Double blind

Chapter Twenty-two

Awareness came to Wilbur Boggs in brief flashes.

First, a feeling of being trapped in the ropes and nets… struggling in the darkness, unable to move his arms to free himself of the obstructions covering his nose and mouth… then drifting away as soothing voices reassured him that everything was okay.

Then, some unknown time later, bright lights, and a horrible dryness in his mouth… then darkness again, and then a cold hand holding his wrist.

He blinked his eyes, trying to see who it was.

"Well now," a cheerful voice greeted him, "it's about time you started coming around. We were beginning to get worried about you."

Boggs tried to say something, but his dry tongue and mouth refused to cooperate.

"Thirsty," he rasped in a voice that he didn't recognize as his own.

"I'll bet you are, hon." The nurse dipped a clean cloth into a water flask and wet his lips. "How does that feel?"

"More?"

"Hold on just a minute, there's somebody here who wants to talk to you."

Still lost in a foggy daze, Wilbur Boggs felt the cool hand pat his arm, heard footsteps hurrying away… and then a very different, masculine voice jarred him awake again.

"How are we doing?" the voice asked.

Boggs thought about that for a long moment while he tried to sort out all of the confusing images that tumbled through his head.

A boat accident… or was it a car accident? Some kind of accident, though, because he remembered being in a great deal of pain. But that didn't make any sense because he couldn't feel anything at all now. In fact, his entire body felt numb, so numb that whatever he tried to remember kept drifting…

The masculine voice again, asking something… name?

What name?

No matter how hard he tried, Boggs simply couldn't remember any names. Which was odd, he decided, because a federal agent ought to be able to…

"What did he say?" The resident physician looked up at the floor nurse.

"I think he said federal agent."

The resident physician's eyebrows furrowed. Leaning down, he whispered into Boggs's ear: "Do you want to talk to a federal agent?"

It took every bit of strength that Wilbur Boggs could summon to shake his head slightly.

Remembering the limited nature of the clothing the emergency room staff had removed from her patient, the nurse leaned forward and asked skeptically, "Are you a federal agent?"

Boggs tried to nod, but he had no idea whether his head actually moved. So he tried to whisper the answer instead, but it came out a weak hiss.

"You are a federal agent?" Boggs heard the disbelief in her voice.

This time he managed to nod perceptibly.

"What's your name?" she pressed, taking his limp hand in hers. "Can you tell us your name?"

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.

"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."