“Come on, Mike. Here, boy.” Cody whistled and called to the big dog, who had run off after a rabbit.
Mike bounded up behind him, nearly knocking him over. Cody knelt and playfully patted his head. “Where’s the rabbit? I guess you failed in your mission, didn’t you? That’s okay. With all that money from the depot safe, Franklin said he’d be buying everybody steaks for a while. What do you think about that?”
The heeler licked Cody’s face.
“Yeech. You don’t have to be that appreciative.” Cody stood up and adjusted his gun across his shoulder. Nowadays, he never left the compound without it. The gun, along with the combat knife he’d retrieved from the back of the dead soldier, had become a part of him and he felt strange when the weapons weren’t with him.
It had been almost three weeks since the depot mission. Thompson had bragged on him until it became embarrassing. Franklin was proud too. Even though he didn’t say much, Cody could see it in his eyes. Cody was not proud—that is, he was proud that he’d saved Thompson, but he had dreamt several times about it, dreamt about the knife going into the soldier’s back, and he always awakened in a sweat.
Rico continued to teach him martial arts and how to use the various weapons stored in the warehouse. But Cody felt restless. His thoughts turned more and more to Sidoron’s prison camp and his plans to try and rescue the kids there.
In the afternoons he had started taking long walks with Mike. He’d discovered a small window in the basement that was just big enough for the two of them to squeeze through. When he needed to think, they slipped out into the desert to be alone.
He’d decided that he had put things off long enough. Today he had to tell Franklin about his decision to leave the organization. It would be hard. The men at the warehouse had become like a family to him. He knew Franklin would try to talk him out of it, maybe even volunteer some of the guys to go along and help.
Cody straightened. He’d just have to be firm. What they were doing at the warehouse was extremely important to the resistance effort and he couldn’t allow them to sacrifice it for his plans.
“Let’s go, Mike. I guess I better get it over with. Who knows, if things work out for me, they might even let me come back someday.”
He glanced down at the dog. His ears were pointed and the hair on his back bristled.
“What’s the matter?”
Cody listened. He could hear faint, rapid popping.
Gunfire.
It was coming from the direction of the warehouse base. He started running.