by David Archer
Noah grinned as he nodded. “Most of them are, yeah,” he said, “but Matt came up with this system. Each of the teams carries this big roll that sticks to the side of the trailer, and it’s painted with Matt’s own markings. He’s got a few dozen trailers that are ghosts, old trailers he scrapped but kept the paperwork for. Slap this banner on the side of any trailer and it suddenly looks like one of his, and if the tags come back to his company…”
“Then DOT doesn’t bother with it,” Morgan finished for him. “That’s pretty slick. How do you know this guy?”
“We were cellmates back during my first year in the Fed,” Noah said. “We got to be friends because he’s from a town that’s close to where I grew up. He did two years for dealing pot, but his father was already in this racket back then. The old man died a couple years ago, and he took it all over. My stinking PO back in Ohio wouldn’t let me get a CDL, or I’d have been driving a truck for him right after I got out.”
Morgan laughed. “Sounds like his loss is my gain. You think he could get a reasonable number of trailers to us every month?”
“No doubt in my mind,” Noah said. “Of course, we have to make the trailers disappear. They drop it where it’s going, take the banner off the side and the tags off the back, and they’re gone. It all happens so fast nobody really notices anything, and that’s why he never gets caught.”
Morgan chuckled. “I got a cutting operation down by Huntsville,” he said, “a place where we cut up big farm tractors and equipment. We sell the engines and major parts, and the rest gets run through a crusher and hauled to a scrapyard up in Missouri. Those boys could cut up a semitrailer in less than an hour, so that wouldn’t be a problem. And there ain’t no cops around here that would bother to pull us over, even if they noticed the trailer was stolen.”
“Then it could work,” Noah said. “As long as you got a way to get rid of the trailers, there shouldn’t be any problem all.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. How long you think it would take you to get it set up?”
Noah shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I have to get hold of Matt—that isn’t always easy, because he drives one of the trucks himself. I don’t have his number with me, but I got it at home. I can call him tonight, and if I don’t get hold of him, he’ll call me back when he gets the message.”
Morgan nodded and then reached over and patted Noah on the shoulder. “Rex,” he said, “I think I’m gonna be very glad to have you around. Did you have anything else you want to suggest?”
Noah twisted his face as if trying to remember. “Seems like I thought of something, but I can’t remember right now what it was. I’m sure it’ll hit me again at some point.”
“Well, when it does, you speak up. Have you got my phone number?”
“No,” Noah said. He took his phone out of his pocket and passed it to Morgan. “You want to put it in there?”
Morgan pressed a button to activate the phone, then went into the contacts and added his own name and phone number before passing it back. “Give me a call now,” he said, “so I can save your number, too.”
Noah thumbed the contact and Morgan’s phone began to ring. He didn’t bother to answer but then saved the number to his own contacts.
“Good,” he said. “That way I can reach you if I need to.” He turned his face toward Noah again. “I’m thinking you might be my new enforcer,” he said. “You okay with that?”
Noah gave him his shark-tooth smile. “Just call,” he said.
A few minutes later, Noah dropped Morgan off at his house and then headed for home. His GPS showed him a shortcut that shaved off several miles, so he was home only ten minutes after leaving Morgan’s place.
Kate’s car was sitting in the driveway, so Noah parked beside it and walked into the house. Kate, Sarah, and Neil were all sitting at the kitchen table.
“Hey, babe,” Sarah said, jumping up to put her arms around him. She gave him a quick kiss and then let go, holding on to his hand and pulling him into the kitchen. “Kate called a while ago and I invited her out for dinner.”
“Hi, bro,” Kate said. “How was your day?”
A quick glance at Neil, who gave him a silent thumbs-up, told Noah that it was safe to talk openly. “I now know the names of all of Morgan’s lieutenants,” he said. He looked at Neil again. “How did it go on the phones?”
“I’ll have ten of them day after tomorrow,” Neil said. “I take it you got somewhere with that idea?”
“Yeah. I need forty-seven of them, as soon as we can get them. I got promoted today to enforcer, and I got the chance to talk to Morgan directly about the possibility of feds using cell phone talk to build a case. When I told him I knew where to get phones that could keep that from happening, he was all for it and wants me to get them as soon as possible.”
Kate’s eyes were bouncing back and forth between the two of them. “This sounds like something I don’t even want to know about,” she said. She turned to Sarah. “Angie, is there anything I can do to help with dinner?”
Sarah grinned at her. “Are you kidding? We’re having pizza. I’m still recovering from the trip to get here; I don’t feel like doing a lot of cooking tonight.” She got up and opened the freezer, then pulled out four of the frozen pizzas that were inside. “I’ve got three supremes and one pepperoni. That cover everybody?”
“Works for me,” Neil said, and Kate echoed him. Sarah set the twin built-in ovens to preheat and started opening boxes. “Rex, I made iced tea. It’s in the fridge.”
Noah got up and grabbed her for a quick kiss, then searched through the cabinets until he found a glass. He turned around and looked at Kate before he opened the refrigerator. “Sis? Want some tea?”
She held up a glass that was sitting in front of her and rattled the ice cubes in it. “Already had some,” she said, “but I could use a refill.”
Noah got the pitcher out of the refrigerator and poured for her, then refilled Sarah’s glass, as well. Neil had a bottle of beer in front of him, so Noah poured himself a glass of tea before sitting back down at the table.
“So,” Neil said, “you said you know who all the lieutenants are?”
Noah nodded, then looked at him and started reciting the list of names. Neil had opened a notepad and typed them in as he rattled them off.
Kate’s eyebrows rose on a couple of the names. “Geez,” she said, “I never would have guessed they were involved with Morgan. This thing is even bigger than I imagined.” Her face took on a pained expression. “And do you—are you going to have to kill them all?”
Noah nodded. “I’m afraid those are my orders,” he said. “I can’t leave any of the lieutenants to try to rebuild the organization.”
Kate shook her head. “That’s a pity,” she said. “Leanne and Heather—they’ve got kids. If I wasn’t so sure you know exactly what you’re doing, I don’t think I could believe they were part of this mess. I’ve known both of them for, well, pretty much as long as I’ve been here. Heather recruited me to help run a benefit for a couple of local kids who were hurt in a car accident last fall. Until tonight, I would’ve said she was just your average housewife.”
“Average housewives can get sucked into something that makes a lot of money, too,” Sarah said. “I—I used to know this girl. She and her father were professional car thieves, but they were both pretty nice people as far as anybody else knew. You just never can tell, you know?”
“There have been pretty nice people,” Neil said solemnly, “who have murdered their friends because somebody found out what kind of weird stuff they were really into. Think about how many serial killers have been arrested, and the neighbors all say they can’t believe it, he was such a nice guy, all that crap.”
Noah nodded. “Unfortunately, they’re right. If your friend Heather knew who you were, she’d probably be one of the first to tell Morgan, and she’d be fully aware that she was signing your death warrant when she did it. These people will kill, or arrange f
or someone else to kill, in order to protect the secret of what they do, no matter how nice you might think they are in their public lives. That’s precisely why DOJ decided it was time to call us in. Too many people have already died so Jimmy Morgan can keep his secrets and his money, and far too many others have been threatened. Once I’m done here, I suspect you’ll see an awful lot of cops and prosecutors being rounded up.”
“Of course,” Kate said. “They won’t have Morgan to protect them anymore. And as much as I might not like seeing those kids become motherless, I completely understand why you have to do what you have to do.” She looked at her glass for a moment, then looked up at Noah again. “Can I ask how you’ll do it?”
“No. I’m afraid that goes higher than your clearance allows.”
Kate nodded, then took a big drink from her glass of tea. “No problem. Not sure I really want to know, anyway.”
They sat around the table and talked until the pizza was done, and then Sarah suggested they carry it into the living room and find a movie. Noah traded his glass for a bottle of beer on the way, and Sarah handed him the remote. He scrolled through the satellite channel selections and settled on an old Schwarzenegger film called Raw Deal.
The movie was about a small-town sheriff who was recruited by the government to infiltrate a Mafia organization in Chicago, where he had to pose as a hit man. Kate laughed when she figured out what was going on in the film and told Noah she thought it was rather appropriate.
“It’s one of my old favorites,” he replied. “I just never thought I’d have to play the part in real life.”
“Yeah,” Kate said, “I suppose not.”
They ate as they sat through the movie, and then Kate said she had to go home and get some sleep. Noah, Sarah, and Neil walked out onto the porch with her and then waved as she drove away.
“I got a message while the movie was playing,” Neil said. “Molly talked to Wally, and the phones will be ready in about four days, all of them. They’ll come in a big box, all at once, overnight shipment.”
Noah nodded. “That’ll be good. This thing is going a lot faster than I expected, but with everything going on with Monique, I think that might be a good thing. Did you relay up the list of names?”
“Yeah,” Neil said as they went back into the living room. “My only question is how big a mess it’s going to make if you blow them all up at once. It’s like you said, there’s enough conspiracy theories floating around as it is—do our bosses honestly think a couple dozen criminals can all die from an exploding cell phone without people wondering if the government wasn’t behind it?”
Noah thought for a moment, then looked at Neil. “Any idea what brand these phones are? I hate to ruin some phone company, and I know some of them have had issues with batteries blowing up and such in the past.”
Neil chuckled. “They were actually made in China, or at least the electronics are. Once they blow up, there’s not going to be enough left to identify, anyway, so it’s not likely anybody will realize they were all the same kind.”
“Some people will,” Noah said. “Some of these people have wives, girlfriends, husbands. They’ll know, but as long as there isn’t a particular brand on them, it shouldn’t make a lot of difference.”
“That’s a good point,” Neil said. “Let me send a message right now, suggesting that they have some phony brand marked on them.” He sat down and picked up his computer. A few minutes later, he looked up and grinned. “No worries,” he said. “It turns out, according to Wally, there won’t be enough left of anything to be able to determine where the explosion originated. Any leftover cell phone parts will be mixed up with pieces of guts and bone.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Geez, what a lovely thought.”
“As long as they get the job done,” Noah said.
Noah and Sarah sat down on the couch, with Noah keeping Sarah on his right side. She snuggled close and then looked around him at Neil.
“We’re all clear, now,” he said. “Tell him the other thing.”
Noah turned and looked at the skinny kid. “The other thing?”
“Yeah,” Neil said. “We may have a little solution to the problem of that nasty device in your armpit. Molly went out and talked to Wally about it directly, today, and he called in some of his evil geniuses for a brainstorming session. They came to the conclusion that the pressure sensor on that thing must have been activated after it was put in place. That means it read the pressure your tissues put on it at that moment, so as long as the pressure on it doesn’t go any lower, you’d be safe. Higher doesn’t matter—blood pressure, exertion, lots of things can make the pressure go higher—but only removing it from where it’s at could take it lower.”
Noah nodded. “Okay, that makes sense,” he said. “And they have a way to get it out?”
“Well, they’re pretty sure it would work,” Neil said. “What they have in mind is to put you inside one of those things they use to keep deep-sea divers under pressure when they come out of the water. They crank up the pressure, then take out the device and put it into a high-pressure canister filled with water. Since the pressure will be higher than what your tissues could normally put on it, it most likely won’t explode. They can keep it in the pressurized canister until they are ready to let it go off, but you come out of the chamber perfectly safe a few hours later.”
Noah sat there and looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Sounds like it would work,” he said. “Did they give you the odds of success?”
Neil grimaced. “Well, they said it should work, and they’re giving it an eighty percent chance. That’s not perfect, but it beats the hell out of a one hundred percent chance you’ll die any other way they could think of.”
“Eighty percent,” Noah repeated. “You’re right, that’s not bad odds. Maybe once this mission is over, we can get it done.”
Neil’s grimace got bigger. “Yeah, well, that’s the other thing. Wally went ballistic and said he wants you back there right now so they can take care of this.”
Noah’s eyebrows went up. “I can’t go right now,” he said. “The mission has to come first—Wally knows that.”
“You know that, and I know that, but Wally went screaming to the Dragon Lady. Her response was that you will get your ass back to Kirtland at the first possible moment and report to R&D. Now, she didn’t say tomorrow, so I’m assuming she’s going to let you interpret when the first possible moment might be, but me and sis, here, we’re both on Wally’s side. We think you should go right now.”
Noah shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “Ducking out right now, for any reason, could blow the inroads I’ve made with Morgan. I don’t see how I can ask for any time off…”
His eyes suddenly went wide, and the flicker of a grin started to form on his face before vanishing. “Unless,” he said slowly, “Morgan were to tell me to go. Hang on just a moment.” He took out his phone and glanced at the time. It was almost seven, and he quickly tapped the contact for Jimmy Morgan and put the phone to his ear. He listened for a moment, then smiled into the phone.
“Boss? It’s Rex. Listen, I’m sorry to bother you tonight… Okay, yes, sir, I understand. The reason I was calling was that I got hold of my buddy Wally, the guy with the phones. He says I can have as many as I want, but he wants cash and he wants me to come pick them up. He’s in Colorado, not too far from Denver.” He paused and listened for several seconds, then began nodding into the phone. “Yes, sir,” he said a moment later. “Like I said, they normally go for about fifteen hundred each, but I can get them for seven a pop, with cash.” He listened again, then nodded once more. “Yes, sir, I’ll be there first thing in the morning.”
He cut off the call and smiled at Sarah and Neil, his genuine smile that had only recently begun appearing on his face. “It worked,” he said. “Morgan wants these phones as soon as possible, so I made it sound like the only way we could get them quick was if I go pick them up. He wants me to come get the money in the mo
rning and get on the road.”
“Yes!” Neil said, pumping his fist up and down. “Road trip!”
Noah held up a hand. “Hold on,” he said. “You guys are staying here. One of the things we haven’t considered was whether this thing might have a GPS chip in it. If I had designed such a thing, I’d probably want to include one so that I knew where it was at all times. If Monique and her people thought of that, it’s always possible that seeing me headed back toward Kirtland would be enough to make her think I was canceling our deal, so she’d set it off. I’m not going to take a risk of either of you getting hurt if that happens.”
Sarah and Neil tried to talk over one another, but Neil was smart enough to give up the floor. “There is no way,” Sarah said, “that you are going to take that trip without me. I don’t care how stubborn you get, I don’t care how illogical it may seem to you, I’m going with you. You might as well just get that through your head, right now.”
“Sarah…” Noah began, but Neil cut him off.
“Hey, remember me? I got a suggestion!”
Noah and Sarah both turned to him. “What is it?” Noah asked.
“Try calling that last number you had for Monique. I’ll bet she has it set up like before so it lets her know you’re trying to get hold of her. Then all you have to do is tell her you have to make a fast trip back to Neverland, part of the current mission. Hell, you can even tell her what it’s about. She’ll probably get a laugh out of it.”
Sarah started laughing. “See? You really are smarter than Molly.” She turned to Noah. “I bet he’s right, and I’ll bet it will work. Then we can go with you, and we don’t have to worry about her deciding to blow you up on the way.”
Noah looked at her for another moment, took out his phone and scrolled through it until the found the last number that Monique had used to call him, then tapped it twice. The dialer appeared, and the line began to ring. A moment later he heard a recording telling him that the number was no longer in service, and hung up.
