Prey

Chapter Twelve

Henry Lightstone watched the door to Room 102 close behind Alex Chareaux's back.

Then, for a few long moments, he just stood there, alone in the parking lot, and thought very seriously about getting back into the Bronco and simply fading away.

He figured that he had five minutes for sure, maybe fifteen at the outside. For that length of time, the fade would still be a viable option. All he had to do was to toss the rifle case and duffel bags in the back of the rented vehicle, get into the front seat, start up the engine, drive right on out of the parking lot, turn left at the intersection, and that would be it.

No more Chareaux brothers, and no more Henry Allen Lightner. Just Marie, and whatever else he could find to amuse himself with until MeNulty came up with another suitable project for the wild-card member of his respected covert team.

Just like the old times.

Hey, man, heard you did the Fade on ol' Papa-Q last night.

Yeah, that's the way it went. One minute I'm right in there, all set to do the deed, and the next minute, wham, I'm gone. Just like that. Never even saw it coming.]ust up and walked away.

The gut always knows, man. You gotta listen to it. That Papa-Q's a stone freak from way back. You just let him slide for a while. We'll take him down another day.

The Fade.

That was what they called it when he was buying narcotics in back alleys from crack-crazed freaks. The sudden, unconscious decision to walk away from the deal at the last second because some gut-level instinct didn't like what it saw, or sensed, or heard.

Henry Lightstone was perfectly aware that he was working a wildlife case that had little if anything to do with dope, but that didn't matter, because he knew that Alex Chareaux and Papa-Q were kindred souls… amoral creatures who would think nothing of killing a man for the simple pleasure of watching him die.

The Fade. He knew that he could do it. All he had to do was to turn around and walk away. He could do that, and nobody on the Special Operations team-not Paxton, or Stoner, or Scoby, or Takahara, not even MeNulty-would ever second-guess his decision, because they understood that it wasn't a question of giving in to fear.

Covert operators, or at least the good ones, knew, understood, and respected fear for what it was: an ancient early warning system that kept the Stone Age hunters alert and wary and alive in situations where most sophisticated thought processes were simply too slow. In effect, a mental trip wire that might just give that hunter a second chance to survive if he was alert, and cautious, and paid careful attention to his instincts.

But it wasn't fear alone that was making Henry Lightstone consider the Fade. And it wasn't the unexpected appearance of Alex Chareaux's three new clients, who had certainly added a dangerous complication to his carefully worked-out game plan. It was the sudden realization that the pace of the entire operation had accelerated to the point where he no longer had any control over its direction or its timing.

When the door to Alex Chareaux's motel room finally opened fifteen minutes later, Lightstone was still standing there, trying to convince himself that he was ready to face just about anything.

Which, as it turned out, wasn't true at all. Nothing had even remotely prepared Henry Lightstone for the sudden rhythmic thunder of rotor blades as the glistening helicopter swooped down over the Best Western parking lot and then came around in a tight, tail-sweeping turn to hover in a dust-swirling position over the nearby field.

"Tell me, Henry," Chareaux said as he leaned over and patted Lightstone's shoulder, "is this not an incredible surprise?"

"What?" Lightstone rasped, trying not to move his head lest he lose what little equilibrium he had somehow managed to retain. He was trying to decide if tingling arms and legs, clammy skin, and a rapid pulse meant that he was about to faint, or about to be airsick.

"Here, you need your headset on, so we can talk," Chareaux said, reaching up and removing Lightstone's headset from the overhead clip, then helping him adjust the cord and earphones around his throbbing head.

"I said, are you not surprised by all of this?" Chareaux repeated, keying the switch for the cabin intercom on the headset cord as he spoke into the small mouthpiece speaker.

"Yeah, that's the word for it, Alex, no doubt about it," Lightstone nodded weakly.

"Here, we must use this intercom switch if we wish to talk among ourselves," Chareaux said, showing Lightstone how to go back and forth between the helicopter's cabin and pilot intercom systems.

Lightstone wanted Chareaux to take his cheerful little surprises, and the headset that was already starting to hurt his ears, and his goddamned intercom switches, and stuff them right up there along with his "special hunt." But he couldn't say so because, he figured, it would probably start a fight.

He could blame McNulty and Scoby right off for this, Lightstone told himself, since there had been absolutely nothing in any of the team's extensive intelligence reports to suggest that the Chareaux brothers had ever used any transportation equipment more sophisticated than a four-wheel-drive Jeep.

The background report on Alex Chareaux's illegal guiding operation had been over three hundred pages long. And among other things, it had listed in great detail the methods that Chareaux and his brothers had used during the past three years to take at least twenty-three subjects on a total of eighty-seven illegal hunts.

The information had also included the date and duration of each hunt, the state and county where the hunts took place, the number of species wounded or taken, types and calibers of weapons used, the makes and models of the suspect vehicles, license-plate numbers, types of clothing worn, game tags used or altered, access routes, meeting points, contacts with game wardens, and details of previous hunts discussed over evening camp fires.

Everything that an investigating wildlife officer could possibly want, except for current photographs of Butch and Sonny Chareaux, and the name and location of the taxidermist that the Chareauxs used for mounting their clients' illegal trophies, which was why McNulty had sent Lightstone in on the Chareaux brothers in the first place.

The thing was, Lightstone told himself, if there had been as much as a single instance in which the Chareaux brothers had even talked about using a helicopter in one of their illegal hunts, there would have been at least a half dozen cross-indexed references to that fact in the report.

But there had been no mention of helicopters. That was one thing he'd specifically looked for in the index because he was deathly afraid of helicopters. He couldn't imagine McNulty-or Scoby, who functioned as intelligence officer for the Special Operations Unit and had spent three months working up the information on the Chareaux brothers- being that careless.

"In case anybody back there is interested," the pilot spoke over the intercom, "we're just crossing over into Custer National Forest now."

There was something about the whole situation that nagged at the edge of Lightstone's subconscious. It just didn't read right. He had been working on the assumption that the hunt would have to take place within easy hiking distance of one of the few roads in or around Gardiner. There was no other way for five hunters to get far enough out in the woods on a Sunday afternoon to hunt successfully and then get back to Gardiner by nightfall.

Except, of course, by helicopter.

The helicopter in question was a brand-new Bell Ranger, with plenty of room for the pilot, the copilot, and five passengers with backpacks and rifle cases. According to the copilot, who seemed to know what he was talking about, the aircraft had cost somebody the better part of seven million dollars. Suddenly it dawned on Lightstone that Alex Chareaux's new clients owned the seven-million-dollar helicopter and that it was one hell of an expensive piece of equipment to be used with the likes of Alex and Sonny and Butch Chareaux.

"Are we anywhere near the battlefield?" Lisa Abercombie spoke into her headset speaker, starting to get caught up in the excitement of the hunt.

"You mean Little Bighorn?" the pilot asked, glancing back at Abercombie, who was strapped into one of the center seats just behind the copilot.

"Yes," Abercombie nodded. She turned to Reston Wolfe, who was sitting next to her. "Haven't you always wondered what Custer must have thought when he got up on that hillside and saw all of those Indians?" she asked.

"Last Stand Hill, the actual battlefield, would be, oh, about a hundred miles due east of here," the pilot informed them as he reflexively adjusted the controls to compensate for a sudden air pocket, causing the rumbling aircraft to shudder violently.

"Better hang on back there, folks. It's liable to be a little bumpy for the next couple of minutes," the copilot said cheerfully over the intercom.

Lightstone closed his eyes and gripped the armrests tightly, trying to console himself with the irrational thought that he would have chosen a confrontation with six thousand Sioux and Cheyenne warriors over a chopper ride any day.

"About how long would it take to make a quick loop over the battlefield?" Reston Wolfe asked after keying his headset speaker over to the pilot's channel.

"Oh, I'd say an extra hour, if we take her up to about six thousand feet and give her a little more throttle," the pilot answered. "No problem with the fuel, but it's liable to be a pretty bumpy ride. You sure everybody back there's up to something like that?"

Oh God, no, Lightstone whispered to himself. If he had to stay up in this helicopter another goddamned hour — just because one of Chareaux's clients wanted to impress some coldhearted bitch by showing her some goddamned battlefield-

"I think we are running late, so perhaps it would be better if we waited for the next trip," Alex Chareaux said, his gruff voice amplified by the aircraft's headset speakers.

Good man, Chareaux. I take back every lousy thing I ever thought about you, Lightstone nodded gratefully.

"That's fine with me," Lisa Abercombie said agreeably as she gave Alex Chareaux another appraising glance.

"Okay, next trip," the pilot assented. "That's Granite Peak over to the right, and that little spot of water straight ahead is Mystic Lake," he continued in his cheerful litany.

"Is that where we're going to be putting down?" Lisa Abercombie asked.

"Just south of there," the pilot told her.

"It's a magnificent sight," she said as she leaned forward to look over the copilot's shoulder, giving the clear impression that she was just as indifferent to the air turbulence as the two pilots were.

"Worth the price of the ride all by itself," the pilot agreed, joining Lisa Abercombie in amused laughter as the helicopter shuddered violently once again.

Henry Lightstone had no way of knowing that he was in the highly competent hands of two U.S. Army warrant officers who flew armor-plated gunships for a living. These professionals thought nothing of flying an exceptionally airworthy craft like the Bell Ranger through a measly little Rocky Mountain storm, especially when no one was shooting rockets, missiles, or bullets in their direction.

Convinced instead that the aircraft was being flown by daredevil friends of Chareaux's wealthy and obviously insane client, Lightstone simply resigned himself to the fact that he was probably going to die soon in a violent air crash. He tried to console himself with the morbidly cheerful thought that if they did crash, Alex Chareaux would die too, and Henry Allen Lightner's assignment would be concluded.

Chareaux covered the mouthpiece of his headset speaker with one hand and leaned over to talk directly against Lightstone's headset. "I am not one who enjoys flying so much, either." He gestured toward Lightstone's crumpled airsick bag.

"You don't like to fly?" Lightstone asked, reflexively covering his mike.

"No, not at all." Chareaux shook his head. "I would much rather walk for a month than fly for even an hour in an aircraft like this."

"So why the hell did you hire these guys in the first place?" Lightstone demanded weakly.

"Believe me, this was not my doing. All of this was arranged by them," Chareaux said, nodding in the direction of his three new clients.

"Wonderful," Lightstone muttered as he carefully set his head back against the vibrating bulkhead and closed his eyes, vaguely aware that something here seemed important.

"Do not worry, my friend," Chareaux said, patting Lightstone on the shoulder. "One way or another, this will all be over with very soon."