Prey (40 page)

"Feels like the left pylon is going to tear loose any second now! Either got to go up or slow down!" Woeshack shouted over his shoulder.

"She's clear. Go up!" Lightstone yelled as he set the smoking carbine aside and reached for the headset in the back of the plane.

"Can you hear me?" Woeshack asked as he readjusted the wing flaps and started the Cessna up into a steady, roaring climb.

"Christ, I think I'm deaf," Lightstone muttered, the headphones making him aware for the first time of the high-pitched ringing in his unprotected ears.

Marie Pascalaura waved her hand and continued to accelerate the small patrol boat toward the distant western shore.

"You sure that was Paul you saw on the ground back there?" Lightstone called loudly into his mike.

"Yeah, pretty sure," Woeshack acknowledged. "He had on that red-and-yellow vest that his wife made for him. Real easy to spot."

Lightstone didn't say anything for a long moment.

"You get to know Paul very well?" he finally asked.

"Well enough," Woeshack said, his voice taking on a bitter tone. "He got me through flight school when everyone else was trying to have me grounded."

"Then what do you say we go back around, then come in low over that goddamned boulder?" Lightstone said in a cold, deadly voice as he wrenched another loaded magazine out of the nylon harness and reached for the carbine.

Woeshack looked back at Lightstone for a moment. Then he smiled. "How low do you want it?" he asked, banking the vibrating aircraft around to the right.

"Low enough that if I miss, you get to take them out with the prop," Lightstone replied as he loaded the automatic carbine and set the selector back to automatic. He waited with cold, murderous patience for Woeshack to bring the aircraft to an altitude of about twelve hundred feet.

"You ready?" Woeshack asked.

"Absolutely." Lightstone set another loaded magazine between his legs.

"I'm going to go up high and then drop us in fast. I don't think they're going to be expecting something like that."

"Good."

"Okay," Woeshack nodded. "Here we go."

True to his word, Woeshack put the Cessna in a steep dive that caused the no-longer-streamlined airframe to shake and rattle and vibrate all the way down, leveling out just in time to clear the trees as Lightstone held the trigger down and sent all thirty 5.56mm rounds streaking into and around the boulder area.

Chunks of trees and dirt and rocks went flying in all directions as one of the camouflaged-dressed men spun away and then tumbled down the cliff, while the other scrambled for the safety of a narrow ditch.

"Nice job, Woeshack," Lightstone whispered into his mike, not caring that his hands were shaking as he released the empty magazine and let it drop to the floor. "One down and one running."

"I think he's running for that plane that landed over by Paul's," Woeshack said. "You want to cut him off?"

"Damn right I do," Lightstone said evenly as he reloaded the carbine, ignoring the dozens of empty casings that were rolling around on the floor of the aircraft. "Take her around again, and we'll see if we can get an ID on that plane while we're at it."

"Okay, but don't forget we've got gas tanks in our wings," Woeshack reminded.

"Why, did we take any hits there?" Lightstone asked, never having thought—much less cared—about where the gasoline was stored in a Cessna Sky wagon.

"I think we caught a bunch more in the floats, and at least one in the left wing flap that I can see," Woeshack said as he banked the plane in a long, looping turn. "Doesn't look like we're leaking any gas. Long as they don't hit one of the control cables or us, we're probably okay," the Native Alaskan special agent-pilot shrugged.

"Wonderful," Lightstone muttered.

"Hey, there's another one!" Woeshack suddenly yelled into his mike as he banked the plane to the right.

"Where?"

"Off to the right side."

Lightstone quickly shifted over to the right rear seat, suddenly aware of an all-too-familiar queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Can't see him."

"There were two of them. Both in the same cammo gear. Come back up front, you'll have a better view," Woeshack advised.

Lightstone forced himself to ignore his growing nausea and climbed back over into the front seat as Woeshack brought the small floatplane around in a tight circle.

"See, over there." Woeshack pointed over to the right. "Two of them. Looks like they're going for the plane, too."

For a brief moment, Henry Lightstone saw a flash of white hair, and what looked like a gun. He was starting to bring the automatic carbine up for a shot through the shattered right passenger window when the right front cowling of the plane was suddenly hit with three successive
thunks.
Black smoke started to pour out of the engine on Lightstone's side, effectively blinding his shot and causing him to choke and cough as a thick fog began to fill the cockpit.

"We're hit!" Lightstone yelled into his mike.

"Yeah, no kidding," Woeshack grunted as he reached down between the seats for the fuel shutoff valve and then used the stick to nose the plane down into a moderately steep dive.

"What are you doing?"

"Gotta maintain air speed or we'll stall out."

"Yeah, but we're going to crash."

"That's right," Woeshack nodded. "Listen, there's a couple of sleeping bags in the back with the survival gear. Can you get them?"

"Sleeping bags?"

"Yeah, I think we're gonna need them real bad in about thirty seconds or so. Better hurry."

As Lightstone scrambled back over the front passenger seat again, this time fighting the force of gravity, Woeshack quickly switched over to the 121.5 standard emergency frequency, keyed his outside radio transmitter, and then spoke calmly into his mike. "Mayday, Mayday. Kenai tower, this is November Six-One-Four-Seven-Seven. We've lost our engine and we're going down, eastern shore of Skilak Lake. Do you copy?"

"November Four-Seven-Seven, we copy that you have lost engine power, going down, eastern shore of Skilak Lake." The Kenai tower controller came on the air immediately as Lightstone scrambled back into his seat clutching both sleeping bags. "Help is on the way."

"Kenai tower, advise Foxtrot Bravo India that we need immediate assistance. Suspects escaping in a
—Oh, shit!"

The Cessna shuddered and seemed to start to fall backwards in the air, which forced Woeshack to quickly concentrate on his flying and increase the angle of the dive. From Henry Lightstone's horrified point of view, the ground seemed to be coming up at them at an incredibly fast speed. Then it suddenly occurred to him.

"Hey, you're aiming for land. What about the lake?"

"I can't swim," Thomas Woeshack said. "Besides, it feels like that left float is starting to go. We hit the water like that, we're gonna break up and then probably freeze to death before anybody can get to us."

"But—"

"You got that safety belt on tight?"

Lightstone quickly fastened his belt and shoulder harness, trying not to look at the mass of trees coming up at them fast now.

"Yeah, it's as tight as I can get it."

"Okay, put your hands in through the sides of the bag and hold it up in front of your face," Woeshack said as he grabbed the other sleeping bag and put in in his lap.

Then he waited until the last moment before pulling the stick back and dropping the wing flaps to send the orange Cessna plummeting floats-first into a dense clump of spruce trees, looking for all the world like a huge orange eagle flaring its wings as it swooped in to grasp its prey with its talons.

The initial impact of the crash was absorbed by the two floats as they buckled and then crumpled up into the cross pylons. But all Henry Lightstone knew at the time was that the front windshield was suddenly filled with tree branches, and the safety belt tore into his body, and his head was slammed forward toward the instrument panel, with the sleeping bag absorbing most, but not all, of the impact.

Barely conscious, Lightstone was vaguely aware of the plane starting to shift in its precariously wedged position in a clump of broken spruce trees about ten feet off the ground.

He was trying to reach for the seat-belt release when he felt a hand pulling on his arm and a sharp knife blade sawing through his safety harness. Then somebody pushed him out the door and he tumbled to the ground through what seemed like a thousand broken spruce branches that smelled like a curious mixture of fresh pitch and gasoline.

Then he and Woeshack ran as fast as they could until the concussive force of the plane exploding knocked both of them off their feet and into the darkness.

Even after he regained consciousness, it took Henry Lightstone several seconds to recover to the point that he could turn his head and throw up.

Then, after what seemed like an eternity of gasping and coughing, he finally found the strength to crawl over to where Thomas Woeshack was lying on his back, using his cut and bruised forearms to block the sun from his bloodied face.

"You alive?"

"Must be," Woeshack mumbled after a moment. "My whole body hurts."

"Good sign." Lightstone nodded weakly as he slowly rolled over on his back and lay next to the sprawled-out pilot.

"Well, you finally did it, kid," he said quietly after a few moments.

"Did what?"

"You finally figured out how to fly just like one of those goddamned birds."

"Yeah, you really think so?" Woeshack smiled through his split and bloody lips.

"Absolutely. No question about it."

It was only then, as the two special agents lay there in the rock and spruce and lichen-covered clearing, bruised, bleeding, and covered with black soot, that they first heard and then saw the large blue floatplane that appeared overhead at an elevation of about a thousand feet.

"You read the number?" Lightstone asked.

Woeshack tried to focus his blurry eyes on the moving blue object and then slowly shook his head. "No."

"Me neither."

"Maybe they'll try to land."

"Yeah," Lightstone smiled. "That'd be nice."

The plane made three complete circles over the crash site. Then, apparently satisfied that his team had caused sufficient damage to their unexpected adversaries, a tired, blood-smeared and mildly irritated Gerd Maas directed the pilot to rock the wings of the plane in a mock salute before turning away.

For a long time, neither agent spoke, until finally Woeshack said: "They just gave us the finger, didn't they?"

Henry Lightstone continued to watch the large blue floatplane until it finally disappeared off in the distance. Then he nodded his head slowly. "Yeah, I'd say so."

Woeshack thought about that for a few more seconds. "So what do we do now?" he asked.

Then Henry Lightstone turned his head to stare straight into the dark, questioning eyes of his thoroughly bruised, battered, and bleeding partner, and said:

"Find us another airplane."

Chapter Thirty-Five

"Understand you're still the senior law-enforcement officer here representing your agency."

There were at least eight of them on the scene, and they'd been working diligently for three hours now: chalking the locations of the bodies, taking measurements, making sketches, filling paper bags with pieces of neatly tagged evidence, photographing everything at right angles at least twice, and videotaping the whole thing. They worked with such methodical thoroughness that Lightstone found it easy to accept that the "new" FBI was really something else.

The only trouble was, they still hadn't put it all together yet. And based upon what Henry Lightstone was seeing with his own CSI-trained eyes, he wasn't sure that they were going to. At least not right away.

Which was beginning to worry him, because if there was ever a time when he wanted a crime-scene team to come in, pick up the clues, and get back to their desks with plenty of time to complete all the paperwork, it was right now.

"Apparently," Lightstone answered in a carefully neutral voice. "I don't think we've met." He felt like his body was a mass of cracked bones and torn muscles.

"A1 Grynard, assistant special agent in charge of the Anchorage office," the gray-haired man said politely, offering his hand. He was dressed in a neatly pressed sport shirt, new blue jeans, and gray Gor-Tex hiking boots that looked like they'd just come out of the box.

"Henry Lightstone. Senior resident agent, on special-duty assignment to our Anchorage office," Lightstone responded equally politely, making a mental note that the ASAC's light gray eyes seemed just a little too intense and skeptical to have any serious connection with that infamous FBI smile. "And this is one of our agent-pilots, Tom Woeshack."

"You must be the fellow who made that fancy emergency landing back there," Grynard said as he turned to shake Woeshack's hand. "What is it you pilots say? Any landing you can walk away from must be a good one?"