Let Slip the Pups of War: Spot and Smudge - Book Three

by Robert Udulutch

  As Tian stared the sturdy dog winked, and zig-zagged away from him.

  Harley sat up again just in time to see the black dog bearing down on them. He and Katia raised their rifles, but with Tian behind the dog they fumbled to find their tranq triggers.

  Smudge sucked in a huge breath, and was inches from the two rifle muzzles when she let her horrific bark fly. Her massive chest contracted as her modified diaphragm rammed air over her enlarged larynx. Her bark boomed out, rattling the lobby doors in their tracks.

  The dog was close enough for Katia and Harley to feel the spittle. Katia flinched hard at the bone jarring sound and Harley’s bladder let go a little.

  Smudge sailed between them, shoving them hard with her rear paws as she passed.

  As she ran towards the far glass wall she saw another armed man outside in the dark coming around the corner of the building. The man was very big, he was pounding through the snow, and he was holding the same type of small assault rifle.

  As the black dog gained speed around the perimeter of the lobby Harley and Katia got to their feet and raised their rifles. They both opened fire with live rounds as the dog darted behind the curved waiting area benches.

  Boba waved, trying to get their attention as he fumbled with his microphone. He gave up and dove into the snow as the bullets shattered the window in front of him and the small bits of tempered glass fell in a sheet.

  Katia and Harley followed the dog as it charged around the curved front of the lobby with their spitting assault rifles blowing out the windows. The animal stayed low and moved with amazing speed. They couldn’t get a bead on it. Chips and splinters flew from the ring of wooden bench seats as the dog raced behind them.

  As Smudge tore past the double front doors there was a gap in the benches. A bullet flicked a chunk of fur from her back and she dipped from the sting.

  As she curved back towards the lobby desk she saw another pair of thugs outside, coming from the far side of the building. A short woman and a man were running towards the lobby windows through the snow, and they also had the same insidious looking rifles.

  Smudge noticed all of the Chinese attackers shared the same strong chin and swooping eyes. She could see they were all clearly related to Liko, Mina, and Jia…they were all Tzengs.

  And I’m going to see to it you all share the same fate if it’s the last thing I do, she thought as she blasted around the lobby, and that goes for you too, Katia Mogevich.

  She added a burst of speed and picked her target as the windows behind her continued to shatter. Of course, she thought as a bullet whizzed past her snout, I would really like it to not be the last thing I do.

  Tian saw the dog closing the gap to the desk as it continued to race behind the lobby’s benches and follow the arc of the exploding glass wall. He saw Boba getting up from the snow, and he swung back to see Jixi and Mu outside of the remaining windows. He waved for them to hold as he leapt onto the reception desk.

  Jixi waved back at him, and as she and Mu flattened against the building she pointed to the end of the reception desk. She flashed a few quick hand signals, indicating there was a young unarmed woman hiding there. Tian nodded, and walked quickly to the middle of the desk.

  He could see the top of the young woman’s head.

  Harley and Katia walked side by side into the center of the lobby, pissing lead. As the small spent shell casings streamed from their rifles they continued to tear jagged holes out of the curved benches and shatter the glass wall behind the running dog. They had failed to stop the fast, powerful animal. It hadn’t slowed, in fact it looked to have sped up as it neared the desk again.

  Harley raised a fist and stopped firing as the black blur of a dog closed on Tian. Katia continued for a second more and Harley reached over to shove the barrel of her gun up. Her bullets carved a trail in the ceiling before she stopped firing and gave Harley a dirty look.

  Every window in the front of the clinic had been blown out except for the last panel near the reception desk. The light snow started to swirl into the lobby and cover the pieces of broken glass.

  Tian took two more quick steps towards the end of the desk, and when he had a clear shot he aimed the tranq gun at the young woman’s shoulder.

  She looked up at him and Tian realized she was just a teenage girl. She was much younger than Katia had let on, and younger than she had looked on the security monitor.

  She was also beautiful. Stunning, actually. She had striking, pleasantly defined features and enormous brown eyes. In those eyes he recognized a strength he’d seen a thousand times on another beautiful face. He could see this pretty young woman was angry and a little scared, but mostly she was focused, and working on a plan. The girl was smart and she was tough. She was Du Wen.

  Katia screamed as she ran towards the desk with her gun raised, “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

  Tian looked up just as the black dog crashed into him.

  Chapter 40

  “Okay Mom,” Ben yelled at his open bedroom door, “We’ll be down in a sec.”

  As he got off the bed he turned to Spot and said, “You coming?”

  Ben saw the look on his dog’s face.

  He climbed back onto the bed next to Spot. He pulled the pup into his lap and stroked his silky black ears.

  “Oh my little boy, it’s okay. It’s going to hurt. That’s just how this stuff works, believe me,” Ben said.

  Spot stared at him for a long moment, and then he signed.

  “You think you know what guy?” Ben asked.

  Spot signed again.

  “The guy at the clinic?” Ben asked.

  Spot nodded.

  “You saw him for a tenth of a second on a tiny screen from fifty feet away. He was a blur. You probably couldn’t even ID me under those conditions,” Ben said.

  Spot signed.

  Ben raised an eyebrow and said, “And robots? You saw robots behind him on the surgery table.”

  Spot nodded.

  “Are you nuts?” Ben asked.

  As soon as Ben said it he knew he was wrong. If Spot said there was something to it, there was something to it. He knew that stubborn look on Spot’s face. He also knew Kelcy had been right when she had said his eerily smart dog wasn’t often wrong.

  “Okay boy, what’s the plan?” Ben asked.

  Spot signed, and Ben grabbed his tablet and pulled up a paint program.

  Spot extended one of his small black finger pads, selected a pencil from the program’s menu, and quickly sketched on the screen. He drew a perspective view of a vehicle. It looked like a ladder fire truck with three cartoonishly big wheels on each side, and he quickly sketched in the robot’s dimensions.

  He looked up at Ben, and signed.

  “Find that?” Ben asked, “A ten inch long robot with big rubber wheels and an articulated arm mounted on top?”

  Spot nodded as he grabbed his own mini-tablet.

  “Sure, I’ll look for it. What are you doing?” Ben asked.

  Spot signed.

  “Finding Johann. Well of course you are,” Ben said, and then he shouted towards his door, “Mom, can I eat in my room? We’re doing homework.”

  Ben opened an image search on his internet browser and started looking for a robot that looked like a little firetruck.

  Spot brought up the FBI’s DARPA files.

  Chapter 41

  Smudge kicked away the gun as she hit the muscular young man. They flew off the reception desk and crashed into the wall behind it. The clinic’s logo fell as drywall cracked and metal studs buckled. They landed on the floor behind the desk in a cloud of debris and dust.

  Katia and Harley closed the gap to the desk with their guns raised to their cheeks. Harley thumbed his mic and reminded everyone to use the tranqs. Katia grumbled something profane as she moved her hand down from the gun trigger to the tranq trigger.

  Boba stepped through the window opening at the far side of the lobby with his boots crunching on the glass bits spr
ead across the floor. He carefully jogged towards the reception desk with his gun raised to his round cheek.

  Tian was under the dog and he instinctively crossed his hands, tying up his attacker’s front limbs.

  They were stalemated for a frozen moment, neither able to strike, and neither wanting to let go and risk freeing their opponent. This was the guard position. Tian knew it well from hundreds of matches and he was totally at ease on his back. He’d fought to the death a few times from this position when weapons had jammed or been kicked away and close quarters dictated hand to hand maneuvers. Even with a talented opponent the stalemate never lasted more than a few breaths. A mistake was made, an opening got exploited, and someone died quickly thereafter. So far it had always been Tian’s opponents.

  The dog looked down into his eyes, and the absurdity of the situation hit Tian.

  He was applying his instinctual fight logic to a dog. Although he had never fought a dog before this one seemed to understand ground combat tactics, and was incredibly strong. He would have expected an excited animal to try to shove away or bite, but this dog had equally tied up his hands and seemed quite content being face to face with him.

  Another wave of the absurd crashed over Tian as he struggled, and looked down. He realized the dog had indeed tied up his hands, and had done so by somehow spreading open those strong paws and grabbing his wrists.

  The speed and skill of the man below her was affecting Smudge’s ability to come up with a plan. She tried a few quick moves that should have broken his grip but he had just as quickly countered and they were again deadlocked.

  Smudge had originally wanted to snap the man’s neck but things got muddy when she was in mid-air. She noticed he hadn’t shot Kelcy. She clearly saw the hesitation, and the look on the man’s face when Kelcy looked up at him. Smudge wished they could negotiate. She wanted to figure this fast, talented man out but time was a luxury she didn’t have. It was time to end it.

  It was a shame but a bite was going to be required. She drew back and opened her mouth wide, fixing on a target just below his ear. As they struggled he even turned his head to the side to make it easier.

  Just before she closed on his neck Smudge saw the lightning bolt tattoo and paused. As she stared at his neck she thought, Why is this guy tattooed with my logo?

  Tian saw the dog rearing back for the bite. He tried to twist his head away but when the fangs didn’t sink into his neck he turned and saw the dog was calmly staring down at him again. More specifically, it was looking right at his tattoo.

  Smudge heard the other assassins closing in from behind the counter and launched herself over the man’s head, yanking hard and taking him with her. As they rolled together Smudge slipped both paws free when he tried to apply a front arm bar. Her front feet folded differently than a human forearm and the man had miscalculated. It was the only mistake she’d seen him make and it was too late for him to correct, her back feet were already firmly planted under him.

  Tian cursed his mistake and knew what was coming next, he also knew he wouldn’t be able to twist away fast enough. A second later he was flying through air, crashing backwards through the only remaining intact window panel. It shattered and a thousand small pieces of tempered glass rained down on him, the dog, and the girl.

  Kelcy covered her head and after the shower of glass subsided she looked at Smudge. They both looked at the little assault rifle on the floor behind the desk, and then at the oncoming attackers. In a heartbeat they had both done the math and opted to jump through the shattered window opening.

  They dropped down a few feet into the snow and Smudge landed next to the man she’d just thrown through the window.

  Two tranq darts immediately hit Smudge in the back. She tried to leap in front of Kelcy to intercept the barrage of darts headed at her but the quick man grabbed her rear paws. He wrapped himself around her like a snake and they tumbled away, fighting through the snow.

  Kelcy made it two steps and was hit in the leg and shoulder by more of the little darts. Their barbs lodged in her skin and delivered a cocktail of anesthetic and paralytic agents that dropped her face first in the snow before she took a third step.

  Harley and Boba jumped from the window’s ledge. As the cousins closed on Tian from opposite directions they followed the fight with their rifles, not wanting to pull the trigger until they got a clean shot.

  Tian and the dog were a storm of flying limbs and snow. A frustrated Jixi tossed her rifle to her older brother Mu. She pulled her knife as she ran through the snow towards the spinning, growling melee.

  From the window sill Katia raised her rifle and shot a dozen darts at the blur of fighting black dog and muscular Chinese man. They continued to struggle for a few seconds before collapsing on top of one another in the snow.

  “Enough fucking around. We don’t know how long we have up here,” Katia said, “Get the vans and let’s go get the rest of this crazy fucking family.”

  Chapter 42

  “I think I found it,” Ben said, and tore the last bite of sandwich in half. As he handed a piece to Spot he spun the tablet and pointed to a robot that looked identical to the one Spot had drawn.

  Shorter and a little longer than a toaster, the robot had three large rubber wheels on each side and an armature sticking out from the front. At the end of the arm was a cluster of sampling attachments below a micro light and a mini camera on a swivel ball. Even though it was small, the robot looked to be a serious piece of heavy industrial hardware. It was constructed from machined aluminum with rows of screws down every seam.

  Spot nodded and signed rapidly, poking at the tablet’s screen.

  “Okay, give me a sec,” Ben said. With a few taps he found the robot manufacturer’s website, and a link to its white paper. Spot leaned over his shoulder and they read the overview together. Spot nodded vigorously and Ben opened the document. It took a few more minutes for them to read through the specifications sheets and the features of the sampling arm.

  When they finished Ben asked, “You’re sure one of these things was at the clinic?”

  Spot nodded, and signed.

  “Four of them?” Ben said, and as Spot turned back to his little tablet he asked, “Any luck finding this Doctor Johann guy?”

  Spot shook his head without looking up and Ben caught the dog’s frustration. He said, “I’m sorry buddy. Like I said, I just don’t think you got a good enough look at the guy to be sure.”

  Ben finished polishing an apple and took a big bite out of it. “So now what?” he said around a mouthful.

  Spot looked up at him. He watched Ben take another big bite of apple.

  He turned back to his small tablet and danced quickly over it with his paw. His deft little pad pulled up a video file of two men jumping rope. He dragged a slider towards the middle of the screen and the men moved in fast forward until one of them stumbled. Spot slowed the video down to normal speed as a man walked into the picture. He was wearing a lab coat. He also had a bushy black beard and round glasses, and he was eating an apple. The man pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose with the palm of his hand as he took a big bite.

  Spot paused the video and tapped at the man.

  Ben said, “Are you sure? You said the guy at the clinic had a white beard.”

  Spot nodded, and signed as he poked at the tablet.

  “Got it,” Ben said, reading the file information, “That video’s twelve years old.”

  He took another bite from the apple and mumbled, “So why is this guy from the old DARPA accelerator program at a Pembury vet clinic with a sewer-crawling, stool-sampling robot?”

  Spot and Ben looked at each other, and Ben whispered, “Oh no, Kels.”

  Spot leapt to the floor and half disappeared under the bed. He came back up with his vest and clipped it on before he bolted from the bedroom.

  Ben tossed the half eaten apple in his trash barrel and yelled, “Mom! Dad!” as he shouldered his go bag and lifted up his mattress
.

  Spot charged down the stairs. He cleared the last few steps and pawed the porch and hall light switches off as he flung open the front door.

  Dan and Aila came from the kitchen just in time to see Spot bolting through the open front door and sending one short bark out into the darkness.

  Ben ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time. He handed Liko’s big hand cannon to his mom. When Dan saw his son had his go bag and assault rifle slung over his shoulder he ran to the hall closet and yanked it open.

  “Ben, what’s going on?” Aila asked as she checked the big gun’s ammo clip and pulled back the dragon engraved slider to chamber a round.

  Ben had his phone pressed to his ear and held up a finger for his mom to wait, he also motioned for her to kill the rest of the downstairs lights.

  Aila nodded as Dan handed out her go bag. She rummage for her penlight and ran through the house hitting switches as the living room, dinning room, and kitchen went dark.

  Ben stood at the small hallway table where his parents charged their cell phones and put his phone down next to theirs. He dialed Kelcy using his dad’s phone, Mimi with his mother’s phone, and put all three on speakerphone.

  All three of the calls connected and started to ring.

  Aila returned through the dark house to join Dan at the hall closet. She held the penlight so he could dig for their bulletproof vests.

  The front door was still open and Aila saw a flash of movement in the front yard. She cupped her hand over the penlight and raised the gun.

  It was a coyote running from the woods to join Spot on the front walkway. She saw he was the runt hunter with the limp, Lum, and a second later One Ear’s mate came from the opposite side of the house. Spot yapped instructions to both coyotes and the larger male immediately bolted away to the north, towards the den.