"You think that we're being watched by a white rhino?" Marie Pascalaura asked suspiciously.
"No, not watched. More like we just happened to cross paths." Lightstone winked. "No big deal."
"I see," Marie nodded skeptically.
Probably a felony because the boots looked brand new, Lightstone told himself, vaguely proud of his knowledge of wildlife parts and products. But even so, he wasn't about to arrest someone for wearing a pair of rhino-hide boots. Not today anyway, he smiled, watching casually as the group shuffled up to the baggage-screening area. They stood just under the split-view overhead TV monitor that showed the two X-ray scanner screens and the flow of people through the two rectangular metal detectors.
Then, as Lightstone blinked in surprise, two of the men in the group did something completely unexpected.
Walking around to the side of the hand-carry X-ray unit, they casually displayed small, black-leather badge cases to the security officer standing in front of the walk-through metal detector. Then, as Lightstone continued to watch, all five of them walked around the side of the X-ray machine, past the metal scanner, and proceeded to the desk of the "C"-concourse duty officer, where they presented their three-page forms.
"Well, I'll be damned," Lightstone whispered.
"What is it?" Marie Pascalaura asked.
"I think I just figured out what it was that jarred my antennas. The five people I pointed out to you are cops."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive that at least two of them are," Lightstone nodded. The other three members of a group took the yellow and pink copies of their forms back, then picked up their bags and started walking down toward the "C" concourse.
"I'm pretty sure the other three are carrying concealed weapons, but I'm not sure that they're any kind of law- enforcement officers," Lightstone added.
"How do you know that?"
"They were careful to walk around the metal detector, as if they didn't want to set it off. But then they didn't show the security guards any badges. That's the first thing you've got to do when you try to bypass the screening system," he explained. "Otherwise, everybody gets real upset."
"Who would they let on an airplane carrying a gun except a cop?" Marie asked curiously.
"I don't know," Lightstone shrugged. "Maybe drug dealers, snitches, CIA agents, terrorists, people like that."
Marie Pascalaura stared at him for another long moment. "Anybody ever tell you that you've got a warped imagination?" she finally asked.
"Just about every supervisor I ever had," Lightstone admitted.
"Are you sure you're mentally fit to get married?"
Henry Lightstone blinked in surprise and then smiled. "You mean you changed your mind?"
"Not necessarily," Marie Pascalaura hedged as she stood up and reached for her carry-on bag. "Let's see if anybody starts shooting at us before we get on that plane. We probably ought to worry about getting married after we get to Anchorage."
"I just talked to the pilot," Shoshin Watanabe said as he watched the attractive woman on the other side of the security check stretch to give her boyfriend a long, lingering kiss. "The plane is refueled and ready to go."
"How much time?" Gerd Maas grunted as he dropped his carry-on bag next to his expensive rhino-skin boots. He stared out through the window at the approaching private jet that they would be boarding. The pilot had received special permission to pick up passengers at the Horizon gate while the plane was being refueled for the long flight.
Standing beside his team leader, Shoshin Watanabe continued to watch Marie Pascalaura and Henry Lightstone as they picked up their carry-on bags and walked to the end of the security check-in line. Typical Americans, he thought. No sense of shame when it came to fondling each other in public.
Then he looked down at his watch and smiled. "In about four minutes," he said, "it will all begin."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Monday September 13th
The call came in at seventy-thirty that Monday morning. Carl Scoby tried to beg off because he had planned to spend the day with the resident-agent staff of the Marana Law Enforcement Training Center on a tour of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation.
But the woman was insistent that someone had to show up. She knew where twenty-four bear carcasses had been buried after their paws had been cut off, and she could show him where at least fifty bear gallbladders were being dried in preparation for sale.
Scoby tried to explain that he was new to the area, already had plans for the Indian reservation, and would much rather make an appointment to talk with her on the following day.
"But don't you see," the informant said, "the bears are from the reservation." The woman, who sounded like she might be German, added with a nervous edge to her voice: "My boyfriend is planning on making a big sale this evening, and if the bastard ever finds out I've squealed on him, he'll really beat me up bad the next time."
Scoby finally agreed to meet the woman at ten-thirty that morning at her cabin on the Simon River. If it turned out to be something worthwhile, he told himself, he and the other resident instructors at the Marana Training Center could always set up a surveillance and track the boyfriend back to his customers.
So at exactly ten-thirty that morning, Carl Scoby drove his Jeep to the cabin, got out, and looked around briefly at the surrounding forest.
"Mrs. Hoffstedler?" he asked when an attractive young woman opened the door slightly and looked out over the stretched chain latch.
"Yes, I am Carine Hoffstedler," Carine Mueller acknowledged in a thickly accented voice. "Who are you?"
"I'm Special Agent Carl Scoby of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, ma'am," Scoby said, holding out his badge and credentials to the visibly nervous woman. "Is your, uh, husband home?"
"No, my boyfriend and his friends, they are not here," Mueller said as she unlatched the chain and then stepped far enough outside for Scoby to see the large, purplish bruise on the side of her cheek. "But I was afraid you might be one of their friends, checking up on me. Please, come in."
Responding to well-ingrained habits, Scoby entered the cabin cautiously, but it was immediately apparent that they were alone in the small two-room structure.
"Would you like some coffee?"
"No, thank you." Scoby smiled.
"Then let me take you there right now to show you the bears," she said as she strapped a small pack around her slim waist. She grabbed up a jacket and led Scoby out the back door to a narrow trail.
"This is one of my favorite places," Carine Mueller said as she carefully moved branches aside so they could pass. "I'm going to hate to leave it."
"Have you been here long?" Scoby asked, trying to concentrate more on the forest and less on the woman's tight jeans.
"You mean at this house?"
"No, I mean in the United States."
"Oh, not so long," Mueller shrugged.
"You speak English very well, but I couldn't help noticing your accent," Scoby said.
"Oh, yes. You like the way I speak?"
"Yes, I do," Scoby smiled. "It's very, uh, flavorful," he said, searching for the word.
Carine Mueller laughed, looking back at the agent. "I have never heard anyone say that before."
"Well…"
"My boyfriend thinks I am very sexy when I talk English, but then he is not so shy as most of you Americans," Mueller said. Scoby thought she had a great deal of composure for a supposedly nervous and abused woman.
"You think Americans are shy?" he asked.
Mueller nodded. "You Americans know the big talk, but not so much the gentle words. I think it is because you are too shy, and that is no way to impress a Fraulein."
"You're German, then?" Scoby asked.
"No, not German, but you are very close," Mueller said as she continued to push forward through the narrow trail. "I was born in Germany, but my father is Swiss and my mother is French, so I am what you Americans would call a hybrid. Is that the right word?"