Ken Goddard - Prey

Friday September 24

At precisely quarter past twelve on that Friday afternoon, Lisa Abercombie set Dr. Reston Wolfe's summary report aside and slowly began to flip through its accompanying sheath of police reports, interagency teletypes, and press clippings.

Three minutes later, having satisfied herself that the names and numbers in Wolfe's report seemed reasonable, she went back and read the entire four-page summary report one more time.

Having done that, she sat back in her beige-leather executive chair and stared incredulously at the three men sitting across from her desk.

"Five of our people are dead?"

"That's right," Paul Saltmann said matter-of-factly. "Arturo, Corrie, Felix, Shoshin, and Kiro. Roy, Carine, and Kimiko were wounded. Of the three, Roy's injuries are the most serious."

"And Alex Chareaux is… loose?"

"Apparently," the curly-haired weight lifter and intelligence specialist nodded.

For a long moment Lisa Abercombie simply stared at the three ICER team leaders.

"Three months ago, in one surgical operation," she said, her voice hoarse with disbelief, "Operation Counter Wrench created absolute havoc among five of the top environmental activist organizations in the world. Since then, we have conducted seven follow-up operations, which have literally set these extremists at each other's throats, without a single one of our people being so much as scratched.

"But then," Abercombie went on, "when we send you out to deal with six Fish and Wildlife Service officers-not Delta Team members, or Secret Service agents, or U.S. Marines, but wildlife officers-none of whom have the slightest reason to suspect that you're coming, you come back and tell me that not only have we lost half of our effective team, but also that an incredibly dangerous individual, one in a position to cause us immense grief, has been allowed to get away from us?"

For a brief moment, Abercombie allowed her gaze to fall on each of the men individually. "Can any one of you please tell me," she asked in a glacial voice that matched the cold fury in her eyes, "how we could possibly have gotten ourselves into such a position?"

For approximately ten seconds, all three men simply stared back at her with varying degrees of casual indifference. Then, out of no apparent sense of intimidation or urgency, Paul Saltmann spoke up again.

"I can explain it very simply," he said. "You and your bureaucrat buddy tried to make it too cute."

"Cute?" Lisa Abercombie rasped, her eyes almost bulging with rage. "You call the endangerment of a hundred-million-dollar operation cute?"

"We could have taken every one of them out with long-range weapons," Saltmann responded with icy calm. "We told you that. And if you had allowed us to handle it that way, we would have left appropriate evidence at the scenes and then disposed of the Chareauxs separately, without the slightest difficulty. It was only when we tried to integrate the Chareaux brothers directly into the situation that we ran into complications."

"However," Dr. Morito Asai reminded, "five of these agents are now dead. Also, we are following the sixth agent right now, and we may have located Chareaux."

"You know where Alex is, right now?" Lisa Abercombie asked quickly.

"We believe so, yes."

"Where?"

"In a remote cabin approximately three miles northeast of us," Paul Saltmann said. "We recognized this location as a possible jump point for an intruder, so we had it wired into our security system. The sensors detected one individual moving in there last night."

"You mean he's here, close by?" she asked with undisguised panic in her voice.

"Not so close, but not so far away either," the Japanese technical specialist said. "From our point of view, he is accessible."

Abercombie hesitated, trying to maintain her icy demeanor. But the thread of fear was there, and they could sense it now.

"Do you anticipate that he will be coming after us?" she finally asked.

"Alex Chareaux is a proud and vengeful man, and we have sacrificed his two brothers for our purposes," Asai shrugged. "Why would he not?"

"How did he know to come here?" she asked.

"Probably because Felix told him," Paul Saltmann said.

"What do you mean, Felix told him?" Abercombie demanded. "Why in the world would he do that?"

"An individual under torture can be made to say almost anything," the curly-haired intelligence specialist said coldly. "Even someone like Felix is not immune. Read the Reno sheriffs report. It's fairly descriptive."

Abercombie looked at Saltmann quizzically, then quickly flipped through the sheath of papers until she came to the report filed by Homicide Sergeant Clinton Hardwell. One third of the way through the report, her tanned face turned pale.

"My God, he-" Then she blinked in sudden realization and turned her attention to Gerd Maas, who was seemingly bored by the drift of the conversation. "Why haven't you gone out there and killed this bastard?" she demanded, her voice harsh and unforgiving.

"Because it is essential that we dispose of the sixth agent first," Gerd Maas responded, his deep and foreboding voice causing Lisa Abercombie to pull back from her aggressive posture. "It must look like Chareaux is determined to complete his mission."

"But… but the risk," Abercombie started to argue as she stared down at the report, seemingly unable to take her eyes away from the descriptive paragraphs.

"Chareaux is emotional, and therefore does not represent a significant risk to this operation," Maas said with cold indifference. "The cabin is under constant surveillance, and he will not be allowed to approach this facility until we are ready for him to do so."

"But what if he eludes all of you again?"

"Mistakes were made when we had him in our possession at Reno," Maas said coldly. "Such mistakes will not be made in the future."

"Mistakes? What do mean by that?"

"For example," Maas replied, "it was a foolish mistake to send Gunter away and leave Alex in the hands of Felix and the others. Felix was a tactician whose primary concern would have been to carry out his assignment, whereas Gunter would have killed Alex the moment he tried to escape, and not given him the opportunity to harm the others."

"But you were in charge-" Abercombie started to protest.

"Gerd was monitoring the situation in the Kenai," Paul Saltmann interrupted. "He left orders for all of us to maintain our positions until he returned. However, your bureaucratic buddy, who didn't have the balls to stick around, decided to change the program."

"Dr. Wolfe had two appointments in Washington that he couldn't reschedule," Lisa Abercombie retorted. "But what do you mean, he changed the program?"

"The sixth agent had disappeared, and we didn't want to finish off Chareaux until we had located him," Saltmann explained. "Wolfe found a lead through the Fish and Wildlife Service personnel records that turned out to be useful; but instead of waiting for one of us, he ordered Gunter to follow up on the lead, leaving Felix, Shoshin, and Corrie in Reno to monitor Chareaux and Takahara."

"And I might add that Dr. Wolfe issued those orders knowing that Shoshin had been injured, and therefore was certain to be less effective," Asai said accusingly.

"Wolfe did that?" Lisa Abercombie blinked in astonishment.

"That's right," Saltmann said grimly, "which is why Felix, Shoshin, and Corrie are now dead."

The Bronx-raised politician muttered a curse under her breath.

"All right," she whispered. "I will deal with Wolfe when he returns. Now, what about Nakamura?"

"I was there on that one," Saltmann nodded. "Everything was going according to plan until Paxton and his buddy showed up."

"Larry Paxton, the black agent whom you and Felix and Gunter supposedly killed in Florida?"