Wildfire (55 page)

As SAC Hal Owens called for backup and then began circling helplessly above the surviving members of his raid team, Riser picked up the M-60 in one hand, the four-bore rifle in the other, and turned to the suntanned young woman who was cowering behind a large bale of recycled paper.

"We've leaving, right now," he growled, and then ran out the back door of the garage and around to the nearby sheet-metal hangar.

Once in the hangar, Riser unlocked and dropped open the door of his waiting Lear jet while the young woman—who, in the period of a few short weeks, had made the amazing transition from being a bodyguard for an illicit arms dealer to the accomplice of a professional assassin—started to pull open the large hangar doors. She had one side fully open and was starting to work on the other when she saw it.

"Wait a minute, what's that?" she demanded, pointing in the direction of the office structure in the far rear corner of the hangar.

Riser looked up and then blinked in surprise as he saw the man-shaped silhouette that had been cut through the plaster-board office wall. His mind instantly flashed back to the similar cut he had made through the wall of a Westin Hotel closet back in Boston. At that moment sunlight suddenly let in through the corner window inside the office caused the silhouette to glow brightly—almost like a human-sized ghost.

"What is it?" the azure-eyed woman who no longer had to call herself Anne-Marie demanded again, but Riser simply twisted his face into an evil smile. He quickly scooped up the M-60 and then triggered the remaining hundred-or-so rounds in the chain-link ammo belt through the thin walls of the office in one long, sustained burst that sent the young woman staggering to the concrete floor with her hands clenched over her ears amid dozens of bouncing, expended casings.

Tossing the machine gun aside, Riser was starting to reach for the four-bore when a movement at the rear door of the hangar caught his eye.

"Go ahead, pick it up. See what happens," Henry Lightstone said as he stepped inside the hangar with his 10mm Smith & Wesson pistol out and ready.

Riser remained motionless, his practiced eyes making a rapid assessment of this newcomer, noting the soaked handkerchief wrapped around the left hand that appeared to be dripping blood, the torn and dirt-encrusted clothing, the bloodied, familiar face . . . and the deadly cold expression in his eyes.

"I'm very disappointed in Maas and Chareaux," he finally said in a deep, growling voice. "They should have had no difficulty in dealing with you." Then he turned to look at the silhouette again. "However, that
was
a clever diversion on your part, Mr. Lightstone. You went to the hotel, I take it?" he went on in a conversational voice.

"It was a memorable scene."

"Crude, but obviously effective." Riser shrugged, still staring at the office wall that now had over a hundred bullet holes in it, in addition to the roughly cut figure. "What did you use?"

Reaching behind his back with his tightly wrapped and bloody left hand, Henry Lightstone pulled the fighting knife out of his belt and tossed it to the floor.

The blood-and-plaster-covered knife clattered loudly in the cavernous hangar as the young woman slowly removed her hands from her ears. She remained there on the floor, blinking and staring, uncomprehending, at the slender, jean- and shirt-clad figure who seemed not the least bit intimidated by her absolutely terrifying employer.

"I borrowed a knife from Chareaux," Lightstone replied evenly. "He wasn't going to need it anymore."

"You killed Chareaux?"

"Chareaux,
and
Maas too."

Riser nodded slowly.

"You were outside the building, of course, when you let in the light?" the huge man said matter-of-factly. He didn't seem to be interested in the fate of his most recently hired employees.

"That's right," Lightstone said, keeping the 10mm semiautomatic pistol extended in his right hand and centered on Riser's chest.

"Please help me," the young woman whispered, starting to tremble as she stared at Lightstone, trying desperately to decide ... and knowing that she didn't dare be wrong.

"Who are you?" Lightstone asked, never taking his eyes off the huge man standing next to the open door of the Learjet.

"My name's Valerie," she replied in a tremulous voice, staring wide- eyed at the impassive face of Riser. "He—he kidnapped me. He said—he was g-going to hurt me real bad if I didn't d-do what he said."

"What did he want you to do?"

"What? I don't know ... he didn't . . . please, let me get away from him. I'm afraid he's going to —"

"It's all right, he's not going to hurt you. Just move over there, by the office," Lightstone directed, continuing to keep the front sight of the 10mm pistol centered on Riser's broad chest.

"Please, I just want to go home," the young woman whispered as she slowly backed away from Riser toward the still-glowing silhouette.

"Where did he kidnap you, Valerie?" Lightstone asked in a quiet voice.

"Uh ... at the marina."

"Which one?"

"Uh, uh . . . I don't. . ."

"Which side are you on, Valerie?"

"What?"

"Which side, Valerie? You need to decide,
right now,"
Lightstone said in a cold, unforgiving voice.

"Uh, uh ..." Then, in a moment of blind panic, the young bodyguard went for the pistol that had been only partially hidden against the small of her back—which caused Lightstone to shift his aim, and Riser to lunge for the four-bore and start to spin around.

The huge professional assassin was still turning, his fingers instinctively finding the grip and trigger, when he realized that the gun in his young assistant's hand was coming around at him and not at Lightstone.

Reacting instinctively, he paused in mid-turn to trigger one of the buckshot-loaded barrels, an act that created a horribly concussive boom in the partially contained hangar as the savagely torn body of the young woman was flung against the far wall like a cloth doll.

The first two 10mm hollow-point bullets caught Riser square in the center of his chest, causing his eyes to blink in shock. But his body and his hands were still in motion, continuing to bring the barrels of the devastating weapon around, when the third 10mm, semi-jacketed hollow-point ripped into his forehead just above the bridge of his nose.

Dying as he fell, the man known as Riser never heard the echoing sounds of his stainless steel four-bore rifle clattering loudly on the concrete floor.

Henry Lightstone walked slowly over to the sprawled body of the beautiful, azure-eyed young woman. He saw the blood-splattered tattoo of a Scarlet Macaw on an exposed portion of her right breast and shook his head sadly.

"You made the right decision, Valerie," he whispered, unable to hear even his own words over the shrill ringing in his ears. "You just waited too long to decide."

Then he started walking out of the hangar toward the rapidly approaching FBI surveillance helicopter and the cautiously advancing agents.

Chapter Thirty-eight

"I think you're going to enjoy this flight a little better than the last one," Henry Lightstone said to a moderately sedated Dwight Stoner as two burly Coast Guard crewmen strained to lift the stretcher up into the Sikorsky Sea Stallion helicopter's cargo bay.

"These guys know how to fly, huh?" the huge agent mumbled.

"Most likely. And even if they don't, you're not going to know about it, anyway."

"Hey, come on, Henry, ol' Woeshack did okay for himself out there," Larry Paxton said in a raspy whisper from the stretcher at Lightstone's feet.

"You're only saying that now because he's unconscious and he can't hear you," Lightstone responded, glancing over at the thoroughly sedated figure of Thomas Woeshack, who was being attended to by one of the Coast Guard medics.

Larry Paxton started to laugh and then winced.

"Yeah, he did do good," Lightstone admitted. "And if you hadn't been so chicken-shit about flying with him, you could have ended up being the hero instead of Stoner."

"Good leader always lets his raggedy-ass crew get the glory," Paxton mumbled, finally giving in to the sedative and closing his eyes.

"Amen to that, buddy," Lightstone said, patting Paxton's shoulder with the one hand that wasn't tightly bandaged and throbbing as the Coast Guard crew picked up Paxton's stretcher and set him into the waiting helicopter.

"Hey, don't forget this," Lightstone said as he handed a small wooden box with several holes drilled into the side up to an extremely young-looking air crewman sitting in the Sea Stallion's cargo bay.

"What is it?" he asked, peering cautiously in through one of the holes.

"My lucky turtle. Cat Island subspecies. One of the last of its kind."

"Yeah, so?"

"So if you guys will guard that box with your lives, and deliver it to a guy named Sidney Bordeaux, the manager at Arthur's Town airport, then he's not going to sue the United States government for destroying his airplane, and Larry and I won't have to marry his daughter," Lightstone explained.

"That so?" The young crewman grinned. "What's she like? A real battle-ax?"

"You married?"

"Nope."

"Got a serious girlfriend?"

"Not really."

"Ever heard the term 'Conchy Joe'?"

"No, can't say I ever have."

"Then I'll tell you what," Lightstone said. "Why don't you drop that box off in person, tell the manager you're feeling a little airsick, and see for yourself."

The young crewman cocked his head suspiciously, then shrugged and nodded in agreement.

"And in the meantime, take good care of these guys."

"Yes, sir, will do."

Henry Lightstone and Mike Takahara waited until the Coast Guard pilots and their crew teams finished securing the stretchers bearing the three sedated wildlife agents to the floor of the helicopter next to the four wounded FBI agents who had already been strapped in.

"Clear!" the pilot called out through his opened window.

Stepping back as the rotors began to turn, Lightstone and Takahara waved to the young crewman who was strapped in by the open door with a small wooden box clutched tightly in both hands.

"Justin's going to be pissed at you for that," Mike Takahara said.

"Yeah, I know." Lightstone nodded. "But she's ready to get on with her life, and he's not. Give him a couple of years and he'll be back out here looking for her younger sister."

Then, as the powerful Sikorsky rescue helicopter rose in the air, hovered, and then banked away in the direction of the Nassau Hospital where two surgical teams were waiting for their arrival, Lightstone and Takahara walked back toward the villa.

As they did so, they noted that the bodies of the ICER Committee members, as well as those of Maas and Chareaux and Eric Tisbury, had already been placed in black body bags and laid out in a temporary morgue area in the villa's garage. They tried not to think about the bodies of the two pilots, the crew chief, and the six FBI agents who had died in the exploding Blackhawk out at the Fernandez Bay airstrip.

When they got inside, Lightstone and Takahara found Theresa Fletcher and the four supervisory wildlife and FBI agents—Halahan, Moore, Grynard, and Owens—sitting in the living room talking with a severely shaken but apparently still defiant Sam Tisbury. Tisbury had been given a bathrobe to replace his wet clothes, and was being guarded by two very solemn-looking FBI hostage recovery team agents.

One of the FBI agents processing the scene looked up.

"Agent Takahara?"

"Yes?"

"There were a couple of calls for you a few moments ago." The agent looked down at his clipboard. "A Roger Dingeman, from your forensic lab in Ashland, and a Dr. Kimberly Wildman from the National Biological Survey. Both of them said you'd been trying to get hold of them on an urgent matter, and that you'd left this number."

"Great, thank you."

As Mike Takahara disappeared into the back bedroom, Lightstone walked outside on the rear deck and stood there, staring out over the water. A few moments later Theresa Fletcher came outside.

"Mind if I join you?"

"No, not at all, have a seat," Lightstone said, gesturing toward a pair of deck chairs.

Fletcher watched as Lightstone gingerly set himself down in the chair. She shook her head.

"Hate to be the one to say it, Henry, but you look like hell."

"I've felt better," Lightstone acknowledged with a rueful smile.

"I thought you were going with the others to Nassau?"

"I was, but the guys they shipped out need medical attention a whole lot more than I do. Figured I'd just end up at the end of the line, sitting around bare-assed in one of those open-ended hospital gowns with Paxton, listening to him complain."

"Not a sight for the fainthearted, I'm sure." Theresa Fletcher smiled. "What about the hand?"

Lightstone looked down at the tightly wound tape and bandages that covered his entire left hand and about half of his forearm. "Doc says it should be fine, long as I keep on taking the antibiotics and painkillers. No major nerve damage as best he can tell. He put a few stitches in to hold everything together until we get back to Fort Lauderdale."

Theresa Fletcher stared silently at Lightstone's bandaged hand for a long moment.

"I understand it got pretty wild out there," she finally said in a conversational tone.

"Yeah, I suppose it did," the ex-cop turned federal agent responded.

"Craziness in all directions. You don't think much about it while it's happening. You just follow your instincts, go with the flow. It catches up with you later."

"The deaths, you mean? The people you ended up . . . killing?"

Lightstone nodded.

"How do you feel about that?"

"You mean, were their deaths justified?"

Theresa Fletcher nodded silently.

"Is this one of those leading conversations where I should be asking for a lawyer?" he asked, watching her eyes.

"If you need one, I'm available."

"Thanks, I appreciate that," Lightstone said with a half-smile. "But I don't think it'll be necessary. Maas and Chareaux weren't going to stop coming after us, no matter what we did. As for the other guy—Riser, whatever his name was—I don't know. I could have dumped him when he first came into the hangar."