The Mission
Later that night in a dark motel room stinking of cigarettes and Lysol, Joe sat on the stained bedspread stroking Moka’s proffered belly. He thought back over what had led up to this night.
For nineteen years, he’d been in the Investigations Unit of the Military Police, charged with looking into financial crimes perpetrated by Army personnel. He was good at his job–smart and persistent in uncovering evidence for kickbacks, black markets, and fraud. But when he’d discovered some damning evidence on a big case implicating men high up in the chain of command, he was ordered to discontinue the investigation. No explanation. Royally pissed, he complained, but got slapped down. Hard. A promotion he deserved was derailed by a negative review from his C.O., and he was transfered out of Investigations and into the K-9 Unit.
K-9. What the hell? Joe liked dogs, but he’d been a crimes investigator and a damned good one. They might as well have sent him a telegram: Take your twenty years and get out.
That last year in the Army was a slide down into a dark hole. He’d sit up at night, rattling ice in a glass of scotch, brooding on the denied promotion and unjustified reprimands. Resentment alternated with self-pity. He’d given his all and got nothing back.
Too agitated to eat much, he’d filled his shrinking belly with alcohol. The liquor made a quiet, empty space in his head, suppressing the nasty thoughts that roamed his mind: The Army sneered at him. He was a failure. Twenty years all for shit. He tried to muster up some plans, but thinking about the future left him feeling deflated, like a used-up balloon, barely able to draw a breath.
The drinking helped, but ironically, the only thing that got him up in the mornings and out the door was the dogs. The K-9 transfer was a demotion, but he turned out to be exceptional at training dogs to track, navigate an obstacle course, and attack a man on command. During that last year in the Army, he developed a competency he didn’t know he had. The confidence he felt when working dogs, the easy rhythm of it, the certainty of his talent—this one good thing about himself—created a haven through those sodden months.
Then the dreams started. Ever since he started working with Lady, a sweet-tempered black and tan German shepherd, a stray who’d been brought in from the local pound, he’d have these dreams about her. No, not about her, more like she made pictures in his mind, images from a crazy perspective, as if he were a dog himself. In the dreams, he felt his arms sturdy like legs beneath him, his head up, his vision a wide panorama of muted colors. Harsh odors, like fog in his face, pulsed with messages he did not understand.
The dreams were always about some strong emotion. In one dream, he and Lady trotted down a woodland path, pumped with eagerness, the anticipation of something grand. In another, they nosed over a garbage bin and feasted with intense pleasure on half-eaten hotdogs, French fries and pizza crusts. In yet another, he stood head to hindquarters pushed up against her side, a growl low in his throat, fear and fierceness raising the hairs on the back of his neck. The threat, a stray dog, had slunk off at their display. He had felt comforted by the dream-bond with Lady. It had been an escape from the persistent brooding on his failed career and blank future.
Joe rousted Moka from the motel bed. “C’mon, girl, time to do your stuff then we’ll turn in.” Trying to both stay in the shadows and appear nonchalant, he walked her out back of the strip of rooms in a weedy lot. He wondered how he’d be connected to Moka. Through dreams? Or maybe she’d send him hunches, like what happened with Lady during those ESP experiments just a few weeks before his retirement.
At the time, Joe found it unbelievable that the Army would have gone along with those ESP experiments and that idiot—Professor Brock—from Duke University. Brock was a twitchy little man whose bow tie bobbed with every nervous gulp. He’d come to test the idea that Joe’s dogs were telepathic, that they’d know how to find a target—a tennis ball—by reading Joe’s mind after Joe had hidden the ball. Joe could barely hide his contempt for such science fiction bullshit. But he had to go along with it.
The “experiment” was simple: Joe dropped the ball in one of three enclosed wooden bins, then a dog was brought into the room and, as previously trained, would sit by the bin it thought held the ball. All the dogs did better than chance. Well, of course they did. They used their noses to sniff out the ball, which was probably as smelly as an outhouse to a dog. Lady was the quickest and most accurate at the task, so they focused on her.
Joe tried to convince Brock that the dogs were using their sense of smell to find the target, but the researcher dismissed the idea. Then Brock ran one last experiment.
In this last set of trials, they hid the ball with Lady in the room, and then brought Joe in and told him to find the correct bin. Like they expected him to read Lady’s mind?
But that was when Joe got the damndest sensation—like a flicker in his peripheral vision, an itch in his brain—and the middle bin focused his attention like filings to a magnet. He turned to look at Lady sitting in the back of the room. She smiled, tongue hanging out, looking delighted. A feeling of confused wonder welled in his chest.
Joe knew something odd had just happened and Lady was part of it. But whatever he had with Lady, it was his alone. He didn’t trust this bow-tied egghead from Duke any more than he trusted the Army.
Joe pointed to the bin on the end, one that gave him the feeling of emptiness.
There were only ten more trials. Joe had had a hunch about the bins almost every time. He’d tried to make his choices look random, sometimes indicating the “correct” bin and sometimes not. But he never knew if his hunches were accurate. He’d never been told where the target actually was.
After Moka finished her business, Joe got a blanket from the car and they returned to their motel room. Joe peeled off his clothes down to his skivvies. Moka, lying on the bed with her head on her paws, followed his every move. He lay down beside her and she licked his face. He pulled the blanket over them both.
He felt a craving for a drink, but pushed it aside. He knew better than to drink on a mission. Oh, yes, he was definitely on a mission. Everything made sense now. As he waited for sleep to come, he remembered—was it just two nights ago?—how it had all come together.
He’d been out of the Army for a week and was warming his favorite bar stool at a dive close to his house, thoughts swirling in his mind as he stirred the olives in his martini. He’d kept coming back to that weird experience with Lady during the ESP experiments. He was skeptical. Had he been reading her mind? After all, the Army had backed those experiments. The Department of Defense had a reputation for turning over every stone in the arms race. Maybe ESP wasn’t so far out there.
And, just like that, the tumblers clicked into place. A fact, a certainty, lay in his mind as if it had been dropped there: She has telepathic ability. Lady had truly been sending images to him. Those dreams of acting like a dog all during the past year. She was “sending” her emotions, and Joe was receiving them.
With the fact of Lady’s ability lodged in his mind, Joe was immediately certain the Army suspected it and was ready to conduct more experiments on Lady and her puppies. He knew he had to save the pups, at least. He chuckled to himself. If he rescued them, an extra added bonus was that he could really screw the Army out of their big ESP plans. Stick it to those bastards good.
He’d thrown some money on the bar and slipped into his jacket. He was ready to take some action. Plans were already gelling in his mind. Tomorrow, he’d pack a few things and leave his apartment locked up, tell the landlord and his few friends he was going on an extended vacation. He’d find an out-of-the-way motel, a place he could stay with the dogs for a night while figuring out his next move.
Joe understood that rescuing the dogs was up to him and him alone. After all, he was the one who could receive the images, he could read Lady’s mind. He was not just an ordinary man. He’d suddenly felt bigger, special. He had a purpose and a future—a mission. The black cloud of doubts and depression that had been shrouding his mind for so many months had dissolved in the clear light of resolve.
In the chilly motel room, Joe curled around Moka and fell into an untroubled sleep—his first in many months.
