Tiger Trap (10 page)

“Let me go!” Nick cried. “Let me go!”

Doug had Nick firmly by the arm and was marching him away from the door when Peanuts reached his trunk over the bars of his enclosure and seized Doug. As Doug was lifted into the air, he released his grip on Nick, who fell to the floor. Doug screamed — a blood-curdling yell — as Peanuts raised him higher and higher and then tossed him. Pinwheeling through the air, arms and legs flailing, Doug landed with a thud against the wall.

Before I could even think to react — whether to flee, or run to see if Doug was okay — Anthony and Bob appeared in the doorway. I stepped back as Nick picked himself up off the straw-covered floor and scampered over to my side. He hid slightly behind me as if seeking protection. Maybe we both should have jumped into the pen with Peanuts.

“What’s going on here?” Anthony bellowed. “What are you doing here?” He glanced at Doug, who was sitting on the ground and rubbing his head, seemingly in pain. Anthony turned to Bob. “See if he’s all right.”

Switching his attention to us, Anthony stared straight at me — an angry, hard, hot glare. I felt a wave of panic and fear — stronger than I’d ever experienced in my entire life.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said. His voice was quiet. That was worse, more scary, than if he’d yelled. “I’ve tried everything I could think of to make you stay away, but you just keep coming back.”

“We won’t come back again,” Nick pleaded. He sounded as if he were on the verge of tears.

It was up to me to defend him … defend me. “We want to see Mr. McCurdy or Vladimir,” I demanded.

“They can’t help you now,” he said threateningly. “It’s too late.”

The fear I was experiencing suddenly jumped right off the scale. What did he mean
too late
? Too late for what?

“There’s only
one
thing left for me to do,” he said ominously. “I tried to avoid this, but you don’t leave me any alternative.” He opened up his jacket. There, in a leather holster, was a gun!

“You can’t do that!” I gasped. “You can’t shoot us!”

“Shoot you?” He sounded almost as confused as I felt scared.

I pointed at the gun strapped to his side.

“Nobody’s going to shoot anybody,” Anthony said. “What I’m going to do is tell you the truth. I guess sometimes that can work when everything else fails.”

He opened his jacket wider to reveal the gun even more. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet. Was he going to pay us to go away? If he let us go right now, I’d do it for free.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“I know
what
you are!” I snapped, amazed at how I was either brave enough or stupid enough to give attitude to a guy with a gun.

“Settle down,” Nick said out of the side of his mouth.

“That’s okay, Nick. So, Sarah, do you really think you know what I am?”

That sickly sweet smirk filled his face. If I had gun, I’d have shot
him
.

He flipped open his wallet. There was a badge — a big silver shield — inside. “My name’s Anthony Mednis and I’m an agent of the United Nations, working under the mandate of international legislation to protect endangered and exotic animals.”

“W-what?” I sputtered. “You’re what?”

“A special agent.”

“I … I don’t understand,” I stammered, peering at the badge, trying to make sense of what I was seeing, what he’d just said and what had been going on here.

“You’re a cop?” Nick asked.

“An
agent
,” Anthony said, “a special agent working for the Wildlife Conservation Foundation under the authority of the United Nations. Myself, Bob and Doug and —” He turned around to where Doug sat and Bob hovered over him. “Is he okay?”

“I’m okay,” Doug answered weakly. “My arm’s hurt.”

“It could be broken,” Bob added.

“Damn!” Anthony said. “We can’t have that happen. Especially not now. Get him up to the house.”

Bob helped Doug to his feet. The way he was holding his arm — cradling it with the other — left no doubt he was hurt. The only question was how badly.

“You two come, too,” Anthony said. “We’ll sort out the rest of this up there.”

Anthony followed Doug and Bob out of the barn, leaving Nick and I standing there alone. For a split second I thought we could just run away now, but I knew we couldn’t do that.

“Come on,” I said to Nick, and we both hurried out the door after them. We quickly caught up — Doug didn’t seem to be able to move very quickly.

“It was an accident,” I said to Doug.

“Peanuts didn’t mean to harm anybody,” Nick said. “He was just trying to defend me.”

“I shouldn’t have grabbed you,” Doug said feebly. “I was just afraid to let you go before we talked to you. I couldn’t believe how far that elephant threw me.”

“Yeah, you really flew!” Nick said, sounding almost enthusiastic.

“Don’t you want to know why we’re here?” I asked Anthony, changing the subject quickly away from Nick and Peanuts and Doug being hurt.

“I know why you’re here,” Anthony said. “You’re here because you didn’t believe the lie we made up about the place being under quarantine.”

“Then there really wasn’t a disease,” I said.

“There are lots of diseases, but not one like the one I created to shoo everybody away.”

“You lied to us,” I said, stating the obvious.

“I lie to almost
everybody
. That’s part of my job.”

“But what about Mr. McCurdy and Vladimir?” I asked.

“Them I didn’t lie to. They know everything and have from almost the beginning. At least after I found out I could trust them. Let me look after Doug before you pester me with any more questions. Let’s just go inside.”

“Is Mr. McCurdy in there?” I asked. “Is Vladimir in there?”

“Angus is. Vladimir’s out doing something for us. I asked Angus to stay inside until we sorted things out. I didn’t want him getting shot.”

“Shot?” Nick said. “You thought we might have a gun?”

“We didn’t know it was you,” Anthony said. “All we knew is that some of these people do carry weapons and they don’t care about people any more than they care about animals.”

Nick rushed ahead and opened the door to the farmhouse. I trailed after everybody, down the hall and into the kitchen.

“Sarah! Nick!” Mr. McCurdy called out. He jumped up from the kitchen table, hurried over and wrapped an arm around each of us. It felt so good, so safe to have him there. “What are you two doing here?” he questioned.

“I guess we were the intruders,” I admitted.

“Are you both okay?” he asked.

“We are now,” I said. “I’m just so sorry.”

“You have to believe how sorry I am about how I had to lie to you,” Mr. McCurdy said.

“No need to lie anymore,” Anthony said. “I started to tell them the truth.”

“I hated not telling you what was going on and then making up all that stuff about that pretend disease,” Mr. McCurdy said.

“We still don’t understand why any of this is happening,” I said.

Nick grinned. “Yeah, all we know is that Anthony’s some sort of cop —”

“Special agent,” Anthony corrected from across the room where he was examining Doug’s arm. Doug didn’t look good.

“Yeah, whatever,” Nick said. “And we know there wasn’t a disease, but we don’t know why you told us there was.”

“It was important that you two stay away,” Mr. McCurdy said.

“But why didn’t you want us here?” I asked.

“It isn’t that I didn’t want you here — you have no idea how hard it was not to have you two around.”

“We have a pretty good idea,” I said, “because we know how hard it was not to be here.”

“I just didn’t have a choice. It’s too dangerous for you to be here. It was for your safety.”

“We wouldn’t get hurt,” I said. “We know our way around animals.”

“It’s not the animals I was worried about,” Mr. McCurdy said. “It’s all those men who want to buy our animals … to kill our animals.”

“But why are those men coming here?” Nick asked. “And if Anthony’s a cop — okay, a special agent — why isn’t he arresting them?”

“You can’t arrest people without evidence,” Anthony said. “But first things first. Bob, you have to take Doug to the hospital to have that arm looked at.”

“How bad is it?” Mr. McCurdy asked.

“Collarbone’s broken, and I think the arm’s fractured,” Anthony said.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. I felt so awful. I liked Doug. Too bad it wasn’t Anthony the elephant had tossed.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Anthony said. “It isn’t like you’re the one who tossed him across the barn.”

“But if we hadn’t been here, none of this would have happened.”

“I guess you have a point there,” Anthony said. “Maybe it is your fault.”

Nick shot me an angry look. I had to learn to keep my mouth shut.

“But there’ll be enough time to figure that out later,” Anthony said. He turned back to Doug and Bob. “You two better get going to the hospital.”

“I don’t want to go right now,” Doug said. “How about if I wait until tomorrow morning?”

“You go now. You don’t have any choice. That’s an
order
.”

“But what if something happens tonight and I’m not here to help?” he asked.

“If something happened tonight, you wouldn’t be much help, anyway,” Anthony reasoned.

“How about if Bob stays here. I don’t want to leave you two men short.”

“One or two doesn’t matter. I need you both. But it doesn’t matter. Not now. It’s almost two in the morning. If it was going to happen tonight, Vladimir would have called already.”

“Just where is Vladimir?” Nick asked.

“He’s out trying to arrange a little business deal with a couple of guys who want to buy all of the tigers,” Anthony said. “It’s a big deal worth over half a million dollars.”

“You can’t sell the tigers no matter how much you get!” I protested.

“Sarah,” Mr. McCurdy said, “we’re not selling any tigers for any amount of money. This isn’t about selling animals. It’s about
catching
people.”

“Bad people,” Anthony said. “Very bad people, and I’ll explain it all in just a few minutes.” He turned to Doug. “Call after the doctor’s checked you out. Let me know if I need to get another agent for tomorrow.”

Bob and Doug left the room, and I heard the sound of the front door closing after them.

“Well?” Nick said. “You were going to explain everything to us.”

Anthony nodded. “As you know, I’m a special agent and my assignment is to try to stop the trade in endangered and exotic animals. Tigers are high on that list.”

“Then shouldn’t you be in the jungles of India or up in Siberia?” Nick asked.

“We have agents in both those places. But what you may not know is that there are far more tigers here in North America than there are in the wilds of India and Siberia put together.”

“I didn’t know that,” Nick said.

“I did,” I said. “There are estimates that there are close to twenty-five thousand tigers spread across this continent.”

“That’s unbelievable!” Nick said.

“Unbelievable but true,” Anthony confirmed. “And the vast majority of those are in the hands of private collectors and private game farms.”

“People like Mr. McCurdy and Vladimir,” Nick said.

“If it was all people like them, there wouldn’t be any worries,” Anthony said. “Some are owned by people who think nothing about trading a tiger for a wad of cash, and those are the people we’re after. We got word out through the Internet, through our website, through contacts in the exotic animal community that there were tigers and other animals for sale and that the buyer didn’t need papers or to make promises about what he was going to do with the animal. If he had cash, he could get a tiger or whatever animal he wanted.”

“And did it work?”

“Like a charm,” Mr. McCurdy said. “So far over thirty people have been caught and charged.”

“And just as important,” Anthony added, “we were able to follow these people back, like links in a chain, to other people and other animals. Thanks to this operation we’ve saved more than seventy tigers that were waiting for the right bidder or the right butcher.”

“That’s amazing!” Nick said.

“It is amazing, but why didn’t you tell us what was going on?” I asked.

“I wanted to but I couldn’t,” Mr. McCurdy said.

“I wouldn’t let him,” Anthony said. “We couldn’t risk the operation.”

“But we wouldn’t have told anybody!” Nick said.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t have deliberately told anybody,” Anthony said, “but sometimes, for some people, it’s hard to hide a lie.”

All three of them looked at me. “Is it my fault that I like telling the truth?”

“We just couldn’t risk it,” Anthony said. “This is too important. Other than Angus and Vladimir, the only other person we told was the head of the local police department.”

“Martin knew?” I asked.

“We never run any operation without the cooperation of the local law-enforcement agencies,” Anthony said.

“That probably explains why Martin was so insistent that we not come over here during the quarantine,” I said. “He knew it was fake, right?”

“He knew everything,” Anthony said. “We had to come up with some story after the two of you almost stumbled into that deal. We had to make sure the deal wouldn’t be jeopardized and that you wouldn’t be in harm’s way. That’s when we came up with the disease angle. Actually, the whole part about the parrots was Mr. McCurdy’s idea.”

“It was your idea?” I asked Mr. McCurdy.

He shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you the truth about why you couldn’t come out to Tiger Town for a while, so I figured I’d at least tell you a lie that would save your feelings.”

“You didn’t really think you could fool Sarah for long, did you?” Nick asked.

“I only needed another two or three weeks,” Mr. McCurdy said.

“I was surprised it took
this
long,” Anthony said.

“Anthony said he thought you’d figure it out, that it was just a matter of time,” Mr. McCurdy explained.

“You were suspicious of me from the beginning,” Anthony said, “so I thought you’d end up putting two and two together. I figured your bad feelings toward me — the way you don’t trust me — would push you in the direction of the truth.” He paused, and his trademark smirk slid onto his face. “I bet over the weeks you really started to dislike me.”

“I
never
liked you.”

Mr. McCurdy cackled like an old crow.

“Didn’t you like me even a little in the beginning?” Anthony asked.

I shook my head. “You started with a lie and you always looked like you were hiding something. And what was with those boots?”

“These boots,” he said, gesturing at his feet, “were part of a shipment of illegal caiman skins our agents intercepted. I thought they were a perfect touch for the costume of the character I was playing. If you didn’t like me to begin with, you must have really, really learned to hate me over the weeks.”

“It didn’t take that long,” I said, and Mr. McCurdy burst into laughter again.

“It was all part of who I had to become to sell this sting operation,” Anthony said. “Slimy people like to deal with other slimy people so that’s what I became. You have to admit I played it pretty well.”

“No argument there,” I said.

“You remember when I said the two of us have a lot in common?” Anthony asked.

“I remember,” I said. That didn’t mean I agreed.

“Well, we also have one great big difference. We couldn’t risk telling you the truth because we couldn’t count on you to be able to cover it up. We lied to protect you and your brother.”

“But now we know the truth,” I said.

“And now it’s almost over. Word has gotten out to the exotic animal underground that this is a law-enforcement undercover operation, a sting.”

“But you said Vladimir was out meeting with somebody tonight,” I said.

“He is,” Anthony said. “It’s probably our last deal.”

“I thought everybody knew about what was really going on here,” I said.

“Everybody in the underground knows, but these people aren’t in the underground,” Anthony said. “Maybe I shouldn’t say any more.”

“That’s not fair!” Nick protested. “You’ve told us just about everything already. Besides, who are we going to tell?”