Ken Goddard - Prey

"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."

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 the 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.

"Did you say Stoner and Paxton?"

"That's right," Takahara nodded.

"Uh, did anybody mention to you guys that you're supposed to be dead?" the scientist asked. "Though I don't recall seeing anything in either of the messages about an agent named Lightstone."