Prey

Chapter Eight

It didn't occur to Henry Lightstone, until he was just about to drive his red pickup into the private tie-down area of the Great Falls airport, that he'd forgotten to ask McNulty what Len Ruebottom looked like.

Which was unfortunate, because at least a couple dozen adult males were standing around several of the thirty-odd planes that were lashed down on the wide asphalt field.

Lightstone glanced down at his wristwatch, winced, and muttered a heartfelt curse as he reached for the binoculars in the glove compartment.

Even if he managed to link up with the resident agent- pilot within the next few minutes, he was still going to be late for his rendezvous with the Chareaux brothers.

"Come on, Ruebottom," he muttered as he began to scan the groups, searching for some sign of recognition. "McNulty must have given you a description of my truck, and I'm late, so you ought to be looking over here at me right-"

Then he blinked in pure disbelief.

For Christ's sake, McNulty, Lightstone thought despondently. What the hell have you gotten me into now?

For a brief moment, Lightstone seriously considered turning his leased pickup around at the gate, driving back to his apartment and calling the San Diego Police Department to check out the chances of getting his old job back. But then he remembered all the conflicts and problems that had caused him to question his law-enforcement career in the first place. And besides, he could never go back to the PD as a senior homicide detective, with zero seniority and a lock on every shit detail that came down the pike.

Sighing heavily, he put the binoculars back into the glove compartment and slowly drove the truck over to a tan station wagon parked next to a yellow-and-white Cessna.

A tall man in his early twenties, an attractive blond woman almost certainly his wife, and two young children were standing next to the plane, staring at Lightstone's truck.

"You must be Henry Lightstone," the young man in the cap and jacket said as he walked around to the driver's side of the truck and reached in to shake hand. He was wearing a blue baseball cap and a blue windbreaker jacket, both of which bore the easily identifiable badge insignia of a special agent of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"I beg your pardon?" Lightstone said, keeping his hand on the steering wheel as he stared straight into the young pilot's clear blue eyes.

"Uh…" Len Ruebottom said, blinking in confusion as he slowly brought his hand back out of the truck window. "Aren't you Henry Lightstone? McNulty said that you'd be in a red pickup and that I was supposed to fly you to Bozeman."

For the second time in as many minutes, Lightstone seriously considered the idea of driving off and leaving the young agent-pilot and his family standing there next to the plane and wondering what the hell was going on.

It really wasn't all that bad an idea, he told himself. With luck, he might be able to catch the last half of the game, during which time he was bound to come up with a reasonable explanation that just might satisfy both Paul McNulty and Alex Chareaux.

Yeah, Alex, I know I was supposed to be there, but you see, the guy I hired to fly me to Bozeman turned out to be a federal agent. Saw him standing there in broad daylight wearing this agent hat and jacket. Imagine that? Yeah, hell of a deal, huh? So anyway, what I did, I decided to go back home and catch a ball game instead. I mean, no sense in bringing the cops right into the middle of the deal when it's an illegal hunt all the way and I'm trying to get my Boone and Crockett record, right? Yeah, figured you guys would understand.

And at least a couple dozen people for witnesses, Lightstone sighed. Absolutely incredible.

"Did this McNulty fellow happen to mention a guy named Lightner? Henry Allen Lightner? Probably looks a lot like me?" Lightstone asked, trying very hard to keep a pleasant tone to his voice.

"Oh… uh, yeah, that's right." The young pilot winced. "Lightner's the guy I'm supposed to fly-"

"To Bozeman, where he's going to drive down to Gardiner and meet up with three guys who are just the kind of fellows who would probably kill him on the spot if they even thought he might be a federal agent?" Lightstone suggested.

"Uh… I guess I figured that since you weren't actually going to meet them in Bozeman-"

"That none of them would ever think to hang around the airport, taking pictures of the wife and kids of the pilot that this guy Lightner hires to take him around to do all his illegal hunting?"

"Oh, Christ!" Len Ruebottom grimaced, unable to keep from glancing over at his family, still waiting expectantly over by the Cessna.

"And even if they did take a couple of pictures," Lightstone went on, "they probably wouldn't ever think to run the registration number on the plane and then maybe fly out to Great Falls to see if anybody hanging around the airport might have seen this guy Lightner talking with anybody who looked like a Fish and Wildlife agent."

Lightstone glanced meaningfully over at the twenty or so people who were still wandering around on the asphalt tarmac.

Len Ruebottom's hand started to come up, as though he was going to rip the cap off his sandy-haired head and then quickly pull himself out of his jacket. But then he caught himself and just stood there.

"That's right. It is a little late, and you really don't want to make a scene," Lightstone nodded.

"But-"

"And we won't even discuss how long it would take these bastards to find out where you live, where your wife works, where the kids go to school, what kind of locks you have on your doors, names of friends, baby-sitters, little details like that."

He hadn't meant to push it that far, and MeNulty had vouched for him, but Henry Lightstone suddenly decided that he wanted to see for himself just how far he could trust the young agent-pilot.

"Jesus, I really screwed up," Len Ruebottom whispered, staring at Lightstone in shock, his sunburned face visibly paled.

"Yes, you did."

"So what do I do now?"

"Is that your plane over there?" Lightstone pointed at the yellow-and- white Cessna.

Ruebottom looked over his shoulder and nodded.

"You think it's safe to take something like that up in weather like this?"

"Oh, yeah, sure, no problem," Ruebottom said, his eyes still glazed from the shock of realizing that his thoughtlessness had exposed his family to… what?

"Okay, then. Why don't you hand that cap and jacket over to your wife and see if you can talk her and the kids into staying home this trip so we can get going?" Lightstone suggested.

Len Ruebottom took in a deep breath, let it out, and asked, "Anything else I should have had brains enough to think about, but didn't?"

"Duty weapon, shoulder holster, badge, registration, log book, anything else in the plane that somebody could find and link us back to the Service?" Lightstone suggested.

"You think they'd break into the plane, right out in the middle of the airport?"

Lightstone closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. "Ruebottom," he said, "listen to me very carefully. These people, the ones you're flying me down to Bozeman to meet-if they even thought you had something in that plane that might keep them from going to federal prison, they'd take it apart, rivet by rivet, right out in the middle of the fucking runway. You can't underestimate a guy like Alex Chareaux. If you do, you're going to get some people killed. And if you're real lucky, it'll only be you and me."

Len Ruebottom nodded solemnly. "Can you give me a couple of minutes?"

"Yeah, sure," Lightstone said tersely.

Two minutes later, the station wagon was slowly driving away, the kids in the back solemnly waving good-bye to their father, as Len Ruebottom walked up to Lightstone.

"Sorry about that. It won't happen again."

"If I thought it would, I'd be looking for another pilot right now," Lightstone said agreeably.

"This all your gear?" Ruebottom asked, looking at the pair of duffel bags and the rifle case lying at Lightstone's feet.

"That's it."

"Okay, let's get going."

Len Ruebottom grabbed one of the duffel bags and the rifle case and started off in the direction of a nearby hangar, walking right on past the yellow-and-white Cessna.

"Hey, where the hell are you going?" Lightstone demanded.

Ruebottom stopped for a moment to look at his passenger. "To the plane," he said, a perplexed expression on his face. "We're behind schedule. I thought you wanted to get going."

"But you said this was your plane," Lightstone said, pointing at the Cessna.

"It is, but that's not the one we're going up in today." Ruebottom started walking again toward the hangar.

Muttering yet another curse, Lightstone reached down, grabbed the other duffel bag and followed the young agent-pilot.

"McNulty and Halahan worked this thing out a couple of weeks ago," Ruebottom explained as he unlocked the hangar. He grunted with exertion as he pushed one of the heavy doors all the way over to the side. "The way I heard it, McNulty figured that one of his agents-you, I guess- might need a pilot and plane on stand-by to enhance his cover. He was willing to pay all the expenses, so Halahan said fine, do it. And then, this morning McNulty calls and tells me that you're on the way and to meet you at the airport."

"Yeah, so?"

"So what I did, a couple of weeks ago, was to work out a special deal with a rich buddy of mine," Len Ruebottom explained as he shoved the door to its fully open position on its oiled but rusty rollers.

"What kind of special deal?" Lightstone asked suspiciously.

"A very special deal indeed," Ruebottom said with a smile as he flipped on the hangar lights and then gestured with his head at the glistening metal shape inside the hangar.

"That's the plane that you and I are going to fly to Bozeman."

Lisa Abercombie looked up as Dr. Reston Wolfe finally put down the phone.

"Well?"

"It's all arranged," he said, smiling like a man who had just put together the deal of a lifetime.

"It sounded like you were having some problems."

"Nothing that couldn't be resolved," Wolfe shrugged easily. "He and I have done business before, and he wants to continue doing business in the future. It was just a matter of rearranging some schedules."

"And offering to pay a great deal of money," Abercombie added. "You're a smooth operator. It sounds like a nice way to thank our financial backers."

Wolfe shrugged again. "It's not often that you can offer a new experience to people with nine-digit incomes. And our going out on the first excursion will mean only a small added expense." He stared straight into Abercombie's dark eyes. "A few extra dollars is hardly worth worrying about."

Lisa Abercombie blinked.

"That's very sweet of you, Reston," she said after a few moments, her sensuous mouth widening out into a dimpled smile that put Wolfe's blood pressure up another twenty points, "but do you think it's wise for us to leave the cabin at a time like this?"

Reston Wolfe remembered once again the sensual warmth of Abercombie's hand resting on his thigh, and the indelibly erotic image of her skintight jeans stretching across her hips and buttocks and muscular thighs when she'd walked out of the dining room to take her phone call.

Savoring a sense of heart-pounding anticipation, Wolfe held up a reassuring hand and shook his head.

"No need to be concerned. It's going to take them all afternoon to go through those briefing books. And besides, I've made arrangements with Sergeant MacDonald to move up the introductory tour of the training center to seven o'clock tonight."

"Tonight?"

"The Committee wants us to be ready to go by Thursday," Wolfe told her. "That gives us only three full days to work out the initial bugs."

"Do you really think there are going to be any bugs, with people like Maas and Saltmann?" Abercombie asked.

"I don't know," Wolfe replied. "MacDonald's the expert, and I don't think he was too thrilled about the idea of letting them go out on an operation without at least a couple weeks of orientation. Says it doesn't matter how good they are as individuals, it takes time to develop teamwork."

"He's probably right," Lisa Abercombie conceded, "but we simply don't have that luxury. Not if we're going to be effective when we need to be."

"I know, and that's what I told him."

"You told him what we're doing?" Abercombie asked, feeling her heart start to pound.

"No, of course not," Wolfe smiled. "I just told him that we've been advised that some of our targets have started to move and that we need to get certain elements of the team into position by Thursday to keep an eye on things."

"I think he's anxious to see how all his simulations work against a guy like Maas," Lisa Abercombie said, working to keep a neutral tone to her voice.

"Me, too," Wolfe agreed. "Tonight's just an orientation. Tomorrow, at nine o'clock, we get to see the real thing. A live-fire assault on a corporate office. Four-man team. And you and I have ringside seats."

"Nine o'clock tomorrow morning?"

"Right, which give us exactly," he glanced down at his watch, "twenty-three hours to enjoy ourselves."

"But-"

"I can assure you that we won't be missed at all, just as long as we're back in time for breakfast," Wolfe smiled. "But it's up to you," he added instinctively, going with his gut- level presumption that risk-taking was the way to reach a woman like Lisa Abercombie. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

Lisa Abercombie hesitated for only a brief, tantalizing moment as she remembered once again the almost tangible sense of being alive that she had not only experienced, but-what was the word? — savored as she watched Gerd Maas face the terrifying charge of the fearsome Bengal. It had been the most intense and visceral moment of her entire life, and she knew that she would do almost anything to be able to experience that sensation once again.

The knowledge that Maas would be there with them tonight, perhaps even standing at her side, to assist her in reliving that moment of absolute dread was almost more than she could stand.

"Yes, Reston," she nodded, her dark eyes alive with anxious anticipation. "As a matter of fact, I'm absolutely sure."