She thought the simple black dog looked strange standing next to the larger and far more imposing shepherd. Based on what she’d learned about canine posture, he appeared to be the one in charge.
Berluti knew Spot was a naturally born accelerated canine. Even though he and his sister Smudge were the only two of their kind in existence, and the most significant advancement in the history of genetic engineering and animal evolution, it struck Berluti that he just looked like a mutt. He was a mixed breed dog of no consequence that would probably be passed over at any shelter.
She realized it had turned out to be their best camouflage.
She thought about the accountant parents and the grandmother, and as she looked at the old man, and the boy, and the teenager, she wondered just how many people had underestimated this unassuming family of talented, highly effective killers.
As if reading the British assassin’s thoughts Tera head butted Spot and said, Not bad for a pair of pound rejects and a group of misfits.
Well, we had a lot of help, Spot said, You were amazing Tera, thank you for saving my family. I think Titov would be proud of you.
Tera nodded, and then she said, The rhinos were a brilliant move. Those cunning young humans of yours are very brave.
They are that, Spot said, And speaking of brave, I have a question about you charging out from under the truck. It kinda looked like you hesitated taking the second shot. Can I assume it had nothing to do with you not trusting my targeting sys—
“Excuse me,” Semion said from behind them.
They all turned to see the big Russian laying on the deck of the chopper with his back against the far door, just below a jagged red hole. A large pool of blood flowed from under him and ran across the chopper deck until it dripped over the edge and puddled on the ground.
Semion’s massive hands were clasped across his abdomen. He was trying to hold in his innards.
He stared at the humans and dogs for a moment and then drew a labored breath. He rasped “You must be Spot. I have heard a lot about you.”
Spot leapt up onto the chopper deck. He stepped around the puddle and looked down at the huge, dying man. He could hear the blood gurgling in Semion’s lungs every time he took a breath, and his heart losing the battle to keep his blood pressure up.
“Can I see your paws?” Semion asked quietly.
Spot held up a paw and split it open, rotated his fingers, and flexed his pads.
“Da,” Semion sighed as he nodded slightly, “Incredible. The things we could have done.”
He stared into Spot’s intelligent eyes and coughed, and a little blood ran down his chin. He sucked in another ragged breath and said, “So what will you and your amazing sister do now?”
Spot took another step closer. He raised a paw and signed, and from behind him Ben translated, “We’re going to live, Semion. Just live. We’re going to love our wonderful family, appreciate our incredibly loyal friends, and try to repair some of the damage you and I are both responsible for. But mostly we’re going to quickly forget all about you, you crazy fucking ublyudok.”
Semion laughed and his barrel chest shook. He coughed and a pink piece of some organ slipped out from between his fingers.
“Good for you, little dog,” Semion said. He looked at Ben and said, “And good for you too, young man.”
Semion looked at all of the faces staring back at him and said, “Da, that is good. I think I will do the same…I am going now…to see my Kati…”
His wheezing voice trailed off as he tipped to the side and his hands fell open.
Chapter 103
Berluti looked over her shoulder and hit her mic button. “Thirty seconds,” she said, and nodded to Sholto who was standing by the helo’s sliding door. Sholto looped her paw into the chopper’s door handle, twisted, and slid it open.
Christa and Ben were in the back of the chopper. As the door opened in front of them they gave Berluti a thumbs up and lowered behind their sniper rifles.
“Hold on, here we go,” Berluti said as she turned back to face the duct-tape repaired windshield. She twisted the control stick and dropped the chopper out of the night sky above the Misisi shanty town on the outskirts of Lusaka. A dark carpet of tin roofs, tarps, and odd concrete walls stretched away into the distance below them. It was dotted with thousands of bare light bulbs and small fires. A maze of narrow, twisting alleyways and rutted dirt roads led to a wide clearing right in front of them. The open-air market was deserted except for a few drunks stumbling home from the closed bars.
Berluti stopped their descent five meters above the corrugated huts. She smoothly spun the stealth helo so Ben and Christa would have a clear line of sight across the dirt clearing. On the far end was a four story brick hotel that also served as the brothers’ brothel.
Sholto leaned far out from the chopper’s sliding door. She was held firm by a harness secured to the roof and her keen eyes watched for any signs of trouble in the dark alleys below them.
In their headsets they heard Vuur’s low grumbling and his message scrolled across the bottom of their eyepieces, WE’RE IN POSITION - TWO GUARDS JUST INSIDE THE FRONT DOORS.
“We got them,” Ben said, “You can start your approach.”
Ben and Christa watched as four dogs wearing helmets and gun vests slipped from the shadows of the shanty town and bolted from the perimeter of the clearing. As they paused just outside the front entrance to the brothel two humans dressed in all black approached the front of the hotel at a run with their assault rifles raised.
The guards saw the human attackers coming. One aimed a short-barreled shotgun as the other pulled a pistol and picked up a telephone from the front desk. Ben and Christa shot at the same time, and both men puffed out red, and fell where they stood.
The dogs ran into the lobby with the black figures following close behind as Ben and Christa worked the bolt action on their sniper rifles. As the spent casings flew out and they rammed home another shell they scanned the hotel’s windows.
Shouting and gunfire came through their headsets as Ben and Christa watched naked men and woman scrambling for clothes and snatching up money in several of the rooms. Christa looked over at Ben. He smiled, and blushed a little, and avoided looking back at her.
A few seconds later the four dogs ran from the lobby and setup a perimeter around the clearing.
“Okay, send them in,” Tian said over the radio.
Another black stealth chopper dropped out of the night and landed in the dirt in front of the hotel.
As it touched down two more figures dressed in black sprang from the open sliding door and bound up the front steps of the hotel. A few seconds later they exited with their guns slung and a woman huddled between them. She was carrying a baby and each man had a little boy in his arms.
The humans and dogs disappeared into the waiting helo and dust swirled as it shot up from the market clearing.
Sholto swung back into the cabin, pulling the door closed in front of Ben and Christa as Berluti lifted their chopper away into the night. Sholto nodded, and wagged at the two snipers as she twisted the door latch closed.
“So that’s it, Gunny?” Christa said to her, “A wag and a nod? No critique? No bitchin’ about me hitting the guy five centimeters too high?...You getting soft in your old age?”
Ben laughed as Sholto stopped wagging and growled.
On the outskirts of a small village not far from Kafue National Park both helicopters landed in a clearing on the banks of a wide river. There was already a small group of people gathered around a fire, and two more black stealth choppers were parked in the low grass with their double rotors very slowly spinning in opposite directions.
Fisho approached Ben and Christa as they unclipped their safety harnesses and hopped out of the chopper. He shifted a toddler to one arm and reached out to pump their hands. As he patted Sholto he said, “Many, many thanks to you. All of you. It is a good thing you have done here tonight. Come, please, meet my family.”
>
He led them through the chatting crowd near the fire. Aila handed Christa a cold beer as Spot, Smudge, and Tera appeared and fell in step ahead of Ben. He swatted at their wagging tails and asked, “Hamish and Musa make out alright?” Smudge looked back and nodded as they neared a group of people standing around Fulfort. The smiling young father set down a toddler and beckoned to them with his hands raised. He waved for the crowd to make a hole and let them in.
Dan and Tian were there. They were dressed in all black and clapped Ben on the back as he passed. Kelcy could only give him a nod and a nudge with her elbow as she had her hands full. She was holding Fulfort’s baby in her arms. The adorable kid was asleep on her shoulder and Kelcy gave Ben a big puddly smile.
Fulfort put an arm around Ben and herded him and the pups in front of a beautiful African woman.
The beaming young father raised his hands again to quiet the crowd and said, “Jewel, this young man is Kelcy’s brother, Ben. He’s an exceptional boy, and these fine animals are his brus, Spot and Smudge. The four of them are responsible for arranging your rescue, and for keeping us from being killed by that one over there.”
Fulfort raised his beer to Musa and the big ranger smiled and waved. He was standing at the open sliding door of a chopper filled with confiscated poached animal parts. Inside the chopper Banji and Bowa were seated back to back on a stack of furry hides with their hands and feet zip-tied. The fat brothers were generously bloodied and bruised. They were also gagged, and had been stripped down to their boxer shorts.
Jewel smiled radiantly and stepped forward. She leaned down and held Spot and Smudge’s faces. She looked up at Ben and said, “Thank you, Ben. I never thought I would see my husband or our Dada ever again. I have no way to repay you but you must visit our home and let me cook for you, and your family.” The pups nodded, and wagged in sync as Jewel laughed and rubbed their ears. She stood and took Ben and Kelcy’s hands in hers. She said, “I would love to meet your mother and grandmother, Fulfort tells me they are very special women.”
Ben nodded and said, “They are, and they’d love to meet you, too. You owe us nothing, ma’am. Your men saved my sister’s life and we couldn’t have stopped this stupid animal killing without them. I will certainly visit you guys, and when the boys are a little older I’ll tell them all about their brave dad, and grandfather.”
She gave Ben a long hug and kissed his head as Hamish and Musa pushed into the circle.
The huge head ranger stepped forward and removed his hat. He flashed the group a toothy smile and boomed in his whispering voice, “Ma’am, as constable of the Zulu king’s preserve service I am empowered to compensate my rangers as I see fit. For services rendered your men here are entitled to remuneration. Now, we don’t have them setup in our payroll system so we’ve chosen an alternative method of payment that we hope you’ll find acceptable.” He motioned for Pili who came forward and handed the woman his hat.
Jewel stared down into the ranger’s cap for a long moment. She looked up at her husband, and then at her farther-in-law. As tears ran down her face she dug into the hat and pulled out a handful of rings and necklaces. There were more than two dozen fat gold rings in the hat, and as many thick gold chains. Some of the rings were set with beautiful jewels.
Chapter 104
The bodyguards were good, but not exceptional. He gave them credit for choosing their clothes carefully and leveraging their clean-cut looks to disguise themselves as salarymen sympathetic to the protesters’ plight. They also covered the rally’s crowd well enough from their vantage points at the ends of the stage.
In fact he had almost missed picking up on them but they should have learned the chants and the protest songs and not just mouthed them, incorrectly.
They also shouldn’t have let their client mingle with the VIPs behind the stage unattended. It wasn’t difficult to pick the right moment as the pretty young woman chatted up the clusters of influential donors.
As she thanked a well-dressed elderly woman he weaved through the crowd behind her. He moved closer to her, casually, and unnoticed. She held the woman’s hand as she smiled brightly and bowed respectfully. When she left the woman and walked past one of the large hanging banners decrying unchecked urban expansion she simply disappeared.
A strong hand clamped over her mouth in the darkness under the stage scaffolding. As she turned to face her attacker she drove her knee up.
The man moved back two centimeters to let her shin just graze the front of his tuxedo pants. Her high heels slipped on the pavement and he scooped her up as she fell. His powerful arms wrapped around her silk dress and soft shoulders, holding her firmly.
“Careful there little one,” Tian said, “you don’t want to damage something we might want to use at some point in the future.”
“Tian?” Du Wen whispered.
He started to reply but she cut him off with a kiss. A very long kiss. When Tian told Comina the story later he couldn’t recall exactly how long their kiss had actually lasted.
Across the river, on the top floor of a glass high rise overlooking a park that had once been the site of the Kowloon Walled City slum, an ancient man moved smoothly through a cavernous office.
As he bent to set a teapot and small plate of Oreo cookies down on the glass desktop he paused.
He recognized the two large pistols lying in the middle of the desk. Both were engraved with dragons.
The gaunt man turned to face the desk’s padded chair and saw the three bloody holes in the chest of the slumped Tiandihui gang’s patriarch.
The tall man smiled, and nodded as he touched the scar on his neck. Many, many years ago when he was about Tian’s age it had been a lightning bolt tattoo before Dalao had him held down, burned it away, and replaced it with the Tiandihui triangle and tree.
He picked up the guns, took a cookie, and slid out of the room.
Chapter 105
On a dark country road a panel truck’s brakes squealed and hissed as it pulled over and stopped on the gravel shoulder. The driver jumped down from the cab and raised her hand to a motorcycle that swung around the truck and rolled to a stop next to her.
“I’m good from here,” she said over the motorcycle’s deeply rumbling engine, “You and the brothers should probably stay out of Jersey.”
In one smooth move the big rider flicked out his kickstand and reached down between his legs to turn off the key. The motor fell silent as he let the bike tip onto its stand.
She nodded at a narrow, rusty bridge a hundred yards further up the dark road and said, “The Pagans would fucking pop a gasket if they heard you’d come over unannounced. The fact that you’re just citizens now would matter fuck-all to them. Those boys’ memories are far longer than their dicks.”
The former biker gang’s sergeant-at-arms laughed and nodded. He smiled, causing his signature boyish dimples to crease deeply.
He held up his fingerless-gloved hand and she slapped her palm into it. He pulled her close, and squeezed her hand for a moment as he said, “I miss you.”
She raised her eyebrows as she smiled back at him, and if it wasn’t almost pitch black out, and if he wasn’t so dark skinned, she’d swear he was blushing a little.
“We all do, you asshole,” he quickly added as he let her hand go.
He folded his big arms across his chest and his bike groaned as he leaned back and said, “Look, because of you we all got shitty day jobs and we’re home every night. We’re bored as fuck and ready to strangle our kids…and it’s wonderful. I can tell the boys are in a pretty good place ‘cause all they do is bitch about their wives. You’d like it…you sure you can’t stay?”
“As appealing as you make that sound,” she said with a smile, “I really can’t. I’ll swing back around sometime soon and take you pussies out to toss back a few and catch up, I promise.”
“Deal,” he said, but then his dimples faded as he nodded at the truck behind her, “All bullshit aside, I’m fucking worried you’re into
something pretty deep here…and after all your preaching and bitchin’ at us to go straight. You gonna be alright?”
“I’m good,” she said with a nod, “Really. I’m just righting a big fucking wrong. It’s all coming together and tonight was a big motherfucking piece. You assholes did me a real solid tonight. Seriously man, thanks again.”
He pulled his considerable bulk off the seat and leaned over the tank of his bike to give her a peck on the cheek. As he zipped his leather jacket up over the pistol grips peeking out from both armpits he nodded to the dozen bikes idling behind the truck.
Their motors revved as she gave them a wave. She raised her voice over their roar and said, “Thank the boys again for me.” She punched his shoulder, pointed at him, and added, “And you be good, I’ll be watching.”
As she climbed back into the cab he fired up his motorcycle’s engine. He flashed his dimples up at her, and then planted one boot and screamed the powerful bike around in a tight circle before leading his crew of former outlaws back to Brooklyn.
As the truck rumbled over the bridge and entered New Jersey she reached back to grab the plastic garment bag hanging behind the passenger seat. After carefully laying its contents out on the seat she stripped. She kicked off her boots, wiggled out of her jeans, and removed her short leather jacket, shoulder holster, and t-shirt. A minute later she was wearing a conservative gray skirt and white blouse, with a matching suit jacket hiding her shoulder holster. As she slipped her feet into a pair of low heels she pulled her hair up into a bun, and then rolled down her window. She tipped the side mirror towards her and quickly applied a little makeup.
Just as she was dropping her lipstick back into her clutch she turned the truck onto a gravel road and drove around to the back of a large industrial complex. She passed rows of garbage trucks and came to a massive building with dozens of large metal garage doors. Her headlights shrank to small circles as she swung her truck up to the last one. The door slid up in front of her and she pulled into the building and stopped.
Let Slip the Pups of War: Spot and Smudge - Book Three Page 48