Bill Plager ran a callused palm over his bald spot. "Meat eater or no', ye'll no' capture anythin' until ye get these amateurs tae stop drop- pin' their damn sonar buoys all over the Loch."

"Us?" Hoagland stood. "It's your buoys jamming our grid!"

"Easy, boys," David warned, "there's no unions here. Either you fellas play nice or we'll boot your asses off the Loch."

Dr. Saumil Shah, Associate Curator at the Smithsonian, raised his hand. "A question, please. Assuming you can even locate this water creature, where do you think you're going to keep it?"

"Right here." David stood, then circled Urquhart Bay on the map with his pencil.

Meghan Talley rolled her eyes.

"Okay, I can see a few doubting Thomases, but think about this. The bay provides us with a natural habitat, with three shorelines we can use to pen the creature in. Council's already negotiating with engineers and construction companies who said they can drop steel fencing from a prefab bridge spanning the entire mouth of the bay, in effect, cordoning it off from the rest of the Loch. The fencing'll be secured to the bottom using concrete anchors and supported along the surface by a series of buoys. Naturally, the shoreline surrounding the bay will have to be fenced in as well. It'll be the largest animal pen in the world, and I guarantee, the most popular."

"Plus," added the Provost, "it'd allow us tae study the creature while still protectin' the legend… an' our tourists."

David offered a cocky smile. "Now I'll answer your questions. Yes, ma'am, and you are?"

"Meghan Talley. My husband, Mark, and I are curators at the British Museum of Natural History. We were at your press conference last night when you publicly identified the predator as a plesiosaur. Exactly what did you base your analysis on?"

"Decades of sightings. Photos. The usual stuff."

"I see." Meghan's blue eyes blazed. "And is this the type of scientific protocol we can come to expect?"

"Look, lady, what difference does it make what I say it is? Once we capture it, we'll look under its skirt and know for sure, right?"

"It's ass-backwards, doctor. This is still supposed to be a scientific expedition."

"Says who?" David paced around the table, chest out. "I've been hired to organize a hunt, plain and simple. You want to call it a scientific expedition, knock your socks off. Me? I say we capture the thing, then sort the science out later."

"My wife's right," Mark Talley said. "If you don't know what you're hunting, you can't even be certain it's one creature. You're also basing your assumptions on Nessie lore. Chances are, it's not something anywhere as romantic as a plesiosaur. What if it's just a giant sturgeon?"

"A sturgeon?"