by David Archer
There was one email, and Noah’s eyebrows went up when he saw that it was from Allison.
Camelot, it said, I wanted to let you know that I’m still in possession of all my mental faculties and will be returning to my office sometime in the next week or ten days. Dr. Parker has been keeping me updated on what’s going on, and I completely support his decision to let you go after Andropov. I realize that you aren’t one who needs encouragement or back patting, but I think it’s important to let you know that I have the utmost confidence in you to get this job done.
Incidentally, I spoke with the President yesterday (can you believe the son of a bitch actually flew out here and visited me in the hospital? Wonder how they kept that out of the press!) and he let me know that he also supports what you’re doing. As a first-year operative, you were originally designated a Q4, which means that you are expected to remain within mission parameters at all times according to specific orders, but you have shown such initiative and aptitude that he has authorized moving you all the way to Q2. That rating means that you are authorized to go off mission on your own discretion, the American equivalent of James Bond and his “license to kill.” Any action you take will be considered to have been sanctioned by me, or by the government of the United States.
All that said, I want you to know that I expected you would rise quickly, but you’ve outshined even my most imaginative speculations. Good job, Camelot.
“What are you doing?” Sarah asked sleepily. She was peeking at him under half-lidded eyes as she lay there on her belly.
Noah looked up at her. “Got an email from Allison,” he said. “She expects to be back at work next week sometime.”
Sarah’s eyes opened wider and she smiled. “That’s awesome,” she said. “You know, if anyone had ever told me that someone as nice as she is could do the kind of job she does, I would’ve said they were crazy. I mean, I know she has to make decisions on who lives and who dies, and I’m glad she’s strong enough to do it, but in spite of all that she’s a genuinely nice person. I really, really like her.”
“She’s definitely strong,” Noah said. “I think she must have some incredible control over her emotions. Not like me, I know that she actually has emotions because I’ve seen them. She just seems to have the ability to turn off parts of them when necessary.”
Sarah rolled over onto her back and rubbed her eyes. “Are the boys up yet?”
“I haven’t heard anything from them. I woke up before the alarm so I thought I’d let you get an extra few minutes of sleep.”
She yawned and then threw off the covers. “That’s sweet of you, but I need to get up. Our late lunch yesterday meant we didn’t get dinner, and I’m ready to go have some breakfast. Call Doofus and Goofus and get them up. Nothing’s supposed to happen until eleven, and this place has waffles downstairs. I want waffles, give me waffles.” She stood up and headed for the bathroom.
Noah punched the speed dial button for Moose and wasn’t surprised when it was answered almost instantly. “Sarah wants waffles,” he said.
“Waffles will work. We’re both up. Meet you guys down in the breakfast room?”
“Sure, we’ll see you there,” Noah said. He ended the call as Sarah came out of the bathroom and began pulling on her clothes. “The guys are up. I told them we’d meet them down in the breakfast room.”
She looked at him with a grin on her face. “Then you better get some clothes on.”
They walked into the breakfast room ten minutes later to find Neil standing by the waffle maker. Moose was already at a table, eating a waffle that seemed to be swimming in syrup.
“Good grief,” Sarah said to him, “how are you not diabetic?”
“It’s because I burn the calories up so fast,” Moose answered. “My body never has time to realize I’ve eaten anything.”
Neil’s waffle was done a moment later and Sarah took over the machine. She made one for Noah and set it in front of him before starting one for herself, but the machine was quick and the waffles came out hot. Noah waited for hers to be done before he began eating, and both Moose and Neil went back for seconds as soon as they could.
They talked about inconsequential things as they ate, killing the hour they spent there the best they could. Other hotel guests were all around them, so they couldn’t discuss the mission or the upcoming likely action. Moose told them a risqué story about his days in the Navy that made Neil snort waffle through his nose as he tried not to laugh with his mouth full, and Sarah simply covered her eyes and refused to look at him for the rest of the time they were there.
They finished up at a little after seven thirty and went back up to Noah’s room. Neil brought his computer and set it up, then checked to be sure Nicolaich hadn’t called his daughter yet. He had not; there had been a few calls to her number in the past few hours, but they all came from within Moscow.
“So, now we just wait,” Neil said. “Too bad we don’t have a deck of cards, we could…”
Noah’s phone rang suddenly, and he glanced at it to see Captain Hayes’s number on the caller ID.
“This is Camelot,” he said.
“Sir, this is Captain Hayes. I’m reporting all units on station. We’re ready to go whenever you give us the word.”
“Very good, Captain,” Noah said. “I’ll send the location to the number you gave me as soon as we have it.”
“Yes, Sir, we’ll be waiting.” The line went dead.
“Delta Force guys are all in position,” Noah said to the team. “Like Neil said, now we just wait.”
“It’s frustrating that we have to sit back and do nothing while the commandos take Nicolaich out,” Moose said. “He should be ours, don’t you think?”
Noah shrugged. “As long as they get him, I’m not gonna worry about missing my own chance to take a shot at him. Last time you and I tried to take him out alone, he got away. If only one of these teams gets to him, he’ll be up against five of the deadliest fighters in the world. From what I’ve read and heard about Delta Force, any one of them is a match for a whole squad of regular soldiers. We’ll do our job and let them do theirs.”
Sarah, sitting on the bed, looked from Noah to Moose and back again. “This is one time I agree with the big guy,” she said. “I was hoping we’d get to him ourselves. Even after yesterday, I’d still like to watch you put a bullet through his head.”
“I’ll even go along with that,” Neil added. “I got a little shook up yesterday, I know that, but I don’t think seeing Nicolaich die would bother me a bit. Matter of fact, I think it would probably make me feel a whole lot better about what we do.”
“This is exactly why Allison recruited me,” Noah said. “You guys are all thinking emotionally. Nicolaich hurt you so you want to hurt him.” He shook his head. “That isn’t the way to do these things. An elimination has to be done surgically, precisely. Assassination is a powerful tool, but it depends heavily on the element of surprise. Nicolaich Andropov is fully aware that we’re coming for him and he’s set a trap, so there’s no element of surprise. In this case, Captain Hayes and his men are the scalpel that will remove this cancerous growth we call Nicolaich from the world.”
The other three sat quietly for a moment, and then Moose mumbled, “Still sucks. I was hoping to get a couple of bullets into that son of a bitch myself.”
Sarah leaned back against the wall and picked up the TV remote from the nightstand beside her. She pushed the button to turn on the television and began flipping through the channels, looking for something to watch and kill the time. HBO was showing one of the recent Tom Cruise spy movies and Neil asked her to leave it on, so she did.
Noah moved up on the bed beside Sarah while Moose and Neil dragged their chairs to where they could see the TV better. The movie helped to pass the time, and was followed by a romantic comedy. By the time the second one was over, it was almost a quarter to eleven.
“Let’s shut off the TV,” Noah said. “With any luck, Bridger was telling the tru
th and we’ll have a location to give Captain Hayes and his men within the next half hour or so.”
They moved to the table where Neil’s computer was open and running, and Neil slipped on the headphones that were plugged into it. Twenty silent minutes later, the program on the screen came to life. A call was coming in to Marina Andropov’s phone and the computer was showing frantic activity as it traced the call back to its source.
“It’s an international call,” Neil said excitedly. “A woman, presumably Marina, answered the call and it sounds like Andropov’s voice, but he’s speaking in Russian. Routing through Switzerland—Germany—New York, it’s bouncing through New York—got it, got it, got it, it’s a cell phone, GPS coordinates 32.877586 dash 100.12524! Getting an address, give me a minute—here it is, the address is 2674 North Harrison Street in Arlington!”
Noah quickly punched the address into the SMS app on his phone and sent it to all of the Delta Force teams at once. Seconds later, two messages came through the radio that he had placed on the table.
“Group 8 closest, en route. ETA three minutes.”
“Group 11, backup, ETA four point five.”
“That’s two teams scrambling to get there right now,” Noah said. “Is he still on the phone?”
Neil was nodding frantically. “Yes, yes, he’s just yakking away! This guy acts like he doesn’t have a care in the world, how crazy is that?” His fingers were flying over the keyboard. The monitor on the computer had been split into two screens, one of them still on the phone-monitoring program while the other seemed to be jumping around. “I’m trying to find a traffic camera or something in that area, see if we can maybe watch what happens.”
“Unplug your headphones, and maybe we can hear it,” Moose said. “I’d love to hear that bastard scream in panic, hear the shot that takes him out.”
Neil snatched off the headphones and unplugged them, and they could all hear the conversation, even if they couldn’t understand it. The four of them sat quietly, their attentions focused on the sounds coming through the computer speakers.
Three minutes passed, and then five. The telephone conversation continued and seemed peaceful, almost jovial. The woman’s voice was replaced by that of a child who seemed delighted to be speaking to the caller.
Suddenly the radio crackled to life. “Group 8 is on site, no target, I say again, no target.”
“Group 8, recon,” came Captain Hayes’s voice. “Group 11, report.”
“Group 11 is on site, confirm no target, I say again, confirm no target.”
Noah looked at Neil, his face was ashen. “Boss, that’s the coordinates! He’s got to be there!”
“Group 8, sit rep,” Hayes said through the radio.
“Nobody here but some teenagers, Sir,” came the reply. “My tech is scanning for cell signals on site, wait one.”
“Neil, could he be bouncing the signal through some kind of repeater at that location?” Noah asked.
Neil stared at his computer monitor, his head shaking from side to side. “I guess—yeah, he could. I got the number of the cell phone the call seems to be coming from, let me try tracing it.” His fingers began flying over the keyboard again, and the monitor display began to change. “I can’t—holy crap, that’s what he did! Somewhere at that location is a…”
“Sir,” came the Group 8 voice through the radio, “we found a cell phone wired to some kind of computer. It was hidden under a bush just outside the house.”
Neil was nodding. “Yeah, that’s what I was going to say, he made some kind of a relay setup. Back-tracing from that phone now—nothing, whatever that box is they found is the actual receiver, and it’s pushing the call through that cell phone. I don’t have a number on that box, I can’t trace it.”
Noah cell phone rang and he answered it instantly. “Camelot,” he said.
“This is Hayes, are you monitoring?”
“Yes,” Noah said. “My intel guy says that box they found is some kind of cell phone relay system. He could call into it from anywhere in the world, and it would use the phone connected to it to bounce the call for him. Tell your men to stand down, and we’ll try to figure out what to do next.”
“Yes, Sir,” Hayes said, and the phone went dead. A moment later his voice came through the radio, telling his men to report back to the JSOC facility and await further orders.
“I just can’t…” Neil began, but Moose cut him off.
“Let it go, Neil, it wasn’t your fault. We know this bastard is smart, we just didn’t anticipate this kind of thing.”
Neil spun to face him and they saw tears streaming down his cheeks. “But I should have! I should’ve seen it coming! I just wanted this to be over, I just wanted to get the son of a bitch, and I didn’t think it through as far as I should have.”
“We’re not done yet,” Noah said. “All this means is that he fed Bridger that line about the phone call. There was some reason he wanted us to think we found him, and I’m not going to buy the idea that he was just showing off.”
Sarah’s eyes suddenly went wide. “Molly! He wanted us out of the way for something, he must be going after Molly!”
Noah picked up his phone and called Molly’s cell number. It rang three times, but then she answered.
“Is your security tight?” he asked. “Nicolaich is in the wind, we thought we had him but he got away. He was trying to keep us distracted for some reason.”
“I’ve got your people here, plus all the security in the building. You think he’s ready to make his move on me?”
“He could be, I really don’t know. Just tell everyone to go on high alert.”
“I will right now,” Molly said. “If I make it through the day, let’s talk this evening.”
“Deal,” Noah said, and then cut the call. He turned to Neil. “If you had that box, could you figure out where the call actually came from?”
Neil nodded, his face still twisted in rage and shame. “Maybe. I could hack it and find out what frequency it was receiving on, or whether it was using a cell number of its own. There’s a chance I might be able to—”
The explosion blew the door off its hinges and threw it across the room, and the concussion wave that followed knocked all four of them out of their chairs and onto the floor. They were dazed, groaning from the shock, but Noah was already trying to raise his head to see what was happening. His vision was blurred and his ears were ringing, but he managed to make out several men rushing into the room.
They were all dressed in black, and all were carrying submachine guns. Noah tried to reach for his pistol but his arms and legs simply weren’t responding to the commands his brain was sending. He lay there and watched as Sarah was grabbed from the floor and dragged away.
Moose grunted but Noah couldn’t make out what he was trying to say. He managed to turn his head to look at his backup man, but then two of the strangers stepped in between them, and another was suddenly standing just in front of him. He tried to look up, tried to see who it was, but then a heavy boot smashed into the side of his head and the world went dark.
TWENTY
Noah awoke to find paramedics bending over him. For a second he was confused, but then he remembered the explosion. He turned his head to try to look around, but pain in his neck made him stop and lay still.
“Just hold still, Sir,” one of the medics said to him. “You’ve been hurt pretty bad, but you’re gonna be okay. We’re just getting your vitals, then we’re going to take you to the hospital.”
Noah nodded just enough to show that he understood. His ears were still ringing, but at least he could hear. He opened his mouth to try to speak but his ears popped suddenly and pain shot through his head. He grimaced, but then closed his mouth and tried to swallow. Even that hurt.
He was lying on a gurney, he realized. The lack of pressure on his lower spine told him that his Glock was gone, holster and all. He lifted a hand and tapped the medic on the shoulder to get his attention, then opened his mouth aga
in. In a hoarse whisper, he said, “Where are my friends?”
The paramedic shook his head. “Don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “Cops called us out here and said there was one person with injuries. You were the only one here when we arrived.”
Noah allowed himself to lie back again. “Cops?” he managed to ask.
Nodding, the paramedic said, “Oh, yeah, a bunch of them. Whatever kind of bomb it was, it blew off your door and the one across the hall. The cops really want to talk to you but we told them they have to wait ‘til you get to the hospital. All we’re trying to do is make sure you’re stable enough to transport, you know?”
Noah nodded slightly again, then tried to relax. The medic strapped him onto the stretcher and then he and his partner lifted it up until the wheels locked into place. A moment later, Noah could feel every bump and jolt as they rolled the stretcher across various kinds of debris.
He was taken to an elevator for the ride down, and then wheeled out and placed in the back of an ambulance. Noah saw several squad cars, and a police officer climbed into the ambulance with him and one of the paramedics, while the other paramedic went around front to drive. No one spoke, so Noah stayed quiet.
The ride seemed to last about fifteen minutes, and then he was being wheeled into an emergency room. He was pushed into a room with several curtained-off sections and placed into one of them, the curtain pulled around its curving track to give him some privacy. The police officer started to enter, but a nurse suddenly grabbed his arm and pulled him backward.
The nurse came in a moment later and began looking him over. “Hi, there,” she said. “You want to tell me what happened to you?”
Noah opened his mouth once, but nothing came out. He closed it and then tried again. “Bomb went off,” he said. “Just outside my hotel room.”
“Yeah, that’s what I heard. Any idea how that happened?”
