Prey (11 page)

"And offering to pay a great deal of money," Abercombie added. "You're a smooth operator. It sounds like a nice way to thank our financial backers."

Wolfe shrugged again. "It's not often that you can offer a new experience to people with nine-digit incomes. And our going out on the first excursion will mean only a small added expense." He stared straight into Abercombie's dark eyes. "A few extra dollars is hardly worth worrying about."

Lisa Abercombie blinked.

"That's very sweet of you, Reston," she said after a few moments, her sensuous mouth widening out into a dimpled smile that put Wolfe's blood pressure up another twenty points, "but do you think it's wise for us to leave the cabin at a time like this?"

Reston Wolfe remembered once again the sensual warmth of Abercombie's hand resting on his thigh, and the indelibly erotic image of her skintight jeans stretching across her hips and buttocks and muscular thighs when she'd walked out of the dining room to take her phone call.

Savoring a sense of heart-pounding anticipation, Wolfe held up a reassuring hand and shook his head.

"No need to be concerned. It's going to take them all afternoon to go through those briefing books. And besides, I've made arrangements with Sergeant MacDonald to move up the introductory tour of the training center to seven o'clock tonight."

"Tonight?"

"The Committee wants us to be ready to go by Thursday," Wolfe told her. "That gives us only three full days to work out the initial bugs."

"Do you really think there are going to be any bugs, with people like Maas and Saltmann?" Abercombie asked.

"I don't know," Wolfe replied. "MacDonald's the expert, and I don't think he was too thrilled about the idea of letting them go out on an operation without at least a couple weeks of orientation. Says it doesn't matter how good they are as individuals, it takes time to develop teamwork."

"He's probably right," Lisa Abercombie conceded, "but we simply don't have that luxury. Not if we're going to be effective when we need to be."

"I know, and that's what I told him."

"You told him what we're doing?" Abercombie asked, feeling her heart start to pound.

"No, of course not," Wolfe smiled. "I just told him that
we've been advised that some of our targets have started to move and that we need to get certain elements of the team into position by Thursday to keep an eye on things."

"I think he's anxious to see how all his simulations work against a guy like Maas," Lisa Abercombie said, working to keep a neutral tone to her voice.

"Me, too," Wolfe agreed. "Tonight's just an orientation. Tomorrow, at nine o'clock, we get to see the real thing. A live-fire assault on a corporate office. Four-man team. And you and I have ringside seats."

"Nine o'clock tomorrow morning?"

"Right, which give us exactly," he glanced down at his watch, "twenty-three hours to enjoy ourselves."

"But—"

"I can assure you that we won't be missed at all, just as long as we're back in time for breakfast," Wolfe smiled. "But it's up to you," he added instinctively, going with his gut- level presumption that risk-taking was the way to reach a woman like Lisa Abercombie. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

Lisa Abercombie hesitated for only a brief, tantalizing moment as she remembered once again the almost tangible sense of being
alive
that she had not only experienced, but—what was the word?—
savored
as she watched Gerd Maas face the terrifying charge of the fearsome Bengal. It had been the most intense and visceral moment of her entire life, and she knew that she would do almost anything to be able to experience that sensation once again.

The knowledge that Maas would be there with them tonight, perhaps even standing at her side, to assist her in reliving that moment of absolute dread was almost more than she could stand.

"Yes, Reston," she nodded, her dark eyes alive with anxious anticipation. "As a matter of fact, I'm absolutely sure."

Chapter Nine

They were number three in line for takeoff, which gave Henry Lightstone plenty of time to check his safety harness and readjust his headset.

"Nervous?" Len Ruebottom asked, speaking into his headset mike through the Lear's intercom system as he continued to monitor the gauges on the complex instrument panel.

"Yeah, I've never strapped myself inside a goddamned rocket before," Lightstone replied through his intercom microphone as he tried to ignore the tower traffic reports coming through his headset. The controller was saying something about head winds and down drafts that Lightstone really didn't want to hear.

"The Lear's actually a pretty smooth plane," Ruebottom said as he tapped at a gauge and then keyed his mike over to the external channel to acknowledge the tower's report. "Once we reach altitude, you're going to find that she gives you a real nice ride. Almost like sitting in your living room and watching a ball game."

"I'd
like
to be sitting in my living room watching a ball game," Lightstone said seriously. "Any chance you could pick up one of the games on this?" he asked, thinking that he might not vomit in the brand-new Lear jet if he could close his eyes and concentrate on something halfway interesting.

"Sure. What do you want to hear?"

"Lakers and Blazers?" Lightstone said hopefully.

Len Ruebottom checked his watch and then consulted a half-inch-thick booklet that he pulled out of a nylon pocket beside his seat. "Would you settle for a relay feed out of L.A.?"

"You can get that?"

Ruebottom laughed into his microphone. "Are you kidding? With all the money my buddy put into this radio gear, we could probably pick up a phone call in downtown Moscow. Which reminds me," he said, pointing to a part of the instrument panel that looked like a calculator key pad, "you can call out if you need to. All you've got to do is link in with a couple of codes, then punch in a phone number and talk through your mike. No sweat."

"Except that you and anybody else with a scanner gets to listen in, right?"

"Just me," the young pilot grinned. "Stu bought himself the high-priced rig. Signals come in and go out through a satellite hookup using scrambled transponders. Pretty good for privacy, unless there's a hacker out there who knows how to break matrix codes at two-second intervals."

"I think I've already met a guy like that in Special Ops," Lightstone said.

"Oh, yeah? Probably Mike Takahara, right?"

Lightstone nodded.

"I got to meet him at In-Service last year," Ruebottom said. "Real nice guy. I took him up in a Cessna a couple of times. I think I've just about got him talked into going for his license."

"Jesus, that's just what I need," Lightstone muttered to himself. He watched uneasily as the young agent-pilot released the brakes and gently advanced the throttle, winding the Lear's engines up into a high-pitched scream as they moved along the taxiway parallel to the main runway.

They were number two in the pattern for takeoff now.

Len Ruebottom responded to the traffic controller with some numbers that he read off his instrument panel, then busied himself making notes on the latest weather report.

Finally he looked over at Lightstone with obvious concern. "You really think it's going to be okay, my leaving Sue and the kids by themselves after I screwed up like that?"

"Yeah, they'll be fine," Lightstone said reassuringly, hoping he was right. "I was just giving you a bad time back there, trying to make you think about what you were doing."

"Yeah, I know, and I appreciate it," Ruebottom said in a sincere voice. "I guess I shouldn't worry about them so much, but Christ, it's bad enough with all the normal stuff going on. People shooting each other. Kids running cars into trees. Rapes, robberies, burglaries. Jesus!"

"Exactly," Lightstone nodded. "That's why I got out of police work. Too goddamned depressing. You have to shut that part of your mind off, like in a closet in the back of your head. Then you focus in on what you're supposed to be doing out there and try not to look into their eyes too often. And while you're doing that," Lightstone went on calmly, "you keep searching around for that little bit of craziness that'll make everybody laugh so they don't have to worry about crying when they go off shift." The ex-homicide investigator shrugged as he stared out through the Lear's thick windshield, remembering the two-o'clock-in-the-morning call-outs, the blood-splattered crime scenes, the dull, vacant gaze in the eyes of the victims, the rambling statements of the witnesses, and, finally, the interminable wait for the judge to sign the warrant, knowing all the while that the suspect was . . .

Ruebottom reached for the controls as the tower came on the air and the 737 ahead of them began to move forward. Lightstone consciously brushed his fingers across the release snap of his safety harness.

A sudden burst of static provided advance warning of another message from the control tower, this time letting everyone on the taxiway know that they were getting ready to start moving airplanes again. Lightstone could feel himself starting to tense up as he realized that they were nearing takeoff.

Ruebottom was making slight adjustments to the controls to counteract the jet wash as the 737 ahead of them began to roll forward, three powerful engines sending shock waves all the way down the line.

Working quickly now, Ruebottom checked both his and Lightstone's safety harnesses, adjusted his headset, scanned the instrument board for red lights, double-checked the critical gauges, and then inched the throttles forward again.

"You about ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Lightstone said with a visible lack of enthusiasm.

"Try to think about something else," Ruebottom advised, trying hard not to grin.

"Okay," Lightstone agreed, willing to try just about anything at this point. "What about you and the plane? Everything in here clean, just in case somebody does start snooping around?"

"Thanks to McNulty and his no-limit credit cards, this plane is officially leased to the Ruebottom Air Transport Service, a more or less reputable outfit that doesn't dig too deep into the sordid past of its clients," Ruebottom said as he continued to monitor controls and gauges. "Far as the flight logs are concerned, they've been cooked so that it looks like I've been taking you up on an average of about once a week for the last couple of years. You pay in cash, and what you do when you land is nobody's business but your own. I'm just a fly-for-hire, who wouldn't know a set of agent's credentials from a Crackerjack badge."

"What about ID and weapons?"

"I've got an old military forty-five in a kit bag behind the seat, handy to have in case some critter starts chewing on the wings." Ruebottom gestured with his head as he scanned the instrument panel one last time, a hand poised on the throttles. "Registration papers track back to my buddy Stu, who's got too damn much money to care about having extended conversations with people he doesn't know. He'd just tell them to buzz off or talk to one of his lawyers."

"What about your wallet?"

"Wallet, map case, kit bags, pants, shirt and jacket pockets are all clean, no incriminating evidence."

"Good habit for you young married types to get into," Lightstone advised, half serious. "That way you won't have to worry about Sue finding slips of paper with all those strange phone numbers in your pockets."

"Yeah, right," Ruebottom said absentmindedly as he began to tap at individual gauges on the instrument panel.

"By the way," Lightstone said, "I want you to call a girl named Marie when we get to Bozeman and tell her I'm sorry I stood her up."

"I should tell her how you and I get to go to Yellowstone this weekend and she doesn't?"

"For Christ's sake, don't tell her I'm at Yellowstone!" Lightstone said quickly. "That was another place I promised I'd take her to someday."

At that moment, the 737 began to accelerate down the runway in a deafening roar of jet exhaust, which meant that the Lear was next in line for takeoff. Henry Lightstone thought he could actually feel his rib cage and chest muscles begin to tighten around his heart.

"Which reminds me," Ruebottom said. "You sure you don't want me to go down to Gardiner with you, give you some backup in case things go nuts?"

"No thanks." Lightstone shook his head, making a conscious effort now to control his breathing as he spoke into the headset mike. "These guys are spooky enough as it is. They'll be watching us from the minute we touch down, and you can count on there being at least one guy on you the whole time you're in the airport, so be real careful about using the phones."

Ruebottom nodded in silent understanding as he adjusted his headset mike, keyed the radio, and made one last weather check with the tower.

Moments later the Lear jet was poised on the end of the runway, looking far more like a scrappy fighter jet than a hotdogging passenger aircraft.

"Great Falls Tower, Lear November Three-Three-Five-Charley-Papa," Ruebottom spoke into his mike as he checked each quadrant of the sky. "Requesting clearance for takeoff."

"Lear Three-Three-Five-Charley-Papa, stand by."