Lone Wolf

by David Archer

  Noah nodded. “Of course. I doubt we'll need it here, anyway. We'll want it to be available when we figure out where the battleground will be.”

  Moose waited as Noah dumped his bag on the bed, then took it and walked out the door without another word. Neil had set his computer up on the desk, and was looking at something that appeared to be a computer game.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Noah asked, and Neil turned to him with a grin.

  “This place has some high-speed Wi-Fi,” he said. “I'm scanning it to see if it has any bleeds. That's what I call it when someone else can watch your Internet activity.” He turned back to the monitor and tapped a few keys. “Good thing I checked,” he said. “The system is bugged. Every bit of data I send or receive over it will be copied to another location, probably the SVR.”

  “Do you have to use it?” Noah asked.

  “No. There aren't any cell towers close enough to do me much good, but I can use my phone to go directly to a satellite, and it has a built-in, password-secured hotspot. I can log on through that, and no one can see what I'm doing. We can run a cell phone through the Wi-Fi, just so they see some activity, but I doubt it will matter.”

  “Get on it, then. Find me anything you can that might lead us to Nicolaich or Sarah or both.”

  NINETEEN

  Team Camelot, minus Sarah, had arrived at their luxurious base of operations at just after seven PM. Five hours later, at midnight, Neil was still searching for any sign of Nicolaich online.

  “There's nothing,” he said. “From the moment he got into that safe house, no one in any intelligence agency has made any reference to him. I've gotten into every intelligence network in this hemisphere, but there's absolutely nothing I can find. If he's making any kind of plans, he's keeping it pretty secret.”

  Noah, who was lying on a couch, nodded. “Okay, give it up for tonight. You guys get some sleep, and we'll talk again in the morning.”

  Moose had been sitting on the other couch, flipping channels on the TV. He turned it off and got to his feet as Neil shut down his computer for the night. The two of them walked out of Noah's room, mumbling goodnight as they did so.

  Noah continued to lie on the couch. Calm on the outside, his mind was racing as he tried to formulate a plan that would speed the process of getting him in position to kill Nicolaich Andropov. Unfortunately, he had nothing to go on, and another part of his mind was occupied with something that the others might have considered to be worry. Noah didn't see it that way, but there was a part of him that was trying unsuccessfully to avoid any thought of what the future might be like without Sarah.

  For as long as he could remember, Noah Wolf had never worried about anyone, not even himself. Whenever a situation that might have been dangerous arose, he simply examined it and took whatever action he deemed necessary, without any thought of the risk to himself. That wasn't to say that he didn't know how to take precautions, but only that he wouldn't let a lack of precaution stop them from doing what he felt he needed to do.

  Suddenly, though, he found himself in a position he had never known before. Without realizing it, he had become so accustomed to Sarah and her attentions that he was taking them for granted. The thought that she might be gone, that he might not be able to save her and be with her again, was causing him to feel something akin to impatience. He wanted to move, wanted to take action, but he had no idea where to begin.

  For the first time, Noah forced himself to consider whether he might be feeling an emotion. Certainly, he didn't want Sarah to die, and a large part of that was simply because she was a member of his team. One of the things he had incorporated into his own psyche while in the Army was the necessity of taking care of your own. In three tours of duty in combat zones, Noah had never willingly left anyone behind, earning three different medals for valor because of wounded compatriots he’d carried on his back.

  Back then, it was simply logic. Soldiers were important to the military effort, so any soldier that was alive should be brought back for rehabilitation. He had served with other men who had been wounded in combat, brought back to health with medical treatment and then volunteered to return to the front.

  This case was different. Sarah wasn't just a fellow soldier, she had become important to him on a personal level. That's what made it new; Noah had never needed anyone before. Even as a teenager, when his childhood friend Molly had become his lover, it had never bothered him when she was busy and unavailable, and when she finally moved away, he simply said goodbye and felt nothing. Now, however, the thought of never seeing Sarah again was enough to fuel something inside him that he didn't recognize.

  Could it be anger? Was he actually experiencing anger over the danger that Sarah was in? Even worse, was it possible that he had actually grown emotionally attached to the girl? If there was one thing he knew, it was that emotional attachments caused people to make mistakes in judgment. Otherwise-sane men had been known to murder their wives over an erroneous belief that they were unfaithful, or to kill or injure friends who seemed to be paying too much attention to a wife or girlfriend. Noah forced himself to examine what was going on inside himself.

  No, he concluded, he wasn't suffering from any kind of romantic attachment to her. That was obvious to him because of their swimming adventure a few days before. All three of the men had stripped naked in front of Sarah, and her wet underclothes had left her almost as exposed when they had climbed out of the water. Noah had felt nothing akin to jealousy, even though he knew both of the other guys had taken the opportunity to get an eyeful of her charms. He thought that he would surely have been jealous to some degree over that, if he was actually attached to her in such a way.

  After a half hour of logical analysis, Noah concluded that his problem was dependence. He had come to be dependent on her, not only for sexual encounters, but also for the subtle touches of humanity that she allowed him to share in. Her own feelings for him were clear, she had made sure of that, but he couldn't find anything in himself that implied reciprocation. Noah wasn't in love, he just didn't want to do without her. Jealousy wasn't an issue, because nothing that had happened had affected that dependence.

  Analyzing it this way allowed him to clear his mind of a lot of the turmoil, and he began to think more clearly. As he had told Neil, there was nothing he could do if Sarah were killed before he got a chance to try to rescue her, but he finally acknowledged to himself that he would feel some kind of emptiness if she were gone forever.

  Logically, then, he knew that he needed to make every possible effort to ensure that she came back to him alive and safe. There was no doubt in his mind that he would do so, if only he could determine a course of action.

  He let himself think about movies he had seen wherein a character was faced with a similar situation. Someone important to them was in danger, and the character had to go to the rescue. Unfortunately, in those stories, it was the character's anger that gave them the strength to overcome insurmountable odds, but Noah didn't know how to turn his anger on. The best he could do, as he had always done, would be to fake it.

  He sat up suddenly. Maybe that was the answer. If he took actions that seemed to be emotionally driven, it might force Nicolaich's hand and cause him to expose whatever trap he was setting.

  Noah quickly created some scenarios in his head, then got up and stripped. He lay back down on the couch and was asleep within moments.

  The sitting room had no windows, but Noah had always awakened near the crack of dawn, and the habit served him well again. Even the changing time zones as he traveled around the world didn't seem to cause him any difficulty in knowing when the sun was coming up, so he rose from the couch, picked up his discarded clothing and went to the bedroom. He chose clothes to wear for the day and headed for the shower.

  Twenty minutes later, he went down the hall and tapped on both Neil and Moose's doors, calling to them to meet him for breakfast in his room. Both of them grunted acknowledgment, and he returned to his room to o
rder breakfast. He picked up the phone and punched the intercom button, and was surprised when the butler answered instantly.

  “Good morning, Mister Colson,” said the stiff upper lip. “I trust you slept well?”

  “Like a baby,” Noah said. “Rothschild, what's good for breakfast here?”

  The Butler chuckled. “Absolutely anything you might desire,” he said. “The cook on duty spent several years as a chef in one of London's finest hotels. However, I might suggest that he is excellent at preparing eggs and beef, what you might call steak and eggs. Might that suffice?”

  “That will be fine, and make it times three. Eggs over easy, steaks medium rare. Do they have any decent coffee down there?”

  “Everything from Russia's own Zhokei, which I find delightful, to American brands like Folgers or Maxwell House.”

  “Good, send up a pot of the Russian variety. Better send along a big sugar bowl, that skinny kid with me can't seem to get enough of it.”

  Moose tapped on the door a moment later, and by the time Noah opened it for him, Neil was also staggering down the hall. They were both dressed, but while Moose looked fresh and alert, Neil's hair suggested that he had showered before he went to bed and hadn't bothered to use a towel.

  “Steak and eggs on the way,” Noah said. “I'm sure it will be a few minutes, so we can talk until he gets here. I've had an idea, and I think it might make Nicolaich tip his hand.”

  “We're listening,” Moose said. “What are we going to do, Boss?”

  “Remember we figured that Nicolaich expects me to act like a normal person? I was thinking about how normal people act in situations like this, going over some of the movies I've seen. Whenever the hero's wife or girlfriend or daughter is in danger or has been kidnapped, the hero gets angry. I need to let Nicolaich think he's driven me to a rage.”

  “Oh, dear God,” Neil moaned. “Don't tell me you're going on a killing spree. Liam Neeson always goes on a killing spree in those movies.”

  Noah looked at him. “Pretty close,” he said. “What I'm going to do is start snatching SVR people and demanding Nicolaich's whereabouts. I will kill a few of them, just to make it look like I'm out of control, but I have to let some of them live so that he'll hear about it. He'll think he's got me all torn up, not thinking clearly, and I suspect that's when he'll make his move.”

  Moose grinned. “I like it,” he said. “We going after them soon as breakfast is over?”

  “We aren't,” Noah said. “I am. This is one time when I need to operate alone, so that it looks like I'm freaked out over Sarah being taken hostage. Don't worry, though, I’ve got things for each of you to do.” He turned to Neil, who was staring at him open mouthed. “Neil, I want you to find a phone line going into that safe house, and listen to everything that goes through it. Any mention of Nicolaich, I want you to tell me. We'll be using those super communicators Wally gave us, so you can be in my ear all the time.”

  “Whoa, hold on,” Neil said. “How the hell am I supposed to know what might be important and what isn't? I don't speak Russian!”

  “Are you going to tell me you can't find some kind of an audio translation program? I'm sure there has to be one out there somewhere.”

  Neil blinked at him. “Well—well—yeah, I guess there is. Fine, I'll see what I can do. But not until I have some coffee, okay?”

  “It's on the way.” Noah turned to Moose. “Moose, I'm sending you on some special errands. I want you to take pot shots at the police. Don't kill anyone, and don't let yourself get trapped, just scare the crap out of them. Shoot close to them, but miss, or shoot their cars. I want the police in the city in a panic, so keep moving around. Think you can do that?”

  Moose rolled his eyes. “Of course I can,” he said. “I thought you wanted me to do something difficult.”

  “All right, we all jump on it as soon as we eat. I'll drive you into the city, Moose, and have Carson get you some wheels. Wait, on second thought, you can have the Land Rover. There are a lot of flashy cars running around Moscow. I need something similar, something that will get attention . Within a couple of hours after I start, I want every SVR agent in the city to panic every time he sees anything similar to whatever I'm driving.”

  There was a tap on the door at that moment, and Noah opened it to find a maid pushing a serving cart. She smiled prettily, tittered once and then pushed the cart into the room. She put it in the small kitchen, then set three large covered plates, three silver mugs and a large silver coffeepot on the table. When she had finished, she turned and looked at Noah, tittered again and then hurried out the door.

  The three men sat down to eat, and each of them was surprised when they took the covers off the plates. The steaks were porterhouse, and large enough to be the entrée of a dinner, and the eggs were very large. There was a serving of fried potatoes on each, as well, and a large, heavily buttered roll.

  Finishing their meals took the better part of an hour, but they were all wide-awake and ready for the day by the time they got done. Neil filled his coffee cup for the third time, and carried it over to the desk. Within minutes, he was back online and trying to crack the Russian telephone system. It took him all of ten minutes to find the numbers assigned to the safe house, and ten more before he could listen in and record everything that went through them.

  Noah went to his bedroom and retrieved his Glock; Moose had already brought his along. Noah handed Neil one of the paired Bluetooth-style earpieces and put the other on his own ear. “Remember, you get anything interesting, you just pipe up and tell me. No one else will be able to hear what you say, but we can talk back and forth through these things as we need to.”

  Noah turned to Moose. “Ready?”

  “Hell, yes,” the big guy said. “Let's go make some mayhem.”

  The two of them left the room, and ran into Rothschild as they came down the stairs. Noah told him that they were going into the city to take care of some “business,” and the butler wished them luck. They walked out the door into the morning sunshine, but the air was rather cool.

  “I don't think it ever gets actually hot here,” Moose said. “This time of summer, you'd think it would be pretty warm. I don't think it's over sixty degrees, right now.”

  “Don't complain,” Noah said. “Remember how hot it was in Mauritania? At least we're in a decent climate.”

  They got into the Land Rover and Noah retraced the route to Moscow. Along the way, he decided to take a look at the safe house, and activated the car's built-in GPS system. He followed the directions, and an hour later they were on the street in front of the place.

  It looked more like a fortress than a house, and it was easy to spot the guards patrolling the grounds.

  Moose let out a low whistle. “Larry boy was right,” he said. “I don't think we'd ever get in there. Those guys look like they mean business and know what they're doing.”

  “No doubt about that,” Noah said. “Going in there would be suicidal, anyway. If Nicolaich has any idea I know where he is, he's probably hoping I'll try. We're going to let him keep hoping, at least until he finds out what I'm going to do to his organization.”

  Noah called Carson and told him they needed another vehicle, something flashy that would draw attention.

  “I've got just the thing,” he said. “The CIA has a Marussia B2, the only real Russian sports car ever built. This one's been tuned to over five hundred horsepower, and can hit two hundred miles per hour. The sound alone is enough to make sure you get attention. There are a few of them around the city, and a lot of other cars that people mistake for one of these.” He gave Noah an address and told him the car would be waiting when he arrived.

  The car was incredible. Low and sleek, it looked like a combination of a McLaren and the Bugatti Veyron, and both men were extremely impressed. A British agent went over the controls with Noah, showing him how to shift from automatic to manual mode, and then handed him the keys.

  “Okay,” he said to Moose, “time
to put this plan into action. You keep the police busy, because I'm going to be driving them crazy.” He climbed into the spectacular automobile and fired it up, then drove away quickly.

  Moose got back into the Land Rover and headed for some of the busier parts of the city. He found an alley and ducked inside long enough to get the sniper rifle out from under the seat, then got back in with it leaning against his leg. Moments later, he spotted a police cruiser and followed it until its lights came on to pull over a driver ahead. Moose cruised slowly by and found another alley, turned into it and stopped just at the entrance. He raised the rifle and aimed it carefully at the patrol car.

  The sound suppressor on the big gun couldn't silence it completely, but the report was not nearly as loud as even a handgun. Moose shot off the driver side mirror, then put a couple of rounds into the windshield. As soon as the first bullet struck, the policeman hit the ground. Moose stowed the gun in the floorboard again, then took off through the alley.

  He continued to cruise the city, and every time he saw a policeman or a patrol car, he found a concealed position and squeezed off two or three shots. No one was injured, but there were suddenly a lot more patrol cars running around the streets of the city. It became difficult for Moose to find stations to shoot from, but now and then he would get another opportunity. Some of them were close enough that he simply used the Glock, but most of the time he employed the rifle. Luckily, he had a large box of ammunition on the floor under his legs. Over the next few hours, the Moscow police began to think they were under attack, and were concentrating all of their forces into the area of the city he had chosen for his campaign.

  TWENTY

  Noah wasn’t being much more discrete. Another call to Carson had gotten him the names and locations of several SVR agents who were known to have ties with Nicolaich Andropov. He started by scouting them, cruising past the houses and offices where they could be found. The car he was driving was getting a lot of attention, with almost everyone he passed stopping to stare and sometimes point.