Highest Order

by David Archer

  Wally giggled. “Oh, yeah,” he said softly. “How much money are we talking about? I could funnel off a few million pretty easily, set it up in accounts that he can access without anyone ever being the wiser. I’ve got money stashed in accounts in six different countries, because sometimes the things I need just aren’t available here. I’m not trying to brag, but I can guarantee you that the GAO doesn’t know about some of those accounts. One of the beauties of a true black ops budget is that nobody really pays much attention to what you do with the money.”

  “Good. Let’s get him about ten million set up as quickly as possible, and get me the information he needs to access it. Do you have anything in Europe or the U.K.?”

  “Germany, yeah,” Wally said. “He doesn’t have to go anywhere to get it, though. I can set it up so he can draw money from anywhere in the whole world.”

  “He’ll probably want to access most of it from somewhere here in the U.S., but it wouldn’t hurt if we could find a way to get him a hundred thousand or so in England. That’s where he’s based out of, for now, but that’s got to be the biggest secret of all. I don’t want anyone finding out he’s there, because we’ve got him set up with a safe house.”

  “Okay, okay,” Wally said. “I can give you some instructions to send off to Neil, and he can take any debit cards and re-encode them to access this money. We can set it so he can withdraw up to seven thousand dollars a day, using different ATMs and cards. It wouldn’t take long for him to have a pretty good stock in cash, that way.”

  “Good. Get those instructions together and get them to me as soon as possible. That sounds like the perfect answer to that part of the problem. Now, how are we going to get weapons to him?”

  Wally giggled again, and Allison thought he sounded almost like a girl. “Are you kidding? We don’t. What we do is send him a list of contacts I’ve got, people who can supply just about any weapon. They won’t have any idea who he is, but they won’t really care. These are the same people that most spies buy weapons from. As long as he’s got money, that’s all they care about.”

  Allison waggled her head. “Okay, I guess that takes care of that. The question is, what do we do if he needs some of your special equipment?”

  “Give me a little bit of time to think about it,” Wally whispered. “I can think of ways to send stuff out, I’m sure. Can we trust any of your other teams?”

  Allison hesitated. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I hate to say that, but right now the only three people I trust at all on this is you, Molly, and Parker. Nobody else knows what’s going on, and I’m going to keep it that way for now. I haven’t even told Donald.”

  Wally leaned his head back and looked into her eyes. “Allie, Don Jefferson would never betray you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “My head knows it, Wally,” she said. “Unfortunately, my gut tells me not to trust anyone other than you three.”

  Wally let out a sigh and shook his head. “I’ll get the instructions and contacts to you first thing in the morning,” he said. “Just let me know of anything else you need me to do.”

  Allison thanked him, and then they went back to the table with Molly. Two hours later, Molly had to help Allison get Wally into the back seat of her car, so she could drive him home.

  * * * * *

  Neil waited until breakfast was finished before he caught Noah alone. “Got a message from Catherine this morning,” he said softly. “I ran it through the program, and it’s pretty interesting. Wally sent me instructions on how to modify debit cards so that they pull money out of a special account of his. I’ve still got a couple from Algeria, some that I forgot to get rid of. I’m going to use those, and then we can go to any big ATMs and withdraw a couple thousand at a time. He says we’ll be able to pull about seven grand a day off each card.”

  Noah nodded. “I’ve got a couple of extra cards,” he said, “and so does Sarah. The more you can set up, the more we can pull out, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said. With four cards, we could pull out twenty-eight thousand a day. That would be an easy way to put a lot of cash together, and it might come in handy.”

  “Yeah, it might. Anything else?”

  “Oh, yeah, lots more. I have a list of names and numbers scattered throughout the U.S., the U.K., and Europe, people who can produce weapons, ID kits that will pass inspection, that sort of stuff. We’re going to need people like that if we are on our own.”

  “Yes, I agree. In fact, we need to get started on the IDs now. I want to be on the way to the States within the next three days.”

  “In that case, I need to get started on the cards. We’ll need money to get the ID kits, and probably a lot of it. It’ll take me a couple of hours to redo the cards, so give me yours as soon as you can.”

  Noah went up to his room and got them immediately, then passed them off to Neil. He was sitting in his room at his computer, and he took one of the debit cards and swiped it through a slot on the side of the computer immediately. He watched the screen for a moment, then turned and handed the card back to Noah.

  “There is one,” he said. “I just got everything set up, so we should be good to go within just a few minutes. The only question is, where are you going to find ATMs around here?”

  “I don’t want to use them around here,” Noah said. “If we’re going to pull that much money, I want to do it in London. These kind of transactions could possibly draw some attention, but is less likely in a bigger city.”

  Neil nodded and went back to work. A half-hour later, they had six separate debit cards that would draw money out of Wally’s hidden super black ops account.

  Noah passed the cards around, and the five of them got back into the Bentley and headed off to London once more. They spent almost two hours going from bank to bank, each of them going to walk-up ATMs individually and withdrawing the limit each time. By the time they were finished, they had amassed almost 30,000 pounds sterling, more than forty thousand U.S. dollars in value.

  “Okay,” Noah said as they headed back to Feeney Manor. “It’s time to get this show on the road.”

  Chapter NINETEEN

  They had gotten back to the house an hour earlier and found that it was lunch time, so they happily sat down to eat. Lunch was battered fish with chips—which Marco kept referring to as French fries—and was delicious. Afterward, they headed up the stairs to get started.

  “We need identities,” Noah said. They were gathered in Neil and Jenny’s room so the whiz kid could use his computer. “Go through the list of contacts Wally sent and find us somebody who can create the documentation we’re going to need. We’ll need at least three sets each; one set to travel to the United States on, a set to use while we are there, and one set to get us back out. Passports, birth certificates, driver’s licenses, everything.”

  “I’m checking,” Neil said. “There’s one British guy on the list, in Cambridge. Wally says he can turn out perfect documentation within a day, but we have to go to him.”

  “Then he’s the one we want to use. He’s probably going to be secretive and skeptical; does Wally say how to approach him?”

  “Yeah, there’s a kind of ritual. First step is an email that has to have certain codewords. After that, a phone call where you have to have answers to certain questions, then a face-to-face. That’s when he decides whether to work with you or not.”

  “All right,” Noah said. “Let’s get it started.”

  Neil quickly typed up the message and sent an email off to Paul Tunney, the name Wally had given him. He was sure it would be a while before he got a response, but he had his current cell phone set to notify him when an email came in.

  “Okay, next item,” Noah said. “I want to hit the president away from D.C. Neil, I need his itinerary for the next 7 to 10 days. I want to know what cities he’s going to travel to, what events he’s going to attend, all of that.”

  “Okay,” Neil said, “that shouldn’t be too hard to find, but how do you p
lan to get close enough to him to make the shot? Secret Service clears everything within a mile, there’s no way you’ll get a weapon inside that perimeter.”

  “There’s always a way,” Noah said, “but we haven’t even started to formulate a plan, yet. First we need to choose the location, so we can try to figure out what the possible options of attack might be. The choice of weapon isn’t something we can even consider until we’ve got those things sorted out.”

  “But there is still the problem of all that security,” Neil argued. “I don’t care what the options are or what weapons you plan to use, I just don’t see how you can expect to get past the Secret Service. I read somewhere that the president travels with more than a thousand people, and they are all involved in making sure he is safe. It’s a pretty big number of people for one guy to try to get past.”

  “You’re overthinking it,” Jenny said. “Noah doesn’t have to get past a thousand people, he only has to get past one: the one standing between him and his target.”

  “Correct,” Noah said. “And as for weapons, the most effective weapon in this particular type of political assassination is usually one you have to improvise on the scene.”

  “Yes, but then I refer you to the work of Frank Olson, who made a point of explaining that improvised weapons are usually used during what’s known as a ‘lost’ assassination, when the assassin is going to die with the target. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m not ready to give you up just yet.”

  “I second that,” Sarah said.

  “And you can both relax,” Noah said. “I have no intention of sacrificing myself on this mission. My orders are not to take out just one man, but an entire organization. I don’t intend to die on the first phase.”

  “Or the second, or the third,” Sarah said. “Or any other phase. No dying, it’s not allowed, you got that?”

  Noah looked at her, and for a second it almost looked like he started to grin. “No dying,” he said. “Orders received.”

  Neil was working away at the computer, and suddenly turned to Noah. “Okay, the president has two events scheduled in the next ten days. Three days from now, he’s going to be meeting with children at an elementary school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then five days later, he’s going to be in Dallas to address an oil convention.”

  “Skip the one in Pennsylvania,” Noah said. “The last thing we want to do is traumatize the school kids. Can you find out where he’ll be staying in Dallas?”

  “Ritz-Carlton,” Neil said. “Secret Service has already blocked off three floors. That’s standard procedure when the president has to stay in a hotel, and they’ve already got the staff scheduled that will be working the hotel while he’s there. Apparently, some of them didn’t pass the background check and will be taking a couple of days off. The hotel is calling in people from other hotels in the area who did pass.”

  “Is there any way you can get a list of who will be working while he’s there? Particularly the people coming from other hotels.”

  “That’s pretty highly classified,” Neil said, “so it’s going to require some hacking. Give me an hour or so to find my way into the Secret Service computers.” He went back to tapping on the keyboard, and Noah turned to Jenny.

  “I may need to use you,” he said. “What I’m hoping is that we can pull a substitution, snatch one of those people and use their ID to get into the hotel. No matter what floor they keep him on, there will be certain areas he’ll have to pass through. If one or both of us can get inside, we can set up some sort of ambush.”

  “What have you got in mind?” Jenny asked. “A bomb?”

  “Possibly, but nothing conventional. They’ll have detection systems set up to catch anything that uses explosives, everything from electronic sniffers to dogs. We’d never get a conventional bomb of any kind inside that hotel, so we might need to think outside the box.”

  “Then you have the problem of how to set it off,” Neil said. “One thing they constantly scan for is anything electronic. They even take out all of the TV sets and telephones from the rooms they use, and install their own. No outside electronics are allowed, in order to prevent bugging and such. Some of their equipment can detect even the slightest electrical field, even as small as a hearing aid battery.”

  “I’m not even sure a bomb is something I want to use,” Noah said. “One thing I would like to do is avoid collateral damage as much as we can.”

  Marco shook his head. “That’s going to make this a lot harder,” he said. “I understand where you’re coming from, but I can’t imagine that there’s going to be any opportunity for a surgical strike.”

  “Then we need to create one. Let’s think about other ways to take out a target that don’t involve mass destruction, something that can be executed on a particular person. Any ideas?”

  “It’s got to be something that can get past detection,” Jenny said. “A blowgun? Like some of the African tribes used to use, with poison darts?”

  “That actually could be a possibility,” Noah said. “We have to look into what kind of poison would be most effective, something that couldn’t be quickly counteracted. It could also be propelled by compressed air, rather than just by breath.”

  “Hey, what about an air gun?” Marco asked. “Maybe something made of plastic or ceramic, so it won’t set off a metal detector?”

  “Another possibility. Instead of a trigger, it could use a simple valve. It would have to have an air tank built into it, one that can hold some pretty serious pressure.”

  “I’m thinking of poisons,” Jenny said, “and a thought just occurred to me. Did I read somewhere that the president is deathly allergic to something?”

  Neil glanced at her, then started tapping on the keyboard again. “Well, lookee there,” he said. “It seems President Andrews is highly allergic to bee stings. He was stung once a few years ago and almost died. More than a couple of stings, and even atropine would not work.”

  Noah looked at Neil for a long moment. “Find out where I can get some bees,” he said. “Preferably wild ones.”

  * * * * *

  It took two days to get close enough to Paul Tunney to lock in a deal for identification, but once the man decided to take the job, he didn’t waste any time. For three thousand dollars a set, he provided Noah with three complete identities for each of them less than twenty-four hours later. It required spending a few more hours hitting ATMs, but it was well worth it as far as Noah was concerned.

  The following morning, they each used the first set of IDs to book tickets on an American Airlines flight from London to Dallas, and they told Thomas that they would be gone for a few days as they drove away. They drove the Bentley into London and parked it in a secure storage lot, then took three separate taxis to the airport. All three of them were on the same flight, but in different sections of the plane. In order to avoid drawing any attention, Noah sat alone, Sarah and Jenny appeared to be traveling together, and Marco and Neil sat beside each other toward the rear of the cabin.

  For more than ten hours, they pretended not to know each other. It wasn’t until after they had disembarked at Dallas and made it through baggage claim that they finally gathered together at the car rental counter. They drove out a little while later with a Nissan SUV, headed for a hotel that didn’t have nearly the security requirements the Ritz-Carlton would have.

  They arrived in the late afternoon, and despite the meals served on the plane, they were all hungry. The hotel they chose didn’t have a restaurant of its own, but there were several within walking distance. They found a decent place to sit down and eat just a block away, and carefully acted like tourists as they had their dinner.

  In order to keep an even lower profile, they had taken separate rooms. Noah and Sarah shared one, as did Neil and Jenny, leaving Marco all alone. When they got back to the hotel, Noah suggested they all get some sleep and be ready to start work the following morning, and the first thing to do was to send Marco and Sarah out to buy a vehi
cle.

  “We need something big enough for all of us,” Noah said. “I think the ideal vehicle at the moment would be something like a minivan.”

  “Sure,” Marco said, “send me out to buy the perfect vehicle for a soccer mom.”

  “Hey,” Sarah said, “I’ll be with you, you can blame it on me.”

  They had been through so many different time zones in the last couple of weeks that all of them were exhausted. It wasn’t that difficult for them to fall asleep, once they turned off the televisions, got their showers, crawled into bed, and relaxed.

  The sun woke Noah at shortly after six, as it pushed enough light through the thick curtains to tickle his eyelids. He leaned over and kissed Sarah awake, then used the hotel phone to make sure the rest of them were up and out of bed. They went to the same restaurant for breakfast, and then Marco and Sarah went out car shopping. Neil, Jenny, and Noah gathered in Noah and Sarah’s room when they came back.

  “Okay,” Neil said, “I managed to get the layout of the Ritz, and it’s really quite a building. The main entrance is on McKinney Avenue, but it’s almost a certainty that the president will come in through the back. They’re not going to take a chance on letting him walk right through the front doors, because controlling the environment would be too difficult. Granted, they try to set up a mile perimeter around his location, but even the Secret Service can’t interfere with civil rights. Just because someone might not be fond of the president is no reason to run them out of their home or place of work, so they prefer not to let him be in the line of sight of anyone who might want to do him harm. That’s why they generally bring him through the loading docks in the back of any building.”