7 Wild East Read Free Page B

be on this flight as well and there are limits to what my
stomach can take. How about we don’t have an engine failure this time?”
    “I understand, boss,” the Wings replied with a wink.
    Chuck was doubtful that the Wings fully understood his
wishes—or that he would honor them—and he felt a little depressed as he climbed
into the passenger seat of the plane. It was going to be a long, awful flight.
     
    *  * 
*
     
    Ricky, a child of no more than six, slunk through the woods
at the outskirts of the town of McIntyre’s Gulch on a mission. Within his rich
imagination, he was Officer Ricky Jones, the latest recruit into the RCMP and
new partner of Inspector Charles Goodhead. But now he was on a solo assignment
to clean up a gang of terrorists who had set up camp in the outskirts of town. He
carried a large tree branch with him which in his mind was a high-powered rifle
needed to defend both himself and the citizens of the land he’d sworn to
protect.
    Ricky slithered through the undergrowth and took up position
behind a large pine where he could easily observe what was going on in town. He
watched as Butterscotch led two strangers, one limping badly, from the Bones’
office toward the pub. He reached into his back pocket to remove a pad of paper
and a pencil, the two most important tools of a government agent, and made a
note of the new arrivals. Putting his pencil and paper away, he crept closer to
the shed which was his current objective.
    Sliding along the worn boards of the shed he crept toward
the front door. There he prepared himself before throwing the door wide open
and stepping inside.
    “Hands up, you two. You’ve been nabbed,” Ricky announced,
pointing his makeshift gun at the two suspicious-looking characters huddled
within the shed.
    “Ricky, you nearly scared the daylights out of me,” Horace
announced, looking up from the explosive he was working on. “And that’s not a
good thing to do when someone is performing such a delicate operation.”
    “Go away before you get us in trouble with the Flowers,”
Sasha announced. “We will play guns later.”
    “Man, you guys are no fun,” Ricky said disappointedly as he
dropped his weapon to his side and closed the door.
    Maybe I can arrest the two new arrivals in town, Ricky
thought as he slipped away from the shed to sneak across town to the Bones’
office. They hadn’t looked like criminals, who in Ricky’s experience tended to
wear sunglasses and to drive large cars, but they might be secret bad
guys. He’d keep watching.
     

Chapter 2
     
    The Flowers and I came downstairs after tucking the injured
boy into bed. Mark was snoring before we had the covers pulled up over him.
Either exhaustion or the Bones’ injection had knocked Mark out.
    Pete was talking happily to Big John, Wendell, and the
Bones, still not grasping the fact that their fixed stares betokened not
pleased admiration so much as stunned horror.
    “… so the National Energy Board hired the SGB—that’s the Surveyor General Branch—to lay the route. It
would have been nice if they had decided to do this a couple months ago, but I
think—the weather willing—that we will get this done. And I have to say it’s
been a fascinating project.”
    I turned to the Flowers
and said in English, “I bet what this man needs—aside from a shot of whisky to
go with that beer—is a nice venison steak. It’s got to be hard work tramping
through the wilderness for so many days.”
    Big John took the hint and
reached under the bar to pull out some of his home brew as the Flowers headed
for the kitchen. Big John’s hooch had about the same effect on most people as a
shot of morphine.
    “ Butterscotch, the
Mountie comes back tonight? ” Big John asked in Gaelic as he poured. “Try
this. It’s something special.”
    Pete picked up the glass
and sniffed suspiciously. Obviously it smelled enough like scotch to pass
because he took a sip.
    “ Yes and the new
recruit he’s training