Silent Creed Read online

  Instead of telling Jason this, Creed told him, “My dad committed suicide.”

  Jason stared at him. It wasn’t exactly what the kid had expected of this conversation, but he didn’t seem thrown by it at all. Finally he nodded and said, “Because of your sister?”

  This time Creed was surprised.

  “How do you know about my sister? Did Hannah tell you?”

  Jason shook his head. “She didn’t need to tell me. All you have to do is Google your name.”

  Creed’s sister, Brodie, had disappeared when she was eleven and Creed was fourteen. His dad was driving them back home, a daylong road trip from their grandmother’s house. His mom had stayed to take care of his grandmother, who had been sick. They stopped at a busy rest area because Brodie needed to use the restroom. Creed’s last image of his sister was of her skipping in the rain, the puddles lit up with orange and red neon from the reflections of eighteen-wheelers’ running lights and the dozens of brake lights.

  “How’d he do it?”

  Appeared the kid had very little manners.

  Creed glanced down and saw that both Grace and Bolo had lain down at his feet. Grace, however, was watching him. Of all his dogs, she seemed the most sensitive to his moods. She looked anxious. He dropped his right hand and she nudged it.

  Finally Jason realized his mistake. “Sorry. Just seems like if people talked about it more they might not actually do it.”

  “Are you thinking about doing it?”

  Another rescue crew came into the cafeteria, adding noise and distraction, but Jason kept his eyes on Creed’s and Creed could see the answer.

  “You accepted a puppy from me,” Creed told him. He leaned down and scratched Grace behind the ears. “I understood you’d be around to take care of him.”

  “A dog?” Jason half snorted, half chuckled, like he didn’t think Creed was serious.

  “There’s been a time or two that these dogs were the only reason I stuck around.”

  Jason got quiet and eyed him suspiciously, as if still waiting for a punch line.

  “You don’t owe Hannah a thing, and you certainly don’t owe me, but you have an obligation to Scout. Yeah, a dog.” He sat up and leaned his elbows on the table, hands wrapped around his mug again. “You take a dog in, you earn his trust, his unconditional love. If you think there’s a chance that you might not be sticking around, then you need to give him back to me.”

  “Seriously?”

  Creed held his eyes, saw that what he was presenting was actually a decision for Jason to make, despite his attempt to make light of it now.

  “Yeah, I’m serious. Most of my dogs have already been abandoned in some way. You need to remember when I found that puppy he was stuffed into a burlap bag with his siblings, ready to be tossed into the river. If you’re planning on offing yourself and abandoning that dog again, you might as well give him back now.”

  Jason’s eyes flitted away, suddenly interested in the rescue members shedding gear and clanking trays and silverware. He looked at Creed again and there was still too much curiosity when he asked, “Did you see your dad do it?”

  Creed wondered if the kid had heard a word he’d said because he certainly didn’t seem to take any of it seriously.

  “No,” he told Jason, “but I was the one who found him.”

  Creed saw Oliver Vance across the room. When he spotted Creed he waved at him. He had shed his gear and, though still a giant of a man, he looked half normal. He made his way toward them.

  Creed put his mug on the table with an exaggerated tap and told Jason, “Time to work.”

  “How are you doing?” Vance asked, pulling up one of the metal folding chairs. He swung his leg over it like he was saddling a horse, sitting on it backward so he could lean his arms on the back.

  “I feel like I rolled down a mountain,” Creed told him.

  The big man laughed, loud and hard.

  “Actually, the mountain rolled on top of you.”

  “Oliver Vance, this is one of my trainers, Jason Seaver.”

  “Call me Ollie,” he said, holding out his hand to shake Jason’s, and when he realized Jason’s right hand wasn’t there, Vance didn’t flinch. He simply switched and offered his left one.

  Then he looked at Creed, not wasting time and getting down to business. “I heard that your Mr. Logan wants you back up there to recover those bodies we found. Last night we pulled two more people alive out of the rubble of what used to be their home. They’re pretty beat-up but there’s a good chance they’ll make it.”

  “That’s great,” Jason said.

  Vance’s eyes stayed on Creed’s. “Just got word that an eighty-two-year-old woman across the bridge over in the Hillcrest development’s been missing since the first night. They got some flooding over there but houses are intact. None of the properties were affected by the slide. She has dementia. They think she might have walked off, looking for her daughter. They live together and the daughter got caught up in the downpours. Got home late. Found the front door left open. Family’s been searching the woods. No sign of her. That’s two nights she’s been out in the dark, alone, confused, lost. Temperature’s supposed to drop tonight so we can add cold to that list.”

  “If she’s still alive,” Creed said.

  “That’s true. I’ve got a few hours before I have to get back to work. I thought I’d run over there.” Vance glanced around the cafeteria. A group was leaving and waved at him. He waved back. “All I know is there’s a chance one of your dogs might be able to find her. Save her life if she is still alive. Those bodies Logan wants you to find . . . Hey, I know he’s paying you and you gotta do the job.”

  Vance looked around again, and Creed wasn’t sure if he was expecting Logan to walk in the door at any minute. Then his eyes came back and locked on Creed’s as he said, “All I’m saying is that those dead guys aren’t going anywhere. Maybe they can wait a little while longer.”

  24.

  Washington, D.C.

  Frankie Sadowski hated waiting. Butterflies had invaded his stomach. The palms of his hands perspired as he clutched the rim of his hat. His daughter, Susan, sat quietly by his side. They were told to stay outside the hearing room and asked not to wander far from the corridor. He tried to keep his mind focused on why he was there in the first place. The reason he had agreed to do this.

  It all started with the reunion. They’d grown into old men who complained about their various health issues as though their surgeries were badges of honor. Frankie smiled at that. Once upon a time this same group bragged about their children, their promotions, even their golf handicaps. But this reunion was a litany of ailments. It wasn’t long before the eight men realized each of them had gone through or suffered from too many of the same things: pulmonary infections, chronic respiratory problems, and pulmonary fibrosis. Duke Hutchins had had five heart bypass surgeries. Calvin Clark was getting ready for his fourth.

  At first they had laughed. By the end of the evening they were elbowing each other in smaller groups, whispering their suspicions. Was it possible that their time in the service had had anything to do with so many illnesses?

  Frankie shared their concerns with Susan, who was a nurse. Immediately she said it was a strange coincidence. She started doing research. Frankie had never even heard of SHAD until she explained that it was an acronym for Shipboard Hazard and Defense. The tests were part of Project 112 and were conducted secretly from 1962 until around 1974. She told him about veterans getting sick.

  The government, of course, had denied any such tests until 2002. Since then Congress had held hearings, ordered study after study, tried to enact legislation—but all of it had simply put off doing anything about the servicemen who had been exposed. And consequently, it allowed the VA to deny those servicemen any benefits or compensation.

  Frankie figured they would just keep putting
it off until all of them were dead. He wasn’t sure how anyone had managed to bring it back to life. Another congressional hearing. Another possibility of getting some help for his friends.

  Frankie’s buddies had christened him their crusader. Slapped him on his back and wished him well. They even took up a collection among themselves to pay for Frankie’s flight to D.C. He felt bad about that. None of them had extra money sitting around. He hadn’t asked for their money or their trust. He simply wanted answers, and he wanted his friends to finally get the medical benefits they deserved.

  Frankie started coughing and Susan offered him a bottle of water. He took it and sipped. The cough had gotten worse. He hadn’t told Susan about the blood he’d hacked up the other day. At Segway House he was afraid Hannah would notice that her little dog named Grace could obviously smell his cancer. Hannah had barely finished telling him that the dog was capable of doing just that when Frankie noticed Grace staring at him, long and hard.

  Now all Frankie cared about was that if he could help Gus and the others, then this would be worth it. He thought about Gus being worried about his grandson. The kid had come home from Afghanistan without one hand. What they’d been through might have caused them some health issues, but at least all his buddies were in one piece. He couldn’t imagine going through life with only one hand.

  Maybe they were silly to be fixated on a stupid government test that had been kept secret for sixty years. Even Gus had said that if they were able to keep secret who killed Kennedy for this long, how did they ever expect to bust open Project 112?

  Frankie shook his head thinking about Gus. He knew his friend didn’t have much time left, either. Frankie knew Gus was dying, too. But he knew this not because Gus had told him. He wasn’t sure Gus even knew. Nor did he know it because of his daughter, who was a nurse at the care facility that Gus went to. If she did know, she’d never divulge that information to her father.

  No, Frankie knew that Gus was dying because that’s what the man from the government had told him. The man who had visited him a week ago and suggested what Frankie should and shouldn’t say during his testimony.

  Frankie and his friends knew the government might try to discourage them from testifying. They had battled with their VA for years now. And they knew there were others like them who had been fighting this fight for many more years. All of them had been denied benefits, first because the government denied Project 112 and Project SHAD even existed, then because the government’s studies claimed those projects did not hurt any military personnel. Of course, their own studies would not show any evidence despite private studies showing the opposite.

  So Frankie wasn’t surprised to have someone visit him and try to guide his testimony. He didn’t care. It was too late to worry about himself. But he didn’t want the others to worry, so Frankie hadn’t told Gus about the man. He hadn’t told Susan, either. In fact, he hadn’t told a single soul.

  25.

  Senator Ellie Delanor tried not to be distracted by the reporters and cameras. They were sprawled below in the tight area between the row of senators on the dais and the table where witnesses would testify. Some of them looked ridiculous squatting or sitting on the floor, bracing their foot-long lenses. She hid her delight in their discomfort. It was nice to have them focused on someone else for a change.

  “To fully understand Project 112,” Dr. Hess was telling the committee, as if he were a professor in control of a classroom instead of an expert who had been subpoenaed to be there, “you must understand the nature of the world at that time. There was a deep, almost visceral, distrust after World War Two. Russia had been an ally out of necessity only. But the Russians were happy to split the spoils of war. For the most part we imported German scientists and their minds. The Russians got the laboratories and they literally disassembled them piece by piece and transferred them to places inside their borders. We had no idea what may have been left in those labs.”

  He reached for his glass of water, slowly taking a sip as if he wanted the committee to sip on that last bit of information. When Senator John Quincy started to say something, Dr. Hess held up his index finger and stopped the senator cold.

  Ellie couldn’t help being fascinated by the colonel’s air of authority. At first glance he looked like a stodgy old man, his shoulders sagging as if from the weight of all the medals that decorated his dress blues. His full head of hair had gone thin; the feathery wisps barely covered the brown spots on his scalp that matched the ones on the back of his hands. But there was something about him—the piercing blue eyes, the confident gestures—that demanded respect.

  “We knew the Russians were way ahead of us in the chemical and biological warfare department. The Cold War was something no one had ever experienced. Two countries literally had the ability to wipe each other off the face of the earth and take everyone else with them. We were all looking for alternatives to nuclear weapons. President Kennedy ordered his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara—”

  “With all due respect, Colonel Hess,” Senator Quincy interrupted, and this time managed to ignore the scowl he received, “I don’t believe we brought you here today for a history lesson.”

  There were a few nervous smiles and nods as the cameras turned. Even the reporters seemed to be waiting for some kind of confrontation.

  “How old were you, Mr. Quincy, in 1962?”

  “I’m not sure how that’s relevant. I certainly wasn’t old enough to enlist, if that’s your point.”

  “I’m guessing you were in elementary school, perhaps?”

  “Actually, if you must know, I was five years old. Not quite in school yet.”

  “Ah, I see. That explains things.” Hess was now nodding and smiling, and Senator Quincy suddenly looked uncomfortable, as though he’d missed out on a joke. “You never experienced the school drills of the 1960s, where children were instructed at the blaring sound of an alarm to climb underneath their desks in preparation for an attack. You probably don’t remember the evening news showing soldiers slogging through the jungle or the daily casualty report from Vietnam. You have no idea, Mr. Quincy, what kind of fear and panic existed at that time because you were simply a child. But let me tell you as someone who was there, someone who helped prepare us for a new generation of threat—we were in the race of our lives.”

  Ellie, along with the other senators, kept quiet. She wasn’t born until a decade later. Project 112—from the little homework she had done—existed between 1962 and 1974. As far as she was concerned, these hearings seemed more for show than anything else. Veterans who were unknowingly a part of Project 112 had been attempting to get VA medical benefits and disability since 2002, when the Department of Defense finally acknowledged this project even existed.

  There had already been hearings that produced studies that later went nowhere. A legislative bill passed the House in 2008, only to die in the Senate. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t bothered to read beyond those facts. She already knew this hearing would most likely be only for show, too. And that’s why she had signed up. Why she had fought to be included. She needed to look like she was fighting for veteran voters without really engaging in any controversy that could alienate her from the powers that be within Congress. It was a safe political bet for an embattled incumbent who needed to look like she was working hard for her constituents.

  “These tests that a handful of veterans are complaining about nearly forty to fifty years later were not conducted with the intention of hurting them. These tests were to determine the vulnerability of U.S. warships to attacks with chemical and biological agents that we understood could wipe out more than just our troops if used by a willing enemy. These weapons could wipe out entire cities. So excuse me, Senator Quincy, if I insist that knowing a bit about history is important in this matter.”

  Without raising his voice Hess had managed to deliver a scolding that silenced the room. Except for the clicks of the ca
meras. Hess milked it, waiting patiently with a stone-cold stare that made Quincy squirm and shift in his chair. Ellie watched him give a slight tug on his collar, as if it were choking him to release the four words he finally said: “By all means, continue.”

  26.

  Haywood County, North Carolina

  Daniel Tate had discovered an entire tunnel system. Fractured walls and splintered furniture made it a challenge, as did the many cables and electrical wires tangled in clumps or strung from one side to another. Ceiling tiles dangled, and in some spots he could see all the way up to the clouds. He climbed over burst pipes that spewed disgusting sewer mixtures.

  This was nothing.

  He’d been through much worse—a bombed village outside of Baghdad. He remembered the soles of his boots melting from walking on the charred remains. As long as he lived he’d never forget the smell of burnt flesh.

  Earlier, searching through a caved-in storage room, Tate had hit the jackpot. He found night vision goggles, something that looked like a Kevlar vest but was lighter, and a helmet with two different lighting options. With a flick of a switch he could change from LED to infrared. The helmet and the goggles allowed him to see whatever he wanted without filling his hands with a flashlight. And he needed his hands to pull and shove and push as he made his way through the tunnel system.