Balance of Power (Noah Wolf Book 7)
Page 33
Jenny frowned. “Damn,” she said, “I wish I was in on this one with you. He sounds like the kind of guy I love to take out.”
Neil looked at Noah. “Hey, boss, how about that? Think she could come on down for a while? I mean, we could tell everybody my girlfriend was visiting, right?”
“No,” Noah said. “I don’t have the authority to okay that, and I’m already in place. We got Marco coming in a few days from now; it might look funny if too many new people start showing up.”
Sarah patted Neil’s arm. “Don’t worry, baby brother,” she said, “this mission should be over pretty soon, and you can get back to your cuddle bunny.” She giggled when she saw Jenny blush slightly. “Oh, my gosh, does he actually call you that?”
Jenny shrugged but didn’t say anything. Neil glared at Sarah for a moment, then leaned over and put an arm around Jenny and whispered to her. Whatever he said made the girl smile, and she turned around to give him a kiss.
“Hey, Noah,” Wally said as they were waiting for their orders to appear, “we got a few new gadgets you might like. Are you gonna have time to take a look at some of them tomorrow morning, before you leave?”
“Possibly,” Noah said. “What kind of gadgets?”
Wally grinned, and Sarah thought once more that he really did look a bit like a mad scientist. “I had this wild idea a few weeks ago,” he said, “and I turned it over to a couple of new kids we hired, and they handed me a working prototype day before yesterday. I call it a smart gun. It looks like a brick on a small tripod, but it has a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree camera mounted on top. You use a cell phone or a computer to feed it a photo of the target and then just set it someplace where you expect the target will pass by. When it sees the target, it will lock on and track until it gets the perfect shot, and then it will fire. You can actually give it several dozen targets, and it will look for each and every one and shoot them. Well, until it runs out of bullets, anyway. The base model only holds fifteen rounds.”
Noah’s left eyebrow went up a notch. “Like having a sniper in your pocket,” he said. “I can think of times it would’ve come in handy.”
“I can’t wait to demonstrate it for you,” Wally said, and then he leaned close to whisper into Noah’s ear. “Another thing you might like is super classified—a pair of sunglasses that can tell you when someone is lying to you. It has a super-micro-computer built into it, along with a camera so small you can’t even see it, and it reads microexpressions. It can tell you instantly if someone is being deceptive by flashing a little display that only the wearer can see.”
“Now, that could be interesting,” Noah said. “How accurate would you say it is?”
“We’ve tested the technology, before we used it in the glasses, on over four hundred subjects, including a hundred who were specifically told to lie, and none of them have been able to fool it. So far, it’s running a hundred percent accuracy. The only drawback is that it can’t necessarily tell you exactly which part of what the subject says is untrue, but it can definitely tell you if the subject is trying to conceal something. In testing, however, we’ve been able to spot the actual lie about ninety-eight percent of the time.”
Noah looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “I want one,” he said, still in a whisper. “Do you have one I can take back with me tomorrow?”
Wally’s smile got even bigger. “We’ve got several sets made,” he said. “I’ll make sure to have one ready for you in the morning.”
The food arrived a few moments later, and they all dug in. They chatted a bit as they ate, but Noah, Sarah, and Neil were quite hungry, so they tended to listen more than speak. Jenny told them about her latest mission, which had involved the assassination of a Colombian drug lord, and Neil was careful to express shock, horror, and admiration in the right places. He’d already figured out that Jenny often second-guessed herself and needed some kind of approval for the way she handled her assignments in order to avoid self-doubt. The more he gave her, the happier she seemed to be in their burgeoning relationship.
When they finished dinner, Wally convinced them to stay a bit longer for a couple of drinks. Noah decided to forgo any alcohol, since he knew he would be going into surgery before long, but didn’t object when Sarah decided to have a wine cooler. Considering that there was still a chance the explosive in his arm would kill him before the evening was over, he figured the small bit of alcohol in the bottle might help ease her nerves slightly.
Wally’s phone chirped about half an hour later, and he glanced at it. He smiled and then looked up at Noah. “They’re ready,” he said.
The five of them, including Jenny, headed for the door. Wally took care of the tab, and then Neil decided to ride back to R&D with Jenny. That let Wally sit behind Sarah and stretch his legs out a bit more comfortably. It took them only a short time to get back, and the security guards did not even challenge them as they entered with Wally.
Wally led them straight back to where the hyperbaric chamber still sat in its trailer, and they were met by Tom and Bob, the electronics technicians, who had already given the doctors their handiwork.
Dr. Slocum was looking at it closely, comparing it to the image on the X-ray. “Looks almost identical,” he said. “Certainly seems to be the same size and shape. We shouldn’t have any problem at all sliding this right in where the other comes out.” He looked up at Noah. “What we’re going to do is use a cylindrical extractor. It’s sharp, like a hypodermic, and will pierce the skin the same way it was done when this was put into you, and we’ve got a tiny mechanical grapple that we can slip through it. That will grab on to the device and let us pull it out, and then we’ll drop it into the containment canister and use the same system to put the new device into place. The whole procedure won’t take more than twenty minutes, but we need to completely deaden the area first. I don’t even want to put a needle into you there until we’re inside the chamber and under pressure.”
“And then, of course,” Dr. Reed said, “once the explosive is in the containment canister, we have to decompress. Now, the pressure won’t be a lot higher than it is out here, but decompression will still take about a half hour. We’re probably looking at an hour, hour and ten minutes, from the moment we go in until we come out.”
Wally grinned and rubbed his hands together. “Which is why I’m going to take Neil and these lovely young ladies back to my office, where I have a rare and expensive bottle of wine I intend to share with them. By the time you come out, Noah, we’re all going to have a pretty good buzz going on.”
Sarah started to protest, but Jenny took her by the arm and pulled gently. Noah leaned down and kissed her, then gave her a little push in Wally’s direction. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll be there in an hour or so.”
Sarah stood there and stared at him for a moment, tears starting to flow down her cheeks. “You better be,” she said, and then she let Jenny lead her away.
Neil stood there beside Noah for another moment, then just held out a hand. The two of them shook, and Neil followed Jenny and Sarah.
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NOAH WOLF THRILLERS
Code Name Camelot (Book 1)
Lone Wolf (Book 2)
In Sheep's Clothing (Book 3)
Hit for Hire (Book 4)
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Black Sheep (Book 6)
Balance of Power (Book 7)
Time to Hunt (Book 8)
Red Square (Book 9)
Highest Order (Book 10)
Edge of Anarchy (Book 11)
Unknown Evil (Book 12)
Black Harvest (Book 13)
World Order (Book 14)
Caged Animal (Book 15)
Deep Allegiance (Book 16)
Pack Leader (Book 17)
High Treason (Book 18)
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Live Bait (Book 7)
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More Than It Seems (Book 9)
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