had been churned up by the undulating shocks.
Wes forced himself to concentrate on what they had to do. Luckily for the team, there was a construction company less than a quarter mile away, down a small side street. Turning to blond-haired Sergeant Barry Cove, who was in his late twenties, Wes said, “Sergeant, you and Lance Corporal Stevens go down to that construction company and see what you can find. Find the owner, if he’s around. If he’s not, break into the office and locate keys for whatever equipment he’s got inside that cyclone-fence area. Get the following, if you can find it—a cherry picker, because we’re going to need a crane and hook to start lifting off the top debris on the Hoyt to try and find survivors. A front-end loader with a bucket would also be useful to us. I want a list of everything he has. If you do locate him, send him to me. Right now, martial law is imposed, and we’re the law. What we need, we get. Be diplomatic with him, if he’s there. If not, take what we need and leave a note. Bring that equipment up here to the Hoyt.” Wes pointed to the wrecked hotel, the ruins of which stood on the corner opposite them.
Sergeant Cove nodded. “Yes, sir!” And the two men started off at a trot down the pulverized street.
Wes glanced at Callie. Though he was feeling shocked by all of this, one quick look at her calm features soothed him somewhat. She was gazing toward the collapsed hotel, her full lips parted, the pain very real in her huge blue eyes. His gaze settled on his other two men, Corporal Felipe Orlando and Private Hugh Bertram.
“Corporal, take Private Bertram with you and canvass the hotel with this map.” Wes handed the corporal one of the tightly rolled blueprints from beneath his arm. Orlando had worked with him for nearly a year helping to build roads and bridges at Camp Reed, which was why he and Wes had been specially assigned to the base. Orlando was in his late twenties, married, and the father of three beautiful little girls. At Wes’s words, his round coppery face lit up and he nodded briskly and took the map.
“Yes, sir. Where are we putting the H.Q.?”
Wes grinned slightly and nodded to Orlando. They needed a central location to erect tents and store food before they could get busy with the rescue effort. Looking around, Wes saw a car that had been knocked around and smashed by several falling palm trees right in front of the collapsed Hoyt. With a little cleaning, the broad hood of the car could be used as a table.
“Near that blue SUV, Corporal. Once you finish canvassing the hotel, you two can get the tents up, store our supplies and get us operational. That will be our ops center until we can get reinforcement in here.” There was a convoy starting out of Camp Reed, heavy trucks and Humvees bringing more tents, MREs—Meals Ready to Eat—and anything else they might need for their stay. This was a field operation, and everyone knew it was going to be a long, arduous one. Supplies that were coming to each grid area would help the local people survive.
“Yes, sir, that looks like a real good area.” Orlando turned to Hugh Bertram, a soft-spoken, red-haired Southerner from Georgia. “Come on, Bertram. We got work to do.”
The private nodded and saluted and, turning on his heel, followed the corporal, who was trotting toward the hotel.
“That leaves me,” Callie said as Wes’s warm green gaze settled on her. She offered him a slight smile, feeling as if the sun were shining around her. Throughout the trip in the Huey, she’d sat beside Wes. And she had been privileged to wear a set of headphones hooked up to the intercom. For the entire trip, she was able to converse easily with Wes without having to shout over the roar of the helo.
He hadn’t known much about quake rescue dogs or what she did for a living. Callie had filled him in as quickly as possible. Every time he settled his full attention on her, her heart beat harder in her chest. She couldn’t explain her reaction. Never had a man’s look affected her as much as his did. When his mouth crooked slightly upward at the corners, she felt a little breathless because he was smiling at her. The look that lingered in his sharply assessing eyes made her feel giddy and unsettled at the same time.
Callie decided crazy things happened during disasters and her feelings could only be attributed to her skewed, unreliable emotional state. During times of trauma, most people were in shock and nothing made sense to them. Even though she was a trained rescuer, that didn’t mean she could just shut off her emotions and do her job; far from it. Callie had lost count of how many times she’d cried while out on a grid search for victims. Whenever she thought about what the families of the victims went through, she was ripped apart inside. No matter how difficult it made her job, Callie didn’t ever want to lose her capacity for sympathy and empathy with others; she would rather suffer the consequences. She knew herself well enough to know that her reaction to Wes was not normal, and probably a symptom of what she called “earthquake mode” emotions.
Maybe Wes was in the same mode; she wasn’t sure. As he stood there, tall and straight, his broad shoulders thrown back as he assessed the Hoyt, he seemed rock solid emotionally. Callie was grateful for his quiet, unobtrusive style of command. Right now, with panic rampant, a calm voice and clear thinking were hard to find. She was glad he was in charge of this operation.
“Let’s get over to the hood of our H.Q.,” he told her wryly. “You need to commence a grid search in that mess, right?” he asked, hooking a thumb toward the pulverized Hoyt Hotel.
Callie nodded and fell into step with Wes. Dusty got to his feet and walked obediently at her side, his body swinging comfortingly against her leg. “Yes, the search grid has to be overlaid on your blueprint of the hotel, and then I’ll search each square foot with Dusty. Hopefully, he’ll locate someone who’s still alive. He’ll also pick up the scent of those who have died. He’s been trained to whine if the person is dead and to bark if he finds someone alive. If they’re dead, I’ll put a bright-red plastic square in that place so everyone knows there’s a body under the rubble. If we find someone alive—” she gave him a hopeful look “—I’ll be radioing down to you and asking you to bring the construction equipment to try and help us unearth the person ASAP.”
Wes nodded, absorbing the information. “I hope you find a lot of live people. Our number-one priority here is to recover survivors. Secondly, we’re charged with getting tents, food and water to the people of this area, as we get supplies delivered here.”
“You’ve got a tough job ahead of you,” Callie admitted. Their arms brushed together as they walked. She moved away slightly to ensure that didn’t happen again. Though she liked touching him, Callie knew it wasn’t appropriate. Still, her heart had pounded a little harder in her breast when she’d made contact with Wes. And he didn’t seem to mind the accidental touch. In fact, he’d slanted a glance down at her, a slight hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
He snorted softly now. “I’m a construction guy, not a rescue trained military officer. I hope I can do justice to this mess, but I’m not sure.” He held her gaze. “And I’m looking to you for help, Callie. You’re the real disaster expert here. I hope you don’t mind if I call you often on the radio and ask for help and guidance when I need it?”
What a delightful surprise, Callie thought, happy that Wes didn’t have trouble relying on her. Usually that was the case when she was paired up with a man. “Sure, I’ll try to be of help to you in any way possible, Wes. No one is ever trained well enough for something like this….” She looked around, sadness entering her voice. “No one could ever imagine the scope of this disaster. I mean…I’ve been in some pretty awful places, especially Turkey, but this is even worse because it has affected such a large region—not just one city, a few square miles. No, this is a horse of a different color, Wes, and frankly, I don’t think General Wilson at the base realizes how bad it is—yet. He will.” Lifting her arm, she gestured toward the suburbs surrounding the Hoyt. “This is a nightmare come true. And we’re
