Ken Goddard - Double blind

"Oh, I think they're serious. No question about that." A shadow flitted across Wintersole's cold gray eyes. "The question is, can they pull it off — or even make a reasonable showing — if they try. That's what we're going to find out tonight."

"You don't sound too optimistic."

Wintersole shrugged. "Just like the old army game, Henry. You do the best you can with whatever resources you're given. Sometimes the best you can do is play for pride."

"Well, whatever the game is, I'm certainly looking forward to it. Especially the money part." Lightstone smiled cheerfully. "Twenty hundred hours, front entrance, main compound." He waved his hand as he began walking toward the distant road.

"Glad you feel that way, Henry," First Sergeant Aran Wintersole whispered to himself as he watched his lanky new recruit disappear into the surrounding woods. "I'm looking forward to it, too."

It had grown completely dark that Monday evening by the time Henry Lightstone worked his way through the tall stand of old-growth trees, across a shallow stream, and up a long incline to the edge of an open field, pausing every hundred yards or so to check his compass bearing.

Then, after pausing one last time at the edge of the open field to catch his breath, he knelt and leaned against the rough bark of a concealing thirty-foot evergreen, cupped his hand over his wrist, and checked the luminous hands on his watch.

Seven oh five. Shit.

It had taken longer than he expected — and much longer than he had hoped — because he'd doubled back on his tracks on two separate occasions… once as a routine precaution, and then a second time when a branch snapped somewhere behind him.

He'd spotted the deer on his second loop back, which left him with a vague sense of uneasiness when the animal finally noticed him and bounded off into the surrounding brush. While an incautious deer might snap a twig, the agile young men employed by the pale-gray-eyed man they referred to as sergeant could easily move through a dense old-growth forest without their boots coming anywhere near a dry branch.

Trouble is, Lightstone thought, they could be all around me right now, and I probably wouldn't even know it.

He felt tempted to turn around, right there, and hike back to his motorcycle. Very tempted, in fact, because he also had a very uneasy sense that these six extremely fit and confident young men, along with their ominously cold-eyed leader, wouldn't hesitate to take out anything or anyone which happened to get in their way.

Including a couple of federal agent Special Ops teams, he thought uneasily.

Earlier in the afternoon, during a break from the hands-on instruction, Lightstone had located the shooting ranges and watched two of Wintersole's men work the pop-up targets with a pair of M-16 assault rifles. From Lightstone's limited view, it appeared they did so with tightly choreographed precision and deadly accuracy that spoke of many long hours in the military version of the FBI's Hogan's Alley. One moved, the other covered, one reloaded, the other covered, back and forth… a random, forward, leapfrogging that sent short deadly bursts from at least one — and often both — of the assault rifles into every pop-up target that sprang into view.

Christ, we don't stand a chance if they're all like that… and there's absolutely no reason at all to think that they aren't, Lightstone reminded himself.

And that memory, plus the nagging awareness that something — or someone — had placed some event, some action into motion drove Henry Lightstone now. He had to get word of his suspicions to his team as soon as possible.

Accordingly — and after one last futile pause to listen for any sound of movement amid the chirping of what sounded like hundreds of cheerful crickets — he glided forward in the darkness, crouched against the wall of the building, and rapped his knuckles in three quick double-strikes against a cold metal door.

The chorus of crickets came to an immediate halt.

An instant later, the tiny sliver of light seeping from under the now-much-more-securely sealed side door went out.

Moments later, the door swung open cautiously.

"It's me," he whispered, then slipped quickly inside and waited against the inside wall until he heard the door close. Anticipating the blinding effects, he shielded his eyes as the lights came on.

It took Lightstone's eyes a few moments to adjust. Then he simply stood and blinked in amazement.

"What in the hell have you guys been doing?" he asked as he surveyed the mass of wadded clumps of duct tape that almost completely covered the warehouse floor.

"Don't ask," Larry Paxton warned as he re-holstered his pistol.

"Yeah, don't," Dwight Stoner agreed as he leaned the pump shotgun against the side of the team's rental car. "He's in a real shitty mood tonight."

"Okay, then, what the hell did you guys do to those terrariums?" Lightstone's eyes swept across the rows of glass containers now festooned with hundreds of irregular wads, shreds, and strips of duct tape. "And," he added, "what's the deal with all the ice?"

From Henry Lightstone's viewpoint, all of the plastic swimming pools now filled with mostly melted blocks of ice, and the dozens of empty plastic bags — not to mention large puddles of water — scattered around the warehouse floor strongly suggested the previous presence of dozens of additional ice blocks.

"That's part of what you're not supposed to ask," Stoner cautioned his fellow agent.

"Ah."

Lightstone then heard the resident chorus of chirping crickets start up again, then gradually increase in volume to highly irritating levels.

"The next time we run an operation like this, if we ever run another operation like this, which we won't," Paxton announced ominously, "I get the sexy witch, the panther, and the whole gang of militant idiots all to myself. The rest of you get all the snakes and spiders and crocodiles… and the goddamned crickets. Ain't talking about it anymore. That's just the way it's gonna be."

"He's a little upset 'cause we had to take all the terrarium lids off to put the light bulbs back in after we'd taped them all shut," Thomas Woeshack explained cheerfully. "We tried to freeze them again real quick so nothing would get out, but I guess the cold didn't bother the crickets all that much, 'cause most of them got out anyway. Then a couple of snakes almost got out, and one of them almost bit Larry, 'cause he was trying to hurry… and then one of the spiders ran up his arm real fast, and three of the crocs got loose when he fell backwards into their pool… and then we ran out of duct tape, and there isn't any more in the whole town, so…"

A warning wave from Stoner caused the eager special agent/pilot to terminate his briefing.

Lightstone examined Larry Paxton's expression carefully, while attempting to ignore the ever-increasing volume of cricket chirps.

"Are you okay, Larry?" he asked carefully. "No problems with stress, lack of sleep, bunch of crickets running loose, anything like that?"

"Oh hell yes. Just fine and dandy. Don't hardly hear the damned things anymore."

Lightstone decided to dismiss the slightly glassy look in his supervisor's eyes… at least for now.

"Yeah, Larry's fine, Henry. No different than he always is. So what've you got for us?" Stoner prompted the team's wild-card agent.

Another triple-series knock on the door interrupted Henry Lightstone just as he was in the process of describing his new job. He moved forward quickly and turned off the light in the suddenly silent warehouse, then cautiously opened the door as the other three agents stood with firearms ready.

Moments later, a flabbergasted Bobby LaGrange and Mike Takahara stood in the warehouse surveying the disaster around them.