by Ken Goddard
"Actually, we did anticipate the credibility problem," Simon Whatley offered hesitantly, uncomfortably aware that at least one of Smallsreed's guests had the power to order the deaths of a team of federal law-enforcement agents. He didn't even want to think about where he might stand if something went wrong.
"And?" Tisbury turned to face Smallsreed's underling.
"Well, after evaluating their, uh, offensive capability, we decided to provide them with better weapons."
"Oh really?" Tisbury's eyebrows rose. "Like what?"
"M-16 assault rifles. The earlier military version. Colonel Rustman, uh, 'arranged' the paperwork necessary to prove they disappeared from one of the local National Guard units several years ago. Our team will familiarize the militants with the weapons and let them get in a few practice rounds before we set the stage… make sure everything looks legitimate."
"Yes, very good, I like that." Sam Tisbury nodded approvingly. "And you're absolutely sure these agents are in place?"
"Well, uh…"
"Goddamn it!" the industrialist exploded. "You've got an informant, and it cost us a bundle to put her in place. Use her!"
"Uh, yes sir, I am — and, uh, they are. I mean, I know the agents are definitely in Jasper County," Simon Whatley stammered.
Even as he uttered the words, Whatley vaguely recalled some kind of discrepancy in the latest report from his informant. But he'd been racing around his apartment packing — in a hurry to make that damned red¬eye — and didn't listen to the recorded messages all that carefully. Something about Bravo Team not working out as planned. But they were definitely in Jasper County, Oregon. He remembered that part clearly. That's all that mattered.
"Simon's also got some of his people in a position to provide us with all of the up-to-date intelligence we need," Smallsreed added cheerfully. "They'll make damned sure everybody's where they're supposed to be. Right, Simon?"
God I hope so, Whatley thought, feeling his stomach churn, but he said, 'Yes sir, absolutely."
"We're going to need periodic reports, so we're absolutely certain everything goes according to plan. These agents caused the deaths of my father, my son, and my daughter," Tisbury reminded everyone in the room — as only a powerful third-generation industrialist who truly believed that his immense wealth and influence gave him the right to seek out vengeance on his own terms could remind them — "and they're going to pay for that. They are going to pay dearly."
"I would also remind you all that we lost six of the founding members of ICER." The unfamiliar, deep, and very foreboding voice that rumbled from the back recesses of the room startled Simon Whatley. "Until we can reestablish the committee with individuals of equivalent power, influence, and ideology, the environmental extremists will continue to run amok. These agents caused us to suffer tremendous setbacks. That must stop, immediately!"
"And it will stop," Regis J. Smallsreed promised. "You have my word on that."
"And the reports?" Tisbury pursued his main point of interest.
"I can fax you a daily briefing, along with — " Simon Whatley began, but Tisbury quickly interrupted.
"No faxes. No written reports. And especially no phone calls," he ordered sharply. "I am not about to find myself in federal prison because of some goddamned wiretap, and I assume everyone in this room feels exactly the same way. I want comprehensive verbal reports every two days, preferably here in this office."
"That's not a problem," Smallsreed agreed affably.
"But-" Simon Whatley tried to protest, but the congressman ignored him completely.
"Simon will be here at, oh, let's say 10:00 A.M. sharp — just in case that red-eye gets delayed again," Smallsreed added with a wink, "every other day, starting this coming Friday. No notes, no reports, no phone calls. Just the four of us in this room. And I can assure you it will be a sorry day if any federal agent ever even thinks about bugging this office."
"But — " Whatley tried again, but no one in the room paid him the slightest bit of attention.
"And keep him out of first-class," Tisbury added. "Make the reservations under different names, randomized locations in the back cabin, inside seats whenever possible, pay in cash, and have somebody else pick up the tickets. I don't want some sharp-eyed stewardess or airport clerk with a good memory for faces wondering why he's making all these red¬eye flights to DC."
"No problem." Smallsreed bobbed his massive head agreeably.
"Traveling back and forth like that, will he have enough time to sleep, and still get fully briefed at the other end?" came the ominous voice from the shadows.
"Oh hell yes," Smallsreed replied confidently. "Simon's one of those people you can depend on to get the job done. He'll get all the sleep he needs on the plane."
At 11:30 A.M., eastern standard time, David Halahan, Chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Special Operations Branch, poked his head in his deputy chiefs office door.
"Any more word on Boggs?" he asked.
Freddy Moore shook his head.
"We've got everybody on Charlie Team except Donato, LiBrandi, and Marashenko combing the town. Figured we'd better hold those three back in reserve, just in case Boggs doesn't show and we need to make our own contacts with those Chosen Brigade of the Seventh Seal folks."
"What about his house?" Halahan asked. "Anybody look inside?"
"Not yet. I told them to hold off on that on account of the neighbors. Wilbur's got the whole damned place alarmed, and LiBrandi's the only one on Charlie Team who's been through lock school."
"What about at night?"
"LiBrandi's willing to give it a try, but if that alarm goes off, that means dealing with the local cops, any one of whom could have relatives in the militant group. There's a good chance he could badge his way out of it, especially if the locals know Wilbur, but that would still cut us down to Donato and Marashenko for the contact work."
"Okay," Halahan agreed with his deputy, "tell them to keep looking." He started to leave, then turned back.
"What about Bravo Team?"
Freddy Moore looked at his watch.
"Based on the e-mail report they sent last night, I think we can assume that Bravo Team has more than enough to keep them fully occupied for the next twenty-four hours or so."
Chapter Twenty
"I've got a bad feeling about this," Mike Takahara murmured softly as he put down the battery-powered sander and wiped the sawdust off his face.
"What do you mean you've got a bad feeling?" Larry Paxton demanded. "You're the one who designed the damned thing."
"Yeah, but — "
"Didn't you ever build things with your dad when you were a kid? You know, birdhouses, Tinkertoys®, Legos®, things like that?"
"Yeah, sure, but everything we built always fell apart," the tech agent confessed.
Special Agent Dwight Stoner muttered something under his breath, then walked to the rear of the rental car parked next to a huge stack of crates, boxes, and bags containing an assortment of terrariums, specially designed terrarium lids, terrarium lights, extension cords, junction boxes, several dozen rolls of silvered duct tape, boxes of crickets and mice, snake bags, snake hooks, snake tongs, nets, gravel, mouse food, water dishes, four heavy-duty plastic swimming pools about eighteen inches deep and six feet in diameter, and a full-size chest freezer that was delivered earlier that morning.
After grabbing a pair of the long-handled snake hooks, Stoner opened the trunk, removed a Model 870 Remington 12-gauge pump shotgun, a box of shells, a small ice chest, and a fire extinguisher. Then he closed the trunk, walked back over to the mind-numbing stack of seventy-two brightly labeled 2'X4'X1' wooden crates in the middle of the team's leased warehouse, and handed the fire extinguisher to Thomas Woeshack, the ice chest to Mike Takahara, and the snake hooks to Larry Paxton.
The Bravo Team leader eyed the shotgun inquisitively.
"Bird shot," Stoner explained as he fed five of the low-based cartridges into the shotgun's extended magazine. "Way I see it, anyth
ing starts to walk, crawl, or slither out of that contraption, one of three things is going to happen. Either you're going to catch it, Woeshack's going to freeze it, or I'm going to kill it. End of story."
"Can we do that?" Thomas Woeshack asked, looking confused as usual.
"Oh yeah, no problem."
The expression on Dwight Stoner's face clearly indicated that any discussions about proper enforcement of the Endangered Species Act — as it applied to poisonous snakes and giant red-kneed tarantulas trapped with him in a warehouse — would have to wait for a better day.
"Well, at least we know Halahan cares about our welfare," Mike Takahara reported after he opened the ice chest and removed a plastic-sealed reference card marked in bright colors.
"Just because the man sends us a whole bunch of expensive snakebite serum by overnight mail doesn't necessarily mean he cares," Larry Paxton countered reasonably. "He's probably just covering his butt in case the Washington Office ever gets wind of this operation."
"Well, according to this, he bought us just about every poisonous snake antivenin known to man." Takahara examined the contents of the chest. "Yep, everything's in color-coded syringes, ready to go. Something goes wrong, all we need to do is figure out who got bit by exactly what kind of snake… " — he gestured toward the small library of reference books that came with the emergency snakebite kit — "match up the codes, inject the right syringe in the immediate area of the bite, and we'll probably be okay-provided we get to the hospital in time. Everyone clear on that?"
"Not my problem," Dwight Stoner announced as he dumped the remaining shotgun shells in his coat pocket. "I've got twenty-five rounds of bird shot and twelve rounds of 10mm hollow-points in my Smith. Halahan may need to find some more snakes, and you guys might have to dig bird shot out of your butts, but I'm not getting bit, period. End of discussion."
"Me neither." Thomas Woeshack solemnly nodded in agreement.
Takahara contemplated the jury-rigged contraption that he and Woeshack had spent the morning building with six four-by-eight sheets of three-quarter-inch plywood, six eight-foot-long two-by-fours, approximately 240 drywall screws, two wing bolts, and $1232.00 worth of assorted power tools, all charged to one of Halahan's Special Ops credit cards. In short, they had designed, built, and charged to the government what amounted to a large wooden funnel onto whose top they could lower and secure an unopened crate, hopefully safely open it, and dump its inhabitants into the prepared terrarium below.
"Well, now that we've got the basics worked out," Larry Paxton snorted sarcastically in the direction of the team's visibly nervous tech agent, "you ready to get started?"
"Not really, but…"
"Like jumping into a lake of ice-cold water in the middle of winter," Paxton assured him. "If you're dumb enough to do it in the first place, you might just as well hop in and get it over with."
"Was that supposed to be inspirational?" Takahara asked.
"As inspirational as it's gonna get until things start looking up around here," the Bravo Team leader replied. "Okay, Thomas, you pick up one of those terrariums over there, take the lid off, let Stoner fill the bottom with gravel, and then you slide it under the funnel.."
Paxton stopped talking while Woeshack carefully set the extinguisher down, removed a terrarium from one of the twelve-by-eighteen-by-twenty- four-inch cardboard boxes, set the lid aside, waited while Dwight Stoner carefully poured a half-inch layer of small gray stones into the bottom, slid the terrarium into the lower slot of Mike Takahara's thoughtfully designed device, locked it in place at both open ends with sections of two-by-four, and then hurried back to the extinguisher.
"Now, Mike, you and I will start with this box, number twenty-three, 'cause it's got screening over the air holes, so we don't have to worry about something getting at us through the holes.." Paxton motioned to one of brightly labeled wooden crates on top of the stack.
"First we cut the bands off." He used a pair of metal snips to sever the tightly cross-wrapped steel bands.
"Then we lift it up." Paxton set the snips and cut bands aside, then he and Takahara carefully lifted the heavy crate off the stack.
"And place it in the frame right… there."
The heavy wooden crate dropped into Takahara's makeshift apparatus with a satisfying thunk, causing its inhabitants to thrash around in what — as best the agents could tell through the screened air holes — looked like shredded paper.
"I can't believe Newark didn't send us a description of contents," Larry Paxton complained. "You'd think if somebody went to the trouble of numbering the damned boxes in the first place, they could've made a goddamned list, too, while they were at it. You see anywhere on the box where it says what's in this one?" the supervisory agent asked hopefully.
"Not unless they renamed a species Danger, Hot Snakes, or Hazardous Cargo," Takahara replied as he carefully inspected the wooden container from all angles.
"Okay, no problem." Larry Paxton's face had taken on a decidedly glossy sheen in the cold warehouse. "Now we lower the box and the frame just like so…"
Working slowly and carefully, Paxton and Takahara carefully released the wing nuts and slowly lowered the jig holding the crate to a point just barely above the top of the wooden funnel.
"All right, now tighten everything back up," Paxton ordered. The two agents carefully retightened the wing nuts. Then Paxton sighed heavily.
"Okay, now comes the fun part."
The sound of a low-based bird-shot round being jacked into the chamber of an 870 pump shotgun echoed throughout the warehouse, causing Larry Paxton to flinch, then glare at his huge subordinate agent. Then he turned to Takahara.
"You ready?"
"Oh sure. Anytime," Mike Takahara croaked dryly.
Stoner set the shotgun within easy reach and leaned forward to hold the top of the crate in place with his two huge hands, while Woeshack moved in with the fire extinguisher. Paxton and Takahara each picked up one of the battery-powered variable-speed drills fitted with Phillips screwdriver bits, and stretched out on the concrete floor on either side of Takahara's makeshift apparatus.
The design allowed just enough room on the outside of the wood funnel to get at the screws that held the bottom of the crate in place
… which meant a gap slightly in excess of three-quarters of an inch would exist between the sides of the crate and the edges of the funnel when they slid the bottom of the crate out of the way-an issue that generated several hours of emotional discussion until Mike Takahara finally convinced the rest of the team that a three-quarter-inch board couldn't possibly move through anything less than a three-quarter-inch space.
But the unresolved point was whether any of the inhabitants of the seventy-two wooden crates would want to — and more to the point, could — squeeze through a three-quarter-inch space and either escape or attack, rather than cooperatively drop into a nice, clean, gravel-filled terrarium.
Hence Woeshack's fire extinguisher and Stoner's shotgun.
Paxton and Takahara had backed out the first pair of wood screws halfway when the sudden thrashing inside the crate caused both of them frantically to roll away while Stoner lunged for the shotgun.
"I think I'm gonna have a heart attack," Larry Paxton commented to no one in particular as he lay on the concrete floor with his eyes closed.
"Don't forget, I was the one who said somebody's gonna get bit," Woeshack whispered nervously to Stoner, who nodded and glared pointedly at the Bravo Team leader.
Eight minutes and several frazzled nerves later, Paxton and Takahara removed the last two screws holding the bottom of the crate in place, and the last portion of the three-quarter-inch plywood piece dropped a sixteenth of an inch onto the top of the wooden funnel.
"Okay," Mike Takahara murmured softly. "Now it gets interesting."
Larry Paxton glowered at his tech agent. "Well, thank God for that! I was afraid I was gonna fall asleep out of sheer boredom."
Ignoring the sarcasm, Takahara
picked up a carefully sanded two-foot-wide-by-three-foot-long piece of plywood. Working cautiously, he used it to push the bottom board of the crate until each covered half of the box.
The inhabitants of the crate stirred uneasily.
"Okay," Takahara whispered to Paxton, "grab the end of the other board, but don't do anything until I tell you."
As Larry Paxton gingerly took hold of the released portion of the crate, he felt the container's inhabitants shifting heavily on it.
Movement continued for several more seconds and then stopped.
Takahara looked at his fellow agents. "Everybody ready?"
The three men nodded with varying degrees of confidence.
"Okay" — Takahara's voice sounded ominously loud in the otherwise silent warehouse — "one… two… three… now!"
In the instant that Takahara and Paxton yanked their respective boards out from under the crate, two huge black snakes with bright red scales on their bellies plummeted into the terrarium with a loud thump and thrashed against the glass, causing Larry Paxton to scream "SHIT!" and lunge out of the way.
"Oh my God," Thomas Woeshack whispered, backing away quickly as he held the extinguisher in front of his body as if to ward off an evil spirit.
Dwight Stoner leveled the shotgun at the terrarium, and then watched uneasily as the huge snakes coiled their thick bodies around each other and began probing the glass with their stubby black noses.
"What the hell are those things?" Larry Paxton whispered.
"They kinda look like dwarf king cobras," Mike Takahara suggested uneasily.
"Whatever they are, they're too big for that terrarium," Dwight Stoner noted accurately.
At that moment, a loud pounding on the metal door of the warehouse startled all four agents.
Stoner, Woeshack and Takahara continued ogling the snakes while Larry Paxton cautiously approached the door, looked through the peephole, and disappeared outside.
Five long minutes later, he returned with a torn-open FedEx envelope and a clipped stack of papers in his hand.
"We get FedEx delivered to a brand-new covert ops storefront site that we could barely find?" Mike Takahara cocked his head curiously.