Zhukov's Dogs Read Online Free

operations briefings. I rose from my seat to reply, a small, courteous gesture that wasn’t necessary, considering how similar we were in rank, but I was a good dog.
    “Your guess is as good as mine, Colonel Gully,” I told him. “Brigadier McKee asked me to meet him here ten minutes ago.”
    It was strange, I imagined, for anyone unfamiliar with our hierarchy to be told that a man twenty years my senior was barely two titles above me. Special Forces was a small, tightly structured branch of the military made up of three distinct divisions. Younger agents, like myself, who’d been trained from an early age, were members of the Youth Infiltration Division. As we grew older and gained renown, our officer ranks began to overlap with the General Field and Special Operations Regiment. A sixteen-year-old Y.I.D. major commanded just as much respect as his thirty-year-old General Field counterpart. Both the Y.I.D. and G.F. paid due respect to the elite S.O.R., though, the same majors viewed as the equivalent of an S.O.R. captain.
    Colonel Grant Gully of the Special Operations Regiment was a peculiar, plump man we often referred to as the walrus. With a set of well-maintained whiskers surrounding his mouth and hiding his upper lip, he was always fun to watch when he delivered a speech. His jokes were abundant and entertaining, even if they were crass, simply because of the way his body shook when he laughed.
    “McKee? Pah,” Gully boomed. He opened the door further and placed a hand on his belly as he laughed. “What? Is that new office of his too small?”
    “What’s so funny?” came Aiden’s voice from the hall.
    Gully stepped aside as a red-headed man twenty years his junior appeared in the frame with two thick folders under his arm. He wore the same sleek black suit as Gully and me, each of us with a different pin on our lapel to distinguish rank. The colonel slowed his laughter but didn’t seem pressured to recompose himself. “Ahh, Brigadier, we were just talking about you.”
    “More ginger jokes, Colonel?” asked Aiden. The corners of his mouth tugged upwards into a bitter smile. He stood tall at almost six-foot-two with a narrow face and broad shoulders. His limbs were long and gangly, though, which made his stature awkward to look at and, I imagined, to carry. If Gully was a walrus, Aiden was a giraffe.
    Gully patted him on the shoulder soundly as he spoke. “Tell me. Why do you need this conference room when you’ve got a brand new office one floor up, McKee?”
    “If you must know, I haven’t finished moving into it yet,” Aiden admitted. He’d been a brigadier of the Y.I.D. for a full week now, but somehow still hadn’t settled into the position. Aiden had never been very good at time management. He was, however, good at politely dismissing people he didn’t like. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Colonel.”
    “As you wish. Come find me when he’s finished with you, Zhukov,” Gully said.
    I wanted to tell Gully I had a million other things to do before noon, but like a good dog, I just nodded and told myself I’d have to work one more thing into my schedule. Aiden shut the door behind Gully and immediately groaned, “Christ, his laugh is annoying.”
    “Someone’s in a bad mood this morning,” I said as I sat back down in my seat. There was no need to be as professional around Aiden as I was with Gully, even though he was two ranks my senior. Five years older than me, Aiden was my best friend in the world and had put his life on the line for me more than once. He was the sort of person who’d spend the first half of his day nonchalantly preventing nuclear bombs from detonating in Disneyland, and the second half using his lifetime of espionage training to pick up women.
    Aiden unbuttoned his jacket and collapsed into the seat next to me. He didn’t wear his stress as well as I did and was far more vocal about it. “Can’t imagine why. It’s not like I’m losing more sleep lately than I