Wildfire (3 page)

The first jacketed 9mm Parabellum slug caught the distracted bodyguard square in the forehead just as the muzzle of his pistol was starting to clear his holster. The second and third rounds dropped Hoffsteadler's two gunsmith brothers out of their workbench chairs like a pair of pop-up targets.

George Hoffsteadler had something less than a second to absorb the fact that his brothers were dead and that he was still holding his cherished four-bore rifle in both hands—rather than reaching for his holstered pistol as he should have been doing—when the fourth high-velocity 9mm bullet shattered the bridge of his nose and buried itself into the soft tissue of his brain. He was dead by the time his knees started to buckle.

Which left two.

Riser was already diving for the ground, wrenching the four-bore rifle out of George Hoffsteadler's dead hands, when the man in the turret— who had been caught off-guard by the spectacular effects of the exploding fifty-five-gallon drums and the suddenness of Riser's actions—sent a stream of 7.65mm machine-gun rounds ripping right to left through the display tables and the entire left-side wall of the staging area.

The vengeance-seeking bodyguard managed to shred both display tables and the workbench, along with a considerable portion of the surrounding landscape, with his initial sustained burst from the lethal M-60. He was starting to transverse back, left to right, sending out a second lethal stream of copper-jacketed projectiles at the rate of ten per second when suddenly, over to the far right, he saw the huge man with the fearsome expression in his eyes come up to his knees with the four-bore rifle in his hands.

Working out of desperation, the bodyguard tried to swing the barrel of the heavy machine gun around in time. But before he was halfway there, the four-bore roared again. The nineteen-hundred-grain lead slug exploded through the turret's armored glass and tore the bodyguard's spine in half before exiting through the back wall.

At the onset of the shooting, the fourth bodyguard had initially chosen to barricade himself behind the relative security of the two-by-six boards that made up the front wall of the console booth. But the sight of the thick piece of armored glass in the M-60 turret exploding apart in all directions caused him to change his mind. He came up fast, triggering three 9mm pistol rounds in the general direction of Riser's last observed position. Then he turned around and lunged for the back door, just as a second nineteen-hundred-grain slug ripped apart the four-by-four corner post and sent splintered chunks of two-by-six boards ricocheting into the bodyguard's exposed back.

Finding himself face down in the debris, groaning in pain and still partially stunned, the bodyguard cautiously tried to move his limbs. He was amazed to discover that all his arms and legs were still attached and that he didn't seem to be losing any significant amount of blood.

Driven forward by his screaming survival instincts, he was starting toward the back door again, which was now dangling open on one hinge, when he heard the all-too-distinctive sound of the four-bore's breech being snapped closed.

Realizing that he was trapped, and that there was no time or chance to do anything else, the bodyguard twisted around to face his adversary. He was starting to come up in a desperate crouch, with the 9mm Beretta extended out and firing as fast as he could pull the trigger, when the four- bore roared once more and forty-six double-ought buck pellets sliced through the splintered interior of the console booth in a tight pattern. Nine of the 33-caliber pellets struck the bodyguard from head to groin. He too was dead before his head hit the ground.

In the intervening moments it took for the female bodyguard to recover from the stunning impact of Riser's fist being driven into her vest-protected stomach, all the firing had stopped.

Reacting to her carefully honed survival instincts, she immediately reached for her pistol. It was only as her fingers brushed across the empty holster that she remembered: it was her mistake that had set the disastrous firefight into motion.

Furious with herself, she looked around frantically. The first thing she saw was the blood-splattered body of her fellow bodyguard lying under the shattered remains of the display table. Then she saw his unfired 9mm Beretta lying within two feet of his limp and outstretched hand.

She was starting to come up onto her hands and knees, getting ready to dive for the pistol, when she saw Riser out of the corner of her eye.

He was standing to her right, less than twenty feet away. He held the four-bore rifle firmly against his hip, the double barrels aimed directly at her upper body. The front view of the two cavernous rifle barrels was frightening, but it was the absolutely terrifying expression in the huge man's deadly cold eyes that seemed to turn her muscles into jelly.

For a brief moment she wondered if George Hoffsteadler's horribly lethal new weapon was now loaded with slugs or buckshot. Not that it would matter in the least, one way or the other, she reminded herself. Dead was dead.

Then, having no idea what else to do, and still furious with herself for having lost her concentration at the crucial moment, she came up unsteadily to her feet and just stood there, staring into the face of death with her deep blue eyes. To her utter amazement, she realized that she was no longer afraid.

Tensed against the anticipated moment when the explosive discharge from the four-bore would rip into her body and end her life, it took her a moment to realize that he was saying something to her.

"What?" she rasped.

"Take off your shirt
and
your vest," he repeated.

She hesitated, wondering why he was even remotely concerned about the vest. If he intended to kill her, too, all he had to do was pull the trigger. She knew with absolute certainty that her Kevlar vest would offer far less protection against Hoffsteadler's terrifying four-bore than the armored glass on the obliterated M-60 emplacement.

And besides,
she thought morbidly,
even if it's loaded with buckshot, instead of slugs, all he has to do is aim for my head.

For a brief moment, as she started to unbutton her shirt, it occurred to her to wonder if his instructions could possibly have anything to do with sex, and to think about how much of her pride she might be willing to sacrifice in an attempt to save her life. But then—as she slowly removed the shirt and the thick vest, exposing the mirrored pair of scarlet Macaws tattooed on the smooth inner curves of her full bare breasts, and observed the clinical expression in his dark, foreboding eyes—she realized with a sinking heart that he had no personal interest in her at all. Or at least none that she could detect.

"Put your shirt back on," he said with cold indifference.

She was starting to re-button the front of her shirt, her chest muscles tight with fear as she tried not to think about what was coming next, when he asked in a deep, resonate voice: "Do you know how to sail a boat?"

She started to say "What?" again, because it didn't make any sense. But then she quickly forced herself to concentrate because there might be a chance after all. She already knew in her heart that nothing else mattered—whatever the trade was, whatever it was he wanted her to do, would be fine with her.

She would do anything to survive. Anything at all.

"Yes, I can sail a boat. Why?"

"I need someone who is capable of taking a large sailboat out into the ocean. You seem to be unemployed at the moment," Riser added without the slightest trace of irony or amusement in his cold and foreboding voice.

The woman blinked.

She started to say: "How large a sailboat?" but it immediately occurred to her that that might be the wrong question to ask.

"How . . . how do you know you can trust me?" she finally asked instead.

"Do you blame yourself for Hoffsteadler's death?" he asked, completely ignoring her question.

The woman hesitated again, wondering if there was a right or wrong answer or if it even mattered.

"Yes, of course I do," she finally replied. "It was my fault."

"Do you feel grief? A sense of personal loss?"

She looked down at the sprawled, bloody body of George Hoffsteadler, the man who had paid her exorbitant salary without hesitation, but who had also teased her mercilessly in front of her fellow guards. The man who had "accidentally" brushed against her breasts or patted her butt dozens of times, and then laughed when she had turned away, embarrassed and enraged, but refusing to respond. The man who was now dead because, in the span of one second, she had failed.

"No," she said, realizing as she spoke the words that it was a truthful answer. Hoffsteadler's death didn't matter to her at all.

"Good." Riser nodded. "I expect the same degree of loyalty. Nothing more, nothing less. Success will be rewarded. Failure will result in immediate punishment. Disloyalty will result in death. Do you understand and agree to the terms?"

"Yes," the woman said calmly, wondering what it was she was doing, other than—for the moment—saving her life.

"Good. Do you know where Hoffsteadler maintains the video recorders and the tapes for his surveillance system?"

"Yes."

"Show me," he ordered. "And then go back to doing what you were told to do."

"What's that?" she asked, confused.

"Pack my merchandise. It's time for us to go to work."

Chapter One

Special Agent Henry Lightstone dug his lethal hands deep into his jacket pockets as he walked slowly along the narrow asphalt pathway that curved through the historic Boston Common.

Alert and ready now, but having no idea as to whom or what or why, he was waiting with growing impatience for the converging pair to make their move.

The problem was, as Lightstone reminded himself for the third or fourth time that evening, it didn't make any sense. The team hadn't made any controlled buys yet. And it was much too early in the game for any organized opposition to be sending out tags. So it had to be some kind of amateur situation. A couple of local muggers, or hopeful car-jackers, or a mistaken identity on a blown drug deal. Something like that.

But there were at least two of them, and they hadn't been acting like amateurs at all so far. So Lightstone had been forced to keep moving in the opposite direction from the team's safe house. Thinking, as he did so, that it would have been nice to have had a little advance warning. That way he could have been wearing something more substantial than a long down jacket and a knit watch cap to ward off the increasingly cold winds and rapidly falling snow.

At least a set of woolen long johns and warm gloves to go along with his jeans and flannel shirt
, he thought wishfully, starting to feel the effects of the bone-chilling wind through the light denim pants. And ideally, the pair of insulated winter boots in his duffel bag in place of his comfortable, low-cut desert hiking shoes that were already starting to get cold and damp from walking through the accumulating slush.

He hadn't bothered to dress any warmer because he had only intended to walk down to the local grocery store for a newspaper and a pound of coffee. It had never occurred to him that an hour later, at five-thirty in the evening, he might still be wandering around the city of Boston in a growing snowstorm.

And even if such a possibility
had
occurred to him, the weatherman had been reporting a steady barometric reading all day, with no expected change in the storm patterns over the next twenty-four hours.

But all that had changed in a matter of a few seconds when the barometer and the air temperature had suddenly started to drop rapidly—and when he decided, mostly on a whim, to cross the street through a break in traffic rather than at the light.

They obviously hadn't been expecting that.

So now, instead of walking directly back to their concealed safe house with an evening newspaper and a can of coffee under his arm, Henry Lightstone was searching for a place that was suitably remote. Preferably a small clearing surrounded and concealed by bare-limbed trees. Or perhaps the shadow side of an isolated building. Or even, if it became absolutely necessary, the far end of a darkened alleyway. It didn't really matter, just as long as it was someplace that a streetwise Bostonian or an equally wary tourist would instinctively avoid at all costs.

Which was to say, a place where a sudden moment of opportunity might become overwhelmingly tempting, if and when they chose to take it.

He had been walking in an elliptical pattern for almost forty-five minutes, deliberately leaving himself open to an approach because he wanted the answers right now,
before
he and his fellow wildlife agents set their new covert operation into motion, rather than later, when the entire team would be exposed.

Who they were.

What they wanted.

And why.

He had first sensed their presence, and then caught their movements at the corner of his peripheral vision, when he had suddenly crossed over to the other side of the street, and then—at the last moment and more out of habit than anything else—turned right instead of left, retracing his route in the opposite direction down the busy sidewalk.

Thinking back, Henry Lightstone realized that it had been the timing of their reactions that had caught his attention. They hadn't been ready for his sudden change of direction, and their attempts to recover had created brief but discernible breaks in the pedestrian flow of traffic on the crowded and slippery sidewalks. Not enough of a break to pinpoint the trackers themselves or to confirm any kind of intended action. But more than enough to suggest that some kind of focused activity—focused, that is, upon his physical movements—might be going on in his immediate vicinity.

In other words, a surveillance.

There were at least two of them out there, he figured. Two and possibly a third, because even after he had managed to jar them out of their pattern a second time (which gave him a better sense of their distance and relative positioning), he still had an uneasy sense of some other presence lurking out there in the growing darkness. Something dark and sinister and hidden, and therefore, at least in Lightstone's suspicious mind, something infinitely more dangerous.