by Ken Goddard
As a result, and thanks to the reflected light from the dozens of terrariums aligned on the shelves along the rear wall of the warehouse, Lightstone could easily see the bright red legs and eyes of the sixty-to-seventy giant red-kneed tarantulas and the iridescent blue eyes of the two snakes which had escaped when Larry Paxton's randomly aimed 10mm bullets shattered their containers.
Between them and the hundreds of slowly moving bright red and iridescent blue legs and eyes in the background, Lightstone might never have seen Wintersole at all… had not fifteen or twenty glowing tarantulas effectively outlined his seated form as they slowly walked up, over, and around his body.
Keeping an eye on the two sets of free-roaming iridescent blue snake eyes, one set of which had crossed in front of Wintersole, Lightstone moved slowly forward with the 10mm aimed at the center of the Ranger first sergeant's forehead.
"You're under arrest, Wintersole," he announced softly. "You have the right…"
"To remain silent," the Ranger first sergeant finished as he slowly rose to his feet so smoothly that the inquisitive bright red-glowing legs barely hesitated before continuing on their wandering path.
"If you move again without my telling you to do so, I'll drop you
… right here, right now," Lightstone warned.
Watch the snake, the covert agent reminded himself, well aware that Wintersole was perfectly capable of slinging the reptile at him with his foot, trusting the leather of his combat boot to defeat any bite and knowing that Lightstone, at best, could deflect it with his pistol… or more likely, his arm. A dangerous tactic, especially if Paxton's random shots had freed one of the Tiger Snakes or Death Adders.
"I don't intend to move, Henry," the Ranger first sergeant spoke softly, apparently indifferent to the tarantula slowly inching its way from the collar of his fatigue jacket to his ear, or the other one under his chin, whose iridescence illuminated Wintersole's face. Even in the hot reddish glow of the slowly moving eyes and legs, the soldier's expression appeared cold.
"She'll do my moving for me."
At that moment, Lightstone became aware of the movement to his left.
But before he could move, or swing around with the Smith amp; Wesson, or do anything at all, a very familiar voice whispered…
"Hello, Henry."
The click of a releasing safety catch told him all he needed to know.
There really had been six, after all.
"Hello, Natasha," he greeted her softly, keeping his eyes and gun on Wintersole. "You moon-lighting now?"
"Always have been, Henry. That's what I like best about the American free-enterprise system. So many wonderful opportunities for a young woman who wishes to move up in this world."
"Especially a treacherous one."
"Oh yes; that, too. It would have been much easier if Halahan had transferred me to Bravo Team, but… there are always ways."
"What would have been easier, Natasha?" Lightstone asked in a quiet voice.
"Oh, that's right." The female Special Agent giggled. "You don't know, do you?"
"No, he doesn't," Wintersole reiterated the point as he brought his boot down quickly over the slowly approaching pair of iridescent blue eyes, knelt down, picked up the snake carefully behind its head, and then walked slowly toward Lightstone, holding the pair of blue eyes out in front of him… all the while ignoring the 10mm Smith amp; Wesson still aimed at his forehead.
"It's a very poor exchange, Henry," Wintersole explained the basics as he stopped directly in front of the gun muzzle. "You kill me, she kills you… and then she kills them. And she will, too. I understand she's very well trained, and very good with that pistol; not that it will make much difference since she'll have every possible advantage," the hunter-killer team leader added with a cold smile. "My guess is that your friends won't stand a chance. Imagine all of them dead because of you. That's your biggest fear, isn't it, Henry?"
"I won't bargain for my life against theirs, Wintersole, and I won't put this gun down." Lightstone kept his index finger firmly on the trigger of the Smith amp; Wesson, and the front sight centered just above the Ranger first sergeant's nose to emphasize his point. "If she pulls that trigger, reflex action will set this one off… and you'll die. To tell you the truth, way I feel right now, I'd just as soon take you with me."
"I'm sure you would, Henry." Wintersole smiled faintly. "But that won't be necessary. If you come with us, your friends get to live, and you get to see what this is all about. It's either that, or like you said…" Wintersole adjusted his grip on the snake's head, closing its mouth tightly between his forefinger and thumb, and then slowly and carefully brushed the scaled head lightly against the exposed knuckles of Lightstone's tightly clenched hands, "… we both die. Right here. Right now.
"And, since you brought it up, I wouldn't mind taking you with me, either," he added with a sardonic smile.
Henry Lightstone felt the cool head of the snake against his fingers, then saw the outline of the head in the combined light of the bright red and blue iridescence.
Tiger Snake.
The worst one of the whole batch.
Absolutely deadly.
Of course, Lightstone thought with an odd sense of detachment. What else would it be?
Then he blinked in surprise when Wintersole crushed the snake's head with his fingers and let it drop to the floor.
"It's nothing personal, Henry. I'm just doing what I'm getting paid to do."
Wintersole continued to smile, a menacing but ultimately indifferent smile.
"So which will it be, Henry? You're the one who has to choose. And you have to choose right now."
Two minutes later, Henry Lightstone walked slowly out of the warehouse with his hands over his head.
"LARRY, BACK EVERYBODY OFF!" he called out. "WAY BACK. I'M GOING TO GO…"
Then he stopped dead still.
"LARRY?"
"BOBBY?"
No answer.
"If your friends are playing games…" Wintersole hissed in Lightstone's ear.
"If they are, it's a new game to me," Lightstone informed his captor calmly, scanning the area with the night-vision goggles. As far as he could see, the entire parking lot, the adjacent warehouses, and all the surrounding sparse woodlands appeared empty.
No handcuffed Rangers.
No Bravo Team.
No Bobby LaGrange.
Nobody.
"This isn't…" Natasha Marashenko never completed that statement because Wintersole cut her off.
"Get going, now!" he ordered her urgently.
They had just reached the edge of the clearing where the land sloped down to the increasingly dense stands of evergreens, when a bright searchlight suddenly illuminated the area from the side of the adjacent ware-house and a voice bellowed out over a bullhorn.
"FBI! DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND PUT YOUR HANDS UP!"
Cursing, First Sergeant Aran Wintersole spun, sent four 10mm hollow-tipped bullets streaking in the direction of the searchlight — which immediately exploded in a glaring flash, then flared out, plunging the entire area into pitch-darkness again. Turning back, the hunter-killer recon team leader threw a surprised Lightstone aside and rolled down the incline, then came back up into a zigzagging sprint toward the trees as gunfire erupted from all sides.
Natasha Marashenko had already started to run before Wintersole destroyed the searchlight and was halfway down the incline when she tripped on an exposed root. She tumbled to the ground, screaming in surprise and anger, and was scrambling back up when the bullets began whipping over her head… which slowed her down enough that she was still a good six feet away from the first big tree when Lightstone caught her from behind in a running tackle.
The impact sent the Smith amp; Wesson flying; but instead of trying to twist loose and scramble for it, Natasha Marashenko swung her elbow back and caught Henry Lightstone square in the face, destroying his night-vision goggles and causing blood to pour from his nose.
Stunne
d, blinded, and enraged, Lightstone lunged and grabbed Marashenko by the waist of her tight jeans, spun her around, drove a crippling elbow into her thigh, tried for an arm bar, lost it, and had to cover to protect when the female agent jackhammered a series of potentially lethal elbow and hand strikes at his face and neck.
Then, before he realized what had happened, she was off him and hobbling toward the forest.
Ignoring the bullets smacking into trees above his head, Henry Lightstone dived forward, twisted behind a large tree for shelter, came back up to his feet, and was taking off after her again when he suddenly found himself flying through the air and landing hard on his back.
"Let her go, you idiot!" a familiar voice snarled in his ear.
But the adrenaline still surging through Henry Lightstone's bloodstream caused him to fling her aside and try to get back up again.
This time, when he landed hard on his back — knocking a goodly amount of air out of his lungs in the process — and tried to get back up again, she pinned his left arm behind his back and wrapped her right arm around his throat in the first move of a carotid chokehold.
"What the hell…!" he gasped, and reached up with his right hand to deflect the choke… then almost screamed when the huge cat came tearing through the brush and lunged at him, the impact sending both him and his assailant tumbling backwards into the dirt.
Henry Lightstone had a brief instant to realize that he lay on top of the sensuous body of a very strong woman who still had one of his arms pinned and her arm pulled tight around his throat… with a panther firmly planted on his chest, digging her painfully sharp claws into his heaving chest muscles while nuzzling his face with her thick-whiskered nose, and rumbling in apparent amusement or contentment… before another familiar voice yelled out above him.
"FBI, YOU'RE UNDER ARREST!"
A subliminal sense of awareness totally unrelated to the shouted order suddenly caused Henry Lightstone to jerk his head upward and stare past the head of the panther who also stared into the dark sky at… what?
He blinked, tried to focus, gave up, and looked helplessly over his shoulder at the grinning dirty face now visible in the flashlight beams.
"Under arrest?" he echoed. "Me?"
"Uh-huh," the woman known as Karla acknowledged, while Sasha rumbled in agreement and several blue-jeaned figures wearing FBI raid jackets and carrying sound-suppressed, night-scoped assault rifles moved slowly and cautiously past him into the woods, and a number of other blue-jeaned figures gathered around them at a safe distance.
"You're an FBI agent." Lightstone said it more out of wonder than anything else.
"Brilliant deduction, Sherlock," Karla chuckled in his ear. "We'll make a federal agent out of you yet."
"And so am I, sonny. Been retired for a lotta years, but they brought me back special just for this case… so there," the skinny, bearded, and supposedly blind old soothsayer otherwise known as the Sage announced with a wide grin as he proudly displayed his FBI raid jacket and badge.
"Dear God," whispered Lightstone as he looked around at the other familiar faces — Larry Paxton, Mike Takahara, Dwight Stoner, Thomas Woeshack, Bobby LaGrange, and Danny-the-Cook in an FBI raid jacket — who all wisely kept their distance from the glaring, but seemingly contented panther.
"And just in case you wondered, sport," Karla spoke softly in his ear, "Danny's one of our tech agents, in addition to being a half-decent cook."
"You swear in this damned cat, too?" Lightstone inquired, glaring into the adoring bright yellow eyes, and wincing when her claws dug deeper into his chest.
"I'd be happy to, but I don't think she'd take the demotion."
"Ah."
"Okay, Karla, I think you and Sasha can let him go now." FBI Supervisory Agent A1 Grynard let out an exaggerated sigh as he joined the group, looking down at the female members of his unconventional FBI covert agent team disapprovingly as he re-holstered his sidearm.
"Umm, no, I can't," Karla announced after a moment.
"Why not?"
"Because you just arrested him."
"But that was just for show… to keep them running," the FBI supervisory agent — who now radiated the aura of a man sorely put upon — reminded her less than patiently.
"I know, but who cares? I got him, and we won." The dirty-faced female grinned, much to her supervisor's visible dismay.
"You know, Grynard, you FBI folks run one hell of an undercover investigation when you put your minds to it," Larry Paxton commented as he gingerly brushed off some of the fetid debris adhering to Grynard's dark blue FBI raid jacket. "Supposedly blind old-fart soothsayers who ride around on motorbikes, witches who run government post offices, Cajun cooks, real live panthers, exploding sacks of chicken shit. Don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it."
"I was not responsible for the chicken shit," the supervisory FBI agent muttered darkly.
"Right, which was why I was thinking maybe we could just transfer Henry directly over to you guys, seeing as how…" Larry Paxton smiled hopefully.
"Actually, I kinda liked the way two female agents in a row stomped the shit out of Henry," Dwight Stoner interrupted before the incredulous FBI supervisor could respond in some manner that he might later regret.
"Yeah, speaking of which," Lightstone remarked, looking up from his sprawled and — digging panther claws aside — relatively comfortable position, "how come you guys held back so long, and then just let them… oh."
"The light dawns." Karla smiled.
"It's about time," Mike Takahara commented.
"From the FBI's standpoint," A1 Grynard explained, trying his best to maintain his dignity and composure in spite of his splattered and odorous jacket, "the Chosen Brigade of the Seventh Seal was a classic example of a basically inept and disorganized militant group ripe for manipulation by a more serious antigovernment organization. Jim — the Sage — Karla and Danny were keeping a loose eye on them as well as a couple of other groups in southern Oregon, when Wintersole and his team showed up and started nosing around… which put us on alert."
"And then a bunch of our Special Ops agents wandered into the picture, followed by Bobby LaGrange and me, and things started to get confusing?" Lightstone easily completed the sequence.
"Yeah, to put it mildly," Grynard replied sarcastically. "Only nobody knew who you were because it took so long to get any decent surveillance photos," he added, glaring down at Karla.
"Hey, you try to run a post office and a restaurant in between taking covert pictures of every federal undercover agent who wanders through the door." The female FBI agent shrugged. "And besides," she added with a mischievous grin on her dirt-smeared face, "he wouldn't go to sleep so I could take his picture. Sasha kept waking him up."
The huge panther purred agreeably at the mention of her name.
"I don't want to hear about it," A1 Grynard repeated.
"Yeah, me neither," the Sage agreed.
"As I was saying, seeing as how this is supposed to be a real, honest-to-God FBI investigation, the plan was — and still is — to track Wintersole back to what we assume are the main players in this little put-the-federal-government-on-trial scenario," the FBI agent supervisor made no attempt to control his sarcasm.
"But then, Mr. White Knight" — Grynard pointed at Lightstone — "you almost screw everything up when you decide to come to the rescue of a covert FBI agent perfectly capable of protecting herself…"
"Yeah, so I noticed," Lightstone grumbled, rubbing his neck.
"… not to mention also being protected by her two cover agents and a goddamned panther, and break the arm of one of Wintersole's men, which distracts Wintersole who, for some unaccountable reason, decides to drag you into their game. And then, of course, after everything goes to shit at the compound and it looks like Wintersole and this Marashenko — whoever the hell she is, in addition to being one of your agents — just might try to link up with somebody higher up in the organization to tell them what went wrong, you,
" — Grynard glared down at Lightstone — "manage to end up in the way… again."
"He's not real smart in that department," Karla conceded as she rubbed the carotid-choke-inducing edge of her wrist against Henry Lightstone's exposed throat, "but he is kind of cute."
"Wait a minute," Lightstone protested. "It was you guys… and these two in particular," he added, referring to Karla and Sasha, "who deliberately let Wintersole and Marashenko get away, in the middle of the woods, and in the middle of the night, I might add. So just how in the hell do you intend to follow them anywhere?"
"Actually, Henry," Mike Takahara glanced down at his still confused partner, "I think Danny's planning to track your Army Ranger pal electronically."
"What?"
"Come on, Henry, use that cat brain for a minute or two," Karla smiled pleasantly as she adjusted herself more comfortably under her captive, and then lightly fingered the center medallion of the cougar-claw necklace around his neck. "How do you think we kept track of you?"
Chapter Fifty-four
The next day dawned cold, wet and dismal, an absolutely perfect day for hunting ducks.
Or at least that's what Regis J. Smallsreed told Simon Whatley, who sat mute and huddled in the far corner of the main VIP blind, numbed by the only partially effective painkillers, shivering from the cold in spite of his down pants and jacket, and, in every other way imaginable, feeling more miserable than he had ever felt in his entire life.
"They're calling it an 'unexplained explosion' at the training compound of the Chosen Brigade of the Seventh Seal," Lt. Colonel John Rustman read from the second page of the Loggerhead City Gazette now that he had enough light to see the fine print. "An unidentified source reported seeing what looked like numerous body bags being loaded into a refrigerated truck. The FBI sealed off the scene and refuses to answer any questions at this time."
"What the hell does all that mean?" Sam Tisbury cradled one of Smallsreed's expensive auto-loading shotguns and watched the horizon, to all outward appearances a man at peace with himself and the world.
"Probably means there was a bunch of federal wildlife agents in those bags, and they're not happy about it," Rustman explained, "but we'll find out soon enough. Wintersole reported in last night. Said he'd meet us here sometime this morning to brief us in person."