Ken Goddard - Double blind

After assuring herself that all three of the small, flexible antennas for the tracking, syringe-activating and drug-injecting systems were extended and clear, and that she now had complete control over the dangerous cat, she started the truck and accelerated out of the inn parking lot with a steely look of determination in her gold-flecked green eyes.

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."

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.