Prey

PREY…
Chapter Forty-Two

Friday September 24

At precisely quarter past twelve on that Friday afternoon, Lisa Abercombie set Dr. Reston Wolfe's summary report aside and slowly began to flip through its accompanying sheath of police reports, interagency teletypes, and press clippings.

Three minutes later, having satisfied herself that the names and numbers in Wolfe's report seemed reasonable, she went back and read the entire four-page summary report one more time.

Having done that, she sat back in her beige-leather executive chair and stared incredulously at the three men sitting across from her desk.

"Five of our people are dead?"

"That's right," Paul Saltmann said matter-of-factly. "Arturo, Corrie, Felix, Shoshin, and Kiro. Roy, Carine, and Kimiko were wounded. Of the three, Roy's injuries are the most serious."

"And Alex Chareaux is… loose?"

"Apparently," the curly-haired weight lifter and intelligence specialist nodded.

For a long moment Lisa Abercombie simply stared at the three ICER team leaders.

"Three months ago, in one surgical operation," she said, her voice hoarse with disbelief, "Operation Counter Wrench created absolute havoc among five of the top environmental activist organizations in the world. Since then, we have conducted seven follow-up operations, which have literally set these extremists at each other's throats, without a single one of our people being so much as scratched.

"But then," Abercombie went on, "when we send you out to deal with six Fish and Wildlife Service officers-not Delta Team members, or Secret Service agents, or U.S. Marines, but wildlife officers-none of whom have the slightest reason to suspect that you're coming, you come back and tell me that not only have we lost half of our effective team, but also that an incredibly dangerous individual, one in a position to cause us immense grief, has been allowed to get away from us?"

For a brief moment, Abercombie allowed her gaze to fall on each of the men individually. "Can any one of you please tell me," she asked in a glacial voice that matched the cold fury in her eyes, "how we could possibly have gotten ourselves into such a position?"

For approximately ten seconds, all three men simply stared back at her with varying degrees of casual indifference. Then, out of no apparent sense of intimidation or urgency, Paul Saltmann spoke up again.

"I can explain it very simply," he said. "You and your bureaucrat buddy tried to make it too cute."

"Cute?" Lisa Abercombie rasped, her eyes almost bulging with rage. "You call the endangerment of a hundred-million-dollar operation cute?"

"We could have taken every one of them out with long-range weapons," Saltmann responded with icy calm. "We told you that. And if you had allowed us to handle it that way, we would have left appropriate evidence at the scenes and then disposed of the Chareauxs separately, without the slightest difficulty. It was only when we tried to integrate the Chareaux brothers directly into the situation that we ran into complications."

"However," Dr. Morito Asai reminded, "five of these agents are now dead. Also, we are following the sixth agent right now, and we may have located Chareaux."

"You know where Alex is, right now?" Lisa Abercombie asked quickly.

"We believe so, yes."

"Where?"

"In a remote cabin approximately three miles northeast of us," Paul Saltmann said. "We recognized this location as a possible jump point for an intruder, so we had it wired into our security system. The sensors detected one individual moving in there last night."

"You mean he's here, close by?" she asked with undisguised panic in her voice.

"Not so close, but not so far away either," the Japanese technical specialist said. "From our point of view, he is accessible."

Abercombie hesitated, trying to maintain her icy demeanor. But the thread of fear was there, and they could sense it now.

"Do you anticipate that he will be coming after us?" she finally asked.

"Alex Chareaux is a proud and vengeful man, and we have sacrificed his two brothers for our purposes," Asai shrugged. "Why would he not?"

"How did he know to come here?" she asked.

"Probably because Felix told him," Paul Saltmann said.

"What do you mean, Felix told him?" Abercombie demanded. "Why in the world would he do that?"

"An individual under torture can be made to say almost anything," the curly-haired intelligence specialist said coldly. "Even someone like Felix is not immune. Read the Reno sheriffs report. It's fairly descriptive."

Abercombie looked at Saltmann quizzically, then quickly flipped through the sheath of papers until she came to the report filed by Homicide Sergeant Clinton Hardwell. One third of the way through the report, her tanned face turned pale.

"My God, he-" Then she blinked in sudden realization and turned her attention to Gerd Maas, who was seemingly bored by the drift of the conversation. "Why haven't you gone out there and killed this bastard?" she demanded, her voice harsh and unforgiving.

"Because it is essential that we dispose of the sixth agent first," Gerd Maas responded, his deep and foreboding voice causing Lisa Abercombie to pull back from her aggressive posture. "It must look like Chareaux is determined to complete his mission."

"But… but the risk," Abercombie started to argue as she stared down at the report, seemingly unable to take her eyes away from the descriptive paragraphs.

"Chareaux is emotional, and therefore does not represent a significant risk to this operation," Maas said with cold indifference. "The cabin is under constant surveillance, and he will not be allowed to approach this facility until we are ready for him to do so."

"But what if he eludes all of you again?"

"Mistakes were made when we had him in our possession at Reno," Maas said coldly. "Such mistakes will not be made in the future."

"Mistakes? What do mean by that?"

"For example," Maas replied, "it was a foolish mistake to send Gunter away and leave Alex in the hands of Felix and the others. Felix was a tactician whose primary concern would have been to carry out his assignment, whereas Gunter would have killed Alex the moment he tried to escape, and not given him the opportunity to harm the others."

"But you were in charge-" Abercombie started to protest.

"Gerd was monitoring the situation in the Kenai," Paul Saltmann interrupted. "He left orders for all of us to maintain our positions until he returned. However, your bureaucratic buddy, who didn't have the balls to stick around, decided to change the program."

"Dr. Wolfe had two appointments in Washington that he couldn't reschedule," Lisa Abercombie retorted. "But what do you mean, he changed the program?"

"The sixth agent had disappeared, and we didn't want to finish off Chareaux until we had located him," Saltmann explained. "Wolfe found a lead through the Fish and Wildlife Service personnel records that turned out to be useful; but instead of waiting for one of us, he ordered Gunter to follow up on the lead, leaving Felix, Shoshin, and Corrie in Reno to monitor Chareaux and Takahara."

"And I might add that Dr. Wolfe issued those orders knowing that Shoshin had been injured, and therefore was certain to be less effective," Asai said accusingly.

"Wolfe did that?" Lisa Abercombie blinked in astonishment.

"That's right," Saltmann said grimly, "which is why Felix, Shoshin, and Corrie are now dead."

The Bronx-raised politician muttered a curse under her breath.

"All right," she whispered. "I will deal with Wolfe when he returns. Now, what about Nakamura?"

"I was there on that one," Saltmann nodded. "Everything was going according to plan until Paxton and his buddy showed up."

"Larry Paxton, the black agent whom you and Felix and Gunter supposedly killed in Florida?"

"That's right," Saltmann conceded. "The plan was to go down and confirm the body, but the lake was filled with alligators that were acting aggressive, like they were down there chewing on fresh meat. There was blood in the water, so we decided it wasn't worth the risk."

"But obviously it would have been."

The chilling voice of Gerd Maas stopped Abercombie.

"Other than Wolfe's mistake, the decisions in the field have been correctly made," the assault-group leader said. "In this kind of operation, casualties are to be expected."

Lisa Abercombie started to interrupt, but Maas waved her off.

"These six agents have had some luck," he said. "But we can replace our losses, they cannot. This Paxton was clever enough to avoid death in Florida, but then he died in the explosion along with Stoner. And Chareaux was helpful enough to kill Takahara before he escaped, so now there is only one left to deal with-one agent, and then Chareaux- before we have resolved our problem."

Lisa Abercombie considered this; then, her cold bureaucratic facade back in place, she turned to face Dr. Morito Asai. "You said that you know the location of this sixth agent right now?"

"Yes."

"Where is he?"

"At the moment, he is on board a small, private, twin-engine airplane enroute to Washington, D.C."

"You are certain of that?"

Dr. Morito Asai maintained a stony expression as he absorbed the insult. "He is on that plane, along with several others. Yes, I am certain."

Lisa Abercombie glanced down at her watch. "It's twelve-thirty now. In approximately five and a half hours, the Committee is expecting me to call in with a full report on our progress. When I do so, I would like very much to be able to tell them that-in spite of the horrible cost-the entire situation has been completely resolved. Is that possible?"

Asai turned to Gerd Maas, who nodded his head.

"Gunter has been following the plane for the past eight hours in one of our jet helicopters," the assault-group leader said.

"By himself?" Abercombie asked.

"Yes, of course." Maas shrugged indifferently. "Gunter will not need assistance in this matter. The helicopter can follow this plane wherever it goes, and he can complete his mission at any time, even with an air-to-air missile if necessary."

"Then what is he waiting for?"

"There are others on the plane, and Chareaux would not logically have access to such weapons," Maas said. "They are scheduled to land at D.C. National in approximately one hour. It is better to wait until then."

"But when they land?"

"Then Gunter will not fail, and the last agent will be dead," Maas said matter-of-factly.

"Good," Lisa Abercombie approved. "I will meet all of you in the conference room at five-thirty, and I will be expecting good news when I get there."

After waiting until the door closed behind the ICER team leaders, Lisa Abercombie pressed two buttons on the underside of her desk. The outer door of her office automatically locked, and her phone console was set to record. Then she retreated to her private quarters, accessible only from the inner sanctum of her underground office.

Once inside this luxuriously furnished sanctuary, Abercombie treated herself to a long, hot bath, and then to a two-hour nap, which had become a physical necessity to the hard-driving and late-working politician-turned- counterterrorist.

At four p.m., her alarm went off and she woke refreshed and ready to begin again. Thirty minutes later, she was dressed and back in her office, where she turned her full attention to the sheath of reports and clippings on her desk.

By five minutes past five that afternoon, Lisa Abercombie was halfway through the Washoe County coroner's autopsy report on Felix Steinhauser when the private line on her phone console rang.

"Abercombie," she answered in her characteristically gruff, no-nonsense voice.

"Mrs. Abercombie, this is Gwen Fletcher, Dr. Wolfe's secretary at the Main Interior Building in Washington, D.C."

"Yes?"

"You asked me to let you know if anyone attempted to contact Dr. Wolfe at his office."

"Yes, go on," Abercombie said, impatient to get back to the autopsy report.

"There have been three such contacts this afternoon. One at two-fifteen. One at three fifty-five, and one at a quarter to five."

"Oh, really?" she said. "And what did they want?"

"They all wanted to speak to Dr. Wolfe, of course. I explained to them that he had several appointments today and wouldn't be back in his office until tomorrow morning."

"How would you describe these people?"

"One of them was a white-haired, older gentlemen in his sixties. I believe he is a biologist interested in Dr. Wolfe's grizzly bear research. The other two were much younger men, in their mid to late thirties, I suppose. One of them-"

"Did you make the recordings, as I asked?" Abercombie interrupted.

"Yes, of course. That's why I'm calling. I dropped the tape off at K-Link Communications. They said to tell you that they would be ready to transmit whenever you called."

"Thank you, Mrs. Fletcher," Lisa Abercombie said in a neutral voice as she hung up the phone. She began humming to herself as she picked up her reports, stepped out of her office, closed and locked the door, and then walked quickly down the long, narrow hallway toward the command-and- control room.

When she entered the glass-walled room, Gerd Maas was just hanging up the phone.

"It is done," he said abruptly. "The last agent is dead."

"Are you certain that it was him?" she asked.

"They were going out to eat in a rented automobile. Gunter verified his presence with his binoculars, using the photograph you provided, and then waited until they came out of the restaurant before he detonated the device," Maas replied. "Everyone in the vehicle was killed instantly."

"Fine," Abercombie nodded after a moment. "Then all we have to do is dispose of Alex Chareaux and we are home free." She smiled as she sat down at the main control console, reached for one of the phone handsets, and dialed a memorized number.

"Marlene, this is Lisa. Yes, fine, thank you. I'm ready to receive. Which transponder will you be using? All right, fine, just a moment."

Looking up at the main video screen, Abercombie keyed in a series of commands, then watched the control board until the screen read:

DISH ONE SATELLITE: K-16 TRANSPONDER: 33 LINK VERIFIED SYSTEM READY DO YOU WISH TO TRANSMIT OR RECEIVE?

Abercombie pressed "R" and then "Enter" on the keyboard before speaking into the phone again.

"We have a verified link at our end. Please begin transmitting now," she said. She watched the screen as the computer controlled the receipt of the digitalized video signal. After approximately two minutes had passed, the screen went blank for a brief moment, and then a new message appeared:

SIGNAL PACKET D0I-DD-00162 RECEIVED. DURATION 117.32 SECONDS STORAGE: DRIVE 13 FILENAME: WC0008. VID SYSTEM READY DO YOU WISH TO TRANSMIT OR RECEIVE?

Abercombie punched the "N" and "Enter" keys, waited until the main menu display reappeared on the screen, and then turned to Maas.

"In five minutes," she said, "As scheduled, we will all meet again in the first-floor conference room."