by Ken Goddard
"So what do we tell them?" Moore asked reasonably. "Those guys will spot a bullshit story a mile off, especially if it looks like we're giving them a paid vacation."
The contemplative look on David Halahan's face suddenly gave way to a satisfied smile.
"Oh-oh," Moore groaned. "Why do I get the feeling Bravo Team's not going to like this?"
"Just off the top of your head," Halahan suggested cheerfully, "where's the last place our friends from the Mexican Mafia in Nogales would expect the federal government to run a sting operation on hot snakes and red-kneed tarantulas?"
The smile that blossomed on Freddy Moore's face easily eclipsed that of his boss, then quickly dissolved into a fit of helpless laughter.
"What about the snakes?" he gasped when he finally could speak again.
"What about them?"
"You think they'll be able to handle the cold okay?" Moore asked as he wiped the tears from his eyes. "I hear it gets damn chilly in Oregon in the winter."
Halahan shrugged. "I don't see why not. As long as the warehouse doesn't get too cold, I assume they — and I imagine the tarantulas, too, for that matter — would just stay kind of sluggish. Unless, of course, the agents running the operation foolishly turned up the heat for their own comfort. In that case I suspect the entire team would need to stay alert pretty much around the clock, watching out for escaping poisonous snakes and very large spiders."
"You really think that'll keep them sufficiently occupied so they don't start poking around and spot Charlie Team?"
"I certainly hope so." Halahan's smile faded, and he tapped at his desk pensively. "Between setting up the warehouse, rigging a communications system, establishing their covers, putting out some ads and feelers, making a few purchases and sales from some of the legitimate dealers, and maintaining a reasonable stock of illicit specimens — which reminds me, do we have any good sources?"
"Well, I know the guys in Newark are sitting on a bunch of hot stuff they pulled out of the back of a shipping container an Australian importer abandoned a few weeks ago. About a hundred specimens total," Moore responded. "Mostly African and South America vipers as I recall. Gaboons, Bushmasters, Puff and Mountain Adders, Fer-de-lances, some Bamboo and Russell's Vipers from China, and I think even a pair of Death Adders and a few Brown, Black, and Tiger Snakes from Australia."
"Are the Australian ones poisonous?"
"Oh yeah, definitely."
"Good. That's exactly the kind of thing these Mexican Mafia characters deal in. Exotic and deadly. How about the spiders? Can we get some of them, too?"
"Come to think of it, I heard Miami's still trying to get the Zoo Association to take that last batch of red-knees they seized off their hands."
"How many did they get?"
"Something in the neighborhood of 750 total."
Halahan blinked. "Seven hundred and fifty red-kneed tarantulas?"
"Naw, only about half of them are the genuine article. The rest are either red-legged, or plain old browns… along with a dozen baby caiman crocs as a bonus," Moore added. "You want to hear a heart-wrenching sob story, call Jennifer up and ask her what she thinks about feeding those damned things."
"What in the world do you feed 750 tarantulas and a dozen baby crocodiles?"
"Mice, crickets, and chunks of chicken, according to her. Apparently it's not so much what you feed them as how," Moore explained. "I understand that quick reflexes help tremendously… especially with the tarantulas because they fling needle-sharp little hairs into their prey-or at anything they're pissed at. I'm sure Jennifer would be more than happy to give you all the gory details, but I wouldn't call her right before lunch."
"Special Agent Jennifer Granstrom." The Special Operations branch chief's eyes began to gleam. "Don't we owe her for something?"
"The Miami Office has been nice to us occasionally in the past," Moore conceded hesitantly.
"That's what I was thinking." Halahan nodded thoughtfully. "But how in the world would you ship 750 tarantulas from a federal law enforcement office in Miami to a warehouse in Loggerhead City, Oregon, without anyone on the outside knowing what's going on?"
"Beats me." A grin of awareness began to light up Moore's face. "But I'm willing to bet you a steak dinner at the restaurant of your choice that Jennifer either knows how, right off the top of her head, or she'll figure it out in three minutes flat."
"Why don't you give her a call — after lunch," Halahan suggested with a benevolent smile on his face. "Tell her to get the whole batch ready to ship to Oregon, posthaste, along with — what? — all the necessary terrariums, heating elements, and other assorted supplies she's got on hand. Our treat."
"The crocs, too?"
"Oh, hell yes. How can we impress the Mexican Mafia if we don't go all out?"
"David," Freddy Moore's tone bordered on reverent, "remind me every now and then, if you don't mind, to never, ever, piss you off."
"Basic principles of people management." The Special Operations Branch chief shrugged modestly. "If you can't gain the attention of your employees with the standard motivational techniques, try a different approach."
"On second thought, you're not going to need to remind me." Moore shuddered as he tried to imagine several hundred snakes, tarantulas, and crocs all in one warehouse.
"Glad to hear it." David Halahan smiled pleasantly, and then went on. "So you call Jennifer, and then make arrangements with Newark for, oh, say two or three dozen miscellaneous snakes — be sure to include that death adder, and a few of those Australian brown, black, and tiger snakes — along with, say, a two-month supply of mice, crickets, chicken, freezers, holding cages, and the like. I think that should keep everybody on Bravo Team extremely busy, focused, and out of trouble, with the possible exception of — "
"Lightstone?"
Halahan nodded.
"So what are we going to do with him? Ship him down to Nogales to start working on his cover?"
"Not a chance." The Special Ops chief dismissed that option immediately. "I want him there, too, just in case we do run into some problems with Charlie Team or Boggs. Lightstone may be a little difficult to control at times, but he's also pretty damned useful when things turn to shit."
"So…?"
"So, while Charlie Team scopes out the militants and everyone else on Bravo Team tries to work out accommodations for seven hundred giant tarantulas, twelve baby crocodiles, and two or three dozen poisonous snakes" — Halahan smiled pleasantly — "I think somebody should take a serious look at our friend the Sage and his Bigfoot souvenir scam, don't you?"
"You know" — Moore paused a moment to savor the Bravo Team's wild-card agent's most likely reaction to his new assignment — "this just might teach those jokers to play fair."
"I doubt it."
"Yeah, me too." Moore nodded in agreement. "But in any case, I think we'd better get them on a plane to Oregon by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. I have a feeling Jennifer's going to have those tarantulas packed up, out the door, and on their way to a certain Loggerhead City warehouse before we have a chance to change our minds."
"Exactly. Which means you'd better get busy putting together a briefing document."
"It will be a pleasure." Freddy Moore smiled in cheerful anticipation.
"Yeah, I'll bet. And in the meantime," Halahan said as he put the stack of exercise evaluations aside, "I'm going to give my old buddy Wilbur Boggs a call. Tell him to break out his big grill and ice chest and stand by, because Special Ops is about to make his life a whole lot more miserable, too."
Chapter Eight
It took federal wildlife agent Wilbur Boggs a good five minutes to regain his senses after the accident.
Two or three minutes after that, he discovered that the force of the impact had broken the leather restraining strap on his shoulder holster, thereby sending his old and reliable government-issued Model 66. 357 revolver (he simply couldn't get used to the new 10mm Smith amp; Wesson semiautomatic pistols that most of the ag
ents in the Fish and Wildlife Service now carried) into at least twenty feet of cold muddy water… along with his binoculars, thermos bottle, lunch box, tackle box, fishing rod, ticket book, portable radio, and his badge case.
He would have discovered all of this earlier if he hadn't spent so much time staring in dismay at the bent and twisted mounts of his outboard motor that had nearly been torn loose from the transom, thereby severely damaging the back of his own boat — which he'd opted to use for his rendezvous with Lou Eliot because he knew Rustman's crew would spot his government-owned boat the moment he dropped it into the water.
Then, and in spite of Lt. Colonel John Rustman's optimistic predictions, it had taken Boggs almost four more hours to free his prop from the yards of tightly wrapped nylon netting and twisted ropes for several reasons.
One, the tightened ropes, twisted mounts, and his severely broken right hand prevented him from raising the outboard out of the water or disconnecting it from the ripped transom.
Two, the impact tore open his supposedly sink-proof tackle box, sending his wrenches and pliers and other potentially useful tools — not to mention his wallet — to the bottom of the lake, leaving him with only a pocketknife and the pair of nail clippers on his key chain.
And three, he had to do everything with his merely throbbing and trembling left hand, and he didn't dare drop the pocketknife overboard because he didn't even want to think about how long it might take him to cut all that rope and netting loose with nail clippers.
Boggs spent the first few minutes leaning over the side of the boat in an ultimately futile effort to cut through the tightened ropes that secured the netting and the boat to whatever anchors Rustman and his cohorts had placed in the bottom of the lake. Finally, he gave that up because he couldn't reach all of the ropes, and holding his head upside down made him feel dizzier than ever. So he cursed John Rustman, Lou Eliot, and especially Regis J. Smallsreed for the fifteen minutes it took him to pull off all of his clothes, put the life vest back on, and then awkwardly lower himself into the icy cold water with his forearms, and his one more or less good hand to try to work the ropes and netting loose from there.
Once in the water, he momentarily considered diving to the murky bottom to search for some of his tools, but some still-rational fragment of his mind warned him that if he did, he'd probably get caught in the netting and drown.
A second distinctively sharp, high-velocity gunshot — that didn't sound at all like a shotgun blast, but did sound exactly like the first one that had catapulted him into action at the end of what he assumed was Smallsreed's first round of shooting — caught his attention. He would have tried to pinpoint the location of that second shot if nothing else, but his head and his hand hurt like hell, and his feet and legs ached already in the icy water, so he decided not to worry about it until later.
After he got the boat loose.
It took seven trips into the frigid water before Wilbur Boggs finally managed to free his boat. During each trip, he wrapped his useless right arm around the motor housing, then carefully cut a few nylon strands at a time until his lower body grew numb. When that happened, he carefully slipped the knife into the Velcro-secured pouch on his life vest, heaved himself back into the boat, dried himself off as much as possible with his soggy underwear, socks, and shirt, pulled on his pants and jacket, and sat shivering in the chilly morning air until some feeling returned to his limbs and he could rationalize going back into the water at least one more time.
Several times during this physically and mentally exhausting process, Boggs sensed that someone was watching him. But he forced himself to block that out because he knew if he saw so much as a glimpse of Lou Eliot, or Lt. Colonel John Rustman, or — in a moment of wishful thinking — the Honorable Regis J. Smallsreed himself, he'd forget all about getting tangled in the net and drowning, and dive straight down into that murky, freezing water for his gun and proceed to kill the bastards.
For the first time in his life, Special Agent Wilbur Boggs felt that close to losing control completely.
But the worst was yet to come: Once he finally did manage to free his boat, he discovered what he should have expected, had he not been so disoriented and distracted by the combined effects of an almost certain concussion, a broken hand, a smashed nose, missing teeth, the icy cold water, and other assorted aches and pains far too numerous to name.
The motor wouldn't start.
Forcing himself to remain calm, Boggs awkwardly unlatched and removed the engine cover with one hand, checked the fuel lines, switch valve, plug wires, distributor cap, battery connections, and air filter, replaced and latched the cover, and then tried again.
Nothing.
That was when Wilbur Boggs began to laugh.
It wasn't a pleasant laugh. In fact, had any member of Lt. Colonel John Rustman's crew — except maybe Wintersole — heard that laugh, they almost certainly would have given the emotionally and physically drained federal wildlife agent a wide berth… because nothing in that laughter indicated the presence of a man with a tight grip on his sanity.
It took Boggs a good three or four minutes to stop laughing and wipe the tears out of his eyes… at which point the Fates mercifully gave him a glimpse of the small wooden paddle floating in the distance.
Under anything even remotely resembling normal circumstances, Wilbur Boggs could have retrieved the paddle in, at most, a couple of minutes. But after almost three hours of intermittent exposure to the icy lake water, he now doubted he could swim that far in one stretch, and he knew the life vest wouldn't keep him warm enough if he couldn't. So he used his good hand to paddle to the real paddle instead, stopping only twice to untangle the prop from pieces of rope and netting. Whereupon it all became, in a relative sense, much easier.
Shivering and cursing as he fought to keep the boat on a reasonably straight course, it took the numbed, exhausted, and furious agent nearly three more hours to reach shore. But that was all right, Boggs reminded himself during his rest breaks, because he felt relatively warm and dry now in his damp pants and jacket — but no socks or boots because he couldn't get them on one-handed — and he wasn't going to drown or die of exposure after all. Not only that, he'd discovered that his left hand didn't cramp up quite so much if he stuck the handle of the paddle under his armpit.
Piece of cake.
When he finally did manage to zigzag his way to the shore, dragging several yards of netting and rope and an assortment of miscellaneous lake debris in his wake, Wilbur Boggs simply could have abandoned his boat right there at the base of the launch ramp. No insurance rep in the state would have dared to question such a decision.
But Wilbur Boggs was, above all else, an exceedingly stubborn and persistent man, who refused to admit defeat. Consequently, he spent another forty-five minutes backing his truck down the ramp, cursing his blurred vision and the floor-mounted manual shift, fumbling with the release mechanism on the winch, wading into the cold water one more time to bring the boat around to the back of the partially submerged trailer, stepping on sharp rocks with his bare feet, and then slowly and painfully winching the boat up onto the trailer, cursing Lt. Colonel John Rustman, Lou Eliot, and the Honorable Regis J. Smallsreed with every agonizing turn of the crank.
And then, in the midst of that process, when he rammed his shin into the solid steel tow hitch, recoiled from the effects of the brain-searing impact, slipped on the slippery asphalt, smacked the back of his head against the trailer, and then lay there gasping and cursing on the cold, wet pavement until the pulsating bursts of pain in his shin and his hand and his head finally evened themselves out into some kind of endurable equilibrium, he still possessed the necessary willpower to pull himself up and go back to the task at hand.
Only when he finally drove toward his rural home nestled an hour away in a quiet little wooded grove, did the federal wildlife agent allow himself to laugh again.
Only this time, no one would mistake the nature of that laugh for madness.
>
Now, Special Agent Wilbur Boggs was quite furiously — and quite sanely — enraged.
Against all odds, or at least any odds an observant bookie might offer on this star-crossed federal law enforcement officer toward the end of that incredibly disastrous day, Wilbur Boggs managed to get all the way home, all the way up his driveway, and all the way through his front door, without a single other thing in his life going wrong.
Stumbling into his living room in a numbed daze at seven-thirty that Sunday evening, the physically and mentally depleted agent's blurred eyes immediately spotted the blinking red numeral on the glowing face of his answering machine: 1
One message.
Wilbur Boggs turned on the light and staggered forward to rewind the tape as quickly as possible, driven by the thought that Lou Eliot — his best hope in three long years to finally bring John Rustman and Regis J. Smallsreed to justice — had left a message explaining why he failed to appear at the rendezvous point at six-thirty that Sunday morning.
But the instant he heard the familiar voice emanating from the answering machine's cheap speaker, the federal wildlife agent began to comprehend the magnitude of the defeat he'd suffered at the hands of Lt. Colonel John Rustman and Congressman Regis J. Smallsreed.
Stunned and disbelieving, Wilbur Boggs punched the buttons of the infuriating machine again with the swollen, scarred, and quivering forefinger of his left hand — the one that probably wasn't broken — and re-played the message.
That's okay, Halahan, he thought grimly as he stood in his living room — dizzy, nauseous, and trembling with pain, hunger, and almost total exhaustion — and listened once again to the voice of the chief of the Law Enforcement Division's Special Operations Branch advising him that Charlie Team, a new team of covert agents, were being assigned a project in his area and would contact him when they got into town, you can't make my life any more miserable than it already is…
The answering machine began to swim out of focus.