Ed Rhodes picked it up on the first ring.
'Forensics Laboratory, Rhodes.'
And then: 'Yes, sir. He's right here,' Rhodes said as he handed the phone over to Lightstone.
'Hello?'
'Special Agent Lightstone?'
'Yes.'
'This is Nigel Hooper from Holland and Holland. I understand that you've been inquiring about one of our rifles?'
'Yes, sir. A double-barreled African Hunter, chambered for the. 416 Rigby cartridge. We're trying to find out the name of the individual who purchased the weapon.'
'Do you happen to know when he might have made his purchase?'
'No, I don't.'
'Perhaps a serial number, then?'
'Uh, no, sir, ' Lightstone said, speaking loudly over an annoying hiss in the telephone line. 'All I have is a description of the etching on the receiver, and the fact that the weapon was sold to an American.'
'I see. Well, perhaps we could start with the etching,' Nigel Hooper said politely. 'That might help narrow things down a bit.'
'The etching is of a single wolf standing on a rock.'
'Umm, I'm afraid that's a rather common design request,' Nigel Hooper said. 'Is there anything else about the etching that might be distinctive?'
'I'm afraid that I'm doing this from memory,' Lightstone said, recalling in his hallucinatory dream how the first point of light had become a slowly rotating disk and then the face of a dog that really wasn't a dog after all.
'I see. Are you certain that the creature is a wolf?'
'I assume it is,' Lightstone said. 'That's what was etched in script just below the rock. W-O-L-F-E.'
'Oh, really?'
'Would you have any idea of how many rifles Holland and Holland might have made with that particular etching?'
'Yes, I think I can tell you exactly how many,' Nigel Hooper said. 'But first, perhaps I should explain that while we Brits may use the English language a bit, uh, differently than you Yanks, we still spell wolf 'W-O-L-F.''
Henry Lightstone sat in absolute silence as he listened to Nigel Hooper explain the background of a certain. 416 Holland and Holland African Hunter with the picture of a wolf etched into its receiver.
'Yes, you've been a wonderful help, Mr. Hooper. Thank you very much,' Lightstone said as he hung up the phone and turned to the four haggard individuals who had been hanging on every word.
'Dr. Reston Wolfe,' Lightstone said with a tired smile. 'Special executive assistant, U.S. Department of Interior, Washington, D.C.'
PREY…
Chapter Forty-Two
Friday September 24
At precisely quarter past twelve on that Friday afternoon, Lisa Abercombie set Dr. Reston Wolfe's summary report aside and slowly began to flip through its accompanying sheath of police reports, interagency teletypes, and press clippings.
Three minutes later, having satisfied herself that the names and numbers in Wolfe's report seemed reasonable, she went back and read the entire four-page summary report one more time.
Having done that, she sat back in her beige-leather executive chair and stared incredulously at the three men sitting across from her desk.
'Five of our people are dead?'
'That's right,' Paul Saltmann said matter-of-factly. 'Arturo, Corrie, Felix, Shoshin, and Kiro. Roy, Carine, and Kimiko were wounded. Of the three, Roy's injuries are the most serious.'
'And Alex Chareaux is… loose?'
'Apparently,' the curly-haired weight lifter and intelligence specialist nodded.
For a long moment Lisa Abercombie simply stared at the three ICER team leaders.
'Three months ago, in one surgical operation,' she said, her voice hoarse with disbelief, 'Operation Counter Wrench created absolute havoc among five of the top environmental activist organizations in the world. Since then, we have conducted seven follow-up operations, which have literally set these extremists at each other's throats, without a single one of our people being so much as scratched.
'But then,' Abercombie went on, 'when we send you out to deal with six Fish and Wildlife Service officers-not Delta Team members, or Secret Service agents, or U.S. Marines, but wildlife officers-none of whom have the slightest reason to suspect that you're coming, you come back and tell me that not only have we lost half of our effective team, but also that an incredibly dangerous individual, one in a position to cause us immense grief, has been allowed to get away from us?'
For a brief moment, Abercombie allowed her gaze to fall on each of the men individually. 'Can any one of you please tell me,' she asked in a glacial voice that matched the cold fury in her eyes, 'how we could possibly have gotten ourselves into such a position?'
For approximately ten seconds, all three men simply stared back at her with varying degrees of casual indifference. Then, out of no apparent sense of intimidation or urgency, Paul Saltmann spoke up again.
'I can explain it very simply,' he said. 'You and your bureaucrat buddy tried to make it too cute.'
'Cute?' Lisa Abercombie rasped, her eyes almost bulging with rage. 'You call the endangerment of a hundred-million-dollar operation cute?'
'We could have taken every one of them out with long-range weapons,' Saltmann responded with icy calm. 'We told you that. And if you had allowed us to handle it that way, we would have left appropriate evidence at the scenes and then disposed of the Chareauxs separately, without the slightest difficulty. It was only when we tried to integrate the Chareaux brothers directly into the situation that we ran into complications.'
'However,' Dr. Morito Asai reminded, 'five of these agents are now dead. Also, we are following the sixth agent right now, and we may have located Chareaux.'
'You know where Alex is, right now?' Lisa Abercombie asked quickly.
'We believe so, yes.'
'Where?'
'In a remote cabin approximately three miles northeast of us,' Paul Saltmann said. 'We recognized this location as a possible jump point for an intruder, so we had it wired into our security system. The sensors detected one individual moving in there last night.'
'You mean he's here, close by?' she asked with undisguised panic in her voice.
'Not so close, but not so far away either,' the Japanese technical specialist said. 'From our point of view, he is accessible.'
Abercombie hesitated, trying to maintain her icy demeanor. But the thread of fear was there, and they could sense it now.
'Do you anticipate that he will be coming after us?' she finally asked.
'Alex Chareaux is a proud and vengeful man, and we have sacrificed his two brothers for our purposes,' Asai shrugged. 'Why would he not?'
'How did he know to come here?' she asked.
'Probably because Felix told him,' Paul Saltmann said.
'What do you mean, Felix told him?' Abercombie demanded. 'Why in the world would he do that?'
'An individual under torture can be made to say almost anything,' the curly-haired intelligence specialist said coldly. 'Even someone like Felix is not immune. Read the Reno sheriffs report. It's fairly descriptive.'
Abercombie looked at Saltmann quizzically, then quickly flipped through the sheath of papers until she came
