The Last of the Dogteam

by William W. Johnstone

  Later that night she awakens in a pool of blood an4 pain . . . hemorrhaging. Unable to stop the alarming How of blood, scared witless, she stumbles into the hall and collapses at the feet of a totally astonished couple from Iowa, on their first—and probably last—trip to the Big Apple. At the hospital, the doctors tell Sally she will be all right, but she'll never be able to have children.

  "No daughter of mine is going to sleep around like some whorel" her father yelled at her. "I wish to God I could send you to a military school."

  "Hey, that'd be super," Sally said. "Must be about five miles of cock at the average military school. When do I leave?" She didn't mean it, and she wasn't a whore; not really promiscuous. She just got caught with a boy with his hand up her dress.

  Her face stinging and reddening from the open-handed slap from her father, Sally looked up at him from her newly and quite suddenly attained position on the living room floor.

  "I hate youl" she glares at her father. "God, you don't know how I hate you." She is eighteen.

  Just for an instant, her father's eyes soft-

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  ened, then his features hardened as he made his decision. "You've got a younger sister and brother here in this house. I can't have you corrupting them. You're just no good, Sally. You're a little tramp. I'll pay the rent on an apartment and give you an allowance until you can find a job in the city. Pack your clothes, take your car, and get out of here. Sell your butt on the streets of New York City with the rest of the street-walkers."

  Sally picked herself up from the floor. There was a slight trickle of blood from one corner of her mouth. "You won't object if I tell mother goodbye?"

  "Your mother does not wish to see you," he lied. "Not ever again."

  Sally glanced in the rearview mirror. She had just passed the city limits sign. "Hello, Binghamton," she said, tears forming in her eyes, welling up, running down her cheeks. "Goodbye, Binghamton."

  She clicked on the radio as the disc jockey introed a Goldie Oldie. Daddy's Little Girl.

  This time, New York wasn't so frightening. Sally found an apartment in the Village, sharing it with two other girls. One from Ohio, the other from Tennessee. Ohio worked as a full-time waitress and part-time writer. Tennessee was an artist, peddling her painting and occasionally her ass.

  Sally sold her car, or rather, what was left

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  of it after she parked it on the street her first day in the Big Apple—Fun City. The car thieves took the tires, wheels, seats, and radio. Sally sold what was left.

  For a year, Sally worked, part-time, at a dozen different shops and cafes and stores. She wasn't qualified to do very much. Her only contact with her parents was a check each month. No notes, messages, or social amenities from father and mother to daughter.

  Then the money stopped coming.

  Drinking more, sometimes into drugs: snorting Coke and Smack, smoking Mary Jane, Sally took her night ride in a stolen car.

  Seargeant Kovak propped his Jump Boots up on his desk and twiddled his thumbs. Tate grinned at him from behind his desk, where he was occupying his time concentrating on a crossword puzzle.

  "Sometimes we get busy, Terry, and when we do, we work our butts off. But most of the time we just piddle around at make work projects."

  "Hell, it's boring!"

  Tate put away his crossword puzzle book. "Yeah, but you just came off months of hard and fast training. Don't worry, the Colonel—the Head Dog—will call on you soon enough."

  Terry looked at him.

  Tate matched his glance. "I've been with

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  Dog Teams—of one name or the other—since 1944. Now that you know, you can forget I said it."

  Terry wouldn't leave it alone. "How did you get in with Colonel Ferret?"

  The Master Sergeant sighed. "I'll make it short, then we won't bring it up again." He smiled, a sad moving of the lips. "Back during the war—the Second one—I was on leave in England in 1943 when I got word my wife was fucking around on me in the States. I went a little nuts. Banged up some MP's and then assaulted an Officer of the Crown. Wound up pulling hard stockade time. Ferret came to see me. You can put the rest of it together yourself."

  "Wonder, how many people are in this thing?" Terry mused.

  "In what thing?"

  "Dog Teams."

  Tate smiled. "Never heard of them. By the way, how was Ranger School?"

  "Rough."

  "Of the four hundred chosen in pre-Ranger testing, only eighty made it through the most grueling training—at that time—ever devised by the U. S. Army."

  "Yeah," Terry said, almost in a whisper. "It was rough."

  "I know," Tate said. "I was with Darby in '43."

  "March or die."

  "You better believe it."

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  NINE

  The crisp and often lovely days of fall moved into the cold and sometimes lonely days of winter. Rain mixed with bits of snow and ice; steamy breath against a backdrop of white-covered ground—people hurrying along from one warm spot to another.

  When Terry entered the Armory that morning, Colonel Ferret was sitting at his desk, a cup of coffee and a folder before him.

  "Good morning, Sergeant Kovak." The Colonel was all business and Terry quickly sensed it.

  "Morning, sir. Haven't seen you for a few months." He sat down in front of his desk and waited for the Colonel to lay it on him.

  Ferret opened the folder and tapped a blunt finger on an 8x10 photograph. "Gene Hubbell," he said. "Employee of the government. Top secret clearance; just last month granted Eyes and Ears Only rating. Then, last

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  week, it was discovered he's been working for the Russians, passing high level information to them. That passed information just cost two men their lives in East Berlin. The men worked for the Agency."

  Terry knew his months of training and studying were at an end. Gene Hubbell was to be taken out, and he was to do the taking.

  "May I have the bottom line, Colonel?" Terry asked.

  "The agent, Hubbell, is to be dealt with in an extremely prejudicial manner."

  Kill him. "Yes, sir."

  "Very well. Now then, Hubbell has taken two weeks leave time from his post in Washington. He'll be visiting his sister in Kansas. Western Kansas." He told Terry the name of the small city. "On February the first, Hub-bell was to link up with a Red .agent at the zoo. He'll be exchanging papers for money. We'll managed to juggle the date around so Hubbell thinks the meet will take place on the last day of January. The man he'll meet is you. There is a very slight chance the Red agent might be around, waiting. If so, don't loll the Moscow man." He met Terry's steady gaze. He's a double agent. Those orders come from The Golfer. You understand?"

  The President. "Yes, sir."

  Ferret handed Terry a slip of paper, "When you get to the city in Kansas, check into the motel named on that paper. The next morning* you won't get ten miles out of town before

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  your engine will lock up: the oil plug will have worked loose. There will be a tow truck happening along. You'll have four or five days in the city while your engine is being replaced. Plenty of time to deal with Hubbell. Rent a car to run around in. Your car will be repaired by late afternoon of the last day in January, that's a Thursday. That night, meet Hubbell, then get the hell out of there. Your false ID, driver's license, money, all the other paraphernalia you'll need, including your orders are in this envelope." He pushed a m anil a envelope toward Terry. "Memorize your orders, then burn them. Understood?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Any qualms about this job?"

  "The man's a traitor, isn't he?"

  "Most definitely."

  "Does he need the money he's getting selling secrets?"

  Another side to Kovak, Colonel Ferret thought. "What do you mean, Sergeant?"

  "Just what I said, sir. Does he need the money to support his family? His parents? Sickness that's got him in a bind—that sort
of thing."

  "Would it make any difference?"

  "It would to me."

  Ferret thought: I'll have to be very gareful where I send Kovak. "No, Sergeant, Hubbell makes a very good living at his position. No sickness in the family. Parents are dead. What he's doing is attempting to support both a wife

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  and a mistress.**

  "Then I have no qualms, sir."

  If Terry thought winters in North Georgia were rough, it was only because he'd never been in Kansas in January. The wind, coming straight out of Canada, cut him with a thousand icy knives.

  For lack of anything else to do, Terry went to the small zoo—almost deserted in winter— and prowled about. The seals were playing in their watery cages, enjoying the cold weather, and they fascinated Terry. One would actually come up out of the water and take a small fish—purchased from a converted Coke machine in the zoo—right out of Terry's hand. He made friends with the seal, naming him Pete. Terry spent as much time as possible in the zoo, playing with Pete, feeding him fish, until it was time to do the job he'd been sent to do.

  He found a spot out in the country to bury Hubbell—officially, Hubbell would be listed as defecting to the Russians—and in the trunk of his rent car Terry found bags and bottles of lime and lye and acid. He spent one cold afternoon digging a hole in the ground, far out in the country, in a clump of trees, and the hole was ready and camouflaged.

  Terry did not know all the particulars about his assignment, but he knew his meeting with Hubbell had been set up from Washington

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  with the help of a foreign embassy; a double agent planted in the embassy. Terry didn't understand it all; he knew very little of the tricky maneuverings of governments. But he knew that security at the zoo would not bother him that night. He wondered how Ferret had managed to pull that off?

  That night, he carefully investigated his own thoughts and feelings as he drove toward his rendezvous point at the zoo. The radio in his newly repaired car was turned down low, playing country music.

  Did he have doubts about this mission; this cold-blooded killing he was about to perform in the night, in a zoo in Kansas? No. Hubbell was a traitor—a spy, selling out his country, a turncoat, working against the government of America. Terry had no misgivings about killing the man.

  Eleven o'clock when he reached the zoo, parking his car near a small building. He killed his engine and picked up a special preset walkie-talkie from the seat beside him.

  "Everything Go?" he asked.

  "Green light on," came his reply. The two men who waited just outside the zoo compound were not Dog Team personnel. They worked for a civilian agency, there to take care of the small details of Hubbell's disappearance. These men were not the Smoky-Boy type, Ferret had told him. They did not soil their hands with gunsmoke, and, the Colonel

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  added, they looked with contempt upon Dog Team personnel.

  "Fuck them," Terry had said.

  "My sentiments exactly," Ferret agreed.

  Terry fitted the silencer onto the Colt Woodsman .22 caliber automatic and jacked a round of hollow point ammunition into the chamber. He got out of the car and walked up to the meeting point, the pistol held close to his right leg.

  A shadowy, bulky figure stepped out from behind a tree. "Hubbell?" Terry spoke, sensing the man had a pistol in his hand.

  "Yes, I'm Hubbell. Has Freeland lost his mind? You're not the man I was supposed to meet. Who the hell are you?" Hubbell raised his gun.

  "Dog Team," Terry said, and brought his silenced automatic up, shooting the spy four times in the chest. The little pistol made flat hissing sounds in the night.

  Terry heard the man gasp in pain as the small slugs flattened as they struck him; the gasping ceasing abruptly as one slug tore into his heart, stilling it forever.

  Hubbell fell forward, settled on one knee for a few seconds, then toppled over on his face. He twitched several times, then was still. Vital functions ceased their life-supporting work. His bladder relaxed and the smell of urine was sharp in the cold air.

  Terry walked to the man, nudged him with his shoe, and was satisfied Hubbell was dead.

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  He removed all identification from him, and took all papers. Back at his car, Terry spoke into the walkie-talkie.

  "You can have his car in fiye minutes."

  "Okay," the same voice as before replied. "Is it done?"

  "That's why I'm here, hero," Terry said sarcastically.

  Terry removed a heavy tarp from the trunk of his car, rolled the body in it, and carried the grisly bundle to his car, stuffing the dead man in the trunk. The other men would clean up any bloodstains on the ground. Technicians.

  Terry hesitated, then walked over to the seal pool. There, he purchased several fish from the machine, and softly called out for Pete. The seal refused to come to him.

  "Come on, Pete," Terry urged. "It's me. Come on."

  He called and called until he knew the seal would not come. Pete ignored him, remaining in the far end of the pool, aloof, oblivious to Terry's pleas. Terry dropped the fish over the fence, very much aware he had just lost another friend.

  "Who says animals are dumb?" he said, walking back to his car.

  At the burial site, Terry stripped the body naked, working swiftly in the cold darkness. He stuffed the clothing in a plastic bag, dropped them into the hole, then poured acid over the bag. He dumped Hubbell into the hole, and covered his body with layers of lye

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  and lime, acid over that. The stench was awful. A half hour later, he was satisfied his job was done. The ground was patted down and covered with rock and earth. The body—what was left of it—would not be found. Terry's first lethal assignment for Dog Team, unit 12, was done.

  On the seat of his car in Benning, Terry found an envelope containing a message and a thousand dollars in twenty dollar bills. The note was typewritten, congratulating Terry on a job well done. It was signed with the letter P.

  Terry drove back to Bishop and the next day resumed his duties at the Armory.

  On the last day of February, Terry was sent to an Air Force base in Arkansas.

  He was met by several unsmiling and grim looking Air Police at the back gate, escorted to a sedan, and driven to a huge hanger. The young Airman in the hanger was frightened, his face pale. He made no attempt to run, not even when the door closed and he was alone with Terry.

  "Don't you even want to know why I did it?" he asked Terry.

  "I know why you did it," Terry said.

  "Hey, man! The government's got no right to draft me. I just barely got under the wire in time to join this chicken-shit outfit. But it's better than the Army. I was doing okay in col-

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  lege; just busted a couple of courses, that's all."

  "So that gives you the right to sabotage a fighter-bomber and loll three men who had done nothing to you?"

  "Ain't no point in tryin' to talk to you. You gonna beat me up, huh? Teach me a lesson? Well, you go right ahead. But mister, I'm going to the press after you do. So you better have your fun while you can."

  "No," Terry said, "I'm not going to beat you up."

  "Yeah? Whatcha gonna do, then?"

  Terry pulled out the .22 automatic. The young man's eyes widened. He panicked. "You gotta be kidding? Don't I get a trial? Man, this is America! All I did was mess up a fighter-bomber."

  "And kill three men."

  "Big deal."

  Terry shot him between the eyes, picked up the empty brass from the weapon, and walked to the side door of the hanger. The Air Police were waiting for him.

  "Done," Terry said, and got in the back seat of the sedan.

  During the ten minute ride to the back gate, the Air Police said only one thing to Terry. "You're a cold mother-fucker," a Sergeant said.

  "So I've been told," Terry replied.

  "You want to do WHAT?" Colonel Ferret 171

  was astonished. He sat
open-mouthed behind Terry's desk at the Armory. He held Terry's unsigned re-enlistment papers in his hand.

  "Get out for awhile," Terry repeated. "See how normal people live. Hell, I might like it."

  "Kovak, the government's got a lot of money invested in you," Ferret reminded the young man. "Not to mention," his smile was grim, "I know where the body is buried."

  "Hubbell?" Terry returned the dour smile. "No, you don't. I didn't follow your orders to the letter." Ferret's smile faded. "I picked a different spot to plant him, miles from the original plan."

  "I should have guessed it," Ferret sighed, allowing a rueful smile to crease his tanned face. "Kovak, you are a natural-born horse's ass."

  Terry shrugged off the insult. "I'm not going to voluntarily sign those re-up papers, Colonel."

  "What do you want, Terry? I'll confess, I don't understand you. I thought you wanted to make the Army your career?"

  "I do, Colonel, believe me. But ... I want a chance to be a kid . . . again. If I ever really was. To have some fun. Then 1*11 be back. I promise you that." The Armory was empty, Terry's voice hollow in the huge building.

  "I believe you when you say you'll be back, Terry. But isn't it a bit late to be thinking of boyhood?" Ferret's voice was soft. "You're no longer a boy. Listen, Terry, -t know what

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  you're going through* son» believe me, I do. Our lives almost parallel. I, too, killed a man when I was just a lad. I killed a cop who was beating me up. Shot him right between the eyes with his own gun. Now you know something on me. Oh, he had it coming—but that's beside the point. I took off, changed my name; it was easy back then. Lied about my age, joined the Army. That was in '38. The year you were born, son. I'm a Mustang, worked my way up the ranks." Ferret stood up, putting his hand on Terry's shoulder. "Son, listen to me: we're alike, much more than you realize. After one hitch, I left the Army. I was back in less than four months. I killed a man in a bar in Kansas City. Like you, Terry, I was searching for the youth I never had. But it's gone, son. And when it goes, it's gone forever."

  "You're probably right, sir, but I sure would like the opportunity to find out for myself." He looked into Ferret's eyes. "Colonel, if you order me to sign those papers, I'll do it."