Ken Goddard - Prey

"Guards were a piece of cake," Lightstone said. "We gave them some bullshit story about getting into an accident on the Beltway, which was why we were late, and how we needed to use the Y-band transmitter on the roof to send an emergency message to South Africa before the government shipped any more of their elephants to the Saudis. Don't think they even looked at our credentials."

"Pretty sad performance for a couple of D.C. brothers." Paxton shook his head.

"So what's a Y-band transmitter?" Stoner asked.

"Beats the hell outta me. Ask Captain Marvel up here." Mike Takahara, in the front passenger seat, shrugged. "I just do locks."

"Yeah, so how did the locks go?" Paxton asked.

"Easy. Typical government low-bid stuff. But we did discover something else that was interesting," Takahara said. "Somebody set up a remote video unit to monitor the secretary's desk outside Wolfe's office."

"Oh, really?" Paxton said. "Any kind of surveillance system inside the office?"

"Nope, just a wire to his phone that he had hooked up wrong," Takahara replied. "Doesn't look like he's the technical type."

Larry Paxton thought about that for a moment. "Which would lead a suspicious person to think that somebody else wants to know who stops by to see our little piss-ass bureaucrat."

"Looks that way," Lightstone agreed. "We'd better not lose track of him tomorrow, because he's about the only lead we've got."

"Yeah, no shit," Paxton nodded. "So what do we do now?"

"According to his secretary," Lightstone said, "if he's in town, Wolfe almost always goes to the office on Saturday, either late in the morning or early in the afternoon, to catch up on his paperwork. Said I could probably catch him there tomorrow because he's got some kind of report due."

"Unless he decides to come back tonight and sees what we've left him," Takahara reminded.

"Yeah, right."

There was a brief silence, then Dwight Stoner cleared his throat.

"Don't know about you guys," he said, "but I'm starting to get hungry."

Lightstone looked at his watch. "We have a choice, guys," he said. "We can either set up in the van outside this asshole's apartment, eat cold hamburgers, pee in cans, and take turns staying up all night watching it rain on the off chance Wolfe might drag his ass out of bed and stop by his office before noon tomorrow; or, we can bribe his doorman to give us a call on the pager when he starts to move, go out and have a decent meal, check into a first-class hotel, get a good night's sleep, and go after the potbellied little wimp in the morning."

"We know where he lives?" Stoner asked.

"Yep," Lightstone told him. "Got his address out of his secretary's Roledex, so all we've got to do is go find the building and talk to the doorman."

"If I gotta eat a cold hamburger and sleep in this thing all night, I'm gonna be hard to live with," Stoner warned.

"I know a good rib joint out near Lincoln Park," Larry Paxton said. "Little Joe's. Slow-cook pork and beef, all you can eat, and draft beer."

"Mike?"

"Personally," Mike Takahara smiled, "I'm getting to where I like eating cold hamburgers and peeing in tin cans, but if that's what it takes to keep Stoner happy…"

"All right, Paxton," Lightstone nodded. "Let's go find that doorman."

Lisa Abercombie waited until Roy Parker had maneuvered his wheelchair into the huge conference room, then motioned for Asai to shut the door.

Standing behind the podium at the head of the hexagon- shaped table, Abercombie allowed her eyes to sweep across the six individuals-Osan, Asai, Maas, Mueller, Saltmann, and Parker-who, aside from Gunter Aben, were now the surviving members of her incredibly talented and aggressive counterterrorist team.

"I wanted to bring you all together this evening to give you a status report on an operation that, to date, has cost us the lives of five of your comrades," Abercombie said solemnly. "Special Agent Len Ruebottom died in a car- bomb explosion in Georgetown approximately forty-five minutes ago."

There were general mutterings of approval around the table.

"We thought that this would be the end of it, and that we could get back to the primary mission of Operation Counter Wrench," Lisa Abercombie went on. "But, as it turns out, we have one loose end remaining."

"The room went silent."

"When Dr. Asai and I took part in the hunt that Dr. Wolfe arranged with the Chareaux brothers," Abercombie explained, making it clear that she did not consider either herself or Dr. Asai to be guilty of any wrongdoing, "there was another man involved, one Henry Allen Lightner.

"The man who was accidentally shot during the killing of the first bear," Asai nodded.

"Yes, that's right," Abercombie said. "We were concerned at the time that Mr. Lightner might reveal our identities if he was ever threatened with prosecution. But fortunately," Abercombie smiled, "we were able to divert the case against the Chareaux brothers, and we have never heard from Mr. Lightner again… until now." She reached down to the controls on the podium, dimmed the conference-room lights slightly, and then turned on the VCR and the overhead monitors.

"Our concern was that Mr. Lightner might try to use his knowledge of our involvement with the Chareaux brothers to blackmail one of us." Abercombie continued to speak as the videotape showed the white-haired scientist who had spoken with Wolfe's secretary.

"So when we learned that Lightner made an attempt to contact Wolfe this afternoon," Abercombie went on as the white-haired man was suddenly replaced by a second, much younger man with a terrible bruised and swollen face, "I decided that we-"

"Wait a minute, that's him!" Roy Parker yelled out from his wheelchair, causing Abercombie to jab at the pause button, freezing the blurry face of Henry Lightstone in the center of the stilled monitor.

"Yes, of course, that's-" Abercombie started to say, but Parker ignored her as he turned to Maas.

"No, I mean that's him, the guy Arty and I were shooting at out there on the island."

Gerd Maas turned slowly to face the injured ICER team member.

"Are you certain?" he asked.

"Yes, goddamn it, of course I'm sure," Parker said emphatically. "I had that bastard in the cross hairs at least three different times. He's the one who shot Arty and then opened up on us from that goddamned plane."

"Lightner was up there in Alaska? That doesn't make sense." Lisa Abercombie shook her head in confusion. "Why would they let a-"

Then she blinked in shock. "Oh, my God, he's not a businessman. He's-"

"— a special agent," Gerd Maas finished in his cold, hardened voice.

"He's also the one who took out Nakamura hand-to-hand," Carine Mueller nodded slowly.

"Yeah, I think Carine's right," Paul Saltmann added. "I got only a quick look, but-"

Gerd Maas turned to stare at Carine Mueller, then brought his head back around to scrutinize the blurry image of Henry Lightstone.

Then he smiled.

"Ruebottom was not the sixth agent we were looking for," he said, speaking to Abercombie in his glacial, calm voice but keeping his eyes fixed on the monitor, as if fascinated by what he was seeing. "This is the one they were hiding."

"But-"

At that moment, one of Abercombie's aides stuck his head in through the door, gulped nervously, then hurried in and whispered something in Abercombie's ear.

Lisa Abercombie frowned and waited until the aide disappeared back through the door before she turned to Maas.

"It's Reston," she said, staring down at the blinking button on her phone console.

"Put him on the speakerphone," Maas directed.

Numbly aware that she had somehow managed to lose control of the meeting, Lisa Abercombie complied.

"Reston? This is Lisa."

"Thank God!" Dr. Reston Wolfe's excited voice burst out into the still room.