Wildfire (5 page)

"Gawd damn!" the black man cursed as he saw the dark blood dribbling through his partner's clenched fingers. Flinging the chain-saw chain aside, he started to reach for the 9mm semiautomatic secured to his belt behind his back. But then he froze when he found himself staring into the barrel of a 10mm Model 1076 Smith & Wesson double-action pistol aimed right between his eyes.

"You don't want to do that," Henry Lightstone said calmly.

The black man brought his hands back up slowly and nodded, indicating that he understood.

"Put your hands behind your head, interlocking your fingers, and then spread your feet," Lightstone continued, and then waited for the man—who was now completely cooperative—to follow his instructions. "All right, good. Stay that way. Now what's your friend's name?"

"What?"

"Pay attention. I said,
what's your friend's name?"
Lightstone repeated.

"Listen, man, Ah don't know. . . ."

"Shut up and listen to me," Lightstone ordered in a cold voice, keeping the Smith & Wesson semiautomatic dead-centered on the man's broad nose. "If you fail to respond to my instructions, or if your friend tries to stand up or does anything stupid with his hands, then I'm going to put a hollow point between your eyes, and then one between his, and then walk back out to the street and call the cops. You understand what I'm saying?"

The black man nodded.

"Now what's his name?"

"Carlos."

"And your name is?"

"Fred," the black man muttered unhappily.

"Carlos, did you hear what I just said to your buddy Fred about you getting up or trying to do something stupid with your hands?" Lightstone asked.

The stricken Hispanic tracker responded with a burst of abusive Spanish through his bleeding fingers, but he stayed down.

"Care to translate that?" Lightstone asked.

"He understands," the man who might or might not have been named Fred responded.

"Good. Does he carry a piece too?"

The black man hesitated.

"Never mind." Lightstone shook his head impatiently. "Okay, Fred, what I want you to do is bring your feet back together, right, just like that. Now turn around slowly to face the wall to your left—right there, that's it—and spread your legs again. A little farther this time. Good."

Stepping around and behind the tall, spread-eagled assailant, and keeping an eye on his temporarily disabled partner, Lightstone reached under the black man's jacket and removed the 9mm semiautomatic. After releasing the magazine and jacking the live round out of the chamber, he quickly disassembled the weapon and tossed the slide, receiver, barrel, and mainspring into a nearby trash can.

A quick one-handed search from the man's head to his ankles—conducted while Lightstone kept his own pistol tight against his side to discourage any thoughts of a desperate grab or spin move—confirmed that the taller and presumably more dangerous of the two trackers was now completely disarmed.

Stepping back, Lightstone quickly moved around and knelt down by the still prone Carlos. A second quick search turned up another identical 9mm semiautomatic—the parts of which also went into the nearby trash can—and a small switchblade. Lightstone tossed both knives back into the darkness of the alleyway, and then gestured with the Smith & Wesson at the black man.

"Okay, Fred, help him up."

Silently the black man obeyed.

Henry Lightstone waited until both men were standing up, the man supposedly named Carlos still muttering threatening curses and clutching a bloody hand to his severely torn cheek. As he did so, the federal agent held the 10mm pistol down at his side.

"I suppose it'd be a waste of time to ask if either of you happen to remember the name of the person who hired you?"

Silence.

"Yeah, that's what I figured." Lightstone nodded. "And I don't suppose it would matter much, one way or the other, if I decided to take you guys over to the local police station and let them ask the same question, right?"

More silence.

Shaking his head and sighing to himself, Lightstone slid the Model 1076 Smith & Wesson back into his concealed jacket pocket holster, then reached into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a quarter. "Now, about those directions . . ."

"Say what?" the black man growled, his forehead furrowed in confusion.

Lightstone tossed the coin to the taller of the two trackers, who caught it out of reflex.

"I'm still lost." Lightstone shrugged, staring straight into the man's furious eyes.

"Gawd damn it all!" the black man swore as he flung the coin aside. Then, before Lightstone could do or say anything else, the two men glanced at each other, then turned and ran.

Within a matter of seconds they were out of the alley and running down the street toward the southern edge of Boston Common at a frantic pace.

About thirty seconds later Henry Lightstone came out of the alley. He paused for a moment, looked around, and then walked over to a dark sedan parked along the curb and got in on the passenger side.

"You okay?" Dwight Stoner, the huge, six-feet-eight, three-hundred-pound member of the covert agent team inquired.

"Yeah, sure." Lightstone nodded. "Where is everybody?"

"I dropped Mike off at the far corner of the park, and put Larry and Thomas out on the wings," Stoner said as he started up the car. "Larry figured that he and Thomas could probably run a little faster than Mike and I if they had to."

"They will. Those guys are rabbits," Lightstone said as he reached for the pack-set radio on the seat.

"Bravo Two, anybody out there?" he spoke into the radio mike.

"Bravo Five, I'm in the middle of the park, heading, uh, due west," Special Agent/Pilot Thomas Woeshack's distinctive voice echoed within the rented sedan.

"Bravo One, I lost them. Last I saw, they were heading northwest, toward that old graveyard," Larry Paxton responded, sounding as if he were almost out of breath. "Watch for them coming your way, Snoopy!"

Lightstone nodded at Stoner, and the huge agent sent the sedan roaring out into the snow- and slush-filled street.

"Snoopy"—Lightstone spoke into the radio mike—"if you spot them, give them some distance and keep your eyes open. I took away their toys, but they may have a buddy out there somewhere."

"Bravo Three, copy," Mike Takahara acknowledged. "Haven't seen anybody yet. What am I looking for?"

"Salt-and-pepper team," Lightstone said. "The tall one's black with a full beard. The short one's Hispanic, handlebar mustache. Both wearing boots and dark green military fatigue jackets, Vietnam era."

"Nobody like that's been by here so far," Mike Takahara responded.

"Okay, we're on our way," Lightstone said. "Meet you all at the corner of Charles and Boyston."

Five minutes later the five covert agents were standing together at the intersection of Charles and Boyston streets, Paxton and Woeshack still trying to catch their breath.

"You know, a couple years ago Ah'd have kept up with them mothers, no problem," Larry Paxton grumbled as he leaned against a light post.

"That's the problem with getting to be the acting boss." Lightstone grinned as he and Stoner and Takahara continued to search the darkness. "A guy starts sitting in those fancy chairs, feet up on the desk, secretary bringing him coffee and doughnuts, he's bound to go soft."

"Ah ain't got no fancy chair, and Ah ain't got no fancy desk or secretary neither," Paxton growled. "All I got is you idiots, which ain't much right about now, let me tell you."

"Good thing you don't," Mike Takahara chuckled, slapping Paxton on the back. "Otherwise we'd probably have to talk Stoner into carrying you back to the house over his shoulder. Be downright embarrassing."

"Somebody's got to do some work around here," the huge agent agreed.

"Speaking of which, do we still have an operation?" Lightstone asked, turning to Paxton.

"I don't know." Paxton shook his head, still looking disgusted with himself. "Let's go back to the apartment, check in with Halahan. See what he thinks."

"He's gonna be pissed at us if we've blown this one," Mike Takahara predicted.

"Yeah, so what else is new." Paxton nodded gloomily.

"You mean we might have to start over again somewhere else?" Thomas Woeshack asked, looking dismayed.

"That's the beauty of undercover work," Lightstone said as the agents started walking back toward the car. "Just when you think you know what you're doing, the bad guys get into the act and start confusing the shit out of everything."

"Does it happen this way very often?" Woeshack asked.

"As far as I know," Lightstone said with a sigh, "every damn time."

The two chastened surveillance specialists, who were in fact named Fred and Carlos, were nearly a half mile away from the intersection of Charles and Boylston streets when Carlos—weakened by the loss of blood and the sharp pains in his broken wrist—finally had to stop to catch his breath.

"You see them?" he gasped, bracing and concealing himself against a nearby inset wall, and holding a bloodstained handkerchief to his face with his one good hand, while his better-conditioned partner maintained a lookout.

"No, I think we lost them back at the graveyard."

"God, I hope so."

Carlos was starting to wheeze now, sounding asthmatic, although his marine recon-trained partner correctly guessed that it was more likely the result of delayed shock. "Gotta get—hospital, face and arm fixed. Then— gonna hunt that bastard down."

"Got news for you, man, we ain't gonna be going to no hospital." The man named Fred shook his head.

"What do you mean?"

"Ah
mean
we ain't going to no hospital," the black man repeated. "We're gonna be in enough shit as it is. Ain't no need to make things any worse."

"Hey, it wasn't our fault. . . ." Carlos started to protest, but his partner shook him off.

"Listen, man, we blew a tail. Simple as that," the black man said solemnly. "Our orders were to tag the people coming out of that apartment and ID their contacts, period. The man didn't say nothin' 'bout us getting ourselves made, and then facing up the guy in some alley."

"I'm telling you, the guy was going for the safe house." Carlos shook his head. 'You could tell, the way he was making those moves. And you know what, I'll bet you a hundred bucks the entrance was in that alley too. If he hadn't heard us coming, we'd have had it nailed."

"Maybe." The black man shrugged, sounding unconvinced.

He had been maintaining a careful vigilance of the route that they had just taken, but in doing so, he had failed to notice the dark van that had pulled up to the curve about a half block up the street.

"Maybe, my ass." Carlos shook his head, his breath still coming in ragged gasps. "I'm telling you, we had the bastard, whoever the hell he is.

"He ain't no goddamned fish dealer, Ah'11 tell you that much right now."

'You think he's a cop?"

"Maybe. Kinda acted like it. But that don't make no sense either."

"Why not?"

"'Cause a cop wouldn't have—" Fred stopped, his eyes widening in fear.

Seeing the expression in his partner's eyes, Carlos whirled around and found himself looking up in shocked disbelief at a huge, dark, and absolutely terrifying form.

Then he whispered: "Oh, God."

It was the last sound he ever uttered.

Chapter Two

Somehow, William Devonshire Crowley managed to control his trembling upper torso long enough to look at his watch. It was 4:45 p.m.

His heart sank.

It wasn't supposed to be happening like this. The weather service had been predicting no change in the storm patterns and a low of 36 degrees all morning. Which was why he had decided to wear a light down jacket to his three-thirty meeting at Soldiers and Sailors Civil War Monument in the middle of Boston Common.

But the snow had started to fall at three-fifteen, just as he stepped out of the Park Street subway exit. Within minutes it had begun to accumulate—heavy, wet, and slippery—on the surrounding paths and trees and park benches. Hardy tourists, determined to walk the Freedom Trail no matter what, buttoned up their jackets and hoods, and lowered their heads into the wind.

And all that time, while the temperature continued its steady drop into the twenties, his contact never showed.

"Christ's sake, where the hell are you?" he rasped.

More of a prayer than a curse, because William Devonshire Crowley was becoming desperately afraid.

He had spent the entire hour and a half trampling a slushy circular path around the tall concrete monument, searching for some sign of the man he was supposed to meet and feeling the icy wind cutting deeper and deeper through his light down jacket. And for the last forty-five minutes, at the end of every completed revolution, turning his head away to avoid seeing again those first two ominous lines on the monument's inscription.

Crowley's shoes were soaked, his ears were frozen, his hands numb and weary, and his entire body was trembling now. But his uncontrollable shivering had very little to do with the cold.

He was so scared now, so overwhelmed by a growing sense of utter hopelessness, that he thought he might drop to his knees and start to cry at any moment.

He turned away from the long, narrow asphalt path that he'd been monitoring with such feverish intensity, to stare once again at the distant subway station. He desperately wanted to run to that station and scramble down the long stairway and jump onto the first train going out of the city of Boston. Anywhere, was fine, it didn't matter. Just as long as it was far enough away where he wouldn't ever have to face that huge, hulking, and absolutely terrifying man again.

Then he turned back and froze when his eyes went immediately to the hunched-over figure approaching in the distance.

Oh, my God, he's here.

Crowley felt his arms and hands and mind and backbone, and every other part of him that he could imagine, go numb.

Somewhere in the depths of his sanity, a voice was screaming at him to run. To go as far and as fast as he could, right now, before it was too late. But much in the manner of a small rodent that suddenly finds itself face to face with a slowly approaching serpent, Crowley quickly discovered that he couldn't run. Couldn't even move, for that matter. All he could do was stand there, with a growing sense of apprehension and dread, and watch the hooded figure with the wide shoulders and easy stride continue his approach, knowing that when he reached the statue, he would . . .