Prey

Chapter Thirty-One

Tuesday September 14th

To virtually any other resident of the southern shoreline of Skilak Lake, the sudden cracking of a dried branch would have been immediate cause for alarm. But in this remote and isolated area of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, the fiercely protective Kodiak had no natural enemies. With her cubs close by, she was completely engrossed in the alluring clumps of lush, ripe, raspberry-like salmonberries and low- bush cranberries. She had every intention of seeing her small cubs develop the fatty tissue necessary to carry them through the cold Kenai winters.

Relaxed, confident, and only mildly curious about the source of the crackling noise, the mother Kodiak grunted her annoyance as she rose up to her full nine-foot height. Once upright, so that she could see over the interwoven salmonberry stems and alder branches, she quickly focused on her young male cub, who had wandered too far. More branches snapped as he awkwardly tried to work himself in closer to an especially sweet-smelling loop of fibrous material that seemed to be drenched in berry juice, and the repetition of the familiar sound caused the last of the mother Kodiak's residual concerns to vanish.

The Kodiak bellowed a long, grunting whooof to warn the cub back, then dropped down again to continue foraging. She was reaching out toward a particularly enticing clump of red salmonberries when the sudden, terrified yowl of her cub erased all thoughts of eating from her instinct-regulated brain.

In an instant, seventeen hundred pounds of furious motherhood exploded through the mass of interwoven branches and stems that would have hopelessly trapped any lesser mammal. Charged with adrenaline, her eyes bulged as she saw her tortured baby cub dangling from a rope held by a relatively small and mostly hairless upright creature.

Had the sow possessed any sense of what it meant to have natural enemies, she might have hesitated. But in nature, the desperate urge to protect the young at any cost is always the dominant instinct.

Exposing her huge teeth in a savage snarl, the enraged sow brought her massive shoulder muscles down in preparation for attack. In her fury, she paid no attention to the shiny, long-barreled pistol that suddenly appeared in the creature's hand, nor did she ever actually hear the gunshot that tore into her right shoulder. The fractured joint gave way, sending the roaring bear tumbling muzzle-first into the soft earth.

Mindless of anything but the sound of her squalling cub, she staggered up onto her three functional legs, her right foreleg dangling useless. She tried to make the uphill charge once more… only to go down again when the carefully aimed second bullet ripped into her left shoulder socket.

There was another momentary flash of pain, so severe this time that it threatened to eclipse her awareness. But then the white-haired predator yanked on the rope, causing her cub to cry out again, and the mother Kodiak suddenly rose up on her hind legs like a demon out of hell, her neck bowed like a huge striking snake as she lunged upward, her fearsome teeth bared for the kill.

The third high-velocity bullet shattered the knee joint of her right rear leg, and she came down heavily on her side. But this time she was only a dozen feet from her tormentor, and the furious churning efforts of her left rear leg-as well as the swiping motions of her damaged but still functional left forearm-brought her to within six feet before the fourth bullet slammed into her left hip and completely broke her down.

She might have stayed there then on that rocky hillside, having done all that could possibly have been expected of an animal limited to the fearless use of muscle, bone, and heart in trying to protect its young from the most savage species on earth.

It would have been reasonable, and understandable, and even just.

But her cub was squalling steadily now, fighting against the rope to reach its mother, while the white-haired man simply laughed.

Which was all it took to send the tortured Kodiak roaring forward one last time, slashing out at the leg of her tormentor with her one functional paw even as Gerd Maas sent the fifth bullet from Sonny Chareaux's single-action. 357 Magnum Ruger revolver into her brain and silenced those unyielding maternal instincts forever.

"Look at them," she whispered in amazement.

Henry Lightstone and Marie Pascalaura were sitting together in the bow of the twenty-five-foot patrol boat, bundled up in thermal underwear, sweaters and windbreakers under their life vests to ward off the chilling offshore breezes. They watched in silent fascination as the now-familiar pair of bald eagles continued to perform their aerobatic twists and turns over the glistening turquoise surface of Skilak Lake.

The graceful raptors had been performing for the past half hour, probably, as Refuge Officer Sam Jackson suggested, because it kept their human competitors from concentrating too much on trying to catch their fish.

Sam Jackson, a twenty-two-year veteran at the Kenai Refuge, and longtime friend of Thomas Woeshack, had shown up in a patrol boat an hour before. Wearing his reddish-orange "Mustang" survival suit and carrying his golden retriever pup, he had been more than happy to pull out his own fishing pole and join them.

"I think they're the most beautiful things that I've ever seen in my life," Marie said, cradling the golden retriever pup in her arms now and laying her head back against Henry Lightstone's shoulder. "I think I could get used to days like this."

"It isn't bad," Lightstone agreed. "But I'm not too sure about that idea of saving on grocery bills by catching our own food," he added thoughtfully as he stared out at the gently bobbing lure. Although they had already hooked and released several two- and three-pounders, the ten-to- fifteen-pound "keepers" had shown no interest whatsoever in the Grey Mosquito fishing fly. Their Alaskan guide had apparently overestimated the rainbow trout. Just like he overestimated his flying skills, Lightstone thought, recalling the young agent-pilot's two aborted attempts to put the Skywagon's twin floats down on the wind-rippled lake surface, attempts that Lightstone had privately described to Marie as "probably how a stone feels when it gets skipped across a lake."

"Hey, Woeshack," Lightstone said as they watched one of the eagles swoop down toward the water and then tumble wildly in the air, narrowly escaping disaster as one of its talons locked onto and then lost a glistening and thrashing sockeye salmon. "Is that your flight instructor up there?"

Jackson laughed. "I saw him try to make a landing out on Lake Hood just like that a couple of days ago."

"Don't let them pick on you, Thomas," Marie Pascalaura said, holding onto her pole and the pup as she looked back over her shoulder. "I think you fly just fine."

"That's okay, I don't mind," the young native Alaskan agent shrugged easily. "In fact, they're right. The eagles have always been my inspiration. As a child, I often watched them catching their food from the water and dreamed that I would fly just like them one day." He cast his line with an effortless flick of his wrist out toward a swirl in the water about thirty feet away.

"Well, you've just about made it as far as I'm concerned," Lightstone said, ignoring Marie's warning elbow to his ribs.

Trying to concentrate on the gentle swirls around his slowly drifting fly, Lightstone heard but chose to ignore the sharp, distant explosion that suddenly echoed across the huge Alaskan lake.

Instead, he continued to breath in a slow, steady rhythm, his muscular hands rock-steady on the eight-foot rod. His feet were solidly braced against the tightly secured backpack that contained a pair of 7x40 binoculars, a stainless-steel Smith amp; Wesson revolver fully loaded with. 357 hollow- points, and his special agent's badge and identification, all of which Henry Lightstone had no intention of using on this bright, crisp, peaceful Alaska fall day.

"Come on, you picky bastards," he whispered. "Go for it. What the hell are you waiting for?"

"Don't worry, lover," Marie Pascalaura whispered. "There's always the fish market."

The second echoing gunshot caused Lightstone to blink, but his eyes never strayed from the gently bobbing fly. In the murky depths of his subconscious, Henry Lightstone had already categorized the shots as having come from a high- velocity pistol somewhere along the southern shore of the lake, probably at least a mile and a half away. Fine, he thought to himself, moving the tip of his rod slightly. I don't care about gunshots today, just as long as the bullets aren't coming in our direction.

Off to the right, a large, slow swirl broke the reflective blue surface about fifteen feet away from the lure.

"There, did you see that?" Marie asked as she clutched Lightstone's arm anxiously.

"Just be patient," Woeshack advised quietly as he stared out over Lightstone's shoulder at the glistening water. "They think they are the hunters, but you're the one who has the bait they want. Watch for the next one. It will come to you."

It was the timing of the third explosion, as much as anything else, that jarred at Henry Lightstone's peace of mind.

Paced shots, cool, deliberate aim, he thought, unable to resist the urge to count off the interval.

Not a hunter.

… thousand and three, one thousand and four.

"What's the matter?" Marie Pascalaura whispered, but he ignored her.

Now.

Crr-rack… booom!

Henry Lightstone slowly turned his suntanned face toward the distant southern shore, aware that the soaring eagles had instinctively drifted away from the echoing explosion. He waited… and then winced six seconds later when the fifth shot echoed across the water with a discernible sense of finality.

"You have many hunters out here?" Lightstone asked.

"A few," Sam Jackson said with an edge to his voice. "Never heard any shoot like that, though." He, too, had detected the unlikely pattern of the gunshots.

"Someone doing some target practice, maybe?" Thomas Woeshack suggested, but the tone of his voice suggested that he didn't really believe it. He slid his rod down against the gunwale of the aluminum boat and reached for his backpack.

Lightstone could hear Woeshack at the rear of the boat, opening up the waterproof equipment box that had been bolted to the cross structure of the sturdy patrol craft. At the same time, Sam Jackson slowly and carefully climbed back into his smaller patrol craft and opened up his own equipment case.

For a good five minutes, the two federal agents and the refuge officer scanned the distant rocky, tree-lined shore with their binoculars, searching for some sign of the individual who seemed much too methodical- much too precise — to be a hunter, while Lightstone tried to hold back the harsher reality that threatened to overwhelm the serenity of the glistening, smooth water. Memories of grisly crime scenes and deadened eyes. And of terrified victims, and of nervous suspects on the edge of panic, ready to run or fight or kill again, because they were never sure of exactly how much you knew.

"Anybody see anything?" Woeshack finally asked in a hushed voice.

"Nothing here," Sam Jackson answered from his boat.

"Nothing here either." Lightstone shook his head. "You're probably right. Just some guy out-"

There was another splash nearby, and the fly rod suddenly clattered violently across the bottom of the patrol boat.

"Hey!" Marie Pascalaura cried as she lunged across her fiance's lap and grabbed her fishing rod just as it was about to go over the side.

The sudden pull on the line as the thirteen-pound, hooked rainbow trout dove for the rocks pulled Marie forward, causing her to squeal in surprise as the rod bent down toward the water like an eight-foot bow.

"Hold on to it!" Lightstone yelled as he yanked the binocular strap up over his neck and reached for the waterproof case.

"What do I do?" she gasped as she tried to get back into her seat.

"Give him some line and watch out for those rocks," Sam Jackson advised, quickly securing his binoculars and reaching for his net. Thomas Woeshack got ready to pull up the light anchor and kick in the motor if the fish pulled them anywhere near the rocks that protruded from the water about fifteen yards away.

"I knew your luck would change," Woeshack said cheerfully from the back of the rocking boat.

"I hope you're right," Lightstone nodded as he looked one more time toward the distant southern shoreline.