My cell phone began to vibrate.
“Lieutenant,” Trask said, when I opened it. “Glad you could drop by.”
“How’d you get the dogs down here?” I asked.
“Dragged a rat on a string in front of them and into the double doors,” he said. “Which were open when you made your little detour there, in case you didn’t notice, and I don’t think you did.”
“Got me there,” I said. I told the dogs to sit. I was trying to be really stern with them, but I was very glad to see them back. They sat, but they weren’t happy.
“I’ve got you here, actually,” he said, “and we’re going to have some fun, presently. But first: I’m curious. What is it you think we’re going to do at Helios?”
“I think you’re going to create some kind of fake terrorist incident. That wake-up call you were ranting about. Something to do with moonpool water.”
“You’re close,” he said. “Perhaps wrong about the fake aspects.”
“So why knock us off?” I asked, examining the space again. I didn’t like the sound of that have-some-fun comment, and I wanted out of here. Obviously I’d need to pull that plywood ramp back down, but I couldn’t see a seam anymore.
“Because you’re getting in the damned way,” he said. “I don’t have time for any more of your interference. We have a plan, and a window of opportunity, which is upon us, so to speak. I need you out of the way, which is where you are.”
“You keep saying ‘we.’ ”
“Some like-minded people in the nuclear power industry,” he said.
“What did you do to my partner out there?”
“Put him to sleep,” he said. “Temporarily, I hope. He’s going to be medium useless when he does wake up, though.”
“I told the Bureau you’re alive and kicking,” I said, “and where I was going tonight.”
He laughed. “Nice try,” he said, “but the Bureau is shortly going to be much too busy to worry about you.”
“Going to turn some more of your aliens loose in the container yard?”
“My aliens?”
“We ran into an ICE guy the last time we came over here. He told us he’s undercover over here in the junkyard, and that you’re part of an alien immigration surveillance program.”
“My, my, how some people do run their mouths,” he said. “But I’m not worried about the Bureau. Their only interest in me right now is that I’m not their vic in the moonpool. Where’s the little Italian wise-ass?”
“Out there somewhere,” I said.
“Or back in Triboro,” he countered. “That’s what my sources tell me, anyway. Back home doing some homework. Something to do with the Helios visitor logs. You don’t have any idea why your Ms. Gardner overran her sell-by date down here, do you?”
“You said you were going to enlighten me.”
“I did say that, didn’t I. But I don’t know-you’re a pretty resourceful fella. You might yet get out of that hole you’re in. As long as you don’t manage that in the next twenty-four hours or so, I won’t care, of course.”
I wondered if that meant tonight was the big night. “So give me a hint,” I said.
“Okay, I wilclass="underline" What was her maiden name?”
“Beats the shit out of me,” I said. “I guess I just assumed Gardner was her maiden name, after two divorces.”
“Therein lies the tale, Lieutenant. Now: I have things to do, people to see. Some spectacular incidents to precipitate. That. 45 loaded?”
“Of course.”
“And you still have that baby penlight you were flashing around all over the place outside?”
I did, even if the single AA battery was running down. I realized then that it had stayed on when I dropped it. The tiny spot of white light was now yellow.
“Okay,” he said. “If it were me, I wouldn’t go shooting that hand-cannon of yours down there. Steel walls over hard-packed earth, sides and floor. What goes around will almost certainly come back around, if you follow me.”
“Why would I be shooting?” I asked.
“Because something’s coming for dinner,” he said.
The phone connection switched off. I put the thing in my pocket, retrieved and switched off the penlight, and then walked around the confines of the chamber. I tapped the side walls, and, although they seemed to be made of metal, there was obviously hard-packed earth behind them. They felt like brick walls. He was right about the. 45-there’d be ricochets forever. The dogs just sat there watching me, panting a little, and waiting for orders. I wished I had some for them, but this looked like a modern version of an oubliette. Then the shepherds both looked up at that black hole high up on the left side.
A soft sound, like grain coming down a silo chute, began to fill the air, and then an enormous snake head came into view, its black tongue flickering urgently. The triangular head was pale white and the size of a partially flattened regulation-size football. The snake looked around, saw me, and then saw the shepherds, who were raising hackles and backing up. Locking on to the dogs, the snake continued to emerge from the hole. The body was proportionally smaller than it should have been right behind that enormous head, but then began to swell as the thing reached the floor and began to spread across it.
I backed up right along with the dogs. Time began to slow down as more and more snake kept coming, the body getting thicker and thicker before finally slimming down to a vigorously switching tail, itself the size of a full-grown rattler. The cell phone began to vibrate in my pocket.
“Isn’t she a beauty?” Trask said when I picked up. “Albino Burmese python.”
“Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder,” I said, pulling out the. 45. Ricochets be damned, I wasn’t going to let that thing get a whole lot closer.
“Yeah, I get that,” he said. “She’s almost six meters, and did I mention that she’s hungry? She just loves a good dog for dinner.”
The snake wasn’t coiling, which surprised me. It lay full-length-out on the floor of the container in a big serpentine arc, that flat bone-white head maybe ten feet away, watching all three of us. At the moment, its six meters looked like six miles. Wearing two German shepherds, I backed against the front wall of the container, and aimed the SIG at the thickest part of the snake’s body. I recognized the smell now as the scent I’d picked up on the boat. Jungle smell, something rotting and hideously primitive. The tongue never stopped.
“She’ll go for the dogs, not you,” he said. “Unless you interfere, of course. But it’ll be a fairer fight than if you were, say, doing this in the swamp. See the tail? Nothing for her to hold on to down there. They need to anchor that tail to really throw coils.”
“I’m going to shoot this fucker, starting right now,” I said.
“Only if you can see her, Lieutenant,” he said. And then the overhead lights all went out. Almost immediately I heard that flowing-grain sound. I dropped the cell phone and nearly fired, but realized in time that that would be pointless. The penlight. Where was that goddamned penlight?
Both dogs began to growl deep in their chests as I fished for it in my pockets.
More sliding sounds, and that primordial stink was getting more pronounced.
My fingers closed in on the plastic light, and I popped it out of my shirt pocket. Tactical instinct took over as I held the light in my left hand, way out to one side, and pointed the SIG into the darkness. I switched it on.
No snake.
The light seemed a tiny bit brighter than it had been; maybe the battery had rested, or maybe it was just because the darkness was damned near absolute.
Where was the snake?
I scanned the floor of the container in an arc right in front of us, then sensed something looming to my right.
To my right, and up, not on the floor. I could feel the shepherds pressing harder against my legs.
I swept the light over there and found myself looking into that white snake face, which was no more than three feet away. The snake had lifted its forebody on its coils like a cobra, which still left about a half mile of snake on the floor behind it. Without thinking, I fired a round at that face.