The Death & Life of an American Dog Read online

  “The plan is that I’m helping to rescue Yoda, and that’s all there is to it,” Sunny insisted.

  “I could go alone,” Baron offered. “All they really want to see there is me. I won’t run. I’m through running.”

  “I know you won’t, Baron.” Levi said. “But you showing up without an escort, as they have specified, would likely spook them just as much as if they saw police dogs skulking through the grass.”

  “I’ll go with Baron,” Sally said. “If you’re going to have any hope of rescuing Yoda, you’re going to need all the scrappers you can get. That’s Sunny, not me.”

  “Thank you, Sally,” Sunny murmured. “So very much.”

  “All right, Sally will escort Baron to the exchange and put on a show of waiting,” Levi said. “Remember, they will watch you, so make sure you act nervous.”

  “I won’t be acting,” Sally said.

  “We want them to believe we’re giving in to their demands,” Levi said. “The more they believe we have given up Baron in favor of Yoda, the less prepared they’ll be for anything else. They’re an unimaginative and short-sighted lot, but they will assume we are as duplicitous as they are, so a good show is necessary.”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard, since they believe we’re weaklings anyway,” Baron remarked. “It’s one of the reasons we constantly bested them in Afghanistan…always underestimating us.”

  “Wait about twenty minutes, then start out,” Levi told the two dogs. He looked to Sunny and Gibbs. “We’re going to head up Davidson in case they have a watcher on F Street.”

  “Unlikely, considering they’re down three dogs,” Gibbs said.

  “Especially since someone has to guard Yoda.” Sunny gasped and a stricken expression appeared on her face. “Levi, you don’t…”

  “Put it out of your mind, Sunny.” Levi advised. “Concentrate on the mission and nothing else. If we are consumed by doubt and fear, we are beaten before we start.”

  Sunny nodded, forcing dread thoughts from her mind.

  “Once across Fourth, you two cut through the park next to the library, cross F Street without being seen, and enter Memorial Park via the parking garage behind Third Avenue Village,” Levi instructed. “On the other side of the pines, there’s a shunt drain that diverts some of the main tunnel’s flow into the park. Wait there for a signal, then rush in prepared for a fight and to grab Yoda.”

  “What’s the signal?” Gibbs asked.

  “Not sure,” Levi said, “but you’ll know it when you hear it.”

  The Siberian Husky nodded.

  “What about you?” Sunny asked.

  “I’ll continue up Davidson, cross Third, and enter a side tunnel on the other side of Twin Oaks,” Levi said. “I’ll make my way to where Yoda is, and then…well, I’ll think of something.”

  “Be careful, Levi,” Sunny said.

  “And good luck,” Gibbs added.

  “One thing more,” Levi said. “Careful passing the PD. They’ll be on alert, and this mission doesn’t need more than three dogs.”

  Chapter 12

  That time of the morning, there was almost no traffic on Fourth Avenue, but still the three dogs ran as fast as they could. It was unlikely Anila could spare a spy from her depleted pack, but it was a chance Levi and the others preferred not to take, not with the life of their friend hanging in the balance.

  Sunny and Gibbs cut across the park constructed near the low, sweeping form of the Chula Vista Public Library. A few ghostly security lights shone through windows overlooking the park. They abandoned gently winding walkways, running fast over the rolling grassy hills. They loped quickly through the deserted parking lot, paused only for a moment at F Street, then shot across, keeping one eye out for nonexistent traffic and the other on the dark rising bulk of the adjacent police building.

  Levi did not slacken his pace once Gibbs and Sunny broke off at the park. Freed from the limitations of the others, he increased his speed. While other dogs considered his long legs only as an aid for phenomenal jumps, the truth was they were much more handy for attaining speeds that would have made even dogs like Flashman pause before challenging him to a race. It was not often anyone saw Levi run fully as fast as he was able, and no one saw him now as he shot up the deserted length of the narrow street.

  He passed darken two-room frame houses from the turn of the last century, and newer glass-walled medical buildings that would not open for hours. As he approached Third Avenue, he saw the intersection light was red, but he could not afford to wait; at the curb he paused only long enough to ensure no traffic was coming, then flew across.

  Once beyond the thin façade of businesses on Third, he was in a residential area. Of the original houses of Chula Vista, each set on a five-acre parcel and reflecting sensibilities of the Victorian Age, only two remained, the rest having been divided into postage stamp-sized lots over the years. Levi’s goal was one of those relics of yesteryear, near the corner of Davidson and Twin Oaks, a handsome pile with domed towers, iron railings and bay windows.

  Levi eased between the bars of the wrought iron fence, crossed the manicured lawn, and paused at the rear fence. On the other side was the black gulf of an open drain.

  Only a small section of the channel was open to the sky, from the edge of Davidson to the end of the lot on which the house stood. On all sides, except at the back of the Victorian house’s lot, it was surrounded by impenetrable chain-link fence. Pausing less than a moment, Levi passed between the bars and plunged into the void.

  Levi half ran, half slid down the steep concrete slope of the drainage channel. The bottom was littered with mud, sand, brambles and the debris of civilization. The opening of the tunnel yawned before him. He entered at a wary half-lope and the blackness closed around him as he left the starlit world behind.

  Though he could not see very well through the gloom, it hardly mattered since Levi was essentially a scent hound. His ancestors, at least the known ones, had been bred to ferret out the lairs of badgers underground. Journeying into this subterranean world, guided by his nose, was for Levi a return to his most ancient roots.

  He was, however, listening as well, for the concrete tunnels were excellent conduits of sound, something he hoped would be of help if he were able to locate Yoda. Keeping to one side or other of the tunnel, as dictated by accumulations of trash, Levi made his way deeper into Chula Vista’s underworld.

  About ten minutes into his quest, Levi received his first hint he was not alone, a faint scent wafting from the darkness ahead. It was a heady canine smell, which eliminated any other creature which might be scavenging among the trash. It was the scent Levi had detected by the tree, that of the Bully Kutta of Afghanistan. He had not been able to examine the dog on the peninsula, but he knew the breed stemmed from the same bloodline that had given the world the Mastiff, dogs who had walked along the Nile, sat in the courts of early Chinese emperors, and helped armored legionnaires impose a Pax Romana upon the known world. This new scent in the dark carried that same trace.

  Levi moved forward with the utmost caution. He doubted the Bully Kutta would be able to smell him, but the real danger was that the dog’s ears, which were just as sensitive as any canine’s, would detect some stray pad-sound against the concrete.

  The vague starlight was now far behind. By Levi’s reckoning, he would soon approach the main drainage tunnel. The ripe smell of Bully Kutta was much stronger, but what made Levi’s heart leap with excitement and joy was Yoda’s familiar scent. He suddenly noticed the darkness was no longer absolute ahead, that he saw the black edge of a wall against a diffused yellowish light.

  At the same moment, he heard murmuring voices around the corner, but could not make out the words. He knew, however, there was one pair of ears in the world that could discern even the softest of sounds, and he spoke to those ears now.

  “Yoda, it’s Levi,” he said in a voice not even as loud as a sigh. “I know the Bully Kutta is there. You must distract him somehow, t
ake his attention off what’s going around him, and do it in fifteen heartbeats from…now.”

  * * *

  “Iblis and your friend should be at the exchange point, waiting for us,” Abasi said.

  “So we’ll be starting soon?” Yoda asked. He could not believe Levi and Sunny had agreed to trade Baron for him, as it was against everything they stood for. But that was what Anila had claimed.

  “I’ll join Anila shortly, but we—you and I—are going nowhere together, little one,” Abasi replied. “When Anila left to join that cur Purdil, she told me to dispatch you before I left.”

  Yoda’s eyes went wide. “Dispatch me?”

  “To Jahnaham.”

  Yoda tilted his head in confusion.

  “The place of shame,” Abasi explained. “The house of dust and darkness that is the abode of infidel dogs and wretched weaklings like Zain.” Abasi laughed. “Do you still not understand, little one? I told you that Iblis’ fate would be yours: death, little one. Death.”

  “But how can an exchange be made…”

  Abasi smiled as Yoda lapsed into silence. “It finally dawns on you. No exchange. No hope. Anila and Purdil shall first kill your friend, then Iblis, and if I am lucky I shall arrive in time to take part in the restoration of honor.”

  “You don’t know Levi,” Yoda protested. “By the time he gets through with Anila she’ll look more like an Afghan rug.”

  Abasi’s grin widened, revealing sharp yellowish fangs. “Anila is more deadly than she is beautiful, and she is very beautiful, is she not? She could best even me in a fight, and I have never before been beaten by any dog.”

  “I just don’t understand…” Yoda’s large ears suddenly pricked up and quivered.

  Abasi looked at him suspiciously. “What is wrong?”

  “Nothing much,” Yoda replied sadly. “Just thinking about…”

  “Giving in to your fears, having some last thoughts about the futility of your life?” Abasi taunted.

  “Something like that, I guess,” Yoda replied, forcing himself to remain calm, to keep his heart beating at a steady rate and counting those heartbeats. “Can I tell you something?”

  “What?”

  “Something about the Dog at the Well.”

  “What about Him?”

  “Come here,” Yoda said, his voice low. “It’s hard to admit.”

  Intrigued and confused, Abasi moved closer to the overturned crate. He held no fear of Yoda, either in his ability to escape or in any harm he might do. He was, after all, a weakling, a pampered pet who knew nothing of hardship or faith, an infidel dog in a benighted land that would eventually know the iron paw of the Dog at the Well. That the little Pomeranian was so frightened he could not talk above a whisper was a source of amusement to the Bully Kutta. He put his ear close to Yoda’s mouth to hear his last words.

  Yoda barked!

  Yoda’s greatest gift was, of course, his sense of hearing, but his ability to bark came in at a close second. If the barks of other dogs could be likened to the crack of a BB-gun, then Yoda’s were like a continuous cannonade from the full broadside volley of a corsair’s man-or-war. One story current among the pets of the neighborhood was that such a fusillade of barking had stopped a rapacious hawk’s swoop in mid-swoop. Being so close, Abasi got the full brunt of Yoda’s barks. Feeling as if he had been smacked by a frying pan, the Bully Kutta staggered back.

  Abasi growled furiously and started to charge Yoda. The time had come to put an end to this infidel who mocked the Dog at the Well. So intent was Abasi on carrying out his murderous mission he heard neither the quick pad-falls closing in on him, nor the myriad sounds of paws moving in from the opposite direction.

  Something slammed into him, knocking him for a tumble. Back on his paws in an instant, Abasi whirled to meet his foe. He was puzzled when he saw the infidel pack leader, about whom Anila had told him, but there was some part of him that rejoiced at the sight of Levi. If the fighting skills of this small, elderly dog were even a fraction of what he had been told, then this fight to the death would be as challenging as it would be entertaining. Any doubts he might have harbored about Levi’s skills dissipated when he charged Levi and was easily rebuffed.

  Abasi’s skills and Levi’s were at antipodes. Levi had honed his fighting ability through observation, analysis and precision execution, while Abasi was a brawler, pure and simple…though more simple than pure, leaning heavily on brute force and deception. The Bully Kutta believed in hitting hard, then hitting even harder when an opponent remained unvanquished.

  While Levi also attacked with tooth and claw as the opportunity arose, his goals were more specific, the tendons and muscles that affected speed, strength and movement. He also excelled at using an opponent’s actions and weight against him.

  After just a few seconds, Abasi realized he was fighting a dog unlike any other he had ever fought before. Every rough move he made against Levi was countered, often in ways so subtle he was not sure how he ended up on the ground or against a wall. Abasi was, however, a survivor, and if he could not win by brutal carnage, he would find another way to send this infidel dog to Jahnaham, something he must do quickly, he realized, as he heard the sounds of paws thundering from down the drainage tunnel.

  When Abasi suddenly changed the nature of his attacks, Levi knew he was in trouble. His survival in the gladiatorial compound, and during numerous fights since then, depended upon his ability to quickly read a dog’s style of fighting and to counteract it. Almost all dogs knew only a single way to fight, and fought that way until their skills failed them. He had read Abasi as an arena brawler, a dog who won quickly by going for throat or neck with lightning speed. Now that his preferred tactic had failed, Abasi switched styles, one quickly after the other.

  Yoda was very worried. He had never seen Levi take longer than a few moments to subdue a dog into submission. One problem, he knew, was that Abasi would never submit. In Abasi’s vicious world, fights ended only in death, not submission, and that was a line Levi did not cross. Levi went for the nerve at the base of the Bully Kutta’s skull, but Abasi countered by lifting his upper body and thrashing his head, nearly catching Levi with his wicked fangs.

  “Submit, Abasi,” Levi urged. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Abasi laughed as he lashed the trapezius muscle in Levi’s neck. “A fighter not willing to kill is no fighter!”

  “My friends will be here shortly,” Levi warned.

  “They will find your eviscerated body, and the little one’s as well,” Abasi replied as he came lose to chomping Levi’s left ear. “I shall let them dispose of your dishonored remains.”

  Unless Levi found a way to quickly defeat Abasi, he feared the Bully Kutta’s words might prove prophetic. He had not counted on finding Yoda so close to the connecting tunnel, had hoped they would be closer the entry from the park, and he had not anticipated either Abasi’s tenacity or adaptability. He knew if he could keep the other dog from getting the upper paw, at least till his friends arrived, then Abasi might be vanquished without killing him.

  Yoda shouted and jumped wildly in his cage, hoping to distract Abasi and give Levi an edge. In his excitement, he slammed against the front of the crate and was surprised when it started to tilt.

  As Yoda’s adrenalin-fueled movement started to unbalance the plastic crate, Levi and Abasi locked into each other, both growling savagely, both seeking to fasten teeth on the other, both thrashing across the concrete floor, rolling in Yoda’s direction. Frantic to help his friend, Yoda threw himself at the top edge of his prison. At the same moment, Levi and Abasi slammed against the ground at the base of the crate. Levi was on the bottom, breath crushed from his lungs. Abasi roared victoriously and lunged forward to rip out Levi’s throat.

  The crate started to topple.

  Yoda cried in impotent dismay as Abasi covered Levi’s throat with his powerful jaws.

  The fifty-pound chunk of iron that had weighted Yoda’s prison to the floor of th
e tunnel rolled off.

  For years, it lay in the drainage tunnel, too heavy to be moved by even the most powerful flash floods. What the thing was, before being lost in darkness, was not apparent, so touched by corrosion was it, so disfigured by decades of deposits. When found by the dogs of Afghanistan, it seemed the perfect thing to keep the Pomeranian imprisoned as long as it was convenient for him to remain alive. If it took the three of them to move it into place, they reasoned, there was no chance it could be dislodged by the smaller dog. However, they had not taken into account Yoda’s desperation, or the coincidence of Levi and Abasi slamming into the base of the crate as Yoda threw himself against the top.

  The iron mass plummeted straight down.

  Levi felt the impact of the heavy object transmitted through Abasi. At first he did not know what had happened. He only knew that Abasi suddenly stiffened, that the dog’s eyes, just inches from his own, suddenly went glassy and rolled back into his head. Then Abasi collapsed upon him. He shoved the dog aside.

  Sunny and Gibbs rushed into the glow from the light-stick, now knocked against a wall. They skidded on sand that covered the floor in a ripple pattern. Behind them were Officers Antony and Arnold, as well as Blackie, a Doberman who until a few months ago had been a probationary member of the CVPD K-9 Unit.

  “Levi, are you okay?” Sunny yelled.

  “Any others around?” Gibbs demanded.

  “I’m okay,” Levi replied, standing unassisted despite the pain. “No, it was just Abasi here…and that was nearly enough.”

  “Been here sooner,” Gibbs said, “but we ran into those three.”

  “Hey, don’t blame…” Antony started to protest.

  Sunny whirled on the police dogs, who cringed before her fury, even Antony, who cringed at nothing. “Let me tell you three keystone cops something. If Levi…”

  “It’s okay,” Levi interjected before the mild-mannered Golden Retriever said words she would regret. “I’m fine…thanks to Yoda.”