by Ken Goddard
"A three-fifty-seven pistol?" Jackson still didn't want to believe it.
"Three-fifty-seven's one hell of a weapon if you want to take out a human being," Lightstone shrugged. "But it sure wouldn't be my choice for hunting a grizzly bear."
"Yeah, no shit."
"And as long as I'm sending things down to the lab, I'll probably include this." Lightstone showed the refuge officer a tiny strip of hide about an inch long and less than a sixteenth of an inch wide.
"What's that?"
"Not sure. I found it stuck in one of her front claws." Lightstone shrugged as he pulled three small Zip-loc bags out of his flotation vest. He discarded the fishing flies and carefully transferred the mangled bullets and the strip of hide to separate bags, then put them back in his vest pocket.
"So now what do we do?" the enraged and frustrated refuge officer asked.
"You said these bears were killed out of season?"
Sam Jackson looked at his watch for confirmation. "Yeah, sure. Today's the fourteenth of September. Season doesn't start until the fifteenth, even if these bastards had a tag, which they probably didn't."
"So let me run this by you," Lightstone said. "The guy could always claim that the bear charged him, and that he just didn't have a chance to see the cub. And the fact that he used a pistol to put her down would probably back up the self-defense angle. I'm assuming that it's legal to shoot a bear out of season to protect yourself."
"As long as he didn't provoke the attack," Jackson nodded. "But you don't think this guy-"
"No, of course not." Lightstone shook his head. "But the point is, it doesn't matter what I think. It's what a jury's going to think that counts. On the other hand," he added with a smile, "you'd think the person who did this would have one hell of a time trying to explain to a jury why he had to rope a little sixty-pound cub by the neck and then cut its throat to protect himself."
"I sure as hell wouldn't believe it," Sam Jackson growled.
"Well, in that case, seeing as how there's a set of boot prints moving up over in that direction," Lightstone said, motioning with a blood-smeared hand, "what do you say we take ourselves a little hike, find this certifiably crazy bastard, and see what he has to say for himself?"
"Can you see them?" Gerd Maas demanded, speaking quickly into his scrambled radio as he crouched down in the concealing brush.
"Affirmative. Two subjects, approaching cautiously from the south." Roy Parker, one of Paul Saltmann's ICER protection-team members, watched the approaching law- enforcement officers as he spoke into his headset microphone.
"How far away?"
"A couple hundred yards."
"Do you have a clear shot?"
"Doubt it. These guys are staying in pretty tight with the rocks. Let me check with Arturo."
"Why can't he answer for himself?" Maas demanded.
"Antenna link on his com-set's malfunctioning," Parker replied calmly. "Hold on."
Turning his head carefully so as not to lose the limited cover of the small spruce, or to allow the stabilizer on his 5.56mm Colt Commando automatic carbine to disturb the surrounding brush, Parker looked over at a position about twenty yards away, where his headset radio-equipped and camouflage-covered partner, Arturo Bolin, was lying in a prone position with a U.S. Marine Corps 7.62mm bolt- action, bipod and Redfield telescopic-sight-mounted M40 sniper rifle extended out and ready.
The camouflage patterns on the fiberglass stock and the clothing had been specifically selected for the Kenai Peninsula area. And when combined with the brown and dark green greasepaint, the wiglike hat made out of shredded brown and dark green rags, the rag netting, and the clumps of rubber-band-attached local foliage, the overall silhouette-concealing effects were so successful that Parker had to look carefully to see his partner's hand signals.
But in doing so, the professionally trained mercenary failed to notice the movement of the small, terrified female grizzly-the mother Kodiak's surviving cub-who, alerted by the sound of the human voice, had quickly crouched down in the surrounding brush.
"Negative on the clear shot." Parker spoke into his own headset radio mike. "Maybe another thirty seconds."
Maas cursed. He knew they had to hurry, because the dark orange floatplane had already made one low run across the west end of the island and was starting to come back around for another pass.
"You want to call it now, or wait?" Parker's electronically scrambled voice asked with calm, professional patience.
"Can you identify them?"
"The tall one with the beard is Sam Jackson, one of the senior refuge officers out here. No make on the second guy."
"Are they armed?"
"From what we can see, it looks like both of them are carrying stainless-steel handguns, short barrels. Probably standard-issue Model Sixty-sixes. No long guns."
"Then the second man is either another refuge officer or a special agent," Maas said as he watched the orange floatplane sweep back around over the eastern end of Skilak Lake.
"That's the way we read it," Parker agreed. "Thing is, we figure you'd better make a call one way or the other pretty damn quick. That guy up there in the Cessna makes another pass, he's bound to spot either us, you guys, or the plane."
"You deal with the two on the ground, we will deal with the plane," Gerd Maas said, the chill in his voice still evident despite the electronic scrambling.
"That mean we have clearance?"
"Yes," Maas said. "Put them down."
Chapter Thirty-Four
In reaching to grasp the top edge of the shale outcropping so that he could pull himself up, Henry Lightstone almost put his forehead right in the cross hairs of Arturo Bolin's extremely accurate rifle.
But the deafening roar of the Cessna Skywagon's single engine as it passed over caused Lightstone to drop back at the last second. He took the packset radio from Sam Jackson.
"Woeshack, can you read me?"
There was a long pause, then Thomas Woeshack's excited voice came over the air.
"Ten-Four, I think I saw something!"
"Where?"
"Hold on, I'm coming back around for a better look!"
"Woeshack, what the hell did you see?" Lightstone demanded.
No answer.
"Woeshack!" Lightstone yelled into the radio mike, but it was already hopeless. He could see the small orange floatplane coming around in a tight turn just barely above the treeline, the roar of the powerful engine increasing as the special agent-pilot fought to maintain his precarious altitude.
"Jesus Christ, I think he's going to crash!" Sam Jackson whispered.
"Goddamn it, Woeshack, get your ass back up in the air!" Lightstone raged into the radio as the Cessna Skywagon appeared to stall but then recovered as Woeshack banked the wings of the floatplane and opened the throttle to maximum power.
"I can see-" Woeshack yelled into his mike.
At that instant, the resounding overhead roar of the airplane completely overwhelmed the survival instincts of the Kodiak bear's surviving cub and it broke from the shelter of the dense scrub brush.
Roy Parker reacted out of pure instinct, triggering a quick burst of 5.56mm rounds that threw fountains of dirt, rocks, and twigs into the air as the multiple impacts of the high- velocity bullets sent the frantic cub tumbling back into the brush in an explosion of dirt, torn hair, and blood.
"What the hell!"
Enraged by the agonized cries of the horribly wounded cub, Sam Jackson started to scramble up and over the shale outcropping and was immediately thrown backward as a 7.62mm copper-jacketed bullet tore through his upper shoulder and blew a bloody hole out the back of his down vest.
Henry Lightstone dropped the packset radio, reached for his hip-holstered. 357 Magnum and lunged forward against the protective surface of the shale outcropping. He took a quick, cautious look over the edge, then pulled himself up fast to trigger off three concussive rounds with his short- barreled. 357 revolver. Sensing that he hit the first crouched fig
ure, Lightstone then whirled to his right and fired the last three rounds at the barely visible figure that lay prone, a sniper rifle pointed at the dead cub.
Using a pistol with only a 2-inch barrel at a distance of over a hundred yards, Lightstone had little hope of making a hit. But that didn't concern him, because all he really wanted to do was to keep everybody down long enough for him to get to Sam Jackson.
After firing the last shot, he ducked down behind the outcropping and only narrowly avoided the second bullet that exploded in a stinging shower of lead, copper and shale fragments just a few inches above his head.
Cursing to himself, Lightstone crouched down with his back against the rocky cliff, quickly dumped the empty casings out of the stainless-steel revolver and fed one of the six-round speed-loaders from his jacket into the open chambers. Then he scrambled down to the lower ledge to where the bearded refuge officer was sprawled out on his back, with his blood-covered left hand clenched tightly against his upper right shoulder, his eyes glazed in shock.
"Henry, can you read me?" The voice of Special Agent-Pilot Thomas Woeshack was muffled because Jackson's radio was facedown in the brush.
Ignoring the discarded radio, Lightstone knelt down and gently pulled Jackson's trembling hand away from the bleeding wound. He used his folding knife to cut and peel back the blood-soaked layers of vest, shirt and long underwear.
After taking a brief look at the exposed entry point, Lightstone tried to gently move the refuge officer's severely injured shoulder so that he could examine the exit area, and then winced inwardly at the sound of shattered bone ends grinding against each other as the refuge officer groaned in agony.
Lightstone began to use his folding knife to cut the cotton lining out of his own jacket.
"What-" Jackson whispered.
"Trying to keep you from getting the refuge all messy," Lightstone said, glancing up and listening for the sound of anyone moving in their direction as he began to tear the jacket lining into long strips.
"Hurts like hell," Sam Jackson mumbled.
"Yeah, I bet it does," Lightstone muttered as he began to pull handfuls of the synthetic fill from the lining of his thick jacket. "You're losing a lot of blood out the back, but I think I can get it stopped. Looks like a straight through-and- through punch, no expansion. Must be using ball ammo."
"Military?" Jackson whispered weakly, blinking his eyes in response to the pain of each shallow breath. "Nobody… uses that stuff out here anymore."
"Henry, this is Woeshack. Can you read me?"
"Yeah, well, somebody is today. By the way, you're not going to like this next part, but I've got to do it." Lightstone held chunks of the synthetic fill on either side of the wound. "You ready?"
"Yeah, sure," Jackson nodded, blinking his glassy eyes as he looked up at Lightstone. "Hurry up, get it over… Oh, shit! '" he screamed. Then his eyes rolled back into his head and he went limp as Lightstone used the tips of his fingers to jam the filler material deeper into the gaping wound.
"Yeah, hell of an idea. I'd faint too if it were me," he muttered to himself as he quickly used the strips of cotton lining to tie the blood-soaked filler in place.
Lightstone scrambled back up to the top edge of the outcropping, the. 357 Magnum back in his hand, just in time to watch the man in shredded-rag camouflage gear kneel down beside his prone partner. He set the bipod-mounted sniper rifle in place, dropped the ammo belt with the extra 7.62mm clips next to the scoped weapon, slipped into the green nylon harness rig that held eight extra thirty-round magazines in snap pouches, and then picked up the 5.56mm Colt Commando automatic carbine.
"Oh, shit," Lightstone whispered.
"Henry!"
Cursing, Lightstone scrambled back over to the clump of brush where he had dropped the small packset radio. In the background, somewhere off to his right, he could hear the echoing roar of the Cessna Skywagon's powerful engine as Woeshack circled the floatplane high over the center of the huge lake.
"This is Henry, go ahead," he said, bringing the radio up to his mouth and keying the mike as he cautiously peered around the edge of the outcropping and saw the figure with the short-barreled automatic weapon start to move forward from tree to tree in their general direction.
"Jesus, I thought you-What's going on down there?" Woeshack demanded.
"Couple of shooters about a hundred yards south of us," Lightstone explained, watching as the rag-camouflaged figure proceeded to move in closer, covered by his wounded but still very functional partner, who had taken over the sniper rifle.
"They're both wearing military cammo gear." Lightstone spoke into the radio mike again. "One of them's armed with an automatic weapon. The other one's got some kind of bipod-mounted rifle with a scope."
"You mean they're soldiers?"
"Sure as hell look like it to me," Lightstone muttered.
There was a momentary pause.
"I thought I saw one of you guys go down," Woeshack said hesitantly.
"You did. Sam caught a round through the shoulder."
"Is he okay?"
"He's alive, but he's out cold and losing blood pretty fast," Lightstone said as he continued to watch the still-distant but rapidly approaching figure, not happy with the idea that the man really did look and act like a soldier.
"What about the suspects?"
"The one with the automatic weapon's heading our way right now," Lightstone said in a cold voice. "The other guy's staying in place with the rifle. Looks like I might have hit him. Can't tell."
"Jesus, what the hell are they-"
"Listen," Lightstone interrupted, "we're going to need some help down here. Can you contact Anchorage on that radio?"
"Sure, if I get up high enough."
"Then get up there and try to get ahold of Paul," Lightstone ordered. "Tell him to get us some backup out here, pronto. After that, come back down and help me keep track of these guys."
"That's what I was trying to tell you," Woeshack said. "I spotted Paul's plane down by that island. It's tied up in the cove on the northwest side."
"Can you see him?"
"No. I tried to raise him on the radio, but there wasn't any answer, and there's nobody back at the office."
"Shit," Lightstone snarled.
"What do I do?"
"Get ahold of the tower. Tell them to call the FBI or the Coast Guard or the goddamned Boy Scouts, for all I care," Lightstone growled into the radio mike, watching from the protective shale edge as the rag-camouflaged figure cautiously moved forward another seven or eight yards. "Just get somebody out here."
"Christ, those FBI guys are way downtown at the Federal Building. It would take them a good two or three hours to get here."
"Well, tell them to fucking hurry!"
Lightstone listened to the changing pitch of the Cessna's engine as Woeshack sent the floatplane climbing up and around the back of the island.
"Okay." Woeshack's excited voice came back on the air in less than thirty seconds. "I got ahold of the tower. They're calling the FBI and the-Hey, what's that?"
"What's the matter?" Lightstone demanded.
"Just a second. I thought I saw something," Woeshack exclaimed excitedly and then went off the air as he brought the dark orange floatplane down in a sweeping low pass across the far north side of the island.
"Woeshack, what the hell are you doing?" Lightstone demanded.
"There's somebody down-Oh, shit!"
The roar of distant gunshots almost blocked out Woeshack's panicked scream. From his position below and behind the shale outcropping, Lightstone could hear the roar of the straining engine and see the dark orange overhead wings of the Cessna wobble frantically as Woeshack sent his aircraft almost straight up in a desperate effort to escape the ballistic onslaught from the ground.
"Woeshack, get the hell out of there!" Lightstone yelled into his radio.
"Two bodies!"
"What?"
"Two- Jesus, I've been hit!"
"W
oeshack, what the hell-"
Dead silence.
"Woeshack!"
"… okay… not hit… airplane's been hit," Woeshack managed to stammer out. "Jesus, they shot this thing full of holes!"
"What about the bodies?" Lightstone demanded, watching the rag-camouflaged figure carefully because he was almost close enough now.
"I saw two bodies on the ground, in a clearing near the spit," Woeshack answered in an audibly shaken voice. "I think one of them's McNulty."
"You assholes!" Lightstone whispered.
Then, after one last glance to make sure he had the approaching figure positioned correctly, Lightstone lunged out from behind the protection of the shale outcropping, dove to the ground and then rolled behind another smaller mound of rocks and brush as a jackhammering stream of 5.56mm rounds tore up the surrounding landscape.
Rolling quickly to his left, Lightstone fired two rounds in the general direction of the rag-camouflaged figure, then dove forward on his hands and knees to the relative security of a nearby spruce just split seconds ahead of a second burst of wildly ricocheting copper-jacketed slugs.
Working hard to control his breathing, Lightstone tucked himself in tight against the moderately protective tree trunk as a third burst of the small but deadly 5.56mm bullets shredded brush and tree branches all around his new position.
Then the much louder crack-pow! of the sniper rifle echoed through the trees, and Lightstone threw himself flat and rolled to his right across rock and moss and lichen- strewn ground as a 7.62mm rifle round tore a huge chunk of wood out of the tree trunk less than two inches over his head, sending sap-filled fragments flying in all directions.
Lightstone brought the short-barreled. 357 Magnum up in an instinctive point-shoulder position and fired two rounds at the running figure just as it disappeared behind a tree. Then, eyes fixed in a murderous rage on the concealing tree, Lightstone remained in his dangerously exposed, extended- arm position for two more heartbeats as the other man faked a move to his right with his back against the tree. Lightstone triggered the last two rounds at center-chest level just as the man came back around to his left with the Colt Commando automatic carbine firing in the full auto position.
