Prey (30 page)

"Henry Allen Lightner completely disassociates himself from the Chareauxs and their attorneys and then offers to plead guilty to knowingly taking part in an illegal hunt, because there isn't any evidence to tie him into any other part of the case," Jameson Wheeler said offhandedly. "The U.S. Attorney and I agree to probation, with no requirement to assist the prosecution, and Henry Lightner simply disappears. Another satisfied customer of our criminal justice system."

"You think it'll work?"

"I don't see why—"

At that moment, Paul McNulty shoved the door open and entered the room, the furious expression on his face causing even Stoner to back away.

"They want to talk with you," McNulty growled at Wheeler.

"Me?"

"Yeah, you," McNulty nodded. "Right now."

McNulty waited until the puzzled Deputy U.S. Attorney had left the room, then looked over at his team.

"They want to drop the case," he said.

"What?"
five agents yelled in unison, causing Paxton to wince in pain and Lightstone to grab at his head as McNulty held up his hand for silence.

"Who's 'they'?" Carl Scoby demanded.

"The Department of Interior, for one."

"Any particular reason?"

"Pretty much the classic reasons," McNulty shrugged. "Failure to follow proper procedures. Concern that Special Ops is running amok. Perception that severely limited resources have been devoted to a relatively minor case. Clear need for better oversight. It goes on, but I think you get the drift."

"You mean that somebody in the Department of Interior actually cares about the Chareaux brothers?" Lightstone asked.

"Apparently," McNulty nodded.

"Who do those bastards
know?"
Larry Paxton muttered.

"What about those three characters you guys took out on the hunt?" Mike Takahara suggested. "Any way they might be a reason?"

"I can't see how or why," Henry Lightstone shrugged. "They aren't even charged with anything. Why the hell would
they
care?"

"I don't know," Takahara admitted, "but
somebody
cares."

"That's right," McNulty added, tight-jawed. "Somebody cares a lot. The Department now thinks that two Special Ops teams may be one too many. So it's going to dismantle one team. Guess which one."

"Bravo team," Carl Scoby whispered.

"Can they do that?" Henry Lightstone asked.

"Oh, yeah, they sure as hell can," McNulty nodded. "It's called 'priority management.'"

"Can we fight it?" Lightstone asked.

"Sure we can," McNulty told him. "We can pull all of our stats together, document our cases, write it all up in one big, summary report. And then demand a hearing."

"So when do we start?" Lightstone demanded.

"Right after we get reassigned to the New York office," McNulty replied evenly.

"Oh, God, no," Carl Scoby and Larry Paxton whispered in unison.

"Either that," McNulty shrugged, "or we can go along with the program
..."

"Yeah?" Lightstone said suspiciously.

". . . and receive immediate and permanent transfers to the duty stations of our choice."

"What?"

"For example," McNulty went on, ignoring Lightstone's exclamation, "they've offered me the Region Seven SAC job in Anchorage, where Martha and I had hoped to retire in a couple of years. Carl would get the training coordinator's position that just opened up at Marana. Larry drops into a newly created agent-pilot slot in Miami. Dwight would get—"

"Goddamnit, we're being split up and bought off!" Lightstone exploded just as Jameson Wheeler came back into the room, closed the door, and looked at McNulty with a grim expression.

"What'd they offer you?" McNulty asked.

"Chief of the Lands and Natural Resources Division if I decide to be cooperative," the Deputy U.S. Attorney replied evenly.

"And if you don't?"

"Newark office, working toxic-waste dump sites."

Larry Paxton muttered something unintelligible.

"See, the thing is, Henry," Carl Scoby said in a voice tightened with barely controlled rage, "what we're being offered is the carrot or the stick. New York and Newark are the sticks. And they are big mothers, let me tell you."

"So fuck 'em," Lightstone said. "How bad can New York be?"

"Henry," Deputy U.S. Attorney Jameson Wheeler said softly, "before you fellows take a vote on this, which I have no doubt you will, why don't you let me tell you a few things about the New York office?"

Chapter Twenty-Six

Friday June 7th

The crew of the Bell Ranger dropped Dr. Reston Wolfe off at the Whitehorse Cabin heliport and prepared to wait on stand-by. The executive director of ICER hunched way down for several awkward steps until he was clear of the sweeping rotor blades and well beyond the more distant yellow-painted warning stripes. He then hurried on past the stone-faced ground controller with a briefcase clutched tightly in his small, bureaucratic fist.

Three minutes later, Wolfe walked through the private entrance to Lisa Abercombie's underground office, closed the door, and set his briefcase down on her desk. Abercombie ignored him as she continued to read through a stack of faxed press clippings.

Undaunted, Wolfe opened the briefcase, removed a handful of thick file folders, and tossed them onto the desk top.

"It's a done deal," he said proudly.

"Meaning?" Lisa Abercombie asked as she finally looked up.

"Bravo Team no longer exists," Wolfe said. "At five o'clock Eastern Standard Time, which was—" he glanced down at his watch "—exactly one hour and twelve minutes ago, the team was officially disbanded and all assigned special agents were officially transferred to new duty stations of their choice."

"You're certain of that?"

"It's all right there in the files." Wolfe gestured to the stack of personnel folders. "Six voluntary requests for transfer with accompanying approvals and personnel actions, all signed, sealed, and delivered."

"Wonderful," Abercombie nodded.

"And, coincidentally," Wolfe went on, "you might be happy to learn that the case against the Chareaux brothers has been dropped."

"Oh, really? On what basis?"

"Failure to follow official policies and procedures. Covert operations require law-enforcement agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service to obtain prior written approval before conducting undercover investigations against individuals with sensitive backgrounds."

"You identified the Chareaux brothers as having
sensitive
backgrounds? Are you out of your goddamned mind?" Lisa Abercombie demanded, her eyes suddenly widening with fear.

"What Paul McNulty and his covert team simply didn't realize when they began their little probe," Wolfe went on confidently, "was that the Chareaux brothers have been working as confidential informants for an extremely sensitive government operation, the details of which cannot be revealed at this time without putting other agents and informants at risk."

"You have that documented?" Abercombie asked uneasily.

Wolfe nodded.

"So what did you threaten them with?" Abercombie asked.

"Immediate transfers to New York, with occasional forays into Newark."

"You really think that's going to be enough of a threat to keep them quiet?"

"As I understand it," Wolfe smiled, "a typical New York import-export case can take several years to resolve, rummaging through filthy warehouses, sifting through hundreds of thousands of records. And, of course, it's virtually impossible to find a decent place to live anywhere near the office on a special agent's salary."

Lisa Abercombie was quiet for a long moment.

"Nice," she finally said. "In fact, very nice." She nodded in grudging approval.

"I thought you'd like it," Wolfe smiled, clearly pleased with his clever bureaucratic maneuvers.

"But we have another problem that you may not know about yet," Abercombie said. "Have you seen the papers?"

"Not today. Why?"

"Read these," she said as she tossed the faxed news clippings across the desk.

Wolfe scanned the clippings, then went back and read the first two articles more thoroughly.

"They did it," he whispered.

"They certainly did," Lisa Abercombie concurred. "And what's more, they did it perfectly. I don't think we could have asked the team for a better demonstration."

"How did you manage to set it up?" Wolfe asked.

"That's the beauty of it," Abercombie smiled, her dark eyes flashing with unconcealed amusement. "The stupid bastards set it up themselves. Five known militant activists from three of the top environmental groups deciding to get together for an informal meeting at a remote location on Long Island. It was perfect."

"Any idea why they called the meeting?"

"Probably to discuss strategies, or maybe just to exchange tofu recipes," Abercombie shrugged. "It doesn't matter now, though. One of them was well known for making violent threats against specific industrial targets. Apparently he liked to spout off to the press about how the environmentalists ought to declare war on the industrial world. I mean, what more could we ask for?"

"That quote I read." Wolfe flipped through to the second clipping. "Ah, yes, here it is: 'He was always talking about using bombs as a last resort, but we never took him seriously because nobody ever thought he'd really be stupid enough to do it.'" Wolfe shook his head in admiration. "God, that's beautiful!"

"We were able to get some preliminary reports from the Justice Department," Abercombie smiled. "Apparently they found enough evidence in the basement—including some buried explosives and a couple of crude timing devices—to tentatively conclude that the victims were probably examining a completed bomb when something set it off."

"What if they try to track all of that stuff back to a source?" Wolfe asked.

Abercombie smiled. "It seems that our tough-talking victim really did have a thing for explosives. What little he did have—just a few sticks of dynamite and the timers—was carefully stored away at a warehouse in Connecticut. So all Maas and Asai had to do was relocate his pathetic little armory to the basement of the Long Island meeting site and then see to it that the Radio Shack receipts and the sketches in his handwriting would survive the blast."

"Sounds perfect," Wolfe murmured.

"That's what I thought," Lisa Abercombie said with a curious edge to her voice. "Until I discovered the problem." She opened her desk drawer and removed another set of clippings, which she tossed over to Wolfe.

"A Bozeman newspaper?" he asked with a quizzical expression as he glanced at the first header.

"Would you believe that one of the victims who was killed in the explosion just happened to live in Bozeman, Montana?" Abercombie asked as the executive director of ICER started to scan through the small type.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Wolfe winced. "Didn't anybody
know
that?"

"No." Abercombie shook her head. "Other than our mad bomber, who was also the primary coordinator for the meeting, we had no idea of who the other representatives might be. It was simply an unexpected opportunity, and we took advantage of it."

Wolfe sat for a moment in contemplative silence.

"These are just local papers," he said finally. "They run an article one day and by the next day, it's forgotten."

"Yes, that probably would have been the case
if
the local NBC affiliate hadn't stopped by the victim's home to interview his parents," Abercombie nodded. "Do you know what those people gave him?"

"No, what?" Wolfe asked uneasily.

"A homemade video tape showing what a wonderful person their son was because he had always spent his summers working as an outdoor naturalist at—you'll never guess—Yellowstone National Park. Naturally, Brokaw picked it up immediately for his Nightly News show."

"Christ Almighty!" Wolfe whispered.

"Do you know what that
means?"
Lisa Abercombie asked in a quiet, chilling voice. "It's a link. Something that we can't afford right now."

"But I don't see how
anyone
could make the connection between a Bozeman naturalist who died in an accident on Long Island and three illegal hunting guides at Yellowstone, one of whom happened to be arrested in Bozeman," Wolfe said. "The two incidents seem completely unrelated."

"The only problem is that they are
not
separate and they are
not
unrelated," Abercombie reminded. "Dr. Morito Asai was involved in both. So were you and I, to a lesser degree. And keep in mind," she added, "that if we start talking investigations, we're talking the FBI."

"But no one can link us to Asai or Bozeman—" Wolfe started to protest.

"Except for Alex and Butch Chareaux, and the covert agents who were investigating them," Abercombie responded quietly.

"How could the FBI possibly make that connection?"