The Glasgow Gray: Spot and Smudge - Book 2

  She couldn’t resist that one. She knew the closest Gloria Bekker-Myers had ever come to serving her country was throwing a posh fund raiser for wheel-chair bound vets. None of the vets were present at the black tie event of course, but they were supposedly the recipients of the donations. One of which was rumored to have been a new sand volleyball court for Gloria’s foundation on Cape Cod.

  Bill caught Kim’s raised eyebrows and slight nod at the hallway behind him, and was glad he held his retort.

  He turned around and said to the tall woman hovering over his shoulder, “Gloria, perfect timing. You ready?”

  “Absolutely boss. Good afternoon Kimberly,” Gloria said curtly above Bill’s bulk while flashing her plastic smile.

  Kim waved as the two unlikely coworkers left her doorway to go and have that friendly beer. She so wanted to be a fly on that barstool.

  An hour later Bill tucked himself back into his pants, zipped up, and yanked down on the flush handle of the urinal, all with the same hand. He hadn’t been on a ship in thirty years and still only used one hand to take a piss. Sailors learned quickly to keep one hand free to hang on to the boat, and it was a habit that never went away. He gave his fingertips a quick rinse and as he picked up a sheet of paper towel he said to the mirror, “Well, master chief, you haven’t killed the snotty bitch yet. I’d say that’s enough win-win socializing for one afternoon.”

  He returned to the bar. In another three hours a flood of aides and staffers seeking a cheap happy hour would jam his favorite G-street hole in the wall, but he and Gloria had the end of the bar to themselves. At least they had when he excused himself to go to the head. As he approached his new pain-in-the-ass underling he saw an extremely well-formed backside was standing next to her.

  The backside was attached to an even more appealing young woman in a clingy black dress. She turned and smiled when Gloria said, “Oh Bill, come say hello to a very dear friend of mine, Katia.”

  He shook the brunette’s hand, and sometime later when Gloria wished them both a good afternoon and left the bar Bill had barely noticed.

  An hour later he was trying to keep up with the pretty young woman, and after they both belted back a third drink he loosened his tie and turned up his sleeves. Katia nodded for the bartender to fill their glasses again as she took notice of the tattoo on Bill’s thick forearm. It was a bumblebee holding a machine gun.

  “My grandfather was a dirt sailor,” Katia said as she moved closer and traced its outline, “He landed at Inchon with the First Marines, and then sweat blood to build Cubi Point.”

  Bill clinked his glass against Katia’s, and with a proud nod said, “Well shit, to your grandad then.”

  “Can do!” they both said before tipping back their glasses.

  Some early drinkers had started to trickle into the dark tavern. In a booth at the far end of the bar a big, brick-ugly man sat down and reached a hand into his suit jacket. He moved aside his pistol’s handgrip and took out his cell phone and a small bluetooth earpiece. As he hooked the headset over his ear he thumbed the phone’s screen to start recording from the micro-camera built into his glasses. He dragged his fat finger around the display and adjusted the zoom to better catch Katia and the National Security Advisor, who was losing his battle to not stare at her cleavage. He also raised the volume from the mic in Katia’s purse and picked up her sultry voice whispering, “I just love tattoos. I have one as well, but we’d need to be a whole lot drunker for you to see it.”

  Bill laughed and summoned the bartender. He picked up his phone from the bar, and as he texted his wife he’d probably be missing dinner again he leaned back and looked both ways to make sure no one was paying attention.

  Chapter 58

  Hamish let another one go and Smudge got up from his lap and gave him a dirty look.

  Ben groaned and laughed, “Jeez Unc. What the heck, again?”

  “I guess that was a little out of bounds, sorry little girl,” Hamish said as he pulled on Smudge’s ear before she picked up her little stuffed chicken toy and walked around the fire to cuddle up with E’sra and T’raf.

  Ben waved away Hamish’s foulness with his hat. The fire flared and he watched the embers get pulled up with the smoke. They drifted up through the gaps in the trees and quickly died away in the stars and the colorful northern lights streaming by overhead. The wind had picked up after they made camp, but the snow had stopped and they enjoyed a break from the storm. Thick clouds were already starting to roll towards them from the mountaintops and the snow would start to fall again soon. Hamish expected tomorrow would likely bring another two feet.

  He watched the boy and his pups as they took turns pointing up into the sky to name the shimmering sea of constellations. Ben and Smudge knew most of them, and a few planets, and Spot filled in some they missed. Hamish knew his brother loved the stars and figured he had taught Ben all about the northern night sky, but it also turned out to be one of Spot’s many hobbies.

  That didn’t shock Hamish much, but he was surprised when the little know-it-all signed, and through Ben told him his Elkies liked to star gaze as well…just like their coyotes back home. He explained that when the primarily nocturnal wild dogs hunted the ambushers often sat for hours in the dark waiting for the drivers to chase prey their way. While they were waiting they often watched the moon and the stars, and even the bright strip of the Milky Way. It allowed them to zone out so their other senses could take over. He said dogs also used the stars to orient themselves. They didn’t name them as such, but they used the relation of the brightest star, Sirius, and the North Star, Polaris, to interpret direction, and even time. They understood how the moon and the stars rotated during each night, and shifted on the horizon throughout the year.

  Smudge sat up and signed, and Ben nodded as he translated for her. She added that the stars were more than just clocks, maps, and focusing tricks to dogs. She said it wasn’t only humans that drew comfort from being in an environment they were familiar with. The ever-present stars and their predictable positions were comforting. The dog’s excellent vision allowed them to see many more of the stars than humans, and the familiar blanket of white dots made the night sky feel like part of their home. She’d even seen the adult coyotes sharing their understanding of the heavens above with their young.

  Spot said the stars also played a role in their complex internal positioning systems. He told Hamish he and Smudge were able to guess how far they had travelled from Pembury to within a dozen kilometers based solely on the stars.

  Spot wagged as he signed again, and Ben reached over and pulled him playfully down into his lap. As he rubbed his dog’s ears he said, “Spot says it makes perfect sense that Sirius is also called the Dog Star, cause it’s, you know, the brightest one.”

  As entertained as Hamish was by the pups’ conversation he couldn’t help but wonder how many dogs were as annoying and as good at bullshitting as Spot was.

  They were camped under an umbrella of a large pine that formed a natural barrier to the wind. He had shown Ben how to cut blocks of snow to close the gap between the tall drift ringing the base of their tree and the huge overhanging snow filled boughs, and it effectively kept the heat from their little fire in. Cuddled up with the ring of dogs on fur blankets they wouldn’t need the tent as long as the snow didn’t turn to rain, and with the temps outside their little shelter hovering well below freezing there wasn’t much risk.

  As they were cutting the blocks for their shelter the sled dogs had chowed down on a dinner of dry food, raw chickens, and lard. Ben was amazed at the staggering amounts they ate but Hamish said they had probably burned ten thousand calories since breakfast. He and Ben had split an orange, a big ham sandwich, a can of pork and beans warmed up in the fire, and a bag of cheese and onion crisps. As the pups ate alongside the sled dogs Hamish had asked Spot, “Do you curs prefer dog food or human food?”

  Spot looked up from T’nuc’s bowl and signed while Ben translated, “We love the taste an
d textures of most human food but we have to watch our figures. We’re not puppies anymore, and our systems aren’t built to process most of the stuff you eat. Neither are yours, by the way. If Aila saw how much crap we’ve consumed on this trip she’d send us all to detox. I’m still paying for that second plate of fries we scarfed at the Grub the other night.”

  Hamish smiled, and in response let a loud explosion fly.

  Ben took the can of beans from him, and Spot stared at both of them for a moment before he continued, “Smudge needs more calories than I do, depending on how often she goes Cu-Sith. The modifications to our coats saps some of our strength, too. Based on today I’d say she needs about five thousand or so.” He looked at his sister, and the bowl in front of her, and he signed again.

  Ben said, “I said five, not fifteen.”

  Smudge stopped gobbling from E’sra’s bowl and looked up. She slowly licked a big smear of lard from her muzzle before dropping back down to mow some more.

  As they lounged by the fire Hamish noticed the clouds had stared to close in. He said to Ben, “Better call home while we still have a weather window.”

  The sat phone had been spotty earlier in the day, and once the weather really closed in they hadn’t gotten any signal the few times Ben had tried.

  He turned on the phone, watched the signal meter dance around one bar and called Mimi’s. They were just finishing up dinner and were sitting around the kitchen table at the farm. They thought it was the coolest thing to be speaking to him via satellite from the middle of the Canadian tundra. Everything at home was good. Ben had already told the family about the pups getting busted by Hamish so they were free to ask Spot and Smudge how things were going. Ben said they were having the time of their lives, and Hamish told them Ben and the pups had been a huge help. The audio started to get scratchy so they sent out hugs and kisses, and cut the call short.

  As soon as they hung up the phone’s missed call and message indicator chimed. They could see that Christa had called several times but the message kept cutting out when they tried to retrieve it so Hamish just dialed the ranch.

  “Hey,” Christa said with some concern in her voice as she picked up on the first ring, “You get my message? Have you heard from Willie?”

  “No, and no,” Hamish said and had to repeat himself after a blast of static interrupted him.

  “Blu called,” Christa said over the hiss, “The park station received pings from Willie’s emergency beacon but they’ve stopped and they can’t raise him. There’s been no call from the radio at his north camp either.”

  “Well everything’s going to be dodgy with this weather,” Hamish said, raising his voice over the crackles, “That Valerie lass probably hit the button by accident with her toe when Willie was, um, painting her nails. Still, if he activated by accident he would let them know so we didn’t come looking for him in this shite. We’ll head that way and check it out, did they get the grids?”

  Christa gave him the position of Willie’s last ping, and as Ben and Spot mapped it she said the rangers were heading out and would stop at the north camp first as it was on their way.

  Ben showed Hamish the mapped coordinates on the tablet. “Aye,” he said, “The basin below the falls.”

  Ben said, “That’s close to Glasgow’s last collar reading.”

  Christa had said something but the phone cut out and lost signal.

  “Okay, let’s pack up. It’s a long hike,” Hamish said to the pups.

  Ben watched the phone’s display continue to read ‘no signal’ for a few more moments, and then turned it off and put the phone away.

  “Tighten everything down and put the rifle in last,” Hamish said, “Spot, please explain what’s happening to the team.”

  As Hamish peed on the fire he thought through the possible scenarios that would lead to Willie’s beacon having been activated, and then just stop transmitting. There was a chance it could be the weather but more likely explanations kept pushing their way in, and none of them were good. If he had hit it by accident, and if his sat and radio wouldn’t work he would have cycled the emergency beacon twice more at a set interval and then repeated it to let the rangers know it had just been an accident. Willie was an odd duck but he was competent enough and had lived in the back country most of his life.

  Hamish tended to trust his gut, and it was telling him something was indeed amiss. It was also telling him to send down more crisps, so sometimes he had to take what it told him with a grain of salt.

  The dogs had just refueled but hadn’t had much of a break. Hamish hated to be pushing them again so soon, especially in the dark, and in this weather. He also didn’t like Ben being out here if something was truly wrong, but if Willie or his skiers really were in trouble he couldn’t take the time to drop Ben and the pups off. Bad things tended to happen quickly in these winter woods, and minutes could make the difference between getting yourself home or getting yourself dead.

  Chapter 59

  Mimi got up from the kitchen table and put the phone back in its charger. They heard crunching on the snow outside and she pulled aside the kitchen curtains as the lights from a flatbed tow truck lit up the snow covered turnaround.

  She watched the truck’s yellow rotating lights chase orange shadows across the snow. The driver’s door opened and a bearded man wearing a fur lined bomber’s cap and thick one piece coveralls jumped out. The stiff wind immediately grabbed the fuzzy ears of his cap and flapped them wildly. Mimi turned on the goat pen light and the lights above her back door as the man approached the house. Another man jumped down from the passenger seat and followed behind him. The second man was wearing the same coveralls, with a black knit hat and a black full-face ski mask. He also wore snow goggles and carried a thick clip board.

  The bearded man pulled open the storm door and wrapped on the window of the kitchen door.

  Mimi nodded to Dan as she pulled open the door. He was casually leaning against the wall by the coat pegs with his hand resting on the barrel of the shotgun.

  “Evening Jean, is it the jeep that won’t start again?” the man said, and tipped his head back into the light so Mimi could see his face. He put his finger to his lips and tapped the oval name tag sewn to his chest.

  It was the FBI director Douglas Barton, and he was wearing a convincing beard.

  “Yes, that’s the one,” Mimi said, reading his name patch, “Please, come in from the cold, Arnold. Can I get you a cup of tea?”

  “Yah,” VB said, “That’d be awesome.”

  The man with VB followed him through the door and nodded to Mimi. She nodded to Dan, and paused until he stepped away from the wall and sat down at the table.

  From the man’s shape Mimi could tell he wasn’t a man at all but a rather tall, sturdy woman. As she filled the tea kettle the woman moved quickly and set her thick clipboard down on the kitchen table. She flipped it open and took out what looked like a small tablet. She tapped a button on the side and as the screen lit she held it up like she was taking a picture.

  “What’s the problem with the jeep this time, Jean?” VB said casually as his partner spun in a quick circle, sweeping up and down as she turned.

  From over her shoulder the family could see what looked like an x-ray image of the walls of the kitchen, with various shades of blues and reds for the plumbing and electrical. There were numbers and arrows dancing around on the screen.

  “Oh,” Mimi said, watching the woman work as she set the kettle on the stove and turned on the flame, “Who knows Arnold, it’s older than the hills.”

  The woman had completed her circle. She set the tablet down in front of VB, nodded to him, and left through the kitchen door, pulling it shut behind her until it softly clicked closed.

  VB took off his hat and said, “There’s been a development in Canada that you need to be aware of, and I take sugar with a little milk.”

  Chapter 60

  The trail ahead sloped down and around a bend, coming to one of the few
maintained river crossings in the higher elevations of the park. Four large spruce trees had been felled at the top of a narrow gorge. They had been staked at the ends and bound together to form a solid crossing about four feet wide.

  The log bridge was also used as a highway for the animals that lived in the higher elevations. When Hamish was doing the sustainability research for the wolf reintroduction he setup camp at the crossing and in one night watched fox, badger, wolverine, marmot, deer, and even a brown bear use the logs, sometimes at the same time and in opposite directions. It was just wide enough for the sled’s runners, and it was a long way down over the rocky falls and into the icy water if they messed up. The wind was also a factor as it roared through the natural wind tunnel created by the trees and the gorge. On the positive side the snow storm had returned and visibility was so poor they could only hear the river tumbling over the rocks of the falls.

  “So team,” Hamish called to the front of the sled as he slowed them to a trot, “What do you think?”

  The pups and T’nuc chatted about the icy logs and the river far below. It turned out T’raf had an issue with heights but after some heated chiding they all agreed. Smudge turned back and saluted to Hamish, and then pointed for him to forge ahead.

  “You lot sure?” Hamish asked, “We can unload and go over one at a time if we have to, but it will take time.”

  T’nuc barked and the team gave the gangline and extra tug, bumping the sled forward.

  “Well okay,” Hamish said, and called out, “Ga hike.”

  The team pulled hard through the corner, straightening as they came to the bridge. The dogs spread apart a little so they could run in the center of the outer logs. They had pulled the sled over narrow beams in the obstacle course but they hadn’t been that far off the ground, in a stiff wind, in the dark.