Prey

Chapter Sixteen

The first of the three men who pushed the door of Room 210 open and lunged in yelling, "Surprise, you son of a bitch!" was incredibly fortunate that Special Agent Dwight Stoner happened to be standing closer to the doorway than to the bed. It was far better to get Stoner's thick-knuckled fist in the eye than the butt of a 12-gauge pump shotgun. Going headfirst over the side of the second-floor railing was no fun in any case, however.

The second and third members of the intoxicated raiding party-the ones holding the. 44 Ruger rifle, the three bottles of inexpensive champagne, and the video camera for filming their presumably "otherwise occupied" newlywed friends-were even more fortunate.

Instead of following their friend over the railing, they simply found themselves sprawled out on the second-story walkway next to the three shattered magnums of champagne. Twin SIG-Sauer 45-caliber semiautomatic pistols were aimed at their heads, while an incredibly large, snarling, and absolutely terrifying man pinned them to the rough concrete walkway, his muscular hands pressing the stock of the. 44 Ruger rifle across their exposed throats.

Paxton tried to explain to the stunned, shaken, and still-trembling celebrants that ex-tackles from the Oakland Raiders sometimes just couldn't control themselves. Then he and Scoby helped the men down to their car so they could check on the condition of their decidedly less fortunate companion.

Fifteen minutes later, Scoby remembered what he had been doing before the unexpected assault on their motel room. Shaking his head, he went back up the stairs and retrieved the phone olf the floor.

"Sorry about that," he said as he sat down into the chair again with a loud sigh.

"Jesus H. Christ, what the hell's going on out there?" Paul McNulty demanded.

"Well, as best as we can tell, it seems that we were the unintended target of a little honeymoon surprise."

"What?"

"Three men, mid-twenties, drunk on their collective asses," Scoby explained. "Armed with a video camera, three bottles of champagne, and a. 44 Ruger autoloading rifle, the last two of which were supposed to be gifts. At least that's what they claim. Or rather, that's what two of them claim," he corrected after a moment's thought. "The third one isn't up to talking just yet. Last time I looked, the police and the paramedics were still extracting him out of the front windshield of his car."

There was dead silence on the other end of the line.

It took McNulty a few moments.

"You mean they came in on you guys because they thought-" He couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence. "They went to the wrong room?"

"Oh, no, right room. Just the wrong motel," Scoby said. "Apparently they were so busy negotiating with the desk clerk for the extra key that they didn't happen to notice the sign that said Holiday Inn."

"So what happened?" McNulty forced himself to ask. He hadn't heard any shots, but the crash of broken glass, the sound of Stoner's fist colliding with tissue and bone, and the agonized gasps as the ex-Raider's scarred knees slammed down hard into a pair of flabby stomachs had been unmistakable.

"It seems that the Lord, in His infinite wisdom, continues to watch out for all of the drunk assholes of the world," Scoby said with an exasperated sigh. "Stoner caught the first guy square on the button, put him back over the walkway railing. Then he gang-tackled the other two before we could shoot them," he added in a tone that suggested some undefined level of disappointment. "Oddly enough, they surrendered on the spot. Also pissed their pants."

"Was anybody hurt?"

"No friendly casualties, other than Stoner's knuckles, but he says they don't bleed much anymore anyway. No big deal. Nothing too serious on the other side."

There was another long pause as McNulty considered some of the ramifications of Scoby's summary report.

"The guy who went over the railing. I take it he's okay?" he finally asked in a hopeful voice.

"Well, no, not exactly," Scoby hedged. "His nose is definitely not okay, and his car doesn't look much better. Couple of pretty serious dents in the hood and roof, and the windshield's all over the parking lot. He's probably going to have a hard time explaining things to his insurance company, but other than that, he seems to have survived the incident fairly well. Apparently there's a lot to be said for being unconscious when you land face-first on the roof of your car. Anyway, the cops and the paramedics were pretty impressed."

"Who called them?"

"The desk clerk. She claims that she had second thoughts about accepting a two-hundred-dollar bribe, but I think the rifle was the kicker. Probably worried that she was setting somebody up for a bullet."

"Nice of her to be concerned," McNulty muttered sarcastically. "Everything okay with the locals?"

"Yeah, I think so. We've got three uniforms, the field supervisor, and the watch commander out here, which I think is probably the entire shift, but everybody's being cooperative. Larry and Dwight are out there right now giving them enough of a story to keep the paperwork straight."

"Are they going to take them in?"

"Yeah, looks like it," Scoby said. "Apparently no one in the group was sober enough to have driven here legally, so they're all gonna get put on ice for about twenty-four hours. Drunk driving, disturbing the peace, littering the parking lot. Couple down below got a little shook up when they looked out their window and saw the guy land on his car, but outside of that, everything seems to be settling down."

MeNulty was silent for a few moments.

"Listen," he finally said, "are you absolutely certain that this thing wasn't a probe?"

"Paul, to tell you the honest-to-God truth, I think the whole thing's too fucking absurd to be anything but the truth," Scoby said. "We're going to check out their hotel just to make sure. You think we ought to move the command post?"

MeNulty hesitated. "Yes, I do, but that means shutting down the communications system, right?"

"Afraid so, unless we wait for Mike. He should be back pretty soon, though. Anyway, if we left right now, Mike wouldn't know how to find us unless we contacted the airport."

"You guys have been made, and we don't know if Alex Chareaux has connected with the locals," MeNulty said. "What about the radios?"

"Mike's got a packset with him for emergency use, but it's a one-way deal. It's not likely he's going to be in any position to leave it on."

"Which means that if he does find something in that plane, we're not going to know about it until he tries to call in-or goes back to the motel, and finds out you've moved."

"That's about it," Scoby acknowledged. "I'll try to get us checked in over at the Prime Rate. That's the place right across the freeway, so we shouldn't have any problem picking up a radio call when he tries to find us. Trouble is, where does that leave Henry?"

"He's still got the lifeline," MeNulty said. "I had Mike reroute the link to Terry's house before he went out to the airport. I'll give Terry a call before I leave, make sure he knows that you're relocating."

"Yeah, that's fine, but maybe you ought to work it out so that Martha's the one who answers the phone. Far as I know, I don't think that Henry and Terry have ever met."

There was a short pause on the other end of the line.

"Shit," MeNulty muttered.

"What's the matter?"

"Martha left about a half hour ago. She was going to drop off the dogs at the kennel, run some errands and do some shopping. Last I heard, she wasn't planning on getting up to Terry's until nine or ten this evening."

"Can you get ahold of her?"

"Not unless I put out an APB on her car."

"Christ, if Henry hears a strange voice on the other end of that lifeline, he's just going to hang up."

Carl Scoby could almost hear McNulty's mind churning.

"I'm getting too goddamned old for this kind of shit," the team leader finally muttered.

"You and me both," Scoby said in heartfelt agreement.

"Okay," McNulty sighed, "here's what we'll do. We've still got a fair amount of time before Henry should be coming back from that hunt, so let's make good use of it. You turn Dwight and Larry loose, see if they can get a lead on Ruebottom. I'll make sure Terry knows where to contact us in case somebody calls him and then hangs up. In the meantime, it shouldn't take Mike long to find out what's going on with that Lear jet, so if we're even halfway lucky, he'll find you guys and get back in time to reconnect the communications system before Henry tries to report in."

"You do realize that this is beginning to sound like New York all over again," Carl Scoby commented dryly.

"Yeah, tell me about it. That's why I'm heading down there. I'll be damned if I'm going to spend another night sitting around on my ass by a phone, waiting to find out if I still have a team."

"Sounds good to me," Scoby said gratefully, more than willing to hand the supervision of this detail over to McNulty. "Anything else you want done before you get here?"

"Just make sure everybody down there stays alert," McNulty emphasized. "We don't need any more goddamned incidents drawing attention to what we're doing. And keep in mind that until Henry gets back from the hunt and starts calling around trying to find his pilot, there's no reason why somebody should be looking real hard for a guy named Len Ruebottom."

"Maybe we're trying to hook him up for another charter?"

"No, I think we'd be pushing our luck trying something like that. Henry's got Chareaux convinced that he's a big enough player to have a plane of his own on stand-by twenty-four hours a day. But even so, we took a hell of a chance using the Lear. A plane like that is way out of Henry Lightner's league."

"So now Chareaux has to figure that Henry's got himself some kind of Sugar Daddy hanging around in the background, which is bound to make him a little uneasy, because we set up Lightner as an independent operator," Scoby said.

"That's right. But to a guy like Chareaux, the smell of serious money is like blood in the water for a shark. So he starts sniffing around…"

"… and comes across a rookie agent named Len Ruebottom thrashing about on the surface like a goddamned cripple," Scoby finished dourly.

"Exactly."

"You really think they made him?" Scoby asked. Stoner and Paxton had come back into the room and were now sitting on the bed, staring at him.

"Yeah, I'm starting to think it's a strong possibility."

"So where does that leave Henry?"

"I don't know. That's the problem."

"There's always the chance that they made Ruebottom as an agent, but then came to the conclusion that he's working on Henry instead of on them," Scoby suggested. "Be a hell of a cover, when you stop to think about it."

"That's a possibility, too," McNulty acknowledged. "Henry told Alex that he's been hunting illegally since he was a kid and that he's got one hell of a trophy collection hidden away somewhere."

"Christ, with clients like that, the Chareauxs ought to expect the feds to be snooping around," Scoby said.

"Sure, hazards of the game. But would they be crazy enough to take Lightner out on a hunt if they knew he had a federal wildlife agent right on his ass?"

"Any halfway sane crook would have been long gone by now," Scoby agreed, "but I wouldn't put the Chareaux brothers in that category."

"No, I wouldn't either," McNulty agreed. "Especially not Alex. And that's exactly what's bothering me right now. I'd like to believe that everything's on track and that Len Ruebottom's just sitting around in a bar somewhere in Bozeman wondering if he's going to get his butt chewed for not doing as he was told. And I'd also like to believe that Henry's going to show up sometime in the next three or four hours with all the evidence we need to put these coon-ass bastards away for good."

"But you don't think so, do you?"

"No, I don't."

"So how long do you figure we've got?"

"We'll let it run until ten o'clock. That's about," McNulty checked his watch, "five and a half hours from now."

"Ten p.m., check," Scoby said as he marked the time down in his case notebook, "and after that?"

"If we don't hear from Len or Henry by ten o'clock," McNulty said, his voice taking on a cold chill, "the five of us are going to drive down to Gardiner and have a nice heart-to-heart talk with Alex Chareaux. And in the meantime, let's just hope that Mike's gotten something useful out of that goddamn plane."