Prey

Chapter Twenty-One

Thoroughly distracted by the realization that the lives of Len Ruebottom and Henry Lightstone were hanging in the balance, Larry Paxton stepped out of the phone booth, looked to his right at the Cat's Paw parking lot, and started to run across the street between two parked cars.

He never saw the white car to his left that made a quick turn and began to accelerate toward him.

The sudden sound of screeching brakes was the only warning that Paxton had before the bumper of the Ford Taurus caught his left leg and sent him tumbling up and over the front of the hood. The hood ornament tore through his jacket and the small packset radio, gouging against his ribs before it snapped off.

As Paxton continued on in his tumbling path into the vehicle's windshield, the smoking tires finally got a grip on the asphalt and brought the vehicle to a sudden stop that sent the stunned agent rolling backward off the front of the hood and onto the hard, cold asphalt.

"Jesus fucking Christ! What the hell's the matter with you?" a high-pitched voice demanded as the driver's door of the Bozeman Police Department patrol car was thrown open.

Larry Paxton had managed to get up on his hands and knees and was starting to use the bumper and hood of the damaged vehicle to work himself into a standing position when the thoroughly unnerved police officer finally got around to him.

"Sir, are you okay?" The wide-eyed face that stared down at him under the mildly illuminating glow of the nearby street light was that of a shaken, anxious young officer.

"Yeah, I'm fine. No problem," Paxton said heavily as he straightened upright, his legs wobbly and his vision fuzzy. He tried to blink his eyes clear to read the numbers on his watch, but its supposedly shatterproof face had been crushed by the Ford Taurus's hood.

"Christ, buddy, you've got to watch out where you're going. You could get yourself killed like that," the officer went on in a barely controlled voice.

"Yeah, I know. My fault all the way." Paxton nodded groggily, wondering if he had a concussion. "Had my head up my ass, didn't see you coming. Say, do you know what time it is?"

"Uh, it's nine fifty-eight," the officer said as he glanced quickly at his watch. "Listen, why don't you sit down there by the curb while I get you some help?"

"No, really, that's okay," Paxton smiled weakly, thinking he really ought to lie down. "See, I'm running kinda late, and it looks like your police car's okay, so if you don't mind, I'll just-" Then he blinked and turned away as the young officer turned on his flashlight.

"Oh, Christ."

"What's the matter?"

"You're bleeding. Deep cut over your right eye." Paxton felt his arm being taken in the firm grasp of the muscular and now very concerned officer. "Listen, you sit down over here while I call this in, get my supervisor out here. Then I'll get my first-aid kit and try to patch you up until the medics can transport you to a hospital."

"No, man, I'm telling you, I've gotta go," Paxton said as he twisted his arm out of the officer's grasp.

"Hey, look, buddy, calm down. You're hurt, and you need medical attention, and I've got to write this up," the young officer said insistently as he got Paxton back into his grasp. "You just- Hey, what's this?"

In trying to regain his grip on Paxton's arm, the patrol officer's hand had brushed against the grip of Paxton's shoulder-holstered SIG-Sauer.

Oh, shit! Paxton thought, realizing that there wasn't enough time to go through the lengthy procedure of positively identifying himself as a federal agent. Especially since his badge and credentials were locked in the trunk of the car across the street.

Responding to his academy training, the young officer instinctively shoved Paxton around to face the patrol car while he reached down for his holstered 9mm Glock automatic, which left Paxton with only one reasonable option.

Dropping his head and bracing himself against the hood of the patrol car, Paxton slammed the heel of his hiking boot into the officer's lower abdomen, trying as best as he could not to catch him square in the groin. Then, as the navy-blue- uniformed officer grunted and dropped to the ground, Paxton spun around, wrist-locked and arm-barred him down to the pavement, fumbled for the snap of his handcuff pouch and quickly secured his arms behind his back.

Then, feeling his sorely bruised ribs and every one of his thirty-six years, Paxton started to pull himself back up to his feet.

"You goddamned bastard," the young officer snarled as he tried to get at Paxton with his free leg. The well-aimed and solidly driven kick narrowly missed Paxton's groin, catching him in the thigh instead as it knocked him back down to the asphalt.

"Nice going, man. Hell of a shot," Paxton gasped as he dragged the still-struggling and cursing officer over to the sidewalk and held him down against the concrete for a moment with his aching body.

"Listen to me, buddy. You don't want to do this. You're making a real bad mistake," the officer tried, but Paxton was in too much of a hurry to listen.

"It's okay," he said, speaking as quietly as he could between deep breaths as he looked around quickly to make sure that nobody was watching. "Take my word for it, I'm on your side. No time to explain right now. Make it up to you later."

Then, after looking both ways this time, he took off at an unsteady gait across the street toward the Cat's Paw.

Paxton saw Stoner look up at him when he came in through the door. Sonny Chareaux was standing with his back to the bar, feeding three more quarters into the telephone. He held up a piece of paper in his right hand and began to dial.

Larry Paxton, with a convenient glazed look in his eyes, staggered over in the direction of the Cat's Paw's single telephone. As he approached Sonny Chareaux's back, he deliberately bumped into the small table, knocking the set of keys to the floor and causing the Louisiana poacher to turn around and look. Paxton, muscular but still much smaller than Chareaux, lurched forward, knocking Chareaux sideways. As Paxton threw out his left arm to catch himself on the telephone box, the fingers of his left hand closed down over the handset receiver.

"CAN AH USE THE PHONE WHEN YOU IS DONE?" Paxton yelled in a loud, slurred voice, blinking his eyes as he smiled up at the hulking Cajun, who had already recovered his balance.

"What?" Sonny Chareaux rasped, still clutching the handset.

"WHAT AH SAID IS, CAN AH USE-?" Paxton started to repeat himself in a loud, mumbled version of a South Carolina dialect before he found himself being flung backward into the table.

"HEY, MAN!" Paxton started to protest, gasping in pain as his ribs seemed to grate against the hard surface of the table.

But the severely injured agent was wasting his breath. Sonny Chareaux had already brought the handset back up to his ear, and his eyes were widening in rage as he recognized the dial tone.

Chareaux screamed out something unintelligible- something that Paxton figured was a Cajun-French curse on his ancestry.

Turning back to the phone box, Chareaux was in the process of hurriedly fumbling for more quarters when Paxton lurched forward again, wedged himself between Chareaux and the phone, screamed out, "IT'S MAH TURN!" and then used his leverage and the full force of his right leg to send Chareaux tumbling backward into and over his table.

Working quickly now because his ribs were really hurting and he knew he wasn't going to have much time, Paxton pulled a handful of Kleenex out of his back pocket, tore off a piece about three inches wide, and then began fumbling around in his pocket for a coin so that he could stuff the Kleenex into the slot of the phone.

Behind his back, he heard the sounds of people yelling and tables and chairs being flung aside as Sonny Chareaux screamed out his rage.

Paxton had just finished jamming the last of the blue tissue into the narrow slot when Sonny Chareaux's savage roar warned him in time to duck away from the fist that slammed into the wall right next to his ear. But he couldn't avoid the second fist that seemed to explode into his already damaged rib cage, turning his knees into jelly, or the third that caught him right in the side of the head and sent him sprawling to the floor.

Paxton was still down, clutching at his ribs, shaking his bleeding head, and Sonny Chareaux was working feverishly at the phone, when ex-Raider-tackle Dwight Stoner slammed into Chareaux's upper back with a bone-crushing forearm shot that sent Chareaux and the telephone through the two-by-four-studded wall and into the bar's storage room.

Nearly trampled by the crowd of half-drunken spectators drawn by the irresistible sounds of breaking glass, splintering wood, grunting, screaming and cursing, Paxton crawled under Chareaux's table and waited. As the fighters and spectators worked themselves farther into the nearly demolished storage room, Paxton reached for Chareaux's keys, and the piece of paper that had also fallen to the floor.

Getting to his feet was more difficult than Paxton had expected, but the sounds of distant police sirens offered encouragement. Within a minute, he was out the back door and walking unsteadily to the car that he and Stoner had rented. He unlocked the door, pulled himself into the front passenger seat, quickly shut the door, and then spent another thirty seconds trying to reach under the seat for the portable telephone that Mike Takahara had talked them into carrying as a backup.

He didn't know how badly he was hurt, but nothing was going to stop him, Paxton told himself for perhaps the fifth time. Not until he found a certain Chevy pickup truck. Paxton smiled, because he thought he might know where Sonny Chareaux was keeping Len Ruebottom. He paused to listen to Dwight Stoner's distinctive roar, followed by the glass-shattering crash of a large body being thrown through a window.

"Go to it, Stoner, my man," he whispered to himself. "Take that coon-ass son of a bitch apart at the seams."

Finally, his rib cage about ready to burst, the tips of Paxton's long fingers located the cold, plastic case. Good old Snoopy, he thought as he slowly extended his hand another half inch and managed to retrieve the heavy, battery-operated remote phone without fainting in the process. One of your crazy-ass ideas actually came in handy.

Lying semiprone on the seat, his head braced against the driver's armrest, and holding the face of the radio up at window level so the numbered buttons were faintly illuminated by the nearby streetlights,

Paxton carefully punched in the phone number for the Prime Rate motel.

"Operator," the soft, youthful voice spoke in Paxton's ear.

"Room one-three-seven," he said, working hard to enunciate the numbers clearly. He didn't know what time it was, but it had to be well after ten, which meant that Henry and Len Ruebottom were probably running out of time. He had to get word to McNulty.

"Thank you."

Paxton listened to the busy signal ring eight times before it occurred to him that Mike Takahara probably hadn't gotten back from the airport yet. Which meant that all of his fancy message-switching gadgets-the ones that would have alerted McNulty that someone else was trying to call in-were still sitting in their cases, waiting to be reconnected to the Prime Rate Motel phone lines.

He let the busy signal ring four more times before he realized that the motel operator wasn't going to come back on the line, so he broke the connection and redialed the number.

"Operator."

"This is Larry Paxton," he said carefully and slowly, trying very hard to erase every trace of his black, South Carolina upbringing. "I'm a guest at your motel. Room one-three-eight. I need you to break into a call at room one-three-seven. The room is in the name of Paul McNulty, and it is an emergency."

"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not allowed to do that without permission of the manager."

"Then would you please go get his permission?" Paxton asked in a voice that, in his thoroughly biased view, was far more polite and controlled than the young operator had any right to expect.

"I'm sorry, sir, but he's not in his office right now. If you could call back in a half hour-"

Paxton broke the connection with a flood of profanity. He was rapidly running out of time.

Which meant there was only one reasonable option left.

Okay, McNulty, he thought to himself, you're always telling us to be adaptable, think fast on our feet, make decisions on our own. Hope the hell you're right.

Working slowly in the streetlight-illuminated darkness because he didn't dare turn on the overhead interior light, Paxton took another half minute to decipher Sonny Chareaux's scrawled handwriting and then punch the correct sequence of numbers into the portable phone. It rang twice before an unfamiliar voice answered.

"Hello?"

"This Alex?" Paxton asked in his slow, South Carolina drawl.

"What?"

"Ah said, is this Alex?" Paxton repeated.

There was a long pause, and then a voice replied cautiously, "There is no one here by that name."

"Well, shit. Ah know this is the number Sonny told me to call, and Ah-"

"You said Sonny? Wait just a minute-"

"Hey, man, you wait just a minute! Who the hell is this?" Paxton demanded.

"This is Jacall. Please wait just one minute."

Paxton thought he heard a muffled voice yelling something in the background.

"Listen, man, Ah ain't waiting for nobody, and Ah ain't in the mood to play no fucking games. All Ah'm doing is what Sonny asked me to do. You just tell this Alex, whoever and wherever the fuck he is, that Sonny says everything's cool with the pilot, whatever the hell that means."

"No, wait! Don't hang up!" the voice said frantically. "What about Sonny? Where is he?"

"Probably in some po-lice car, heading to jail, seeing as how he just got himself in one hellacious bar fight. And Ah'm getting the hell out of here before Ah end up in the same place," Paxton said and then quickly disconnected before Alex could come on the line.

"Okay, Henry, I hope that buys you something," Paxton whispered as he slowly pulled himself up to a sitting position and looked again at Chareaux's keys. One of the keys belonged to a Chevy, and the key ring bore the emblem of a camper supply house. He reached for the door handle and got out.

There were at least seven or eight pickups with full-sized camper rigs in the parking lot, and as it turned out, four of them were Chevys. So it took Larry Paxton almost five more minutes to discover that one of the keys Sonny Chareaux had lost in the Cat's Paw bar fit perfectly into the back-door lock of the third camper.

Barely conscious now, but still on his feet, Paxton was just about to open the camper door-to see for himself whether or not he had guessed right-when he felt the cold, hard muzzle of a 9mm Glock pistol press hard against the back of his neck.

"Sir, without turning around, and without moving a single muscle in your entire body," the young patrol officer said as he stepped in with his left foot and wrist-locked the agent's left arm behind his back, "I want you to explain to me exactly why you and I might be on the same side."