Prey

Chapter Twenty-Six

Friday June 7th

The crew of the Bell Ranger dropped Dr. Reston Wolfe off at the Whitehorse Cabin heliport and prepared to wait on stand-by. The executive director of ICER hunched way down for several awkward steps until he was clear of the sweeping rotor blades and well beyond the more distant yellow-painted warning stripes. He then hurried on past the stone-faced ground controller with a briefcase clutched tightly in his small, bureaucratic fist.

Three minutes later, Wolfe walked through the private entrance to Lisa Abercombie's underground office, closed the door, and set his briefcase down on her desk. Abercombie ignored him as she continued to read through a stack of faxed press clippings.

Undaunted, Wolfe opened the briefcase, removed a handful of thick file folders, and tossed them onto the desk top.

"It's a done deal," he said proudly.

"Meaning?" Lisa Abercombie asked as she finally looked up.

"Bravo Team no longer exists," Wolfe said. "At five o'clock Eastern Standard Time, which was-" he glanced down at his watch "-exactly one hour and twelve minutes ago, the team was officially disbanded and all assigned special agents were officially transferred to new duty stations of their choice."

"You're certain of that?"

"It's all right there in the files." Wolfe gestured to the stack of personnel folders. "Six voluntary requests for transfer with accompanying approvals and personnel actions, all signed, sealed, and delivered."

"Wonderful," Abercombie nodded.

"And, coincidentally," Wolfe went on, "you might be happy to learn that the case against the Chareaux brothers has been dropped."

"Oh, really? On what basis?"

"Failure to follow official policies and procedures. Covert operations require law-enforcement agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service to obtain prior written approval before conducting undercover investigations against individuals with sensitive backgrounds."

"You identified the Chareaux brothers as having sensitive backgrounds? Are you out of your goddamned mind?" Lisa Abercombie demanded, her eyes suddenly widening with fear.

"What Paul McNulty and his covert team simply didn't realize when they began their little probe," Wolfe went on confidently, "was that the Chareaux brothers have been working as confidential informants for an extremely sensitive government operation, the details of which cannot be revealed at this time without putting other agents and informants at risk."

"You have that documented?" Abercombie asked uneasily.

Wolfe nodded.

"So what did you threaten them with?" Abercombie asked.

"Immediate transfers to New York, with occasional forays into Newark."

"You really think that's going to be enough of a threat to keep them quiet?"

"As I understand it," Wolfe smiled, "a typical New York import-export case can take several years to resolve, rummaging through filthy warehouses, sifting through hundreds of thousands of records. And, of course, it's virtually impossible to find a decent place to live anywhere near the office on a special agent's salary."

Lisa Abercombie was quiet for a long moment.

"Nice," she finally said. "In fact, very nice." She nodded in grudging approval.

"I thought you'd like it," Wolfe smiled, clearly pleased with his clever bureaucratic maneuvers.

"But we have another problem that you may not know about yet," Abercombie said. "Have you seen the papers?"

"Not today. Why?"

"Read these," she said as she tossed the faxed news clippings across the desk.

Wolfe scanned the clippings, then went back and read the first two articles more thoroughly.

"They did it," he whispered.

"They certainly did," Lisa Abercombie concurred. "And what's more, they did it perfectly. I don't think we could have asked the team for a better demonstration."

"How did you manage to set it up?" Wolfe asked.

"That's the beauty of it," Abercombie smiled, her dark eyes flashing with unconcealed amusement. "The stupid bastards set it up themselves. Five known militant activists from three of the top environmental groups deciding to get together for an informal meeting at a remote location on Long Island. It was perfect."

"Any idea why they called the meeting?"

"Probably to discuss strategies, or maybe just to exchange tofu recipes," Abercombie shrugged. "It doesn't matter now, though. One of them was well known for making violent threats against specific industrial targets. Apparently he liked to spout off to the press about how the environmentalists ought to declare war on the industrial world. I mean, what more could we ask for?"

"That quote I read." Wolfe flipped through to the second clipping. "Ah, yes, here it is: 'He was always talking about using bombs as a last resort, but we never took him seriously because nobody ever thought he'd really be stupid enough to do it.'" Wolfe shook his head in admiration. "God, that's beautiful!"

"We were able to get some preliminary reports from the Justice Department," Abercombie smiled. "Apparently they found enough evidence in the basement-including some buried explosives and a couple of crude timing devices-to tentatively conclude that the victims were probably examining a completed bomb when something set it off."

"What if they try to track all of that stuff back to a source?" Wolfe asked.

Abercombie smiled. "It seems that our tough-talking victim really did have a thing for explosives. What little he did have-just a few sticks of dynamite and the timers-was carefully stored away at a warehouse in Connecticut. So all Maas and Asai had to do was relocate his pathetic little armory to the basement of the Long Island meeting site and then see to it that the Radio Shack receipts and the sketches in his handwriting would survive the blast."

"Sounds perfect," Wolfe murmured.

"That's what I thought," Lisa Abercombie said with a curious edge to her voice. "Until I discovered the problem." She opened her desk drawer and removed another set of clippings, which she tossed over to Wolfe.

"A Bozeman newspaper?" he asked with a quizzical expression as he glanced at the first header.

"Would you believe that one of the victims who was killed in the explosion just happened to live in Bozeman, Montana?" Abercombie asked as the executive director of ICER started to scan through the small type.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Wolfe winced. "Didn't anybody know that?"

"No." Abercombie shook her head. "Other than our mad bomber, who was also the primary coordinator for the meeting, we had no idea of who the other representatives might be. It was simply an unexpected opportunity, and we took advantage of it."

Wolfe sat for a moment in contemplative silence.

"These are just local papers," he said finally. "They run an article one day and by the next day, it's forgotten."

"Yes, that probably would have been the case if the local NBC affiliate hadn't stopped by the victim's home to interview his parents," Abercombie nodded. "Do you know what those people gave him?"

"No, what?" Wolfe asked uneasily.

"A homemade video tape showing what a wonderful person their son was because he had always spent his summers working as an outdoor naturalist at-you'll never guess-Yellowstone National Park. Naturally, Brokaw picked it up immediately for his Nightly News show."

"Christ Almighty!" Wolfe whispered.

"Do you know what that means?" Lisa Abercombie asked in a quiet, chilling voice. "It's a link. Something that we can't afford right now."

"But I don't see how anyone could make the connection between a Bozeman naturalist who died in an accident on Long Island and three illegal hunting guides at Yellowstone, one of whom happened to be arrested in Bozeman," Wolfe said. "The two incidents seem completely unrelated."

"The only problem is that they are not separate and they are not unrelated," Abercombie reminded. "Dr. Morito Asai was involved in both. So were you and I, to a lesser degree. And keep in mind," she added, "that if we start talking investigations, we're talking the