by David Archer
Sarah watched him for a moment, then reached across and laid her hand on his arm. “Well, it’s like you said. You ain’t no Prince Charming, but I’m not exactly Cinderella, either. I’m okay with the way things are; just don’t hold it against me if I daydream now and then, okay?”
“Everybody daydreams,” Neil said suddenly from the backseat. “What are we daydreaming about today?”
Sarah leaned into the gap between the front seats and smiled at him. “Noah and I are daydreaming about getting married and adopting you. We decided we want children, and you’re the most childish person we know.”
Neil stared at her for five seconds, and then stuck his tongue out at her. He closed his eyes and leaned against the door and was snoring again only a minute later. Sarah turned her attention back to Noah.
“So, did the old man have anything else for us?”
Noah shook his head. “Not yet. He thinks it will take a little time for the captives to talk. One of the things I like about him is that he doesn’t try to torture information out of people, or at least not in any way most people would think of as torture. He said they try to break down reluctance rather than resistance, so nobody’s trying to just say what they think we want to hear.”
“That makes sense, I guess,” Sarah said. “I just wish they’d tell us something, anything to let us know whether we’re on the right track or not.” She rubbed her hand on his arm for a moment. “So, tell me about this girl we’re going to see. You said she was your best friend, but was she more than that?”
Noah glanced at her and then turned his eyes back to the road. “In a way,” he said. “We were both unusual, neither of us was the normal teenager. I was the guy who went through puberty without even noticing it, and she was so wrapped up in trying to learn everything she could that she didn’t want to take the time to deal with boys. She came up with the idea that if people thought we were a couple, they wouldn’t bother either of us, and then she had to explain to me how a boyfriend was supposed to act with his girlfriend.”
Sarah’s eyebrows were as high as they could go on her forehead. “And how did that work out for you?”
“Pretty well, actually. She taught me about kissing and holding hands and such, and then we started going out on dates together with some other kids who were dating.”
“Oh, really? So, this girl we’re going to check on was your girlfriend. How long did that last?”
“It was about three-and-a-half years, from the time I was thirteen up until just before I turned seventeen and would have started my junior year in high school. We were together in the same foster home for a couple of years, and then I got sent to live on a farm, so we only got to see each other in school and on weekends after that.”
Sarah sat quietly for a moment, and Noah looked over at her briefly. “If you’re wanting to know if it was a real relationship, it wasn’t. Each of us was just the convenient way out of a bad situation for the other one. She wanted someone to hang out with and do girlfriend things with, and I needed to cover up the fact that I didn’t need a girlfriend at all. It was a workable solution. And if you’re wondering whether it was a sexual relationship, yes, it was.”
Sarah lowered her eyes to her lap. “Did you—I mean, was it like us? Did you love her, the way you were talking about loving me the other night?”
Noah didn’t say anything for a moment, and Sarah finally looked up at his face. “Noah?”
“I’m trying to figure out how to explain it,” he said. “Molly was my friend, nothing more. When we were pretending to be a couple, it was just that, a pretense. We each needed a camouflage to cover up how we were different from everybody else, so we were obviously the ideal solution for each other.” He looked over at her and smiled, then turned his eyes back to the road again. “When I was busy and couldn’t see her, it didn’t bother me a bit. With you, I’ve come to the point that when you’re not around, I find myself wondering where you are and what you’re doing. That may not seem like much of a difference, but from my perspective it’s pretty profound.”
Sarah still had her hand on his arm, and slid it down to entwine her fingers with his. “I think I understand,” she said. “So, when we get there, I don’t have anything to worry about?”
Noah’s eyebrows lowered and he glanced at her. “Worry about? What do you mean?”
Sarah suddenly laughed. “Never mind,” she said. “If you don’t understand why I asked, then obviously I don’t.”
“Could you two keep it down,” Neil grumbled. “A few of us are trying to sleep back here.”
Sarah looked back to make a face at him, but he hadn’t even opened his eyes. She squeezed Noah’s hand and leaned back in the seat. It wasn’t long before she dozed off and Noah was alone once again.
It was almost eleven before he had to stop for gas, and everyone woke up as he pulled off the ramp. “Gas stop,” he announced. “Anybody hungry?”
“I am,” Moose said. “Where are we?”
“Almost to Kansas City. There’s a half-dozen restaurants here, take your pick.”
They chose a small truck stop that had a KFC attached and Noah filled the tank while the rest went inside to use the restrooms and freshen up. When he was finished, he pulled the car up to the building and made his own way in to find the facilities.
Sarah was waiting for him when he came out, but Neil and Moose had already gone over to the restaurant side. There was a buffet and they were already making their ways along it, piling chicken, corn-on-the-cob and other side dishes onto plates that looked like they were about to break. Noah ordered two more buffets for himself and Sarah and they followed the guys to a table near the windows.
Neil was already working on his second drumstick by the time they sat down, and Moose was almost finished with a breast. Sarah stared at them for a second and said, “You guys are pigs.”
“Hey!” Neil said. “Moose is a pig, I’m a growing boy! I have to eat to keep up my strength.”
Moose put down the bones and looked at Sarah. “He’s right, I’m a pig. Especially when it comes to fried chicken.” He picked up another breast and bit into it.
ELEVEN
Sarah took the wheel when they got back on the road, and they made good time across Missouri. All four of them fell silent as they passed Columbia, but they were back to their jocular camaraderie just a few minutes later. The trip was long, and they passed the time by talking about many different things.
They stopped for dinner near Indianapolis, grabbing burgers and fries at a McDonald’s and eating in the car as they drove. Three hours later, Noah decided they should stop and get a room for the night, so they found a motel in Cambridge, Ohio and got two rooms.
“Everybody get some sleep,” Noah said. “We’re only about six hours out from Alexandria, so let’s plan on hitting the road around eight. That’ll put us there midafternoon, give us time to scope out the situation a bit before we contact Molly.”
They went into their respective rooms. Sarah waited until the door was shut before she grabbed Noah by the hand and dragged him toward the bathroom. “Shower time,” she said, “and then I’m gonna show you why you like me better than your old girlfriend, Molly.”
* * * * *
The motel had a continental breakfast set up, so they all met there for waffles at seven fifteen and were out the door and on the road a couple of minutes before eight. Sarah took the wheel and got them back onto the interstate, set the cruise control at eighty and kept up with the heavy truck traffic.
Noah’s phone rang at just before eleven, and the caller ID said “Brigadoon Investments.” He answered quickly.
“Hello?”
“Camelot, an update,” said Doc Parker. “First, you should be getting near your destination by now, am I correct?”
“Yes, sir, about two and a half hours out.”
“Very good. Ms. Hanson is under surveillance, as I promised, and at this point we have seen no sign of any threat to her. She went to her office a
t Dexter Reedy this morning and is still there. I took the liberty of getting her schedule from their security people, so I can let you know that she will be leaving her office at around five this evening, after which she will probably go out for dinner. I’ll email you a copy of it in just a moment, along with their security dossier on her, gives you details like her friends and associates, all these, bad habits, etc. Have you decided how you are going to make contact with her?”
“At this point, I’m not planning to make contact at all. What I want to do is put her under our own surveillance, with Sarah, Moose and myself tailing her while Neil does his electronic magic and watches her through all of the electronic eyes out there. I want us to stay out of sight until we know whether or not Nicolaich is even planning anything here. I don’t suppose you’ve gotten anything out of your house guests, have you?”
“One of them has grudgingly admitted that a man fitting Andropov’s description seemed to be giving the orders, but that’s all we’ve gotten from him. This fellow is nothing more than an American gun-for-hire who would be spending the rest of his life in prison should we turn him over to the feds, so we’ve offered to recruit him if he cooperates more fully. He seems to be thinking about it today.”
“Sir, are you sure we would want him? He may well have killed some of our people.”
“Clandestine agencies often recruit former mercenaries, Camelot,” Parker said. “It’s not an entirely uncommon practice for their previous sins to be forgiven in the process.”
“Understood. Anything new on Allison or Mr. Jefferson?”
“Allison is in a medically induced coma at the moment,” Parker said. “The doctors said they couldn’t get her to stay quiet long enough to let her brain swelling go down, so they just put her to sleep for a while. Donald, on the other hand, is doing quite well. He does seem to have lost some sensation, it seems, mostly in his chest and legs. They actually had him up walking around yesterday afternoon, and they’re saying they expect him to be able to return to work within six weeks.”
“That would be good. We’ll keep both of them in our thoughts.”
“Yes, do that. I’ll let you know if I hear anything else.” The line went dead.
Noah relayed the information about Allison and Jefferson to the others, and then pointed at a billboard promoting a café at the next exit. “Molly’s going to be in her office the rest of the afternoon,” he said. “Let’s go ahead and grab some lunch now.”
Moose and Neil agreed, so Sarah nodded and moved into the right lane so that she could take the exit. A few minutes later, they pulled up in front of Wild Bill’s Café and went inside. The restaurant was rustic, reminiscent of something that might have been seen in the Wild West a century and a half earlier, despite modern appliances, menu and prices.
“So,” Moose said around the roast beef sandwich he was eating, “I gather we’re just going to keep an eye on this girl?”
“That’s the plan,” Noah said. “If Nicolaich is truly planning to use someone from my past to try to draw me out, then I have to agree with Sarah that Molly is the logical choice. He wants to use her for bait to trap me, but I’d definitely prefer to turn the tables. Dexter Reedy has good security, and apparently so does her subdivision; Nicolaich would be watching her, trying to figure out any pattern that would let him get to her without interference. The idea is for us to watch her, too, and hopefully spot him before he can make his move.”
“And if we do? What then?” Neil asked.
Noah looked at each of them in turn. “We take him alive,” he said. “I promised Doc Parker that I would make it slow and painful. I plan to do exactly that.”
Sarah had been looking into his eyes as he spoke, and suddenly glanced down at the sandwich she was holding. She blinked once, then put the sandwich down on the plate.
“Something wrong, Sarah?” Neil asked her.
She looked up at him for a moment without speaking, then slowly shook her head. “It just hit me,” she said. “I’ve never actually seen anyone die, but after what that son of a bitch did to me in Moscow, I think I want to watch.”
“You want to watch? Hell, I want to help. By the way, Boss, did you give any thought to getting me that shotgun?”
Moose’s eyebrows tried to crawl over the top of his head. “Shotgun? Neil, as skinny as you are, a shotgun would blast you back to last week. That’s like holding a rocket up to your shoulder and setting it off. That’s the last thing you need.”
“Well, I want something! I can barely even handle a pistol, I always blink and yank it back when I pull the trigger. I can handle a rifle fairly well, but that isn’t much good for up close and personal. I need something that’s going to wipe out whoever I’m shooting at, you know? I asked the boss to get me a sawed-off.”
“Sawed-off shotgun? Well…” Moose seemed to be thinking it over. “Actually, a single-barrel 12-gauge might not be a bad idea. Even if it knocks you on your ass, you’ll probably blow away whoever you’re shooting at, assuming they’re within thirty feet or so. You want to use rat shot, not buckshot. Does a better job of perforating a human body.”
Sarah had been watching them as if at a tennis match. “God, the conversations we have while we’re eating. Do either of you ever wonder what it would be like to be normal?”
Moose and Neil looked at her for a moment, glanced at each other and then turned back to Sarah. “Nope,” they said in unison.
They finished eating and got back into the car for the final leg of the trip.
“I want to find a hotel,” Noah said, “and then recon the subdivision Molly lives in before we actually start watching her. I want to know just what kind of security holes we may have to watch out for.”
“Neil said security there was Blackstone,” Moose pointed out. “Those guys are pretty good, you won’t find any. They were trying to recruit me while I was still in SEAL school. Just about all of their people are ex-special forces, and then they get even more training after they sign on.”
Noah nodded his head. “You’re probably right, I just want to be sure. From what we know of Nicolaich Andropov, if there’s any gap in security, he’ll spot it. I don’t want to give him any opportunity to slip past us.”
“Well, if you do find any,” Neil said, “I think I can plug them. I’ve got a dozen dart cameras with me that we can put just about anywhere. We’ll need an air rifle, one of the twenty-two caliber ones; Moose can shoot them into walls and such, and they’ll transmit high-def video and audio for about a month. They use a multi-frequency setup, splitting up the signals and sending them over four different UHF channels that aren’t used anywhere else. If somebody were to pick up one of them, it’d just sound like static, and all we have to do is hide a little receiver that re-combines the signals and streams it to a server back at Neverland. We can watch it live on any computer.”
Noah turned and looked back at him. “That’s slick,” he said. “And I think it might be pretty useful. See if you can find out where to get one of those air rifles, would you? Make it a good one, we need something with both range and accuracy.”
“You got it,” Neil said as he picked up his computer from the floorboard. A moment later, he and Moose were looking at a web page showing numerous air rifles. “Okay, Boss, there’s a Benjamin twenty-two caliber that would be perfect, and we can pick one up at Walmart. In fact…” He tapped a few more keys. “There’s one in stock at a Walmart two exits up. We ought to stop and grab it, so that we don’t have to go looking for one around Alexandria.”
“Good point,” Noah said. “Sarah, let’s make a stop at Wallyville, shall we?”
Sarah grinned and moved into the right lane. They made the stop at Walmart and were back on the highway only thirty minutes later with the air rifle added to all the other gear in the trunk of the car.
They arrived in Alexandria at just before three. Molly’s house turned out to be in a private community known as Gatewood, which consisted of only forty-two homes and was surrounded
by a twelve-foot-high brick wall. There were only two entrances, both of which were manned by a quartet of armed guards. Two of them bore only sidearms and would be the ones to approach any vehicle that attempted to enter; the other two carried assault rifles and stayed inside a brick-fenced portico on the guard shack. Moose and Noah spotted them instantly as they drove by.
They circled the compound a couple of times, but Noah didn’t want to attempt to get inside while they had a trunk full of weapons and explosives. He took out his phone and googled for hotels, choosing a Holiday Inn Express that was only a mile away. Sarah drove to the hotel and Noah went in to get their rooms.
Their rooms were on the second floor, toward the back of the building. That allowed them to come in through a back entrance and carry all of their gear up without being observed. Moose had been smart enough to get a long, narrow box for the air rifle, but the rest of the guns they carried inside were either small enough to conceal or broke down into manageable components.
They stashed everything inside and took a few minutes to freshen up. Noah told Neil to get out the little Bluetooth-style two-way communicators they used to stay in touch during missions and bring them along. “Just in case we get separated,” he said. “We need to be able to stay in touch at all times during this phase of the mission.” Noah and Moose checked their pistols and then they all went back to the car. It was time to get in position to start following Molly around.
The offices of Dexter Reedy, the private analysis firm where Molly worked, were in the Woodward building on 15th St. Northwest. Security in the building was very tight, so Noah had Sarah park the car a block away from the main entrance. Molly would be coming out that door a few minutes after five, so that left them with about twenty minutes to wait. Noah passed out the pictures Neil had printed before, so all of them could refresh the mental image they had of her.
