Wildfire (15 page)

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of," Halahan said.

"So what does that mean—you're going to dangle an entire Special Ops team out as bait?"

"That's right," Halahan said, making direct eye contact with his new deputy chief.

"You don't think that might be a hell of a risky thing to do?"

"Maybe. Might be a whole lot worse if we just sat back and did nothing. Whoever those backers are, I think they got their noses bloodied pretty bad the first time around. They might not be that careless the next time."

"So what about the team? You sure they're up to dealing with something like that?"

"Sure enough that I'm willing to let them bullshit me a little while longer," Halahan replied matter-of-factly.

Freddy Moore blinked, looking confused for a brief moment, and then smiled in sudden understanding. "That Bahamas deal?"

"They've been searching around on their own for somebody connected to Abercombie for the last three months. My guess is that Takahara found some kind of lead with that goddamned computer of his. The rest of them didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but you saw how they acted. Followed along just like they really had talked about it last week."

"Adaptive, innovative, and resourceful?"

"Exactly."

"Mind if I ask you a question?"

"Shoot."

"Why not make this an official investigation?" Moore asked reasonably. "Assign two or even all three of the special ops teams, track down every angle, see what they can turn up?"

"We already tried that," Halahan replied evenly.

"And?"

"We got turned down. The review committee decided that if the FBI couldn't find any links to anyone beyond Abercombie, then there wasn't much reason to believe that we could."

"In spite of the fact that we lost three agents on the deal?"

"That's right." Halahan nodded.

"I see."

Freddy Moore was quiet for a long moment. Then he looked up at Halahan.

"Let me see if I've got this right. Our job, unofficially, is to set the bait, let the line drift out—in this case, maybe all the way down to Miami— and then wait to see if anything shows up and starts nibbling around the hook. We feel a tug on the line, we reach for a net or a harpoon, depending on who or what shows up. That about it?"

Halahan noted that his new deputy had used the word
we
for the first time during their entire conversation. He smiled to himself. Freddy Moore had a reputation for being a tough, no-nonsense supervisory agent and a dedicated team player, but this operation has the potential to be a career-buster . . . which meant that it had to be a volunteer situation all the way. Some agents Halahan knew wouldn't have necessarily felt that being the number two in charge of the Special Operations Branch was worth that kind of risk.

"That's the way I see it."

"Halahan," Freddy Moore said, his eyes seemingly reflecting a combination of boyish amusement and deadly cold seriousness, "I'm a southern boy, and I like to fish more than just about anything I can think of . . . but it looks to me like we might be starting out a little bit skimpy in the bait department. You know what's gonna happen to Bravo Team if we don't feel that tug in time?"

"Yeah, I do," Halahan replied. "That's why we're using bait that isn't afraid to bite back."

At two-fifteen that Wednesday morning, when Larry Paxton and Henry Lightstone finally got back to the safe house—which was actually a four-bedroom apartment located on the third floor of a warehouse building across the street from their storefront operation—they found Mike Takahara and Dwight Stoner sitting at the dining room table with opened cans of beer in their hands and satisfied grins on their faces. Judging from the dirt on their faces and clothing, it looked liked they had just spent the last hour in a garbage dump.

"Okay, Snoopy, spill it," Paxton demanded as he and Lightstone fielded cold cans tossed in their direction by Stoner.

"I found out how they got into the computer." The tech agent beamed.

"Snoopy, I don't give a shit about that goddamned computer," Paxton growled as he popped open the beer. "What I want to know is—"

"No, wait a minute, let's hear what he has to say first," Henry Lightstone interrupted, staring at the two smiling agents suspiciously. "I think they know something we don't."

"The antenna system on the warehouse," Takahara said, his exposed teeth looking brilliant white against his dirty face. "We went back up on the roof to take a look at it. Remember when I used one of the monitor units in the car last night to make sure the alarms were set?"

Paxton and Lightstone nodded.

"Well, somebody got up on the roof of the warehouse and hooked another transmitter to the antenna. It's a real nice setup too. First-rate job. The moment I triggered our monitor, that unit automatically recorded and then transmitted a copy of the signal on a separate frequency, access codes and everything, the whole works. Somewhere nearby they had a receiver hooked up and waiting. At that point all they needed was a modem and our phone number, and they had easy access to our computer."

"Which we gave out to at least a couple dozen people when we were setting up the buys." Paxton nodded.

"So there was somebody in that warehouse after all," Lightstone said, nodding in satisfaction.

"Whoever rigged the transmitter used a modem to plant a Trojan Horse program in our computer that they could activate to shut off the alarms," Mike Takahara explained. "That gave them free access to the warehouse. The noise you heard was probably the guy going out the emergency door in the office, after he activated the last phase of their little program, which was probably to wait for a few seconds and then start erasing itself."

Lightstone nodded. "Giving the guy enough time to get out before the computer woke up, rearmed the system and scared the living shit out of both of us."

"Exactly." The tech agent smiled.

"So who the hell is he, and what was he doing rummaging around in the warehouse?"

"Beats the hell out of me," Mike Takahara admitted. "A reasonable guess would be that the Boracatto brothers got pissed off when they figured out we were some kind of sting operation, but—"

"Okay, so now we
know
that somebody's fucking with us," Paxton interrupted. "We'll figure out who and why later. What I want to know is, what's all this shit about Miami?"

"Yeah, that's the best part." Dwight Stoner grinned. "Wait until you hear this."

"Come on, Snoopy, spill it. It's been a long night," Henry Lightstone snapped as he sat down at the table and took a long swallow of the cold beer.

"You know how we've been looking for some other connection to Abercombie and Wolfe?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Well, I found him."

"Found who?" Paxton demanded.

"Abercombie's boyfriend."

"You mean Wolfe? Hell, Ah
know
where
he
is," Paxton said. "They planted him six feet down in some Fairfax County cemetery."

"No." Mike Takahara shook his head. "I mean the real one."

"No shit?"

"And guess where," Dwight Stoner added, the wide smile still on his scarred face.

"Bahamas in the wintertime," Henry Lightstone whispered.

"That's right." Mike Takahara nodded.

"Well, I'll be damned," Paxton whispered, a wide smile appearing on his tired face. Then he looked over as Henry Lightstone got up, walked over to the table, began rummaging through his briefcase, then walked back toward the phone with his address book in his hand.

"Hey, who you gonna call this time of night?"

"LaGrange," Lightstone replied. "I want to find out if he's hired himself a boat crew yet."

"At two o'clock in the morning?"

"Yeah, sure, why not? He never got much sleep when we were working together in San Diego."

"I can believe that." Larry Paxton nodded, shaking his head as he watched Lightstone start to dial the phone. "And while you're busy pissing off our future employer, I'm gonna go lock myself in my room and pretend this evening didn't even happen."

"Locks? Oh, shit," Mike Takahara said, his eyes blinking open as he looked over at Stoner.

"What's the matter?" Paxton demanded suspiciously.

"Halahan got me so pissed off, I forgot to reset the alarm system on the warehouse," Mike Takahara said as he started to get up.

"Never mind, I'll do it." Paxton yawned as he walked over to the door that led to the balcony that overlooked the street in front of the warehouse. Stepping out onto the balcony, he reached into his pants pocket and brought out a small transmitter. Then he hesitated and looked back in the doorway. "Hey, man, you sure you rigged everything back up exactly the way it was?"

"It's all set to go." Mike Takahara nodded sleepily. "Just push the red button like you always do."

Nodding to himself, Larry Paxton aimed the transmitter at the front door of the building and depressed the red button.

The shock wave of the resulting high-order explosion sent the assistant special agent in charge of Bravo Team tumbling backward into the room amid a spray of broken wood and shattered glass. Moments later, as the stunned agent found himself lying dazed on the floor, a deluge of broken bricks, chunks of freezer insulation, shredded fish and oyster shells rained down on the balcony.

Staggering up to his feet, Larry Paxton joined his fellow agents who were already out on the balcony staring down at what had once been the site of their storefront fish-dealing operation. All around the warehouse complex, burglar alarms were ringing loudly. And in the distance, the agents could hear the all-too-familiar sounds of Boston police sirens beginning to wail.

"Goddamn," the assistant special agent in charge whispered in a shocked voice, "Ah think we just woke up the neighborhood again."

Chapter Nine

Dr. Kimberly Wildman looked around her National Biological Survey field group.

"Okay," she said, "is everybody clear on who's going to be where the next few days?"

Of the thirty-one people present in the Yellowstone National Park headquarters conference room, at least two-thirds nodded sleepily. The newly assembled group had been in the field for only two weeks, and everyone was still trying to adapt to their new boss and her six-thirty a.m. middle-of-the-week staff meetings. For many of the scientist/technician teams it had been a long drive to Yellowstone yesterday evening, and it would be just as long a drive back to their individual survey sites this morning. Few of them were enthusiastic about the prospect.

"One more heads-up. The park rangers have asked me to remind all of you that they are
still
maintaining a
high
fire danger alert for most of the northwest Wyoming quadrant. So think about hot exhaust pipes when you park those trucks. And please limit your use of chain saws to emergency situations."

"How are we defining an emergency situation?" one of the field technicians asked.

"One tree drops in front of your truck, another one drops behind it, and the one in the middle is starting to go," someone said from the back of the room, which got favorable chuckles or smiles from most of the group.

"Okay, good, you're starting to wake up." Wildman nodded approvingly. "Does anybody have anything else they want to bring up before we head back out?"

"You might want to mention about that green sign we found yesterday," Wildman's field technician reminded.

"Oh, yes, that's right. Yesterday afternoon we found a metal sign attached to a Doug fir that the Fish and Wildlife Service is apparently using to mark eagle nesting sites. If you happen to run across any more of them, you should include them in your documentation data for the nest. They might make a useful cross-referencing with existing Fish and Wildlife databases."

One of the senior biologists in the back of the room raised his hand.

"Ah, Kim," he said, "could you describe that sign?"

"Yes. As I recall, we listed it as a metal plate, blank, green camouflage coating. Dimensions—uh —eighteen inches by thirty inches by three-quarters-of-an inch thick. Attached to the tree with a pair of what looked like very heavy steel lag bolts with three-inch wide, security configured heads."

"Was the sign made out of aluminum?"

"It appeared to be." The group leader nodded. "Either that or some kind of aluminum alloy."

"I don't think those are markers for eagle nests. I found one just like that last Monday, and it certainly wasn't attached to a nesting tree."

"Are you sure there wasn't a nest up there somewhere?" Wildman asked.

"Pretty sure." The elderly biologist grinned. "It was a stump about twenty-four inches high."

Laughter and a few comments about confused eagles and rapidly declining biologists immediately broke out among the suddenly reenergized group.

"Okay, okay." Wildman smiled. "I guess we can assume that they're some kind of Forest Service marker."

"Kind of a strange way to mark a tree," the biologist commented. "Fact is, we never would have seen it if we hadn't been rummaging around in some brush."

"Yeah, we found one like that too." One of the other biologists spoke up. "Or at least it sounds like the same thing. I could only see part of it because it was nestled behind some berry brambles, and I wasn't curious enough to try to get in any closer."

"I can do you one better than that," another voice in the back said.

Wildman looked up to see one of the park maintenance men standing in the doorway.

"We damn near tore up a chain saw on one of them signs yesterday afternoon when we were taking down a diseased pine out near the north entrance. Never saw the damn thing until we made the cut. Missed it by only a couple inches, too. Lousy place to put a sign, far as I'm concerned. Gonna get somebody hurt doing dumb-ass things like that."

A puzzled and disapproving look appeared on Dr. Kimberly Wildman's face. "Have any of the other teams found similar signs in their areas?" she asked to the room at large.

Much to Wildman's surprise, a total of seven hands were raised around the room.