"You want to call it now, or wait?" Parker's electronically scrambled voice asked with calm, professional patience.
"Can you identify them?"
"The tall one with the beard is Sam Jackson, one of the senior refuge officers out here. No make on the second guy."
"Are they armed?"
"From what we can see, it looks like both of them are carrying stainless-steel handguns, short barrels. Probably standard-issue Model Sixty-sixes. No long guns."
"Then the second man is either another refuge officer or a special agent," Maas said as he watched the orange floatplane sweep back around over the eastern end of Skilak Lake.
"That's the way we read it," Parker agreed. "Thing is, we figure you'd better make a call one way or the other pretty damn quick. That guy up there in the Cessna makes another pass, he's bound to spot either us, you guys, or the plane."
"You deal with the two on the ground, we will deal with the plane," Gerd Maas said, the chill in his voice still evident despite the electronic scrambling.
"That mean we have clearance?"
"Yes," Maas said. "Put them down."
Chapter Thirty-Four
In reaching to grasp the top edge of the shale outcropping so that he could pull himself up, Henry Lightstone almost put his forehead right in the cross hairs of Arturo Bolin's extremely accurate rifle.
But the deafening roar of the Cessna Skywagon's single engine as it passed over caused Lightstone to drop back at the last second. He took the packset radio from Sam Jackson.
"Woeshack, can you read me?"
There was a long pause, then Thomas Woeshack's excited voice came over the air.
"Ten-Four, I think I saw something!"
"Where?"
"Hold on, I'm coming back around for a better look!"
"Woeshack, what the hell did you see?" Lightstone demanded.
No answer.
"Woeshack!" Lightstone yelled into the radio mike, but it was already hopeless. He could see the small orange floatplane coming around in a tight turn just barely above the treeline, the roar of the powerful engine increasing as the special agent-pilot fought to maintain his precarious altitude.
"Jesus Christ, I think he's going to crash!" Sam Jackson whispered.
"Goddamn it, Woeshack, get your ass back up in the air!" Lightstone raged into the radio as the Cessna Skywagon appeared to stall but then recovered as Woeshack banked the wings of the floatplane and opened the throttle to maximum power.
"I can see-" Woeshack yelled into his mike.
At that instant, the resounding overhead roar of the airplane completely overwhelmed the survival instincts of the Kodiak bear's surviving cub and it broke from the shelter of the dense scrub brush.
Roy Parker reacted out of pure instinct, triggering a quick burst of 5.56mm rounds that threw fountains of dirt, rocks, and twigs into the air as the multiple impacts of the high- velocity bullets sent the frantic cub tumbling back into the brush in an explosion of dirt, torn hair, and blood.
"What the hell!"
Enraged by the agonized cries of the horribly wounded cub, Sam Jackson started to scramble up and over the shale outcropping and was immediately thrown backward as a 7.62mm copper-jacketed bullet tore through his upper shoulder and blew a bloody hole out the back of his down vest.
Henry Lightstone dropped the packset radio, reached for his hip-holstered. 357 Magnum and lunged forward against the protective surface of the shale outcropping. He took a quick, cautious look over the edge, then pulled himself up fast to trigger off three concussive rounds with his short- barreled. 357 revolver. Sensing that he hit the first crouched figure, Lightstone then whirled to his right and fired the last three rounds at the barely visible figure that lay prone, a sniper rifle pointed at the dead cub.
Using a pistol with only a 2-inch barrel at a distance of over a hundred yards, Lightstone had little hope of making a hit. But that didn't concern him, because all he really wanted to do was to keep everybody down long enough for him to get to Sam Jackson.
After firing the last shot, he ducked down behind the outcropping and only narrowly avoided the second bullet that exploded in a stinging shower of lead, copper and shale fragments just a few inches above his head.
Cursing to himself, Lightstone crouched down with his back against the rocky cliff, quickly dumped the empty casings out of the stainless-steel revolver and fed one of the six-round speed-loaders from his jacket into the open chambers. Then he scrambled down to the lower ledge to where the bearded refuge officer was sprawled out on his back, with his blood-covered left hand clenched tightly against his upper right shoulder, his eyes glazed in shock.
"Henry, can you read me?" The voice of Special Agent-Pilot Thomas Woeshack was muffled because Jackson's radio was facedown in the brush.
Ignoring the discarded radio, Lightstone knelt down and gently pulled Jackson's trembling hand away from the bleeding wound. He used his folding knife to cut and peel back the blood-soaked layers of vest, shirt and long underwear.
After taking a brief look at the exposed entry point, Lightstone tried to gently move the refuge officer's severely injured shoulder so that he could examine the exit area, and then winced inwardly at the sound of shattered bone ends grinding against each other as the refuge officer groaned in agony.
Lightstone began to use his folding knife to cut the cotton lining out of his own jacket.
"What-" Jackson whispered.
"Trying to keep you from getting the refuge all messy," Lightstone said, glancing up and listening for the sound of anyone moving in their direction as he began to tear the jacket lining into long strips.
"Hurts like hell," Sam Jackson mumbled.
"Yeah, I bet it does," Lightstone muttered as he began to pull handfuls of the synthetic fill from the lining of his thick jacket. "You're losing a lot of blood out the back, but I think I can get it stopped. Looks like a straight through-and- through punch, no expansion. Must be using ball ammo."
"Military?" Jackson whispered weakly, blinking his eyes in response to the pain of each shallow breath. "Nobody… uses that stuff out here anymore."
"Henry, this is Woeshack. Can you read me?"
"Yeah, well, somebody is today. By the way, you're not going to like this next part, but I've got to do it." Lightstone held chunks of the synthetic fill on either side of the wound. "You ready?"
"Yeah, sure," Jackson nodded, blinking his glassy eyes as he looked up at Lightstone. "Hurry up, get it over… Oh, shit! '" he screamed. Then his eyes rolled back into his head and he went limp as Lightstone used the tips of his fingers to jam the filler material deeper into the gaping wound.
"Yeah, hell of an idea. I'd faint too if it were me," he muttered to himself as he quickly used the strips of cotton lining to tie the blood-soaked filler in place.
Lightstone scrambled back up to the top edge of the outcropping, the. 357 Magnum back in his hand, just in time to watch the man in shredded-rag camouflage gear kneel down beside his prone partner. He set the bipod-mounted sniper rifle in place, dropped the ammo belt with the extra 7.62mm clips next to the scoped weapon, slipped into the green nylon harness rig that held eight extra thirty-round magazines in snap pouches, and then picked up the 5.56mm Colt Commando automatic carbine.
"Oh, shit," Lightstone whispered.
"Henry!"
Cursing, Lightstone scrambled back over to the clump of brush where he had dropped the small packset radio. In the background, somewhere off to his right, he could hear the echoing roar of the Cessna Skywagon's powerful engine as Woeshack circled the floatplane high over the center of the huge lake.
"This is Henry, go ahead," he said, bringing the radio up to his mouth and keying the mike as he cautiously peered around the edge of the outcropping and saw the figure with the short-barreled automatic weapon start to move forward from tree to tree in their general direction.