Part 2
“You want to explain to me, Nurse Jenkins, how a Level Two medical staffer knows how to visually identify PETN explosives and a mercury tilt-switch?”
Base Commander Admiral Vance stood over me in the makeshift command center, his face flushed with anger and suspicion. Around us, alarms blared. The EOD team was out on the loading dock, sweating through their blast suits as they worked on the device I had found. Titan sat pressed firmly against my leg, his heavy head resting on my knee as if he knew my world was actively falling apart.
I wiped a streak of grease off my forehead, looking up at the Admiral. There was no point in lying anymore. The quiet life I had built was over.
“My real name is Special Agent Sarah Jenkins,” I said, my voice steady, though my hands shook. “Until four years ago, I was the lead Explosives Investigator and K9 Handler for the ATF. I resigned my commission and transferred to the Navy Medical Corps to disappear.”
Vance’s eyes narrowed. “Disappear from what?”
“From him,” I said, pointing toward the loading dock. “The man who built that bomb. Marcus Thorne. He was a freelance munitions expert for the cartel. Four years ago, I raided his compound. He rigged the building. The blast killed my entire strike team and my previous K9.” I swallowed hard, feeling Titan shift his weight against me. “Thorne was supposed to have died in that fire. But that device out there… the wiring, the silver coin… it’s his signature. He’s alive. And he knows I’m here.”
Vance stared at me in stunned silence, but before he could process the revelation, a deafening CRACK echoed through the compound.
It wasn’t an explosion. It was sniper fire.
The heavy glass window of the command center shattered inward, showering us in razor-sharp fragments. “Get down!” I screamed, physically tackling Vance to the floor as a second bullet ripped through the drywall where his head had just been. Titan barked viciously, stepping over my body in a protective stance.
Outside, the base erupted into chaos. Gunfire rattled from the perimeter fence near the medical wing.
“Status! I need a sitrep!” Vance roared into his radio, scrambling behind a reinforced steel desk.
“Multiple breaches at the east gate!” a frantic voice crackled back. “We have a shooter inside the perimeter! He’s heading for the trauma ward!”
My blood ran cold. The trauma ward. That was where all the bedridden patients were. That was where my team was.
“The bomb on the dock,” I realized, the pieces slamming together in my mind. “It was a diversion. Thorne didn’t come here to blow up a loading dock. He came here to butcher my people while security was distracted.”
I didn’t wait for Vance’s orders. I grabbed a fallen security guard’s sidearm from the floor, racked the slide, and bolted out the door into the chaotic hallway. Titan was right on my heels, instantly falling into his tactical heel position.
The corridor leading to the medical wing was filled with thick, gray smoke. Fire alarms shrieked. As I rounded the corner, I saw Ramirez, a young nineteen-year-old combat medic, sprinting toward the ward with a fire extinguisher.
“Ramirez, stop!” I yelled.
But it was too late. A tall figure stepped out of the shadows at the end of the hall, dressed in tactical black, holding an assault rifle. Marcus Thorne. He looked older, half his face scarred by the fire from four years ago, but his eyes were exactly as cold as I remembered.
He didn’t even hesitate. He raised the rifle and fired.
Ramirez screamed, his body violently spinning as a bullet tore through his thigh, dropping him instantly to the linoleum floor in a pool of blood. Thorne chuckled, a sickening, raspy sound that echoed over the alarms. He slowly kicked a metal canister down the hall toward us. It clattered to a stop just a few feet from Ramirez. A secondary explosive.
“Hello, Sarah,” Thorne’s voice slithered through the smoke. “I told you I’d come back for you.”
Ramirez was bleeding out fast, clutching his leg, right next to a bomb. Thorne had his rifle raised. If I moved for the boy, Thorne would shoot us both. If I stayed in cover, the bomb would detonate. The walls were closing in, the smell of gunpowder choking the air, and my grip on the stolen pistol slipped with sweat.
Part 3
“Ramirez, keep pressure on it! Don’t let go!” I screamed over the blaring sirens. Blood was pulsing from his femoral artery, slicking the white hospital floor.
Thorne raised his rifle, aiming directly at my chest. “You always cared too much, Sarah. It’s what got your last team killed.”
I didn’t have a clear shot. He had body armor, and the smoke was too thick. But I had something Thorne didn’t anticipate.
“Titan, strike!” I roared.
The Doberman didn’t just run; he launched himself like a ninety-pound missile. Thorne barely had time to widen his eyes before Titan slammed into his chest, teeth sinking deep into Thorne’s forearm. The assault rifle discharged wildly into the ceiling as Thorne screamed, stumbling backward under the dog’s immense weight.
That was my window. I sprinted out of cover, ignoring Thorne entirely, and slid on my knees across the blood-slicked floor until I reached Ramirez. I holstered my weapon, ripping off my belt. “Stay with me, kid, look at me!” I yelled, wrapping the leather tightly around his upper thigh, pulling it with every ounce of strength I had to form a makeshift tourniquet. Ramirez gasped, his face ghost-white, but the violent spurting slowed.
“Get this mutt off me!” Thorne roared. He had managed to draw a combat knife with his free hand and was driving it toward Titan’s ribs.
“No!” I lunged forward, throwing my entire body weight into Thorne. My shoulder slammed into his ribs, knocking him off balance. The knife clattered to the floor. We grappled fiercely, his heavy fist connecting with my jaw, sending a flash of white-hot pain through my skull. I tasted blood, but adrenaline kept me moving. I grabbed his wrist, twisted it violently backward until I heard a sickening pop, and drove my knee straight into his stomach.
Thorne collapsed to the floor, gasping for air. Before he could recover, Titan was standing over his throat, delivering a low, guttural growl that promised absolute violence if the man twitched.
I scooped up my pistol and aimed it squarely at Thorne’s head. “It’s over, Marcus. Move, and he tears your throat out.”
Footsteps thundered down the hallway. Sergeant Hayes and heavily armed security forces swarmed the corridor. “Hold your fire! Suspect is down!” Hayes yelled, moving in to kick Thorne’s weapons away and slap heavy iron cuffs on his wrists.
I immediately dropped the gun, turning my attention back to the explosive canister Thorne had kicked down the hall. I crawled toward it. “EOD! I need EOD in the medical wing now!” I screamed into a dead guard’s radio.
“EOD is here, Jenkins,” a voice said behind me. It was the bomb squad captain. He knelt beside me, looking at the canister. “What are we looking at?”
“It’s a localized fragmentation charge. Pressure-sensitive trigger,” I said, my hands hovering over the device. “Cut the blue wire, then the yellow. Ignore the red—it’s a dummy loop. Thorne hasn’t changed his tricks in four years.”
The captain didn’t question me. He made the cuts exactly as I instructed. The small red light on the canister faded to black. The threat was neutralized.
I slumped against the wall, utterly exhausted, watching as the medics loaded Ramirez onto a stretcher. He gave me a weak thumbs-up before they wheeled him away. He was going to live.
Admiral Vance walked through the clearing smoke, surveying the handcuffed Thorne being dragged away, then looked at me and Titan. I braced myself to be fired, arrested, or court-martialed for lying on my enlistment papers.
Instead, Vance let out a long breath. “Agent Jenkins… or Nurse Jenkins. Whatever you want to call yourself. You saved this base today. You saved that boy.” He looked down at the Doberman, who had trotted over to sit proudly by my side. “And it seems to me, this dog only answers to one handler.”
I looked at Titan, running my hand over his sleek, dark head. He leaned into my touch, the wild terror from earlier completely gone, replaced by unwavering loyalty.
A month later, the Navy didn’t just let me keep Titan; they gave me a new assignment. Working alongside Miller, I opened a specialized K9 rehabilitation program on base. We paired traumatized military working dogs with wounded veterans and medics dealing with PTSD. We were a bunch of broken pieces, learning how to heal each other. I didn’t have to hide who I was anymore. I was exactly where I was meant to be.
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