The lowdown so far:
English surfer Doggie and his Welsh goofy mate Pipe are on the road trip of their lives. In Biarritz, the pair score a dream crib staying at a mansion with the gorgeous Gabrielle, her hulking sister Amelie and the silent chauffeur, Duffoir. They have no idea Amelie is really a murdering smuggler or that Doggie’s three prize surfboards are fibreglass mules. One contained enough explosive to remove a huge chuck of Biarritz coast, which it did, in a swell sacrifice gone horribly wrong. But Doggie and Pipe had a more pressing worry – like rallying to the world famous rivermouth of Mundaka before dawn. For the swell was on the rise! Gabrielle joined the lads, determined to save her imprisoned family, and packed her own big wave gun…

“Spain, here we come!” Pipe cackled, at the wheel. “Mundakaaaaaaah!”

* * *

It was still dark when they paddled out, the line-up lit up with stars. But the thundering THROOOM! of sets made it clear this was a day of surfing that would go down in Basque surfing folk lore.

Doggie stroked harder than he’d ever stroked. I’m sick of being a fat kook. Now I’m riding a gun surfboard perfectly suited to these waves of real power, it’s time to let the Dog out! He leapt to his feet early and crouched. The board dropped out beneath his feet, but Doggie followed it down, determined not to bail. From deeper up the line drove nuggety Aussie pro surfer, Nathan Hodge, always the first surfer in the water. Doggie reconnected with his board at the base of the wave at the same time as Hodgey arrived, midway through his driving, horizontal bottom turn. Their rails clashed. CRRRACK!

The fibreglass rail of Doggie’s semi-gun split. A concentrated liquid dribbled out.

Doggie overbalanced, and stood on one leg. Hodgey grabbed his other leg and yanked him from his board, before driving up into the pocket. Doggie went down hard, was sucked over the falls and slammed down even harder, bursting open his wetsuit like an overripe grapefruit. Cold river water flushed down his wetsuit arms and legs, shrivelling his gonads, and through his ear canals, sinus passages and rectum. When he finally made it to the surface, he was gasping like an octogenarian who’d gobbled an entire packet of Viagra in La Rosa. He held onto his board, which had already leaked over half its load, and looked up, just in time for the next set wave to loom above his head. In the split second before impact, Doggie glimpsed a shadowy figure laying over a huge bottom turn. A most curvaceous figure…

Gabrielle! SLAMMMO!

Washed toward the harbour, Doggie shook his ringing head with disbelief. His sexy French host was not only rich and voluptuous, but she also ripped! Doggie would have chuckled at the irony of the situation, were he not drowning.

Rinse cycle over, Doggie crawled up the concrete steps inside the harbour, frowning at the crack in his rail from Hodgey’s board and the dings all over the deck from his head. Pro surfers and gnarly locals swarmed past him, eager to catch a few waves before the Mundakky Pro contest kicked into gear. Doggie squinted out the back, just in time to see his best mate vanish behind the curtain of an eight foot bomb.

“Bastard,” muttered Doggie.

His next thought was, Why has the sky turned fluoro pink?

The surf frothed with pro surfers, warming up for the Mundakky Pro. Normally, the pros would be snarling and psyching each other and jostling for the inside. Instead, an American pro was pointing at the sky and saying, “Here comes the Duke – in a yellow submarine!”

Two others paddled for a set wave side by side, stood on their heads, held hands and cried, “Wheeeee!” as they were thrown over the falls upside-down.

Big Pedro Hanrahan clawed at the sky. “Flying cheeseburgers!”

Pipe batted his eyes and patted the imaginary hair of a lover visible only to him. “Oh Amelie, you’re the giant girl of my dreams!”

Water photographers drifted by, giggling, more treeless than a kombi of hippies at One Palm Point.

On shore, contest organisers hopped around waving flags and blowing hooters, which were completely ignored by the loopy professionals, locals and heroes of this tale, brains slowly frying.

And all the while, the swell continued to build – eight feet, ten feet, twelve… Finally, the mega set of mega sets peaked halfway to the island out the back. A two storey wall of whitewash rolled through the lineup, sweeping away the last of the liquid, flushing out the surfers’ heads and washing everyone into the harbour, or up the river, without the proverbial paddle.

Pipe and Gabrielle were the last two to stagger out of the water. They gawked at the Spanish police questioning the gibbering pro surfers. Pipe wobbled unsteadily around the police lines, crawled into the back of his van, and passed out next to Doggie, who was already snoring and grinning through his dream of 100 naked Gabrielles and an indoor wave pool pumping strawberry jelly waves.

* * *

Something hard poked into Pipe’s ribs. “That you, Amelie?” he muttered, half-asleep.

“Get up!” A familiar voice shook with emotion. “Both of you!”

Pipe peeled back his eyelids. “Gabrielle…? Uh, why are you looking all crazy and pointing a gun at my head?”

Gabrielle jabbed her revolver into Doggie’s stomach. He vomited up half a bucket of river water.

“G-Gab?” he slurred. “What’s happening? Where’d your 99 twins go? And the jelly barrels?”

“I’ve driven the van to a remote forest outside Mundaka,” said Gabrielle. “Pipe, tie up Doggie.”

“Ooh… kinky,” smiled Doggie. “I like.”

Gabrielle whipped Doggie across the face with her gun. Blood sprouted. Doggie looked shell-shocked. Head down, Pipe tied Doggie’s hands and feet.

“You bloody English idiots!” Gabrielle ranted. “You just poured ten million Euros worth of Super Serum into the Atlantic Ocean and through the brains of half the Top 45, some of whom will never recover.”

“For the umteenth bloody time, I’m bloody Welsh! Got it? Anyway… Super Serum???”

“It’s a new, high-illegal sports stimulate developed in Eastern Europe. In tests they reckon the lab cleaning lady did the 100m in 3.41 seconds. In its ultra-concentrated transport liquid form though, it’s not performance enhancing, just highly hallucinogenic.”

“This is a joke, right?” Doggie gulped.

Gabrielle sighed. “Doggie, your three prize surfboards were designed to smuggle goods.”

Pipe scoffed. “But they were shaped by Guru the shaper!”

“Who is now dead,” said Gabrielle, silencing Pipe. “The fish contained plastique explosives-”

“So WE blew up that cliff?” Doggie scratched his head.

Gabrielle nodded. “And your big wave board contained the trippy Super Serum.”

“Ah, that explains the naked chick photographers at the wave pool.” Doggie’s grin faded. “But what about my six-three? What’s hidden inside it?”

Gabrielle ignored his question and smiled grimly. “I wish all this could have turned out differently. But now… my only hope is to hand you both over to the Spanish connection, Pablo Coffino.”

“To party?”

“No. He will torture and kill you, and possibly kill me, which I regret, but perhaps then my family will live.”

“Your family?” Pipe’s forehead furrowed. “You mean, Amelie?”

The back door to the van flung back, revealing… Amelie! “Someone mention my name?” The two metre tall brunette with the physique of an industrial fridge leered in, silenced gun in hand. “Your plan was a good one, Gabrielle. That’s why I’m stealing it. I’m going to drop all three of your corpses off to Pablo Coffino, in the hope that he will let me live! Now – tie up the one called Pipe.”

Gabrielle’s shoulders slumped as she obeyed. “How did you find us?”

“Tracking device in YOUR surfboard.” Amelie waved her gun. “First rule of smuggling: trust no one.”

“Amelie?” Pipe repeated, dumbly.

“You’re such a moron.” Amelie chuckled, and pulled off her wig.

“You’re not a big ugly chick!” exclaimed Doggie. “You’re a big, ugly guy!”

“Fool!” The big, ugly guy pistol-whipped Doggie’s other cheek. “I am Sergei Saginballsov, top ten on Interpol’s Most Wanted list. You will fear me!”

“I already fear your breath… Ow, nice kick.” Doggie winced. “What are you going to do with us?”

Sergei smirked – a disturbing sight indeed. “I’m going to let you loose in this forest and hunt you down! Like dogs for sport!”

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to shoot us here?” asked Gabrielle.

“Easier, yes. But not as much fun.”

The van gently trembled. “Damn,” said Pipe. “The surf is still getting bigger. What a sucky day to be hunted down.”

“A pity, yes…” Gabrielle’s eyes locked focus. “And I know a secret Spanish wave that would be handling this giant swell…”

“That’s it!” Doggie beamed. “Sir Gay, you say you like blood sport?”

“Of course.”

“Then why don’t you let Gabrielle direct us to her surf spot? Then we can have a final surf as a last request, and you can have the pleasure of shooting us in the surf!”

“I am not fool. You would just try to escape!”

“You’ve brought a high powered rifle. Do you really think we could escape that?”

Sergei grinned as he tied up Gabrielle’s hands. “Very well. You will have a final surf. The winner of the surf contest, I will kill instantly, while he – or she – is still surfing. The losers – I will kill much more slowly. It will be good warm-up – for killing Gabrielle’s family!”

* * *

The van bounced over potholes. Sergei grinned madly. “Everyone comfortable back there? I hope not!”

He steered the van out of the forest into an overgrown car park and whistled. Fifteen feet right handers rumbled along the bouldered shoreline. “Maybe I won’t need my rifle,” he smirked. “Maybe these big waves will do my killing job for me.” He shrugged. “Either way, it will be fun to watch. And you’ll all end up dead.”

A rumbling sounded behind. A beat-up old car full of Spanish surfers pulled up next to the van. The surfers shot Sergei a big thumb’s up. He shot them a thumb’s up back and pulled out his pistol.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

“What the hell was that?” squawked Doggie.

Sergei wrenched open the van’s back door. “That was me… warming up.”

Doggie gawked at the next car, at the four bullet holes in the windows, at the slumped surfers, at the blood and brains showered over everything, and heaved up the last of the river water from his stomach.

Sergei cut their ropes. “Suit up. Let’s get this turkey shoot over before dinner!”

Next issue: Pipe, Doggie and Gabrielle surf-off to the death!