Prey sahl-1

by Ken Goddard

  "Did you make the recordings, as I asked?" Abercombie interrupted.

  "Yes, of course. That's why I'm calling. I dropped the tape off at K-Link Communications. They said to tell you that they would be ready to transmit whenever you called."

  "Thank you, Mrs. Fletcher," Lisa Abercombie said in a neutral voice as she hung up the phone. She began humming to herself as she picked up her reports, stepped out of her office, closed and locked the door, and then walked quickly down the long, narrow hallway toward the command-and- control room.

  When she entered the glass-walled room, Gerd Maas was just hanging up the phone.

  "It is done," he said abruptly. "The last agent is dead."

  "Are you certain that it was him?" she asked.

  "They were going out to eat in a rented automobile. Gunter verified his presence with his binoculars, using the photograph you provided, and then waited until they came out of the restaurant before he detonated the device," Maas replied. "Everyone in the vehicle was killed instantly."

  "Fine," Abercombie nodded after a moment. "Then all we have to do is dispose of Alex Chareaux and we are home free." She smiled as she sat down at the main control console, reached for one of the phone handsets, and dialed a memorized number.

  "Marlene, this is Lisa. Yes, fine, thank you. I'm ready to receive. Which transponder will you be using? All right, fine, just a moment."

  Looking up at the main video screen, Abercombie keyed in a series of commands, then watched the control board until the screen read:

  DISH ONE SATELLITE: K-16 TRANSPONDER: 33 LINK VERIFIED SYSTEM READY DO YOU WISH TO TRANSMIT OR RECEIVE?

  Abercombie pressed "R" and then "Enter" on the keyboard before speaking into the phone again.

  "We have a verified link at our end. Please begin transmitting now," she said. She watched the screen as the computer controlled the receipt of the digitalized video signal. After approximately two minutes had passed, the screen went blank for a brief moment, and then a new message appeared:

  SIGNAL PACKET D0I-DD-00162 RECEIVED. DURATION 117.32 SECONDS STORAGE: DRIVE 13 FILENAME: WC0008. VID SYSTEM READY DO YOU WISH TO TRANSMIT OR RECEIVE?

  Abercombie punched the "N" and "Enter" keys, waited until the main menu display reappeared on the screen, and then turned to Maas.

  "In five minutes," she said, "As scheduled, we will all meet again in the first-floor conference room."

  Chapter Forty-Three

  It was dark and raining, and the two agents could still hear the sirens in the background as they climbed into the front seats of the rented van. Whatever it was, it had happened in Georgetown, at least a mile away, and so they figured they probably wouldn't get caught up in the confusion.

  "Well?" Dwight Stoner asked from the far backseat as he adjusted his sprawled-out body to take full advantage of the legroom created by Mike Takahara's unauthorized removal of the middle seat.

  Henry Lightstone had tried to talk the rental company people into removing the middle seat themselves, but the clerk at the counter had balked, and the manager of the maintenance facility had said it was against company policy, and the employees in the shop had mumbled something about it not being in their job description. So Lightstone and Takahara had finally given up, gone back to the maintenance area parking lot and pulled it out themselves.

  "Guards were a piece of cake," Lightstone said. "We gave them some bullshit story about getting into an accident on the Beltway, which was why we were late, and how we needed to use the Y-band transmitter on the roof to send an emergency message to South Africa before the government shipped any more of their elephants to the Saudis. Don't think they even looked at our credentials."

  "Pretty sad performance for a couple of D.C. brothers." Paxton shook his head.

  "So what's a Y-band transmitter?" Stoner asked.

  "Beats the hell outta me. Ask Captain Marvel up here." Mike Takahara, in the front passenger seat, shrugged. "I just do locks."

  "Yeah, so how did the locks go?" Paxton asked.

  "Easy. Typical government low-bid stuff. But we did discover something else that was interesting," Takahara said. "Somebody set up a remote video unit to monitor the secretary's desk outside Wolfe's office."

  "Oh, really?" Paxton said. "Any kind of surveillance system inside the office?"

  "Nope, just a wire to his phone that he had hooked up wrong," Takahara replied. "Doesn't look like he's the technical type."

  Larry Paxton thought about that for a moment. "Which would lead a suspicious person to think that somebody else wants to know who stops by to see our little piss-ass bureaucrat."

  "Looks that way," Lightstone agreed. "We'd better not lose track of him tomorrow, because he's about the only lead we've got."

  "Yeah, no shit," Paxton nodded. "So what do we do now?"

  "According to his secretary," Lightstone said, "if he's in town, Wolfe almost always goes to the office on Saturday, either late in the morning or early in the afternoon, to catch up on his paperwork. Said I could probably catch him there tomorrow because he's got some kind of report due."

  "Unless he decides to come back tonight and sees what we've left him," Takahara reminded.

  "Yeah, right."

  There was a brief silence, then Dwight Stoner cleared his throat.

  "Don't know about you guys," he said, "but I'm starting to get hungry."

  Lightstone looked at his watch. "We have a choice, guys," he said. "We can either set up in the van outside this asshole's apartment, eat cold hamburgers, pee in cans, and take turns staying up all night watching it rain on the off chance Wolfe might drag his ass out of bed and stop by his office before noon tomorrow; or, we can bribe his doorman to give us a call on the pager when he starts to move, go out and have a decent meal, check into a first-class hotel, get a good night's sleep, and go after the potbellied little wimp in the morning."

  "We know where he lives?" Stoner asked.

  "Yep," Lightstone told him. "Got his address out of his secretary's Roledex, so all we've got to do is go find the building and talk to the doorman."

  "If I gotta eat a cold hamburger and sleep in this thing all night, I'm gonna be hard to live with," Stoner warned.

  "I know a good rib joint out near Lincoln Park," Larry Paxton said. "Little Joe's. Slow-cook pork and beef, all you can eat, and draft beer."

  "Mike?"

  "Personally," Mike Takahara smiled, "I'm getting to where I like eating cold hamburgers and peeing in tin cans, but if that's what it takes to keep Stoner happy…"

  "All right, Paxton," Lightstone nodded. "Let's go find that doorman."

  Lisa Abercombie waited until Roy Parker had maneuvered his wheelchair into the huge conference room, then motioned for Asai to shut the door.

  Standing behind the podium at the head of the hexagon- shaped table, Abercombie allowed her eyes to sweep across the six individuals-Osan, Asai, Maas, Mueller, Saltmann, and Parker-who, aside from Gunter Aben, were now the surviving members of her incredibly talented and aggressive counterterrorist team.

  "I wanted to bring you all together this evening to give you a status report on an operation that, to date, has cost us the lives of five of your comrades," Abercombie said solemnly. "Special Agent Len Ruebottom died in a car- bomb explosion in Georgetown approximately forty-five minutes ago."

  There were general mutterings of approval around the table.

  "We thought that this would be the end of it, and that we could get back to the primary mission of Operation Counter Wrench," Lisa Abercombie went on. "But, as it turns out, we have one loose end remaining."

  "The room went silent."

  "When Dr. Asai and I took part in the hunt that Dr. Wolfe arranged with the Chareaux brothers," Abercombie explained, making it clear that she did not consider either herself or Dr. Asai to be guilty of any wrongdoing, "there was another man involved, one Henry Allen Lightner.

  "The man who was accidentally shot during the killing of the first bear," Asai nodded.

  "Y
es, that's right," Abercombie said. "We were concerned at the time that Mr. Lightner might reveal our identities if he was ever threatened with prosecution. But fortunately," Abercombie smiled, "we were able to divert the case against the Chareaux brothers, and we have never heard from Mr. Lightner again… until now." She reached down to the controls on the podium, dimmed the conference-room lights slightly, and then turned on the VCR and the overhead monitors.

  "Our concern was that Mr. Lightner might try to use his knowledge of our involvement with the Chareaux brothers to blackmail one of us." Abercombie continued to speak as the videotape showed the white-haired scientist who had spoken with Wolfe's secretary.

  "So when we learned that Lightner made an attempt to contact Wolfe this afternoon," Abercombie went on as the white-haired man was suddenly replaced by a second, much younger man with a terrible bruised and swollen face, "I decided that we-"

  "Wait a minute, that's him!" Roy Parker yelled out from his wheelchair, causing Abercombie to jab at the pause button, freezing the blurry face of Henry Lightstone in the center of the stilled monitor.

  "Yes, of course, that's-" Abercombie started to say, but Parker ignored her as he turned to Maas.

  "No, I mean that's him, the guy Arty and I were shooting at out there on the island."

  Gerd Maas turned slowly to face the injured ICER team member.

  "Are you certain?" he asked.

  "Yes, goddamn it, of course I'm sure," Parker said emphatically. "I had that bastard in the cross hairs at least three different times. He's the one who shot Arty and then opened up on us from that goddamned plane."

  "Lightner was up there in Alaska? That doesn't make sense." Lisa Abercombie shook her head in confusion. "Why would they let a-"

  Then she blinked in shock. "Oh, my God, he's not a businessman. He's-"

  "— a special agent," Gerd Maas finished in his cold, hardened voice.

  "He's also the one who took out Nakamura hand-to-hand," Carine Mueller nodded slowly.

  "Yeah, I think Carine's right," Paul Saltmann added. "I got only a quick look, but-"

  Gerd Maas turned to stare at Carine Mueller, then brought his head back around to scrutinize the blurry image of Henry Lightstone.

  Then he smiled.

  "Ruebottom was not the sixth agent we were looking for," he said, speaking to Abercombie in his glacial, calm voice but keeping his eyes fixed on the monitor, as if fascinated by what he was seeing. "This is the one they were hiding."

  "But-"

  At that moment, one of Abercombie's aides stuck his head in through the door, gulped nervously, then hurried in and whispered something in Abercombie's ear.

  Lisa Abercombie frowned and waited until the aide disappeared back through the door before she turned to Maas.

  "It's Reston," she said, staring down at the blinking button on her phone console.

  "Put him on the speakerphone," Maas directed.

  Numbly aware that she had somehow managed to lose control of the meeting, Lisa Abercombie complied.

  "Reston? This is Lisa."

  "Thank God!" Dr. Reston Wolfe's excited voice burst out into the still room.

  "What's the matter?"

  "They know! Listen, you've got to help me. They know all about us!"

  "Who knows all about us?" Abercombie demanded.

  "They… they do. The ones… they…"

  "Reston!" Abercombie snapped. "Listen to me!"

  "But-"

  "Reston, where are you?"

  "In my office, M-M-Main Interior," he stuttered. "Forgot my attache case. Nothing in it, but didn't want to leave it there, so I came in. Found it just like that, all over the walls. I'm telling you, they know, so I've got to get out of here quick, before they-"

  "Reston, I want you to listen to me very carefully," Lisa Abercombie said. "The only one who knows anything at all about us is Henry Lightner. Nobody else, just him."

  "But he… he's just-"

  "Lightner is a federal agent," Abercombie explained calmly. "He's the one who came to see you today."

  "An agent?"

  "That's right."

  "But… but he can't be. I mean, I checked. Honest to God.. " The man was almost whimpering now.

  "Reston, it's all right," Lisa Abercombie said soothingly. "He doesn't know anything at all about what we're doing, so he can't possibly do anything to harm any of us, as long as no one panics. Do you understand?"

  "I… yes, okay, I understand," Wolfe said, taking in a deep, shuddering breath. "Just send the plane out here immediately. I'll wait at National."

  Lisa Abercombie looked up and saw Maas slowly shaking his head.

  "Reston, we can't send anybody out to get you right now," Abercombie said. "It's too dangerous."

  "Oh, yeah. Right. Uh, that's okay. I'll just take a commercial flight to Denver, and then-"

  Abercombie saw Maas shake his head again.

  "Reston, listen to me. You've got to stay where you are until we can get you some help," Abercombie said, watching as Maas nodded his head slowly in agreement.

  "But-"

  "Reston, go back to your apartment immediately," Abercombie ordered in her firm "don't-give-me-any-shit" voice. "I'll take a red-eye flight and be there first thing in the morning with our legal team. You and I will go to my apartment and stay there, and Koles will see to it that no one can possibly touch us. All right?"

  There was a long pause, and then Wolfe seemed to partially recover his composure.

  "Yes, that's good, a good idea," he rasped shakily. "How soon will you be here?"

  "I'll have one of the helicopter pilots take me over to Denver Stapleton right now," Abercombie promised. "What you need to do is to have one of the guards call you a cab and then go home right now," she emphasized. "I'll see you tomorrow morning. All right?"

  "Yes, okay, tomorrow morning," Wolfe agreed, and Abercombie hung up before the thoroughly unnerved executive director could say anything more.

  For a long moment, Lisa Abercombie and Gerd Maas simply stared at each other.

  "You understand that they are trying to make him panic and run to us," Maas finally said calmly.

  Lisa Abercombie nodded.

  "Then you realize, also, what we must do." It was not a question.

  Lisa Abercombie nodded again, this time with her lips tightened.

  "You call your Committee and advise them of the situation, and then find out who this Henry Allen Lightner really is," Maas directed, his pale eyes gleaming with amusement. "I will deal with Wolfe."

  Five minutes after they finished talking with Dr. Reston Wolfe's doorman, the cursing agents were back in the van and heading down Connecticut Avenue in the direction of Eighteenth and "C" Streets.

  "What the hell's the matter with this bastard?" Dwight Stoner grumbled as he held on to the armrest to balance himself against Lightstone's frenzied driving.

  "I don't know," Larry Paxton growled, "but I'm telling you, if this guy makes us follow him all night, and we have to eat cold, fucking hamburgers instead of Little Joe's barbecue, I'm gonna-"

  Before Larry Paxton had a chance to describe in detail his intentions in greater detail, Lightstone brought the van to a tire-screeching stop in front of the "C" Street entrance of the Main Interior building.

  Moments later, he and Paxton were in a heated conversation with the federal security guard.

  "Hey, look, man, it ain't my job to keep track of all the people who come in and outta here." The guard shook his head emphatically. "All I do is watch the building, you know what I mean?"

  Larry Paxton was just about to rip into the self-righteous uniformed guard when the duty sergeant came up to the door.

  "Anything I can help you gentlemen with?"

  "I'm Special Agent Lightstone, and this is Special Agent Paxton," Lightstone said as he displayed his credentials, not trusting his more volatile partner to speak. "We're looking for Dr. Reston Wolfe. He was apparently dropped off here by a taxi about a half hour ago."

&
nbsp; "Wolfe? Oh, yeah, sure. He just left a couple of minutes ago," the uniformed sergeant nodded.

  "He say where he was going?" Lightstone asked, looking around quickly at the surrounding buildings.

  "Hell, that man don't never say nothing to us peons," the uniformed sergeant shrugged. "All I know is, he went out the westside door and… hey, isn't that him down there? Yeah, there he goes, right there, guy in the blue raincoat heading down Nineteenth Street toward the gardens!" The guard pointed to a hunched figure walking hurriedly down the dark, wet sidewalk.

  "Get in the van," Lightstone yelled back at Larry Paxton. "See if you can cut him off." Then Lightstone took off in a sprint.

  Lightstone was within fifty yards of Wolfe when the distraught executive director apparently heard the slapping sound of Lightstone's shoes on the wet cement, looked back, then broke into a frantic run out across Constitution Avenue right into oncoming traffic.

  The driver of a Mercedes, trying desperately to avoid hitting Wolfe head-on, jammed his brakes hard, sending his car sliding sideways on the wet asphalt, across the main divider, and into the path of a brand-new BMW.

  Incredibly, in the midst of the ensuing jumble of swerving vehicles, screeching tires, shattering windshields, and dull crunches of chromed steel and sheet metal, all punctuated by the screams and curses of enraged and frightened drivers, Reston Wolfe somehow managed to stumble across all six lanes of traffic without once being hit.

  Running frantically and gasping for breath, Wolfe could hear Lightstone yelling behind him. Through the darkness and rain, Wolfe saw the three agents coming around in the van to his left, and he started to run to his right. But he found himself blocked by the Reflecting Pool. He staggered from the impact of the first bullet as it caught him high in the chest and punctured his right lung.

  Lightstone was already yelling "don't shoot!" at Paxton and Stoner and Takahara before he realized that he hadn't heard a gunshot.

  Instinctively, Lightstone dove to the ground and rolled to a prone position, his 10mm automatic extended at he searched hopelessly for a target.