by David Archer
“Oh, God,” Sarah said. “I can’t believe it’s going to come down to this. Do you honestly believe Jenny will go through with it?”
“Jenny is driven by her emotions,” Noah said. “She loves Neil, and will do absolutely anything to get him back, including this. If killing Allison is what it takes, she’ll do it, and worry about the consequences later. The only hope we have of stopping her is to either find a way to fake Allison’s death convincingly, or rescue Neil. There is no way to give the PRA what they want as far as proof of death, so that leaves us with only two options.”
“Okay,” Marco said, “so what’s the game plan, then? What’s our next step?”
“We get back with the bosses and figure out which teams are available, which ones would have the best chance of locating Neil. We pull in every possible favor and marker from all of the other agencies to help us locate him, and we do whatever it takes to keep Jenny from getting to the Dragon Lady. Beyond that, I’m open to suggestions.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Marcus said. “They took Neil while Jenny was meeting with this Hofmeyr woman. That means she knows where he’s at, she’d have to. If we take her, we can make her talk.”
“I thought of that, too,” Noah said. “We’ll get assets in Rio to locate her, and probably send a team to interrogate her. I agree that it’s the most likely scenario as far as finding out where they might be holding Neil, but there’s always the possibility that she doesn’t know. She might have made certain that she didn’t, just to be ready for something exactly like this.”
“I’d happily volunteer to be the one to go find out,” Marco said. “I ain’t one to complain, but things just ain’t right without Neil around. I miss the way he whines about everything, you know?”
“Yeah,” Sarah said, “me, too. He’s the perfect annoying little brother, even if he is growing up a bit, lately.”
Noah was quiet for a moment, then glanced at Marco in the rearview mirror. “You may have just given me one hell of an idea,” he said. “Let’s get to the office.”
Sarah pressed on the accelerator and the car moved faster. They were just coming into the main part of town, but she didn’t let up until it was time to pull into the parking garage under the headquarters building. They got out quickly and headed for the elevators, then stepped out on the top floor a moment later.
Allison’s secretary, Kathy, was startled when they walked right past her and into the boss lady’s office. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but it told her instantly just how serious the situation had to be. Allison looked up from behind her desk, and Donald Jefferson actually reached for the gun under his jacket before he realized who had entered.
“You weren’t out there very long,” Allison said. “That tells me you didn’t come up with any brilliant ideas.”
“Wally says if we had more time, we could pull it off, but there’s no way we can do it this quickly. I think it’s time to forget trying to fake it and get started on Plan B. We need to find Neil and rescue him before she gets to you. That’s the only thing I can think of that will make her stand down, short of putting a bullet through her head.”
“Which I’m reluctant to do,” Allison said. “Considering the importance of her actual mission, identifying and eliminating the top people in the PRA, there are those in other agencies who would consider my loss to be an acceptable price to pay. Perhaps I should look at it the same way.”
“No way,” Sarah said suddenly. “No offense to Mr. Jefferson, but this outfit would fall apart without you running it.”
Allison threw her hands in the air and blew out air in frustration. “Well, then what the hell can we do? Do we have any real leads on where Neil might be? I’ve contacted everybody, and I’ve got nothing.”
“Alexandra Hofmeyr,” Noah said. “Even if she doesn’t know where Neil is being held, she’d know how to contact whoever is holding him. I think it’s worth a try to get that information out of her. I want to send some people out right away to start on that.”
Allison looked at him for a moment, then turned to Jefferson. “Who do we have available?”
“At the moment,” Jefferson said, “the only two teams that are back home are Pegasus and Angel. Everybody else is out of the country on missions.”
Noah frowned. “Not Pegasus,” he said. “Ralph is still too green for something like this. I’ve never really gotten to know Angel that well. That’s Gabriel McAllister, right?”
“Right,” Allison said. “His team is also fairly new, but he’s got about a year under his belt. He’s done well on a couple of missions they had to bring back hard intelligence. He tends to find out what he wants to know.”
“Then, get him in here,” Noah said. “He needs to be in Rio by tonight, and we need to get any assets down there keeping track of Ms. Hofmeyr. The last thing we need is for her to get out of the city or out of the country before Angel gets to her.”
“I’m just curious,” Jefferson said, “but why aren’t you going, yourself? Neil is part of your team, and with everything I’ve seen in the past, you tend to try to take care of them personally.”
“Under any other circumstances, I probably would,” Noah said. “Unfortunately, if Jenny decides to go through with the hit, I may be the only one who could anticipate her moves and stop her.” He looked Jefferson in the eye. “And I’m probably the only one who could actually terminate her, assuming she doesn’t terminate me first. Jenny’s every bit as deadly as I can be, but we come at it from two different ends of the spectrum. I work with logic, and she works with emotion and her gut. It may be time to find out which one is better.”
Allison tapped the keys on her computer for a moment, then picked up her phone. “Briefing, my office, one hour,” she said, and then she hung up again.
“Donald, you get on securing Hofmeyr’s location, and use any asset available. I don’t care if it’s CIA, DEA, whoever. We clean up enough of their messes, they can do us a favor, and tell them I want the crocodiles on standby.”
“I’m on it,” Jefferson said. He got up and left the room without another word, and Allison turned back to Noah.
“Do you honestly think you can stop her?” she asked. “Jenny has a reputation for getting to her target, no matter how difficult it might be. That’s why we chose her to pose as Victoria, because they were a lot alike.”
“I can’t honestly tell you whether I can stop her or not,” Noah said. “What I can tell you is that I have a pretty good idea how she thinks, that should make it easier for me to anticipate what she does. I’m going to be looking at the entire situation through her eyes, thinking about how I would plan the hit if I were her. That way, I hope to be able to block her access to the most useful places she’d want to strike from, and funnel her into one particular place. If I can take her down without killing her, I will.”
“If anything happens to Neil,” Allison said, “putting her down would be a kindness. She’ll never be able to get past that, Noah. It was one of my concerns in letting the two of them get close. Doctor Parker warned me that she would be particularly vulnerable to any kind of extortion that involved using him against her, but I didn’t really expect it to happen.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I can be a total idiot.”
“It doesn’t matter whether the situation should exist,” Noah said, “because it already does. Now we have to deal with it as reality, and I’ll do whatever I have to do. The real problem is going to be down there in Brazil; if Angel is successful in locating Neil, then we have the question of whether they will be able to rescue him. The PRA has an awful lot of connections, and it’s quite possible that they will need a lot more than just their own team to pull him out.”
Allison nodded. “I’m ahead of you,” she said. “CIA has a strike squad down there. That’s what I meant when I told Donald to get the crocodiles to be standing by. That’s the code word they use for that squad. They are a dozen of the best, recruited from special forces in every branch. They can handl
e anything they come up against, trust me.”
“Okay, that will help,” Noah said. “I think you should get the plane ready, Angel needs to leave as soon as we finish reading them in.”
Allison picked up her phone again and quickly gave orders to get the Gulfstream ready for another flight. It was already refueled, but a new flight crew would have to be called in. She hung up the phone and turned to Noah. “It’ll be ready in thirty minutes, with a flight plan for Rio.”
They moved to the conference room and Allison called Molly in. Within minutes, she was able to find a couple of photographs of Alexandra Hofmeyr, so by the time Team Angel arrived, they were ready to give them the details of their mission.
“One of our operatives has been captured,” Allison said. “There are circumstances that require us to try to rescue him as quickly as possible, and the only lead we have is this woman. Her name is Alexandra Hofmeyr, a Brazilian citizen who lives in Rio de Janeiro. She had been identified as a board member of the PRA, and is the only person we know of who might have any knowledge of his whereabouts. Your mission is to do whatever is necessary to get that information from her, because even if she doesn’t possess it herself, she will know how to contact the people holding him. Once you have his location, you will be supported by the CIA strike team stationed in Rio when you go to extract him. He must be brought out alive, no matter what the cost.”
Angel’s leader, Gabriel, nodded his head. “I understand,” he said. “It sounds like this is a rush job. How soon do we leave?”
“The plane is waiting for you now,” Allison said. “Get your travel bags and head for the airport. Don’t worry about special identities on this mission, you’ve all got back up burner identities, right? Use those, and do whatever is necessary to complete this rescue. You’ve got a little more than forty-eight hours, but the sooner you get it done, the better. Notify us immediately upon completion.”
Gabriel stood, followed by his team. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “We’ll be in the air in less than an hour.”
Team Angel left the conference room, and Allison turned to Noah. “With any luck,” she said, “they’ll be able to find Neil and rescue him in plenty of time. If they can’t, then I’m counting on you. There’s just one thing I want you to understand, Noah. If for any reason she manages to get to me, you are to stand down. Let her go back and complete her mission, and Donald will welcome her and Neil back into the fold as soon as it’s over.”
“Do you honestly think she would come back?” Noah asked. “After being forced to kill the very person who gave her a second chance at life? I don’t. I’m afraid that if we don’t find a way to salvage her before she can get to you, Jenny will become every bit of the monster the PRA wants to turn her into.”
Allison nodded. “That’s why I want you to get word to her, no matter what it takes. If she manages to get me, she is to regard it as a mission necessity. It will not be held against her if she comes back to the agency.”
“You’re wrong,” Sarah said. “Maybe Mr. Jefferson could control himself enough to forgive and forget, but I don’t think the rest of us could. I love Jenny, but if she kills you, then there’s no hope for her. I think she’d end up losing Neil, anyway, because he couldn’t deal with the guilt of knowing you died to save him. After that, Jenny would be even less human than she already is.”
“Sarah’s right,” Noah said. “The best thing I could do for Jenny, if she gets to you, is to go ahead and put her down.”
* * * * *
The day wore on, and the miles rolled by under Jenny’s wheels. At noon, she stopped in the little town of Elko, Nevada for lunch, and then realized that the restaurant she had chosen had a Wi-Fi account that was available to the customers. She took a booth that was far away from everyone else, set down her tray and then whispered, “Activate Wi-Fi.”
A couple of seconds passed, and then she heard, “Public Wi-Fi access active.”
She sat there for a moment, then steeled her resolve. “Jenny to Noah,” she whispered. “Are you there?”
“Noah to Jenny, yes,” came the reply. “Where are you?”
“Elko, Nevada,” Jenny said. “Have you figured out a solution yet?”
“We’re still working on a way to fake it,” Noah said, “but it doesn’t look good. We dispatched a team to work on rescuing Neil, and I believe we have a good plan in place. Jenny, can you buy us more time?”
“No. Hofmeyr made it clear that Neil will be killed if I fail to complete this assignment within the time limit I was given. At the moment, that means I’ve got about seventy-four hours left. Tell Allison I’m sorry about this, but if you don’t come up with an answer in time, I’m going to do what I have to do to get Neil back.”
“Believe it or not, she understands that. She wants me to tell you that, if it comes to that, then she wants you to regard it as a mission necessity and go ahead and complete your mission, then come back in.”
Jenny laughed. “Yeah, right,” she said. “Half of Neverland will be out to kill me. Look, I don’t want to do this, but Neil should never have even been where they could get their hands on him. This was my fault, nobody else’s. If I had half a brain, I would’ve known better than to try to take him with me on these meetings. I just didn’t want to sleep alone, and now he’s got his head on the chopping block because of it. I’m going to get him back, Noah, no matter what I have to do, but there’s no way I could come back to E & E afterward. I probably won’t even be able to keep Neil, but at least he’ll be alive.”
“You know I have to stop you,” Noah said. “There’s no way I can let you take Allison out, Jenny.”
“Well, I look at it this way. I think we’ve each wondered which one of us was the best at one time or another. If you can’t come up with some other way to do this, then I guess we are going to find out.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way, Jenny,” Noah said. “Remember, we all know this job could be the death of us, even Neil. You can blame yourself, but he would have thrown a fit if you didn’t take him along. You know that as well as I do. Come on in, and help us figure out how to get him back the right way.”
“Noah, you didn’t meet that woman, but I did. I don’t think there’s any way you’re going to get her to give up where he’s being held, and she’s old enough that I don’t think death scares her at all. The thing I learned about PRA is that they are some kind of crazy idealists; they think they are making the world a better place for everybody with the things they do, and that the end justifies the means. If you torture her to death, she’s only going to think it makes her a martyr for the cause.”
“Well, we’ve got to do something. We don’t want to lose Neil, but we don’t want to lose you, either. One way or another, they’re going to find him, Jenny. And then, you and I will take out PRA. Jefferson has figured out that we can identify the rest of their board members by studying the associates of Newsom, Niemeier and Hofmeyr. That makes all of them targets, the real targets you should be focusing on.”
“You get Neil back, and I’ll do whatever you want, Noah,” Jenny said. “Until then, I’m staying on mission. I’ll check in with you once in a while, but I’m not going to leave this thing on. I have to be able to concentrate, just in case I have to go through with it.”
She turned off the subcom and picked up her cheeseburger. Suddenly, it seemed extremely unappetizing, but she knew she needed to keep up her strength. She ate it completely, then finished off the French fries and the drink before tossing her trash and heading back to the car.
A small shopping center across the street caught her eye, and she made a quick detour. Rather than use her credit cards to make purchases that could be viewed by sat back in Neverland, she walked up to an ATM in the parking lot and withdrew several hundred dollars in cash. Then, she went into a store called Sell It Again, Sam, and came out thirty minutes later with three large bags full of clothing, shoes, wigs and various other accessories. Another stop let her purchase some makeup, a
nd one more to purchase a pair of barely functional reading glasses. She could see well enough through them to be able to wear them at all times, because they barely distorted her vision at all.
It was time to think about how she was going to get close enough to Allison to do the job she was sent for. A disguise was top of the list.
TWENTY
The plane had caught a tailwind, and landed in Rio de Janeiro at just before ten PM, Denver time, though it was one in the morning in Rio. Gabriel and his team walked off the plane and into the terminal, then dealt with the nuisances of customs for the next half hour. When everything was finished satisfactorily, they made their way down to the front entrance and spotted a man holding a sign. It read “Charles Burke,” and Gabriel walked straight up to the fellow.
“I’m Charlie Burke,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting somebody to meet us.”
“Yes, well, your boss called in a favor. I’ve got a vehicle waiting for you outside, along with a few accessories they felt you might need.”
Gabriel grinned. “Then, lead the way,” he said. The team followed along, and then climbed into the big Ford van that their host had brought along.
“I’m Jason Dickens, CIA,” the guy said once they were inside. “There’s a box in the back containing a fairly nice selection of weapons. I didn’t have everything on the list, so I had to improvise on a couple of items. I’ll drive till we get back to my rendezvous point, and then you can take the van and do whatever you need to do.” He reached into a pocket and took out a business card, which he passed to Gabriel. “That’s my cell number,” he said. “When you get what you came for, you call me and I’ll arrange the special backup you might need.”
“Nice to see somebody is on the ball,” Gabriel said. “This should help us accomplish our mission a lot more quickly. Any word on our target?”
“Ms. Hofmeyr is at home, but she’s got a fair security team of her own. They’re not exactly special forces types, but they have military and police experience. If they give you a problem, let me know. I can lend you a couple of people if you need them, but we have to try not to burn our covers.”
