. It was me and a K-9 until they pulled me to EU then it was me and my two in training. We had one year of training but that was while working. They were trained in all I had through the chip.
Harky nods. “Our training was on the job too, Boss. They’re fucked-up but we made it. Some dogs and handlers didn’t make it out.”
I nod raising the bed higher. “We saw a whole unit implode before they shut it all down. I was hit then discharged but remember 22 K-9s and eleven handlers died from some kind of overload or something. My partners helped me piece it together. We all kept memories but until we put it together, not one of us had it alone. We were gassed and left in Pakistan. A French SF team got me to a plane headed to Germany with my partners. We owed time but they let us go with honorable discharges instead of medical leave. They figured they’d get rid of us in private but we didn’t make it easy.”The new teams had Delta Operatives that shouldn’t have been mixed in with their untrained turncoats. Those operators helped us out when we needed it.
“Brolin?” Harky asks. It takes me a second to realize he means the French GIGN.
I shake my head no. “I heard of him but no. Bastille was the Commander. He was GIGN too, I think, everything is hazy from then. They transferred me at an airfield and had to get back for a mission.”
Harky nods but doesn’t add whatever he’s holding. At a guess, he’ll be here to talk again.
“All the dogs you named are here. We run regular rescue missions for them and with them.” Cort has me turning back his way.
“I’m glad they made it out. Zeus was a name I heard but didn’t know he was cyborg.”
Alder shakes his head. “Cyborg wrong. Prosthetic. No change to mind. Change to fix injury.”
Harky catches my attention with his nod. “He was caught in a blast and lost his leg. Alder fixed him up with the leg and more technology geared for him. He was my second in, so he made colonel and is the Lead for all K-9s here.”
I smile down at the K-9. “Glad you made it back for this.”
He huffs at me. “Chuff, Harky calls it,” Chris corrects me.
“Okay.”
The giant doesn’t care. “So, you’re not from here? You have no accent at all.”
I smile at Cort. “It was trained out of me. I was born here but raised in Scotland with my uncle who was military. My parents died when I was young. I went to Stanford and joined as an officer doing basic in California then Virginia, North Carolina and Florida for different agencies and branches, but I was shipped out before the ceremony every time.”
