Wildfire (6 page)

Then, still fifty feet away, the hunched-over figure suddenly straightened up, and Crowley's eyes widened in shock.

No, wait, it's not him! It can't be!

William Devonshire Crowley didn't know whether to scream out his frustration or simply break down and cry out of pure relief. So rather than do either, he just continued to stand there and stare at the hooded figure of Henry Lightstone as the mildly curious covert federal agent glanced his way and then continued walking on past the statue.

Crowley watched Lightstone disappear in the growing darkness, and then turned back to his increasingly desperate search for the man he had to find. Absolutely
had
to.

"Goddamnit, where the hell
are
you?" he rasped again as he continued to search among the crossed pathways and bare trees surrounding the low hilltop through his ice-streaked glasses.

He realized now that he really had no choice. He had to find the huge, hulking, and fearsome dark-coated figure and talk with him again. That was the only way that everything could be all right again. The only possible way.

"Come on. Please. Be here," he whispered to himself as he transferred the increasingly heavy laptop computer to his less-fatigued hand. "Please!"

Although, during the last hour and a half, it had certainly occurred to Crowley many times that he might be better off if he never saw this incredibly frightening man again.

In fact, the more he thought about it,
far
better off.

He understood now, much too late, that he had been unbelievably stupid from the very beginning. What had seemed like a lark, an adventure, when he'd first been offered the job—
When was that? Only three days ago?
he thought incredulously—had long since become a living, walking, hulking nightmare.

And even worse, a nightmare with unforgettable and absolutely terrifying eyes.

No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, William Devonshire Crowley simply could not erase the chilling memory of the man's eyes. How they had narrowed and then turned cold and hard when Crowley told him that the deal would have to be renegotiated. And how they had lost all expression when Crowley had added that the most his employers would be able to pay was four hundred thousand dollars apiece, rather than the initially offered five hundred thousand.

Think about it,
Crowley had suggested in a shaky voice, realizing only at that moment that he had almost certainly gone too far.
We'll meet here again at three-thirty this afternoon. Right here, in front of the Soldiers and Sailors Civil War Monument. Work out all the details. Win-win situation all the way around. I guarantee it.

And how the man had stared at him that one last time before he turned away. Stared at him with an expression that was so cold and malevolent and threatening that Crowley had nearly wet his pants right there in the park.

We want you to try to bargain him down. Get us a deal if you can. You're good at that sort of thing, Crowley. That's why we hired you.

That's what they had told him at the airport.

Christ, didn't they realize what this man was like? Didn't they understand?

"Goddamnit, it's not my fault! I only did what they told me to do!"

Crowley tried to scream the words out in a roar of iron-willed defiance. But his voice broke on the word
fault,
and the rest of it disintegrated into a whimpering sob that was completely inaudible beyond a dozen feet in the growing storm. Not that it mattered, because there was no one on the low exposed hilltop to hear him anyway. Or at least no one that he could see.

His body was trembling so hard now and his hands hurt so bad that he could barely hold onto the handle of the computer case. But he didn't dare set it down. He understood now that the little laptop computer was his primary lifeline back to his accustomed world of privilege, luxury, and warmth. Not to mention sanctuary from huge, hulking men with terrifying eyes, he reminded himself prayerfully. He couldn't even bear to think about the computer being stolen, so he kept switching it back and forth between his numbed and aching hands as he continued to scan the bare- treed landscape.

Distracted for a brief moment, Crowley allowed his gaze to travel up the base of the monument, back to those first two lines of the dedication that had been inscribed in the high concrete surface many years ago:

to the men of boston who died for their country

It was the sight of those chilling words, and the memory of the terrifying expression in the man's eyes, and the sudden overwhelming realization that he really
had
gone too far, that sent William Devonshire Crowley scrambling down the slippery asphalt pathway in a frantic dash toward the distant Park Street subway entrance. Running as if he were being pursued by ghosts. Or demons.

Or
him,
he thought, too panicked now to even look back, as he ran even harder past the empty and desolate Frog Pond, for fear of what he might see.

Can't wait any longer,
he told himself as he nearly knocked three elderly women to the ground in his haste to get through the green sheltering doors of the subway entrance and down the slush-splattered stairs and into the relative security of the underground train station.

Have to get back to the hotel. Have to let them know. Get them to call it all off before . . .

He looked back over his shoulder as he fumbled with the small token. At the top of the stairs a huge dark figure was standing in the doorway. Driven by mindless fear, Crowley plunged through the turnstile and ran for the green commuter train that was just getting ready to depart the station.

It was only when he was on board, clutching onto the overhead rail and trying to catch his breath, that he became aware of the eerie shadows and shapes in the surrounding darkness of the underground tunnel. The steel support and cross beams standing out like angular black scarecrows in the dim glow of the dangling bare light bulbs. The crisscrossing lengths of black cable snaking out of the darkness in all directions. And the hidden corners and side tunnels that could easily conceal a hundred evil and terrifying men.

The images that had been lurking in the shadows of Crowley's consciousness while he was desperately circling the monument began to take shape in his mind again. Images that had warned him to stay out in the open, where people could see him.

And to avoid dark and isolated places—like subway tunnels—where he could be trapped.
Oh, God.

William Devonshire Crowley swung his head around frantically, staring wide-eyed at the handful of passengers who swayed with the rocking motions of the double-car commuter train as it slowly braked to a screeching stop at the Boylston exit. He couldn't see him, but that didn't necessarily mean anything.

As the doors slid open and people began to move in and out of the car, Crowley watched it all happen with a paralyzing sense of impending doom. The man wasn't here, in this car, but he could be in the next car. Or in the tunnel. Or at the exit by his hotel. Waiting for him.

The doors had just started to close again when William Devonshire Crowley suddenly came up on his shaky legs and lunged through the opening. In doing so, he caught his shoulder and slammed the computer case against the closing door as he staggered out onto the narrow walkway of the underground station.

The immediate sensation that nearly overwhelmed Crowley was that of being enclosed in a black wire cage. It took him a moment to understand that the thickly coated metal screens weren't there to close him in, but rather to guide him to the exit. Then he looked to his right and saw the wide gaping mouth of the dark tunnel he had just left.

He knew that was still two stops away from his destination, but that didn't matter. Nor did it matter if he froze to death running the remaining four blocks to his hotel. What
did
matter was the fact that he had to get back out into the open.

Right now!

This time, in his haste to escape, he caught the computer in the turnstile and nearly ripped the handle off the case. He almost started screaming in an uncontrolled frenzy before he finally managed to wrench the case loose and scramble up the thirty-four steps and out the doors into the freezing wind and blowing snow.

Then his heart nearly stopped again when he realized that this exit came out at the southeastern end of the Commons, and that he hadn't escaped at all.

Frantically clutching the handle of the laptop computer case that had grown so incredibly heavy over the past half hour, he began running on a diagonal course across the dead grass toward the street that would take him to his hotel.

Fifteen minutes later William Devonshire Crowley staggered into the middle of Copley Park, a completely open and public space that sat diagonally across from the Westin Hotel. He was gasping for breath and shaking uncontrollably as he set the computer case down between his legs. He looked first across the street at the Westin's modern glass entryway. And then back at the phones. And then finally over at the huge wood and iron doors of the eighteenth-century Trinity Church.

One or the other, and he had to choose quickly.

The greatest temptation was to run for the church, with its ancient brownstone walls and high steeples and life-sized replicas of the saints, and beg whoever was inside for sanctuary. That was what he desperately wanted to do. But Crowley didn't know anything at all about the Episcopalian religion and therefore had no idea if sanctuary was even a viable option.

What if they made him leave, and the man was out there, waiting for him?

The phones were about thirty feet away, mounted within a six-pack-like array of tall black painted cylinders. He was sorely tempted to call for help, but he couldn't call his employers because he didn't know their phone number. Security reasons, they had explained. Didn't want him to call in on an open line. That was why they had provided him with the computer.

He couldn't call his employers, and he couldn't call the police either, because he didn't have the slightest idea what he could possibly tell a cop that would make any sense.

What? That I'm scared and that I need help because a man gave me a scary look?

A man that I'm trying to hire for four hundred and fifty thousand a pop to kill people I don't even know?

And for people I don't know either?

Yeah, right.

So instead of seeking help or sanctuary or almost certain arrest for conspiracy to commit
something,
William Devonshire Crowley simply prayed that he wasn't heading straight into a trap, and started across the street to his hotel.

Chapter Three

They had no corporate name or insignia to identify themselves. No embossed business cards. No heavy bond stationery. No listing in the World Wildlife Fund's annual Conservation Directory. Only the bottom two floors of a four-story brownstone building in Reston, Virginia. And a street address in eighteen-inch-high numerals of black anodized aluminum.

And an all-consuming mission:

To seek out and destroy seven greedy and powerful men, the creators and manipulators of ICER, in a manner that would shock and disrupt the entire industrial world.

And then to ignite that world into a roaring inferno of destruction and rebirth.

All that joined together by a single word, spoken in quiet recognition or whispered with fevered emotion between fellow conspirators:

Wildfire.

To the inner core, the chosen ones, this word brought forth images of valleys and forests and cities and towns all crumbling, one after the other, beneath the roaring path of a driven and unstoppable and insatiable flame.

And to the larger—and still growing—assemblage of true believers, this word offered the only hope for a planet overrun by disease and famine, and pollution and war and all the other excesses of a species that was running out of control as fast as it was running out of resources: the chance to start over. To be cleansed, and then reborn once again out of the devastation of smoldering ruins.

And thus this word described perfectly a small but increasingly fanatical group of environmental extremists who were better known—to the extent that they
were
known—for their fiery rhetoric and their rabid newsletters and their extremist beliefs than for any pretense of environmental ethics—much less any concern for other members of their species.

It was for this reason that they wisely chose to remain hidden, sending out their fiery rhetoric via anonymous mailings and carefully isolated Internet bulletin boards, while they made ready for their day of righteous glory.

Two of the large, corner basement offices of the small and innocuous brownstone building that housed Wildfire were connected—by two pairs of small isolated metal doors and two long and narrow concrete tunnels— to a huge eight-story, twenty-four-hundred-slot parking garage. These hidden access and escape routes offered the clandestine group an easy means of entering and leaving their concealed headquarters building without being observed or identified.

In one of those offices Leonard Harris, a sixty-three-year-old, short, baldish, and overweight man with a predilection for rolled-up sleeves, loosened bow ties, and computerized fantasy games, looked up as the small metal escape and access door to his dimly lit office opened.

A tall, slender woman, dressed in skintight black leggings and a loose black-and-purple sweatshirt that came down to her hips, and carrying a rifle case, entered the darkened room. Setting the rifle case against the wall, she shut the door, set the locks, and then walked over to the cluttered computer workstation.

"Did you have fun?" he asked.

"I like it," she nodded, kissing him gently next to his ear. He could smell the burned gunpowder in her hair.

It had been her birthday present: a Remington Model 7400 autoloading rifle, chambered for the 30-06 Springfield round, and capable of holding four in the magazine and one in the chamber. He had originally planned to order it in the smaller .222 round, to reduce the recoil and to save wear and tear on her spare frame, but she had insisted on the more powerful cartridge.