Double blind

Chapter Thirty-three

"Why the hell didn't you think of something like this in the first place?" Larry Paxton asked reasonably after he examined Mike Takahara's latest construction project.

"Lack of perspective," the team's tech agent replied.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"A couple days ago, I wouldn't have thought that building something this elaborate just to drill a four-inch-diameter hole into the side of a shipping crate would have been worth the effort."

"Chasing little baby poisonous snakes around a frozen warehouse for eight hours straight tends to give you a whole different perspective on a lot of things," the Bravo Team leader commented grimly.

"Amen to that."

"Yeah, no shit," Dwight Stoner agreed as he and the other three agents watched the first red-kneed giant tarantula step cautiously into the twelve-inch segment of four-inch-diameter clear plastic tubing that now connected one of the wooden crates to ten feet of flexible black irrigation pipe and the feeding tube of one of the special terrarium tops.

As the covert agents watched, fourteen more giant tarantulas followed each other into the thin, opaque, corrugated plastic pipe.

"Well, it looks like this contraption just might work," Paxton commented with a decided edge of skepticism in his voice.

They waited patiently — for one minute, a second, and then a third — for the tarantulas to drop into the terrarium.

Nothing.

"Now what the hell's going on?" Paxton finally demanded.

"They're not going into the terrarium," Mike Takahara observed.

"I can see that," Larry Paxton retorted as he knelt down by the terrarium and turned his head sideways to try to see inside the black corrugated pipe. "What I want to know is why."

"I don't know, maybe they're afraid of strange new environments," the Tech Agent suggested as he gently tapped the thin, flexible four-inch-diameter pipe. They heard the whisper sound of scurrying feet within the tube, but not a single tarantula ventured into the terrarium.

"Bullshit," Paxton muttered. "Spiders are the primary reason everybody else is afraid of strange new environments."

"Maybe they don't see it that way," Thomas Woeshack offered.

"Hit it harder," Stoner suggested.

Takahara cautiously shook the flexible pipe, causing considerable more scurrying but no giant spider appearances. The terrarium remained empty.

"No, no, not like that. Like this." Paxton grabbed the pipe and gave it a hard shake.

"Wait, Larry, don't…!" Mike Takahara tried to warn his boss, but it was too late.

To the horror of all four agents, the ten-foot length of thin, corrugated black pipe pulled loose at both ends.

"Oh SHIT!"

Larry Paxton and Dwight Stoner instinctively lunged for an end of the pipe. Without stopping to think, they lifted the ends off the floor and quickly covered the four-inch opening with their free hands.

The enormity of their error struck the two agents simultaneously as they both looked down at their exposed hands, and then back up at each other. But Stoner — whose reflexes had been honed by twelve years of diving for loose footballs — reacted first.

Reaching out, the huge agent yanked Paxton's hand away from the end of the pipe, slapped it around the pipe end he was holding, used his overwhelming strength to bring the two open ends of the pipe in his supervisor's resisting hands together, and then quickly stepped back.

Larry Paxton was still staring at the closed loop of four-inch-diameter corrugated pipe in his hands — his eyes bulging with shock as the sound of rapidly moving giant tarantulas caused him to clamp the two pipe ends tightly together — when someone knocked loudly on the warehouse door.

Immediately, four sets of eyes focused on the door.

"Who that hell is that?" Dwight Stoner whispered.

"Can't be Henry," Woeshack reminded them. "He said he and Bobby were going to stay away from here for a while."

"I don't care who it is, I want somebody to get me some…" Larry Paxton started to yell, but then fell silent as Stoner quickly brought his forefinger up to his mouth.

As Paxton remained frozen in place by the frantic scurrying inside the ten-foot closed loop of pipe, Stoner drew his semiautomatic pistol from his concealed shoulder holster. Taking a protected barricade position against one of the warehouse pillars, he directed Woeshack to the far side of the rental car and nodded to Mike Takahara to open the door.

Paxton, Stoner, and Woeshack all tensed as they watched the team's tech agent cautiously approach the door, pull back the curtain on the small window, then open the door and go outside.

Four minutes later, Takahara returned with a FedEx envelope and a single piece of paper in his hand.

"You know," he announced thoughtfully as he approached Larry Paxton, who had a decidedly dangerous expression in his dark eyes, "the next time we set up a covert operation, we probably ought to pose as FedEx agents. Save everybody a whole lot of time and effort… not to mention a certain amount of grief," he added, glancing meaningfully down at the loop of plastic pipe in his supervisor's shaking hands.

"I… don't… care. Get… me… some… goddamned

… duct tape… right… now," Larry Paxton ordered through clenched teeth.

"Who's it from, Jennifer again?" Dwight Stoner asked, ignoring his team leader's furious glare. "What did she do, suddenly remember another piece of crucial information she forgot to tell us?"

"No, this one's from Henry." Mike Takahara handed the paper to Stoner to read while he rummaged through a nearby storage box.

"Oh yeah, what's he doing now?" Thomas Woeshack asked as he tried to read the paper over Stoner's muscular arm.

"I'm not really sure," Takahara confessed as he retrieved a roll of duct tape and began to examine the ends of the corrugated pipe clenched in Larry Paxton's shaking hands, "but if I read that note correctly, I'd say he's trying to tell us that we've got a serious problem on our hands."