Wildfire (14 page)

"Lenny's only halfway through his initial training assignment, but we could give it a try." Halahan nodded. "But we're still talking about a hell of a long time period to work ourselves in, especially in that area. Anything else?"

"We've heard talk about some movement in the elephant ivory trade," Lightstone said, following Larry Paxton's lead and forcing himself to calm down. "People are getting anxious to deal out all those buried tusks they've been holding on to while there's still a market. But I don't know how we'd work our way in on that one either. Probably take some international connections that we don't have right now."

Halahan nodded once more. "Well—"

"Then again," Mike Takahara interrupted as he turned away from his computer again to face his fellow agents, "we could always do what we were talking about last week. Focus in on a couple of those live animal smugglers working out of the Bahamas, see what we can turn up."

Paxton, Lightstone, and Stoner all blinked, but none of them responded. The tech agent turned back to face Halahan.

"This one might actually be doable right now," he said. "We know a few of the major players by name, we know some of the dealers they work with, and we've got a dependable contact who claims he could get us in. Better yet, we've even got a ready-made cover for the whole team."

"What's that?" Halahan asked.

"Charter fishing crew. Remember Henry's ex-homicide partner from San Diego, Bobby LaGrange?" Takahara asked, gesturing with his head back at Lightstone. "The guy who got put in the hospital by Kleinfelter and his biker buddies?"

Halahan nodded silently.

"Well, what we heard is that LaGrange managed to wrangle some kind of sports fishing boat out of his lawsuit with Kleinfelter. He retired out on a medical, moved the whole family out to Fort Lauderdale, and he's setting the boat up for charters right now. All we'd have to do is hire on as his crew, learn the ropes, start to meet people, and eventually start our own 'illegal' operation on the side, once we managed to weasel a boat out of the Coast Guard."

"The Coast Guard's going to give us one of their boats to use in a sting operation?" Lightstone asked, finding it difficult to follow the conversation, mostly because he didn't have the slightest idea what Mike Takahara was talking about.

"Drug seizures." The tech agent shrugged. "The Coast Guard's got boats down there rusting away by the hundreds. Can't get rid of them. We put our minds to it, we ought to be able to work out a deal that would sound believable to the locals."

Halahan looked around at the rest of the agent team. "What do the rest of you guys think?"

"With the contacts we've already got, it probably wouldn't take us long to set the operation up," Paxton conceded. "Henry would have to contact LaGrange, see if he'd be willing to take us on."

"Bobby'll go for it, no problem." Lightstone shrugged.

"Given a choice, Miami in the winter ought to be a whole lot nicer than Boston, especially if you're still planning on keeping an eye on us," Stoner added with a meaningful scowl.

"Okay, I'm convinced," Halahan said as he stood up. "You guys get some sleep, then put a few details together on paper, get it to me, and I'll run it through the Washington office for approvals. And while I'm doing that, you guys get this operation cleaned up, and then get down to those hearings before anything else around here goes wrong."

Deputy Special Operations Chief Freddy Moore waited until Paxton and Lightstone had dropped them off at their hotel and he and his new boss were alone in their room, before asking the obvious question.

"Okay, I give up," Moore said as he tossed his suitcase down on one of the double beds and then sat down heavily in one of the minimally stuffed chairs. "What the hell was that all about?"

"Which part?" David Halahan asked with a tired smile as he set his own suitcase down on the floor and then took the other chair.

"The whole deal. I don't think I've ever seen or heard that much bullshit being shoveled back and forth in one room since I got my first assignment to the Washington office."

"It's an interesting situation." Halahan nodded. "First of all, in case I didn't mention it, those are good agents. Smart, aggressive, self-motivated, and hardworking. All things considered, we probably couldn't ask for a better covert team."

"Oh, really? You'd never know it, the way you were ripping every one of them a new asshole back there," the special ops deputy chief pointed out.

"There was a purpose to that little exercise," Halahan said. "They got shook up pretty bad on that alarm fiasco. I wanted to get them mad and get them thinking, see how they'd react. Make sure they hadn't lost their confidence in themselves and each other."

"You did a good job on that part," Moore said. "For a minute there I thought the big guy, Stoner, was going to come up out of that chair and go after you."

"That was my mistake," Halahan admitted. "Paxton and Lightstone are easy. They rise to the bait like a couple of starved bass, which is probably a good thing, because they get all that emotion out of their systems fast. I was focusing in on Takahara, trying to break down that goddamned armor-plated computer chip he's got for a brain, and I forgot about Stoner."

"He doesn't strike me as somebody you'd want to overlook very often."

"He's not." Halahan nodded. "Stoner's got a high tolerance level for bullshit, and he'll let a lot of stuff go by before he blows. But he's also about as protective as a mother grizzly, especially where those three agents are concerned. You'll want to remember that."

"What's the story on him?" Moore asked. "I thought he was supposed to be slated for a medical retirement."

"He was, and probably still should be," Halahan said. "He's a damn good agent, but he came into the program with bad knees. Tore them up pretty bad playing pro ball. He managed to pass our physical, but running that mile and a half every year for qualification has been a rough deal. And that was before that asshole Maas put a couple of .22 rounds in his kneecaps out at that Whitehorse raid."

"Yeah, I heard about that. Didn't he have to go through some kind of replacement surgery?"

Halahan nodded. "Complete knee joint replacement, titanium implants, both knees. The operations were successful, and he went through rehab fine. But he's so damn big, the medical review board examiners were afraid he'd tear the implants loose if he did anything overly active."

"So what was the deal on his physical? I heard something about Lightstone creating some kind of flack, and that the association was all ready to get involved."

"It was a goddamned mess," Halahan said. "The review board advised Stoner to take a medical retirement, but he refused, which meant they had to disqualify him on a physical. Lightstone and Paxton got shot up on that Whitehorse raid too, so the board decided to make the whole team go through a requalification physical. Probably figured it'd look more even- handed that way."

"Yeah, right." Moore snorted.

"Anyway," Halahan went on, "I guess they poked and prodded him like a goddamned experimental monkey, most of the time right there in front of his partners, which pissed them off right from the start. Made him run the mile and a half on the treadmill twice, even though he qualified the first time and had to ice-pack his knees to get the swelling down before he could continue the exam. They were going to make him run it a third time, but Paxton and Lightstone got right in their faces and threatened to file a grievance with the association. In the meantime, while those two were busy throwing a shit-fit, the new guy, Woeshack, got on the phone to some high-ranking Eskimo relative of his who works in Interior and started claiming that he was being discriminated against as a Native American because he hadn't gotten to run the test twice like the big white guys did. Between trying to deal with Paxton and Lightstone and Woeshack, the doctors forgot about Takahara, which gave him plenty of time to play with—and then accidentally erase—the software program in the treadmill. And somewhere in the middle of all that, Lightstone started making comments about breaking somebody else's kneecaps for forensic comparison purposes if they didn't hurry up and get the exam over with pretty damn quick."

"Otherwise known as the tag-team buddy system." Moore smiled appreciatively.

"Like I said, they watch out for each other." Halahan nodded. "Anyway, the doctors apparently decided to stick with the treadmill data they had and go on to the strength tests. Which turned out to be a mistake on their part, because Stoner maxed out every machine they had, including the leg lifts and deep-knee bends. He even managed to pass the agility drills with a halfway decent score, but you know how those medical review board guys are."

"CYA, all the way," Moore commented sarcastically.

"That's about it. They went into conference, took one more look at the data, and apparently came to the conclusion that they'd be held responsible if anything went wrong with those implants, no matter what. So they called the team in and announced that the board, in their best medical judgment, was recommending a full medical retirement for Stoner. That's when Lightstone stepped in."

"You mean he actually threatened the medical review board?" the special ops deputy chief asked, clearly impressed.

"No, not exactly." Halahan half smiled. "What he did was get them aside and had a little heart-to-heart talk. Explained to the good doctors that in spite of what some idiots in the Washington office might think, it really wasn't necessary for an agent like Dwight Stoner to be able to run a mile and a half through some swamp to chase down some rabbiting suspect. The main reason being that Stoner happened to have four agent partners who were perfectly capable of chasing that suspect through a swamp for ten miles, if it came to that, and if he made it that far, right into their buddy's waiting arms. Whereupon the chase team would sit down and have a beer while their supposedly crippled partner took care of any further resistance that the suspect might be capable of offering."

"Not a bad idea, but probably a little impractical on a routine basis," Moore said thoughtfully.

"The doctors mentioned that," Halahan nodded. "That was when Henry suggested that if the medical review board had any further doubts on how that sort of thing might work out, he and the rest of Bravo Team would be happy to put on a demonstration, right then and there. There was even a forest nearby that would serve just as well as a swamp. Far as Henry was concerned, the medical examiners could bring all the instruments and probes and measuring gadgets with them that they wanted. They could also have a paint-gun and a two-mile head start."

"An interesting variation of 'capture the flag,'" Moore said noncommittally. And then, "I take it our good doctors had enough common sense between them to take a pass on the demonstration?"

"Apparently the idea of being hunted down through ten miles of Virginia forest by four pissed-off federal agents with a hard-on for the medical profession didn't exactly appeal to their sporting instincts." Halahan nodded. "Although I understand one of the younger doctors—supposedly some kind of weekend jogger, cardiovascular workout freak—did offer to take Henry up on the deal before his associates talked him out of it. Personally, I don't think he would have gotten anywhere near Stoner, even with a two-mile lead."

"If nothing else, Takahara would have probably cheated, taken him out with some kind of electronic dead-fall," Moore commented. "Actually, I'm kind of surprised the board didn't file charges on Lightstone. Threatening a federal government official, causing them to pee in their pants, screw up their golf game, something like that."

"Oh, they did."

"Really?" Freddy Moore blinked in surprise. "What did they use for evidence? Presumably it would have been their word against his?"

"No, not exactly. Turns out there was a tape of the entire conversation."

"Those bastards wore a wire to a meeting like that?"

"No." Halahan smiled. "Henry did. He sent them a copy of the tape the day after they filed, along with a set of 35mm contacts."

"Photographs?"

"Yep. It seemed that two of our ass-covering medical advisers have— or perhaps
had
is the better word—a personal preference for certain mildly addictive recreational drugs. Unfortunately for their peace of mind, not to mention their careers, they chose to do their smoking at a party in the back of a private residence where the owner had neglected to install a high fence."

"I take it that the surrounding area was public access?"

"The property butted up against a county park. Lots of trees and bushes. Nice place to hike if you happen to enjoy taking nature photos with night-vision gear."

"Ah." Moore was silent for a moment before he finally said, "Just as a theoretical question, how would you go about describing that sort of thing in terms of a personnel evaluation?"

"I don't know. Adaptive, innovative, resourceful." Halahan shrugged. "Strong sense of team loyalty. Highly developed survival skills. Unwilling to accept defeat as a viable option. Questionable use of government equipment. Pain in the ass to supervise. Something like that."

"Sounds like a description that might fit the entire team."

"That's what I'm counting on," Halahan said. "From what I've seen so far, there's every indication that Bravo Team tripped across something pretty damn serious. And whoever's involved is apparently going after them."

"The tag on Lightstone?"

"Among other things."

"You think it might be more of that Operation Counter Wrench crap?"

"I don't know," Halahan admitted. "If Abercombie and Wolfe were fronting for somebody else, they were pretty careful about keeping it hidden. We haven't found a damned thing in any of their files so far."

"What about the money angle? That was one hell of an operation for Abercombie to be funding out of her cookie jar."

"They had big-time money backers, no doubt about it." Halahan nodded. "We just haven't figured out who or where yet."

"I don't know. Considering what Abercombie and Wolfe were trying to accomplish against the environmental groups, they could have had some pretty big players out there as backers. People who don't like to lose either, and who might not mind hiring a couple more people like Maas to make sure they don't," Moore reminded.