Double blind sahl-3

by Ken Goddard

  The enormity of their error struck the two agents simultaneously as they both looked down at their exposed hands, and then back up at each other. But Stoner — whose reflexes had been honed by twelve years of diving for loose footballs — reacted first.

  Reaching out, the huge agent yanked Paxton's hand away from the end of the pipe, slapped it around the pipe end he was holding, used his overwhelming strength to bring the two open ends of the pipe in his supervisor's resisting hands together, and then quickly stepped back.

  Larry Paxton was still staring at the closed loop of four-inch-diameter corrugated pipe in his hands — his eyes bulging with shock as the sound of rapidly moving giant tarantulas caused him to clamp the two pipe ends tightly together — when someone knocked loudly on the warehouse door.

  Immediately, four sets of eyes focused on the door.

  "Who that hell is that?" Dwight Stoner whispered.

  "Can't be Henry," Woeshack reminded them. "He said he and Bobby were going to stay away from here for a while."

  "I don't care who it is, I want somebody to get me some…" Larry Paxton started to yell, but then fell silent as Stoner quickly brought his forefinger up to his mouth.

  As Paxton remained frozen in place by the frantic scurrying inside the ten-foot closed loop of pipe, Stoner drew his semiautomatic pistol from his concealed shoulder holster. Taking a protected barricade position against one of the warehouse pillars, he directed Woeshack to the far side of the rental car and nodded to Mike Takahara to open the door.

  Paxton, Stoner, and Woeshack all tensed as they watched the team's tech agent cautiously approach the door, pull back the curtain on the small window, then open the door and go outside.

  Four minutes later, Takahara returned with a FedEx envelope and a single piece of paper in his hand.

  "You know," he announced thoughtfully as he approached Larry Paxton, who had a decidedly dangerous expression in his dark eyes, "the next time we set up a covert operation, we probably ought to pose as FedEx agents. Save everybody a whole lot of time and effort… not to mention a certain amount of grief," he added, glancing meaningfully down at the loop of plastic pipe in his supervisor's shaking hands.

  "I… don't… care. Get… me… some… goddamned

  … duct tape… right… now," Larry Paxton ordered through clenched teeth.

  "Who's it from, Jennifer again?" Dwight Stoner asked, ignoring his team leader's furious glare. "What did she do, suddenly remember another piece of crucial information she forgot to tell us?"

  "No, this one's from Henry." Mike Takahara handed the paper to Stoner to read while he rummaged through a nearby storage box.

  "Oh yeah, what's he doing now?" Thomas Woeshack asked as he tried to read the paper over Stoner's muscular arm.

  "I'm not really sure," Takahara confessed as he retrieved a roll of duct tape and began to examine the ends of the corrugated pipe clenched in Larry Paxton's shaking hands, "but if I read that note correctly, I'd say he's trying to tell us that we've got a serious problem on our hands."

  Chapter Thirty-four

  At a little after one that Friday afternoon, Larry Paxton, Dwight Stoner, Mike Takahara, and Thomas Woeshack stood in the hallway as the assistant manager opened the door to a three-bedroom suite located at the far end of the top floor of their hotel.

  "I think you'll find our executive suites to your liking, Mr. Stanley," the assistant manager assured Dwight Stoner as he motioned for the four men to enter the suite, then followed with the luggage cart.

  "Actually, I kind of liked our old rooms," Stoner remarked wistfully as he examined the luxurious furnishings, not at all surprised to discover a set of upright wooden chairs of some indeterminate European vintage instead of the less formal overstuffed chairs that had decorated their previous, more comfortable but much less elegant rooms. "Unfortunately, though, our corporate director has developed more refined tastes in his declining years."

  "Damned right he has," Larry Paxton muttered under his breath.

  "I beg your pardon?" the assistant manager turned to Paxton.

  "I said I can't wait to see how the boss likes these rooms," the covert team leader replied cheerfully.

  "Ah, yes. Well, I think he'll be pleased. And your suite, of course, connects through this doorway." The hotel executive banged his knuckles lightly on a dead-bolted door. "Almost an exact duplicate, and just as nice, really."

  "I'm sure we'll all be very happy here. Think you could rustle up a half dozen barbecued beef sandwiches and some chips from that little slow-cook place down the street?" Dwight Stoner asked. He slipped four twenties to the assistant manager, who scanned, folded, and pocketed the money in an admirable show of one-handed dexterity.

  "Would a half hour be soon enough?"

  "Perfect." Stoner nodded agreeably as he gently guided the young man toward the door.

  They waited until the assistant manager's footsteps died away. Then, while Stoner and Woeshack searched the adjoining suite and Paxton watched out the window, Mike Takahara reached for the phone, punched in a local number, and spoke into the mouthpiece.

  "Room 1012, top floor, end of the hallway to your right."

  Fifteen minutes later, there was a knock at the door.

  Mike Takahara checked the peephole, opened the door, stepped aside to let Henry Lightstone enter, then bolted the door behind him.

  "You clear?" Larry Paxton asked as Lightstone pulled a bottle of cold beer out of the open ice chest, briefly examined the high-backed wooden chairs, and then sat down on the floor with his back against the wall.

  "Far as I know." Lightstone took a deep, satisfying swallow of the cold beer, then looked around. "I see we're spending Halahan's money with our normal indifference to government rules and regulations."

  "You have any idea how hard it was to find two adjoining rooms at the end of a hallway in this place?" Paxton asked irritably. "Considering all the shit we've gone through on this operation so far, the government auditors can kiss my ragged butt."

  "Spoken like a true bureaucrat." Lightstone nodded approvingly as he turned his attention to the team's tech agent. "Did you check the place out anyway, just to be sure?"

  "Absolutely." Mike Takahara nodded. "Telephones, lamps, outlets, switches, and electrical lines are all clear. Nothing in the overhead that I can spot. The walls are solid, the room below us is occupied by a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company, and I disconnected the radio and TV. Add what I hope was a random move on our part to the picture, and we're as clean as we're ever going to get in a public hotel… unless, of course, we've got a seriously professional technical type on our ass, in which case all bets are off," he added thoughtfully.

  "I'll settle for that." Lightstone accepted the tech agent's assessment of the situation. "Sorry if I sounded overly paranoid in the message, but the last twenty-four hours have been pretty bizarre." His eyes swept the room again. "You guys got anything to eat around here?"

  "Sandwiches are on their way," Stoner informed him, but studied Lightstone's bandaged forearm. "What the hell happened to your arm?"

  "Never mind his arm. We'll get to all that later." Larry Paxton surveyed the team with a no-nonsense look in his eyes. "First thing I want to know is what the hell's going on with Charlie Team."

  Between sips of beer, Henry Lightstone described his initial contact with the two apparent soldiers at the Dogsfire Inn and the subsequent military-like surveillance of Charlie Team at the restaurant, leaving out only his personal involvement with the cat woman.

  He paused when someone knocked at the door, waited for Stoner and Takahara to collect the sandwiches from the well-tipped assistant manager, and finished with a description of the devices he'd found under his truck.

  For a long moment, the five Special Agents looked at each other.

  Mike Takahara broke the silence.

  "Can you draw me a rough sketch of that second device?" He tossed Lightstone a pencil and pad of paper.

  Bravo Team's wild-card a
gent made a few quick passes with the pencil, thought for a minute, added a few more details, then handed the pad back to Takahara.

  "You sure about these holes at the base?" the tech agent asked after studying the sketch.

  "Yeah, they were definitely there. I'm pretty sure four on each side."

  "How big?"

  "Maybe a quarter of an inch in diameter."

  "What about this rectangle above the holes?"

  "It looked like some kind of cutout. There was one on each of the two long-dimension sides, about one inch by three inches, with some kind of seal that definitely attached from the inside. Based on the slightly irregular surface, I'm guessing the seal was foil or some kind of metallic-coated paper. I didn't want to poke it to find out."

  "Good thinking." Takahara nodded approvingly. "What about the base? Magnetic?"

  "I don't think so. As best I could tell, some kind of adhesive pad, maybe an eighth of an inch thick, held the device in place. Looked like one of those peel-off-strip kinds of systems, but I didn't find any of the strips in the immediate area."

  "Only the really dumb ones leave their trash around. Unfortunately, these guys don't sound like dummies," Mike Takahara commented dryly. "How was the device camouflaged? Standard military green?"

  "Right."

  "Any insignia, markings, numbers?"

  "No. Or at least none that I remember."

  The tech agent nodded and looked around the room at his companions.

  "Okay, what I think Henry found is an MTEAR-42 device. Military, training, explosive, arm-switch, remote." He rattled off the military terms. "The crucial word is 'training.' The military uses a lot of these for their war games. What they do is mount these things under all the tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks, Humvees, then the referees set them off whenever they want to indicate a hit or disabled vehicle. A small charge blows out those foil seals to create a decent concussion and a nice loud bang, then red smoke pours out of those quarter-inch holes, basically to let the crew know they're either on fire or dead… or both. It's a very instructional little device."

  "So these things aren't real explosives?" A look of relief crossed Henry Lightstone's tanned face.

  "Depends on your definition of 'real,'" Mike Takahara responded. "There's certainly enough of a charge in an MTEAR-42 to give that little truck of yours a good bounce, and all that red smoke pouring out of the engine compartment probably wouldn't have done much for your nerves, especially if you didn't know what it meant. But it wouldn't spread pieces of you and your truck over a couple of acres.. assuming, of course, that what you saw wasn't a modified MTEAR," the tech agent added after a moment.

  "What would they modify it with?" Thomas Woeshack asked.

  Mike Takahara shrugged. "I don't know. Probably a standard detonator and a half pound of C-4."

  Another long moment of silence ensued.

  "Is there any way to tell if the one I saw had been modified?" Lightstone asked.

  "One good way, if you don't mind the obvious drawbacks." The tech agent grinned wryly. "Just drive your truck over to the warehouse, and I'll take a look… after maybe an hour or two."

  "Ah."

  Yet another moment of silence filled the elegantly furnished room, this one finally interrupted by Larry Paxton's barely audible voice.

  "It's a game. It's gotta be a game."

  "What?" Lightstone and the other three agents all turned to stare at the Bravo Team supervisor.

  "Think about it," Paxton insisted. "First, there's the obvious factor: Charlie Team isn't ready to work anything serious yet. They know it, Halahan knows it, and we certainly proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. So how likely is it that Halahan would send a rookie team that isn't ready out on something serious — not just somewhere in Oregon, but in the exact same Jasper County, Oregon, we're assigned to — without putting us on standby just in case they run into some kind of trouble?"

  "Not very likely." Lightstone admitted, and the other three agents nodded in agreement.

  "Okay, so stay with me on this," Paxton went on patiently. "We know that Halahan and Moore went to a lot of work to set up that series of training exercises for Charlie Team — using us as the crash dummies — and what did we do?"

  "We won." Dwight Stoner smiled pleasantly.

  "But we cheated," Thomas Woeshack added.

  "Okay, we won and we cheated," Mike Takahara compromised. "Both fair and square, more or less."

  "Yeah, but wait a minute." Henry Lightstone didn't look at all convinced. "Do you really think Halahan would go to all the effort to set up something — a game, exercise, whatever — this complicated, just because he's pissed at us?"

  "Hey, look at the assignment he gave us," Larry Paxton argued. "You tell me that the brilliant idea of shipping us thirty deadly poisonous snakes, a dozen crocodiles, and 750 giant spiders didn't come from the twisted mind of a supervisor bent on revenge."

  "That is pretty convincing, Henry," Dwight Stoner conceded.

  "Damned right it is. And keep in mind, not only did we seriously piss off Halahan and Moore, but we also embarrassed the hell out of Charlie Team in the process," Larry Paxton went on, "which specifically includes that little wildcat, Marashenko, who, if you ask me, is definitely the type to hold a serious grudge."

  "'Destroyed their team spirit, set them back at least a month in their training,' was the way Halahan put it," Mike Takahara reminded them.

  "Right." Larry Paxton looked around at his agent team. "So what better way of rebuilding that team spirit, and putting them right back on track…?"

  "… than by setting Charlie Team up in a position to embarrass the shit out of us?" Thomas Woeshack finished.

  "Exactly. See, even Woeshack recognizes a case of pure treachery when he sees it." Larry Paxton smiled approvingly at the young agent. "Halahan puts us in a godforsaken warehouse in the middle of Oregon with seventy-two shipping crates from hell, knowing we'll be too busy watching out for our own asses to look around and see what's going on

  …

  "… and then works it out so that Henry makes contact with that blind soothsayer…" Dwight Stoner added.

  "… who links him up to some crazy woman post-office worker who's really a fortune-telling witch in disguise. Wow, that really is devious planning." Thomas Woeshack's eyes widened in amazement.

  "And speaking of curious events, that reminds me," Larry Paxton interrupted after briefly staring at Woeshack in dismay, "just what did happen to your arm, Henry?"

  "Uh… nothing, just a little scratch."

  "You're trying to tell us you bandaged your whole damned arm because you got a little scratch? Come on, give me a break." Stoner glared at Lightstone skeptically and reached for his arm. "Let me see that thing."

  "Hey, wait… AGGHHH!" Henry Lightstone's eyes bulged as Stoner trapped his wrist in an inescapable grip and yanked up one side of the taped bandage loose, ripping out several hundred of his fellow agent's forearm hairs in the process.

  "Jesus Christ, Henry," Stoner whispered reverently as he and the others stared at the exposed wounds.

  "You trying to tell us a woman did that?" Larry Paxton demanded, his eyes widening with disbelief as he inspected the deep, encrusted wounds on Lightstone's forearm.

  "No, her cat did," Lightstone muttered as he hurriedly pressed the taped bandage — now covered with dozens of pulled hairs — back in place.

  "Must be one hell of a cat," Mike Takahara offered dubiously.

  "She's pretty good-sized," Lightstone acknowledged as he glared at his fellow agents.

  "You know," Larry Paxton remarked thoughtfully to Stoner, "something about this whole deal just doesn't smell right."

  "I know what you mean." The huge agent nodded. Then, before Henry could react, the huge agent reached behind Lightstone and yanked up his shirt, pinning the lanky agent's long, muscular arms over his head and exposing his bare back.

  "Bingo." Stoner smiled and turned his futilely struggling partner so the oth
er agents in the room could see the evidence.

  "Now those look like they were done by a woman," Larry Paxton announced approvingly. "'Less, of course, you'd like to try to convince us that the lady's cat climbed all over your body and tore it up like that," the Bravo Team leader added with a pleasant smile on his face when Stoner returned Lightstone to his place on the floor, released his arms, and handed him a cold bottle of beer.

  "I was lucky to survive the night," Henry muttered as he struggled to straighten his shirt, "and that's the unvarnished truth."

  "You all do realize what this means, don't you?" Mike Takahara asked.

  "Henry spent the last two days getting laid while the rest of us froze our nuts off in that warehouse collecting a lifetime supply of nightmares?" Dwight Stoner suggested.

  "Well, yeah; that, too," the tech agent agreed, "but don't you think Bobby must be involved in Halahan's scam, too?"

  Larry Paxton's brows furrowed. "How do you figure that?" he demanded.

  "Simple." Takahara smiled. "Halahan needs a twist on Henry, some way to control or direct his movements. So he finds out where Bobby and Susan live, knowing that if Henry ever gets reasonably close, he'll track them down first chance he gets. Then our dear Machiavellian Special Ops chief works out a deal with Bobby for… what? What would it take to get an ex-homicide detective with a warped sense of humor like LaGrange in on this deal?"

  All eyes turned to Henry Lightstone.

  "Not much," Lightstone conceded, a thoughtful expression appearing on his face as he finished tucking in his shirt. "Bobby and I pulled some serious shit on a few people when we worked together in San Diego. He really gets into that sort of thing."

  "Like that time you floated your drunk supervisor — the one who couldn't swim and was deathly afraid of sharks — in San Diego Bay in an open coffin in the middle of the night, and then woke him up with a string of firecrackers?" Larry Paxton reminded in a mildly threatening voice.

  Lightstone nodded silently, his eyes taking on a distant look as he began to drum his fingers lightly on the floor.