Spot jumped up into the truck and rummaged through a duffle bag. He handed Ben a small bundle of clear plastic vials with white pellets in them. They looked like cigar cases and were taped to a slim little black box with a flexible pig tail antenna sticking out of it.
Spot reached back into the duffle and pulled out another black box that was about the size of a deck of cards. This one had an extendable silver antenna and ARM and DETONATE buttons.
VB took them from Ben and turned the bundle over in his hands. He asked, “ANFO?”
“Yep,” Ben said, “And a digital radio detonator with a nickel hydrazine nitrate initiator.”
Barton held up the bundle to get a better look, and so his lapel pin cam would catch it. He looked at the eleven year old for a long moment before he said, “Okay, so you don’t need any firepower. Let’s talk about perimeter security. You might want to add lights to…”
Smudge jumped past VB and joined her brother on the tailgate. She looked at the director, and then vocalized a small grumbling yap.
VB stared at her until Ben nodded to the barn, and then to the edge of the woods near the driveway. Two coyotes had come from the shadows and stood at attention. They sampled the air and nodded back at the pups on the tailgate.
Barton saw the wild dogs, and turned to Hamish.
“Aye,” Hamish said, “Bloody effective sentries.”
“I expect so,” was all VB could manage. Comina laughed in his ear and said, “Shit VB. Fort fucking Knox.”
Barton followed them back into the house. As they took their seats again Hamish paused to grab two dog treats from a jar by the door. He tossed them to the wagging coyotes before pulling the kitchen door closed.
“Okay, VB,” Hamish said, “What the fuck exactly happened to us in Canada?”
“We messed up is what happened,” Barton said as he took a ginger snap from the plate on the kitchen table, “I didn’t have intelligence in place to see that one coming. I didn’t know they had moved against you until it was too late. It was my mistake, and I was blind up there in Quebec.” Before he took a bite of the cookie he said, “So, what did happen?”
Hamish and Ben told him, with the pups filling in any gaps.
The family had heard the story from Ben over the phone but it was their first time hearing it live, and in graphic detail. Aila teared up as she watched her little boy describe the wolf attacks on the skiers, and the video recorded on the camera they had found. By the time they got to the fights at the ranch and the mine the rest of the family was red-eyed as well. They hadn’t realized Ben’s affection for the murdered bomb expert Lissa Chogin, and hadn’t fathomed how physically close Ben had been to such raw violence. Or how responsible he had been for some of it.
Mimi cursed Hamish and Ben’s ability to tell a good story. As horrible and shocking as the details were, they made for a riveting tale the way her brother-in-law and grandson told it.
“Dear God,” Comina whispered in VB’s ear.
“Dear God,” VB repeated to the family. He looked at Ben’s healing chin and said, “Son, I don’t know what to say. You’re the toughest, smartest damn kid I’ve ever met.”
“Amen,” Hamish said as he took a bite of cookie and brushed the crumbs out of his beard, “And our wee pups here are some bad-ass motherfuckers too, sorry Jean.”
“I was just going to say that very thing, brother,” Mimi said as she covered Hamish’s hand with one of her own and patted Spot with the other.
The dogs took over for the parts of the story they were closest to. Spot told them about freeing Christa, and Smudge told them about using a wolf and a bear to attack the snow machines.
VB noticed something odd happening. The whole family was certainly appalled and moved by the violence, but they were also laughing at some of the more insanely comical parts, especially the parts Ben was translating for the animated dogs.
Hamish caught Mimi’s stare, and silently agreed with her that the pups knew how to tell a story almost as well as he and Ben could. Oddly enough, they didn’t have to embellish any of the details as the truth was plenty entertaining.
Comina was silent in VB’s ear, and he just stared at the odd family as they spun their tale and ribbed each other good naturedly. Even Mimi was snickering when, through Ben, Smudge described how the mining thug Ty had pissed his pants when the bear roared at him. By the time Spot got to the part about the wolf named Glasgow temporarily agreeing to accept Hamish as her alpha only if it didn’t include any mounting, the whole table was laughing out loud.
If VB hadn’t just shaken a dog’s paw a few minutes earlier he would have thought their story to be utter bullshit, and the family to be pure bonkers. It was still a little hard to swallow, but the adults were nodding as much as they were laughing, even when Spot described how a traitorous Canadian police deputy slipped and went ass-over-tea-kettle in a puddle of a decimated thug’s gore.
As VB looked from person to person around the table he thought, Maybe I should just unleash them on Semion and Katia, and then stand the fuck back.
“What happened to Jia?” Comina finally asked in VB’s ear, and he repeated the question out loud to the smiling table.
Smudge turned to face VB as the family went quiet. She stopped wagging, and later when he described it to Comina he said he couldn’t point to any one feature that changed but her whole black face just seemed to cloud up and turn serious.
Smudge signed and Ben translated, “My brother and I blew that fucking Chinese bitch back to hell so she could burn forever with the rest of her murdering, triangle-tattooed family…Sorry Mimi.”
Chapter 11
Kelcy and Spot were laying together on the couch in Mimi’s living room. He was sandwiched between the teenager and the back cushions. They were both on their backs, covered in a blanket, and looking up at Kelcy’s tablet. Crumby remnants from a raspberry scone covered both of them.
Comina had convinced Barton to leave them with a copy of all of the files he had pertaining to the accelerator formula, and there was a row of odd USB drives lined up on the coffee table they had scraped together from both houses. He had shown them how to enter the decryption passcodes and navigate the document indexes.
They hadn’t moved from the couch for the rest of the night, and were still at it the next morning. Mimi agreed to let Kelcy skip school if they both agreed to take food and drink breaks without protest when asked.
The files were fascinating, and brutal, and in addition to reams of documents they included hours of videos. Spot and Kelcy were careful to watch them with the tablet’s volume down low, and stayed away from the more graphic ones entirely whenever an adult came to check on them.
It was clear the accelerator compound did some pretty incredible things to the subjects. They could withstand extreme heat or cold, and control certain normally autonomous functions but only for a little while before things went horribly wrong.
They watched one subject sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool with her legs crossed. A time stamp at the bottom of the screen counted up the minutes and seconds, verifying she held her breath for more than half an hour while accomplishing great feats of agility before her extremities started to blacken and swell, and then she just dissolved in the pool.
All of the videos of the tests showed the same types of remarkable feats, and all of them ended with the same tragic results.
In addition to the test subjects, a small group of well-dressed researchers wearing white lab coats appeared in almost every video. It was always the same four, and often they watched from the background with cold detachment as the test subjects excelled at some feat, and then died screaming. Sometimes they congratulated each other, even when the test seemed to end in horrible failure. Other times they seemed to get a little irritated, and sometimes they just laughed. In some of the videos they were seated around a conference table or standing near lab equipment discussing the results and quietly arguing about next steps. Kelcy noted they seemed to always be e
ating or drinking. A dark man with a bushy beard and round glasses, who appeared to be in charge, watched a female soldier’s hands melt while he folded a slice of pizza. She sprayed ooze on him and died flailing but the man just pushed his glasses back onto his face with the palm of his hand and took a large bite of cheese and pepperoni while intently watching the details of the subject’s painful death.
Spot and Kelcy looked up from the screen as Ben came down the hall with his jacket and gloves. He said to Spot, “We’re heading to the den. I assume you’re quite happy staying here and trying to figure out why you and your sister are such pains in the arse?”
The black dog turned back to looking at the tablet and just wagged.
Ben rapped on the newel post and called up the stairs for Hamish, “Let’s go, Unc, lots of trail to chew on, time’s a wastin’.”
Ben walked into the kitchen and Smudge joined him from the back bedroom. As they passed Mimi he said to the wagging dog, “We’re always waiting for that big lunk, gonna be late for his own passing that one.”
Mimi smiled, handed him two scones and bent her cheek down for a kiss before her grandson and his dog walked out into the snow. She watched them cross the driveway and stop to give Mr. Watt a rub.
Mimi realized with a little sadness that she didn’t have to bend down very far for that peck on the cheek anymore. Ben was going to end up tall like his father and grandfather. She noticed he was starting to muscle up a little, and she also noticed there was a new intensity to the boy. He had always had an undercurrent of intelligence and concentration simmering below his smiling face, but now a confident layer of focus was also there. Certainly the boy’s recent experiences at the farm and in Canada had been tragic, but she still felt raising these special pups had ultimately been a very positive thing. There was no doubt it contributed to Ben’s maturing, but Mimi was more pleased to see that he had moved from a brooding introvert to his current happy, gregarious self in less than a year. She did worry about their safety and how moving away from home may affect Ben, but she also saw how the lad handled himself and marveled at his relationship with these smart dogs. Their situation was a lot for a boy approaching twelve to handle, but she also felt he couldn’t have found a more loyal pair of friends to go through it with.
Ben had also developed a deep bond with her brother-in-law that was obviously very reciprocal, and that surprised her a little. Hamish was a good man, but he was a different sort than her husband had been. He hadn’t paid much attention to the kids during his visits to the farm over the years. He had simply just put up with them, as he did with most children, but Mimi noticed he now listened carefully to what both of them had to say and spoke to them as though they were adults, especially Ben. She also noticed he did the same thing with Spot and Smudge, and he patted them almost as often as Ben did.
Hamish stomped down the stairs and paused as he walked past the couch. He hovered over Kelcy and Spot. The cuddled up dog and teen smiled, and tipped the tablet down as they waited patiently for him to continue on. As he pulled on his tam and grabbed his coat from a hook in the hall he said to his sister-in-law, “This place is pure nutty.” Hamish bent down and gave her a smooch. Mimi shoved a scone in his mouth and pushed him out of the kitchen to join Ben and Smudge in the snowy driveway.
As they walked around the pen, Smudge called the coyote sentry over. She was one of the bigger adult mothers, and third in command behind One Ear and the lead female. She came out from behind the barn where a small hut was hidden under a big pine tree in the woods. It was filled with straw and leaves, and acted as a mini-den for the coyotes who were guarding the farm. There was a similar little hide in the woods near the front yard, and a pair of the little huts were hidden in the woods at the Hogan house as well.
Keep them safe, Smudge said as she touched foreheads with the older coyote and rubbed her neck fur. Hamish gave the wild dog the rest of his scone and the coyote trotted away to share some with her sister who was patrolling the woods on the other side of the house.
As they hiked the trails towards The Bogs, Hamish and Ben reminisced about the ranch in Canada, and the first time they walked through the trees together on the way to see the big she-wolf, Glasgow. They had found her by a river with her pack, and her alpha had stared them down from across a waterfall.
The trail brought them to Morgan Road. There was only a thin slip of gravel shoulder and the mature trees and thick bush encroached close to the road. Even with the leaves gone it was hard to see in either direction without stepping into the road. Smudge heard a rare car coming and had them hang back as it shot past. This crossing spot was a wildlife highway used not only by the pups and the coyotes, but also by the deer, coons, turkeys, and every other creature that ran through these woods.
Ronnie had helped Mimi and Aila press the town to put up reflective animal crossing signs in both directions but the cars that raced down this stretch of road still caused frequent road kill. Of course the body didn’t linger for long as the daily coyote traffic kept it pretty clean.
Lum had his near fatal car incident here. He had been chasing the hunters-in-training and the little runt had ignored the pack’s hard-nipped rules about being cautious around human roads, and this crossing in particular.
Smudge stopped in front of Hamish and signed the same thing she always signed when they crossed here. She wagged as she waited for Ben to translate. He shook his head at her and said, “She calls this the coyote’s favorite fast food spot, complete with drive-over window.”
As they crossed the road Hamish was still laughing as he asked Ben what he thought about Barton.
“I don’t know, Unc,” Ben said, “not sure you can trust anyone who’s got a bug in his ear.”
Hamish nodded. The director’s fake beard had hid the little earpiece, but the pups had heard the whispering voice in his ear. They couldn’t make out all of what was being said, but it was clear the listener was pretty sharp, and they were pretty sure it had been a woman’s voice.
Ben said, “But he left us some cool stuff, and he hasn’t turned us or the pups in yet. The files are going to be a big help and it’s good to have the emergency numbers, but I wonder why he was so blindsided by Jia’s coming after us in Canada. Makes me wonder if he’ll be able to see the Mogevichs coming next time.”
“So you think they’ll be a next time?” Hamish asked.
“I expect so,” Ben said, “I mean, our little ones here are pretty unique, right? Given how much this Semion guy has spent so far I would guess he wants to get his money back. I know I would. Looks like the pups could be the missing link he needs. We just gotta hope he doesn’t know shit.”
“Shit is not acceptable young man, try to stick with shite, especially around Mimi,” Hamish said, “You think we’re safe here like that blind shite VB says?”
Ben laughed and said, “Hell no. Sorry, heck no. I think Mimi’s right, we gotta leave. I like it here but we need to go somewhere and hide. At least until that shite can solve this Orthus thing.”
“Can he?” Hamish asked.
“Unc, why the heck are you asking me?” Ben said, “What’s with all the questions? I was kinda hoping you grownups would have some of these answers. If you’re relying on me to solve this we’re all in deep shite.”
Smudge looked up at them and nodded.
“Belt up, you,” Hamish said to the dog as he turned to push through the pines at a narrow part of the trail. To Ben he said, “I just think better when I’m asking you questions, lad. Hey, you lost a glove and your boot’s untied again, you big numpty.”
Ben looked down at his boot as Hamish noticed the glove a few yards back in the middle of the trail.
“I’ll get it,” Hamish said, “You lace up.”
Ben bent down and pretended to tie the laces as he nodded to Smudge, who huffed quietly into the trees.
Hamish reached down for the glove and realized a second too late what was happening.
He was hit low from behind by a larg
e coyote. The big Scot went down as three more wild dogs darted from cover and two grabbed hold of his feet. They tugged together and backpedaled, struggling to pull him through the snow. Smudge huffed again and they let go of his feet and split up to circle around him. The growling young coyotes snatched off his mittens as he swatted at them, and the smaller one snapped up his hat.
Smudge yapped and as quickly as they had appeared the young hunters darted away without a sound.
“Aye,” Hamish said as he sat up in the trail rubbing his thigh, “The Vuur and Rook ambush?”
“Yes,” Ben said with an ear to ear grin, “Revenge is a dish we Hogan’s serve cold.”
The smaller coyote stepped into the path in front of Hamish and he noticed the sturdy wild dog had a slight limp. The young animal stepped forward, dropped his hat at his feet, wagged, and went to stand next to Smudge.
They continued on to the den and Smudge introduced Hamish to One Ear. Even with Smudge and Ben present One Ear was tentative around him at first. He was a huge human and she was still a wild coyote, but with some encouragement from Smudge she carefully read him and was slowly won over. She could sense his calm demeanor and comfort around her pack, especially around her young hunters. One Ear knew that was rare as most humans seeing her team gave off immediate cues of aggression and panic that she could pick up from across a field.
She got closer and closer as she proudly showed off her den and her pack. As they sat to talk she eventually flopped down in his lap and accepted his grooming strokes to her sides and belly. The young male hunters finished sniffing Hamish and settled into a pile to lick each other under a thick canopy of pines near the humans. Behind them a cave of dense brush was being prepared to serve as a nursery. Piff had been staying close to her mother until Hamish had passed approval. She plunked down in Ben’s lap, and as he stroked her ears he went into detail about how Spot and Smudge had taken over the pack. He explained how the pups had put the same female alpha hierarchy in place in this den as they had with Glasgow up north. Ben told him about the wild dogs’ relationship with the family, and Smudge described how the pack had helped her and Spot protect them from the Dorschstein’s and Liko Tzeng.
Let Slip the Pups of War: Spot and Smudge - Book Three Page 5