Bloodhound

Ello, everybody! This is my newest thriller, called Bloodhound. Just to let you guys know; it’s based very lightly off the TV series NCIS. Isn’t that an amazing show? I’m really excited about writing this story, so I really hope that you like it. But I’m gonna need some reviews to fuel my inspiration, if you know what I mean. Thank you! This is just, mostly, an introduction chapter, so the action will come later. On to the story!

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“Laura, put it back,” Tony Smiths said to 17-year-old Laura Caldwell, walking to his cubicle and only glancing at her from the corner of his eye. Laura jumped but otherwise completely ignored him, stuffing the small red-and-white peppermints from the peppermint pretzel jar into her blue Aéropostle jacket’s front pocket. She stuffed one in her mouth, grinning triumphantly. Smiths shook his head, wondering how government programs like Operation Manticore would hire teens like Laura Caldwell.

“No. You’d be proud of me, Smiths. I only took three.” Thinking Smiths wouldn’t hear her, she added under her breath, “When you showed up.” About that time, Francis Harley walked in with a black backpack with Operation Manticore stitched in white and all-caps. Smiths did his customary whack across the back of Harley’s head. Harley glared in protest at Smiths, who merely shrugged.

Operation Manticore was a program funded by fifteen major countries that signed a pack and had special agents from the fifteen countries: The United States, China, Hungary, Great Britain, Japan, South Korea, Egypt, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Brazil, Israel, Spain, and Greece. Operation Manticore was supposed to capture and hold some of the world’s most dangerous criminal masterminds for questioning and prison care until they received their sentences of court. Laura, Smiths, and Harley were all sent from the United States, Laura holding the worldwide record for being the youngest to be accepted for Operation Manticore.

Katrina Lawless greeted them, entering from the other side. She was a Greek agent specializing in foreign criminals. She was fluent in Spanish, Greek, English, and Hebrew and spoke limited Japanese. That was what you get if you teach a seven-year-old girl French, Japanese, Spanish, Greek (Actually, Greek and English were the languages she grew up with) and Hebrew for fifteen years.

It was required for every agent to be fluent in at least two languages. Laura’s were English and Hungarian, Smiths was English and Czech, Harley was Polish, Sri Lankan and English, Kat was Greek, Hebrew, and all those other languages, and McCarter, the last of the Harpy team, was talented in Chinese, English, and Russian.

“Hello, Harley, Laura, and Smiths. Where’s McCarter?” Katrina asked, setting her backpack in her seat. Laura swallowed the rest of her mint and looked around. Katrina sighed and shook her head, settling down and digging up some papers from her black backpack.

“Right here,” Jon McCarter said cheerfully, walking in. Jon McCarter was sent from South Africa, but he had lived most of his childhood and teenage years in Scotland and was the Harpy’s technician and computer geek.

Kat, Katrina’s known nickname, Laura, Harley, McCarter, and Smiths all made up the Harpy team of Operation Manticore. Numerous other teams were spread out in the four levels of the Operation Manticore main base, not counting the sprawling basement used for autopsies and interrogation rooms. Laura was actually the team’s pathologist, but she was also the analyst for the Harpy team. Operation Manticore teams were usually compelled of five or six people; it was expected of some agents to perform multiple tasks.

“Do we have anything interesting or are we going to just hang around all day like we did this weekend?” Harley asked, lazily turning slowly in his rotatable chair. Laura rolled her eyes, unwrapping another wrapper and popping the mint inside it in her mouth. She leaned against Kat’s desk, looking at the pretzel jar filled with peppermints wistfully.

“Fight it, Laura! You can do it,” Kat teased, doing arm gestures that led Laura to believe she was doing some kind of chanting. Kat’s brown, doe-like eyes sparkled in the florescent lights as she reached over to ruffle Laura’s hair. It was nice to know that countless criminal masterminds underestimated her and ended up staying at Operation Manticore’s elite security center to the right of the main building.

“Oh, shut up,” Laura mumbled, her eyes fixed on 18-year-old Alex Cooper of the Diamondback team. Looking directly at Kat when she did this, Laura slowly unwrapped her last peppermint and popped it in her mouth. Kat threw up her hands in mock desperation, and everyone else laughed. “The joke’s on you,” Laura said easily, even though there was a mint blocking her tongue from speaking clearly.

Harley repeated his question. “Are we just going to hang around our entire work period or what?” he asked. Francis Harley was somewhat of a jokester to the team and usually never taken seriously. Even now, Harley had managed to produce a carton of popcorn, tossing the kernels into his mouth thoughtlessly.

“No, we’re going to ignore you, that is what we’ll do all day,” Laura responded sarcastically. Then she noticed the popcorn and added, “Butter?” Harley nodded, a wicked grin spreading on his face. Laura completely forgot about the mints and grabbed for the bucket of popcorn. Smiths buried his face in a hand and groaned.

“Great, Harley, you’ve got her on a popcorn addiction now,” McCarter complained, punching something in the keyboard attached to his extremely expensive Mac that Operation Manticore had funded, which was funded by the fifteen countries who had signed the pack.

Laura grimaced at the taste. “What did you put in here? Sulfur? That can poison your kidneys pretty badly, you know,” Laura added as the cheeky pathologist. Harley rolled his eyes, refusing to share his popcorn with anyone else anymore.

It was just then that Smith got a call on his cell. He picked it up. “Yeah, it’s Smiths.” Everyone stared as he straightened as the voice on the other line was telling him something with urgency. “What–really? No. You aren’t serious. Okay, we’re on our way.” Instinctively, Kat and Harley grabbed their backpacks whilst Laura tensed. Smiths hung up the phone. “Get your stuff, now,” Smiths called over his shoulder. Laura grabbed two extra gloves from the small box that was stashed under Kat’s desk, going down and grabbing her medical bag. On a second thought, she grabbed her hairband and five more peppermints, thinking that she was going to need them.

“What happened, Smiths?” McCarter was asking as Laura got in, pulling the door shut behind her. The black stakeout Mercedes was only used in sorely important missions. It peeled out of the garage as soon as Laura shut the door, causing the peppermint to pop back in her hand. Laura protested as she struggled to buckle herself in, getting slammed into the car door and McCarter quite a few times.

Finally, Laura buckled herself in when they were speeding away on the highway smoothly. She retorted hotly, “Smiths, I’m an analyst and pathologist qualified at seventeen for Operation Manticore. I’d strongly suggest that you don’t mess with me, because I know what to put into your body so that you just might not wake up tomorrow.”

At this, Smiths smiled at her through the rearview mirror but didn’t say anything, his smile turning back into a cold, grim line on his face. Harley twisted around in the front passenger seat and said with a cheeky grin, “I object to that, Laura! You’re showing just how annoying you are for a year, and then Operation Manticore has to ask you to stay there permanently.” Laura stuck her tongue out at him.

“Shut up, Harley,” she said, wrinkling her nose up. Kat reached over and lightly slapped Harley’s face, showing her agreement with Laura. Laura was a great, if not super-active and annoying, addition to team Harpy, despite how young she was. Looking at the falsely occupied Smiths, she reached over and added, punching his arm, “Tony Smiths, you’d better tell us what happened. I need a good reason for why I was getting crushed against the door. Do you know how hard it is, anyway?”

Smiths didn’t do anything, but heaved a heavy sigh. “We just lost almost all of team Dragonfly. Agent Cass Harper is the only one left, but she’s barely alive.” Laura jerked back as if Smiths had shocked her. Kat gasped, covering her face with both of her hands. McCarter leant back, blinking in shock. Harley sighed, rubbing his black stubble.

Team Dragonfly was a team with seven agents in it, all handled for the mentally ill and trained assassins. It took a lot to take out two burly men from Israel, a fleetingly fast and dangerous woman from Brazil, two teenage (older than Laura, though) spies from Denmark, and fraternal twins with deadly aim from Germany. Agent Cass Harper was one of the twins, having an uncanny instinct of when to retreat. That was what had probably saved her, even for a little while. But all agents on team Dragonfly were extremely fast, and that was what they all had in common.

“I guess we should get there, huh?” Harley said softly. Smiths nodded and stepped on the gas pedal, narrowing down a sharp turn. Laura put her hair up into a high ponytail, feeling sick already.

It was ironic that Laura had a phobia of the dead and threw up at the sight of a particularly gruesome body, yet had no trouble determining what had caused the deaths as long as her Aéropostle jacket was on and she had an extra mint on hand.

Soon, the stakeout car stopped and team Harpy wasted no time. Laura got out, rubbing her hands through the stretchy gloves and grabbing the medical bag and walking to the crime scene. The rest of the agents showed their badges to the police, who let them through eventually. When Laura got at the bright yellow crime scene ribbon, a guard stopped her.

“Oh, no you don’t. This is for authorized personnel only, youngling. Get out before your mind gets scarred.” The guard waved her away. Laura stood there, staring at him. Then she shrugged and tried to duck underneath the ribbon, but the officer grabbed her forearm and pulled her out.

Growing impatient, Laura pulled out the badge she rarely ever showed because she refused to wear a medical jacket, claiming that her Aero one was just fine enough for her. “Look, buddy, are you going to be a jackass and not let an Operation Manticore pathologist through or are you going to let me see my comrades’ bodies?” Laura asked viciously. The officer glared at her, annoyed with her boldness, but sighed and waved her ahead.

Harley and Smiths grabbed Laura’s hands and helped lower her into all that was remaining of the building that had been blown to bits – the rock-hard and five-foot deep cement basement. With the sun shining down, Laura yanked on her ponytail and her stomach gave a slight lurch.

As Laura was inspecting the dead bodies, Kat was interviewing agent Cass Harper. She had a blood-soaked blanket on, shivering, and had multiple cuts and bruises over her faces. Kat was sure that Cass had many broken bones and a cracked rib, but the injuries hopefully wouldn’t be fatal.

Cass’s eyes were darting around suspiciously. “She’s here,” she kept muttering over and over again. “She’s still here.” Kat nodded, not really knowing what she was talking about. She laid a hand on the Dragonfly’s only survivor’s shoulder.

“So, Cass, could you tell me what happened before the explosion?” Cass stared at her with glassy eyes, her mascara already running. Then, with a firm look of determination, she nodded.

“Team Dragonfly had been sent on a mission to retrieve data from a source that claimed to have information on a potential terrorist attack on Washington, D.C.,” Cass began, closing her eyes to reminiscence better. “We came here, at Chichester, to meet the person. I told the team that I would wait outside, because they never really did like it when I was nervous and was complaining because I hadn’t wanted to come.

"So I parked just outside this building and waited. Ten seconds after my whole team went in the building, the structure blew and the car was flipped, landing on its top with the wheels in the air. Paramedics got me out, though, and I saw my brother’s killer.”

Her angular face hardened with hate. “She had –” agent Cass Harper was cut off seconds after a loud gunshot sounded and Cass’s eyes rolled to the back of her head, plummeting into Kat’s surprised arms.