Double blind

Chapter Twenty

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Mike Takahara murmured softly as he put down the battery-powered sander and wiped the sawdust off his face.

"What do you mean you've got a bad feeling?" Larry Paxton demanded. "You're the one who designed the damned thing."

"Yeah, but — "

"Didn't you ever build things with your dad when you were a kid? You know, birdhouses, Tinkertoys®, Legos®, things like that?"

"Yeah, sure, but everything we built always fell apart," the tech agent confessed.

Special Agent Dwight Stoner muttered something under his breath, then walked to the rear of the rental car parked next to a huge stack of crates, boxes, and bags containing an assortment of terrariums, specially designed terrarium lids, terrarium lights, extension cords, junction boxes, several dozen rolls of silvered duct tape, boxes of crickets and mice, snake bags, snake hooks, snake tongs, nets, gravel, mouse food, water dishes, four heavy-duty plastic swimming pools about eighteen inches deep and six feet in diameter, and a full-size chest freezer that was delivered earlier that morning.

After grabbing a pair of the long-handled snake hooks, Stoner opened the trunk, removed a Model 870 Remington 12-gauge pump shotgun, a box of shells, a small ice chest, and a fire extinguisher. Then he closed the trunk, walked back over to the mind-numbing stack of seventy-two brightly labeled 2'X4'X1' wooden crates in the middle of the team's leased warehouse, and handed the fire extinguisher to Thomas Woeshack, the ice chest to Mike Takahara, and the snake hooks to Larry Paxton.

The Bravo Team leader eyed the shotgun inquisitively.

"Bird shot," Stoner explained as he fed five of the low-based cartridges into the shotgun's extended magazine. "Way I see it, anything starts to walk, crawl, or slither out of that contraption, one of three things is going to happen. Either you're going to catch it, Woeshack's going to freeze it, or I'm going to kill it. End of story."

"Can we do that?" Thomas Woeshack asked, looking confused as usual.

"Oh yeah, no problem."

The expression on Dwight Stoner's face clearly indicated that any discussions about proper enforcement of the Endangered Species Act — as it applied to poisonous snakes and giant red-kneed tarantulas trapped with him in a warehouse — would have to wait for a better day.

"Well, at least we know Halahan cares about our welfare," Mike Takahara reported after he opened the ice chest and removed a plastic-sealed reference card marked in bright colors.

"Just because the man sends us a whole bunch of expensive snakebite serum by overnight mail doesn't necessarily mean he cares," Larry Paxton countered reasonably. "He's probably just covering his butt in case the Washington Office ever gets wind of this operation."

"Well, according to this, he bought us just about every poisonous snake antivenin known to man." Takahara examined the contents of the chest. "Yep, everything's in color-coded syringes, ready to go. Something goes wrong, all we need to do is figure out who got bit by exactly what kind of snake… " — he gestured toward the small library of reference books that came with the emergency snakebite kit — "match up the codes, inject the right syringe in the immediate area of the bite, and we'll probably be okay-provided we get to the hospital in time. Everyone clear on that?"

"Not my problem," Dwight Stoner announced as he dumped the remaining shotgun shells in his coat pocket. "I've got twenty-five rounds of bird shot and twelve rounds of 10mm hollow-points in my Smith. Halahan may need to find some more snakes, and you guys might have to dig bird shot out of your butts, but I'm not getting bit, period. End of discussion."

"Me neither." Thomas Woeshack solemnly nodded in agreement.

Takahara contemplated the jury-rigged contraption that he and Woeshack had spent the morning building with six four-by-eight sheets of three-quarter-inch plywood, six eight-foot-long two-by-fours, approximately 240 drywall screws, two wing bolts, and $1232.00 worth of assorted power tools, all charged to one of Halahan's Special Ops credit cards. In short, they had designed, built, and charged to the government what amounted to a large wooden funnel onto whose top they could lower and secure an unopened crate, hopefully safely open it, and dump its inhabitants into the prepared terrarium below.

"Well, now that we've got the basics worked out," Larry Paxton snorted sarcastically in the direction of the team's visibly nervous tech agent, "you ready to get started?"

"Not really, but…"

"Like jumping into a lake of ice-cold water in the middle of winter," Paxton assured him. "If you're dumb enough to do it in the first place, you might just as well hop in and get it over with."

"Was that supposed to be inspirational?" Takahara asked.

"As inspirational as it's gonna get until things start looking up around here," the Bravo Team leader replied. "Okay, Thomas, you pick up one of those terrariums over there, take the lid off, let Stoner fill the bottom with gravel, and then you slide it under the funnel.."

Paxton stopped talking while Woeshack carefully set the extinguisher down, removed a terrarium from one of the twelve-by-eighteen-by-twenty- four-inch cardboard boxes, set the lid aside, waited while Dwight Stoner carefully poured a half-inch layer of small gray stones into the bottom, slid the terrarium into the lower slot of Mike Takahara's thoughtfully designed device, locked it in place at both open ends with sections of two-by-four, and then hurried back to the extinguisher.

"Now, Mike, you and I will start with this box, number twenty-three, 'cause it's got screening over the air holes, so we don't have to worry about something getting at us through the holes.." Paxton motioned to one of brightly labeled wooden crates on top of the stack.

"First we cut the bands off." He used a pair of metal snips to sever the tightly cross-wrapped steel bands.

"Then we lift it up." Paxton set the snips and cut bands aside, then he and Takahara carefully lifted the heavy crate off the stack.

"And place it in the frame right… there."

The heavy wooden crate dropped into Takahara's makeshift apparatus with a satisfying thunk, causing its inhabitants to thrash around in what — as best the agents could tell through the screened air holes — looked like shredded paper.

"I can't believe Newark didn't send us a description of contents," Larry Paxton complained. "You'd think if somebody went to the trouble of numbering the damned boxes in the first place, they could've made a goddamned list, too, while they were at it. You see anywhere on the box where it says what's in this one?" the supervisory agent asked hopefully.

"Not unless they renamed a species Danger, Hot Snakes, or Hazardous Cargo," Takahara replied as he carefully inspected the wooden container from all angles.

"Okay, no problem." Larry Paxton's face had taken on a decidedly glossy sheen in the cold warehouse. "Now we lower the box and the frame just like so…"

Working slowly and carefully, Paxton and Takahara carefully released the wing nuts and slowly lowered the jig holding the crate to a point just barely above the top of the wooden funnel.

"All right, now tighten everything back up," Paxton ordered. The two agents carefully retightened the wing nuts. Then Paxton sighed heavily.

"Okay, now comes the fun part."

The sound of a low-based bird-shot round being jacked into the chamber of an 870 pump shotgun echoed throughout the warehouse, causing Larry Paxton to flinch, then glare at his huge subordinate agent. Then he turned to Takahara.

"You ready?"

"Oh sure. Anytime," Mike Takahara croaked dryly.

Stoner set the shotgun within easy reach and leaned forward to hold the top of the crate in place with his two huge hands, while Woeshack moved in with the fire extinguisher. Paxton and Takahara each picked up one of the battery-powered variable-speed drills fitted with Phillips screwdriver bits, and stretched out on the concrete floor on either side of Takahara's makeshift apparatus.

The design allowed just enough room on the outside of the wood funnel to get at the screws that held the bottom of the crate in place

… which meant a gap slightly in excess of three-quarters of an inch would exist between the sides of the crate and the edges of the funnel when they slid the bottom of the crate out of the way-an issue that generated several hours of emotional discussion until Mike Takahara finally convinced the rest of the team that a three-quarter-inch board couldn't possibly move through anything less than a three-quarter-inch space.

But the unresolved point was whether any of the inhabitants of the seventy-two wooden crates would want to — and more to the point, could — squeeze through a three-quarter-inch space and either escape or attack, rather than cooperatively drop into a nice, clean, gravel-filled terrarium.

Hence Woeshack's fire extinguisher and Stoner's shotgun.

Paxton and Takahara had backed out the first pair of wood screws halfway when the sudden thrashing inside the crate caused both of them frantically to roll away while Stoner lunged for the shotgun.

"I think I'm gonna have a heart attack," Larry Paxton commented to no one in particular as he lay on the concrete floor with his eyes closed.

"Don't forget, I was the one who said somebody's gonna get bit," Woeshack whispered nervously to Stoner, who nodded and glared pointedly at the Bravo Team leader.

Eight minutes and several frazzled nerves later, Paxton and Takahara removed the last two screws holding the bottom of the crate in place, and the last portion of the three-quarter-inch plywood piece dropped a sixteenth of an inch onto the top of the wooden funnel.

"Okay," Mike Takahara murmured softly. "Now it gets interesting."

Larry Paxton glowered at his tech agent. "Well, thank God for that! I was afraid I was gonna fall asleep out of sheer boredom."

Ignoring the sarcasm, Takahara picked up a carefully sanded two-foot-wide-by-three-foot-long piece of plywood. Working cautiously, he used it to push the bottom board of the crate until each covered half of the box.

The inhabitants of the crate stirred uneasily.

"Okay," Takahara whispered to Paxton, "grab the end of the other board, but don't do anything until I tell you."

As Larry Paxton gingerly took hold of the released portion of the crate, he felt the container's inhabitants shifting heavily on it.

Movement continued for several more seconds and then stopped.

Takahara looked at his fellow agents. "Everybody ready?"

The three men nodded with varying degrees of confidence.

"Okay" — Takahara's voice sounded ominously loud in the otherwise silent warehouse — "one… two… three… now!"

In the instant that Takahara and Paxton yanked their respective boards out from under the crate, two huge black snakes with bright red scales on their bellies plummeted into the terrarium with a loud thump and thrashed against the glass, causing Larry Paxton to scream "SHIT!" and lunge out of the way.

"Oh my God," Thomas Woeshack whispered, backing away quickly as he held the extinguisher in front of his body as if to ward off an evil spirit.

Dwight Stoner leveled the shotgun at the terrarium, and then watched uneasily as the huge snakes coiled their thick bodies around each other and began probing the glass with their stubby black noses.

"What the hell are those things?" Larry Paxton whispered.

"They kinda look like dwarf king cobras," Mike Takahara suggested uneasily.

"Whatever they are, they're too big for that terrarium," Dwight Stoner noted accurately.

At that moment, a loud pounding on the metal door of the warehouse startled all four agents.

Stoner, Woeshack and Takahara continued ogling the snakes while Larry Paxton cautiously approached the door, looked through the peephole, and disappeared outside.

Five long minutes later, he returned with a torn-open FedEx envelope and a clipped stack of papers in his hand.

"We get FedEx delivered to a brand-new covert ops storefront site that we could barely find?" Mike Takahara cocked his head curiously.

Larry Paxton eyed them all dangerously as he nodded his head.

"It's from Jennifer. You want to hear it?"

Mike Takahara looked down at the two extremely thick-bodied snakes still probing the thin glass walls of the terrarium, then back up at the Bravo Team supervisor.

"I don't think so," he guessed, "but you'd better go ahead anyway."

"'Dear guys,'" Paxton began reading. "'I meant to send this with the shipment, but we got distracted trying to get all those damned things loaded up and out the door before Halahan changed his mind. Hope this gets to you before you open up any of those crates.'"

Paxton looked up to see if his audience was paying attention, and grimly noted that all three of them had immediately moved several feet farther away from Takahara's jury-rigged contraption and the two very large black snakes.

"'If you've already started to unpack them, I hope you're all okay.'"

The three agents simultaneously closed in around their supervisor, backs to the door and facing the stack of crates and Takahara's snake-transfer device. In addition to Stoner's shotgun, both Woeshack and Takahara had their 10mm Smith amp; Wesson pistols out and ready.

"'Knowing you guys,'" Paxton went on, "'I'm sure you already figured out that the tarantulas go in the small terrariums, and the snakes go in the big ones. And by the way, it's probably a good idea to duct-tape all the lids down because the big snakes can pop them off pretty easily.' "

Paxton looked over at Woeshack.

"Hey, all those terrarium boxes looked the same to me," Thomas Woeshack defended himself as he disappeared behind the pile of boxes. Moments later, his head popped up.

"Good news, guys." The diminutive agent smiled brightly. "There's a whole bunch of bigger terrarium boxes back here, too."

Larry Paxton closed his eyes for a moment, nodded slowly, and continued reading the letter aloud.

"'The caiman crocs are a separate problem entirely. I personally don't think those swimming pools we sent you are deep enough. The herpetologists we hired assured us they'd be fine for a while, but the damned things kept getting out anyway. I'm sure you'll figure something out. But they're a lot faster than you'd think, and mean little shits to boot, so watch your fingers when you pick them up. Knowing Mike, I'll bet he's already come up with some really clever way to open those crates and dump the contents into the terrariums without anybody getting bit.'"

Mike Takahara smiled. "Good old Jennifer, I always liked her."

"Yeah, well wait until you hear this part," Larry Paxton growled. "'Something Mike might not have thought about, though. If you plan to rig the transfers so that the top or bottom part of the crate slides out of the way, remember that the tarantulas can easily squeeze through a three-quarter-inch gap. You'll really need to be ready when they do, because they're really fast little buggers.'"

"Jesus," Dwight Stoner whispered.

"'Finally, be very careful handling the crates with the screened air holes. We rigged those for the female snakes because a lot of them look like they're pregnant. That's not a problem with the egg-layers because you've got quite a bit of time before any eggs would hatch, even if they've laid them in the crates by now. But…" Paxton paused long enough to glower at his agent team meaningfully, "'you've really got to be careful with crates seven and twenty-three… "'

"Oh shit," Mike Takahara whispered.

"'… because,'" the Bravo Team leader continued with a discernible edge to his voice, "'there's a female Tiger Snake in crate seven and two female Common Blacksnakes in twenty-three. In addition to being damned poisonous, they're both ovoviviparous — which means they give birth to live babies instead of eggs — and the two blacksnakes look like they could pop any minute. None of us here know how big a newborn blacksnake is, but we suspect they probably wouldn't have any trouble getting through a three-quarter-inch-wide gap either. According to the literature, the average brood for Common Blacksnakes is twelve. My suggestion would be to do what we did and hire a couple of professional herpetologists, then go have a beer while they get everything unpacked and put away. But I guess you can't do that and maintain a covert operation in a little place like Loggerhead City, Oregon, huh? Well, good luck anyway. Jennifer.'"

Mike Takahara returned to his snake-transfer apparatus long enough to grab the pile of reference books, then beat a hasty retreat behind Stoner and his shotgun. Mumbling to himself, he rapidly thumbed through one titled Australian Snakes — A Natural History.

"Yep, here they are." The tech agent pointed to a photo. "Definitely Common Blacksnakes."

"That's all she said? 'Good luck'?" Dwight Stoner murmured incredulously.

Larry Paxton shook his head. "No, there's a PS." He handed the letter and the attached pages to Stoner.

"Hey, maybe it's not so bad, guys." Mike Takahara continued scanning the text. "It says here that the venom in the average bite of the most deadly snake in the

world — the Inland Taipan — has a 218,000 LD50, the Tiger Snake has 15,000, but the Common Blacksnake only has 700."

"What does that mean?" Thomas Woeshack asked.

"Beats me," the tech agent confessed. "I think the LD50 refers to the number of mice that the poison in one average snake bite would kill. But hey, we must have a bigger body mass than seven hundred mice, right?"

"Yeah, I guess," Woeshack agreed uneasily. "But what about fifteen thousand for that Tiger Snake?"

Takahara scrunched his face as he mentally converted mouse to human mass. "Yeah, that might be more of a problem."

Dwight Stoner looked up from the letter and stared at Larry Paxton.

"She's got to be kidding," he stated flatly.

"You got a better idea?"

"Uh-huh," Stoner volunteered immediately. "Burn the warehouse down and blame it on the gas heater."

Larry Paxton looked around the warehouse. "We don't have a gas heater," he observed.

"I'll install one."

"The problem is," the Bravo Team leader informed his reluctant crew and ignored Stoner's very serious offer, "if those things really are pregnant, and they… Hey!" A stricken look appeared on Larry Paxton's face. "Those snakes aren't moving anymore!"

"You know," Thomas Woeshack mused aloud as he and Stoner watched their two fellow agents cautiously approach the terrarium where the two thick-bodied blacksnakes now lay suspiciously still, "I wonder what Henry's doing right now."