The Glasgow Gray: Spot and Smudge - Book 2

by Robert Udulutch

  Christa explained that Vic wasn’t a fan of Hamish’s plan, and he didn’t want the tourists coming to town. Vic also seemed to have a hatred of wolves that no one fully understood, but there was talk it had something to do with his scar.

  There was also some bad blood with the Chogins.

  Christa said, “Harry worked for the mine here in town for thirty years, and it’s pretty well accepted that Vic was brought in a decade ago just to slash the budget. He had been a dock manager in Thunder Bay and knew nothing about mining. His cuts went too far, and he basically hamstringed Harry’s safety protocols as the economy really turned sour. Harry and Vic argued all the time, until there was an accident during one of Harry’s rock bench explosions. One of the untrained workers walked into a blast site, and when Harry tried to save him they both got injured. Lissa’s been fighting tooth and nail to keep Vic paying Harry’s benefits. Vic really got pissed when he found out she was helping Hamish with the wolves. Lissa helps me with the radio collars, and she keeps a few collars and trackers in her work truck. Vic heard about it and ratted her out to her company. Of course they love Lissa and promptly told Victor LeClerc to go fuc…to go pound rocks.”

  As Christa pulled her truck into the shooting club’s driveway she said, “No one likes the jerk.”

  An hour later Ben was pissing lead with an Israeli made Tavor assault rifle. He was holding down the trigger as it spat fire and ripped apart a scowling plywood bad guy who was pointing a big pistol at him. The bolt clicked forward and the last empty shell casing bounced on the rubber floor matt as smoke rose from the end of the muzzle.

  Ben smiled a huge smile.

  “Nice shootin’, Tex,” Lissa said as she looked at the big hole in the target’s chest and groin, “I’d say he’s not going to bad-guy prom this year.” She had pulled one of the ear pieces from Ben’s sound proofing headset away from his head, and she let it snap back with a thump.

  He turned to smile at her as he adjusted the yellow-tinted safety glasses Lissa’s husband Harry had given him.

  Harry rapped on the glass from the far side of the partition wall. He smiled, and signed to Ben, Not bad for a slow city kid, before turning his round bulk back to the table, and his breakfast.

  The big pair of police canine students were at Ben’s side, standing at attention with their black faces focused on the target. Christa was standing behind them near the glass wall.

  She said, “Vuur, Rook, controleren.”

  Rook ran quickly up to the target and circled it, smelling the bits of woods on the ground. Vuur crossed behind his brother and made a wide arc to come up behind the target. He watched from a few steps away with his head low and his eyes scanning.

  The target exploded just above Rook’s head and bits of plywood rained down. He jumped back a few steps but immediately snapped to alert. Vuur hadn’t flinched. Christa holstered her pistol as she trotted over to Rook. “Good boys! Goeie!” she cooed as she bent over and the dog buried his huge black face into her chest, and both dogs wagged their whip-like tails around in circles.

  Lissa said to Ben, “Two weeks ago that hound would have been shitting himself in the parking lot after a shot that close.”

  Spot and Smudge were hanging out with Harry at the front of the range. He was rubber-banding small posters for the club’s upcoming charity shoot, and sharing his breakfast with the pups. They were eating thick toast smeared with a cold meat and cinnamon spread called cretons. Based on their smacking and wags it was quite possibly the best thing the pups had ever tasted, next to venison.

  They were happy to be fueling up from their long night out, but mostly they were just fascinated with Harry. The accident at the mine had taken his hearing, most of his sight, and five of his fingers. At his feet was a small oxygen tank with a clear tube that ended in a small mask. He only had to use it once in a while to compensate for his scorched lungs’ lost capacity, usually after a good joke or emptying a drum clip of ammo in full auto-fire mode.

  The pups were riveted as Harry and Lissa carried on conversations in sign language. The couple had come up with their own little modifications to compensate for Harry’s loss of digits, and it wasn’t all that different than the pups’ own…except for his sign for needing a pee break.

  Harry seemed to be taken with them, too. He was usually hugging or patting one or the other while he was feeding them. The pups had caught one of Harry’s signings to Lissa about how they reminded him of the couple’s black lab who had died the day of Harry’s accident. They found out later the dog had chased after Harry when he ran towards the idiot who decided to fetch his forgotten radio from under a hundred tons of rock just as it was getting blown up.

  Ben and Lissa joined Christa at a low work table at the back of the range. She had opened a large cardboard box filled with dozens of small metal containers. Each was in a zip-lock bag, and the top of each can had a lid that could be rotated to open and close small holes. They looked like spice cans.

  They were labelled in Hamish’s neatly printed scroll. Ben read the cans as they took them out of the box, “Blood…Feces…Cadaver One Month…Kush…Cadaver Fresh…BC Gold…Raw Cocaine…MDMA…” Ben had to ask what a few of them were, and then said, “Well that explains why Unc’s cooking makes me so happy.”

  Christa laughed as she sent Vuur and Rook back through the glass doorway to wait at the front of the range. She handed Ben a pair of blue acetate gloves, paper booties, and a paper mask. She handed him a plastic grocery bag and said, “Take five cans, any ones you want, but only pick one of the cadaver cans. Spread them around the range and hide them. Take them out of their baggies, twist the top so the holes are open, and set them down carefully with the holes facing up. Don’t shake them, and try to remember which ones you hid where.”

  Ben headed off into the range and halfway to the back he realized how big the building really was. It took him five minutes to walk from the front to the rear wall.

  Harry had explained it had been an indoor lumber yard during the town’s boom years, and he had pointed out the side walls still had the built-in racks for pallets of wood. The racks were now stacked with used sheets of plywood that the club cut into various people-shaped targets. Most of the back wall was angled down to deflect bullets into a sand pit, except for a large sliding garage door covered in layers of thick carpet padding. Ben walked the building’s entire inside perimeter, hiding the cans as he went.

  Ten minutes later they were all standing together at the center of the range. Vuur and the pups were next to them, watching intently as Rook trotted back and forth along the far rear wall.

  Lissa was rocking from one foot to the other like she had to pee. She whispered, “C’mon boy, you can do it.”

  It was Rook’s second try, and he’d covered most of the building three times. Christa told Ben the flat noses of the South African boerboels hampered their ability to distance smell. She also said what Vuur and Rook lacked in sensing ability they compensated for by covering a lot of ground, and by pure pig-headedness. But even the stubborn Rook was clearly getting frustrated. He was running in big loops with his head, ears, and tail down.

  Smudge looked up at Ben with a worried face he could immediately read. His sweet dog had too much of Mimi in her. She’d want to help Rook, and then give him a hug and make him a cup of tea. When Ben shook his head Smudge turned away from him, discouraged. She was shifting almost as much as Lissa.

  Christa said under her breath, “He’s lost it again, shit.” As she left the group and walked towards the front of the building she grumbled, “Maybe he’ll have better luck finding my dead body when Hamish kills me.”

  As they watched Christa stomp off Harry turned and signed to Lissa.

  She replied, “No, leave it in the truck, dear. I doubt we’ll get to the ANFO today. Take them out for a break and we’ll start again in a bit.”

  “I’ll take them out,” Ben said. He wanted to have a word with Smudge outside anyway. He called for Rook, and as the do
g trotted back towards them Ben asked, “What’s ANFO?”

  “It’s a mix of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil,” Lissa said, “We use it to blast at the mines. It’s one of the explosives the dogs need to be able to detect. I usually reek of the stuff so they end up indicating on me as often as the hidden stash. They also need to not be afraid of explosions.”

  As an ashamed Rook joined the dogs his brother Vuur gave him a disappointed head butt. Ben led the dogs out through the side door, and as soon as they were outside Smudge pulled Rook aside.

  Ben said, “Wait wait wait, let’s talk about—”

  Smudge turned and shot him a low growl.

  Ben raised his hands and said, “Okay, yep, got it. Just do me a favor and be a little teeny tiny bit subtle. Spot, help a brother out here.”

  Spot just wagged a laugh up at Ben.

  The boerboels whipping tails indicated they seemed to have enjoyed Smudge’s growl as well.

  Ten minutes later they were walking back to the center of the range and Smudge was still coaching Rook, and Ben had to shoo her away with a boot to the backside.

  Christa said, “Okay kids, let’s give this another try. You moved the cans?”

  Lissa nodded.

  Christa took a few steps forward with Rook and gave the alert dog the ‘be ready’ hand sign. As he stared up at her she again gave him the cadaver search command in Afrikaans, “Rook, soek ver die kadawer.”

  When she had sent Rook off to search for the dead body can last time he had darted off just like his brother by running in the zigzag pattern of their training. Only unlike his brother he hadn’t found it after three attempts, and many painfully long minutes of hunting.

  This time, however, Rook took a few steps forward and stopped. He closed his eyes and turned his black face up to the ceiling. His nostrils flared, and his ribs expanded and contracted as he pulled in long, slow breaths.

  Ben folded his arms across his chest, and noticed neither of his dogs would look up at him.

  Rook sampled the air, and let Smudge’s stream of advice wash over him…Remove sight and sound from the equation, take in long slow breaths and label every smell, and then cast them off one at a time…you can smell the dead human it’s just masked by other smells, you know the trail is there, just remove the clutter…picture the body, make a connection to the person it used to be, feel it, it wants to be found, sense how it wants to be returned to its family…and the essence of who they were will guide you right to them...

  Rook separated the smells of the live humans and dogs around him. He pushed away the ANFO on Lissa, the residual breakfast on Harry, the spent brass shells on the floor, and the smokeless powder hanging in the air…and then he removed everything else from the range as well. All but one smell. One smell that wanted to be found.

  Only about three of every billion or so odor molecules flowing around him had the smell he was looking for, but those three were enough for even his mediocre olfactory receptors to grasp onto.

  Rook opened his eyes and looked back at Smudge before he trotted off towards the far corner of the range. He didn’t walk in a perfectly straight line and had to stop once for a quick check. When he opened his eyes again he went to a row of old metal cabinets in the rear corner. As he got close he started to wag. He sat in front of one of them, and looked back at Christa.

  Harry smiled, and signed to Lissa.

  She said, “Yeah, freaky shit is right.”

  Chapter 38

  They spent the morning working with the dogs on detecting the various cans of scents, and Vuur had started to use the same techniques as Rook. Even though Spot openly agreed with Ben’s protests about being too obvious, he secretly couldn’t help adding his advice whenever they took a break. He was enjoying the boerboel brothers’ progress, and his sister’s elation when they nailed a detection. Ben wasn’t happy but he had to admit he was enjoying the show. He accurately noted the boerboels’ comical looking combination of muscular bulk and flat black faces belied their true intelligence.

  Spot also realized Hamish had been right to select them. Rook and Vuur were special dogs indeed, but how he could have picked up on that when they were just puppies was a mystery. Spot wondered if Hamish had a bit of Smudge in him.

  Before long Christa couldn’t stump the police dog trainees. They went through scent cans labeled with everything from dead bodies to drugs to DVDs. There were cans for cell phones and other electronics, cash, and an array of animal smells including rhino horn. She tried confusing them with several different related scents at once, and even tried to trip them up with lion and elephant urine. Rook and Vuur could always figure out the smells and lock onto the correct can she’d asked for. When they started to do it almost immediately Ben had to step in and force his pups to cool it. Rook and Vuur had begun coordinating from opposite ends of the range to find the scents more quickly, and Ben wasn’t liking Christa’s raised eyebrows.

  They ended up getting through all of the canned scents before lunch, and an elated Christa asked Lissa to grab her training case of explosives.

  All of the Chogins’ joking stopped when Lissa and Harry pulled Ben aside and delivered a serious explosives safety lesson, complete with a graphic description of Harry’s accident, and his injuries. Harry showed Ben his mangled hands, and then lifted up his shirt to show the deep scar that ran from his ribs to his waist, and the puckered chunks of twisted flesh radiating out from it. He looked at Ben through his thick glasses and signed, You don’t get a do-over with this stuff. Not one fucking mistake, ever. Understand?

  Ben nodded, and so did the pups.

  Satisfied Ben got the point, Lissa and Harry showed him how the tubes of ANFO and its detonators worked. Ben nodded when Harry gave him a big smile and an exaggerated sign for Boooom.

  They started blowing up the plywood targets, and then Harry showed Ben how to mix up a small amount of Tannerite, which detonates when shot. Ben blew the head and torso off a bad-guy target with just a small caliber pistol shot.

  As the explosions were going off Christa ran the police dogs through a series of basic patrolling and search drills that took them far closer to the targets than Ben and the pups had expected. Christa was pretty close to the blasts, too, and was watching Vuur and Rook’s every move. She was right there to coach, correct, or encourage them to ignore the spraying plywood and stay on task.

  The pups were again impressed with the police dogs, and with Christa. Even though Spot and Smudge understood what Ben and the Chogins were doing, and could often tell when the detonation button was about to get pressed, they still flinched when the targets exploded. Even with the larger detonations Vuur and Rook barely seemed to notice, and remained laser-focused on completing the job Christa had given them. Their single-minded desire to please her, and accomplish their objective was a little humbling. Spot had noticed the same look on Sholto at The Grub, and knew these dogs wouldn’t hesitate to pounce on a hand-grenade to save their handler, or if they were commanded to do so. He also saw it was something far smarter than blind loyalty. He and Smudge certainly had run in front of a bullet for their family, but these dogs had a definite pride of purpose beyond merely selfless acts. Ben and the pups agreed the only word to describe it accurately was professionalism.

  As they rigged up the next target Ben told the Chogins one of Papa’s old jokes about the suicide bomber instructor who told his class, “Pay attention, I’m only going to show you this once.”

  Harry pounded Ben on the back as he sucked from his oxygen bottle and signed, That’s really fucking funny, kid. It earned him a smack and a smile from his wife.

  The Chogins showed Ben a variety of other explosives. Christa made Rook and Vuur find hidden samples of each, and then a small amount would be detonated so they could identify the charred remnants of explosives like TNT, Semtex, and C4.

  Spot and Smudge were understanding the differences in the explosives as well, and not only their before-and-after smells. They nodded to each other often as Ha
rry setup the charges and showed Ben how to connect the detonators.

  When they finished with the explosives, Christa asked for a little distracting background gunfire as she repeated some of the trickier seek-and-find exercises with the police dogs.

  Lissa, Harry, and Ben lit up the range with a variety of small assault rifles. There was a disagreement at one point about what Christa had meant by a little background gunfire, and Lissa tried to keep the boys to intermittent rounds of pissing hellfire downrange.

  Ben wasn’t too bad of a shot. Before Papa died he had started to teach Ben how to shoot a small twenty-two caliber rifle and his coyote-scattering shotgun. Ben was comfortable with the basics but this was his first time holding assault weapons. Based on his interest in every detail, and big smile, the Chogins could see Ben was having a blast. Even his dogs seemed to like watching the boy shoot.

  Harry was impressed with Ben’s focus, and his wife noticed her normally impatient husband didn’t seem to mind Ben’s constant stream of questions. He was clearly enjoying answering them, and coaching Ben to narrow his spray and control his bursts. He was also enjoying having someone communicating with him by sign language other than his wife, and she noticed Ben had picked up their modified signs quickly.

  Her Harry was by no means shy, but was often perceived that way as he was usually quiet. He didn’t like to speak as his voice was squeaky and distorted. No one in their circle of wonderful friends cared of course, but she knew Harry was self-conscious about it. He was even a little shy about his signing with his missing fingers, but she noticed he’d signed more with Ben than she’d seen in a long while. In fact, he’d barely shut up the entire afternoon.

  Ben and the pups found it funny that the type of small assault rifles they were using were called bullpups. Harry pointed out that the sleek, insidious looking family of short rifles had their firing mechanism and ammo clip at the rear of the gun, built into the stock. It allowed for a longer, more accurate barrel while still keeping the overall length of the rifle short. Ben liked them as they fit his smaller frame perfectly, and they looked crazy cool.