Page 20 of Sheltering Instinct

“Ramping up?” Reaper asked, dropping his bag out of the way by the door.

“A tropical storm in the Caribbean is growing in strength. Looking at the spaghetti models, I’m predicting a sizeable hurricane, maybe even a cat five. If that happens, we might be heading out on search and rescue if our clients can’t get off the island,” Noah said. “Flights are sketchy.” He nodded toward Hailey. “There’s a scramble to get hold of the few plane tickets still available. Hailey’s trying to keep families and pets together.”

Hailey sent a welcome home smile toward the three team members coming back from the Beast Mode fiasco in Texas. “The pets’ issue is the one that’s making this tough.”

“People would rather die than leave their animals behind,” Goose said, stepping around Reaper to find a seat at the end of the conference table. “It’s a given.”

“Good flight home?” Hailey asked as she uncapped a pen and turned to add information to the board.

“Good enough.” Levi dropped his bag next to Reaper’s, then stood with his hands resting on the back of one of the captain’s chairs as he looked over the information listed on the board.

All six Team Alpha handlers would deploy to the search and rescue mission on the island to rescue as many as fourteen clients who couldn’t get out in time.

Man, he itched to be out there with them. The problem for Levi was that he wouldn’t deploy anywhere without a dog.

The process was taking a lot longer than he’d anticipated. The criteria were stringent, as they should be. There was a limited pool from which Command could choose their operators, which was equally true for their dogs.

Levi could admit to being disappointed by their trip to Beast Mode. From the video, Casper had looked like a solid dog with polished skillsets. But that was the magic of editing; you could leave all the ugly parts in the garbage folder.

Noah focused on Levi, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. “Still no leash in your hands. I’m guessing things didn’t go as well as you’d hoped.”

“It was an adventure in futility,” Goose said.

“Eye-opening.” Reaper dragged a black captain’s chair from under the conference table and sat. “We’ll cross that vendor off our list. The dogs had a bunch of red flags, and the owners weren’t big on ethics.”

Levi clapped a hand on Halo’s shoulder as he passed behind his teammate to find a seat.

Hired after he retired from the Australian Commandos, Halo was the only member of Cerberus’s six-man Team Charlie in the room. Iniquus added Team Charlie to the lineup over the last few months. The new hires were getting their sea legs underthem, adjusting to their new positions, and learning to navigate the Iniquus culture.

While Levi wasn’t the last hire on the team, he was the only one without a K9. Most of the team had been out of the military long enough that they had time to train their own dogs to their own specs.

Halo and his Malinois, Max, had come on and—within the first days of fieldwork training with Panther Force in Estonia—had already saved a handful of people’s lives. Halo’s actions were no joke badass, and the bonus was that he met his fiancée when they worked through a series of disasters together. Halo said that if you can trust someone with your life, it was a bloody good base to build a future.

Levi was glad for him. He was a lucky guy.

“So what happened with the dogs? Not a good fit?” Halo pushed his paperwork out of the way so Levi could sit.

. “Not even close.” Levi crouched and reached under the table to give Halos’ doggo, Max, a scritch. “Worse than needing too much training time to get them up to snuff,” Reaper laced his fingers behind his head, his elbows wide, “those dogs would need too much unwinding from Beast Mode training before we could polish their skills.”

“That’s always three times as long,” Halo said. “And you never know when past training will pop out and bite you.”

“If it does,” Reaper agreed, “it’s always at the worst possible time.”

“What was the problem?” Noah asked.

“They were healthy, I’ll give them that,” Goose drummed his fingers on the table. “But that’s about all I’d give them. They’re not Cerberus quality.”

“No?” Noah lifted his brow. “I’m surprised to hear that. Their reputation in the industry is a good one.”

“None of the Beast Mode dogs could work off radio collar directions,” Reaper said, “or even out of sight of their handler for one.”

“And get this,” Goose added, “not a one of them had a blood bite.”

Halo canted his head. “That’s one of the first things I did with Max. I mean, why put in the time and effort to train a military K9 if you aren’t sure how he’ll respond when they get that taste? I’ve seen trained dogs become predatory after that part of their brain switched on, and their handlers lost voice control when the dog spotted prey. With dogs bred for tactical work, that’s a dangerous situation. I’m sure we all know of a dog that was put down for safety’s sake.”

“It’s unfortunate,” Reaper said. “Had I known that from the beginning, we wouldn’t have wasted our time. It goes to show you never to assume. But then, they weren’t very forthcoming about their methods and procedures. They considered everything proprietary.” Reaper pulled his ankle over his knee, resting his hand on his shins as he turned to Levi. “We regularly train our dogs with blood sleeves. In a real-world scenario, either in rescue or tactical work, there will be blood to some extent. The dogs better know how to ignore it and stay task-oriented.”

“Who donates the blood?” Levi asked.

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