Wildfire (11 page)

Ember nodded in agreement. "He really seems proud of the fact that all the signs are finally up."

"Pride in ownership. And you have to admit, the sign idea was brilliant, even though having to do all the installations at night, with the heavier sound-deadening drills, has made the whole operation a lot more expensive than we figured, both in time and money."

"That's okay, it's going to be worth it," she said, her eyes suddenly gleaming again, childlike. "There's something else he told me."

"What's that?"

"The Crucible production is way ahead of schedule. He said they'll have two thousand units tested and ready to use by this Friday. Can you believe that?" she said in a raspy whisper. "Two thousand."

"Really?" Harris could see that she was starting to breathe more rapidly now, and it didn't take much imagination on his part to figure out what images she was seeing in her fevered mind.

The drop . . . and the wind . . . and the rapidly blossoming fire.

She started to run her hand down his chest.

"I don't want to wait," she whispered again.

"We have to."

"But we could do it ourselves," she said, "with the Cessna."

"What,
all
of them?" he chuckled.

"We rigged the drop racks to hold a hundred, so we could do the entire Yellowstone part in one trip, remember? A hundred at a time is only twenty trips."

"But a trip is a thousand miles, with rest and refueling in between," he reminded.

"It would take us awhile, but we could do it and still be able to pay Riser ... if they'll let you pick them up."

"They will," he said confidently. "That's all been arranged. But what about you? Do you have the strength?"

"I have all the strength I need if I
want
to do something. You, of all people, should know that."

'Yes, but—"

"I want to do it," she said insistently. "I
have
to do it. I can't wait much longer."

"Yes, I know," he said, feeling a combination of sadness and elation as her hands became more active, "but what about Eric?"

He was trying to concentrate on the problem, because he knew it was important, but he knew he was lost because he had already allowed his right hand to drift across to the warmth of her silky thigh.

"Uhmm, that feels nice. Do we need to involve him?"

"For access to the storage units, yes, we would have to." Then, after a moment: "Do you have any idea if he'll be in town this weekend?"

"He said something about going fishing with his father down in the Bahamas," she said indifferently as she snuggled herself in closer. He could feel the heat that was starting to radiate from her entire body now.

"Oh, really?" He was having to force himself to concentrate. "When?"

"I don't know," she murmured as she bit tentatively at his ear. "Sometime this weekend, Saturday, I think, or maybe it was Sunday. I can't . . ." Then she paused in her handiwork to blink in sudden realization. "Wait a minute, do you think . . ."

"It's possible," Harris said,

"How possible?" she demanded, her eyes widened.

"We know they've got to get together again sometime. Why not this weekend?"

"It's starting to happen, right now, isn't it," she whispered against his ear.

Her dark eyes seemed to be glowing in the darkened room. He groaned as her teeth sank deep into his earlobe.

"Yes, I think so."

"Then we
have
to do it now. We
can't
wait."

"I need to get hold of Eric then, immediately," he said, even though he knew it was hopeless now. Both of them were too far gone.

"Later," she whispered in his tingling ear. "Can you take me up again, now?"

"Another falling ember in my talons?" he said as he brought his hands up under her breasts. Her nipples felt like two hot coals in his palms.

"Yesss, take me up and drop me," she hissed. "Make me see them. Make me see the flames."

Chapter Six

Dr. Kimberly Wildman found the first one by accident.

A field group leader for the Department of Interior's National Biological Survey, Wildman had been assigned the job of documenting the entire ecology and biodiversity of the northwest quadrant of the State of Wyoming. Her assigned survey area included the Shoshone and Bridger-Teton National Forests, the Wind River Indian Reservation, and the crown jewel of the Park Service: Yellowstone National Park.

It was an absolutely monumental task that was expected to take a minimum of eight to ten years.

For a staff, Wildman had a deputy group leader; twelve site teams, each comprised of one biologist and one field technician; one secretary, three clerks, two computer programmers, and a statistician under her command. Based upon supervisory duties alone, she could have easily spent the vast majority of her work hours in her spacious and comfortable Yellowstone Park headquarters office, churning out reams of data from this crucial first-phase survey site to keep dozens of Washington office statisticians and bureaucrats happy for years to come.

But Dr. Kimberly Wildman had been aggressively fighting the sexist attitude that "women can't pee in the woods" for the better part of her professional career. So when one of her biologists called in sick at eight o'clock that Tuesday morning, she didn't even hesitate.

Reaching under her desk, she pulled out the field kit that she kept packed for exactly this sort of opportunity, notified the deputy team leader that she could be reached by radio, if absolutely necessary, and then walked outside where the stranded field technician and the truck were waiting.

They were checking live traps, and searching for trap WYNWLT-1332 that had been torn loose from its mooring, when Dr. Wildman's metal-tipped hiking stick struck metal.

It took the two of them almost five minutes to clear away the brush, and there it was: a green camouflaged metal plate, attached to the base of a huge Douglas fir with a pair of large steel bolts.

"What is it?" the field technician asked.

"I have no idea," Dr. Kimberly Wildman replied.

"Think it's one of ours?"

"No, I can't imagine that it would be." Wildman shook her head as she ran her gloved hand across the smooth camouflaged surface, searching in vain for some kind of identification markings. Then she examined the oddly notched bolt heads. "But I can tell you one thing, whoever mounted it here certainly didn't want some hiker taking it away as a souvenir."

"The Park Service?"

"I suppose." The survey group leader nodded. "At least I can't think of anyone else in this area who would go to this much effort to attach a blank metal plate to a tree."

Although Dr. Kimberly Wildman had no way of knowing it—because in spite of being sister agencies within the Department of Interior, communications between the National Park Service and the National Biological Survey were not
that
comprehensive or efficient—the metal looked very much like the etched metal signs that park rangers had been finding bolted to big redwood trees all over Sequoia National Park. But there were two significant differences:

Instead of being prominently displayed, like the ones in Sequoia, this metal plate was hidden. It was obvious that someone had gone to a lot of work to conceal it. And instead of bearing a deeply engraved message of questionable religious impact, this one—aside from its chemically etched green camouflage surface—was absolutely blank and smooth.

"Wait a minute," Dr. Kimberly Wildman said, looking skyward, "I think I see what's going on here."

"What's that?"

"There's an eagle nest in this tree."

"Really, where?"

"Step back over here and you can see it—a snag up at the top," the team leader said.

"Okay, got it," the field technician said. "So this must be some kind of Fish and Wildlife Service marker then."

"Looks like it."

"Too bad it doesn't have some kind of location identifier," he commented. "It would make a great reference point."

"Oh, I think it still can," Dr. Kimberly Wildman said as she reached into her pack and pulled out her portable computer. After calling up the appropriate program, she began to type:

METAL PLATE, BLANK, GREEN CAMOUFLAGE COATING,

She looked up at her assistant. "What do you have for dimensions?"

The field technician quickly moved in with a measuring tape. "Uh, make it eighteen by thirty by—uh—three-quarters."

Dr. Wildman went back to her typing:

METAL PLATE, BLANK, GREEN CAMOUFLAGE COATING, 18"x30"x3/4", ATTACHED TO DOUG FIR WITH TWO STEEL BOLTS WITH SECURITY CONFIGURED HEADS. IDENTIFIES BALD EAGLE NESTING TREE.

She looked down at the miniaturized global positioning satellite receiver hanging from her vest, typed the coordinates into the database, and then closed up the computer.

"Okay, we'll keep an eye on this tree. See if we can spot a nesting pair," she said. "Now let's get back to finding that cage."

Chapter Seven

Henry Lightstone's mind was clearly elsewhere, so Mike Takahara waited until the two of them were alone in their rented car and heading out of the Boston Police parking lot before he said, "So what's Rico going to do when he finds out you lied to him?" The tech agent referred to Detective Sergeant Rico Testano of the Boston Police Department, an old friend of Henry Lightstone's who had shown up just in time a few hours back in the warehouse Bravo Team was using for its storefront sting operation dealing illegal wholesale seafood here in Boston. Already, Bravo Team was on the verge of nailing Tony and Sal Boracatto and their wiseguy operation tracking in contraband seafood. On the verge, that is, if the Boracattos hadn't gotten word about the operation maybe being compromised.

"What, you mean those two guys in the alley?"

"Uh, yeah," the tech agent said hesitantly, realizing that he must have missed something.

"Built-in hazard of the job." Lightstone shrugged as he carefully maneuvered the rented automobile along the snow- and slush-covered road, all the while keeping his eye on the rear- and side-view mirrors. "In homicide, people lie to you all the time. Suspects, victims, witnesses, it doesn't matter. You get used to it after a while."

"Fellow cops too?"

Lightstone smiled briefly.

"It's not exactly that we lie to each other," he said, concentrating his attention now on the side mirror. "What happens is that every now and then we hold back something. Especially if the information seems a little vague or contradictory or if it might mess up something we're working on ourselves. Things are usually confused enough in a homicide investigation as it is. No point in adding more complications to somebody else's job if you don't have to."

"Which doesn't exactly answer my question."

"No, I guess it doesn't," Lightstone agreed. "The answer is that Rico knows I'm holding something back on those two, and he more or less trusts me to tell him if there turns out to be a clear link to his case. Knowing Rico, I think he'll probably be pissed when he finds out all the details, no matter what. But he's a big boy. He'll get over it."

The traffic lights in the intersection up ahead were still green, and Lightstone let his foot up off the accelerator a bit. He didn't necessarily want to beat the light on this one.

Mike Takahara remained quiet for a moment, working his way back through the conversations of the past couple of hours. Rico had shown up at the warehouse when the Boston police responded to a distress signal from one of their own. The cop who sent the "officer needs help" call, along with his partner, had attempted to play the muscle while a Boston building inspector shook down Henry Lightstone and his team for alleged license violations. Things had turned nasty after one of the cops broke Thomas Woeshack's arm in two places with a chop from a nightstick. This triggered Dwight Stoner and Henry Lightstone into action. The building inspector and the two rogue cops ended up on their asses in need of medical attention, but not before the one cop managed to send the beeper signal that called in the cavalry. If Henry Lightstone hadn't known Testano from a homicide investigator's convention years ago when Henry was a detective for the San Diego PD, Bravo Team's covert operation, code-named Operation Fish Net, would have been blown.

Then, after Rico Testano called off the Boston Police, he took Henry and Mike to the Westin Hotel on Huntington Avenue just off the Commons to eyeball firsthand a bizarre triple murder scene. A young couple, yuppie lawyers, had been killed in their room. Then the killer had cut through the closet wall of their room into the closet of the adjoining room where a young man in his twenties had been shot to death at close range. The only clues in the young man's room were the height of the man-sized hole in the closet, and a ripped-out connector cord from a computer modem. Then, to top it all off, Rico had mentioned the brutal bludgeoning deaths of two apparent muggers—one of whom looked like he had been slashed first by the multiple blades of a chain-saw chain—right nearby in an alley just off the Common.

Now, in sudden realization, Takahara said, "It was the kid, wasn't it? You held something back on him too."

Lightstone nodded slowly, and then smiled in satisfaction as the lights up ahead switched to yellow. "Rico was right, you've got a real sharp analytical mind. Probably make one hell of a homicide investigator, if all the shit that goes with it didn't drive you crazy first."

"My dad was an FBI agent," Mike Takahara said conversationally. "Retired a couple years back. When I was a kid and he'd come home late, he and I would stay up late working those brain-teaser puzzles he'd picked up on his trips. Used to drive my mom crazy." The tech agent smiled. "He'd tell me about some of the things he and his partners did at the scenes. Tried to get me interested in forensics and the crime scene work, but I never thought I'd be able to handle the bodies and blood and all that stuff. Thing is, I didn't even like cutting up those frogs in biology class. Too damned messy."

"As I recall, that sort of thing didn't seem to bother you much when we were going through your house counting bodies a few months back," Lightstone commented, letting his foot up off the gas a little more as he silently counted off the seconds.