and released several two- and three-pounders, the ten-to- fifteen-pound 'keepers' had shown no interest whatsoever in the Grey Mosquito fishing fly. Their Alaskan guide had apparently overestimated the rainbow trout. Just like he overestimated his flying skills, Lightstone thought, recalling the young agent-pilot's two aborted attempts to put the Skywagon's twin floats down on the wind-rippled lake surface, attempts that Lightstone had privately described to Marie as 'probably how a stone feels when it gets skipped across a lake.'
'Hey, Woeshack,' Lightstone said as they watched one of the eagles swoop down toward the water and then tumble wildly in the air, narrowly escaping disaster as one of its talons locked onto and then lost a glistening and thrashing sockeye salmon. 'Is that your flight instructor up there?'
Jackson laughed. 'I saw him try to make a landing out on Lake Hood just like that a couple of days ago.'
'Don't let them pick on you, Thomas,' Marie Pascalaura said, holding onto her pole and the pup as she looked back over her shoulder. 'I think you fly just fine.'
'That's okay, I don't mind,' the young native Alaskan agent shrugged easily. 'In fact, they're right. The eagles have always been my inspiration. As a child, I often watched them catching their food from the water and dreamed that I would fly just like them one day.' He cast his line with an effortless flick of his wrist out toward a swirl in the water about thirty feet away.
'Well, you've just about made it as far as I'm concerned,' Lightstone said, ignoring Marie's warning elbow to his ribs.
Trying to concentrate on the gentle swirls around his slowly drifting fly, Lightstone heard but chose to ignore the sharp, distant explosion that suddenly echoed across the huge Alaskan lake.
Instead, he continued to breath in a slow, steady rhythm, his muscular hands rock-steady on the eight-foot rod. His feet were solidly braced against the tightly secured backpack that contained a pair of 7x40 binoculars, a stainless-steel Smith amp; Wesson revolver fully loaded with. 357 hollow- points, and his special agent's badge and identification, all of which Henry Lightstone had no intention of using on this bright, crisp, peaceful Alaska fall day.
'Come on, you picky bastards,' he whispered. 'Go for it. What the hell are you waiting for?'
'Don't worry, lover,' Marie Pascalaura whispered. 'There's always the fish market.'
The second echoing gunshot caused Lightstone to blink, but his eyes never strayed from the gently bobbing fly. In the murky depths of his subconscious, Henry Lightstone had already categorized the shots as having come from a high- velocity pistol somewhere along the southern shore of the lake, probably at least a mile and a half away. Fine, he thought to himself, moving the tip of his rod slightly. I don't care about gunshots today, just as long as the bullets aren't coming in our direction.
Off to the right, a large, slow swirl broke the reflective blue surface about fifteen feet away from the lure.
'There, did you see that?' Marie asked as she clutched Lightstone's arm anxiously.
'Just be patient,' Woeshack advised quietly as he stared out over Lightstone's shoulder at the glistening water. 'They think they are the hunters, but you're the one who has the bait they want. Watch for the next one. It will come to you.'
It was the timing of the third explosion, as much as anything else, that jarred at Henry Lightstone's peace of mind.
Paced shots, cool, deliberate aim, he thought, unable to resist the urge to count off the interval.
Not a hunter.
… thousand and three, one thousand and four.
'What's the matter?' Marie Pascalaura whispered, but he ignored her.
Now.
Crr-rack… booom!
Henry Lightstone slowly turned his suntanned face toward the distant southern shore, aware that the soaring eagles had instinctively drifted away from the echoing explosion. He waited… and then winced six seconds later when the fifth shot echoed across the water with a discernible sense of finality.
'You have many hunters out here?' Lightstone asked.
'A few,' Sam Jackson said with an edge to his voice. 'Never heard any shoot like that, though.' He, too, had detected the unlikely pattern of the gunshots.
'Someone doing some target practice, maybe?' Thomas Woeshack suggested, but the tone of his voice suggested that he didn't really believe it. He slid his rod down against the gunwale of the aluminum boat and reached for his backpack.
Lightstone could hear Woeshack at the rear of the boat, opening up the waterproof equipment box that had been bolted to the cross structure of the sturdy patrol craft. At the same time, Sam Jackson slowly and carefully climbed back into his smaller patrol craft and opened up his own equipment case.
For a good five minutes, the two federal agents and the refuge officer scanned the distant rocky, tree-lined shore with their binoculars, searching for some sign of the individual who seemed much too methodical- much too precise — to be a hunter, while Lightstone tried to hold back the harsher reality that threatened to overwhelm the serenity of the glistening, smooth water. Memories of grisly crime scenes and deadened eyes. And of terrified victims, and of nervous suspects on the edge of panic, ready to run or fight or kill again, because they were never sure of exactly how much you knew.
'Anybody see anything?' Woeshack finally asked in a hushed voice.
'Nothing here,' Sam Jackson answered from his boat.
'Nothing here either.' Lightstone shook his head. 'You're probably right. Just some guy out-'
There was another splash nearby, and the fly rod suddenly clattered violently across the bottom of the patrol boat.
'Hey!' Marie Pascalaura cried as she lunged across her fiance's lap and grabbed her fishing rod just as it was about to go over the side.
The sudden pull on the line as the thirteen-pound, hooked rainbow trout dove for the rocks pulled Marie forward, causing her to squeal in surprise as the rod bent down toward the water like an eight-foot bow.
'Hold on to it!' Lightstone yelled as he yanked the binocular strap up over his neck and reached for the waterproof case.
'What do I do?' she gasped as she tried to get back into her seat.
'Give him some line and watch out for those rocks,' Sam Jackson advised, quickly securing his binoculars and reaching for his net. Thomas Woeshack got ready to pull up the light anchor and kick in the motor if the fish pulled them anywhere near the rocks that protruded from the water about fifteen yards away.
'I knew your luck would change,' Woeshack said cheerfully from the back of the rocking boat.
'I hope you're right,' Lightstone nodded as he looked one more time toward the distant southern shoreline.
Chapter Thirty-Two
'Do you see anyone?' Gerd Maas asked over the loud, angry roar of the bear.
Up in the hills surrounding the southern shore of Skilak Lake, and about half a mile from the thick berry patch where the Kodiak sow had fought and died, the male grizzly bear had started to growl and slash at the cage again. But Maas was ignoring it, because he was still on a high from his more recent encounter with the enraged mother bear, and because he was much more concerned about getting the setting exactly right.
'Just some fishermen. Four of them, in two boats,' Kimiko Osan replied as she continued to scan the distant northern shore with the powerful spotting scope.
'How far out are they?'
'About a mile,' she estimated. 'Due north, just outside Doroshin Bay. One of them is wearing an orange survival suit. I think he's the refuge officer we've been monitoring. The one with the small dog. They are very busy. Three of them have fish on their lines, and at least two of the lines seem to be tangled.'
'Good. They shouldn't be too interested in what we are doing here,' Maas nodded as he pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves over his muscular hands. Then he turned to Shoshin Watanabe.
