Wildfire (39 page)

"Which also explains why we weren't catching anything else all afternoon," Stoner said. "With a creature like that following along behind, there probably wasn't another fish within a half mile of this boat."

"Anybody want to buy a kid?" Bobby LaGrange asked hopefully.

"Better watch yourself, buddy," Henry Lightstone warned, standing up as he reached out and messed up Justin LaGrange's hair. "The way these guys are going, they're probably going to end up turning you into a wildlife agent. Although, come to think about it," he added thoughtfully, "we can always use another devious mind on this team."

"If I haven't taught him better than that by now, he can suffer the consequences just as I did," LaGrange laughed. "Hey, where are you going?"

"Didn't sleep too good last night," Lightstone said. "Figured I'd check out the owner's cabin, catch a couple of winks before dinner."

Larry Paxton's eyes opened wide and his head snapped up. "Hey, now, I'll thank you to keep your raggedy-ass butt outta mah cabin and off mah clean silk sheets. You hear?"

Lightstone laughed and then winked at Paxton before disappearing through the sliding glass door into the salon.

"Looks to me like Henry's feeling a whole lot better," Dwight Stoner mumbled from behind his third tuna fish sandwich.

"Too damn good if you ask me," Larry Paxton grumbled. But it was obvious that he too was relieved to see the positive change in his moody and unpredictable wild-card agent.

"So what do you think that earlier business was all about?" Mike Takahara asked.

"If you're asking me," Bobby LaGrange responded, "I think he sensed there was something out there he didn't like, something threatening, but he didn't know what it was."

"Say what?" Larry Paxton blinked.

"One of your basic instincts: fear of the unknown." LaGrange shrugged. "And Henry's a classic case. As long as I've known him, I don't think I've ever seen him act like he was afraid of anything he could see or touch. But"—LaGrange held up his hand for emphasis—"you let something hide out there in the darkness, where he can sense it but not see it, and he goes nuts."

"So that's why you rigged that game with the masks and fins," Mike Takahara said. The tech agent referred to LaGrange's offering to go into the water with Lightstone before the great hammerhead struck Dwight Stoner's line—and Henry, without explanation but with a look in his eye, refusing.

"Yeah, I wanted to see if he still had that old sixth sense, or whatever the hell it is." Bobby LaGrange nodded.

"That's right," Mike Takahara said, "before we got distracted by that shark, you were starting to tell us that you'd seen him act this way before."

"Oh, yeah, I sure did," Bobby LaGrange admitted. "It happened back when we were going to high school together, sophomore year, down in San Diego." The ex-homicide investigator went on to describe how he and his childhood buddy, Henry Lightstone, had gone out body-surfing off La Jolla, as they'd done a hundred times before, and how this time they'd stayed out past the breakers much too late, wanting to hit that last big wave.

"It was really something. One of those absolutely beautiful sunsets you'd see down there on the coast every now and then," LaGrange said. "The clouds would turn a real bright reddish-orange and then gradually go dim, shifting into the purples and grays. Absolutely breathtaking. Well, anyway, Henry and I were out there floating in the water—which by then had turned kind of a glassy dark green, not that it really mattered, because unlike this place, the water was always so cold and murky that you could never see much past the end of your arm anyway out there—and you could feel the smaller swells going past. You know, kinda lifting you up and then dropping you back down. Decent swells, but not the one we wanted. Not the really big one that keeps building up momentum as it heads in toward shore, until the water being drawn back underneath drives the entire swell upward, and then all of a sudden you feel this absolutely bitchin' wave forming all around you that, with a couple of kicks, you could get right out front of—your head and chest completely out of the water—and ride that baby all the way into shore."

Bobby LaGrange sat there in his deck chair, looking as if he'd gotten lost somewhere in the vivid emotions of his memories.

"So that's where the term 'bitchin" came from." Mike Takahara smiled. "I always wondered about that."

"Actually, as I recall, it also referred to just about any young woman in a bathing suit, and definitely any car that didn't look like it belonged to your parents." LaGrange nodded, blinking his way back to reality. "But yeah, a hot wave was your basic definition of bitchin', no doubt about it. I take it you must have grown up somewhere inland?"

"Flagstaff, Arizona," the Japanese-American tech agent said.

"Too bad." The ex-homicide investigator shook his head sympathetically.

"Ah think Ah missed something," Larry Paxton said. "Just what exactly do all these teenage fantasies of yours have to do with Henry?"

"Yeah, I'm coming to that." LaGrange smiled. "So anyway," he went on, "Henry and I are out there in the swells, wearing fins and light wet suits, and still waiting for that last big one to show up. Only the sun's pretty well gone now, and the sky's starting to turn this dark gray color— which means we really shouldn't be out there—when all of a sudden Henry gets this funny look in his eyes and yells at me not to move."

"What?"

"Yeah, I'm telling you, I just about crapped in my trunks." Bobby LaGrange nodded. "So there I am, treading water as slow as I possibly can, trying not to move my legs or arms, with my nose and eyes just barely out of the water. But, man, I'm looking everywhere I can, looking for a fin, barracuda flash, something, trying to see what it is he saw. Only I can't see a damn thing. And then I see Henry turn around in the water so that he's facing south, you know, parallel to the shore. And now I'm
really
looking, only I
still
can't see anything, and my heart's got to be doing at least a hundred and twenty. And then" — LaGrange paused for effect—"I hear him say—and he was about ten feet away from me when he said it: 'It's coming right at us, Bobby, right now. Don't move.' Just like that."

Bobby LaGrange looked around at the faces of the four agents and his son, all of whom were sitting there in stunned silence.

"And you still didn't see anything?" Paxton finally asked, his eyes wide.

"Not a thing." Bobby LaGrange shook his head. "But then all of a sudden I felt it—felt something, a change in the pressure, whatever—like something big, and I mean
really
big, was going by somewhere down there below my feet."

"Jesus!" Dwight Stoner whispered.

"And, man, I'm telling you, my brain is numb and I'm so scared now I can't even move, even if I wanted to. And then I look around with my eyes—because I'm afraid to move any other part of my body, because I know if I do it'll come at me, whatever and wherever it is—and I can't see Henry."

"I mean to tell you he's gone, nowhere in sight. So there I am, out there by myself, and it's really getting dark and cold now, and I can't even
think,
I'm so scared. And then ten, maybe fifteen seconds later—whatever it was, it seemed like a goddamned hour—up pops Henry's head, and I'm screaming at him —'What the hell is it?!'—only he doesn't know because he couldn't see it either, but at least he had the guts to go down there and look, which I couldn't have done if somebody'd put a gun to my head. And then" — LaGrange paused for effect again—"he gets that funny expression on his face again, and he says, 'Oh, God, it's turning. It's coming back.'"

Bobby LaGrange paused to take a sip of his iced tea, aware that five sets of eyes were locked on his every movement.

"So right then I knew we were gone. Dead. Nothing we could do about it, 'cause we didn't know what it was or what direction it was coming at us from—only that it was coming back. And right then both of us felt it. The swell building up, the one we'd been waiting for. And I remember we looked at each other, eyeball to eyeball, and then we went for it. Two kids, what?—fifteen years old, swimming like it was the Olympics finals, trying to catch a wave like it was the last thing we were ever going to do in our entire lives."

"And you caught it, right?"

"Caught it?" LaGrange laughed. "Hell, Paxton, we didn't just
catch
that wave, we outswam it. Me, I think I was up on shore and ten yards past the lifeguard station before I stopped clawing and kicking my way through the sand. Henry, I don't know how he got there or who beat who, but the next thing I knew he was right there on the sand next to me, pounding on my shoulder and coughing up saltwater. All I remember after that is both of us shaking and choking and laughing and hugging each other like we'd just decided to go steady; and then getting yelled at by the lifeguard, who was really pissed 'cause he'd thought everybody was out of the water, and we were so far out in the swells that he hadn't even noticed us until we went for that wave."

"Christ almighty!" Larry Paxton said softly.

"So what was it? Did you ever find out?" Mike Takahara asked.

"No, we never did. And to tell you the truth, I'm not real sure that either of us ever wanted to know. But one thing I
do
know is that a week later, a twenty-foot white nailed an abalone diver off La Jolla Cove, which was about a quarter of a mile south of where we were swimming. The guy diving with him saw him pop up screaming and then disappear. When he got there and looked down, he saw his buddy hanging out of both sides of the shark's mouth and both of them heading west. As far as I know," LaGrange said after a moment, "that was the last time that either of us ever went out body-surfing. Fear of the unknown, Snoopy, my man. It'll get you every time."

"So what—" Larry Paxton started to ask when they all heard and then saw Henry Lightstone appear on the lower deck with a mask, fins, snorkel, and a diving knife in his hands.

"Hey, Mo-Jo!" Lightstone called up to the bridge.

The Jamaican crewman looked back over his shoulder.

"Yass, sir?"

"How about cutting the engine for a few minutes?"

"Yass, sir!"

Moments later, the
Lone Granger's
diesels rumbled to a stop.

"And just where the hell do you think you're going?" Bobby LaGrange demanded from his sitting position on the main deck.

"I think Mo-Jo just hit something," Henry Lightstone said as he stepped out onto the swim platform and began strapping the diving knife around his leg.

"What?"

"I heard something clank against the bottom."

"What do you mean, 'clank'?" Bobby LaGrange demanded. "This thing's got a fiberglass hull."

'Yeah, I know, didn't sound right, so I figured I'd go down and take a look," Lightstone said as he reached down and began pulling the fins onto his feet.

Bobby LaGrange stared at his ex-partner and childhood friend as though he'd lost his mind.

"Henry, by any chance do you happen to remember what it was we were all doing about a half hour ago?" he asked in an incredulous voice.

"Oh, yeah, sure. No big deal. I'll keep an eye out for that critter." Henry Lightstone shrugged as he stood up again.

At that moment Bobby LaGrange saw it again—that unforgettable expression in his ex-partner's eyes.

"Hey, wait, hold on a minute. I'll go with you," LaGrange said hurriedly, trying to work himself up out of the confining deck chair. But by the time he managed to get into a standing position, Henry Lightstone was already sitting on the swim platform and pulling the mask on over his head.

"Henry, you dumb—" LaGrange started to yell, but it was too late. With a small splash Henry Lightstone disappeared beneath the surface of the turquoise-green water.

"For Christ's sake!" Bobby LaGrange raged as he fumbled around on the main deck, looking for his mask and fins. Then he realized that Lightstone had taken his set that he'd left by the door to the crew's quarters.

"Mo-Jo!"

The Jamaican crewman looked over the back side of the bridge again.

"Yass, sir?"

"Get a diver's flag out, and then grab that shark rifle and keep an eye out for that damned hammerhead!"

"Yass, sir!"

"What do we do?" Larry Paxton demanded.

"Go get anything you brought with you that'll shoot a bullet and help Mo-Jo stand watch for that shark."

"You got it." Paxton nodded as the four agents disappeared into the salon.

"Justin."

"Yes, sir!"

"Go get me your diving gear and your spear gun right now," LaGrange ordered. "And, son," the ex-homicide investigator added in a softer voice.

"Yes, sir?"

"Hurry."

Chapter Twenty-four

The first thing that struck Henry Lightstone was the incredible clarity of the water.

Accustomed to the blue-green murkiness of the relatively cold and dark Pacific Ocean along his native Southern California coastline, he had expected to find himself peering through gloomy depths in an effort to spot the hammerhead or other lurking predators. Instead he immediately experienced an overwhelming sense of vertigo—of being suspended forty feet in midair above an open expanse of pristine ocean floor ringed with rocky crags and coral formations and seaweed.

It took a few moments for his jarred survival instincts to accept the fact that he was actually floating, rather than hovering, above the spectacular aquatic vista.

And even though it was late in the afternoon and difficult to judge distances in any case, Lightstone was convinced that he could easily see at least a hundred yards in all directions before the azure-blue waters of the western Atlantic Ocean began to turn opaque out in the distance.

At the same time, he was also aware of being able to hear a multitude of sounds through the ocean water with a similar degree of clarity. Most of these sounds, he quickly realized, were being made by Larry Paxton and his fellow agents as they scrambled to retrieve their weapons from the below-deck storage lockers of the huge, white, and red hovering object above his head that was the
Lone Granger.