Double blind

Chapter Forty-two

Simon Whatley woke up at a little past ten that Sunday morning with a queasy stomach and a massive headache… the predictable aftereffects of far too many hours spent in cramped airplanes eating lousy food and surrounded by obnoxious children, not to mention sitting in noisy airport lounges filled with more obnoxious travelers and equally lousy food.

Only the alcohol had saved him, the congressional district office manager now remembered, remorsefully rubbing his aching head.

Whatley's primitive survival instincts told him to roll over and go back to sleep. But his stomach continued to churn, and his head continued to throb, so he finally got up and rummaged through the medicine cabinet for anything that appeared remotely like a proper antidote and consumed it in large quantities.

A half hour later, he felt good enough to get up again. This time he managed to shave, shower, and brush his teeth before his churning, throbbing hangover drove him back to the soothing stability and comfort of his bed.

Whatley knew he had things to do — important things, like reviewing the drop-box messages — that he simply must get done. But the mere thought of another mind- and body-numbing red-eye flight to Washington, DC, that evening proved more than he could bear.

"It's not right!" he ranted to himself. "I'm a goddamn congressional district office manager. A person of power and influence who controls a wide range of congressional office perks and privileges. One phone call from me, and a friend or associate of Regis J. Smallsreed — or someone who desperately wants to be a friend or associate of such a notoriously powerful and influential congressman — and…"

Simon Whatley blinked at what began as a frustration-relieving diatribe ended with a brilliant idea.

He smiled and rubbed his aching neck.

So many special perks and privileges that a congressional district office manager could hand out for services rendered, even in a rural enclave like Jasper County, Oregon…

But the special services of Rene Bocal rank right up there at the top of the p-and-p list, Simon Whatley thought to himself, resting his throbbing head gingerly on his pillow as he dialed the familiar number, identified himself, then provided the address and necessary details.

Whatley felt vaguely guilty as he hung up the phone. A call to Rene Bocal constituted an expensive perk, one generally reserved for Smallsreed himself or one of his most favored clients. He wavered. Maybe he should call back and cancel the reservation. But then Whatley remembered the remark made by Sam Tisbury, one of Smallsreed's most favored clients and certainly most favored political donors.

… better keep him out of first-class. Make the reservations under different names, random locations in the back cabin, inside seats whenever possible…

Simon Whatley closed his eyes, wincing at the memory.

Oh yes, he thought, I do deserve this. Matter of fact, I damned well earned it.

So by the time the very professional-looking young woman in the very professional-looking business suit arrived at his door with the thin, executive-style briefcase in her hand, the congressional district office manager no longer felt the least bit guilty about adding a fifteen-hundred-dollar charge to Smallsreed's special account.

And by the time the senior congressional staffer stretched out face down on his bed, and the young woman kneaded his narrow and decidedly tense shoulder and neck muscles, her carefully oiled breasts and thighs sliding deliberately but distractingly against him, Simon Whatley could not have cared less about the important work he must get done.

There would be plenty of time for that on the plane, this evening, when he would feel much better… and much more up to the task at hand.

At one o'clock that Sunday afternoon, the first trace of a smile finally broke the tense contours of Bravo Team leader Larry Paxton's face.

It had been a long time coming.

Given the very same circumstances, Paxton decided as he glared down at the finally cooperating arachnids with no little satisfaction, even a potential saint like Mother Teresa undoubtedly would have allowed disparaging remarks to escape her lips.

Christ, what the hell do they expect? The Bravo Team leader immediately abandoned his holy thoughts in favor of a more practical one as he waited patiently for the last of the fifteen giant red-kneed tarantulas to venture out of the jury-rigged clear-plastic tunnel and drop into the waiting terrarium, where fourteen of his or her fellow tarantulas investigated a clear plastic box filled with scurrying crickets. I'm sitting here in an unheated warehouse in the middle of Oregon, freezing my ass off with a kid-agent-pilot who's afraid to fly, thirty deadly snakes, 750 giant spiders, and a dozen baby crocodiles that attack anything that moves; I've got a rookie covert team that isn't even supposed to be here being tagged by a bunch of militant idiots who may or may not be attaching bombs to our vehicles; I've got two of my best agents tagging the rookie team and the taggers in direct violation of direct orders from Halahan, instead of helping Woeshack and me figure out how to move the goddamned spiders into the goddamned terrariums; and I've got a wild-card agent who's supposed to be out buying Bigfoot evidence running around with a blind-man soothsayer who rides a motorbike, and shacking up with a beautiful post-office worker with a goddamned panther who thinks she's a witch.

And if anything goes wrong with all that, anything at all, Larry Paxton reminded himself, it's gonna be my fault.

And they wonder why I get upset? Shit

Then, to Paxton's absolute amazement, the last red-kneed tarantula dropped into the terrarium with a barely audible thud.

The Bravo Team leader's face broke out into a beaming smile.

Hot damn, he thought, as he quickly disconnected the tubing, pulled the string to open the small plastic box — sending dozens of crickets scurrying in all directions, pursued by fifteen apparently ravenous tarantulas — and hurriedly duct-taped a piece of cardboard over the ragged hole in the stamped-aluminum terrarium top.

"Hey, Thomas, how you coming with that next cricket box?" Paxton yelled across the warehouse.

"Not too good," the team's quasi-pilot confessed. "It's really hard to make a hundred crickets go into a box this small all at the same time. A lot of them are getting loose. You sure we need a hundred?"

"Whatever." Paxton dismissed the younger agent's question with a wave of his right hand. "Just hurry it up. I'm on a roll over here."

"You mean your invention works?"

The young special agent/pilot's head popped up in surprise.

"Hell yes, it works. What did you expect?" A pained expression flashed across Paxton's face. "You think I need an electronic genius like Mike to come up with something simple like this?"

"We always did before," Woeshack pointed out truthfully.

"Well, you can forget what happened before, 'cause from now on, things are gonna be different around here," the Bravo Team leader predicted as he worked his jury-rigged device into the crude hole drilled in the next aluminum terrarium cover. "Seeing as how I'm the boss around here, things are gonna go my way for a change."

Which, coincidentally, was exactly what Simon Whatley was thinking, too, until the phone next to his bed rang.