Ken Goddard - Prey

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?"