by David Archer
Noah popped the transmission into neutral and revved the engine once before letting it drop back to an idle. Several people fired at the car, and Noah was almost surprised to see that Heather was among them. He sat in the car as bullets ricocheted all around the building, and then he heard Morgan screaming for the shooting to stop.
The firing came to an end, but there were still more than twenty armed criminals in the building with him. Stepping out of the car, he knew, would be suicidal, but he didn’t know how he could save Kate by remaining inside. He put the car back in drive and eased his foot off the brake, and the car began moving forward very slowly.
“Rex,” Morgan yelled. “All I wanted you to do was explain, Rex. Dave found out your sister is with the FBI, and I just wanted to know who you are.” He looked down at Kate, who was holding her head up high. “She says you don’t know who she works for, but I find that a little hard to believe. I mean, come on, wouldn’t you?”
Noah stopped the car and sat there, thinking about how to get control of the situation. He had Morgan, Walters, and Kate straight ahead of him, a dozen armed men and women to his left and several more spreading out around the car at the back and on the right. He glanced to his right and saw Scott Forney crabbing sideways with a pistol held out in front of him, and then Forney stepped out into the void where the overhead door had been.
There was a single pop, and a 9 mm bullet blew most of Forney’s brain out through a gaping hole in the left side of his skull. He dropped like a stone, and several others screamed, but two of them tried to run outside. Pop, pop, and they dropped into the gravel of the parking lot.
One of them was Leanne, Noah noticed, and then he turned his attention back to Morgan and Kate, just in time to see Walters rushing at him, the pistol in his hand firing as he did so. Three bullets ricocheted off the carbonite windshield, and Noah dropped his foot onto the accelerator. The rear tires screamed as the car jumped forward, and Walters realized too late what was happening. He tried to stop and turn to the side, but the torque applied to the rear axle had raised the front end of the car, and he went down as it struck him. The car rolled over him, and Noah spun it around.
The remaining lieutenants were gathered into two groups and staring at Walters’s body on the concrete floor. The Charger was pointed at an angle toward the open overhead door, but Noah reached over and poked his finger on the center of the video display as he floored the gas pedal again and squeezed the trigger button. The car spun to the right, the machine gun firing the entire time and dropping all but two of the lieutenants. Those two turned and ran, screaming as they fled the building, and rushed right into the crosshairs of the smart guns.
Pop, pop.
Noah continued the doughnut he had spun on the concrete floor until the car was facing toward where he had last seen Morgan and Kate. They were gone; Morgan had dragged Kate through a doorway into another section of the building, and Noah heard an engine start. The sound rushed around the back of the building, and seconds later a new Camaro roared past the open overhead door on its way to the gate and then fishtailed as it turned right onto the blacktop.
Marco appeared in the lot, aiming a gun at the fleeing Camaro, but it was already gone. Noah floored the car and roared out the door, slid to a stop beside him, and waited for Marco to get in.
“That was Morgan,” Marco yelled as he got in. “He had the woman with him, and I think I saw the kid in the back seat.”
Noah had already put the car into motion and was using all of his driving skills to chase down the Camaro. The curves made it difficult, but the Charger was built to hold the road, and Noah skidded around one curve after another, turning in to the skids and riding it through until he could get the car straight again.
The Camaro was less than a quarter mile ahead, but that was a good lead on a road like this. Smaller and lighter, the Camaro was handling the curves better than the Charger, but Noah wasn’t about to back off. He kept his foot down and fought the car when it tried to slide off the road, barely managing to keep it between the ditches.
Pension Mountain Road is several miles long, winding around and up and down, reminding Noah of a roller coaster. Still he kept going, doing everything he could to keep the tail end of the Camaro in sight, and it paid off. After several minutes, he saw brake lights flash up ahead as the car came to the end of the country blacktop where it met Highway 21. He saw it turn left and begin to accelerate, and then he was at the intersection and cutting the wheel to make the car slide sideways as he took the turn at nearly fifty miles per hour.
The highway was where the Charger could be king, and Noah watched the speedometer climb. Signs told him that the next curve required a speed of forty-five miles per hour, but Noah took it at seventy, and when he came out of the curve he saw that he had gained on the Camaro. For almost fourteen miles, Noah slowly drew closer to the smaller car, and then he gained more quickly as they came into Berryville, but Morgan wasn’t about to make a stand. He slid around the broad turn lane onto Highway 62, heading toward Green Forest, and Noah managed to stay within fifty feet as he came out of the turn, himself.
And then Noah understood. As they came around the bend leading out of Berryville, he saw the roadblock up ahead. Several sheriff’s cars were lined up across the road, and deputies were leaning across them holding rifles and shotguns. Morgan’s Camaro slowed and eased over onto the shoulder and was allowed to pass, but then the deputies opened fire on the Charger.
“Hang on,” Noah yelled, and then he floored the accelerator again. The deputies kept firing, but their buckshot and bullets were simply ricocheting away, until they realized that the big car was not going to stop. Noah reached down beside the seat and pressed a button, then tapped the screen on one of the squad cars blocking the road. He squeezed the trigger button on the steering wheel twice, launching two of the explosive rounds and blowing the car in half. Shrapnel and chunks of metal took out several deputies and damaged the other cars, and then Noah rammed two of the squad cars where they had been backed up together. Both of them spun away as the Charger crashed on through.
Both front fenders were shattered and pieces were flapping in the wind, but the Charger kept going. In the Camaro ahead, Morgan realized what had happened and shoved his own foot down. The LT4 engine in the Chevy, cranking almost eight hundred horsepower, was moving the smaller car down the road at nearly one hundred sixty miles per hour as they passed the sheriff’s office on the left.
Noah’s big Hemi was stronger, but the bigger car was heavier. Even with all of the carbon fiber and Kevlar in the body, the Camaro’s lighter weight was helping it to stay ahead.
“Make sure you’ve got a grip on something,” Noah said. “I’ve got to bring them to a stop, and the only way I can do that is to get ahead of them.”
“How the hell you gonna do that?” Marco asked, but then he watched as Noah reached down beside the seat and pressed the last button.
A scream began under the hood, and the hidden supercharger kicked in. Noah and Marco were thrust back in their seats as the speedometer shot from one sixty to over one ninety in less than five seconds. Noah held on to the wheel with everything he had, as the Charger shot around the left side of the Camaro and got in front of it.
Noah let off the gas, signaling the supercharger to cut off, and the car began to slow imperceptibly. He eased down on the brake pedal, but his speed was so great that it almost seemed to have no effect. Within seconds, he and Marco could smell the burning brake pads, but then they began to do their job and the speedometer started falling.
In the rearview mirror, the Camaro was already nearly half a mile behind them, so Noah rode the brakes hard. “Get your window down,” he yelled at Marco. “Try to shoot out his radiator or hit something in the engine. Don’t aim for Morgan—if that car crashes at that speed, nobody’s going to survive it.”
Marco was already hanging out the window by the time Noah finished speaking, both of his guns aimed straight back behind them. When
the Charger had slowed to the point that the Camaro was barreling in on them, he opened fire, blasting away at the front of the Chevrolet.
Steam began rolling out from under the Camaro’s hood, and the car began losing speed only a few seconds later. “I don’t know what I hit,” Marco yelled, “but it must’ve been important.”
Both cars dropped to under fifty miles per hour, and then Morgan slammed on his brakes and tried to spin the Camaro around the other way. He ended up making a wide, skidding U-turn, but when he floored the accelerator again, the engine barely seemed to be running. It was roaring, but there was a loud banging sound coming from it as well, and by the time Noah managed to turn the Charger around, the Camaro’s powerful engine gave up the ghost. There was a tremendously loud bang, and the car began coasting to a stop.
Noah roared up around it and spun out so that he was facing back toward the Camaro. He and Marco were instantly out of the car, both of them aiming directly at Morgan as he sat behind the wheel.
Noah fired once, piercing the Camaro’s windshield and Jimmy Morgan’s forehead at the same time. The crime boss’s head snapped back and then fell forward onto the steering wheel. The Camaro’s horn began to blare.
Marco kept his gun trained on Ralph Morgan, in the back seat, as the boy sat and stared at the gory mess that had been his father. Noah walked around to the passenger side and yanked open the door, then reached in and helped Kate get out and onto her feet. He holstered his pistol and used his Swiss Army knife to cut the zip ties holding her hands behind her back, and then Kate spun around and threw her arms around his neck as she sobbed against his chest.
“Hey, Rex,” Marco yelled, back in character. “What you want me do wid dis boy? I put de bullet in his head, no?”
Noah shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’ve got plans for little Ralphie.”
He carefully extracted himself from Kate’s arms and leaned down to look into the back seat of the Camaro. “Ralph,” he said. “Come on out of there. You’re going with me.”
Ralph carefully climbed out and went to the Charger when Noah pointed. Marco got into the back seat with him, as Noah and Kate climbed into the front.
“I don’t think we need to go back to Berryville just yet,” Noah said. “Let’s get out of sight for a while and wait for reinforcements to show up.” He started the car and drove the short distance to the entrance of a gravel road, then turned onto it and moved as quickly as he could into the cover of trees a quarter of a mile away. The road continued through them, and Noah kept going until it curved around to the left and finally intersected with Highway 103. He went straight across and continued down another gravel road for several minutes, finally pulling in behind an old church building and shutting the car down.
He turned to Kate. “Okay, any idea how they caught on to you?”
Kate gave him a weary smile. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “That asshole Walters was happy to tell me that he had a snitch working inside the Fayetteville FBI office. Somehow, even though it wasn’t supposed to happen, that office was given access to the restricted file on the Morgan Mafia, and it specifically named me as the undercover observer. Didn’t take him long to figure out that you probably weren’t really my brother. He tried to beat it out of me, find out who you are, but I’m happy to say I managed not to give you up.”
Noah took her chin in his hand and turned her face from side to side, looking at the numerous bruises she was wearing. “Not that we are likely to be in this situation again,” he said, “but it wouldn’t have mattered if you had. Even if they knew my name, I don’t even officially exist, so they wouldn’t have gained anything from knowing it. As for E & E, they probably would’ve thought you were lying, anyway. Most people can’t believe the US would bother with assassination, and those who can would expect it to be the CIA. Besides, they were all going to be dead before long, anyway. It really wouldn’t have mattered if you had told them anything about me.”
Kate looked at him, and it took him a moment to realize that she was angry. “Really? It wouldn’t have mattered? Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Big Shot Assassin.” She took a deep breath and then shouted, “It would have mattered to me!”
Noah nodded. “I understand,” he said. “I apologize.”
He took out his phone and handed it to Kate. “I think you need to call this in,” he said. “We need the feds in here as soon as possible. Morgan’s body has been found by now, so Redford and everybody else will be scrambling to try to find out just how bad the situation is. Your people need to come in and start making arrests right away.”
Kate looked at him for a moment, then grinned as she dialed a number. A moment later, the grin vanished as she went to work. “This is SSA Kate Madison,” she said. “Patch me through to the deputy director.”
It took her a few minutes to explain that the “Special Operation” requested by the Department of Justice had finally been implemented. The deputy director of the FBI congratulated her on the successful conclusion of her undercover mission and promised to have a waiting special task force, a group of fifty agents who had been stashed in various small towns just across the line in Missouri, immediately start rounding up the cooperating officials she had been able to identify, while the Arkansas State Police Investigators would be handling civilian criminal investigations.
She disconnected and handed the phone back to Noah. “A team of special agents will hit Berryville in about twenty minutes,” she said. “They want me to give them a couple of hours, then meet them at the sheriff’s office. Think we can get there without being blown away?”
“Yes,” Noah said. He turned and looked into the back seat at Ralph Morgan, who was sitting quietly with his eyes focused on his own knees. “Ralph,” he said, “this is where you get to make a choice. I’m going to tell you something, and it’s your one and only chance to live through this. You do want to live, don’t you?”
The boy nodded, but would not look up at him.
“Okay, here it is. I’m not Rex Madison, which I’m sure you figured out by now. My name is Noah Wolf, and I am a professional assassin in the employ of the United States government. I was recruited because I’m very good at what I do, but we’ve got a few others like me who were recruited simply because they enjoy killing. Since I know you happen to be one of those people, and since I was sent here with orders to eliminate your father and his entire operation, I took it upon myself to suggest to my superiors that you might be a good candidate for our organization.”
Ralph finally looked up at him. “You want me to be an assassin?”
“I think you might have potential,” Noah said. “If you can learn a little bit of self-discipline and how to follow orders, you might be good to keep around. If you want this chance to stay alive, all you have to do is say so. If you don’t, then I’ll kill you right here and now. It’s your call, but you have to make a choice immediately.”
Ralph was staring into his eyes, but then he turned and looked at Marco. Marco gave him a big smile. “Hey, kid,” he said. “Take it from me, being alive beats the hell out of being dead. All you gotta do is say yes, and we take you back with us to be trained. If you’re any good, you might end up running a team the way Noah does, someday.”
Ralph looked back at Noah. “Running a team? What does that mean?”
“I have a team that helps me do my job. Marco, there, is one of them. If you honestly have talent for this type of killing, it’s possible you could have a team of your own one day.”
Ralph looked down at his knees again for a moment, then raised his eyes back up to Noah’s. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
“Lucky little bastard,” Kate mumbled.
Noah took out his phone and opened the war game app, then tapped the screen to bring up the password form. He entered “absolution” and carefully deselected the knives Neil had made, which were still in the trunk of the car in his bag, and then he dropped his thumb on the button marked “GO.”
Several mil
es away, a medium-sized mushroom cloud rose into the air. Four smaller ones in different parts of the area marked Morgan lieutenants who had failed to come to the meeting.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Two hours and ten minutes later, the battered Charger pulled up in front of the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office. Noah shut the car down, and he, Kate, Marco, and Ralph all climbed out. Marco took charge of Ralph and hustled him over to a bench, keeping a hand on his shoulder as they sat down.
A man in a suit stepped out the front door and looked at Kate and Noah. Kate smiled and held out her hand.
“Good to see you, Jared,” she said. She glanced at Noah, then turned back to to the man she had spoken to. “SSA Jared Carter, this is Noah Wolf. Noah, Jared heads up the task force that’s been behind my observation mission all this time.”
Carter looked at Noah and extended a hand, and Noah shook with him. “Good to meet you,” he said. “I wish we hadn’t had to resort to calling you in, but it’s good to know the option is available when it’s needed.”
“Just doing my job,” Noah said.
“And going above and beyond the call of duty,” Kate said. “I don’t know if you’ve been briefed on it, but someone in the Fayetteville office actually gave me up to Morgan today. Noah had to change plans in a hurry to get me out alive, and I’m very grateful that he did.”
Carter’s eyebrows rose. “No, I hadn’t been told,” he said. “Any idea who it was who sold you out?”
“I’m afraid not. One of Morgan’s men apparently knew whoever it was, and somehow they got hold of documentation that named me as the observer. How are things going here?”
“Well, we’ve got the sheriff and almost all of his people in custody. The state police are supposed to arrive any minute now, and the governor has been gracious enough to assign some troopers to fill in as deputies, and the coroner, who was never implicated in any of Morgan’s activities, will serve until a new sheriff is appointed to fill the vacancy until the next election. Most of the city police are either in custody or on the run, including their chief, as well as the county prosecutor and four judges.” He sighed. “It’s gonna be a long night. We don’t even know where some of these people are.”
