Chapter 29

At 10 minutes to midnight Sheppard felt his foot being shaken by a hand — he sat up and after a moment noticed it was Felix.

He looked for his P90 and found it right next to him and picked it up — then once he was ready, he noticed Felix shushing him and motioning for him to be quiet.

Sheppard made to totally remove the chameleon blanket but Felix shook his head no, that he should keep it on and crawl up with it. So Sheppard did that and lay to the left side of Felix so that if there were any firing that he wouldn't get nailed by hot casings.

Sheppard crawled up next to the gun and looked out towards the silos and couldn't make out much until Felix gave him a set of pocket binoculars and said in his ear, "You'll see the animals walking towards the silos." He put the binoculars to his eyes, adjusted the focus and then concentrated on looking at the animals that looked something like horses. It took him a minute but something didn't quite look right and he was not able to put his finger on it until Felix said, "Check out the top of the horses — riders slumped way over trying to sneak in."

Then he saw the shapes that now made sense — just like Felix said — slumped over so they blended in quite a bit on a moonless night. Sheppard lowered the binoculars and said, "Sneaky — so how do we handle this?"

Felix replied, "There is only the two of them — I say we pull back from here right now while leaving the gear covered with the chameleon blanket, bop them on the head and turn them over to the people here. Dr. Weir did say that this wasn't our problem, right boss?"

Sheppard answered, "Correct. We better take them before they plant something again."

They pulled back down from the spruce tree and covered their gear with the chameleon blanket, and Sheppard had Felix lead the way to the silos, as he had been there earlier to plant the mini-cameras.

As they got to the silos, Sheppard put a hand on Felix's shoulder to stop him for a moment and showed him the taser he had brought along. Felix nodded his assent at the way to deal with the potential bad guys, and then brought out his Diablo and softly said to it, "Load flechette."

They quickly went through the first couple of grain silos and didn't find any of the poison yet so they moved along to the next. It was in the 4th one they spotted two men dropping what looked like the poison Felix had identified earlier in the day.

Then Sheppard walked into the silo and pointed his taser at the two men and said casually, "Good evening — having fun with your poison?"

The two men whirled to face their aggressors and stopped still when they saw Sheppard facing them with a weapon unfamiliar to them. Sheppard told them, "Why don't you be good people and clean up your poison before more people get hurt — which is what you've been doing to the farmers here, by the way."

The bigger of the two just smiled and evil smile as he figured Sheppard was alone, so he went for a rather large knife at his waist. As he started towards Sheppard there was a soft cough and the knife flew out of the big man's hand and across the silo. He looked shocked as he was now weaponless and his hand hurt a lot but there was no hole in his hand.

Sheppard gave a small smile and said, "I think you may want to do as I asked and clean up your mess of poison before someone gets hurt. You just got lucky there, my friend — you still have your life. Now, clean up the poison and come with me and we'll sort this mess out with the locals. I prefer to do this without bloodshed if possible, but I'm not so sure about my trigger-happy friend. What do you say?"

Without another word the two trespassers knelt down and cleaned up the poison into the bag they had brought for dispersal. After a minute they were done and Sheppard motioned towards the silo door and said, "Turn right once you get out the door and walk straight into town. And don't try anything else stupid — once should be enough."

Sheppard walked the two trespassers to the town justice building and knocked on the door loudly. After a few more knocks and a couple of muffled curses from within, the door finally opened to reveal the town sheriff. He looked strangely at Sheppard who said, "These two are your culprits of your poisoned grain silos — we caught them tonight and I thought you might want to let your town council know who they are, and to deal whatever justice to them. I would, however — keep them under lock and key."