Noah Wolf Box Set 4

by David Archer

  “Good work, Camelot. Sarah told me that there are at least two other locations?”

  “Yes. I don’t know where they are yet, but I will within the next few days. As soon as I have that information, we will let you know. I thought perhaps the FBI could try to locate the facilities once we know what cities they are in.”

  “Yes, and I’ll be getting a couple more teams ready to go in and eliminate those involved. Pegasus is ready for a solo mission and Angel is due back in within a couple of days. I’ll have both of them briefed and prepared as soon as you can give me general locations.”

  “That sounds good. And you can tell Ralph I said hello.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that,” Allison said. The phone went dead and Noah dropped it into his pocket.

  “What are you doing now?” Sarah asked through the subcom.

  “Heading for home. It’s after four o’clock already, so there’s no point in going back to the office. Maybe we can have a little time alone before dinner.”

  The smile on Sarah’s face came through the subcom in her voice. “You all heard that, right?” she asked. “Everybody stay away. I want some time alone with my husband.”

  “No problem, Neil signing off,” they heard, and Renée and Jenny echoed him. Marco chimed in a moment later to say he was giving them the channel.

  Sarah giggled. “When you get here,” she said, “I bet you can’t find me.”

  “What?” Noah asked. “Are you not in the apartment?”

  “Oh, I’ll be in the apartment,” she said. “You’ll just have to figure out where.” She giggled again and then went silent.

  It took Noah a moment to realize that she was teasing him, and he drove home wondering what she had in mind. When he entered the apartment, she was nowhere in sight, so he walked into the kitchen, then turned and went to the bedroom.

  He found her.

  NINE

  At dinner that night, which was at Marco and Renée’s apartment, Neil showed Noah several potential locations.

  “This one was my favorite,” he said. “Twenty-seven hundred square feet, two overhead doors leading into a large garage area, seven rooms including a front lobby, and a nice size parking lot. It’s available for only eighteen hundred a month and it’s located just west of the corner of Eight Mile Road and Sportsman Road, on the back side of the island. The only traffic out there is people headed toward the marinas, and very little of that will go past this particular spot. And as a bonus, it’s only fifteen minutes from the airfield.”

  “That sounds perfect,” Noah said. “Nobody will have any reason to come there unless it’s on business, then. Send the information to my phone and I’ll go see about it first thing in the morning.”

  Neil did so and then Noah brought the rest of the team up-to-date on what was happening. They enjoyed a quiet dinner, and then talked about the plan to have Sarah, Renée and Neil follow anyone who brought organs to be shipped out. All three of them said they would welcome the chance to do something other than just sit around.

  “I’m thinking of hiring you away from the ambulance service,” Noah said to Marco. “To be honest, I think you would be more valuable to me if I could keep you closer.”

  “I can see that,” Marco said with a grin. “Kinda hard to watch your back when I’m several miles away, trying to get a fat lady out of a tiny car that she wrapped around a telephone pole.”

  “All right,” Noah said. “Put in your notice tomorrow, and you can start with me as soon as they let you go. I can make it clear that your ambulance experience will come in handy, if anyone questions my decision to hire you.” He turned to Neil. “I’m gonna need to hire a dozen more people. As soon as I secure the facility, I’ll need you to place some help wanted ads.”

  “Not a problem,” Neil said. “Just say when.”

  It was still fairly early when they called it a night, and Sarah and Noah went back to their apartment. They showered together as they usually did, then crawled into bed and were asleep moments later.

  Noah got up the next morning and called his office to let them know he would be late. It wasn’t a problem, but he wanted to maintain appearances until such time as he actually started running the transport company. Sarah made him breakfast and they sat down to enjoy it together before he left to visit the real estate company in charge of the building Neil had found.

  Renting the building was easier than he had expected. According to the broker, the building had been empty for almost a year and the owner was anxious to get somebody in it. Noah paid three months rent in advance along with the security deposit and then started working on getting the utilities turned on. He called Bettinger and gave him the address and was told to watch his email for the paperwork necessary to finalize everything involved in starting the business.

  That also proved easy. He had the electricity on less than an hour later, and the telephone and Internet would be installed that afternoon. He forwarded the office calls to his cell phone, then called Conley to give him the address and let him know he would be tied up all day. Afterward, he went shopping for office furniture and supplies. The store offered delivery, and followed him directly to the building shortly after lunch.

  By three o’clock, he was almost ready to open for business. He sat at his desk in the newly furnished office and turned on the computer he had bought, logged onto the Internet and began ordering the rest of the equipment he would need. That included fifty transport cases, as well as the special sinks and other equipment necessary for sterilizing them. All of those things would be coming in over the next few days, and the rush delivery cost him several thousand dollars extra. Since he was spending the money of a criminal organization, he didn’t worry about it. He used the subcom to tell Neil to place the help wanted ads using his new office number.

  “Okay,” Neil said. “I posted on Craigslist, that looks like the best spot. You’ll probably be getting calls before the day is over.”

  “The sooner the better,” Noah said. “I need to make this thing look as real as possible until we know who the main players are.”

  Neil was correct. Noah’s phone rang less than thirty minutes later and he scheduled six interviews for the very next day.

  The front door was set up with an announcer that chimed whenever it was opened, and Noah heard it go off at just before four o’clock. He got up from his desk and stepped into the lobby to find Conley, Linden and two other men standing there. He put a smile on his face and held out his hand.

  “Robert,” Conley said, “you know Barry. This is Jim Harmon and Bill Mayweather. Gentlemen, this is Robert Townsend, our newest associate.”

  Noah looked both men over quickly. Mayweather looked like a young Mr. Rogers, but Harmon gave off a sense of strength and power. He was probably in his late thirties or very early forties, and had the build of a professional wrestler.

  Mayweather smiled broadly. “I understand you are about to revolutionize our little business,” he said. “It’s nice to have somebody in your position, somebody who can think about what we need to keep us expanding.”

  Noah shrugged modestly. “I’m just happy to be part of it all,” he said. “Will you gentlemen be on the Board of Directors?”

  “Oh, no,” Conley said, “not them. Jim runs the outside procurement operation, and Bill—well, Bill takes care of our inventory, you might say.”

  Noah nodded. “Okay, then I’m doubly glad to meet you.”

  “How soon will you be ready to begin operations?” Mayweather asked.

  “Well, officially, not for another ten days or so,” Noah said. “On the other hand, we could start running specials out of here right away. Of course, at this particular moment, it would mean I’d have to transport them personally, but I’ve already got several potential candidates for people to handle that sort of thing. I’ll be interviewing some of them in the morning, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “What did I tell you?” Conley asked. “This guy doesn’t waste time, does he
?”

  “Obviously not,” Mayweather said. “Robert, I…”

  “Just call me Rob, please,” Noah said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Please, go ahead.”

  Mayweather smiled. “Well, Rob, I was just going to say that we’ve been holding back just a bit the last couple of weeks, sort of letting you get your feet under you, but we do have some inventory that needs to be moved. I’m thinking of about twelve items that could be ready to go by the day after tomorrow. Would that work for you?”

  “It shouldn’t be a problem,” Noah said, thinking to himself that he had just signed the death warrants of at least a couple of innocent people. Unfortunately, the mission required him to stay in character until such time as he had identified all of his targets. Since these men answered to the same people Conley did, he was going to have to play along and ship the organs that would be harvested from those victims.

  “Excellent, excellent,” Mayweather said. “What about preservation? I understand you have some new equipment coming for that?”

  “I do, but it won’t be in that soon. We’ll have to continue to work with the old-school method, picnic coolers and ice. That does limit the range a bit, because it’s only good for about four to six hours of travel time. If you can get me the destinations in advance, I can already have the logistics taken care of, set up the flights and such.”

  Mayweather nodded, his head bobbing like a bobble-headed toy. “Not a problem, I can get all that for you tomorrow.”

  Noah gave both men his phone number, and then turned to Harmon. “Outside procurement?” he asked. “Do I even want to know what that means?” He grinned.

  Harmon returned it. “Let’s just say I get the pleasure of bringing in the inventory,” he said. “I’m pretty good at it. They never even see me coming.”

  Conley chuckled. “Jim used to work for the government,” he said. “One of those alphabet soup agencies, the ones who snatch people up and make them disappear.”

  Noah’s eyebrows rose. “Really? The government really does that?”

  “They sure do,” Harmon said. “I could tell you some stories, you can bet on that. I worked for an offshoot of the CIA, an outfit that specializes in getting rid of people who are too big to handle through legal channels. You probably never heard of them, most people haven’t. It’s run by a woman, and officially it doesn’t even exist.”

  Noah shook his head, still grinning. “Sounds like some outfit I wouldn’t even want to think about,” he said. “You don’t think they’ll ever come after us, do you?”

  “I doubt it,” Harmon said. “And I’m pretty sure I would see them coming if they did. I still have a lot of connections back there, friends I can count on. If that old battle-axe ever finds out about us, I’ll know.”

  “That’s a relief, then,” Noah said. “I never would’ve believed our government would do things like that, so it’s good to know you’re on our side.”

  His phone chose that moment to ring, and he pulled it out to see that it was a local number.

  “If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” he said, walking some distance away. He hit the button to answer the phone and put it to his ear. “Townsend Transport Logistics,” he said. “How can I help you?”

  “Hey, listen,” said a woman’s voice. “My name is Sheila Burnett, and I saw an ad on Craigslist. You’re hiring drivers?”

  “Yes, we are,” Noah said. “Although it’s a little bit more than just being a driver. We are an organ transport company, so the job involves carrying sealed cases with human organs to various hospitals so they can be transplanted into patients who need them. It means flying around the country a lot. Does that sound like something you might be interested in?”

  “Well, yeah,” Sheila said. “So, does it pay pretty well?”

  “Actually, it does. All of our transport personnel get a base salary of about twenty thousand a year, but then there are cash bonuses for each time you have to go out on a run. Those will probably add up to another thirty-five to forty thousand per year.”

  “Wow,” Sheila said. “And is there, like, a lot of overnight travel?”

  “No, you’d usually be coming back the same day. I won’t say it’s impossible that you might have to stay overnight, but it won’t be something that happens often. I’m conducting interviews tomorrow, if you’d like to come by and apply.” He gave the woman the address and then continued talking into the phone after she promised to come by the next morning and hung up.

  Carefully, still talking as if he had someone else on the line, Noah turned himself around so that the camera lens on the back of his phone was aimed toward the four men. He tapped his thumb on the screen where he remembered seeing the icon for the camera, and was rewarded with a click.

  “Well, very good then,” he said. “I look forward to speaking to you tomorrow. You have a good evening.” He took the phone down and glanced at the screen, seeing that he had captured a clear photo of all of them, then hit the button on the side to clear the screen so they wouldn’t see it. He dropped it into his pocket as he rejoined Conley and the others.

  “Another interview for tomorrow,” he said with a grin. “I think that makes seven, and I probably just need to hire them all.”

  Harmon chuckled. “You might need more than that,” he said. “Rob, when we get back into the swing of things, we could probably move a dozen products every day. Are you going to be able to keep up?”

  Noah grinned, nodding his head. “We’ll be able to handle it,” he said. “Don’t you worry about that. How long does it take to get here from the, um, warehouse?”

  “You know, that’s funny,” Conley said. “It’s not even thirty minutes away from right here.”

  Noah let his grin get wider. “That’s excellent,” he said. “Figure it’ll take fifteen minutes or so to prepare it for transport on your end, then another thirty minutes to get here. The airfield is only a few minutes from here, so we should be able to have them in the air within not much more than an hour after removal. That’ll save a lot of time, and help get them out to the people who need them.”

  “Absolutely,” Harmon said. “I gotta tell you, Rob, it was a lucky day for us when you came along."

  Conley slapped Harmon on the back. “Didn’t I tell you? This guy is awesome. Hey, Rob, tell him about your plan to make money off other hospitals and such.”

  Noah shrugged. “Well, we need to look legitimate to cover what we are really doing. In order to do that, we can contract with other hospitals around the area to handle shipment and retrieval of organs for them. I know it might not be as profitable as our private operation, but it’ll make another few million a year.”

  Harmon and Mayweather congratulated him on coming up with such a brilliant idea, and then the three of them got into Conley’s car and drove away. Noah waited until they were out of sight, then took out his phone and looked at the photo he had taken. His thumb flew over the screen, and then he called Allison.

  “Camelot, report,” she said when she answered.

  “I just sent you a photo. The man on the right goes by the name of Jim Harmon. He’s the guy who actually kidnaps the victims, and he claims to have worked for a government organization that sounds suspiciously like E & E. Any idea who that is?”

  Allison was quiet for a moment, then cleared her throat. “Actually, I do,” she said. “That man was originally known as Richard Belcher, and he was the first team leader of Team Unicorn. Until this very moment, we all believed that he was killed on a mission to Bosnia, about a year and a half before you came to Neverland. Noah, we need to get Marco out of there. Belcher would recognize him, because he worked with him twice before you came on board.”

  “I can keep Marco out of sight,” Noah said. “The trouble is, Harmon or Belcher, whoever he is, claims that he still has friends back in Neverland. If he does, it’s possible he could be aware of this operation. He even implied that he would be notified if you ever decided to sanction them.”


  “This is very bad, Noah,” Allison said. “Fortunately, only our logistics group knows what missions are assigned. I’ll put a security lockdown on this one to make sure no one else finds out. My worry is that Belcher really did have friends in high places around here. He was very close to Mr. Jackson, and used to spend a lot of time with Wally. God only knows who else he might have been close to, but I’m going to find out.”

  “Then I have an idea,” Noah said. “Rather than keeping Marco away from him, I’m thinking we might want to bring them face-to-face. If Belcher were eliminated, they would certainly need somebody to take over his position. If I can get Marco into that spot, we could learn a lot more in a short time.”

  “And how do you plan to do that?”

  “Can you make some changes to Marco’s back story? Let’s make him a disgraced CIA agent who is hiding from a murder charge, living under a false identity. We’ll need some way to expose him, of course, but that would make him an ideal candidate to replace Belcher if something were to happen to him. And according to Belcher, the holding and surgical facility is only a half hour away from my new location. If Marco gets the job, he’ll have to know where it is.”

  “I can get those changes made,” Allison said. “Noah, Richard Belcher is an extremely dangerous man. He was the first assassin I recruited, right after the agency was formed. He was an ex-cop from Chicago, serving time for murdering a number of teenage drug dealers. I would strongly suspect that he isn’t working alone, he’ll have some sort of team of his own.”

  “Do you think there’s any chance he has others from our organization with him?”

  “No. He’s the only one we’ve lost without recovering a body.” Allison was quiet for several seconds, then cleared her throat again. “Camelot,” she said, “you are hereby authorized to terminate Richard Belcher with extreme prejudice. I will write and sign the order right now. If you can do so in such a way that it allows you to insert Marco into the organization, then you have my blessing.”