'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.'
Chapter Twenty-one
She became aware of their approach as she stood in the greenhouse examining the collection of exotic plants left by the previous occupant.
Two men. The one in the lead plodding, oblivious, doglike and familiar, and of only minor interest. The other fluid, casually aware, catlike, and much more intriguing.
Not to mention dangerous.
