by Ken Goddard
"Hey, you're aiming for land. What about the lake?"
"I can't swim," Thomas Woeshack said. "Besides, it feels like that left float is starting to go. We hit the water like that, we're gonna break up and then probably freeze to death before anybody can get to us."
"But-"
"You got that safety belt on tight?"
Lightstone quickly fastened his belt and shoulder harness, trying not to look at the mass of trees coming up at them fast now.
"Yeah, it's as tight as I can get it."
"Okay, put your hands in through the sides of the bag and hold it up in front of your face," Woeshack said as he grabbed the other sleeping bag and put in in his lap.
Then he waited until the last moment before pulling the stick back and dropping the wing flaps to send the orange Cessna plummeting floats-first into a dense clump of spruce trees, looking for all the world like a huge orange eagle flaring its wings as it swooped in to grasp its prey with its talons.
The initial impact of the crash was absorbed by the two floats as they buckled and then crumpled up into the cross pylons. But all Henry Lightstone knew at the time was that the front windshield was suddenly filled with tree branches, and the safety belt tore into his body, and his head was slammed forward toward the instrument panel, with the sleeping bag absorbing most, but not all, of the impact.
Barely conscious, Lightstone was vaguely aware of the plane starting to shift in its precariously wedged position in a clump of broken spruce trees about ten feet off the ground.
He was trying to reach for the seat-belt release when he felt a hand pulling on his arm and a sharp knife blade sawing through his safety harness. Then somebody pushed him out the door and he tumbled to the ground through what seemed like a thousand broken spruce branches that smelled like a curious mixture of fresh pitch and gasoline.
Then he and Woeshack ran as fast as they could until the concussive force of the plane exploding knocked both of them off their feet and into the darkness.
Even after he regained consciousness, it took Henry Lightstone several seconds to recover to the point that he could turn his head and throw up.
Then, after what seemed like an eternity of gasping and coughing, he finally found the strength to crawl over to where Thomas Woeshack was lying on his back, using his cut and bruised forearms to block the sun from his bloodied face.
"You alive?"
"Must be," Woeshack mumbled after a moment. "My whole body hurts."
"Good sign." Lightstone nodded weakly as he slowly rolled over on his back and lay next to the sprawled-out pilot.
"Well, you finally did it, kid," he said quietly after a few moments.
"Did what?"
"You finally figured out how to fly just like one of those goddamned birds."
"Yeah, you really think so?" Woeshack smiled through his split and bloody lips.
"Absolutely. No question about it."
It was only then, as the two special agents lay there in the rock and spruce and lichen-covered clearing, bruised, bleeding, and covered with black soot, that they first heard and then saw the large blue floatplane that appeared overhead at an elevation of about a thousand feet.
"You read the number?" Lightstone asked.
Woeshack tried to focus his blurry eyes on the moving blue object and then slowly shook his head. "No."
"Me neither."
"Maybe they'll try to land."
"Yeah," Lightstone smiled. "That'd be nice."
The plane made three complete circles over the crash site. Then, apparently satisfied that his team had caused sufficient damage to their unexpected adversaries, a tired, blood-smeared and mildly irritated Gerd Maas directed the pilot to rock the wings of the plane in a mock salute before turning away.
For a long time, neither agent spoke, until finally Woeshack said: "They just gave us the finger, didn't they?"
Henry Lightstone continued to watch the large blue floatplane until it finally disappeared off in the distance. Then he nodded his head slowly. "Yeah, I'd say so."
Woeshack thought about that for a few more seconds. "So what do we do now?" he asked.
Then Henry Lightstone turned his head to stare straight into the dark, questioning eyes of his thoroughly bruised, battered, and bleeding partner, and said:
"Find us another airplane."
Chapter Thirty-Five
"Understand you're still the senior law-enforcement officer here representing your agency."
There were at least eight of them on the scene, and they'd been working diligently for three hours now: chalking the locations of the bodies, taking measurements, making sketches, filling paper bags with pieces of neatly tagged evidence, photographing everything at right angles at least twice, and videotaping the whole thing. They worked with such methodical thoroughness that Lightstone found it easy to accept that the "new" FBI was really something else.
The only trouble was, they still hadn't put it all together yet. And based upon what Henry Lightstone was seeing with his own CSI-trained eyes, he wasn't sure that they were going to. At least not right away.
Which was beginning to worry him, because if there was ever a time when he wanted a crime-scene team to come in, pick up the clues, and get back to their desks with plenty of time to complete all the paperwork, it was right now.
"Apparently," Lightstone answered in a carefully neutral voice. "I don't think we've met." He felt like his body was a mass of cracked bones and torn muscles.
"A1 Grynard, assistant special agent in charge of the Anchorage office," the gray-haired man said politely, offering his hand. He was dressed in a neatly pressed sport shirt, new blue jeans, and gray Gor-Tex hiking boots that looked like they'd just come out of the box.
"Henry Lightstone. Senior resident agent, on special-duty assignment to our Anchorage office," Lightstone responded equally politely, making a mental note that the ASAC's light gray eyes seemed just a little too intense and skeptical to have any serious connection with that infamous FBI smile. "And this is one of our agent-pilots, Tom Woeshack."
"You must be the fellow who made that fancy emergency landing back there," Grynard said as he turned to shake Woeshack's hand. "What is it you pilots say? Any landing you can walk away from must be a good one?"
"Uh, yes sir, that's about it."
"Nice landing any way you look at it," the FBI agent smiled. "Too bad you couldn't have made it to water, though. Probably would have been a lot easier on you two, and you might have been able to save the plane. Gets rough on the budget when you lose an expensive floatplane like that."
Feeling every bit as bruised and battered as his new senior-agent partner, Thomas Woeshack was suddenly finding it difficult to remain composed in the face of the FBI agent's comments. He had no idea of whether they were rooted in interagency camaraderie, warped amusement, or simple accusation. Woeshack recognized him as the man who had arrived in a fancy executive helicopter and who had waited until the rotors had shut off before he opened the door.
Being new at the game, of course, Thomas Woeshack had no way of knowing that the elaborate helicopter incident had just been the opening move in a very intricate game. By arriving at the scene in such a way that the subjects in question would naively focus on the FBI agent's perceived arrogance and vanity, they would presumably fail to notice later the signs of his carefully contrived traps.
Henry Lightstone, however, had seen this sort of thing many times in his earlier police career, and he was very interested in seeing where this particular interrogation was headed.
"In my opinion, Agent-Pilot Woeshack simply made the best choice he could under what I judged to be extremely difficult circumstances," Lightstone interjected in a courteous but firm voice.
"Ah," the FBI agent nodded noncommittally.
Woeshack glanced over at Lightstone, who gave him a steady look and a barely perceptible shrug that basically said: "Don't let him bug you, kid." A glance that A1 Grynard observed.
"Gave it my best
shot, sir," Woeshack shrugged.
"Yes, I'm sure you did. And I'm sure that your Accident Review Board will take that into account. Ah, I assume your agency does maintain a standing AR Board?" Grynard asked, turning to Lightstone.
"Far as I know, we've got every kind of bureaucratic committee imaginable, so we probably have one of those, too. But to tell you the truth, I'm kind of new up here, so I really haven't the slightest idea," Lightstone replied evenly. He was finding it increasingly difficult to keep from telling the FBI agent that one of the bodies under those tarps was their senior agent, as well as a cherished friend, and that he really didn't give a flying fuck about overspent equipment budgets or Accident Review Boards right now.
But he didn't tell ASAC A1 Grynard anything of the sort, mostly because he'd interrogated more than his share of homicide suspects in his previous career, and he knew exactly what the FBI agent was doing.
"You have already given your statement for the records," Grynard said to Lightstone. "Now I would like to try to fill in the gaps. I understand that you were injured in the shooting, as well as in the airplane crash." The FBI agent glanced down at Lightstone's torn and bloody jacket. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to continue this conversation back in Anchorage, where we can get you some first-rate medical attention?"
Lightstone smiled and shrugged. "I'm fine right now."
"Okay, well let us know if either of you change your mind and decide that you'd like to be medivaced out of here."
"Appreciate the offer. We'll let you know if either of us starts feeling bad."
"Fair deal. Rough having something like this happen your first day on at a new duty station," the FBI agent offered. "Guess you Fish and Wildlife guys don't run across this kind of thing very often, do you?"
"What? Oh… you mean the human bodies? No, not really."
"I'm sure you see some really gory stuff," the FBI agent said in a tone that somehow didn't quite cross the line of being patronizing, "but as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing I hate worse than working a scene where a fellow law-enforcement officer's been killed. Especially over something as senseless as this."
"Yeah, he knew better than to work by himself," Lightstone nodded. "But I guess we all do it. Part of the game when you're short on agents."
"Yeah, well, it's too bad you guys don't have some kind of portable computer system so you could run makes on your contacts in the field," Grynard suggested. "If your buddy there had known who he was up against, he might have backed off and tried to find you guys first."
"Oh, yeah? Why's that?"
"See the guy lying there next to the bear? Well, we just ran a make on him. Name's Butch Chareaux. Turns out he and his brothers were part of some poaching ring, whatever the hell that is, back in Louisiana. They all have outstanding felony warrants related to the murder of two-" Grynard glanced down at his notebook-"Louisana Department of Fish and Game officers. You'd think that some of your agents would have run across one of these characters during the last few months." Grynard shook his head sadly. "Too bad they didn't. Might have given your buddy a fighting chance."
"You sure none of us ever did?" Lightstone asked carefully. "We're pretty well spread out, and it's a big county."
"I don't know," the FBI agent shrugged. "According to your Records Bureau back in D.C., nobody in your agency has ever worked these guys. Or at least the name Butch Chareaux doesn't show up in any of your computerized case files."
"So Paul stops by to check on a couple of hunters and runs into a buzz saw," Lightstone nodded in apparent understanding. "Any idea what they were doing out here?"
"Probably setting up what you guys call a 'canned hunt.' According to the folks back in Louisiana, that was one of their favorite tricks. Irony of the whole thing, of course, is that our friend Chareaux seems to have been killed by the bear that they had in that cage. Must have gotten loose during the ruckus when your buddy showed up.
"By the way," Grynard added casually, "I meant to ask you something. Did you ever work with McNulty before?"
Lightstone hesitated, trying to remember exactly what Paul McNulty had told him about his file. Something to the effect that he'd gotten it cleared through Washington for Carl Scoby to hand-carry it over from Customs to the Anchorage office, so that he could still function-to a much lesser extent-as a wild card within the region. Although he hadn't told Marie or anyone else yet, he'd already told McNulty that he'd take the job, which meant that his transfer orders had presumably already gone through to the regional office.
The question was whether ASAC A1 Grynard or his men had managed to locate and talk with Carl Scoby or any of the very few senior agents in the D.C. office who knew about McNulty's plans for a regional undercover team. Given that they'd been working the scene for only three hours, Lightstone didn't think that too likely.
"I ran across him a couple of times on previous duty assignments," Lightstone said. "Guess I figured we'd have plenty of time to get to know each other after Tom and I got back from the fishing trip," he added, giving Woeshack- who was looking thoroughly confused now-a meaningful glance. He turned back to Grynard. "You mind if I ask you a question?"
"Sure, go ahead."
"You have any idea who killed him?"
"You mean McNulty?"
"Yeah."
"It's a little hard to tell just yet. Could have been Chareaux, of course, or one of his brothers. Or even one of the people they were working with out here. Apparently you got to see at least one of them close up. The guy you thought you killed."
Lightstone blinked.
"Thought?" he asked, incredulous. "The guy's brains were all over the rocks."
"Well, if he was dead, then apparently somebody made off with the body and the brains." A1 Grynard looked down at his notebook again. "We found a lot of blood, of course, some of which probably belonged to this guy Jackson, the refuge officer. And a couple of expended. 357 and 5.56mm casings."
" A couple?"
"That's right, but no body."
"Oh."
"And we did happen to notice that there was what appears to be a 5.56mm Colt Commando rifle in the debris of your airplane, along with a considerable number of expended casings. I guess some of them could have cooked off in the fire-"
"I explained all of that to your agent," Lightstone said calmly. "We got fired on from the ground when we took Jackson's boat in to check on all the shooting we heard. I ended up killing one of the men who was shooting at us, and I took his weapon because I didn't want to leave it there for the other guy-"
"The one with the sniper rifle?" Grynard interrupted.
"Right."
"And you were more concerned about a small-caliber automatic weapon than what you've described as a larger- caliber scoped rifle with… what did you say…?" Grynard looked down at his notebook. "A tripod?"
"Bipod. Two legs. Military type. And to answer your question, I would have been concerned about guys with slingshots if they were aiming the damn things at me," Lightstone said evenly.
"Yes, of course," Grynard nodded sympathetically. "Please go on."
"And then we were fired on when we went back up in the Cessna, so we fire back-"
"With the Colt Commando?"
"Because I'd lost my. 357 back at the outcropping when I ran out of ammunition. I don't suppose any of you guys have managed to find it yet?"
"No, we haven't found your duty weapon, or Refuge Officer Jackson's, or any larger-caliber casings, or any evidence of a bipod-mounted weapon being fired in the general area you described to our agents." A1 Grynard shook his head regretfully. "Nor have we been able to confirm your statement that your plane was hit, as you and Special Agent Woeshack put it…" Grynard referred to his notebook again "… several dozen times. Unfortunately, as you undoubtedly realize by now, thin aluminum panels seem to burn very quickly when-"
"Hey, wait a minute. I know we got hit because-" Woeshack started to interrupt, but Lightstone waved him off.
"I'm sure that if
we search long enough," the clearly unperturbed FBI agent went on, "we will undoubtedly find both duty weapons, and some evidence of the other rifle, and possibly even some brains of the individual that you claim to have killed. And perhaps, if you… excuse me, I meant if we are real lucky, our laboratory just might be able to verify your contention that there were a large number of bullet strikes on what little remains of your plane. But there's a great deal of very rugged country out here-"
"And right now, you don't believe much of anything we've told you?" Lightstone finished.
"I do understand that we are all fellow law-enforcement officers," A1 Grynard smiled easily as he put away his notebook, "but I have to tell you that I find this case-and you, in particular, Mr. Lightstone-to be quite vexing."
"Oh, really?" Lightstone smiled. "And why is that?"
"Because I find it difficult to understand why the Chareaux brothers, assuming that at least one or two of them are still alive, would remove the body of one of their associates but leave their own brother's body here.
"Nor can I understand," A1 Grynard went on, "why it is that when we query your background, we can easily retrieve your police records from San Diego. However, when we try to follow up on your transfer to the federal government, we discover that aside from your fairly impressive training records at FLETC, no one at the U.S. Customs Service seems to remember you."
"I told your agents-"
"That you were placed on a covert assignment because of your previous police experience," A1 Grynard nodded, no longer making any pretense of needing to refer to his notebook. "Which does make a certain amount of sense. Unfortunately, you declined to describe the nature of this assignment-"
"As I told your agent, it's my understanding that the investigation is still ongoing."
"— or the name of your immediate supervisor, which I suppose is reasonable for someone working a deep-cover assignment." A1 Grynard smiled. "But what we found to be far more difficult to understand was why you failed to mention the fact that approximately one year ago, Special Agent Paul McNulty booked you into the Anchorage Police Department jail on suspicion of dealing in illegal ivory."
