Balance of Power (Noah Wolf Book 7)

by David Archer

  Noah thought about it for a moment and then led her into another store. After browsing for a few minutes, the two of them agreed on a large beer mug that commemorated the Mexican hero Pancho Villa. At some point in the past, Noah had heard him mention an admiration for the former bandit who helped to liberate his country.

  Some of their best times, however, were spent just lounging at the pool at the resort. There was actually a bartender set up at the level of the water, so they could swim right up to the bar and sit on a submerged stool to enjoy a margarita or a cold Modelo, and it didn’t take long for Noah to realize what Allison meant about Sarah being a lightweight. By the time she finished the second margarita, Sarah was ready to tell everyone in earshot just how happy she was to have married the love of her life.

  Both of them were taking video with their phones, and Noah hired a local photographer a few times to capture footage of them at various activities. While he could personally remember almost every detail of each experience, he knew that Sarah would like to look back on these days at some point, and he already planned to have Neil compile all the video into some home movies they could watch from time to time.

  Nothing, however, lasts forever. Two weeks can seem like a lifetime when you are just beginning it, but the last day always seems to have come too quickly. It was finally time to head back to the real world, and Noah and Sarah said goodbye to the new friends they had met. This included a couple from Australia, another from England, and their favorite waiter at one of the in-house restaurants, who had actually invited them to come to his home and meet his family one evening. They had taken him up on it and spent several hours gathered around a simple fire pit while Roberto, the waiter, playfully scolded his nine children for the antics they were using to catch the attention of the gringos. Sarah thought the children were adorable, especially the two smallest ones who were still in diapers, while Noah seemed to be a source of excitement for the older ones. The boys thought his tall, blond, muscular frame must mean he was some sort of hero, while the girls simply thought he was gorgeous.

  It had been a wonderful trip, and the memories they were taking away from it would be cherished forever, but it was finally time to leave. Noah drove them back to the airport and turned in the Jeep, and an hour later the plane lifted off to bring them home to Kirtland.

  When they arrived at Denver International, Noah was quickly reminded of his observation about Mexican baggage handlers being more efficient. It took almost an hour and a half to retrieve their bags, and then the Corvette refused to start; apparently, one of the doors had not shut all the way and a light was left on, so the battery was dead. Noah caught one of the security officers, who was willing to give him a jump, and they were finally headed for home.

  It was almost midnight by the time they got there, but Noah wasn’t quite finished yet. He told Sarah to wait in the car for a moment while he checked something, then went to the front door and opened it before going back to the car and swinging her door open. She took his hand and stepped out, and then he swept her up into his arms and carried her to the house and across the threshold.

  Once they were inside, he set her on her feet and turned her to face him, and she threw both arms around his neck to pull him down for a kiss.

  “Welcome home, Mrs. Wolf,” he said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Noah was up the next morning with the sunrise, and Sarah was up by the time he finished his shower. He opened the bathroom door and was immediately pulled into a hug, and that turned into a kiss. A few minutes later, Sarah went to get her own shower while Noah dressed and headed for the kitchen. By the time she joined him, he had managed to make quite a mess by spilling coffee grounds on the counter.

  “You want to let me take that over?” Sarah asked.

  Noah looked at her and actually managed a small grin. “Neil says my coffee isn’t as good as yours, anyway,” he said. She giggled at him as she pushed him aside, cleaned up the mess, and dumped out the coffee he had made. A few minutes later, the coffee maker was happily purring away, and she waited until it was almost done before pouring a cup for each of them.

  Then, it was time for breakfast. “I was thinking,” Noah said, “we might run down to Charlie’s for breakfast.”

  “No way, José,” Sarah said. “You’ve gone and made an honest woman of me. The least I can do is make breakfast for my husband, right?”

  Noah wasn’t about to argue, and it wasn’t long before waffles and eggs were sitting on the table in front of each of their chairs. They sat down to enjoy breakfast together, and even though they had done so many times before, it seemed like a first.

  “I suppose we need to check in,” Noah said. “Let’s face it, the Dragon Lady knows we’re back by now. We need to see what’s on the agenda.”

  Sarah nodded, and Noah picked up his phone from where he had laid it on the table. He dialed the number for Allison’s office and asked for her when it was answered.

  “About time you got back here,” Allison said as she came on the line, but he could hear the smile in her voice. “Remember what I said about being able to handle things without you?”

  “Yes,” Noah said hesitantly.

  “Well, I did. Unfortunately, it meant sending two other teams out to do something you could handle alone, but that’s life. How’s Sarah doing?”

  “I’m fine,” Sarah said. “He’s got you on speakerphone, so don’t try to finagle him behind my back.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Allison said. “Seriously, Sarah, how are you feeling?”

  “If you’re asking whether I’ve gotten over being captured and tortured, the answer is yes. Honestly, Allison, I think I’m ready to go back in the field whenever you need us to.”

  “Noah?” Allison asked. “What’s your take on that comment?”

  “She seems like the same old Sarah to me,” Noah said, “but I’ll admit to the possibility of being biased, or only seeing what I want to see. I think it wouldn’t hurt for her to spend some time with Doc Parker, just to be sure.”

  “Oh! Noah, you traitor! Allison, don’t listen to him. I’m fine, I really am.”

  “Hrumph,” Allison said. “This is one time I’m going to take his advice. Parker is available this morning, so take her on out there, Noah. Drop her off and go have some coffee or hang out with Jackson or something, but give them a couple of hours together. After I hear back from him, then I want both of you to come by my office this afternoon. Let’s say around two o’clock, okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Noah said. The line went dead, and he turned to Sarah. “Babe, don’t get upset. This is just a precaution, nothing else. Remember, you went through some pretty serious trauma. The last thing we need is for you to be holding stuff in that might come back to haunt us later.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Sarah said grudgingly. “I don’t feel like there’s any real problems, though. I mean, I can think about what happened without feeling like I want to cry anymore.”

  “Yes, but that could simply be a matter of getting used to the memories. Talking to Doc Parker isn’t going to hurt a thing.”

  “Fine,” Sarah said. “Then let’s go get it over with. And if he says I have to start therapy, I might just shoot the old man myself.”

  They cleaned up the kitchen quickly and headed out to the car. Noah slid behind the wheel of the Corvette and hit the key, but all it did was click. “Battery must have gone bad,” he said.

  “No problem,” Sarah said, “we haven’t taken my car anywhere in a while, anyway.” They got out of the Corvette and walked over to her Camaro, and Noah held the driver’s door open for her. She slid in, and then he walked around and got into the passenger side.

  Getting to Dr. Parker’s office took only a few minutes, and Sarah tossed Noah the keys as she got out of the car. He climbed out and walked around to give her a kiss, then spent almost a minute getting the seat back far enough for his longer frame and adjusting the mirrors. Two hours, Allison had said, and Noah t
hought her suggestion to visit Mr. Jackson was a good one. After two weeks of relaxation, a heavy workout would do him good.

  He got to the physical training facility just as another group was about to take off, and Jackson invited him to run along. E & E’s idea of physical training involved few of the standard exercises; instead, every person who might end up in the field was put through a parkour course, running and using obstacles in their way to help them get where they were going even more quickly. Most of the people in this group were newbies, so Jackson was happy to have Noah set the pace for them.

  Noah was glad he got to set the pace, as well. Most of the time when he ran with one of the groups, it was one of the regulars who was leading, and a few of them were capable of giving Noah a serious workout just trying to keep up with them.

  This time, he took off at slightly more than a leisurely jog, just enough to make the rest of the group work a bit. The route they took normally went through a bit of the forest and into downtown, where they might run right through the middle of office buildings at times, and Noah had been known to run across the tops of desks more than once. Today he decided to take it a little bit easier and just let his followers get a good taste of working up a sweat.

  That didn’t mean it was going to be a picnic, though. He took them up fire escapes, across buildings, had them jump down onto semitrailers and into dumpsters and a dozen other stunts that most of them had never dreamed they might have to try. Each run usually lasted about an hour and a half, and by the time they got back to their starting point, a few of the stragglers were at least a mile behind.

  “You lost a couple,” Jackson said. “Are they going to survive?”

  “They’ll be along shortly,” Noah replied. “I took it a little easy on them, but some of them are going to need a few weeks of exercise before they’re ready for the whole course.”

  Jackson threw back his head and laughed. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell them,” he said, “but they keep insisting they’re ready for anything I can throw at them. That’s why I jumped at the chance to throw you. How was the honeymoon?”

  “Pretty great, but now I have to try to get back in shape. I think you’ll be seeing me often for the next couple weeks.”

  Jackson nodded. “Cool. I’ll put together a group for you to lead. How about mornings, say around ten?”

  “I’ll be here.” Noah wiped his face down with the towel Jackson handed him, then turned and walked back to the car and drove back toward Parker’s office. Sarah was still inside when he arrived, so he sat in the car and waited.

  It was almost twenty minutes later when the door opened and she stepped out of the building. Noah’s first glance up at her told him that she had been crying, but he wasn’t surprised. Parker had a knack for seeing right through any attempt you might make to hide feelings or problems, and there was little doubt in his mind that she had been in some stage of denial over what happened to her. Parker would have seen that and forced her to face it. He got out of the car and was waiting when she reached him, and pulled her into his arms.

  “I hate him,” she said softly. “Why is it he always has to be right?”

  “What happened, babe?” Noah asked.

  She simply held on to him for a moment, with her face buried in his shoulder, but then she looked up into his face. “I wasn’t letting myself remember,” she said. “I was telling myself that it wasn’t as bad as it really was, and that’s not good, I guess.”

  “No. You have to feel what happened; you have to accept the pain and the fear and everything else that came with it. Those things have to become completely real to you before you can honestly put them behind you, but they’ll also become a part of who you are. This is why I thought it would be good for you to come and see him.”

  Sarah looked at him for a moment and then stuck her tongue out at him. “Then I hate you, too, even though I love you. Come on, I’m hungry.” She walked around the car and got into the passenger seat, so Noah got back in behind the wheel and they drove down to Charlie’s for lunch, instead of breakfast.

  Lunch at Charlie’s was never something that happened quickly. Every order was prepared individually so that the food was always as fresh as possible. Both of them ordered burgers and fries, and by the time they were finished eating, it was time to head for Allison’s office.

  Luckily, the office was just down the street a few blocks. Noah drove them into the underground garage, and they rode the elevator up.

  Allison’s secretary simply pointed toward the conference room when she saw them, so they waved and went inside. Allison and Mr. Jefferson were there waiting, along with Neil and Molly.

  “Parker says you’re going to be fine,” Allison said to Sarah, “but he thinks it would do you good to come in once a day for a week or two.” She turned and looked at Noah. “Jackson says you’re going to be working with the newbies for a while, in the mornings, is that right?”

  “Yes, ma’am, ten o’clock every morning.”

  “Good. I’ll tell Parker to keep that same slot open for Sarah.” She turned to Jefferson. “Go ahead.”

  Donald Jefferson simply pointed at Molly, and she got to her feet.

  “Okay,” she said. “With Neil’s help, we’ve come up with a plan to smoke out the CIA mole. We’ve created a dummy file on you, Noah, one that incorporates just enough truth to make it convincing, such as some of your legitimate missions and after-action reports, but everything else was created. We’ve given you a personal history completely unlike the real one, down to living parents. There is a couple in Texas who had a son who would be around your age, and who was beaten to death in prison after being sentenced to death for a couple of gang-related vengeance murders. They’re pretty deeply involved in drug trafficking, so we built the file to show that you were actually their son, recruited from prison and your death faked. He was exactly the kind of person we sometimes recruit, so it’s believable.”

  Noah nodded slowly. “So, the idea is to let the mole think that threatening them will secure my cooperation?”

  “Yes,” Jefferson added, “and of course, it will. At least as long as it takes for us to identify him or her, you’ll pretend to be doing exactly what he wants. Now, we’re hoping that we built in enough traps that it will expose the mole as soon as he tries to contact you, but we may have to let him see cooperation to some degree.”

  “I can do whatever I need to,” Noah said. “It’s absolutely critical that we identify and catch this person.”

  “I agree completely,” Allison said. “Originally, I wanted you to simply identify and terminate the mole, but we need to find out just how much damage has been done to national security before that happens. It’s imperative that this individual be taken alive.”

  “I’d come to the same conclusion,” Noah said. “We need to find out everything we possibly can about what he or she has been doing, who the contacts are, everything.” He looked at Neil and Molly, then turned back to Allison. “How soon are we putting this into play?”

  “Immediately,” Allison said. “We expect it to take some time before any contact is actually made with you, so the sooner we launch the plan, the better. Randy Mitchell is still under absolute observation, but Doc Parker is convinced that he wants to fully cooperate. Let’s face it, you’re probably the only chance he’s ever got for getting out from under this monster’s thumb.”

  “Where is Mitchell now? If he’s not going out into the field with his team, it might look…”

  “He is,” Jefferson said. “Team Cinderella was sent out on a mission eight days ago, and they’re due back today or tomorrow. Everything went according to plan, and Mitchell was contacted twice by the mole, both times to respond to questions about what happened in China. Our mysterious mole seems to have stepped up his efforts to track you down, Noah, and so we hope this will play right into our plans. The day after Team Cinderella returns, Mitchell will ‘inadvertently’ gain access to a file archive—a fake one, of course—w
here copies of active files are kept against the threat of data loss or compromise. He’ll manage to copy your file onto one of those little gadgets that plug into a computer and will hold it until he is contacted again.”

  “At which time,” Molly went on, “he’ll let the mole know he has it and offer to trade it for his own freedom and the safety of his sisters. We decided on that ploy, rather than have him ask for money, because it would be more in character. He has followed the mole’s orders all along only because of the threat against those girls, and has protested each time that he wanted out. Something this big, it would look fishy if he simply asked for money instead.”

  Noah nodded. “Absolutely, that makes sense. So, once that’s done, all I have to do is wait for the mole to use whatever means you set up to contact me. How will that happen?”

  “What we anticipate,” Molly said, “is that one or both of your fake parents will probably be threatened, and you’ll receive a message about it. The message will probably tell you that they will be killed if you don’t cooperate, and will undoubtedly include a way for you to respond. It’s the way you should receive the message that we hope will lead us back to the mole, though. Neil?”

  “We studied the prison file on the guy who supposedly became Noah Wolf, and he was something of a car nut. We built you a series of profiles on different automotive forum sites, all of them tied to an email address we created for you. We also planted tracking bugs into the software on every one of those websites, so when a message is sent to you through one of them, the bug will go looking for the hard IP address of the computer it was sent from. Trouble is, there are ways to mask the IP of an originating computer, so we also gave them all a bug that will attach a hidden file to any message you send in response. That hidden file will hijack even the most secure email server and send us back a message containing the IP address of any computer he uses to view it. We’ll also be recording your phone and everything that goes into or out of it.”

  “And there’s no way he can get around that part?” Noah asked.