by Ken Goddard
The nurse put her ear right next to his mouth, but it still took Boggs three tries before she made any sense out of the sounds.
"Did you say Wilbur?"
He smiled weakly, but the sharp-eyed nurse caught it immediately.
"Okay, Wilbur it is. That's wonderful, Wilbur." The nurse grinned cheerfully and the resident physician made a congratulatory thumbs-up sign, then leaned forward again. "Now, just one more question and we'll let you rest. Can you tell me your last name?"
Boggs thought he could. But when he tried, everything started to drift away again, and he realized how tired he was, and how good it felt simply to lie back and… sleep.
"Well I'll be darned." The floor nurse looked up at the attending physician. "Do you believe that?"
"I'd sure like to," he replied as he made a few notations in Boggs's chart. "It'd be nice to have a patient with a real, honest-to-God medical coverage for a change."
The duty agent took the call, listened politely, wrote down the caller's name and number in his official notebook, then walked into the back room of the Medford, Oregon, field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
"Just got an interesting call from Providence Hospital," the young FBI agent reported to the two older agents. "They've got an unidentified patient over there, pretty badly injured, who just regained consciousness, and is claiming to be an FBI agent. They were wondering if we were missing anybody?"
"What did you tell them?"
"That everybody here at the office was accounted for, but I'd put out a teletype."
"Good, that'll keep the hospital administrator and the county folks happy." Senior Resident Agent George Kawana turned to his guest. "You guys missing anyone on your detail?"
Assistant Special Agent in Charge A1 Grynard's eyebrows shot up. "I sure as hell hope not," he replied. "Did they give you a description?"
The young agent referred to his notes.
"White male, six-one, two-ten, brown eyes…"
"Not one of ours." Grynard shook his head, visibly relieved.
"… short gray hair, first name possibly Wilbur." The young agent finished.
"I know two or three Wilburs in the bureau, but none of them live around here," Grynard elaborated. "There's Wilbur Collins in the Philadelphia Office, Wilbur Fox in Miami, and…"
"You know who that almost sounds like?" A thoughtful look appeared in the senior resident agent's eyes. "Wilbur Boggs, out in Jasper County."
The young agent looked down at his notes again.
"Could be, I suppose," he admitted dubiously.
"Who's he, one of our retired agents?" Grynard asked.
"Nope, Fish and Wildlife."
A1 Grynard's eyes snapped wide open.
"What?"
"Did I strike a nerve?" George Kawana cocked his head curiously.
"In a manner of speaking," Grynard admitted. "I had some dealings with a Special Ops team of Fish and Wildlife Service agents a little while back, and the entire experience damned near drove me out of my mind. All things considered, the idea that any covert Fish and Wildlife Service agent — much less that particular Special Ops team — might be wandering around this part of the country right now is not a cheerful thought."
"That bad, huh?"
"A walking nightmare would be a very polite description."
"Well, I don't think you have to worry about Wilbur Boggs being part of a Special Ops team… or at least not around here," George Kawana offered.
"Really? Why not?"
"For one thing, he wouldn't be able to maintain any kind of cover around this area for more than about fifteen minutes, max. This is hunting and fishing country, and anybody who does either in Jackson, Josephine, or Jasper Counties knows old Wilbur Boggs. Classic old game-warden type. Take an extra fish, duck, or deer over the limit or out of season, and you'll find Wilbur leaping out of the bush with a smile on his face and a ticket book in his hand. And don't even think about trying to talk or badge your way out of a violation notice."
"You speaking from practical experience, George?"
George Kawana smiled. "Fortunately not. But I know a couple of local officers who made the mistake of thinking they could roll the gold and bullshit their way past Wilbur. Bad mistake."
"Not exactly your low-key, low-profile, covert-agent type, huh?"
"Hardly." The senior resident FBI agent chuckled. "You know, though, now that you mention it, I think I do recall hearing something about those Fish and Wildlife guys. Didn't some heavy-duty, multinational counterterrorist group working for some political type out of Interior target them, and then those agents wound up whipping a bunch of counterterrorist butts?"
"They lost a couple of good guys in the process, but yeah, they did a hell of a job," Grynard grudgingly conceded.
"It's all coming back." George Kawana smiled. "You got caught up in it when you were working out of Anchorage, following up on the shooting death of that Fish and Wildlife Service supervisory agent. Only the way I heard it, you put a Russian Embassy-level tail on one of those wildlife agents because he kept popping up as your number one suspect. But then he kept on breaking out of the box… and eventually led everybody to the bad guys. What was his name again?"
"George, I've got more than enough problems in my life as it is right now, and you're not helping things any," A1 Grynard warned.
"Come on, what was his name, that agent who gave you such a bad time?" the senior resident agent pressed.
"Lightstone." A pained look appeared on Grynard's clean-shaven face. "Henry Lightstone."
It was probably just as well that FBI Supervisory Agent A1 Grynard had no idea that at the very moment he and Senior Resident Agent George Kawana worked out the final stages of a long-term and exceedingly complex FBI surveillance operation, two of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's three Special Operations teams — eleven agents in total — were actively engaged in supposedly unrelated covert investigations within a hundred-mile radius of the FBI's Medford, Oregon, field office.
All things considered, though, that bit of knowledge probably wouldn't have bothered Grynard anywhere near as much as the realization that the one covert investigator who had caused him the most trouble during the past two years — Special Agent Henry Lightstone — was, at that very moment, less than two miles from the FBI's Medford field office, poised to set events into motion that would cause the supervisory FBI agent even more grief in the days to come.
Ten minutes after Henry Lightstone and Bobby LaGrange walked in through the glass-door entrance to the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab in Ashland, Oregon, and checked in with the receptionist, supervisory forensic scientist Ed Rhodes hurried into the lobby, buttoning up his lab coat as he walked.
"Henry?"
"Hey, Ed! How're you doing, buddy?"
"Great." Rhodes smiled cheerfully as he shook Lightstone's hand. "And, come to think of it, you look a whole lot better than when I saw you last," the wildlife forensic scientist noted.
"The job's a lot more fun when people aren't shooting at you."
"Yeah, I'll bet."
"Ed, this is Bobby LaGrange, my old homicide detail partner from San Diego PD. I'd tell him what you do around here, but I have no idea," Lightstone confessed.
"Today, I'm acting lab director, chief computer repairman, and number two assistant on the mop detail. We just had a water pipe break, which is what took me so long to get out here."
"Acting lab director? You mean the boss is gone again? Doesn't he ever work around here?"
"Not so you'd notice." Rhodes grinned as he shook Bobby LaGrange's hand. "But don't you ever tell him I said that, 'cause then he'll make me go to DC next time."
"This whole place is a crime lab for wildlife?" Bobby LaGrange wore a stunned look as he surveyed the modern white concrete and blue-toned glass facility.
"Absolutely," Rhodes boasted proudly. "Like to have a tour?"
"You better believe it." The retired homicide detective nodded affirmatively.<
br />
"First things first." Henry Lightstone took a small glassine envelope out of his pocket.
"Well, I guess that means the first stop on the tour is the evidence control unit." Ed Rhodes used a plastic programmable key to enter the secured room, then walked across to the log-in counter, placed his bar-coded ID card into one of the reader slots, then keyed his access code into the case management system computer. "Okay, what've we got?"
Lightstone told him.
Ed Rhodes stared at the federal agent for a long moment.
"You're kidding me, right?"
Lightstone shook his head solemnly.
"Okay." The forensic scientist shrugged philosophically, reached for the nearby phone, and punched in a three-digit intercom number.
"Margaret? This is Ed. Hey, guess who's here? Remember Henry Lightstone, one of the Special Ops agents? Yeah, that's right. Well, he's back again, and you're not going to believe what he brought us this time."
Chapter Twenty-three
Congressional aide Keith Bennington did not enjoy confrontation. Given the choice, he much preferred to leave such unpleasant social interactions to Simon Whatley, and merely enjoy the relatively minor perks associated with his position as a powerful congressman's local assistant while he decided how to pursue his own lucrative political career.
While, at the same time, pursuing the charms of young and vivacious congressional Interns like Maria Cordovian.
A definite perk of the job, he thought with a smile.
But much to his dismay, and for the second day in a row, Maria hadn't shown up this morning.
And Simon Whatley, his normally dependable and available boss, was in no position to deal with this latest confrontational issue either, because he was somewhere over Tennessee on his flight back to Jasper County, Oregon, and, judging from the noise in the background, in very close proximity to a least two screaming children.
And Bennington's news — that the profiles on the agents of Bravo Team had not arrived that morning by FedEx as their deeply burrowed source in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Washington, DC Headquarters had promised — had done nothing whatsoever to soothe Whatley's simmering sense of frustration, outrage, and betrayal.
Although limited by his surroundings, his barely contained whispered fury came across loud and clear over the plane's satellite relay circuits.
Bennington would track Robert — Smallsreed's deeply burrowed intelligence source in the Department of the Interior — down, right now, from three time zones away,
even if he had to use the goddamned FBI.
Robert, if he wished to remain employed anywhere within the legislative or administrative confines of the District of Columbia, would obtain and fax the federal wildlife agents' profiles to Whatley's private office within the hour.
Once the faxed pages arrived, Bennington would lock the door to Whatley's office, put on a pair of gloves, carefully trim the imprinted fax headers off every incoming page, place the wildlife agents' profiles in a plain manila envelope, seal the envelope, address it to Post Office Box Fourteen, Loggerhead City, Oregon, apply the necessary postage without, under any circumstances, using the district office postage machine; and then personally deliver that envelope immediately to the Loggerhead City rural post office at the intersection of Brandywine Road and Loggerhead Creek.
And at 8:45 that evening, Pacific standard time, when congressional district office manager Simon Whatley stepped off his plane and entered the terminal at Rogue Valley International Airport, Keith Bennington — if he was interested in future employment of any sort in Jasper County, Oregon, much less the goddamned District of Columbia — would be there to inform him, in person, that every one of those steps had been accomplished.
It took the thoroughly frightened congressional aide nearly an hour of increasingly frantic phone calls to locate Robert, who profusely apologized for his failure to get the profiles out the previous day, but insisted that none of them could imagine how difficult it was to access the personnel files of federal employees. Especially federal law-enforcement employees involved in covert investigations. Didn't they understand what would happen to him — and his girlfriend — if he got caught in the Personnel Office file room using her security keys to access those files? Didn't they understand that the unauthorized copying and removal of restricted law-enforcement personnel information was a felony? Didn't they…?
Numbed and frustrated by the magnitude of his own problems, and in no mood to listen to someone whining who claimed to spend the better portion of his free time dating bright, attractive, and influential congressional staffers, Bennington cut him off with a curt expletive and demanded to know if he had the profiles in his possession.
Yes, as a matter of fact he did, which just went to show how valuable and dependable he was, Robert had replied haughtily. But it was eight-thirty in the goddamned evening, and it just so happened that a rather luscious young House Foreign Relations Committee staffer — a recent acquaintance that his current girlfriend and her friends didn't know about — had agreed to accompany him to a conveniently secluded trendy nightspot for a few drinks and whatever. So Bennington ought to be pretty damned grateful he'd even answered his pager.
And besides, the FedEx offices were all closed now, and there wasn't anything Keith Bennington or Simon Whatley or even Regis J. Smallsreed himself could do about that. So, as far as he was concerned, they could all just take their petty-ass little problems and…
It took Bennington another five minutes to convince Robert that Simon Whatley was deadly serious about his threat — which, Bennington noted thoughtfully, would undoubtedly include a discreet call to Robert's current girlfriend, because Bennington wasn't about to hide anything from a man like Whatley — and that everyone would fare much better if Robert simply reined in his overactive libido long enough to fax the damned profiles to Whatley's office ASAP because if he didn't, Bennington's next goddamned phone call would be to Regis J. Smallsreed himself.
Thirty-five minutes later, the temporarily empowered congressional aide received his first inkling of how wretchedly things could go when the cover page of Robert's fax dropped out of Simon Whatley's office machine and informed him that eighty-seven more pages were about to follow.
Fifty-three minutes later, the last page finally arrived, by which time jagged fax header strips covered the floor of Whatley's office and Keith Bennington hovered on the brink of a nervous breakdown.
According to his watch, which he had glanced at two or three times between every faxed page, he had exactly one hour and nineteen minutes to deliver the profiles to the Loggerhead City post office and reach the Rogue Valley International Airport ahead of his boss… a total distance, if he added the map segments correctly, of seventy-two miles. He'd already called the airport three times and received the same message. Yes sir, the flight is on time.
Which was probably bullshit, he tried to reassure himself. The flights were never on time.
Except this one will be, he thought sullenly. Hell, the way things've been going on this deal, it'll probably be…
Early? My God.
The idea numbed his mind.
A mile a minute — that was what, sixty miles an hour? — with seven minutes to spare. Jesus, gotta hurry, he thought as he stuffed the ragged-edged pages into the envelope with his gloved hands, hurriedly licked the seal — cutting his tongue on the sharp-edged flap in the process — and then ran to the postage machine. All I have to do now is
… oh Christ!
He'd almost forgotten Whatley's admonition about the stamps.
Bennington wasted two of his spare minutes tearing Simon Whatley's office apart in a desperate search for the envelope of government-purchased stamps that Whatley used for private mail, and then burned three more ransacking the desks of their four office workers and volunteers. He found dozens of franked mailers and franked labels and franked envelopes. But no stamps.
He was running for the office sedan with the keys and enve
lope clutched desperately in his hand, vaguely aware — but not really caring — that it was raining, and that he'd forgotten to grab his raincoat and left the office in a shambles and the front door unlocked, when it occurred to him.
Wait a minute. I'm going to a post office. They have stamp machines at a post office!
Another momentary flash of panic brought him to an immediate halt in the middle of the parking lot. The cold rain began to soak through his light jacket as he quickly dug his hand into his pocket and came up with a small handful of change. Two quarters, four dimes, three nickels. He hefted the thick envelope.
Not enough. Not nearly enough. Shit!
He dug for his wallet, ignoring the fact that his hands trembled.
A twenty, and five — no, six ones!
Yes!
They'd have change machines at the post office, he told himself. Either that or the stamp machines would take ones. They'd have to.
He looked down at his watch. Seven twenty-seven.
Seventy-eight minutes to go seventy-two miles.
Gotta get going… right now!
Oblivious to the rapidly deteriorating weather conditions, Keith Bennington ran for the car.
At seven-thirty that Wednesday evening, the woman finally gave up.
For whatever reason, the cat simply refused to come down from her high-limb perch.
"Okay, be that way," she muttered to herself as she firmly closed the door to the ancient-tree-decorated living room and turned the dead-bolt knob.
She knew the cat was agitated. She'd been that way ever since the intriguing stranger — what was his name, Henry something? — had left. And to a limited degree, she even sympathized with her sulking pet.
You and me both, babe, the woman thought irritably. Just what we need right now.
After closing and dead-bolting the second connecting door to the living room, the woman walked down the corridor to the door leading to the porch, confirmed that the darkness, the cold, and the now rapidly falling rain had driven away all of her restaurant customers, and returned to the main kitchen.