Authors: Ken Goddard
"The third guy, the smaller one in the long-sleeved red shirt and vest there in the back of the booth, kinda fit the profile the colonel gave us — male, white, six-foot, one-eighty — but I wasn't convinced until I saw the big guy. He should be . . . wait a minute, there he is, coming back from latrine duty. Right side, gray plaid shirt, big belt buckle. Looks like a goddamned Abrams without the gun, don't he? I figure six-seven, six-eight, maybe three-twenty. Looks like he's done his share of weight lifting, probably even played a little pro ball back when. That's when I decided, hey, these have gotta be our boys, and reported in."
"Good job, soldier," Wintersole spoke softly into his collar mike, and then: "One-three, do you have them all?"
"Negative, First Sergeant. Two more to go," the comm specialist replied as she made a slight focus adjustment, dropped down a half stop, snapped one more quick telephoto shot, and then shifted the viewfinder of her camouflaged, telephoto-lensed and tripod-mounted camera to the next figure in the restaurant.
"Take your time," Wintersole directed her. "Let me know when you finish. We need them all for verification. Tango-one-one out."
First Sergeant Aran Wintersole smiled as he put down his field glasses.
Very good job, soldier
, he thought to himself.
Now we can get down to the serious work.
Henry Lightstone remained in place a good fifteen minutes after the camouflaged surveillance team packed up and moved off the ridgeline . . . and gave thanks that he did so when he sensed movement to his left, waited another five, then observed another camouflaged figure come up to a kneeling position in the concealing brush before moving out.
Spotter. Covering the back door, just in case. Jesus.
Lightstone felt extremely unhappy with himself, knowing that he probably wouldn't have played it safe — that he more likely would have opted to follow the group — if he hadn't been watching for the cast. When the first six figures appeared to use their left hands freely as they moved out, Lightstone had remained in place . . . and discovered that his young, muscular, trim, short-haired, intense, and ever-so-disciplined and obedient new friend with the cleverly camouflaged cast was the one who had been given — or, more likely, volunteered for —the tail-end-Charley detail.
What was I waiting for, a goddamned salute?
The experienced covert agent chastised himself as he watched the camouflaged figure disappear over the ridgeline.
So that makes seven
, he thought as he shifted his field glasses back to the interior of the restaurant and mentally ticked off the very familiar faces in his head.
As he did, he tried very hard to ignore the cold sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that slowly yielded to a burning, protective rage. A feeling accentuated by several pertinent overriding questions:
Just who are these people working for?
And what the hell are they doing here?
Chapter Twenty-eight
It took Henry Lightstone a good forty-five minutes to work himself back to his truck, and another hour slowly and methodically to make a 360-degree search of the surrounding area until he felt as certain as he could that they — whoever they were — hadn't posted another spotter on the vehicle.
No reason at all why there couldn't be more than seven of them, he reminded himself.
What's the smallest mobile operating unit in the military. A squad? And how many men in a squad? Staff sergeant in charge, two buck sergeant team leaders, and what, four or five riflemen in each of the two fire teams? Eleven minimum? Nine more like those two? Shit.
And that's being optimistic
, he reminded himself.
They could be part of a maneuver platoon — four squads, forty-six minimum with a lieutenant and a platoon sergeant. Or worse, a whole damned company — a minimum of three platoons along with a captain, executive officer, and a first sergeant. Shit.
But anything that big implies an official assignment, especially if there's a lieutenant or captain involved. But who says they have to be military? Just because they look like soldiers and act like soldiers?
Nobody.
Especially when they're using a two-way drop box to communicate with somebody. Box fourteen and box fifteen at a remote, rural post office. What else could that be? And since when did the United States Army, or United States Marines, or whatever, start communicating with their military teams by drop box?
And besides, United States government soldiers aren't supposed to be running around the county surveilling federal agents,
Henry Lightstone reminded himself as he tried to decide just how paranoid he could afford to become at four o'clock on a bright and chilly Thursday afternoon when he needed to do several things very quickly.
In other words, how much time could he spend checking his truck for some kind of device?
He answered that question ten minutes later when he worked himself under the bed of the leased pickup and found the first transmitter. Or at least what he assumed was a transmitter.
Aluminum box, one-by-two-by-five inches, magnetic base, long spring steel antenna, dark green camouflage paint. What the hell else could it be?
Oh yeah, right.
Military thinking.
Why bother to track something or someone when it's a hell of a lot easier just to blow it or them into small pieces? Saves a lot of wear and tear on boot leather.
Christ, Mike,
Henry Lightstone thought wishfully, why aren't you ever around when I really need you?
He found another device very much like the first under the engine block — except that this one had a recessed, two-pole switch on the side and spring steel antennas of different lengths sprouting from either end. He managed to get close enough to verify that the switch was set to the ON position. Then he decided to hell with it.
The first device probably was a transmitter, he guessed as he quickly maneuvered himself out from under the truck. But he couldn't think of any reason why a perfectly simple device like a tracking transmitter would need a protected on-off safety switch and a pair of antennas rigged for two different frequencies, assuming he read the electronics situation correctly.
He could, however, think of a lot of reasons why a receiver might come equipped in such a manner. Especially one filled with C-4 and an electronic detonator.
One to activate, and one to touch it off.
Wonderful.
Okay, guys,
he thought as he cautiously reached under the driver's seat, removed a small cell phone and a Velcro-secured nylon pouch, checked the contents of the pouch, slid the cell phone and the pouch under his jacket and belt, and then cautiously closed the driver's side door,
what did we step into this time?
By a quarter to six in the evening, Henry Lightstone had finally hiked back to the center of Loggerhead City — a little bit of an exaggeration as names went, he decided, since Loggerhead City was, at best, a small town. However, the long walk gave him plenty of time to consider a number of relevant issues . . . the most important being that he had no intention of going anywhere near the warehouse where Bravo Team was busy doing God knows what. Not now. Not until he found out what was going on.
In the meantime, however, he had to warn everyone.
But not through a land line, because Takahara hadn't installed the phones in the warehouse yet.
And not through the cell phones, because people capable of playing with dual-frequency remote detonators were perfectly capable of monitoring cell-phone conversations.
Have to wait until they get back to the motel rooms, Henry decided, uneasy because he knew Paxton would keep everybody at the warehouse until they accounted for every loose snake. And that could take a while.
But could he wait that long?
He thought about that specific question all the way back to the center of town, and he finally came to the conclusion that he could. If time were critical, then one of those surveillance characters would have hung around the truck with a pair of binoculars and a transmitter set to the activating and detonating frequencies, waiting to ID the driver and blow him to bits if necessary. The fact that the team walked away from the truck implied a long-term situation: They obviously felt they had plenty of time to set off the charges under his truck if he got in their way somewhere down the line.
So, Lightstone decided, that meant he could afford to take the extra precaution of staying away from the warehouse for a few more hours, until he had a better sense of the situation, rather than risk drawing whatever attention he'd attracted to the rest of Bravo Team.
But in the meantime, he had no intention of going back to Bobby and Susan LaGrange's ranch house either, even though he felt fairly confident that no one had followed him from the ridge or his abandoned truck. However, nothing said those hard-ass characters — whoever they were, and whatever they were doing surveilling a team of covert federal agents — hadn't been tagging him, too, the last couple days.
Which means they could easily have other members of their team in place, waiting for me to show, so that they can pick up the tag . . . or split it off if I try to hand something to a messenger. And that would be real easy to do if I don't find another means of transportation pretty damned quick. Shit.
Lightstone checked his watch and kept walking, hurrying now because the shop he remembered probably closed at six if he was lucky, or five-thirty if he wasn't.
As he walked, his thoughts returned to the transmitter and receiver. Someone could have put them on his truck earlier in the week, but he doubted it because Bravo Team had only arrived —what?—four days ago, and the only local people they'd had any significant contact with, outside of the warehouse owner and a couple of deliverymen, had been Bobby and Susan, the old coot, Sage . . . and the woman. So that didn't make much sense.
And besides, he'd found a couple of boot prints around the truck only partially wiped away by what looked like pine branches, judging by the few bright green pine needles he'd found scattered around the truck. Which meant the camouflaged figures probably worked their way back to their vehicles, spotted his truck off the road, remembered seeing it, or — unless they were good at remembering license plates — a truck just like it back at the Dogsfire Inn.
And then went ahead and rigged it with a transmitter and detonating device, just for the hell of it? Some random truck parked on the side of the road?
Yeah, right, that makes a lot of sense.
Lightstone mentally put the past day's events in chronological order.
Bobby finds an old coot wandering around his ranch supposedly looking for Bigfoot who offers to sell him a genuine Apache Indian hunting charm. We show up at Bobby's place for dinner. Susan tells us about the old coot. Bobby and I meet him at the pancake house the next morning. Then the old guy takes me to meet a very attractive woman who seems unsure of her name and who has an overgrown house cat for a pet. The goons show up the next morning, one of them wearing a bear-claw necklace, looking for their letter, and get seriously pissed at the woman when it's not there. And I end up out in the woods with a truck rigged to squeal . . . or blow, depending.
So what kind of trail is that?
And more importantly, what do I do now?
That's reasonable.
And explainable.
And useful.
The big cardboard sign in the shop window said CLOSED, and the small block lettering on the inside of the window confirmed that 5:30 was the customary closing hour.
I need to do something that makes sense, maintains my cover, and allows me to put Bravo and Charlie Teams on notice.
And something that allows me to move about, communicate, and track back on these characters.
But at the same time, something that nobody really expects me to do.
Henry Lightstone blinked.
A helpful, smiling face appeared before his eyes.
And at that moment, he knew exactly what he was going to do.
The owner had closed the shop at five-thirty as advertised, but business was slow this time of year, he explained when he noticed Henry and opened the door. Besides, his wife never had dinner ready until seven at the earliest, so he certainly didn't mind opening up again for a serious customer.
Lightstone assured him he was quite serious.
The new models tempted him, but the image was all wrong, so he reluctantly shifted his attention to the used ones the owner displayed in the back of the store.
"What's the story on this one?" Lightstone pointed to a red-and-white Honda with visible dents in the gas tank and numerous gouges and scrapes on the fenders, exhaust, and chrome.
"That's a real sweet little machine. Honda XR 250L. Five years old, thirty-two thousand and change on the odometer. Owned by a real nice local fellow who used to play around with it on weekends. Rode it hard, but took real good care of it. But then one night he took it to a bar, had a couple beers too many, wound up in a ditch, and decided he'd probably live a whole lot longer if he stuck with four-wheeled vehicles."
"Smart man."
"Yeah, I guess that's pretty much what his wife said, too, among other things. Anyway, my son — who's a pretty decent bike mechanic — took it all apart. He says the bike's solid, no internal damage, just looks a little rough around the edges. I've listed it at twenty-five hundred for quite a while now, but as you can see, it's still here." The owner looked thoughtful for a moment. "Guess I could let her go for twenty-one," he offered hopefully.
"What would you say to twenty-five hundred even for the bike, plus one of those used leather jackets, a pair of halfway decent leather gloves, like maybe that pair in the display case, and one of those new two hundred-dollar Bell helmets?"
"I'd say 'cash, check, or charge?'" The shop's proprietor grinned broadly.