by Ken Goddard
The Sage was puttering down the road on his underpowered motorbike toward the Dogsfire Inn when the familiar truck went roaring by, the panther in the cab yowling through the partially opened window in either recognition or distress — the Sage couldn't tell which — as the swirling currents of the truck's wake covered him with dust, dirt, and other assorted debris.
Shaking his head in dismay, he pulled over to the side of the road to clear his eyes and mouth, then got back on the road at a much-accelerated pace.
When he got to the inn, he found the restaurant wide-open but abandoned.
Puzzled and increasingly apprehensive, the old man progressively worked his way into the back living quarters, where he discovered Sasha's open enclosure, the abandoned scrub bucket and cleaning tools, and the concrete floor littered with wet shreds of paper.
Only when he worked his way into Karla's bedroom did he discover the partially torn, still-wet picture of a very familiar individual lying next to the phone on her bed stand.
Five minutes later, cursing to himself in a manner suggesting a far more interesting background than one might expect of the average, supposedly blind soothsayer, the Sage kicked his aging motorbike into life and roared back down the road in pursuit of Karla and the ever-protective Sasha.
And while all of that transpired, Henry Lightstone and Mike Takahara slowly and carefully worked their way under the truck that Lightstone had abandoned on the outskirts of Loggerhead City.
"Can you see it?" Lightstone whispered.
"Oh, yeah, I can see it all right," the Bravo Team tech agent muttered.
"Well?"
Takahara ran the powerful beam of his tiny flashlight one more time around the dual-antenna device someone had attached to the transmission of Lightstone's truck with a thick adhesive patch.
"How badly do you want it?" the tech agent finally asked.
"Will it blow up if you pull it off?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Then I want it," Lightstone replied grimly.
"Okay, you're the boss." The tech agent sighed, then reached up with a heavy screwdriver, popped the device loose with one quick motion, and tossed it to the ground next to Lightstone.
"What in the hell did you do that for?" Lightstone demanded, still somewhat shaken from Takahara's unexpected action.
"You said you wanted it," the tech agent reminded him calmly. "No big deal. It turned out to be what I thought it was."
"You mean an MTEAR-42. Just a simple little flash-bang and red smoke? You're sure about that?" Lightstone pressed as he studied the device warily. "No C-4?"
"I don't know if I'd call it a simple little flash-bang. Those puppies can give an Abrams Main Battle Tank a decent jolt, and that takes one hell of a pressure wave. I definitely wouldn't want somebody to set it off while we're under here. But to answer your question, yeah, I'm as sure as I can be without actually taking it apart. If you look in there" — Takahara directed the small flashlight beam at one of the vent holes in the side of the device — "you can see where the smoke and flash-bang charges are mounted. Plus there's not much room in there for anything else… unless you really worked at it," he added thoughtfully.
"Okay, I'll take your word for it." Lightstone grabbed the device and began working himself out from under the truck.
"That mean we're done?"
Henry Lightstone smiled as he pulled the tech agent out from under the truck and up to his feet, then reached down for the wriggling canvas bag next to his feet.
"Oh, no. That was the easy part. It's the next phase when you really start earning your pay."
Chapter Fifty-two
Henry Lightstone and Mike Takahara waited in the darkness on the outskirts of the Chosen Brigade's training compound until the Army Ranger known as Azaria began to set up her video-recording equipment.
They then took advantage of the commotion that followed — the Brigade members preening and posturing at the entryway of the compound with the bound and gagged Natasha Marashenko and Gus Donato, while Wintersole's hunter-killer team members observed the entire scene carefully from the surrounding woods — to work their way into the back of the ancient barn, almost two hundred yards from the compound entrance, where Lightstone had observed Wintersole and his team working earlier that day.
Initially, the smell of rancid and decomposing chicken manure practically overwhelmed the two agents. But they quickly forgot about that when the reddish beam of Mike Takahara's red-filtered flashlight located the first of the explosive packets.
"Jesus Christ," the tech agent whispered as he traced the wires.. and quickly found eight more packets.
"What's the matter?" Lightstone called softly from his sentry position inside the barn's open doorway.
"There's gotta be at least five or six hundred pounds of C-4 in this place. Maybe more, because it looks like some of it's buried."
"Five or six hundred pounds?" Lightstone turned to stare at the crouching Bravo Team member in the very dim light. "Are you serious? To blow up a barn that'll fall down the first time somebody sneezes too hard?"
"Don't ask me. I'm just the guy with the wire cutters who would like to be somewhere else right about now."
For the first time, Lightstone noticed the tables and chairs arranged to form a crude — but very distinctive — courtroom setting.
Oh man, just what we need, he thought, feeling mildly nauseous at the thought of five hundred pounds of C-4 going off in the relatively small and enclosed space. They'd be lucky to find enough pieces to ID all of the victims. He turned back to Takahara.
"How's it rigged?"
"Everything's wired to a central receiver for remote detonation, just like you thought. It looks like the receiving antenna's mounted on the roof."
"What kind of range are we talking about?"
"No way to tell, but probably quite a ways."
"Can you deal with it?"
"Yeah, sure, if I've got enough time."
"Well, get to it. I'll keep an eye out here as long as I… Oh, shit!"
"What?" the tech agent demanded.
"Wintersole. He's headed this way!"
"What are we…" Mike Takahara started to ask, but Lightstone interrupted him.
"Keep working. I'll try to keep him and everybody else away from here as long as I can."
Lightstone was heading out the back door of the structure when Mike Takahara whispered to him frantically, "Wait a minute, I need to hook that microphone back up!"
Twenty seconds later, Henry Lightstone hurried around the far side of the barn, heading toward the shed housing Boggs a hundred yards away, and almost ran into Wintersole, who now wore night-vision goggles on his forehead over a black knit cap. Streaks of camouflage grease covered his face, and he carried an M-16 assault rifle in a manner suggesting that he'd gladly use it on the first person who got in his way.
"Where the hell have you been?" the Army Ranger first sergeant demanded angrily.
"Trying to scare up a poisonous snake, like I told you I would last night. They're hard to find in cold weather." Lightstone held up the wriggling cloth bag that very clearly contained a large and active snake. "I really had to dig."
Wintersole instinctively stepped back.
"What's going on over there?" Lightstone asked, nodding in the direction of the female Ranger who was in the process of videotaping the Chosen Brigade members and their captives at the compound entrance.
"Never mind." Wintersole shook his head impatiently. "We need to identify Lightstone, and we're running out of time."
"Then let's get to it," Henry Lightstone replied, moving quickly away from the barn and toward the shed.
When Henry entered, he found Boggs glaring fiercely at his interrogator, blood streaming from the agent's re-broken nose and split lips. Startled, the young Ranger brought his uninjured hand down to his holstered pistol, then stopped when he saw Wintersole behind Lightstone.
"I was beginning to think you'd run out on us." The young soldier
glared at Lightstone accusingly.
"If I had any brains worth talking about, I would have. I don't like reporters and TV cameras," Lightstone commented, noting that, like Wintersole, the young Ranger wore his night-vision gear ready to go on his forehead, which reminded him that he'd left his own gear somewhere in the cave. He walked to the bound agent and examined his face critically, very much aware as he did that the eyes of all three men focused on the writhing bag in his hand.
"This guy ever tell you anything?"
"Nothing useful or polite," the young Ranger replied, looking down uneasily at the wiggling bag dangling less than two feet from his leg.
"So what do you think, Mr. Special Agent Boggs?" Lightstone asked in a soft, almost whispery voice. "You going to cooperate with us now? Or are you going to force me to make the rest of your life very short and very miserable?"
"Depends." Wilbur Boggs spoke through bloodied lips in what Lightstone considered an amazingly calm voice considering the circumstances. "What's in the bag?"
"Nothing you'll like very much." Squatting down, Lightstone slightly twisted the top of the bag, untied the securing cord, and then held the top loosely in one hand to create a half-inch-diameter opening.
He waited until the snake just poked out of the hole… then in one quick motion, grabbed it just behind the head with his thumb pressing into the base of the reptile's skull, and yanked it out of the bag.
The sight of the black-and-red snake — the Common Blacksnake brought by Mike Takahara from the warehouse — frantically wrapping its thick three-foot body around Henry Lightstone's right hand and arm caused both Rangers to step back even farther. Although tightly strapped to the chair, and unable to move, Wilbur Boggs simply studied the snake critically.
"Where in the hell did you get that thing?" he demanded suspiciously.
Much too late, it occurred to Lightstone that an experienced wildlife agent like Boggs would certainly know that Common Blacksnakes were anything but common in the Pacific Northwest. In fact, as far as he knew, other than the ones that Bravo Team now possessed, and perhaps a very few more in a couple zoos, they were simply nonexistent
… which should have made it extremely difficult, at best, for Lightstone to find one anywhere near the Chosen Brigade's training compound.
But before he could think of something to say to distract Boggs, Wintersole interrupted.
"Never mind where he found it. Worry about what he's going to do with — "
The sound of animated voices and running footsteps distracted the Army Ranger first sergeant, and he opened the shed door just as one of the other young Rangers came running up.
"First Sergeant, we've got FBI agents at the compound gate."
"How many?"
The young soldier hesitated. "Uh, just two or three, I think. They're in a stand-off position at the entrance. When I left my post, they were arguing with Colonel Rice, and he ordered all of the prisoners taken to the barn to begin the trial."
"What's our status?"
"We're all standing back… completely out of it so far."
"Excellent." Wintersole smiled as he turned back to Lightstone and the young soldier. "You two get that information on Lightstone out of him, right now!" he ordered. "And keep your mikes live. I want to hear what's going on."
And before Lightstone could say or do anything else, he disappeared.
The young Ranger interrupted Henry Lightstone's thoughts as he stared at the door of the shed, ignored the frantically thrashing poisonous snake in his hand, and tried to make sense of this latest development.
"You heard the sergeant, we're running out of time," he reminded Lightstone. "Let's get going."
"Yeah, I guess you're right," Lightstone agreed, and then casually tossed the writhing Blacksnake into the other man's hands.
The soldier instinctively caught the snake, but then an expression of horror replaced the surprised look on his face, and he emitted a high-pitched scream as the snake whipped around and buried its fangs into the fleshy base of the young man's thumb.
Lightstone swiftly grabbed the snake by the tail and — in one quick motion — ripped it loose from the young Ranger's hand, swung it and lightly slammed its head against the back leg of Boggs's chair.. and quickly popped the stunned reptile back into the bag.
"Don't panic, I milked it before I brought it here. Not enough poison left to kill you," Lightstone softly assured the hunter-killer staring down at his bitten thumb. Then before the young martial-arts-trained soldier could react, Lightstone hammered him to his knees with a pair of punishing body strikes to the solar plexus, then finished him off with a sharp elbow strike to the base of the neck that dropped him to the floor, un-conscious.
Wilbur Boggs observed Lightstone in wide-eyed silence as the covert agent brought his left index finger up to his lips while working the collar mike and belt pack loose with his right hand. After setting the mike unit on the floor next to Boggs's feet, he leaned down and whispered into the battered agent's ear:
"It's okay. I'm Henry Lightstone, Special Ops, Bravo Team. What I need you to do, right now," he instructed, pointing to the communications unit on the floor, "is groan as loud as you can, and then say some-thing appropriate."
To Boggs's credit, his eyes blinked and lower jaw dropped for only a brief instant before he recovered… and emitted a loud and very realistic agonized groan, followed by a muttered curse.
"Okay, good." Lightstone grinned. "Keep it up."
As Wilbur Boggs continued to groan, and curse and thrash around in the chair, Henry quickly cut away the duct tape binding the resident agent's wrists, arms, and legs. Once he freed Boggs, he quickly knelt, collected the young soldier's pistol belt, night-vision goggles, and communication equipment, then searched the pockets of his flak jacket for the transmitter.
"Here, take this," Lightstone whispered, handing Boggs the heavy pistol belt.
"Thanks," Boggs whispered back between groans and curses, "but you take it. I can't even stand up."
Lightstone ignored the offered handgun.
"You going to be okay if I shut off the light and leave you in here with this kid?"
"Oh, hell, yes," Boggs replied in a tired whisper.
"Then just keep groaning and cussing — but like you're starting to come around," Lightstone softly instructed the battered agent, "and keep your head down. Things could get crazy around here any minute now."
Then before Boggs could say anything else, the covert wildlife agent turned off the light and disappeared into the darkness.
Crouching behind the shed to avoid the powerful flashlight beams now flickering back and forth around the distant trial site, Lightstone put on the communications mike and earphones and adjusted the night-vision goggles he'd taken from the Ranger.
When everything he viewed appeared in bright, contrasted shades of green, and he could clearly monitor the occasional terse commands and acknowledgments Wintersole and his troops exchanged as they hid in the forest surrounding the compound, he began moving toward the milling crowd.
Lightstone specifically looked for Takahara and Wintersole, but as he got closer, he could see at least twenty people moving in and around the barn now: the members of the Chosen Brigade, and Charlie Team… and a much smaller group, consisting of three clean-cut-looking men wearing blue jeans, boots, and down jackets who apparently argued with Brigade Colonel Rice, and three other Brigade members armed with M-16s standing about twenty-five yards away from the barn entrance. Plus he saw another Brigade member guarding Special Agent Natasha Marashenko, with her hands tied behind her back and a pistol at the back of her head.
Come on, Mike, where are you?
It took Henry Lightstone a few moments to realize that one of the men in the jeans, boots and down jackets — the one in the center arguing with the self-appointed colonel-looked vaguely familiar.
When the man turned to say something to one of his companions, Lightstone smiled in sudden recognition.
Grynard?
Well I'll be damned. What are you doing here?
But before Lightstone could factor the unexpected presence of his old nemesis into the picture, a cold and demanding voice crackled over his earphones.
"One-one to one-four, what's your status? I need an answer, now!"
Shit! Lightstone thought, surveying the area even more intently now, knowing Wintersole wouldn't wait long if he didn't get a response.
Come on Mike, where are you?
"One-four, report. What is your — " Wintersole demanded again over the hunter-killer team's scrambled communications net. Only this time, a deeply furious voice interrupted him.
"You want to talk to this kid, Sergeant, then you get your ass back over here, and we'll discuss the matter," Wilbur Boggs rasped harshly. "And by the way, you and your little toy soldiers are all under arrest." The sound of a 9mm round being jacked into the chamber of a military-issue 9mm Beretta semiautomatic pistol clearly echoed over the earphones.
Boggs, you idiot!
Almost immediately, Lightstone saw the easily recognizable figure of First Sergeant Aran Wintersole moving deliberately toward the shed.
Henry Lightstone, too, turned toward the shed, knowing all too well that Wilbur Boggs had just committed a brave, but foolhardy and very likely fatal, mistake. But then a loud voice thundered out of the darkness to his right.
"HENRY, LOOK OUT, BEHIND YOU!"
Lightstone only had a brief moment to recognize Mike Takahara's voice before he heard the figure coming, ducked under the downward sweeping butt-stroke, and spun on his hands to kick the legs out from under his swiftly moving assailant. He heard the black plastic stock of the M-16 assault rifle clatter against a rock, but then lost his night-vision goggles when the muscular young Ranger slammed a forearm against the side of his head, then nearly connected with an open-handed killing stroke aimed at his throat, which Lightstone barely deflected in time with the palm of his hand.
Working instinctively in the darkness, Lightstone parried another strike, and a third… then lashed out sharply with his elbow at a point where he judged the young soldier's face should be, heard a confirming grunt of pain when soft tissue gave way under the impact, then extended the muscular Ranger's arm out and twisted it sharply, wrenching it out of the shoulder socket.