need,' Smallsreed added cheerfully. 'They'll make damned sure everybody's where they're supposed to be. Right, Simon?'
God I hope so, Whatley thought, feeling his stomach churn, but he said, 'Yes sir, absolutely.'
'We're going to need periodic reports, so we're absolutely certain everything goes according to plan. These agents caused the deaths of my father, my son, and my daughter,' Tisbury reminded everyone in the room — as only a powerful third-generation industrialist who truly believed that his immense wealth and influence gave him the right to seek out vengeance on his own terms could remind them — 'and they're going to pay for that. They are going to pay dearly.'
'I would also remind you all that we lost six of the founding members of ICER.' The unfamiliar, deep, and very foreboding voice that rumbled from the back recesses of the room startled Simon Whatley. 'Until we can reestablish the committee with individuals of equivalent power, influence, and ideology, the environmental extremists will continue to run amok. These agents caused us to suffer tremendous setbacks. That must stop, immediately!'
'And it will stop,' Regis J. Smallsreed promised. 'You have my word on that.'
'And the reports?' Tisbury pursued his main point of interest.
'I can fax you a daily briefing, along with — ' Simon Whatley began, but Tisbury quickly interrupted.
'No faxes. No written reports. And especially no phone calls,' he ordered sharply. 'I am not about to find myself in federal prison because of some goddamned wiretap, and I assume everyone in this room feels exactly the same way. I want comprehensive verbal reports every two days, preferably here in this office.'
'That's not a problem,' Smallsreed agreed affably.
'But-' Simon Whatley tried to protest, but the congressman ignored him completely.
'Simon will be here at, oh, let's say 10:00 A.M. sharp — just in case that red-eye gets delayed again,' Smallsreed added with a wink, 'every other day, starting this coming Friday. No notes, no reports, no phone calls. Just the four of us in this room. And I can assure you it will be a sorry day if any federal agent ever even thinks about bugging this office.'
'But — ' Whatley tried again, but no one in the room paid him the slightest bit of attention.
'And keep him out of first-class,' Tisbury added. 'Make the reservations under different names, randomized locations in the back cabin, inside seats whenever possible, pay in cash, and have somebody else pick up the tickets. I don't want some sharp-eyed stewardess or airport clerk with a good memory for faces wondering why he's making all these red¬eye flights to DC.'
'No problem.' Smallsreed bobbed his massive head agreeably.
'Traveling back and forth like that, will he have enough time to sleep, and still get fully briefed at the other end?' came the ominous voice from the shadows.
'Oh hell yes,' Smallsreed replied confidently. 'Simon's one of those people you can depend on to get the job done. He'll get all the sleep he needs on the plane.'
At 11:30 A.M., eastern standard time, David Halahan, Chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Special Operations Branch, poked his head in his deputy chiefs office door.
'Any more word on Boggs?' he asked.
Freddy Moore shook his head.
'We've got everybody on Charlie Team except Donato, LiBrandi, and Marashenko combing the town. Figured we'd better hold those three back in reserve, just in case Boggs doesn't show and we need to make our own contacts with those Chosen Brigade of the Seventh Seal folks.'
'What about his house?' Halahan asked. 'Anybody look inside?'
'Not yet. I told them to hold off on that on account of the neighbors. Wilbur's got the whole damned place alarmed, and LiBrandi's the only one on Charlie Team who's been through lock school.'
'What about at night?'
'LiBrandi's willing to give it a try, but if that alarm goes off, that means dealing with the local cops, any one of whom could have relatives in the militant group. There's a good chance he could badge his way out of it, especially if the locals know Wilbur, but that would still cut us down to Donato and Marashenko for the contact work.'
'Okay,' Halahan agreed with his deputy, 'tell them to keep looking.' He started to leave, then turned back.
'What about Bravo Team?'
Freddy Moore looked at his watch.
'Based on the e-mail report they sent last night, I think we can assume that Bravo Team has more than enough to keep them fully occupied for the next twenty-four hours or so.'
Chapter Twenty
'I've got a bad feeling about this,' Mike Takahara murmured softly as he put down the battery-powered sander and wiped the sawdust off his face.
'What do you mean you've got a bad feeling?' Larry Paxton demanded. 'You're the one who designed the damned thing.'
'Yeah, but — '
'Didn't you ever build things with your dad when you were a kid? You know, birdhouses, Tinkertoys®, Legos®, things like that?'
'Yeah, sure, but everything we built always fell apart,' the tech agent confessed.
Special Agent Dwight Stoner muttered something under his breath, then walked to the rear of the rental car parked next to a huge stack of crates, boxes, and bags containing an assortment of terrariums, specially designed terrarium lids, terrarium lights, extension cords, junction boxes, several dozen rolls of silvered duct tape, boxes of crickets and mice, snake bags, snake hooks, snake tongs, nets, gravel, mouse food, water dishes, four heavy-duty plastic swimming pools about eighteen inches deep and six feet in diameter, and a full-size chest freezer that was delivered earlier that morning.
After grabbing a pair of the long-handled snake hooks, Stoner opened the trunk, removed a Model 870 Remington 12-gauge pump shotgun, a box of shells, a small ice chest, and a fire extinguisher. Then he closed the trunk, walked back over to the mind-numbing stack of seventy-two brightly labeled 2'X4'X1' wooden crates in the middle of the team's leased warehouse, and handed the fire extinguisher to Thomas Woeshack, the ice chest to Mike Takahara, and the snake hooks to Larry Paxton.
The Bravo Team leader eyed the shotgun inquisitively.
'Bird shot,' Stoner explained as he fed five of the low-based cartridges into the shotgun's extended magazine. 'Way I see it, anything starts to walk, crawl, or slither out of that contraption, one of three things is going to happen. Either you're going to catch it, Woeshack's going to freeze it, or I'm going to kill it. End of story.'
'Can we do that?' Thomas Woeshack asked, looking confused as usual.
'Oh yeah, no problem.'
The expression on Dwight Stoner's face clearly indicated that any discussions about proper enforcement of the Endangered Species Act — as it applied to poisonous snakes and giant red-kneed tarantulas trapped with him in a warehouse — would have to wait for a better day.
'Well, at least we know Halahan cares about our welfare,' Mike Takahara reported after he opened the ice chest and removed a plastic-sealed reference card marked in bright colors.
'Just because the man sends us a whole bunch of expensive snakebite serum by overnight mail doesn't necessarily mean he cares,' Larry Paxton countered reasonably. 'He's probably just covering his butt in case the Washington Office ever gets wind of this operation.'
'Well, according to this, he bought us just about every poisonous snake antivenin known to man.' Takahara examined the contents of the chest. 'Yep, everything's in color-coded syringes, ready to go. Something goes wrong, all we need to do is figure out who got bit by exactly what kind of snake… ' — he gestured toward the small library of reference books that came with the emergency snakebite kit — 'match up the codes, inject the right syringe in the immediate area of the bite, and we'll probably be okay-provided we get to the hospital in time. Everyone clear on that?'
'Not my problem,' Dwight Stoner announced as he dumped the remaining shotgun shells in his coat pocket.
