Prey sahl-1

by Ken Goddard

  "It's empty," the detective's voice echoed clearly over the radio static.

  Hardwell swore again as he looked over at Lightstone.

  "Let's get in there," Lightstone said, releasing his seat belt and drawing the 10mm Smith amp; Wesson automatic from his shoulder holster.

  "All units, move in now!" Hardwell said and then dropped the mike on the seat and accelerated the unmarked detective unit toward the distant driveway as Larry Paxton dropped his crutches and limped toward the far side of the house and Dwight Stoner hobbled furiously up the brick walkway toward the front door.

  Henry Lightstone was out of Hardwell's detective unit and running up the brick walkway when Stoner lifted a huge decorative rock out of Mike Takahara's carefully landscaped garden and heaved it through the wood-and-glass door. Lightstone lunged forward past Stoner with the 10mm Smith amp; Wesson automatic clenched tightly in both hands.

  "Oh, my God!" one of the detectives coming in behind Lightstone and Stoner with a shotgun whispered when he saw the blood.

  Even to Henry Lightstone, who had worked over three hundred homicide cases during his police career, the sight of the blood splatterings that seemed to cover every square foot of the off-white walls jarred at his soul. But he kept on moving through the living room, searching the doorways, because the body that lay facedown in the middle of an irregular pattern of congealed blood on the white carpet did not belong to Mike Takahara.

  Not unless the Japanese-American agent had started to dye his hair blond, lose weight, and take hormone shots, Lightstone told himself, noting the insignia on the uniform of the sprawled female figure as he continued to search for movement.

  "Mike, where are you?" Lightstone yelled, even though he knew that anyone within fifty yards who hadn't heard the rock going through the front door was either deaf or dead.

  They found the second body in the kitchen. The coal- black hair gave Lightstone a momentary scare until he realized that the victim was still a good fifty pounds lighter and three or four inches shorter than Takahara.

  Hardwell came in with a. 357 Magnum in one hand and a packset radio in the other. He glanced down at the body of the Oriental, who had lost massive amounts of blood from deep and gaping slashes in his arms, face, and chest.

  "That him?"

  "No." Lightstone shook his head.

  "Then what the hell-" Hardwell started to say when the radio in his hand began to squawk.

  "Clint, I found Jim and Kenny," the choked voice said. "They're up here on Twin Springs Road. Both of them dead. Small-caliber shots to the side of the head."

  Homicide Sergeant Clinton Hardwell was still cursing when they heard the crashing sound of wood breaking.

  "Where-" Hardwell demanded, his eyes widened with rage, but Lightstone was already out of the kitchen and heading toward the basement stairs. He got there just as Dwight Stoner lunged at the door with a savage roar. His full-body forearm shot tore the door completely off its hinges as the half-crippled agent staggered forward. But the impact of a vicious side-thrust heel kick just below his left ear sent him tumbling to the floor.

  When Henry Lightstone came through the splintered doorway right behind Stoner, he saw the reverse kick coming and blocked it with his left forearm. He started to bring the butt of the 10mm Smith amp; Wesson around in a deadly variation of a palm-heel strike that would have shattered Mike Takahara's jaw if Lightstone hadn't recognized the blood-smeared and swollen face that looked down at him.

  Lightstone quickly reholstered his pistol and stepped forward to support the agent's dangling body while Larry Paxton used a sharp-edged pocketknife to cut away the medical gauze and tape that tied the Japanese-American agent's hands and wrists to the three-inch cast-iron pipe overhead.

  Once loose, Mike Takahara dropped down in front of Stoner, who was just starting to come up on one knee.

  "Dumb-ass jock… told you… supposed to wear a helmet when you kick a door," Takahara said between deep, gasping breaths.

  Stoner glared at his ex-partner. "Before I go ahead and stomp the shit out of you," the huge agent rasped, "you mind telling me why you had to do that?"

  "Over there, to your right," Mike Takahara said weakly. The ex-Oakland Raider tackle turned his head back the other way and stared at the dangling and horribly mutilated body of ICER team-member Felix Steinhauser.

  "I don't understand. You sure these guys weren't working for Alex?" Lightstone asked as the four agents sat in Mike Takahara's blood- splattered living room. The homicide investigation team was working around them, trying to reenact the sequence of events that had led to the death of two of their detectives, before the state investigators got here and took over the scene.

  "Hey, all I know is that when I opened the door to get a package from this Federal Express delivery girl, the guy over there in the kitchen kicked me in the groin and then hit me with something hard," Takahara said. He nodded toward the body of Shoshin Watanabe and then winced as he gently touched the swollen and bruised right side of his head.

  "Don't know what his problem was, but he had a hell of an attitude. Kept mumbling something in Japanese about being pissed off'cause he'd gotten shot and it hurt. When I woke up, I was hanging from the pipe down in the basement and Alex was hanging there next to me."

  "So how'd that bastard get loose?"

  "The tall blond guy and the little shithead with the attitude were playing with one of my kitchen meat knives and working me over with pressure points, trying to get me to tell him who you were and what that phone message of yours was all about, when the broad in the Federal Express uniform comes running down the stairs yelling something about a couple of cops being outside."

  "Washoe County sheriff's deputies," Lightstone explained. "They were supposed to be keeping an eye on your place until we got here."

  "Makes sense," Mike Takahara nodded. "Anyway, the German guy takes off and-"

  "You said German?" Stoner interrupted.

  "I guess," Takahara shrugged. "Had a pretty convincing accent if he wasn't. So after he's gone and we're still down there in the basement, the little Jap guy pulls out this shit-ass kodachi — uh, short sword," the Japanese-American agent explained, "-and uses it to cut Alex down. Then he tells the gal in the uniform, who's got a forty-five SIG-Sauer out now-probably mine-to give Alex the knife."

  "They gave that freak a knife, on purpose?" Lightstone asked, disbelieving.

  "Yeah. The two of them argued about it for a little bit, but she finally did it," Mike Takahara nodded. "Something about him being in charge when the team leader was gone. Real bad mistake on her part."

  "What the hell were they doing?" Lightstone asked, thoroughly perplexed now.

  "Beats the shit out of me," Takahara shrugged. "The way they were talking, it sounded like they were planning to make it look like Alex and I got into a fight.

  "Anyway, the broad finally tosses this meat knife of mine over to Alex and then puts the SIG on him right away, which was smart. So here's Alex. First he looks down at this knife like he can't believe it either. Then he looks up at the Japanese guy, who's standing there in a ready stance with that fucking sword up over his head, looking like he wants to get even with the whole world for something. Then, all of a sudden, Alex flings the meat knife backhanded right into the throat of the broad with the SIG, picks up about a five-foot piece of two-by-four off the floor, and goes after the little guy with the sword. The little guy backs up the stairs, because I guess he really was shot after all, and that two-by-four was a hell of a lot longer than his sword."

  "Hey, wait a minute. How come the woman in the Federal Express uniform ended up dead on the living-room floor instead of in the basement?" Lightstone asked.

  "Must have missed her carotids," Takahara shrugged. "All I know is, one minute she's standing there holding her throat with blood all over her hands, and the next she's going up the stairs with the meat knife after her buddy and Alex."

  "Jesus!" Paxton whispered.

  "She should have
shot the bastard right on the spot when she had the chance," Dwight Stoner muttered, shaking his bruised and battered head slowly.

  "Probably would have," Takahara nodded, "except that she lost the gun when the knife hit her. It landed behind me and she tried to get at it, but I caught her a good one in the face, so I guess she figured she'd come back down and take care of me after she and her buddy finished off Alex."

  "Only they never did."

  "Naw." Mike Takahara shook his head. "After about five minutes, I didn't hear any more ruckus upstairs. Then about twenty minutes later, something like that, I hear it all start up again, only it doesn't last very long. Then Alex comes back down the stairs, dragging the blond guy, and spends another ten or fifteen minutes trying to find out who they were. You saw his technique."

  "Did he get any answers?" Paxton asked.

  "Something about they had to kill all six of us. Those were their orders."

  "Whose orders?" Lightstone demanded.

  "I don't know," Mike Takahara shrugged. "Alex worked on him some more, and then I guess he must have said something else, because all of a sudden Alex just cut the guy's throat. Then he turned around, stared at me with these freaky red eyes of his, smiled like he knew something funny that I didn't and then disappeared up the stairs. I heard my garage door open and close, so he probably took off in my truck."

  For a long moment, nobody said anything. Then Henry Lightstone spoke up. "Somebody's using the Chareaux brothers to get to us. It's the only thing that makes any sense."

  "Sure looks that way," Mike Takahara nodded.

  "So what the hell did we do to deserve that?" Dwight Stoner asked.

  "Pissed somebody off real bad, that's for damn sure," Larry Paxton commented. "Maybe-"

  "And speaking of pissing people off," Homicide Sergeant Clinton Hardwell said as he walked up to the huddled group, "apparently that teletype you asked me to send out had the desired effect. Anybody here know an FBI agent named A1 Grynard?"

  "ASAC out of Anchorage?" Lightstone asked.

  "Sounds right," Hardwell nodded. "Know anything about him?"

  "I think he's probably a damn good investigator," Lightstone said after a moment, "but a little too focused for my tastes. What'd he do, call all the way down here from Anchorage?"

  "Nope, from San Diego," Hardwell said. "However, in addition to being thoroughly pissed and overly focused, he also seems to be a little confused. Said something about you being a suspect in the murders of four other Fish and Wildlife Service special agents, two of whom were-" Hardwell looked down at the piece of paper in his hand, "-Dwight Stoner and Larry Paxton. I assume he's talking about you two guys?" The homicide sergeant looked over at Stoner and Paxton.

  "Most likely," Paxton nodded.

  "I see," Hardwell said, hesitating for a moment before going on. "Anyway, Special Agent Grynard is apparently heading this way on the next available flight. However, in the meantime, he would like me to take you into custody until FBI agents from the Reno office can get here and take over the scene."

  "Sounds reasonable," Lightstone said equably. "Mind if I ask what you told him?"

  "Said that I thought you might have been seen in the area and that we'd start looking around immediately."

  "You planning on taking him in?" Dwight Stoner asked with a curiously polite expression on his bruised and battered face.

  "I'll do anything I can to help a fellow law-enforcement officer," Clinton Hardwell said as he checked his watch, "just as long as they don't get too pushy and try to horn in on one of my investigations.

  "Trouble is," he added with a tired smile, "I'm already way overdue for my coffee break, so I was thinking we might take a little ride down a back road I know before these FBI types get here. Stop by the Reno Sky Ranch Airport, get us a cup of coffee, and maybe introduce you to one of your retired agent-pilots who runs the rental operation down there."

  "Rental operation?"

  "Planes by the hour, day or week, with or without pilot. Understand you have to have decent credit, though."

  "Think he'd take a government credit card?" Larry Paxton asked.

  "Wouldn't be a bit surprised," Hardwell shrugged. "Last time I talked with him, he still had a pretty good sense of humor."

  "Then maybe we'd better get going," Lightstone said as he pulled his aching body out of the chair.

  "Before we do that," Hardwell said, looking as if he hadn't quite made up his mind about something, "mind if I ask you a question?"

  "Sure, go ahead."

  "The guy who got his nuts sliced off. You figure he's the one who shot Kenny and Jim, right?"

  "Looks that way to us," Lightstone nodded.

  Clinton Hardwell considered the answer. "Okay," he said finally. "Anything you'd like my detectives to tell them FBI folks when they get here?"

  "Yeah, as a matter of fact, there is," Lightstone said. "Tell them that the Oriental guy on the floor has been positively identified by one of our agents as Special Agent Mike Takahara."

  Chapter Forty

  After all of the certificates were verified, the gas tanks filled, the credit-card slip signed, and a couple of wildlife law-enforcement war stories exchanged, the retired special agent-pilot and his mechanic at the Reno Sky Ranch Airport finally got around to estimating that it would take them another fifteen minutes to remove two of the six seats from the cabin of the Cessna Golden Eagle.

  Which was cutting it awfully close as far as Henry Lightstone was concerned.

  But Homicide Sergeant Clinton Hardwell reassured him that during that time, his detectives were perfectly capable of keeping a team of FBI agents busy with questions of jurisdiction and procedure. The extra room in the cabin would make it possible for Dwight Stoner to stretch his injured knee out into a halfway comfortable position, so Lightstone just nodded and said sure, go ahead.

  Twenty minutes later, he and Stoner were strapping themselves into a pair of spacious cabin seats while Special Agent-Pilot Larry Paxton taxied the Cessna down to the end of the runway, with Trainee Pilot Mike Takahara in the copilot's seat.

  After bringing the twin-prop plane around to face the runway, Paxton turned and looked back into the cabin.

  "We're set to go. Next stop Ashland?"

  "Yeah, I'd like to drop the evidence off at the lab," Lightstone said. "But what about those teletypes? Isn't that going to raise a flag if we show up there when you three are supposed to be dead?"

  "No problem," Mike Takahara said over his shoulder. "I know the chief electronics guru out there. Guy named Ed Rhodes. He'll help us keep everything low-key."

  "He know we're coming?"

  "I sent him an e-mail message from the house before we left, asked him to pick us up at the airport. Figured we didn't want to alert anyone else yet, just in case."

  "Okay, Ashland it is," Henry Lightstone nodded agreeably. Finding himself able to relax for the first time in many hours, he closed his eyes for a few moments, and then opened them up to find Dwight Stoner staring at him.

  "You know, Henry," Stoner said over the muted roar of the twin engines, "if anybody had tried to stick you in a plane a few months ago where you knew that the pilot had a messed-up arm, a torn-up leg, and probably a concussion to boot, and the copilot didn't even have a license, you'd have gone ape-shit."

  "Yeah, I probably would have," Lightstone conceded. "But that was before I flew with a guy named Woeshack."

  "Woeshack? You mean that new guy up in Anchorage? Eskimo kid, looks like he's about sixteen?"

  "That's the one."

  "So what's the matter with him?"

  "As a rookie agent, not much," Lightstone shrugged. "In fact, from what I've seen so far, I'd say he's smart, aggressive, and has a hell of a lot of guts. On the other hand, as a pilot, he's pretty much an air crash waiting to happen."

  "Yeah? How so?"

  "Well, I can give you three reasons right off. First of all, his idea of a takeoff is to go like hell to the end of the runway and then pull up at t
he last second before he hits something. Second, I don't think he has any idea of what a compass is for. And third, he acts like he doesn't know how to land the goddamn plane once he's up there."

  "Sounds like a government pilot to me," Stoner observed. "But isn't he also the guy that buzzed those bastards who were shooting at you, and then hauled your ass out of the plane after he dumped it into the trees?"

  "That's Woeshack all right," Lightstone nodded.

  "Sounds like good covert agent material to me," Stoner said.

  "Yeah, I know." Lightstone smiled as Larry Paxton received clearance from the tower and began to roll the twin-engine airplane down the runway. "I've been thinking the same thing myself."

  Senior Electronics Specialist Ed Rhodes stood inside the small Ashland Airport terminal building and watched through the window until the twin props of the Cessna Golden Eagle stopped turning, the door opened, and one by one, the four men made their way down the stairs.

  Sighing in relief as the last man stepped down onto the asphalt, Rhodes walked outside and strolled across the tie-down area. Two of the men were standing around on crutches, while the other two were busy removing from the small plane what luggage they had.

  "Hey, buddy, you aren't going to believe the LEMIS messages we got just after you called," the bearded scientist said as he came up behind Takahara and slapped him on the shoulder. "For a minute there, I thought-"

  Then Rhodes blinked in shock when Mike Takahara turned around and showed his badly damaged face. "Jesus! What the hell happened to you?"

  "Long story," Takahara shrugged. "Tell you all about it after we've had a couple of beers. These are the guys I told you about. Ed Rhodes, meet Henry Lightstone, Larry Paxton, and Dwight Stoner."

  Rhodes tried to hide his shock when he looked at the badly bruised and swollen faces of the three men as he shook hands.