Wildfire (13 page)

Come on, go for it,
he thought to himself, trying to will the intruder to move forward. To make another sound. So that he could put away the pistol and use his hands. Make the threatening illusion real.

But he couldn't see anything, and the only sounds he could hear were the cycling compressors, so he didn't dare move. Didn't dare step away from the protective wall of the freezer and expose himself to a single shot or a lethal barrage, because he would never know it was coming until he was hit.

It had come down to a matter of technology, and it was frustrating Henry Lightstone out of his mind because couldn't do anything about it. It stood to reason that an intruder who possessed the technical capability to sneak past one of Mike Takahara's computer-monitored alarm systems would almost certainly have come equipped with night-vision gear. And if that was the case, Lightstone knew, he wouldn't stand a chance because he'd never be allowed to get close.

He was considering the extremely dangerous idea of creating his own light—by firing a 10mm round in the general direction of the office structure, and then trying to spot the figure and get off a second round in time without catching a bullet or blinding himself in the process—when he heard another sound. This one . . . where? ... in the general direction of the small entry door. Metallic sound. Key.

Backup.

Okay, Snoopy,
Lightstone thought.
Just like they taught you at Basic. Slow and easy with the door. Then move in as fast as you can. Right or left, it doesn't matter, just as long as you hit the floor and roll.

Lightstone had watched Mike Takahara go through the simulated exercises at the training academy several times, so he knew that the tech agent was slow on his entries. Going in by himself, against an instructor armed with a paint-pellet gun, Takahara had caught paint every time.

But you're not coming in by yourself this time, buddy,
Lightstone thought as he adjusted his double-handed grip on the stainless steel Smith & Wesson pistol, reflexively brushing his thumb against the safety to verify once more that it was in the off position.

It was going to be up to the intruder. He'd either react to Mike Takahara's entry—in which case Lightstone intended to put ten of the hard-hitting 10mm rounds in the direction of the sight or sound, correcting his aim from the muzzle flashes—or he wouldn't, in which case Lightstone was going to go for the light switches in the hope that the covert team's amiable tech agent would be faster with his gun than with his feet.

Lightstone heard the door begin to slide open, and he started to come around the protective wall of the freezer with the Smith & Wesson semiautomatic coming up in both hands—when the entire warehouse seemed to erupt in an explosion of light and sound that sent Henry Lightstone stumbling backward.

Partially blinded by the sudden flash, Lightstone rolled behind the freezer. Then he twisted back around on the concrete floor with the Smith & Wesson out again, searching desperately for a target. But even as he did so, some part of his stunned brain was trying to identify the source of the familiar blaring sound that was echoing throughout the warehouse, making it impossible to hear anything over the . . . what?

Burglar alarm?

Moments later the two agents made a high/low entry through the concealed emergency access door to the hidden surveillance room and confirmed something that, by now, they already suspected: namely, that the office, the walk-in freezers, and all the concealed operational areas in the warehouse were empty.

Whoever had disabled Mike Takahara's sophisticated alarm system and had been moving about the warehouse with a small pen light when the two agents happened to drive by, was long gone.

Chapter Eight

Branch Chief David Halahan, the supervisory special agent in charge of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Division of Law Enforcement, Special Operations Branch, sat by the door with his forearms draped across the back of an ancient office chair and glared at his agents.

To Halahan's right, Special Agent Freddy Moore, the recently appointed deputy chief for Special Ops, sat in a similar chair, wearing a perplexed expression on his normally congenial face.

At the opposite end of the small warehouse office, Larry Paxton, Dwight Stoner, and Henry Lightstone sat on wooden crates and glared back at Halahan.

The only person who seemed oblivious to the growing tension in the room was Mike Takahara. And that was only because the tech agent was completely focused on the task of running a series of diagnostics programs through the hard drive memory of the covert team's desktop computer in an attempt to figure out how somebody had managed to bypass and subvert his entire security system.

Lightstone had just finished describing the entire sequence of events from his point of view, starting from the moment he had spotted the surveillance and ending at the point when Mike Takahara had come in through the warehouse doorway and set off his own somehow reactivated alarm system. Larry Paxton was getting ready to say something else, but Halahan waved him off.

The man responsible for all three of the Fish and Wildlife Service's covert investigation teams was not happy. And neither were his Bravo Team agents.

"You guys," he began, "spent three months setting up this operation. All together, we've laid out almost fifty thousand dollars of Special Ops funds to lease a warehouse and a safe house, buy freezers, rent trucks, and establish your covers.

"Yesterday, the day before, whatever the hell day it is now, you open for business. And within what, twenty-four hours"—Halahan began to count off on his fingers—"you pick up a tail, both of whom are found dead less than an hour later; assault three city employees; create a hostage rescue scene; blow your covers, transport one of your agents to the local hospital; go out to a local crime scene with a Boston police homicide investigator, and otherwise manage to link yourselves to the deaths of five individuals, all of whom are being investigated as homicides.

"And then, to top it all off," Halahan went on, "you manage to re-attract the attention of that very same homicide investigator, not to mention three more patrol units and five private security officers—and in doing so, I might add, almost certainly destroy any possibility of maintaining your covers
and
your operation—by tripping across your own alarm system at eleven-fifteen in the goddamned evening and waking up the whole goddamned neighborhood!

"Do any of you," Halahan finished, after pausing to look around at each of the four agents, "have any idea what the term
covert
means?"

As it turned out, Mike Takahara
was
paying at least some attention to the general flow of conversation.

"Our alarms are not linked to Ajax Security Systems," the tech agent muttered through clenched teeth as he kept his eyes fixed on the lines of data flowing across the monitor screen.

"Oh, is that so?" Halahan said. "Then how do you explain the fact that
their
computer log shows a break-in alarm at exactly twenty-three sixteen hours this evening, which originated from this address?"

"This building was hard-wired into an Ajax Security Systems trunk line when we rented it," Takahara explained, still staring at his computer monitor. "So we know we're in their data banks. We left it that way because Ajax Security is located here in the complex, everyone else in the complex uses them—mostly because they're cheap—and it would have looked suspicious as hell if we told them we were going with somebody else, and then didn't.

"But," the tech agent said as he turned around in the chair to face Halahan directly, "I also happen to know that our sensors are
not
hooked into the Ajax alarm board any longer, because I personally altered the wiring and reprogrammed the whole system about two months ago. I changed it so that all the intrusion alarms, freezer temperatures, the whole bit, would show up on their board as active, but the alarms would only ring at the safe house, and at the portable receivers we have in the two cars. Furthermore, I personally hard-wired every one of the sensors in this warehouse directly to this computer, which I programmed to dial specific phone numbers and send specific messages, depending upon which sensor was tripped."

"So who called Ajax Security?" Halahan demanded.

Takahara took in and then released a deep breath. "According to their readouts and the records of the phone company, this computer."

"And just how the hell did
that
happen?"

"I don't know."

"Can you replicate the sequence?"

"No."

Special Ops Branch Chief David Halahan shook his head slowly in disgust.

"So basically what you're telling me is that a little less than two hours ago that computer right there, without having been programmed to do so, dialed the phone number of Ajax Security Systems and yelled help, but now it can't?"

"No, what I'm basically telling you is that I've looked through an entire three hundred and twelve megabyte hard drive. And I can tell you right now that there isn't a single goddamned program in this computer that has the phone number of Ajax Security Systems as a piece of data, or has the coding necessary to make the goddamned dial connections and access their alarm board," Mike Takahara retorted hotly.

"Then how is it possible that it did so?"

"The only way it could happen," the tech agent said after a moment, "would be if someone added a program to this computer that included an instruction to erase itself after completing all other instructions, and go back to the original programming."

"But wouldn't that someone have to have access to the computer to do something like that?"

"Normally, yes."

"And shouldn't you be able to tell if someone
did
have access to that computer?"

Takahara nodded sullenly.

"But I take it there's nothing in any of your records or databases or whatever it is you call them that tells you somebody did that, is there?"

"No." The tech agent spoke the word as though it had to be dragged out of his throat.

"So tell me, guys, just what is it that I'm supposed to believe about all this?" Halahan asked in a deliberately calm and controlled voice.

"That somebody is fucking around with us," Henry Lightstone responded in a furious voice.

"Oh, really?" Halahan actually smiled briefly, for the first time that evening, as he turned in his chair to face the ex-police homicide officer turned wildlife special agent that Paul McNulty had talked him into hiring. The special agent whose official performance evaluation included the words "wild-card," and "loose cannon," and "difficult to control," along with two meritorious service commendations and a fairly extensive but ultimately supportive shooting board evaluation.

The interesting part was that all this had transpired during a federal law enforcement career of less than eleven months. Even Halahan had to admit to being impressed.

"For your information, Special Agent Lightstone," the chief of special operations went on, "Lisa Abercombie and Dr. Reston Wolfe are dead. Gerd Maas, Roy Parker, and Alex Chareaux are in prison awaiting trial. Chareaux's brothers and the rest of the Operation Counter Wrench counterterrorist team are dead. There is nobody left of that entire operation that we know about. And that is also, I might add, the only significant case that you've worked in the short time you've been employed by this agency.

"So tell me, Henry," Halahan went on, his voice and his eyes taking on a cold, hard edge, "just who the hell do you think is fucking with you?"

"I don't know," Lightstone snapped, his dark eyes glittering with rage.

"Halahan, if we knew who it was, we wouldn't be sitting here jawboning—we'd be out getting a search warrant and taking down a door," Larry Paxton interrupted sharply before the most volatile agent on his team could come up out of his chair and go right into their branch chief s face. Paxton knew that he was still on probation as the new ASAC and acting supervisor of Bravo Team, and he also knew that he was treading right on the edge of insubordination. But at this particular point in his career he really didn't care.

Of all those present, only Freddy Moore and Dwight Stoner—the huge ex-offensive tackle for the Oakland Raiders—appeared to be calm and controlled. But Halahan knew Stoner all too well, and he recognized the expression on the huge agent's normally impassive face. By Halahan's estimate, Stoner was probably within thirty seconds or so of getting up and reaching for a fistful of bureaucratic shirt and tie with one of his incredibly strong hands.

Halahan decided that he had pushed things far enough for his purposes.

"Okay," he said, glancing down at his watch, "it's almost one in the morning, and it's obvious that we aren't going to get anywhere with this line of reasoning tonight. So where do we go from here?"

"First of all, we've got to shut this operation down," Paxton said. "Anybody in the business who hasn't figured out what we're doing here by now has got to be deaf, blind,
and
dumb." He said it without the slightest trace of hesitation, even though he knew that the blown operation would go into his personnel file as his first significant "accomplishment" as a covert team supervisor.

"Anyone want to argue that?" Halahan asked.

Henry Lightstone and Dwight Stoner shook their heads. Mike Takahara had already gone back to his utility programs and simply shrugged indifferently.

"The problem is," Halahan said, "we haven't got anything else set up to work right now. So what do we do with you guys?"

"Don't forget, they've got that rescheduled hearing coming up Thursday," Moore reminded. "Lightstone should be testifying next, with Stoner on deck."

"Right." Halahan nodded. "But after that's over, we got to get Bravo Team back on a project. Any ideas?"

"We could give the Asian medicinal market another try," Paxton suggested, visibly calming down now. "Mike looks the part, and he can speak Japanese."

"And one of the new trainee agents, Lenny Pak, is Korean," Moore added. "We're going to have to add another agent to the team anyway. We might be able to get him reassigned."