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Dani’s voice was professionally steady. “We’ve got this. Rattlesnakes have a low death rate, about twenty percent in dogs. This isn’t like some of the snakes in your part of the world. The biggest danger is if Max was bitten in the tongue or eye. Let’s check those out first. You’ve had plenty of K9 first aid classes, and you know the drill. As you move slowly and thoroughly over the entire surface of Max’s body, you’re going to palpate—I know it’s tough for a dog dad to do. Lots of emotion. I want you to remove his collar and hold it between your chest and chin. As you move around his body, I’m going to use the camera feed to be a second set of eyes.”
Max was happily chewing his ball, and Halo thought that was for the best. He pulled his headlamp from the ruck, tugged it over his head, and tightened down the elastic strap. He then unclasped Max’s tracking collar, lengthened the strap, and wrapped that around his head. “Can you see?”
“Affirmative. Okay, he wouldn’t be chewing the ball like that if he’d been bitten on the tongue. As you palpate, you’re looking for anything red or swollen. Move the hair out of the way to see if you can find puncture marks from the fangs. Most likely, you would see blood, sometimes quite a lot of blood. You’re looking for any signs of pain. These working dogs are stoic, so watch for him to stop chewing and look around at you.”
Halo did as he was told, working methodically over Max’s side, his tummy, the other side, head, and backside. Max seemed to delight in the extra long time he got with his ball.
“Max just walked up to the rattlesnake and bit just above its head?” Dani asked. “I’m trying to imagine a scenario that put the snake and dog into that position. I’ve seen enough. You can get his collar back on.”
“I have no idea,” Halo said, replacing the comms unit around Max’s neck. “Maybe they took a tape of the camera feed?”
“I think you’re good to get back on task,” Dani said. “Watch Max. If you see any signs of vomiting or diarrhea, I need you to call it in. We’ll go from there. Radio me if you have any concerns, anything that has Max acting out of the norm.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Halo was well aware that Mrs. Haze was out here in the woods with the same kinds of hazards as he’d face today—bears, venomous snakes, dangerous terrain, and an approaching storm. Add to that the confusion that put her up on this slope in the first place. But he took a moment to let his heart reseat. There was no room for mistakes that would pull eyes and resources away from Mrs. Haze should either Max or he need assistance.
Halo put his head down on Max’s scruff and breathed the scent of dog fur. When he came up, he held his hand under Max’s mouth. “Release.” The slobber-covered ball dropped onto Halo’s palm, and Halo shoved it into his pocket. “Good job, mate.” Halo stood and pulled out the scent source to get Max back on task.
With a few chuffs into the bag, a few sniffs into the air, and a few circles over the ground, Max was back on the trail. And Halo was going to do whatever it took to stay close enough to keep an eagle eye on Max’s safety. And, as the air rumbled with thunder, to press forward and find Grammie.
3
It wasn’t five minutes after Halo had whipped the snake into the distance that Max, once again, stopped in his tracks.
A massive tangle of stems and leaves formed a lattice on which thick curtains of thorns turned the vegetation into a seemingly impenetrable mass. Max trotted to the left and right, looking over the vegetative structure.
Halo wasn’t sure why Max had lifted his nose off the trail and into the wind. Normally, Max traced the scent around the impediment. Could it be something caught on his radar that needed identification—another snake that had been fun for him, or maybe that bear from earlier?
He was about to call Max over to offer him some water, a pet, and then another sniff of the scent source when Max let out a whine. Flattening himself into a pancake, Maxed used his back legs to scuff himself under the matted leaves and out of sight.
Pressing the button on his sat phone. “Halo for Bob.”
“Go for Bob.” The operations manager’s voice crackled with static.
“Max disappeared into a hill of vegetation. I’m sending you a picture. Can you identify this plant for me?”
Today on the mountain, they’d clawed their way over the rocks, batted away swarms of gnats, blisters rubbed Halo’s heels from the new uniform boots, and all of that was cake compared to the dense, seemingly impenetrable tangle that was in front of him. Halo waited for his low-res photo to transfer to Headquarters and for the AI assistive technology to help them decipher what was there. The static on the line was getting louder as the cloud cover thickened the sky above him.
This was the hour of desperation. He viscerally felt the seconds spinning toward chaos—the moment the sky would dump down on them, and their opportunity to save Mrs. Haze would vanish.
If Max crawled under this bush because he was tired or distracted, Halo could understand it; they’d pushed hard for hours now without a break. “But it would be bloody terrible timing, mate,” Halo muttered under his breath.
“Bob to Halo. What you’ve got there, brother, is an unholy marriage of rhododendron bush and sweetbriar, the two banes of mountainside search and rescue here in Virginia. I’ve actually never seen it that big and dense. Max is in the middle of that?”
“Affirmative.”
“You might be on top of our missing person. That kind of natural mantrap stops people with a dementia diagnosis in their tracks.”
“How’s that?” Halo crouched, inspecting the ground for signs that someone had passed this way. He found nothing. Of course, with the wind picking up, making the leaves skitter about, he didn’t expect to find anything obvious.
“When people with dementia wander, they typically move in a straight line until they get stuck. For example, if they hit a hard surface, a tree trunk, or a rock, they’ll ping pong off and keep going in the new direction. But if they don’t encounter resistance, they continue forward. That’s why you were told that every bush needs a thorough check. Especially briars. The thorns snag the clothes. That’s where we end up finding our lost subjects —bound up in the bushes. See what Max says. But if he’s interested in that area, that vegetation needs a thorough search. Over.”
“Copy. Out.” Halo now understood the thickness of the gloves and wraparound goggles. He was pulling his pruners from his pack when Max’s tail emerged first, and then he wriggled his way out from under the vegetation.
Max had that intensity in his eyes that he got when he found his scent. Plopping onto his haunches in front of Halo, his tail swishing excitedly over the ground. This was it. Max found something significant. “What have you got, boy?” Halo held his breath.
What happened next was the crucial information.
