by Rene Fomby
“Look, rat. I only came here to get a few simple answers to a few simple questions. Nothing personal, unless you want to make it so. But I’d prefer to end this situation with your head still attached to your body. In my experience that makes it a whole lot easier for you to tell me what I need to know.”
The rat is scanning the room for backup, but apparently he isn’t seeing anything more than I am, so he caves pretty quickly.
“Hey, no reason to get touchy. I may have overreacted, is all. I mean, it was almost a full bottle…”
“Not a problem,” Tommy tells him, relaxing his hold and returning to his seat, but keeping the knife. “You need a beer? I’ll get you another.” He nods over his shoulder toward Barkeep. “Perhaps I simply failed to introduce myself properly. The name’s Tuxedo. Tommy Tuxedo. Double-O Nine, licensed to kill.” He wags his chin in my direction. “And this here is a fellow Double-O agent. We’re here to ask you a few questions about who or what is behind the recent disappearance of several of our colleagues…”
Fellow Double-O agent? This is honestly the first I’ve heard about any of this. But I can’t really say it’s a big surprise. Okay, actually, it is, but it shouldn’t be, right? I mean, what dog or cat has done more in recent times to advance the interests of pets in this city? Although, to be fair, I really have next to no idea what PETSEC has done since the Southside breakout. Or before that, for that matter. So, I guess I’m back to listening.
The Norwegian is looking ill, probably because he’s checking out the same room full of eye-corners I’m seeing right now, and not picking up any sign of a criminal version of a cavalry heading his way. But Tommy isn’t cutting him any slack.
Just as I think the tension between Tommy and Olaf can’t possibly get any worse, Barkeep shows up with a bottle of beer and slaps it in front of the rat with one eye carefully trained toward the cat.
“Put it on my tab,” Tommy grumbles.
“I’ll put it on your tabby hide,” Barkeep tells him before turning sharply and heading back to his station, busying himself once again with wiping glasses behind the bar.
But the arrival of a new bottle of beer seems to have worked some kind of magic on the rat, as he slunks down into his chair and takes a long, slow sip.
“So, Double-O, what brings you down to my little corner of the world in such a huff?” he growls, in a squeaky kind of way.
Tommy is busy spinning the knife in the center of the table. “I think you know very well why we’re here. Like I said, the Double-O service is suddenly short a few members, and I’m not leaving this place until I find out who’s behind all that. And why.”
Olaf considers Tommy’s words for a few moments as he sips thoughtfully on his beer. “And why exactly do you think I can help out with any of that? I’m just a common rodent, after all, minding my business out on the docks, same as any other.”
“Because word on the street is, if you need to ferret out some down-and-dirty info on what’s going down in this city, then the Norwegian’s the best place to start.”
Olaf suddenly sits up straighter, his eyes bright. “Oh, you want the Ferret? Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? He don’t come around here any more, his place of business is down at the Carving Knife, closer to the warehouse district. Or so I’m told. Personally, we rodents try to avoid that particular place any chance we get. You know…”
Oh great. Now I’ll have that stupid children’s tune stuck in my head for the rest of the day. I shake my head vigorously to try and knock it out, causing my two tablemates to stare sharply at me like I’ve lost my mind. Which I probably will at some point if I get stuck with ‘Three Blind Mice’ running nonstop through it all afternoon long…
Tommy finally turns back to face Olaf. “I don’t want the Ferret, you stupid rat! Ferret’s just an expression for—” He stops and shakes his head slowly, realizing the futility of trying to reason with a creature that has a brain the size of an English pea. If that. Tree rats or wharf rats, they’re all the same. Pretty much all a rat is useful for is getting some inside info and spreading the Black Plague. Tommy tries again, holding the knife up in the air in front of him, the blade catching a ray of light from a dingy window on the far side of the bar and glimmering menacingly. “What I’m saying, rat, is you want to get out of this bar with your tail still attached to your sizable hairy butt, you better start talking. Who’s behind the attacks on PETSEC?”
Olaf’s eyes dance around the room as he does a quick calculus on the situation. Which doesn’t take long—for a rat, even adding one plus one is way above their education level. “Listen up, cat, I’m no stool pigeon—”
Tommy scowls and drives the point of the knife deep into the center of the table, leaving it quivering between them. “You’ll be feeding the pigeons within the hour if you don’t start talking. And I don’t mean scattering seed. Listen, rat, I’m running out of time, here. And patience. So spill it, who’s behind all the whacking and hacking?”
Olaf pauses, thinking, then peels the label off his beer and scratches out two words before shoving it across the table toward Tommy. “There. That should get you headed in the right direction. But let’s all be clear, here. I didn’t say a single word, right? Not one single word. I gotta reputation to maintain.”
Tommy glances down at the label, then spins it around so I can read what’s scrawled across it. Just two simple words. Russian Wolfhounds. My stomach turns over again as sweat breaks out across my forehead. The Russians! For the third time today I’m seriously reconsidering my role in this whole operation. In the long run, it might be better to live with Boss Dawg sitting at the head of PETSEC than wind up swimming around in a steaming bowl of beet soup. Because that’s pretty much the only two options I’m facing right now. Be lucky to somehow make it through the rest of this day alive, or else skedaddle back home so I can live to die another day. And I do hate beets.
Downtown Chicago, 12:45 p.m.
T
ommy’s jumping in and out of traffic so fast I can barely keep up, and more than once I missed getting run over so close the driver stopped and checked under his car for my dead body. And I gotta tell you I’m happy they didn’t find me.
I holler out to Tommy to slow down, but he doesn’t seem to be hearing me, and instead just doubles down on his pace. I’m just about to give up on this crazy high-speed chase when suddenly he stops dead in his tracks and studies a wall on one of downtown’s tallest skyscrapers, just a few doors down from the Sears Tower, or whatever they’re calling it these days.
“Only been here once,” he mumbles under his breath, still not paying me any mind.
“What are we looking for, Tommy?” I ask in between hacking gasps for air, squeezing in closer to see what he could possibly be looking for on an apparently unremarkable stretch of blank brickwork.
Tommy starts feverishly pawing at the bricks, and I’m beginning to think the tuna he ate back at the Dead Fish might have been tainted after all, when abruptly he stops in mid-paw and steps back, a smile now creasing his black-and-white face.
“Ah, little Moosie, haven’t lost my touch after all. Stand right there.” He points to a position on the sidewalk just to the right of where I’m standing, and I hold my questions for the moment as I move over to do as he says. Tommy presses one last brick, then hops over to stand right next to me, almost touching. And he lands there just a split second before the ground opens up underneath our feet and swallows us alive.
Down the Rabbit Hole
W
e plunge through the endless darkness for what seems like an eternity, and I’d like to say I’m taking the whole thing like a proper Double-O agent. Except that Tommy is here as a witness, so I’ll have to admit that maybe, just maybe, I let out a squeak or two along the way. Okay, Tommy might say it was more than just a squeak, something more on the order of a scream, or even a terrified, blood curdling shriek. But you know how Tommy exaggerates all the time, so let’s j
ust leave it at a few squeaks for now.
Anyway, after an eternity has passed, or maybe just five or ten seconds—it’s hard to tell when you’re busy free-falling straight to your death—a bright light comes on right beneath our feet, starting as just a pinpoint, then swelling to the size of a giant glowing mouth, and we fall into it without slowing one bit. My eyes are squeezed tight as a deer tick, waiting for the inevitable, and I can just feel the first pale rays of doggie heaven hitting my cheeks, when I slam paws-first into something else instead. Something soft, something that gives way for just a fraction of a second before bouncing me right back up a few feet or so toward the sidewalk stretching high above my head. I fall back, then bounce up one or two more times. Finally, I gulp down the contents of my stomach that have been desperately trying to find their own escape route, then bravely pry open my eyes and see that I’m lying on top of a large net in the middle of an otherwise empty room. Tommy is already brushing off the shoulders of his jacket and is jumping down to the floor, about a foot or so beneath my feet.
“Come on, Moose. We don’t have all day.” He’s moving briskly toward a plain gray door set in the far wall as I manage to finally pull myself together enough to jump down to ground level to join him. And never in my life has the ground felt sweeter under my paws.
Q’ute Branch, 1:00 p.m.
T
he plain gray door leads into an equally gray tunnel, dimly lit by small LED strips set into the walls at about eye level to me. My paws are feeling a little wobbly after the long fall, and I think I may have twisted something important when I hit the net, but hey, I’m a professional here, so I’ll just have to fight through the pain.
“Hey, Tommy,” I call out to my partner, who’s still taking the lead, walking several steps in front of me like he is on some kind of mission. Which I guess he is. “What you said about me being a Double-O agent. Is that for real? And what number do I get? Double-O Ten?”
Tommy turns and shoots me the same long look he’d been using on Olaf the Rat, his eyes rolling upward in their sockets. I quickly check the ceiling myself to see if there’s anything up there I might have missed, but it’s just plain gray like everything else.
“Double-O Ten? Really? Just how does that make any sense?” He shakes his head. “No, Moose, the only double o’s you’ll likely ever get is when people say ‘oh no’ every single time you come around.”
It takes me a second or two to figure out what he just said, and then he’s already turned back around and is walking quickly toward the end of the tunnel before I can figure out a response. Is that really what everyone says about me behind my back? “Oh no?” After everything I did springing all of the dogs and cats out of Southside prison last year? And putting my own fur-covered hide squarely on the firing line in the process?
But Tommy’s getting way ahead of me, so I drop it for now and rush to catch up.
At the far end of the tunnel is another plain gray door. Tommy turns the knob and pushes it open without hesitation, and a brilliant light pours into the tunnel, blinding me for a second.
As things finally come back into focus, I step forward into the largest room I’ve ever seen, and all I can say is that it kinda looks like the Ringling Brothers Circus has met the front lines of a high-tech World War Three! There’s chaos everywhere I see. Off to my right, a large dog is getting shot out of a canon, and just before he splats into the wall on the far side, a rocket pack on his back ignites and he stops almost on a dime, hovering in mid-air for a moment before slowly easing to the ground. Off to my left, a gang of monkeys is busy throwing some kind of brown, nasty-looking substance at a line of human-shaped mannequins, and wherever the brown stuff hits the mannequins they let off a greenish cloud of gas and immediately start to dissolve. A few steps further on I pass a common tabby wearing a bright blue collar. Out of nowhere a pack of robotic Rottweilers pounce on the cat, only to be thrown back by some kind of bright blue force field that has sprung out from the collar, completely surrounding the cat, who’s now busy licking a front paw like nothing ever happened.
It’s like that all around the room, animals flying through the air, strange looking guns, a Pomeranian with no hind legs in a tiny motorized wheelchair—oh, wait, that totally makes sense—and an English Setter getting ready to bite down on a chew stick, and then suddenly spitting small red pellets out the end of the stick, blowing the heads right off another line of mannequins! I barely know where to look next, and I’m kind of frozen in my tracks, taking it all in, when I glance down and see Tommy motioning for me to join him in a small alcove set deep into the far wall. I hurry to catch up, while still being very careful not to step in front of any exploding pellets or whatever it was those monkeys were tossing around.
Tommy’s already taken a seat at a table set in the very middle of the alcove as I finally arrive, slightly out of breath, whether from the strain of running or the strain of dodging all the life-threatening activities along the way it’s hard to say. Sitting calmly at the far end of the table is the smallest Collie I think I’ve ever seen, wearing a pair of glasses with thick, Coke bottle lenses. But somehow the glasses seem to fit—her?—very well. I’ve only seen a Collie once or twice, from a distance at the dog park near my house, but every masculine bone in my body is instantly on full alert.
Tommy clears his throat. “Moose, this is Q’ute, head of PETSEC’s special weapons, espionage and tactics team. SWEATT, for short.”
Pleased to meet you,” I say, sticking out a paw. “Can’t say I ever met a Collie before…”
Tommy clears his throat again, but Q’ute simply smiles as she bumps my paw with hers. “Actually, Moose, you still haven’t. I’m a Shetland Sheepdog, commonly called a Sheltie. But I’m honored to finally meet you, as well. Your exploits down on the South Side of our fair city are quite legendary, I must say. When we get a chance, after all this ugliness is behind us, maybe we can share some kibble sometime and you can tell me all about it.”
Tommy is looking like he’s just been slapped, and leans in to change the subject. “Yeah, well, let’s get back to business, shall we?” He casually tosses the beer bottle label we got from the Norwegian rat onto the table. “I gotta snitch in one of the dive bars down near the Navy Pier that tells me the Russians have moved into town. Think that might be a good place to start.”
Q’ute’s glasses have slipped down her snout just a hair, and she pauses to push them back, giving her a long moment to absorb Tommy’s news. “The Russians? Well, isn’t that interesting…” She starts tapping furiously on the surface of the table, and I lean over to see that there’s some type of computer screen and keyboard embedded deep inside of it. After about a minute and several mumbled comments to herself, Q’ute finally sits up straight and catches my eye.
“Well, Mr. Moose, you certainly have a knack for attracting trouble. A danger magnet of the worst kind, I must say.”
That doesn’t sound at all good, and I notice Tommy starting to squirm around in his seat out of the corner of my eye. The first time I’ve ever seen Tommy nervous. I plaster on my best smile, even as I’m busy sucking in my gut. Did I mention that Q’ute was—well—really cute?
“Trouble?” I manage to blurt out. “What kind of trouble are we talking? Sent to bed for the evening with no din-din, or getting your throat ripped out by a pack of Dobermans trouble?”
Q’ute smiles back comfortingly, but her eyes tell me otherwise, even hidden behind those thick lenses. “I think you might be better off taking on the Crimson Canines single-handedly, versus what’s in store for all of us over the next few days.” She slaps a paw on the tabletop in front of her, and instantly a huge computer screen lights up on the wall right behind her head. “We’ve had our eye on this group for quite some time, a gang of Russian Wolfhounds based out of St. Petersburg, from what we can gather. They call themselves SPECTER, shorthand for their real name, the Secret Protectorate Ensuring Canines’ Total Enslavement by Russia. They’re all th
at remains of the old KGB, the Kanine Globalist Bureau.”
My fears start to melt away immediately. “Canine Globalists? That sounds like a great idea! We dogs are some of the most worldly animals out there, you know. Not like cats, who are pretty much all isolationists…”
Tommy picks this moment to speak up, his face now twisted into a fierce knot. With either fear or rage, or maybe a combination of both. “No, you idiot! It’s the KGB! They have a reputation for being the most brutal, repressive group of animals anyone could ever imagine. The last thing they want is a world where every animal joins paws, singing together in a perfect three-part harmony. They’re trying to turn the world into one giant concentration camp, with them playing the role of the prison guards. And in the process they’re planning to exterminate almost every animal in the non-canine animal world. Starting with cats.”
I glance over at Q’ute, who’s nodding her head in agreement. “Yes, my friends, in the recent past the KGB was easily the most powerful agent for evil in the entire world. But there were certain political changes in Russia that took out the old guard of political idealists, and replaced them with a new guard of criminal opportunists, with SPECTER at the very center of it all. And now it seems like they’ve landed right here in Chicago, just two days before the most important presidential election in PETSEC history. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“The president, President Boomer—” Tommy sputters.
Q’ute cocks her head sideways a bit, her Coke bottle glasses shifting ever so slightly in the process. “Exactly what I was thinking. I’ll have to go back and check the autopsy results one more time, but I’ll bet you kibbles to canned food we’ll find some type of neurotoxin hiding out somewhere in his bloodstream. A Russian neurotoxin, to be precise.”
