"You know, we could be stretching ourselves a little too far on this Halahan-scam business," Henry Lightstone cautioned.
"But think about how they'd work it, Henry," Paxton argued. "They set it up so you trip across these military characters at the restaurant, you follow them and spot their surveillance, you warn us, we notify Halahan, he tells us to stand by — let Charlie Team handle things themselves — we ignore him like we usually do, ride to the rescue…"
"Hey, their side even gets a fair maiden too — Natasha!" Thomas Woeshack interrupted, grinning widely. "I'll bet she'll be surprised when Henry rides in wearing the witch's scarf on his lance!"
"Yeah, that's putting it mildly," Stoner chuckled.
"… and we find ourselves surrounded by video cameras and up to our butts in red smoke when the referees — presumably Halahan and Moore — set off all the MTEARs they've probably been tagging us with ever since we landed in Medford," Paxton finished after giving the team's Eskimo agent/pilot a sadly sympathetic look.
"You've got to admit, Henry, the whole thing tracks real nice," Mike Takahara added.
"Yeah, I know… it sounds good, it really does. But for Christ's sake, I broke that guy's wrist!" Lightstone continued to look perplexed in spite of the other's comments. "I know I did. I heard it snap. And the other one — that pale-eyed guy the kid called Sergeant — is definitely a dangerous s.o.b. I can tell you that much for sure, whoever or whatever else he may be."
"Okay, so these particular militants are tougher than the average bear." Larry Paxton shrugged indifferently. "You telling me Halahan couldn't get his hands on a team of marines out of Quantico, or even some Army Rangers out of Fort Bragg? Guys who wouldn't think any more about a broken wrist than you would a sprained toe?"
"The FBI's Hostage Rescue Team trains at Quantico," Mike Takahara reminded Henry. "And I hear they hire a lot of those guys straight out of the military. Halahan would know that… and a training scenario like this would be right down their alley, too."
"There you go." Paxton nodded his head in satisfaction.
"But what if we're wrong?" Lightstone pressed, still not fully convinced.
"You mean what if Charlie Team really is being tagged by a bunch of hard-as-nails characters, for whatever reason, and they don't know it?" Paxton asked.
Lightstone nodded his head.
The Bravo Team leader paused for a moment. "Then they could be in deep shit."
"Exactly."
"So what can we do to make sure… before we go turn things around on Halahan and Moore again?" Stoner asked.
"I think — at a minimum — we have to report what I saw." Lightstone looked over at Paxton for confirmation. "How could we word it? In the process of making contact with subjects linked to suspect Sage, special agent Lightstone observed members of Charlie Team in the area of Jasper County, Oregon, under active surveillance by individuals who appear to have military backgrounds. Request further instructions."
Larry Paxton stared pensively at the floor for a few seconds. Then he nodded his head and consulted his watch. "Henry's right. We've got to be sure. But it's two o'clock now, which makes it five o'clock East Coast time on a Friday night."
"No problem. Halahan and Moore both wear beepers," Mike Takahara reminded.
"Yeah, but for emergency messages only." Paxton scrutinized his troops carefully. "The question is, do we really have an emergency here? Or just a situation?"
"If that surveillance is for real, I sure wouldn't want those guys following me for very long," Lightstone announced firmly, then hesitated. "But as far as an emergency goes, I guess I can't say they did anything especially threatening… outside of leaving that MTEAR device on my truck."
"Which could have been put there by someone from Charlie Team just as easily," Mike Takahara reminded him. "Donato, LiBrandi, and Marashenko are all tech-trained. Fact of the matter is, for all we know, they could've put those things on your truck right after you rented it."
"That's a point," Lightstone agreed.
"So how do we go about reporting all of this to Halahan in a timely manner, without making it sound like we're panicking out here?" Larry Paxton asked his team.
"I can send an e-mail message to Freddy — to the office and to his home computer — along with a couple of 'tell dad to check his e-mail' notes to his son and daughter," Mike Takahara suggested. "I know he spends a lot of time with his kids on the Net. Probably at least one of them will be on-line this evening, and he'll get the message within the next three to four hours. Worst-case scenario is he doesn't get it until he gets to work Monday."
Paxton nodded his head. "Okay, do it, then keep an eye out for any return mail this evening. I really want to see what Freddy has to say about all this."
"No problem. I'll set up an audio alarm so the computer beeps us if we get any incoming messages," the tech agent proposed as he reached for his nearby computer case.
"In the meantime" — Henry Lightstone rubbed his sore arm distractedly — "I've got an idea how we just might be able to find out what's going on around here."
"Yeah? What's that?" Paxton demanded.
"What's the first thing they teach covert agents to do on a new assignment?"
"Check in with the local resident agent," Thomas Woeshack responded immediately.
"You think those characters on Charlie Team would actually do something like that?" Dwight Stoner asked skeptically.
"Oh hell, yes. Rookie agents are like that." Larry Paxton smiled cheerfully and turned to Mike Takahara, who was busy hooking up the modem line to the back of his notebook computer.
"Mike, who's the closest resident agent in southern Oregon?"
"Just a second."
Thirty seconds later, Takahara looked up from his screen. "Looks like Wilbur Boggs."
"Good old Wilbur. The terror of the Chesapeake Bay when he was a young agent. I remember hearing he'd gotten transferred out to Oregon. Pissed off more duck-poaching congressmen than…"
A startled look suddenly appeared on Larry Paxton's face. Then he looked around at his fellow agents. "You guys thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Oh yeah," Henry Lightstone murmured softly, his eyes lighting up with amusement as he and Stoner and Takahara all nodded their heads. "Halahan, Moore, Charlie Team, Glynco, Bobby, Susan, the soothsayer, the witch-lady… and now good old Wilbur. One big happy game-playing family."
"You mean they're all working together to set us up?" Thomas Woeshack asked. "Wilbur Boggs, too?"
"It sure does look that way." Lightstone shook his head slowly, trying to ignore the apprehension that continued to plague him as the pieces of the puzzle apparently fell into place. "One big game, and we're the target."
"You mean we were the target," Dwight Stoner corrected him.
"Exactly." Larry Paxton smiled again. "So where do we find Special Agent Wilbur Boggs these days?"
"You'll love this part," the tech agent predicted.
"What?"
"If I remember my map correctly, we're about twenty minutes from his office right now."
Chapter Thirty-five
Awareness, when it came to Wilbur Boggs again, freed him from the stupor that enveloped him like a dank, impenetrable cloud.
The vague feelings of fighting the ropes and nets, struggling in the darkness, or trying to work himself free of obstructions trying to cover his nose and mouth vanished.
Instead, he awoke to a sense of freedom, and brightness, and general well-being marred only by the persistent dryness in his throat, the gentle numbness that didn't quite mask the pain which emanated from several parts of his body, and most unsettling of all, the confusion regarding where he was… and why.