Last episode:Just before the road trip of his life, Doggie won the perfect raffle prize: a three surfboard quiver. He and Pipe picked up the prize fish, shortboard and gun from guru shaper, Guru. They left, just as a sinister man in a trenchcoat arrived. Whereupon, Guru gulped…

The big man asked, “Has the… cargo… been picked up?”

Guru nodded and gulped again.

The big man smiled, pulled out a silenced gun and blew the shaper’s mind – all over his resin-splattered wall.

Doggie waved his arms for quiet. “This is going to be the greatest road trip since… Marco Polo set off to surf Peking Point.” He smashed an imaginary bottle of champagne against Pipe’s puke-coloured kombi.

“I didn’t know Marco Polo was a surfer,” laughed the gorgeous Gabrielle.

“Oh, he was.” Doggie, gurgled invisible champers. “Just like your French accent is so… French.”

“When you’ve finished drooling over our guest,” said Pipe. “You can do the first driving shift, Doggie-boy.”

Doggie blasted to Plymouth for the Roscoff ferry, then hammered straight down the left coast of France towards the centre of Europe’s surfing universe… the Bay of Biscay.

Gabrielle’s dark eyes devoured the scenery. Doggie lost the struggle to keep his eyes on the road. His pupils kept veering across to the stunningly shadowed crevasse also know as Gabrielle’s cleavage.

“Um, so you really live in a mansion?” he asked. “In Biarritz?? With your sisters???”

“Oui.”

“And Pipe and I will really be allowed to stay there?”

“Oui.” She looked out the side window.

Gabrielle seems distracted, thought Doggie. But not half as distracted as I am! Oh, those two tanned-

Bump-a-bumpa-BUMP!

A cow leapt out of the bouncing kombi’s path.

“Hey!” Gabrielle screamed. “Get back on the road! The surfboards!”

“Moooo-ooooooo!”

Doggie’s eyes twanged back to the road, and the kombi bumped along after.

Pipe jolted awake in the back. “You wreck my van, you die.”

“Everything’s… cool.” Doggie glanced at Gabrielle’s face, for a change, and was shocked at how her colour had drained. “Hey, uh, Gab, that’s nice of you to be so worried about my boards.”

“Well, they are… brand new.” Gabrielle flashed her best smile. “It would not be lucky to damage those beautiful new surfboards.”

“Yeah, not before I’ve even ripped on ‘em. I hope Biarritz is pumping!”

“Oh, there will be pumping.”

* * * *

Pipe gunned the kombi up steep streets through the heart of historic Biarritz. The van whined. Gabrielle’s mansion stood atop the highest hill at the end of a private road through somewhat overgrown gardens. It loomed up, a baroque fortress.

“Nice digs.” Pipe whistled.

He whistled again when they were met at the door by a stiff-backed butler.

The largest woman Doggie had ever seen appeared – a lantern-jawed brunette with hands bigger than his feet. Doggie’s gonads recoiled. The giant woman and Gabrielle hugged.

“This is… your sister?” asked Doggie.

“Oui,” smiled Gabrielle. “Though we have different fathers.”

Different species, more like, thought Doggie. “Er, and your other sisters?”

“Away.” The fridge-shaped sister growled with a weird accent that Doggie guessed was posh French.

Gabrielle kept smiling. “This is Amelie. Amelie – Pipe and Doggie.”

“English?” Amelie seemed to scowl.

“He’s English.” Pipe nodded at Doggie. “I’m Welsh.”

Amelie smiled and spread her arms wide. “So… welcome! Our butler, Duffoir, will show you to your suites. May your stay be long and enjoyable. If you want to go into Biarritz, Duffoir will drive you in the Rolls. Simply ask.”

Doggie gawked at the butler. Duffoir nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“Did you say… Rolls? As in Royce?”

Amelie raised a hairy eyebrow. “I thought an Englishman would enjoy the English car.”

* * *

Doggie bounced up and down in the back seat of the Rolls. “To the sickest waves in town!”

Duffoir continued driving, as if he had heard nothing.

The stone streets of Biarritz blurred by.

Doggie shrugged. “Doesn’t say much, does he?”

“Maybe he can teach you how to shut up.” Pipe shook his head. “We’ve lucked into the perfect situation. Just don’t you go and ruin everything – like by trying to tune our hostess!”

Doggie grinned. “There’s not enough Bordeaux in Bordeaux for me to go for Amelie.”

“I don’t mean Amelie! I mean Ga- Whoa, we’re here already!”

The Rolls punched into a gap on the boulevarde. Pipe climbed out, a bit embarrassed as every head turned toward him. Doggie stepped out next, waving like a superstar, before lifting out his brand new fish as if it was shaped from platinum.

* * *

The sisters wandered the garden pathway.

Amelie smiled, though her voice held no humour. “Gabrielle – you look more gorgeous than ever.”

“Thank you… sister.”

Amelie reached behind her head and tugged. Her brunette wig snapped free, revealing a crew cut with edges so sharp they glinted.

The big man smiled down at Gabrielle. “So, the surfers will be staying here. How very ironic.”

“They have been perfect smugglers.” Gabrielle shrugged. “Why not take their cargo now?”

The big man shook his Easter Island head. “Better if the cargo is not in our possession. I am negotiating with a group who wish to purchase the ‘special’ fish.”

“The one that contains enough plastique to blow Biarritz sky high?”

“Yes, Gabrielle, that fish.”

“But Doggie has taken that one surfing! What if the board… goes off?”

“Impossible! Unless the fool somehow drops the board off a cliff! Now get the mansion ready for their return. Make sure they do not continue their ridiculous trip until I say so! Even if you have to sleep with the one called Dogwee!”

Gabrielle opened her mouth to reply, but said nothing.

“Relax.” The big man touched her cheek. “I also look forward to this being over. You see, I have developed quite a taste… for killing English surfers.”

Gabrielle strode back to the mansion.

* * *

Doggie waddled down the beach, his eyeballs darting like a wired blowfly in a glass at all the nudity around him.

Oh Lordy, look at those! And look at THOSE! Work, photographic mammary, I mean memory! Never for get this mo-

Doggie staggered and the nose of his fish poked into the blubber of a large, naked man.

“Dumbkopf!” the man snorted. “Vatch vere you are valking!”

“Vanker,” muttered Doggie.

“Vot? Vot??” The man loomed up.

“Nothing.” Doggie scuttled toward the water.

* * *

Doggie paddled hard and leapt to his feet. “Oy!” he cried, but a rotund summer kook dropped in anyway. Doggie grimaced and drove for the tiny lip just behind the kook, determined to shower him with vengeful spray.

Instead, Doggie hit the lip, the fish lurched over the back of the wave and Doggie somersaulted backwards, landing in the flats. The wave downloaded on his backside.

A sexy French boogie boarder paddled past. “Maybe you should take some lessons first?”

“Me… lessons?” Doggie’s look of horror completed his sentence.

Out the back, Pipe paddled into a set. Doggie smirked, expecting to see his stocky mate bog on his first turn. Instead, Pipe drove for the lip, slid out the tail, and calmly landed the move… on his old, brown, non-new surfboard!

* * *

So began Doggie’s Groundhog Day, or Ground-down-dog Day. Gabrielle would flirt with Doggie, then vanish. Amelie would scowl. The boys would eat until ready to burst then go surfing. Duffoir would drive, and say nothing. And on the beach of brazen boobies, Doggie became ever more frustrated.

Back at the mansion, he pulled his new board out of the back of the Rolls and hurled it to the ground. “This stinking fish is even more of a dog than my nickname!”

Duffoir pursed his lips and headed for the mansion.

Pipe smirked. “Dunno why you even bother to surf slop – considering how fat you’ve become lately.”

Doggie nodded glumly. “What else is there to do but eat cheese and snails and other French delicacies?”

“If you keep putting this free food away, I’m gonna have to charge you for excess love-handle baggage!”

“Very not funny.” Doggie kicked his fish. “Once we get a decent swell, I’ll get back in shape. Then I’ll be able to ditch this crap board and ride the bigger boards in my quiver, which look much better!”

Pipe snorted. “If you want the surf to rise, why don’t you just make a sacrifice?”

“You mean, get really drunk? But I’ve tried that.”

“Nah – sacrifice something Hughie would actually appreciate… like… your dumb board!”

“But we can’t burn it – we’ll have every environmentalist in Europe on our tails.”

“I know what to do,” smiled Pipe, opening up his kombi. “If you’ve got the sacrifice, I’ve got the cliff.”

Doggie paused. “Done.” He threw the fish into the kombi rear. “It’s time our luck changed!”

* * *

“Sick sacrifice spot!”

The wind howled up from the ocean, far below. The sun was freshly settled, and the first stars winked.

Pipe raised his arms to the boiling heavens. “Oh, mighty Hughie, great god of the ocean, giver of sick pits and smasher of oil tankers-”

Doggie interrupted. “And that fat kook who dropped in on me-”

“Shut. Up.” Pipe continued. “Please hear the plea of we, your loyal and faithful followers-”

“Doggie and Pipe,” said Doggie.

“Hughie knows all and doesn’t need your help.”

“Just get on with it.”

Pipe scowled. “Hughie… send us swell! Not just any swell, but a grand macking swell! In return, we pray you will accept this near-virginal surfboard sacrifice that we make in your name!” Pipe lowered his arms and hissed at Doggie. “That’s your cue to throw the stick, muppet!”

“Maybe I’d be better off just trading it in-”

“Too late! Hughie expects a sacrifice! Do you really want the God of the Seven Seas to be after your fat arse? Remember Ulysses?”

“That Greek guy with the quad fin? Oh, okay.” Doggie hefted the fish above his head. “Goodbye, heap of crap.” He tossed the board out into the void. It spun like a badly feathered dart, moonlight sparkling on the spiralling fins. A gust of onshore caught the board and spun it back toward the cliff-

LE BOOOOOOM!

The plastique exploded a football field sized chunk out of the cliff. High above, the ground shook and cracked apart. Pipe and Doggie’s whole world began to slide toward the ocean, hundreds of metres below…

“What the-”

Someone’s just started World War Three, and we’re gonna be the first casualties!

Next issue: Landslide, murder and the result of Doggie’s swell sacrifice bears brutal fruit at… a certain Basque Country river mouth!