Double Blind (54 page)

"Thanks," Boggs whispered back between groans and curses, "but you take it. I can't even stand up."

Lightstone ignored the offered handgun.

"You going to be okay if I shut off the light and leave you in here with this kid?"

"Oh, hell, yes," Boggs replied in a tired whisper.

"Then just keep groaning and cussing — but like you're starting to come around," Lightstone softly instructed the battered agent, "and keep your head down. Things could get crazy around here any minute now."

Then before Boggs could say anything else, the covert wildlife agent turned off the light and disappeared into the darkness.

Crouching behind the shed to avoid the powerful flashlight beams now flickering back and forth around the distant trial site, Lightstone put on the communications mike and earphones and adjusted the night-vision goggles he'd taken from the Ranger.

When everything he viewed appeared in bright, contrasted shades of green, and he could clearly monitor the occasional terse commands and acknowledgments Wintersole and his troops exchanged as they hid in the forest surrounding the compound, he began moving toward the milling crowd.

Lightstone specifically looked for Takahara and Wintersole, but as he got closer, he could see at least twenty people moving in and around the barn now: the members of the Chosen Brigade, and Charlie Team . . . and a much smaller group, consisting of three clean-cut-looking men wearing blue jeans, boots, and down jackets who apparently argued with Brigade Colonel Rice, and three other Brigade members armed with M-16s standing about twenty-five yards away from the barn entrance. Plus he saw another Brigade member guarding Special Agent Natasha Marashenko, with her hands tied behind her back and a pistol at the back of her head.

Come on, Mike, where are you?

It took Henry Lightstone a few moments to realize that one of the men in the jeans, boots and down jackets —the one in the center arguing with the self-appointed colonel—looked vaguely familiar.

When the man turned to say something to one of his companions, Lightstone smiled in sudden recognition.

Grynard?

Well I'll be damned. What are you doing here?

But before Lightstone could factor the unexpected presence of his old nemesis into the picture, a cold and demanding voice crackled over his earphones.

"One-one to one-four, what's your status? I need an answer, now!"

Shit! Lightstone thought, surveying the area even more intently now, knowing Wintersole wouldn't wait long if he didn't get a response.

Come on Mike, where are you?

"One-four, report. What is your —" Wintersole demanded again over the hunter-killer team's scrambled communications net. Only this time, a deeply furious voice interrupted him.

"You want to talk to this kid, Sergeant, then you get your ass back over here, and we'll discuss the matter," Wilbur Boggs rasped harshly. "And by the way, you and your little toy soldiers are all under arrest." The sound of a 9mm round being jacked into the chamber of a military-issue 9mm Beretta semiautomatic pistol clearly echoed over the earphones.

Boggs, you idiot!

Almost immediately, Lightstone saw the easily recognizable figure of First Sergeant Aran Wintersole moving deliberately toward the shed.

Henry Lightstone, too, turned toward the shed, knowing all too well that Wilbur Boggs had just committed a brave, but foolhardy and very likely fatal, mistake. But then a loud voice thundered out of the darkness to his right.

"HENRY, LOOK OUT, BEHIND YOU!"

Lightstone only had a brief moment to recognize Mike Takahara's voice before he heard the figure coming, ducked under the downward sweeping butt-stroke, and spun on his hands to kick the legs out from under his swiftly moving assailant. He heard the black plastic stock of the M-16 assault rifle clatter against a rock, but then lost his night-vision goggles when the muscular young Ranger slammed a forearm against the side of his head, then nearly connected with an open-handed killing stroke aimed at his throat, which Lightstone barely deflected in time with the palm of his hand.

Working instinctively in the darkness, Lightstone parried another strike, and a third . . . then lashed out sharply with his elbow at a point where he judged the young soldier's face should be, heard a confirming grunt of pain when soft tissue gave way under the impact, then extended the muscular Ranger's arm out and twisted it sharply, wrenching it out of the shoulder socket.

The soldier was still screaming and thrashing around in the darkness, and Henry Lightstone was feeling on the ground for his goggles and the transmitter, when the beams of two flashlights converged on his face.

"LIGHTSTONE? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING OVER THERE?!" a familiar voice yelled out as he tried to shield eyes.

Oh yeah, definitely Grynard.

"HENRY, YOU IDIOT!"

What?

Karla?

What the . . . ?

In that brief instant during which those two remarks aimed at Henry Lightstone filled the air, the wild-card agent sensed Wintersole coming to a dead stop, and turning in his direction with the M-16 raised . . . and he dived for the transmitter suddenly visible in the shifting beams of the two flashlights, thumbed the A and B switches as a pair of 5.56mm rounds kicked up dirt and rocks mere inches from his head, then rolled away as the nearby barn erupted in a bright flash followed by a violent explosion that sent hundreds of pounds of rotten board fragments, dirt, and rancid, decomposing chicken manure flying in all directions.

Henry Lightstone had a brief glimpse of First Sergeant Aran Wintersole being flung to the ground by the force of the manure-bag-contained MTEAR detonation (and at least a few pounds of C-4 that Mike Takahara evidently missed, because Lightstone couldn't imagine any kind of a training device, military or otherwise, creating an explosion like that), and then . . . once he managed to get his night-vision goggles back on . . . the amazing sight of the Chosen Brigade, Natasha Marashenko and the other members of Charlie Team, FBI Agent A1 Grynard, and his colleagues all staggering to their feet dripping with clumps of decomposing chicken manure.

Lightstone was continuing his desperate search, this time for the M-16 assault rifle that his attacker had lost, when someone — a feminine voice? He couldn't tell — began screaming "CANVASBACK! CANVAS BACK!"

The furious voice of First Sergeant Aran Wintersole snarled in Lightstone's earphones.

"One-one to Fire Team One, target one-sixty-degrees relative is Special Agent Henry Lightstone . . . and he's got one-four's transmitter. Get that bastard, now!"

Realizing that the remaining members of Wintersole's hunter-killer team effectively surrounded him, and were very close to trapping him, Henry Lightstone abandoned all thoughts of finding the lost M-16.

Instead, he ran.

Chapter Fifty-three

The first fifty yards were the worst because Henry Lightstone knew he remained well within the hundred-percent kill range of a trained Army Ranger armed with an M-16 assault rifle. He scrambled on his hands and knees at several points, then threw himself sideways on two separate occasions, to escape the seemingly endless, short bursts of 5.56mm rounds coming at him from all directions, shearing off fragments of bark, branches, and rock that flew into his face and tore at his clothing as the projectiles whipped past his head.

Somewhere in the background, he thought he heard the sound of 12- gauge shotgun and high-velocity pistol rounds, but he was much too busy trying to stay ahead of the shadowy figures working very hard both to keep up and to circle around in an effort to cut him off to worry about such things.

But as he got deeper into the woods and the thick pine and fir trees became more plentiful, the short bursts of 5.56mm rounds came further apart, and nowhere near as close, which gave him hope . . . and he continued to run, now driven by the sounds of boots scattering small rocks and crunching lightly on the thick carpet of dried pine needles, forcing himself to ignore his aching legs and burning lungs.

At one point, he heard a feminine voice start to ask something — but Wintersole immediately cut her off with an order to maintain radio silence.

Halfway to his goal, Lightstone paused to rest, taking in deep breaths to fill his lungs and replenish the oxygen debt in his rapidly fatiguing muscles. As he did so, he could hear the muted sounds of other heavy breathing in his earphones.

That's why he didn't want them talking with each other,
Lightstone realized.
I can hear them . . . which means they can hear me, too.
Shaking his head in frustration, he quickly flipped off the microphone switch.

But as he did so, the first of the oncoming figures appeared in his night-vision goggles and immediately sent him off running again.

As he ran, Lightstone stayed on the winding path because he'd only traveled the route once before and figured this offered the least chance of spraining an ankle on a loose rock or unseen branch. He briefly considered circling back and trying to catch one of the trailing soldiers by surprise to acquire one of the M-16s, but immediately abandoned the idea, knowing that if he stopped —or did anything at all instead of run — he wouldn't stand the slightest chance against the team of professional soldiers who trained together, leapfrogging, surrounding, and killing multiple armed targets with Swiss-watch-like precision.

Instead, he continued to run, stopping only briefly every few minutes to check his compass and gather his remaining reserves . . . until, finally, he emerged from the tall stand of old-growth trees, crossed a shallow stream, and sprinted up a long incline to the edge of an open field.

He paused briefly at the top of the slope, looked back, saw two of the dark green figures materialize at the edge of the forest, and then, with the last remnants of his strength, staggered toward the darkened warehouse.

First Sergeant Aran Wintersole lay prone at the top of incline with the barrel of his M-16 assault rifle extended, waiting until the two members of his fire team signaled that they were in their proper flanking positions. Then he directed the figure lying next to him to set the crosshairs of her target scope on the slightly open side door of the warehouse nearest their location.

She did, and shook her head.

"I'm getting a diffuse heat source, but no movement," she whispered while continuing to scan the front of the warehouse with her IR-heat-sensing target locator.

"Wait a minute," she corrected herself. "I've got heat and movement. Looks like it's coming from the gap between the siding and the floor."

"How many?" Wintersole demanded.

"Two . . . no three, at least three targets. Definitely three."

"Where?"

"Far front corner of the warehouse, opposite side from the open door, in close to the main roll-up door," the communications specialist reported confidently.

Using hand signals, Wintersole quickly informed one-two, his heavy-weapons specialist, of the location of the three targets inside the warehouse, and ordered the corporal and his team to take the near door and go in hot while he and his team stayed outside to pick off the expected runners.

Once the Ranger first sergeant verified that everyone was in place, he signaled "Go!" with his raised right hand.

As Wintersole watched with professional calm, the Rangers took the door without hesitation. The roar of automatic weapons fire filled the night air as the lunging and rolling soldiers sent overlapping streams of 5.56mm rounds into the front and side corrugated metal walls of the building.

Then came the distinctive sound of full magazines replacing empty ones.

And then dead silence, broken only by a softly whispered, "Oh shit."

Another distinctly feminine and near-panicked voice whispered, "Help, I'm stuck."

"One-two, give me a sit-rep!" Wintersole immediately ordered.

Another period of silence.

"We've got a ... a situation . . . in here, First Sergeant," the team's heavy-weapons specialist whispered in a shaken voice.

"Get us out of here, First Sergeant," the feminine voice pleaded.

"One-two to one-one, request permission to withdraw," the heavy-weapons specialist whispered.

"Negative, one-two. Hold your position," Wintersole ordered. "Do you have Lightstone?"

Another long pause, then a soft, "I don't know, First Sergeant."

First Sergeant Aran Wintersole blinked in disbelief.

"Then go look and see, Corporal," the hunter-killer team leader ordered in a slow, very clear, and definitely threatening manner.

A much longer pause followed this time.

"We can't, First Sergeant."

The unimaginable words from arguably the toughest member of his Ranger hunter-killer recon team brought the combat-hardened first sergeant immediately to his feet. He charged toward the partially closed side door of the warehouse, reflexively thumbing the selector switch of his M-16 to full auto as he did so.

Once at the side door, Wintersole paused, M-16 at the ready position, and motioned to one-seven on the other side of the door opposite him. Without hesitation, the young soldier dived in through the doorway, sending a stream of 5.56mm rounds streaking over the heads of the other hunter-killer team members and punching through the far side wall of the warehouse . . . then rolled to the floor, automatically ejecting the empty magazine as he reached back for a full one with his left hand.

The instant he heard one-seven hit the floor, Wintersole slammed the door aside with his shoulder and lunged through the doorway, finger tightening on the trigger of his M-16, ready to kill the first thing that moved . . . and then stood, stunned and uncomprehending, as he stared at the incredible scene before him.

"Oh my God . . ." one-seven whispered, but Wintersole ignored him, feeling a very unfamiliar fear-induced chill run through him when he saw the hundreds of slowly moving eyes and legs glowing in varying combinations of bright red and iridescent blue in the bright green viewfinder of his night-vision goggles . . . and then the six, much larger bright eyes glowing in the far corner of the warehouse by the roll-up door.