'Paint the — what the hell are you reading?… here, gimme that!' Larry Paxton demanded, lunging out of his chair and ripping the thick document out of the visibly concerned agent/pilot's hands.
'I mean, how could you hold them still long enough do that?' Woeshack asked, turning to Henry Lightstone, who was laughing so hard tears ran down his face as he and the other members of Bravo Team watched their team leader frantically flip through Woeshack's copy of the document. 'All spiders have eight legs, don't they? Does that mean four of us would each have to hold two legs while somebody else…?'
'It does say here in the Wildlife Inspector ID Manual that unscrupulous dealers will frequently paint the knees of — what? — plain old brown-kneed giant tarantulas, I suppose, to pass them off as the exotic and endangered red-kneed kind to unsophisticated buyers.. although it also says that the red knees are actually more of a reddish orange,' Technical Agent Mike Takahara noted, looking up from the screen of his notebook computer. 'Does it say anything in there about us being unscrupulous, too, or do we just get to be unsophisticated?'
'Either way, I'll bet you anything at least one of us is going to get bit,' Woeshack predicted.
'Thomas may have a point there, guys,' Takahara agreed, as he continued scanning the digitized identification manual. 'It also says here, and I quote, 'all tarantulas have fangs, and certain subspecies are more aggressive than others. In fact, some are actually known to stalk and attack humans if they are sufficiently stimulated.' I wonder if that means…'
'I am not holding any giant spider legs, Paxton,' Dwight Stoner, the huge ex-Oakland Raider offensive-tackle- turned-agent warned. 'I'll stuff boas and pythons back in their cages all day long if I have to, but I draw the line at tarantulas. That sounds like a team leader's job to me. And not that I really care one way or the other, but just how big are these things anyway?'
'According to the manual, about like this.' Mike Takahara spread the fingers of his right hand as far as he could, and then dropped his fingertips down on the surface of the nearby table.
'Jesus.'
'You know,' Henry Lightstone finally composed himself enough to examine the opened map of Oregon, 'there may actually be a bright side to all of this.'
'Oh yeah?' Dwight Stoner grumbled skeptically. 'What's that?'
'You remember my buddy, Bobby LaGrange?'
'Yeah, sure. He's kind of a hard man to forget, seeing as how we damned near got him killed along with the rest of us on that Cayman Islands deal.'
'Well, I got a letter from him a couple of months ago saying that he and Susan were fed up with humidity and cockroaches and drug dealers, and Justin was starting to talk seriously about buying a sailboat and going out looking for that little kid nurse — you remember her, don't you, Paxton… the one who thought you were kinda cute?'
'Oh yeah, I remember her all right,' Paxton rolled his eyes heavenward. 'And how old's that boy now?'
'About thirteen, I think.'
'Then Bobby'd better either chain him to the house, take away his bank account, or move the hell away from the East Coast, or he's gonna end up being a grandfather a whole lot sooner than he expected,' the Bravo Team leader predicted as he went back to flipping through the briefing document, searching for the part about painting tarantula legs.
'You think Loggerhead City in Jasper County, Oregon's far enough?'
Larry Paxton's lower jaw dropped.
'You're kidding.'
'Not if this map's right. Bobby said his place is on the outskirts of a little town called Loggerhead City, and about a half hour drive from Loggerhead Lake, both of which are definitely in Jasper County according to the map. So if I'm reading this thing correctly, it looks like we're going to be setting up shop about twenty miles or so from his ranch. Which means, if nothing else, we've always got a place to hang out, drink beer, and bum an occasional home-cooked meal.'
'Sounds like a good deal to me.' Paxton nodded approvingly as he went back to his determined search for references to spider knees.
'Wait a minute.' Dwight Stoner looked at Lightstone suspiciously. 'This is the same guy who invited us out on his brand-new super-expensive yacht, and then got it blown right out from under his ass, right? What makes you think he's gonna let us anywhere near him and his family, let alone his brand-new ranch?'
'No problem.' Lightstone smiled cheerfully. 'Bobby's not the type to hold a grudge. And besides, according to his letter, he and Susan used what he described as a ridiculously inflated insurance settlement to buy what he also described as a piece of God's country, so he ought to be happy about the way things worked out. Especially since now that all he has to worry about are the local Oregon girls getting Justin mutually pregnant.'
'Not to mention us coming into town to infest the place with poisonous snakes and giant spiders,' Stoner reminded him.
'Wow, that's right!' Woeshack exclaimed. 'Say, you know, this whole deal's beginning to sound just like that movie — remember, Rack-no-phobia, or something like that — where this young doctor and his family move to this little town in the country, and this really scary tarantula from South America falls out of a tree and accidentally gets smuggled into the town in a coffin, and everybody it bites dies?'
Henry Lightstone collapsed on the floor, holding his ribs and nearly choking in laughter while Larry Paxton stared at his agent/pilot incredulously.
'This is all your fault, Paxton,' Stoner muttered ominously. 'I told you we went too far on that septic-tank idea.'
'My fault? What do you mean, my fault?' Larry Paxton demanded, looking properly aggrieved. 'Who was the one who said 'to hell with protocol, these guys are going down'?'
'Actually, I believe you did.' Mike Takahara looked up from his computer screen long enough to correct Bravo Team's leader. 'You want to know what it says here about Australian Tiger Snakes?'
'No, I don't want to know what that damned computer says about Australian Tiger Snakes,' Larry Paxton replied testily as he tossed Woeshack's copy of the briefing document aside. 'Why should I? If I'm gonna be running this sting operation, and you can bet your badge I am,' he added emphatically, 'we are not going to be buying or selling any damned Tiger Snakes, whatever the hell they are, based on the simple fact that anything with the word 'tiger' in its name is probably dangerous as hell. And the fact of the matter is, I don't care what Halahan says, we're not gonna buy or sell anything more threatening to my hide than a simple little garter snake. We have to, we'll paint whatever we've got to make it look dangerous. But I'm telling you, that's as far as I'm gonna go on this deal.
'And never mind what I said back when,' the covert team leader warned before anyone could respond. 'What I want to know is, where did Halahan and Moore ship Charlie Team off to so quick and sneaky-like?'
'Three to one, somewhere warm,' Stoner grumbled.
'And I'll bet you ten bucks it doesn't have anything to do with snakes and spiders either,' Woeshack added.
'Of course it doesn't,' Paxton dismissed the remark irritably. 'Halahan wouldn't give the job of running a storefront operation full of goddamned snakes and spiders and God knows what else, in the middle of winter in some God-forsaken part of Oregon, to some rookie covert team who'd probably whimper and whine like a bunch of crybabies the first time something got loose.'
'Oh-oh, watch it, guys,' Henry Lightstone warned cheerfully, trying very hard to maintain a straight face as he sat up on the floor and leaned his back against the couch, 'I think ol' Paxton's about to go motivational on us.'
'You're damned right I am,' Paxton set his jaw firmly. 'That's what us motivational leaders are here for, to inspire the troops. 'Specially when all they do is piss and moan when they draw a piddly-ass rough assignment every now and then.'
'I hate to break this to you, buddy,' Lightstone pointed out casually, 'but I really don't think there was any 'draw' involved in this deal at all. Far as I'm concerned, this whole setup is just a little too bizarre, even for the federal government. I mean, who in their right mind sets up a storefront operation for reptile dealing in the middle of Oregon when they're supposed to be working bad guys down in Nogales? Christ, the airfares alone are going to — '
'Actually, Henry,' Mike Takahara interrupted, 'I don't think you should worry too much about airfares right away.'
'If you think I'm going to let Woeshack fly me a thousand miles from Oregon to Nogales, in the middle of
