Prey (51 page)

"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."

"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.

Reston Wolfe was still on his feet when the second, third, and fourth bullets ripped through his thoracic cavity, tearing through his heart and both lungs. He died before his limp body touched the ground.

"Goddamn it," Lightstone whispered as he watched the elimination of their one and only link to the men and women who had mercilessly executed Paul McNulty and Carl Scoby. He was still breathing heavily from his run when the area in front of the Reflecting Pool was suddenly crisscrossed by six pairs of headlights.

"Henry Lightstone, this is the FBI. Put your weapon down on the ground, and put your hands up in the air, right now."

Chapter Forty-Four

Saturday September 25

"I'd really appreciate it, Ed," Henry Lightstone said and then handed the phone to Assistant Special Agent in Charge A1 Grynard, who had a decidedly unpleasant expression on his unshaven face.

As A1 Grynard stood behind the dark wooden desk in the borrowed office he listened to the senior forensics specialist describe the significance of a recovered .416 Rigby bullet that had almost certainly been fired through a Holland and Holland rifle, the unique etching of a wolf that was spelled "W-O-L-F-E," and the strip of hide that Lightstone had recovered from the Kenai Peninsula.

Larry Paxton leaned over and whispered in Lightstone's ear, "Don't think I've ever seen an FBI man look that pissed before."

"You can see his point, though," Lightstone nodded, speaking quietly as he observed the gradual change in Grynard's expression. "He's got a hell of a case. Only trouble is, three of the guys I'm supposed to have killed at least once are sitting here in this room."

"Think he's gonna hold that against us?" Paxton asked after a moment.

"If I were you, I wouldn't piss him off any more right about now," Lightstone advised.

"Yes," A1 Grynard was saying into the phone, "I would appreciate that. Yes sir, thank you very much."

As Henry Lightstone, Larry Paxton, Dwight Stoner, and Mike Takahara watched in respectful silence, A1 Grynard stood for a moment with his finger on the disconnect button in apparent indecision.

Then, seeming to nod to himself, he dialed a four-digit number, spoke softly into the mouthpiece, hung up and then sat down in the padded executive chair. He turned around to face the four agents.

"In my entire law-enforcement career," Grynard said after a moment, "I don't think I've ever come across a case quite like this."

"It
is
a little unusual," Lightstone conceded agreeably, waiting to see which way the veteran FBI agent would decide to play it.

"Did I tell you that we located your duty weapon?"

"In the water?" Lightstone guessed.

A1 Grynard nodded. "About fifteen feet offshore, pretty much in a straight line from where you claimed to have shot the one suspect. Two Model Sixty-sixes, yours and the refuge officer's, as well as a bipod-mounted M-Forty sniper rifle and one H&K nine-millimeter submachine gun, along with three or four handfuls of expended brass."

"Brass?"

"We sent a diver down," the FBI agent explained. "He found over a hundred and fifty expended casings before we finally made him come out. We've got him at Lake Tustumena right now. We received a report from a couple of fishermen who saw a blue floatplane land and then sink out there. One of our technicians picked something up on sonar about a thousand feet down. May have to use a submersible to get to it."