by David Archer
Allison's eyebrows shot up her forehead. “Depends. What is it?”
“Well, I know we're not supposed to use our operational cell phones for personal use, but there's this girl back home who really wants me to call her…”
BOOK 3
IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING
“Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.”
- Isaiah Berlin
ONE
Noah Wolf walked into the conference room with Sarah Child, his transportation officer and apparent girlfriend, beside him. Neil Blessing, his computer and intelligence specialist, was already there. Allison Peterson, the director of E & E, and Donald Jefferson, her Chief of Staff, shook hands with them and pointed to the coffee and doughnuts that were always present in these meetings. Moose Conway, who was Noah's backup muscle, arrived only a few moments later and the briefing got underway.
“You've had almost four months to take it easy since you all got yourselves torn up on the last mission, so we've got an easy one for you, this time,” Jefferson said. “No international travel this time; you're going to be working right here at home. The DEA has identified high-ranking members of the Angelos Michoacan drug cartel operating from a base in the Midwest, and has requested our services to eliminate them. There are five primary targets in all, and it's necessary that they're eliminated in such a way that it sends a message back to the cartel.”
“I've got a question,” Neil said. “If they know who they are, why don't they just go and arrest them? Why send us in?”
“That's a valid question,” Allison said, “so I'll give you a straight answer. DEA and FBI have been tracking them for a few months now, but these people are smart. They don't allow anything to happen that could provide evidence to back up a warrant or lead to an arrest. DEA has picked up dozens of their dealers and mules, but none of them are allowed to know enough to give us any valid intelligence. This is a case where the best way to put a stop to their enterprise is to simply cut off the head.”
Neil was shaking his head. “Wait a minute, wait a minute, let me get this straight,” he said. “They don't have enough evidence to arrest these guys, but they have enough to say let's just kill them and get it over with? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought we were still in America.”
Allison smiled her famous dragon-lady smile at him. “We have detailed intelligence from before these people came to the United States, positively identifying them as major players in the cartel. The DEA can prove that many of the dealers and mules they've arrested have had regular contact with them, but nothing that adds up to sufficient evidence to get a warrant. Since those dealers are distributing some pretty high-grade heroin and cocaine with all the chemical signatures to prove it's coming from the Angelos cartel, I didn't have any problem authorizing the sanctions.”
Neil shrugged but settled back into his chair without any further comments. Allison nodded to Jefferson, and he went on.
“As I said, the idea is to make a statement with their termination,” he said. “We want the cartel to think long and hard before they send any more people or product into our country. How you go about it is entirely up to you, Camelot, but the messier you can make it, the better. The Angelos Cartel is one of the most brutal in the world, and the FBI credits this particular group with at least three-dozen murders here on our soil. Some of those murders were execution-style, and rumor has it that they were ordered because of a few dollars missing from the daily take. The worst of it is that when the Angelos decide to take you out, they don't just stop with you. They take out your entire family as well, eliminating, as they put it, ‘you and your seed from the gene pool’ completely.”
“I want to say something before we finish up here,” Allison said. “Noah, I want you to make it look like the evil they've been dishing out came back to haunt them. Each of the cartel members in Columbia has a family with them. I'd personally like to see you give them back exactly what they've been handing out.”
Sarah gasped. “You want him to kill their families?”
Allison didn't even blink. “Yes,” she said, looking Noah in the eye. “If it's feasible and can be done without significantly putting you or the team at risk, that's exactly what I want, and before you go all moral on me, Sarah, listen up. The higher-ranking members of any drug cartel tend to operate like a family business. As long as any member of the family is still around, business goes on as usual. Besides that, the cartels use terror tactics to try to keep people in line, which means that a lot of people who never intended to get involved in the drug trade are too frightened to try to get out. Feeding them the same slop they dish out might throw a bit of a worry into their leadership, but it's also almost certain to strengthen the spines of the people they run roughshod over. Maybe we can get those people to rise up against the cartels and help to shut them down for good.”
She paused for a moment, as if thinking. “That being said, I should point something out. Alejandra Gomez, one of the members in Columbia, has a two-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son. No matter how I feel about their tactics, I can't sanction the murder of children, so leave them alone. Other than that, the next youngest is Eduardo Menendez's sixteen-year-old son, Manuel, but he's a soldier in his father's operation with a half-dozen kills to his credit already. The rest of the family members are brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles. They tend to take the whole clan with them when they go somewhere.”
Jefferson had stopped talking and let her hold the floor, but then he nodded. “As terrible as it sounds, this really is the best way to handle the situation.”
Noah never broke eye contact with Allison. “I'll do it,” he said. “And I'm glad you clarified that about the kids. I'll make sure they're not around before I strike.”
There was an uncomfortable silence for a few seconds, but then Jefferson cleared his throat and said, “I've got your ID kits ready, along with the dossier on your targets, so you can leave whenever you're ready. Columbia is a college town, so it has a ready-made drug market. We believe the cartel chose it as their central distribution point because of its location, and because transportation to just about anywhere else in the country is readily available there. There is an airport, but I'm going to suggest that you drive in, rather than fly.”
“You'll want to swing by the Armory,” Allison said, “and pick up any weapons you might want to take along, and I've already told Wally to expect you. You'll get your vehicles there, and I'm sure he's got some other toys that might come in useful on this mission.”
Packets were passed to each of the men, and Sarah received a leather purse. Inside, they found wallets and the special, ultra-secure cell phones used during missions, and Noah also received a thick file folder that contained information on all of the targets. They all glanced at their IDs and scanned through the wallets and such to learn more about who they were supposed to be for this mission.
Noah would be Wyatt Wilson. His wallet contained a driver's license, several credit cards and a few hundred dollars in cash, along with several photos. Some of them showed Noah with an older couple, others had him posing with Sarah or another woman, and one showed him with a couple of young boys. There were also numerous worn-out business cards, a few scribbled notes and a long-compressed condom. The data sheet that came with the wallet explained that the people in the digitally constructed photos were his parents, an older sister, a girlfriend (Sarah) and two nephews.
Moose's new name was Jimmy McCormick, while Neil became Leonard Kincaid. That left only Sarah, who found that she was now known as Rosemary Wingo. Her data sheet told her that she was Wyatt Wilson's fiancé, and Sarah's eyes grew wide when she saw a modest but lovely engagement ring in a plastic bag attached to it.
She took it out and slipped it onto her finger, then glanced up at Allison and caught the woman grinning at her. Sarah blushed as she grinned back, but the men seemed not to notice.
Jefferson cleared his throat to get their attention. “Since this is your first time running a mission
domestically, I want to point out one thing you need to know. On each of your driver’s licenses is a magnetic strip. If you happen to be arrested for anything connected to the mission, tell them that you are a federal agent working undercover and insist that the officers run that strip through a reader. It will instruct them to contact the US State Department, and arrangements will be made immediately for your release.”
Noah looked at Allison. “What kind of timetable do we have on this?”
“If it takes more than a week,” Allison replied, “I might begin to wonder if you're slipping. It's not about getting it done quickly, though, it's about making sure there's no doubt that they were taken out deliberately and as a result of their activities. To the rest of the world, it can look like a drug war, but I want the cartel back in Mexico to know exactly what it is: Uncle Sam got pissed and had them whacked. Taking out their whole families, especially in an obviously orchestrated way, would be beyond the capability of any of our local drug gangs. They’ll get the message.”
“I'll play it by ear,” Noah said. “What kind of techniques does the cartel use in executions?”
“The usual,” Allison said. “Bullet to the head, decapitation, evisceration, bombings. It depends on just how strong a message they're trying to send. You'll need to think the way they do.”
Noah nodded. “I can handle it,” he said. He rose from his seat at the table and collected the rest of the team by eye. They shook hands all around and followed him out of the room. A moment later, three vehicles left the underground parking garage. Neil and Moose headed home, while Noah took Sarah along in his Corvette to begin choosing equipment.
Noah flashed his ID at the guard shack that marked the entrance to the restricted area of the gigantic compound. Taking up almost half of the fifteen-square-mile region, this was where the top-secret aspects of E & E could be found, and the local residents simply thought it was some sort of military complex. Noah drove along the twisting, mile-long roadway and emerged into a cluster of large concrete buildings.
He pulled up in front of the R & D building and was greeted at the entrance by one of their security officers. Once again he showed his ID, and Sarah produced her own. The guard studied them intently for several seconds, comparing the photographs to the faces in front of him before he handed them back and allowed them to pass into the main hallway.
Wally Lawson stepped out of one of the rooms off that hallway, saw Noah and broke into a big grin.
“Camelot!” Wally shouted, and then he reached out and grabbed Noah's hand, pumping it vigorously. “It's good to see you. Man, oh man, have I got some goodies to show you today!”
Noah's eyebrows rose slightly. “We got a mission,” he said. “I was told to come to you for vehicles and to see what else you might have.”
Wally's eyes went wide and his face lit up in a gigantic smile. “Oh, great! What kind of mission? Where at? You do know that I'm cleared for all that information, right?”
“Yes,” Noah said, “I've been told that. It's a domestic mission, the elimination of some high-ranking cartel members and their families. They've set up an operation in Columbia, Missouri, and I gather their drugs are flooding the streets throughout the Midwest, maybe even a lot further.”
Wally began chewing on his bottom lip, his eyes darting all around as he thought about what Noah had told him. “Okay, okay,” he mumbled. “Okay, I've got just the thing for you! Come on, you're gonna love this!”
Wally took off down the hall without even waiting to see if Noah and Sarah followed, and they fell in behind. He led them to one of the development rooms further down the hall and motioned for them to follow him inside.
Within the room were two technicians, a man and a woman. They looked up, curious, and Wally introduced them to Noah. “Jazz, Lenny,” Wally said, addressing the woman first, “this is Camelot! Camelot, meet Jasmine and Lenny. These two are a pair of the brightest and most diabolical minds you'll ever find anywhere, and we were lucky to get them.”
Noah shook hands with both of the technicians and introduced Sarah, as well. When all of the introductions and handshakes were over, Wally spoke up again. “Okay, kids, show ’em what you've got.”
Jasmine smiled. “I'm guessing you're familiar with plastic explosives, right? Well, Lenny and I have come up with a whole new formula that is half again as powerful when it explodes, but a dozen times more stable. As a result, we’re able to do things with it that no one has ever done before. Take a look over here.”
She pointed to where Lenny was standing beside a workbench that held what appeared to be a very large suitcase. He opened the lid and raised it, and a metal framework expanded upward until it made a cube that measured about thirty inches on a side. There were a number of components inside the framework and a lot of circuitry on the outside.
Tucked inside the lid of the case was what appeared to be one large plastic tank and several smaller ones. The big one contained a thick, white liquid, while the others contained thinner liquids in various colors.
A slot near the bottom of the case opened up, and something slid out. A second later, it opened to become the keyboard and monitor of a computer.
“This is a high-speed 3-D printer,” Lenny said, “but instead of using plastics, it uses our formula of plastic explosive. The explosive itself is a neutral color, sort of an off white, but this printer can inject color into each cubic millimeter of the plastic, so you can make an object that is intricately detailed. It can blend colors to give you exactly the shade you need, anything from dull plastic to shiny metallic. Let me show you what it can do.”
Lenny turned toward the small computer that was attached to the case. He tapped the keys for a moment, calling up a file in a CAD program, and it displayed a three-dimensional image of an intricately painted figurine of a clown. He used a trackball to rotate the image on the screen, then pointed at some parts on the upright supports of the printer.
“Another difference between this printer and others is that this one is also a 3-D scanner. You simply set an object on the print bed and tell it to scan through the computer, and it does the rest. Those lasers will get an absolutely accurate measurement of the shape and size of the object you’re scanning.” He pointed at the screen in front of them again. “Now, I scanned this figurine in a couple of months ago, as we were first testing the printer. Notice how it has almost a dozen different colors, counting the clown's face and costume, right? Now, watch this.” He tapped another key and the printer's nozzle began moving over the print bed at the bottom of the machine.
“That's going a lot faster than the ones I see on TV,” Noah said.
Jasmine, who was standing beside him, smiled. “It's called a Rep Rap, which means Replicating Rapid Prototyper. That clown is about nine inches tall, and a normal 3-D printer would take up to four hours or more to complete it. This one can do it in about eight minutes.”
Lenny grinned at them. “That's because of our formula,” he said. “Most 3-D printers use a solid string of plastic, melting it a little at a time to put it where it belongs. Ours is liquid, and the hot print head actually causes it to solidify where we want it.”
“Look,” Sarah said, “I can see its feet already. How do you make them so shiny? That almost looks like real ceramic.”
“Well, in a way, it is ceramic,” Lenny said. “Along with the color, we add a glazing agent that crystallizes quickly. As it's pushed through the hot nozzle, the glazing agent melts and gives it that shiny-wet look. Without special analytical equipment, you'd never be able to tell it isn't a real ceramic figurine.”
Suddenly, the print head rose away from the work it was doing, and a mechanical arm swung down from the top of the machine. A small cylindrical object, about an inch long and a quarter-inch in diameter, was placed inside one of the hollow legs that stood there. The arm then moved away, and the print head resumed its work, securing the little device in place.
“Before you ask, I'll just tell you what that was,” Lenn
y said. “That was the detonator. It has a small charge of its own, a super small battery and a microcircuit receiver that can be activated manually, or set to go off at a certain time or after X number of minutes. Give it a few more moments, it's almost done, and then we can show you what it's capable of.”
It took about four more minutes to complete the figurine, and then Lenny invited Noah to remove it from the printer. He picked it up and felt its weight, then ran his fingers over the surface.
“You're right,” he said. “If I hadn't watched you print it out, I'd never know this wasn't real. I'm assuming it's pretty stable? What would happen if I dropped it right now?”
Jasmine grinned. “Not a thing,” she said. “This stuff is so well bonded together that it wouldn't even break. Go ahead, try it if you want to.”
Sarah's eyes went wide, and she shook her head at Noah. “That's okay,” he said, “I'll take your word for it. What about impact, or fire? I know that C4 won't explode unless it's got a detonator, but it will burn.”
Lenny took the figurine from his hand and set it on a workbench, then picked up a propane torch and aimed the flame at its head. After several seconds, it was obvious that the flame was having no effect, so he turned it off and picked up what looked like an eight ball from a pool table.
“I made this the other day,” he said, “but I don't really need it.” He set it on the workbench and then picked up a small, heavy hammer. He grinned at Sarah and then brought the hammer down as hard as he could onto the ball. It shattered into several pieces, and they saw that it had been hollow. Inside was one of the small detonators, stuck to the inner wall of one of the pieces.
“You could shoot holes through it, and it wouldn't explode. It takes a special detonator that uses Triaminotrinitrobenzene and Diaminodinitroethene in combination to produce enough heat and shock to set it off, but boy, when it does! Come on, we'll show you.”
