Chapter 10 - Bloodhounds Turned Hunters
At 0200 hours, the Pacific surf off Coronado Island was black, churning with a cold, relentless tide that crashed against the concrete sea walls of the Naval Amphibious Base.
The water was forty-nine degrees.
We slipped off the back of a rented commercial fishing skiff half a mile off the shoreline—Parker remaining at the helm while Sarah, myself, and the three dogs slipped silently into the swells.
To an ordinary observer, Belgian Malinois are land predators, but Dole’s trio had been conditioned for maritime insertions since they were six months old. With neoprene float vests secured to their chests and low-drag covers over their tracking tags, they cut through the black ocean like three silent torpedoes, swimming in a tight diamond formation around me.
Thor swam at my right shoulder, his powerful hindquarters driving through the chop without a splash. Every thirty seconds, his snout would break the surface of the salt spray, clear his nostrils with a silent exhale, and dip back down into alignment.
We hit the mouth of the old industrial intake conduit fifty yards off the southern perimeter wall. The heavy iron security gate was submerged under four feet of surging tide, encrusted with barnacles and sea kelp.
I pulled a pair of pneumatic cable-cutters from my leg harness, dove beneath the black surface, and went to work on the rusted retention bolts. The saltwater burned my eyes, the cold gnawing at my fingers until they were clumsy and numb.
On the third bolt, the tool slipped, clanging against the iron pipe.
Above me, a blinding sweep of a patrol boat’s halogen searchlight cut through the surface of the water, illuminating the kelp beds in electric blue-green light.
I froze against the submerged concrete, my lungs burning for oxygen. If the boat's sonar or thermal imaging caught our heat signatures on the surface, the patrol would open up with heavy caliber deck guns before we could surface.
Above the water, Thor reacted.
Instead of diving, he swam directly into the fringe of the light cone, thrashing his paws intentionally against the surface, letting out a loud, frantic canine yelp—mimicking the distress of a stray domestic dog that had fallen into the harbor from a civilian pier.
"What is that?" a sailor's voice called over the rumble of the patrol boat's idling diesel engines fifty feet away. "Is that a stray dog in the channel?"
"Looks like a shepherd mix," another voice replied from the boat's wheelhouse. "Must have come off the marina docks down by the hotel. Sweep the light over toward the jetty, see if there are more."
The searchlight swung away from the conduit opening, tracking Thor as he deliberately paddled toward the outer rocks of the jetty, drawing the patrol boat's attention thirty yards away from our infiltration point.
"Good boy," I whispered beneath my breath as I surfaced in the shadows of the intake pipe, gasping for air.
With one final, violent wrench, the rusted gate broke free, swinging open into the dark mouth of the conduit.
I gave two sharp clicks on my tactical whistle—a sound undetectable to human ears over the crashing surf, but carrying crystal clear through the water to a Malinois.
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Fifty yards away, Thor dove beneath the surface of the black water, broke contact with the patrol boat's light, and reappeared three seconds later at the mouth of the pipe, slipping inside behind Ares and Zeus like a ghost slipping through the wall of a tomb.
The pack was inside the wire.
