The Power of Three: A Rex Dalton Thriller by JC Ryan

Author:JC Ryan [Ryan, JC]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

22

Outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, 3:00 p.m., June 24

IT WOULD BE hours before it was dark enough to take Digger through the streets of the neighborhood. After their lunch, Rex decided to sleep for another few hours. The emotional turmoil caused by the loss of his friends and the realization of the betrayal in the last four days, accompanied by the reversal of his waking and sleeping hours and general sleep deprivation, were taking their toll. It wasn’t so much that he couldn’t handle it – over the years he had certainly proven he could – as that he wasn’t as sharp and ready as he would have liked to be. One small slip on his side could mean the end of him. However, over the past four days he had come to understand what it really meant when Trevor told him that Digger was an extension of him, and that well-trained military dogs were one of the biggest force-multipliers that a foot soldier could hope for. If it was not for Digger, Rex would have postponed the mission for a few more days until he was in better shape.

Digger didn’t object to another nap, either. Rex had observed that Digger seemed ready, willing, and able to sleep any time he was given the chance. Smart dog. Just like a Marine, sleep when you get the chance. You don’t know when you will get the next one, he reflected, as his eyes closed.

Another three hours passed before he woke feeling much more rested and primed for action than he had in the last four days. But the end of twilight was still a couple of hours away, and he’d use those to make the best plan he could without closer observation. Before thinking about anything else, he inspected Digger’s harness, which he’d taken off a couple of days before. He didn’t have a tablet to test the camera.

But the voice coms units were intact. Those didn’t require the tablet to work. Rex placed the mini earphones in Digger’s ear. He tested it by going into another room and saying, “Digger, come,” in a low voice. Ten seconds later, the dog bounded into the room and sat in front of him, smiling like he usually did when he surprised Rex.

“Good boy!” Rex crowed. So that would help some, at least. “Go back to bed, buddy. I have some plans to work out.”

Digger pointed his ears forward when he heard ‘work’, but he seemed to understand it was not a command or an offer right then. He turned and padded back to the other room. Rex waited a beat and then went back in to see if Digger had gotten on the bed. He had.

Rex concluded that Digger did indeed understand ordinary speech to some extent. He accepted commands within sentences and differentiated between commands and when the same words were being used in conversation. Rex’s respect for his intelligence grew another notch, and for the first time, he truly believed he and Digger could form a team.

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