by David Archer
“Neil? Growing up?” Moose asked, then looked over at Noah. “What kind of dope is she smoking lately? That kid ain't never gonna grow up.”
Noah shrugged. “Actually, I think he's been a lot better lately. He doesn't whine nearly as much as he used to.”
“Yes, he does,” Moose said. “It just seems like it's not as much because he isn't constantly complaining about not having a girlfriend. Now he spends all his time complaining about not getting to spend enough time with his girlfriend.”
“Which proves my point,” Sarah said.
Moose shook his head. “Yeah, yeah, you keep on believing whatever you want to. Trust me, he's still a whiner.”
“Yeah, maybe so, but you love him. You proved that when you took a bullet dragging him out of the line of fire, remember?”
“I never said I didn't,” Moose said with a grin. “He's like the annoying little brother I never had. I always wanted one, just so I could pick on him, but Mom and Dad wouldn't cooperate. Now I got Neil, I'm making up for lost time.”
Neil came back to the table just then, still smiling. “You guys don't mind if Lacey comes out to join us, do you? She went by the trailer and I wasn't home, so she called to see where I was.”
“Oh-oh,” Moose said. “When a girl gets to the point she's checking up to see where you are when you're not home, things must be getting pretty serious. Next thing you know, you’ll have to ask for her permission to go on a mission with us.” He put on an effeminate grin and tried to imitate Lacey’s voice. “Okay, honey, you can go. Here’s your balls, just make sure you get them back to me when you get home.”
Neil gave him a sneer and stuck out his tongue. “Lacey isn't like that,” he said. “She really cares about me, that’s all.”
Sarah watched the exchange with her eyes wide, then looked at Moose. “You're right, I take it back.”
“Take what back?” Neil demanded.
“She just got through trying to tell me you had grown up since you started dating Lacey,” Moose said. “I said you hadn't, and sticking your tongue out at me just proved my point.”
Moose caught Elaine's attention and waved her over. “Honey, Lacey’s gonna be joining us. Can we get another chair over here?”
Lacey arrived a little more than ten minutes later and took her seat beside Neil. She leaned over to give him a kiss and Neil blushed. “Hey, sweetie,” she said, and then she looked at the rest of them. “Hope I'm not intruding.”
“You're not,” Sarah said, “and now that you're here, I don't feel quite as surrounded by testosterone as I did a minute ago. Thanks for coming.”
“De nada, Chica,” Lacey said. “Thanks for letting me barge in.”
Elaine showed up only a few seconds later carrying a large tray and a folding stand. She flipped the stand open and set the tray on top, then begin passing out their orders. “Lacey, almost every time you come in here with Neil, you order the same thing he does. I hope it's okay, I went ahead and gave you an Italian beef like his.”
Lacey smiled at her, delighted. “That's perfect,” she said. “Thank you.”
They dug in to eat, talking about inconsequential things. While Lacey and Elaine were privy to the type of work the team did, both of them being the daughters of top E & E people, most of the customers of the Saloon were simply local folk who knew nothing. As a result, mission work was rarely discussed there, and only when they were certain they could not be overheard.
Noah had already told his team that he was planning for them to leave for Missouri the following morning, so they decided to just hang out and relax for a while at the Saloon. It was nearly four o'clock by the time they finally left, and Neil rode home with Lacey rather than get back into the Chrysler with Sarah driving. Sarah kept the car under control, however, and her lead foot as well. Lacey stayed right behind her all the way, and they all ended up at Noah's house.
When they turned onto the county lane, Sarah quickly reached down and pushed one of the color buttons while Lacey was out of sight. When they pulled up at the house and got out, she barely managed to keep from laughing when she saw Lacey staring at the now-red car.
Neil hurried Lacey inside to see the printer, but Noah refused to allow another demonstration of what it could do. Despite a short and mostly friendly argument, he refused to budge, so Neil took her out to see the remains of the tree.
Sarah looked at Noah. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It's just interesting, watching Neil trying to grow up. I'm seeing things in his behavior that I've never noticed before in other people.”
“That's because,” Sarah said with a chuckle, “you've never had to deal with an insecure teenager before. Neil has been lonely and scared most of his life, I think, partly because of how tall he is. People expect a tall guy like that to be athletic, but Neil never quite made it. It's probably made him self-conscious.”
Noah nodded his head. “Yeah, that's what I'm seeing. It's interesting.”
Lacey hung around with them for a couple of hours, but then Noah suggested it was time for her to head home. He had come up with a mission plan and it was time for him to go over it with the team. Neil walked her out and kissed her goodbye, then came back in with a long face and took his seat at the table.
“Okay, here's what I'm planning,” Noah said. “We're going to spend a few days playing flower delivery. Neil, your job is going to be making sure we have accurate location intel on each of the targets, then using the printer to turn out flowerpots and vases. We'll want a lot of different designs, don't want them all to be exactly the same or that might arouse suspicion.”
Neil nodded. “Okay, I'll try to learn everything I can about the targets, so that I can sort of gear the designs toward what they might like.”
“Smart thinking,” Noah said. He turned to Moose. “Moose, you will be on flower duty. I'll send you out to other cities in the area, like Jefferson City or Springfield, to buy flowers and plants and potting soil, stuff like that.”
“Got it,” Moose said.
“Sarah, you and I will be scouting. I want to get an eyeball on every target, and particularly on those two little kids. I've got to figure out a way to get them out of the line of fire and I'm not sure how to go about that just yet.”
“Okay,” Sarah said.
“Now, I don't want the van to be seen around the hotel, so we need to find someplace to use as a base of operations. Neil, see what you can come up with. If you can arrange for us to have a building somewhere by the time we get there, that would be great.”
“Shouldn't be a problem,” Neil said. He took out his phone and began poking at it. “Just scanning over Craigslist for that area, I can see quite a few possibilities. There's an old warehouse building in an industrial park. The rent isn't too bad, not that we really care about that. Privately owned—want me to call them now?”
Noah nodded. “Yes, go ahead. It would be good if we could have it ready to go into tomorrow night, when we get there.”
THREE
The team pulled out the following morning at six AM with Noah and Sarah in the sedan, while Moose drove the van with Neil as his passenger. Despite all of Moose's semi-serious complaints about Neil, it was obvious to everyone who knew them that he really had adopted the skinny kid as a surrogate brother. The two of them often hung out together when they were between missions, and had already taken their respective girlfriends on double dates.
The trip to Columbia was almost a straight shot across Interstate 70, after an hour's driving on Colorado Route 71. They stopped for lunch in a little Kansas town near Salina, grabbing cheeseburgers and getting back on the road almost immediately, and didn't stop again until they hit Kansas City. They were all ready for a break by that time, so they stopped for a decent dinner and finally made it to Columbia at just before seven PM.
Neil had made the deal to rent the warehouse building, paying the first month’s rent and deposit with a credit card over the phone the night before. The keys would
be in a lock box that used a digital code, so they went straight to it when they arrived.
It wasn't a bad warehouse, but the little industrial park it sat in had seen better days. Most of the buildings were empty, so no one paid the four of them any attention as they collected the keys and parked the van inside. There were a number of workbenches scattered around there, and Neil commandeered one for the printer. Moose carried it over and set it up for him, and then they locked the building up again and went to find a hotel.
There was a decent one only a couple of miles away, and Noah decided it would work. Neil and Moose would share a room, as would Noah and Sarah, so he rented two for a week. They all gathered in his room and Sarah went to fetch soft drinks and snacks.
“We'll operate out of the warehouse,” Noah said. “The less we're actually seen around the hotel, here, the better off we'll be. Everybody get a good night’s sleep, I want to be up and out of here bright and early in the morning.”
“Hey,” Neil said, “I saw a Denny's down the road. Can we go there for breakfast?”
“That sounds okay. Let's just relax for the night and get some rest, because tomorrow the mission really begins.”
Moose and Neil said goodnight and headed for their room, and Sarah went to the bathroom to take a shower. Noah sat back on the bed and turned on the television in the room, flipping through channels to look for something worth watching. He found the channel guide and spotted a movie that looked interesting, one that would be starting in a short time, so he waited until Sarah came out of the shower and then went to get his own.
The movie was starting as he came back out of the bathroom, so he and Sarah bunched up their pillows and sat on the bed to watch. She leaned against him, and he put his arm around her to hold her close. As the movie was beginning, he noticed her looking up at his face.
“What's up?”
Sarah shrugged. “Just enjoying this,” she said. “You've been—I don't know, more cuddly lately? I like it, but I can't help wondering why.”
Noah sat for a moment and thought about how to answer, then leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “I could just tell you that holding you close to me gives me a pleasant sensation,” he said. “I can tell you that I do it because I think you need it. Both of those have some truth to them, so I wouldn’t be lying.” He paused and leaned his head back against the wall behind it. “The truth is, I'm not really sure why I'm doing it. I’ve come to realize that I like having you close to me, and that's something I'm not accustomed to.”
Sarah was quiet for a moment, and Noah waited for her to speak. “One of the reasons Allison wanted you was because you don't have any emotional attachments. If you—if you are starting to have some kind of feelings for me, is that going to interfere? Is it going to make it harder for you to do your job?”
Noah shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don't see why it would.”
Sarah sat up and leaned against the wall so that she could look straight at his face. “Noah, we haven't talked about it, but you know you broke the rules when you came to rescue me. We're all expendable, remember? I think Allison is afraid that our relationship is going to cause a problem.”
“I disagree. My mission at that time was to locate Nicolaich Andropov, and he had you. From a strictly logical standpoint, you could say that I didn't come to rescue you, I came to try to kill him. Bringing you out alive was simply a bonus.”
“Remember the debriefing? You told Jefferson that you came after me because you didn't like the idea of the world not having me in it anymore. In absolutely anybody else, that would be a sign of love. With you, I'm just not sure what it means, but I'll happily take what I can get.”
Noah lowered his eyebrows, and then turned to face her. “I read a book once, a long time ago. One of the characters was trying to define what love means, and I always liked his definition. He said that love was the condition that exists whenever another person's happiness and well-being is necessary for your own happiness and well-being.” He chewed his bottom lip for a few seconds. “I don't have a clue what it feels like to be in love, but if we look at that definition and accept it, then I guess we can say that I love you. I like it when you smile, I like it when you laugh—I don't like it when you're hurt or unhappy. It seems to me that your happiness and well-being are essential to whatever equivalent of those I might have, so that fits.”
Sarah stared at him for a moment, then smiled. “I love you too, you big jerk,” she said, and then she leaned against him again as they watched the movie. When it ended, they slid down into the bed and found other ways to express how much they enjoyed being together.
By six thirty the next morning, they were all up and ready to go. Noah opened the door to find Moose and Neil just about to knock, so they all went to the car together. Denny's, as Neil had said, was only a short distance away. Sarah pulled in and parked and they all filed inside for breakfast.
They spent an hour over pancakes and sausage and eggs and coffee, then got back into the car and headed for the warehouse. Neil had brought his own computer along, and set it up on another table near the 3-D printer, along with his own portable inkjet printer and a police scanner. He laid his copy of the target files beside it and began studying the individuals in the file.
Alejandra Gomez and her husband Enrique were first. While both of them were involved in the cartel, it was Alejandra, the youngest member of the branch, who seemed to be in charge of the group in Columbia. According to the limited intelligence that had been gathered on them, Alejandra called all the shots. This made her, of course, Noah's number one target, with her husband and other family members on the list simply because of their association with her.
Eduardo Menendez was a widower, but he had three of his sons and two of his brothers living with him. All of them were actively involved, and he was number two on the list.
Ramon Hernandez was next. Besides his wife and one adult son, he was accompanied by two uncles and their wives. All of them were deeply entrenched in the cartel, and Ramon was number three.
Armando Rodriguez seemed to be the man who dealt most with the dealers, and his two brothers and an uncle represented the muscle in his organization. While all of the cartel members were involved in various aspects of the drug business, it was the Rodriguez group who tended to hand out discipline. Usually, it came in the form of beatings, but several people had been obviously executed.
Last, but far from least, was Carlos Perez. Carlos, along with his wife and two daughters, handled the business end of their venture. Mrs. Perez was an accountant, and reportedly kept track of the many millions of dollars that flowed through their branch. Their daughters assisted her, but it was rumored that they had been involved in a couple of murders, using feminine charms to lure at least two men to their deaths.
The home addresses of each of them had been provided, along with a list of each and every occupant. Neil began looking for ways to spy on them, and it didn't take him long to discover that all of the homes were clients of a single local security company. An hour later, he had hacked his way into its security video server and could watch in real time as people entered and left.
Noah sat beside him as he went over what he was seeing.
“This is the Gomez household,” Neil said. “They've got security cameras on every entrance, and several around the yard. I can get a complete, three hundred and sixty-degree view of the house and grounds.”
“But there aren't any cameras inside?” Noah asked.
“Afraid not, Boss. On the other hand, they're using a standard cable company Wi-Fi system. When I get into it, I should be able to access any web cams inside the house. That might give you some internal views.”
“That would be good, if you can. What about the security alarms?”
“I got access to the company's main servers,” Neil said. “I can turn off the alarms, either altogether or just by disabling one door or window.”
Noah nodded. “Good, that may come in handy. I ne
ed to figure out a way to get those two children out of the house before we do anything.”
“Um, on that,” Neil said. “Turns out Mrs. Gomez has a nanny, a local lady she hired through a service. I noticed in the file that it mentioned her, so I'm wondering if maybe she takes the kids out, sometimes. Maybe she takes them to the park or something, you know what I mean?”
“Good thinking. Try to find out for me, will you?”
They went over the security video from the other houses, but just seeing the outsides didn't help a lot. “I wonder if there's any kind of recorded blueprints for those houses,” Noah mused aloud. “I'd really like to have some idea of the interior layouts. I want to get these bombs in there, but I want to make sure they get the job done.”
Neil cocked his head and grimaced. “I'll do what I can,” he said. “Maybe I can find out who built the houses. If it was a development company, they might have blueprints stored somewhere digitally that I can crack into. Don't get your hopes up, though.”
“I understand, just do what you can,” Noah said. “What about the neighborhood? How close are the other houses?”
“Gomez lives in what looks like a pretty expensive neighborhood,” Neil replied. “From what I can see from the security cameras, the Gomez house probably sits on a couple of acres, at least. It's at least a hundred yards to the nearest house on either side. Some of the others live not far away, but the Perez family is all the way across the city.”
Moose had left a few minutes earlier, heading to Jefferson City in the van to begin buying up flowers, so Noah left Neil to his work as he and Sarah went to scout the area. He had programmed all of the addresses of the houses into the GPS in the dash, and it took them only a couple of hours to locate and drive by all of them. Sarah cut through alleys and changed the color of the car between each one, so no one would notice the same car driving by more than one of them.