Jack Martin smiled. Things were going well. Now that he'd made
contact with the bureau he could relax and focus on keeping his masquerade
running smoothly. And it was running smoothly indeed.
Though it had been well concealed with camouflage paint, an
impressive little setup had been constructed out here in the mountainous
wilds of Nowhere, Colorado. There were a half-dozen buildings, each the
size of a small barn; four for storage and two for living quarters, one of
which housed Jack and the other workers who had come to construct the
fabulously horrible Tiger, Tiger circus, the other waiting empty for the
arrival of the rest of the organization in two months' time.
The buildings were arranged in a wide circle around the central
edifice of the circus tent, the Big Top, which was currently lying flat
upon the ground. It had been erected several times during the dry run
drills which Jack had insisted upon, and it would be raised and struck many
more times before the fated day came to pass.
Jack was pleased at the efficient way he was running things despite
himself. Although it was in a way disconcerting to know that he would make
such an effective terrorist... and at the same time, secretly pleasing.
After all, there were similarities in their positions; they were out to
subvert society, he was out to subvert them.
He took pride in his work, that was the thing; that was what Jerry
had seen in him that made the Tiger, Tiger leader place him in charge of
this project; nothing here was half-assed or incomplete. When the cameras
came in, after it was all over, the would see the most spectacular
statement that Tiger, Tiger had ever made.
And a lot of bodies, of course.
But that wasn't about to happen. No, even as he sat here thinking
agents at the bureau were planning their assault. It would doubtlessly be
launched as close to the planned attack day as possible, to catch the
greatest number of rats in the nest, so to speak. But it was coming, no
doubt.
Jack Martin was thinking about the expression on Jerry's face when
dozens of armed FBI anti-terrorist commandos stormed his well-prepared
little party when his reverie was broken by a rap on the door.
"Jack! Come quick! Jerry's on the horn! Something terrible's happened!"
Jack started. Terrible? What on earth could that be? He rushed out
of Storage Barn number two and headed for the crew quarters, where the
nearest phone was.
As he made his way across the needle-dusted compound, he reviewed
things in his mind. He knew that Tiger, Tiger had an Event in the offing,
one that would keep public attention on the group, a precursor that would
set the stage for what Jerry had been calling "The Big Show", which was, of
course, the event which Jack had been planning and building for these past
months. What this earlier event was supposed to be, and any other
information such as where it would take place and how many people would be
killed, was not revealed to Jack or any of the others at the Circus
Compound, in keeping with established "terrorist cell" policy (none of the
people working on this other Event would know anything about Jack's
project, either). Could the call pertain to the Event? Had it gone badly?
Or was it something worse?
Had Jack's cover been blown?
He didn't know, but he threw the door to the crew quarters open and
lurched across the room to the phone.
"Hello?" Odd to use such mundane pleasantries when conversing with
madmen, but that was the way they did things around here.
"We have a problem." Jerry's voice. Curt and precise. Something had
gone wrong.
Jack's heart started hammering.
"Operation John Brown hit a snag," Jerry continued. John Brown?
What the hell was that? "We need to regain our footing with a powerful,
successful statement... fast."
There was a pause. What was he saying?
A moment later, Jerry spoke again. "We're moving up the schedule.
Striking at a different venue. Start breaking down what you can. I'll call
later with a new itinerary."
"But -" Jack started, but the leader had hung up.
Jack placed the phone back on its cradle. Break down? After all
this work? It was unthinkable, it was...
Then Jack Martin smiled, mirthlessly. What was he getting excited for? So what if they had to pack up and move on. It wasn't as if he had been planning for the Circus Event to be carried out. The FBI would simply step in and...
The FBI! Jack stopped cold. They didn't know about the new site...
and there was no way that Jack would be able to contact them!
No. He would have to find a way. These psychos couldn't be allowed
to carry out their plan. They couldn't!
Jack walked by Storage Barn number one and shuddered. The things
that were in that barn... if Tiger, Tiger got the opportunity to use them,
as planned...
but they wouldn't. They couldn't! Jack was there. He'd stop it in time.
And with no idea how he would go about doing that, Jack Martin
headed back to the crew quarters, to begin planning the deconstruction of
his Circus while he waited for Jerry to call again.
Two hours earlier:
It was a bright, brisk morning. The dew was still on the grass, and
a few of the crankier owners were griping about damp paws affecting their
dogs' poise. Other, more sprightly souls were of the opinion that the wet
grass gave their dogs a bouncier gait and the sensation made them more
personable.
There were several hundred dogs in the upper field at the West
Dunston Polo Grounds, the staging area for the Working Group. Some of the
other fields were host to combined groups; but with Danes and Bernards and
Rottweilers and Mastiffs, the Working Group needed all the room it could
get. So the dogs, their owners, and their handlers milled about in the
clean air of morning. Judging wouldn't begin for another hour, but it was
good to give the dogs a chance to stretch.
The Polo Grounds were situated in a beautiful area in the rolling
hills of southwestern Connecticut. Home to an uneasy mix of old farming
families and upper-middles from the City, it offered both a land of wide
fields broken by clusters of thick forest, full of scenic vistas and
leisurely drives. The upper field was separated from a nearby farm by a
rustic old stone wall, its mortar long crumbled, its cracks and crags home
to chipmunks and garter snakes. The farm was no longer a real, working
farm; though there were a few cows and a small crop of corn and pumpkins,
its owner telecommuted to a job in the Big Apple, and kept the farm up as a
hobby. Beyond the farm was a forest, several hundred acres of old-growth
timber.
If you had been at the upper field of the West Dunston Polo Grounds
on that brisk morning, and had a pair of field glasses and a keen eye, you
might have seen occasional furtive movement in the trees nearest to the
disused cornfield that bordered the forest; you might have glimpsed a
figure peering out from the shadows, might have even been surprised to see
some large beast stamping slowly through the foliage, just out of sight's
range, just beyond the cover afforded by the trees.
But no one was looking at the trees, and when one of the dogs would
perk her ears up and shoot a glance in that direction, her handler would
laugh and redirect her attention with a remark about squirrels or deer. No
one looked over. No one saw anything.
But they all heard the bugles.
It was a bright, brisk morning, and there was a short, weird moment
between the time when the first bugle blew and the first horse burst out of
the brush when the polo grounds turned still with a sort of hackle-raising
one-ness. There was an instant when all heads turned, man, woman, and dog,
toward that forest across the empty cornfield, and there was total silence
across the grass, just silence, and the sound of bugles.
Then came the horses, and all hell broke loose.
They burst through the trees in spectacular symmetry, the best
riders that Tiger, Tiger had in their roster atop the finest half-dozen
steeds their resources could find. Politics aside, they were a dazzling
site, black masks, top hats, and boots, long red hunting jackets, and
longer cruel black lashes. The lead horses held the two buglers, whose
instruments cast out a stirring harmonized call to the hunt.
At first no one knew what to make of it. There were those who
thought that it was part of the show, and several in the crowd laughed and
cheered as the riders crossed the lonely stretch of cornfield, heading for
the upper field and the Working Group.
At the low wall the riders split up, three riding parallel to the
wall, heading down the field toward the Herding Group, while the other
three leapt the two feet of crumbling stone and landed among the dogs and
handlers.
The first whip caught a middle-aged woman in the center of her
back. Her light blue dress, bought specially for the occasion, split open
along the path of the lash, and she fell to the ground as a dim red seeped
out into the pale blue fabric. Someone screamed, and panic struck the
assembled handlers and owners, swiftly spreading to the dogs, who struggled
to run in all directions, barking, yelping, tangling man and dog in a
massed web of interlocked leashes. The riders were now well among the
tumult, and their lashes bit into the crowd at will, striking man and woman
alike. People ran screaming, many holding deep, searing wounds. It was a
chaos of blood and horror; Tiger, Tiger in their element, spreading terror
and fear with a lash and a vengeance.
But they hadn't counted on Lord Grimsby Stoutheart of Everwild.
Lord Grimsby wasn't the brightest, or the best, or the fastest. He
had never won best of breed, let alone best of show. His pedigree, though
solid, was hardly stellar. He was too easily distracted, too friendly, too
drooly. His owner/handler, Ms. Marguerite Campbell-Davis, always said that
she never really expected him to win one of these damn things, but he
enjoyed them so much that she felt she owed it to him to keep bringing him.
Lord Grimsby was basically just a good, bumbly, happy, healthy
family dog who happened to have good breeding. By that afternoon, he would
be the most famous dog in America.
Grimsby was an Old English Mastiff. His coloring was common for the
breed; tawny body, dark mask. A furrowed brow, large jowls. A stocky barrel
chest, legs a little too long for the breed, back a trifle saggy. At two
hundred and seventy pounds, he was large, but not exceedingly so; almost
eighty pounds lighter than the current record holder.
On the other hand, two hundred seventy pounds is one damned big dog.
When the horsemen landed on the field, Grimsby, like the other dogs
(and humans), had been frightened and confused. He had stood still when all
the confusion started, unsure what to do, but when his mistress started
running, he followed suit. When she dropped his leash in the tumult, he
kept running.
But when he heard her scream, he stopped.
The first lash had caught Marguerite on the back of her left leg,
just above the knee. She fell to the ground, letting out the scream that
Grimsby had heard. Seeing her stricken, the horseman pulled up on his
reins, bringing his horse to a stop. Able to aim more carefully, his second
blow caught her across the back of her chest, laying her open almost all
the way from shoulder to shoulder, a wound that would take over two hundred
stitches to close. A look in the horseman's eyes would have told any
observant viewer that he was readying a third blow, perhaps a fatal one.
There would be no third blow.
A mastiff's jaws are large and strong, so strong that breeders
often give puppies Louisville Slugger baseball bats as chew toys. Grown
dogs can chew through bricks and concrete blocks. A mastiff's tooth is
about an inch and a half long; a mastiff's head is as large as a basketball
and his skull is thick and hard.
As the horseman prepared to raise the lash for the penultimate
blow, teeth as long as a toe sank into his forearm, jaws tough enough to
splinter ash clamped down, driving home those teeth, and almost three
hundred pounds of canine weight, propelled by Grimsby's flying leap,
carried the arm along with it as it went by, wrenching the horeman's arm
>from its socket and pulling him from his saddle. He hit the ground with a
scream and a curse.
At that moment, the tide turned.
Dogs, of course, are pack animals by nature. They, not unlike
humans, will often act out of fear; flight, or blind, unreasoning defensive
attacks are common behaviors when faced with a threat.
Ah, but let one dog take reasoned action...
The rider was on the ground. Grimsby, all two hundred seventy
pounds of him, jumped on his chest and growled in his face. By then, of
course, the rider was unconscious, and no longer a threat, so Grimsby
turned his attention to his wounded mistress, placing his steady body near
her so that she could brace against him as she rose bleeding to her feet.
When she was standing erect, she saw an incredible sight.
Though many of the dogs had fled, most were still on the field, and
a large number of them had seen Grimsby's action. As if by some unconscious
signal, these dogs accepted Grimsby's attack as the act of a Leader, of a
Head Dog, of an "Alpha". And they had acted in kind.
The Working Group was home to Bulldogs, to Rottweilers, to
Bullmastiffs, to Danes and St. Bernards. And these large dogs, as well as
many of their smaller cousins, set upon the two remaining horsemen in the
upper field with a purpose. They leapt at stirrups, nipped the horses'
flanks, barked, growled, and charged. The horses, startled, panicked,
rearing. One rider tumbled backward into the teeming dogs, landing hard
upon the chill grass.
To the canine mind, a foe that is down is a foe that can be destroyed.
The pack fell in, teeth bared. The rider screamed. But not for long.
The second of the remaining riders clung to his horse for dear
life. Realizing that things had gone as wrong as they possibly could, he
made a dash for the cornfield, for safety.
The dogs, like the wolves that are their cousins, closed in as a
pack and cut him off. They nipped at the horse's legs, drawing blood.
Twisting and bucking to escape, the horse cast its rider to the ground, and
to the dogs.
Across the field, the Herding Group was making equally short work
of the other three horses and their riders. Though the three riders had
seen what was happening to their compatriots, and had made a dash for
safety, the herding group, collies and shepherds and their ilk, were more
suited for the task of running down prey than their fellows in the working
group. Only one horse made it through, galloping across the cornfield and
disappearing into the woods.
By the time the security guards and the media reached the upper
field, it was over.
Five riders were down. Two would later die from their wounds; the
remaining three would recover, only to be murdered in prison before the
authorities had a chance to get any information out of them. Several dog
handlers were injured, one seriously; a few dogs received minor cuts and
bruises.
And, as Grimsby the mastiff became the dean of the talk-show
circuit (actually Marguerite did the talking, Grimsby just sat and looked
noble), eventually becoming the subject of a quite fictional animated
Saturday morning TV series, Tiger, Tiger became a laughing-stock. Editorial
cartoons lampooned them for incompetence, as well as insanity; one
late-night host introduced the "Top Ten Stupid Animal Rights Tricks"
("Number Five: Falling on their asses"); a weekly sketch-comedy show
introduced members of "Kitty, Kitty", an incompetent terrorist
organization, as popular recurring characters. Meanwhile law enforcement
officials smiled into the cameras: "With this mistake, the death knell for
Tiger, Tiger has been sounded;" "They've slipped up, big time;" "We'll be
wrapping up this mob in no time."
"Tiger, Tiger has overstepped itself," the Attorney General of the
United States said. "Five of its best agents are out of commission. We
expect their next move will prove equally inconsequential... if our
investigations haven't led us directly to their doorstep long before that."
The general consensus was that Tiger, Tiger had stumbled. And, once
it was on the ground, the hounds of the Law would close in for the kill.
And Jerry was furious.
Stephen Gerard, known as "Jerry" to his compatriots in his
organization, had sent word to eliminate the three fallen riders, not
because he feared they would talk (he had taken great care that no one in
his organization knew enough to seriously damage his Great Plan), but to
send a message. Failure equals Death.
It was something he had told his soldiers time and again, but had never
been forced to prove until this dark day.
Damn!
Stephen Gerard knew that his Plan had lost momentum. The Great
Liberation had suffered the grimmest of setbacks. In the storm that swept
his mind after news of the disaster had reached him he had considered all
kinds of desperate plans; to assassinate the dog that had downed his men as
a race traitor, to launch a doomed but noble assault upon the White House,
to simply slaughter all of his followers and start anew with fresh souls,
maybe even a new cause.
But those were crazy ideas.
All he had lost was momentum. One triumph in his tapestry had been
turned to defeat. All could be saved, all could be rectified... by another,
more glorious, triumph.
But it had to happen soon. Immediately. Before the Dog Show
Disaster could dim morale, before it could reverse the encroaching tide,
the tide he had worked so endlessly and tirelessly to build.
The next planned Event was the Circus. But it wasn't scheduled for
another two months. That wouldn't do.
He studied a map on his wall, a map with the itinerary of the
McCrae Circus outlined in red ink. He studied it, and then he smiled.
He picked up the phone and made the call.