Patience County War (Madeleine Toche Series) by Soren Petrek Page B

would be like killing a blind dog anyway. He chuckled to himself and looked over at the mutt Jose kept with him at all times. Dogs do resemble their masters and this pair did in spades. Carlos remembered the ad that Jose had answered in the paper for well-bred hunting dogs. He and Jose had gone to the farm where the man was selling these ‘rare’ hunting machines. Carlos knew enough about dogs to know they were just straight coon hounds, nothing but legs, stomachs and howls. But he chose not to enlighten his ‘Patron’ on that occasion and figured Jose would board the dog somewhere anyway. Nope, the idiot kept his ‘Lion’, as he had named him, at his side day and night. The animal was without question the stupidest dog known to man. Lion would lie around like a wet rag and then suddenly for no apparent reason bark and howl like he’d treed a coon or sensed some invisible intruder. Jose would invariably haul out his gun and wave it around like something was going to get shot. After several discharges and a couple of hotel moves, with ample bribes to hotel managers, Carlos thought if there was any justice in the world, Jose would shoot the king of the jungle and Carlos could bury him in a dumpster. Carlos was the first to admit he wasn’t much of a dog man.
    As if on cue, following his master’s outburst, the dog went into an absolute spasm. It was clearly evidence that animals could be possessed. The dog ran around the room, bit one of the soldiers and held on for dear life. It wasn’t until Carlos tossed the remnants of a sandwich on the floor that peace was restored.
    “Patron, perhaps Lion needs the open country to satisfy his great skill at hunting.”
    “Nonsense, I need him by my side and perhaps he will be a useful tool. I have taught him to ‘sic balls’. He will attack any enemy I choose. We are a team.”
    Way too many gangster movies, sic balls my ass. Carlos wisely kept that thought to himself. That demented, inbred antelope might sniff balls or lick balls, but to teach him to regularly bite any specific target was unlikely.
    Lion, having finished the sandwich flopped down, looking satisfied to resume his usual activity of sleeping, punctuated by growling and farting.
    Hopefully the dog is dreaming of being eaten by a real lion, Carlos considered.
    “I think it best if we don’t leave a trail of bodies. We can just find another location and release the neighbor in a day or so. I can’t imagine an all-out manhunt over a couple of days, so we’ll just move the operation. There’s so much nothing in that county that nobody will find us anyway. We’ll give him a good knock on the head and set him loose,” Carlos suggested.
    Jose looked at him with a well-practiced Clint Eastwood squint, like he didn’t believe what he was being told or was considering it. Instead he was just trying to understand it.
    “He has seen.”
    “Patron, all he has seen is an old hippie and Billy the local junky who looks like a giant rain gauge. We’ll move those two somewhere else.”
    “I will think on it,” Jose said, dismissing the matter from further conversation.
    As long as he doesn’t discuss it with the other half of the ‘team’, Carlos thought.
    Carlos picked up the cell phone and got Doc on the line, “Hold onto the guy, finish as many runs as you can, and call back in two days. We’ll knock him out, pour a little whiskey down his throat and dump him in his car in the next county with a little roofie cocktail.”
    “Good call, boss.”
    “Keep an eye on Billy, I wouldn’t trust him to hold a lantern in my front yard, but he has his uses,” Carlos said not entirely sure of himself.
    Doc turned the phone off and collected the finished product already made. He put enough to keep Billy cognizant into a smaller baggy and hid the rest under a floor board when the boy wonder wasn’t looking. Doc thought the plan for Nosy was a good one. He’d start administering the Rohypnol when he gave the old guy a