Ken Goddard - Double blind

"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.