by David Archer
“No, I just prefer to avoid collateral damage if we can. I don’t know for sure where God stands on sanctioned assassination, but I suspect He isn’t too pleased when somebody innocent gets caught up in it.”
Marco shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, “but there are some passages in the Old Testament that say God ordered the Israelites to slaughter entire nations, men, women, and children. You know some of them had to have been innocent, right?”
“Of course,” Noah said, “but you’ve got to remember that those books were written by religious scholars and priests of the day. I’m pretty sure they would want the world to believe that any genocide they committed was only on God’s orders, wouldn’t you think?”
“Yeah, maybe. Still, you can’t always make sure there won’t be any innocent bystanders who get hurt.”
“True. But until God tells me not to worry about it, I’m going to do my best to avoid it.”
Marco chuckled. “Yeah, that’s probably the smart way to handle it.”
To keep up appearances, Noah took Marco around to all of the local places and introduced him. He used each stop to reinforce the necessity of having the lieutenants attend the meeting that night, refusing to tell them exactly what it was about but making it clear that it was important.
A few of them asked about Ralph. Heather, when he stopped to introduce Marco, told him he was a hero and tried to give him a kiss, but Noah laughed it off. Marco offered, in his Cajun accent, to accept the kiss on Noah’s behalf, and Heather laughed as she cooperated.
As they drove away, Marco looked at Noah. “She’s one of them, right? One of the lieutenants who will be at the meeting tonight?”
“Yes. The unfortunate thing is that she has children.”
Marco shrugged. “She made the choice to become a criminal,” he said. “Just feels weird to know I kissed a woman who’s about to die. You think that’s gonna damage my karma?”
“If I believed in karma,” Noah said, “I’d say probably.”
Leonard, at the casino, surprised Marco by speaking to him in Cajun English. “Oh, you from de bayou country, yes?” he asked when he heard “Aubrey” speak. “I been up out de bayou more than twenty years, now. You come, pass a good time here! I give you big big pile of chips, you play, win money.”
Marco broke out in a delighted smile. “Mais j’mais,” he said. “I don’ never got to play dese games before. Mebbe you make a trap, eh? You get ol’ Aubrey in here, make me lose all my money, yes?”
“But of course,” Leonard said, his own smile just as big. “That why I am here, oui? To take away all you money, yes?”
They exchanged a few more sarcastic pleasantries, and then Noah reminded Leonard to be at the meeting. Moments later, they were back in the car and headed to get some lunch.
They stopped at an interesting restaurant, one that had an outdoor dining area. While the air was getting cool, there were small heaters scattered around among the tables that seemed to be putting out enough heat to keep the area warm. The two of them took a table and ordered burgers, and were surprised at how quickly they got them. They were even more surprised at how delicious they were. As they left, Marco bemoaned the fact that they would probably never get to eat there again, but Noah reminded him that the food at the Sagebrush Saloon was every bit as good. Marco shrugged and agreed, and they continued their tour.
At just after two, Sarah called to let Noah know that she and Neil were on the road. They had packed up everything they needed to take with them and were headed back toward Kirtland.
“You know,” Sarah said, “when they gave us the mission, they thought we were going to be here for months. Do you realize that it’s been less than two weeks? You don’t want to put this off a while longer, just let us enjoy acting like a halfway normal couple?”
“No,” Noah said. “I want to get back to our real lives. I think we’re a much more normal couple back in Kirtland than we ever could be out here. At least back there, I don’t have to go off and pretend to be a criminal every day.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Sarah replied. “I love you, Noah. Don’t you forget that.”
“I love you, too,” Noah said. “As soon as we get this done tonight, we’ll be hitting the road ourselves. If you stop to get a room, call and let me know where. We might just catch up with you.”
The call ended, and Noah stopped for gas a few minutes later. He filled up the Charger, and then he and Marco simply cruised around for the rest of the afternoon.
* * * * *
Jimmy Morgan had contacted all of his top lieutenants, and even some of their underlings. There would be more than a hundred people attending the meeting that evening, and he was almost rubbing his hands in anticipation. He’d never seen anyone who could think through a problem as fast as Rex Madison, and he couldn’t wait to see how Rex would handle this meeting. It never occurred to him to wonder why anyone would want all of his top people in one place, and even if it had, he would never have guessed the real reason.
He was Jimmy Morgan. No one would ever seriously try to take him out, he knew that.
He had spent the day in his office, making those calls and several others, getting everything set up to start the liquor distributorship. He needed to have a warehouse ready to go before the first trailer even showed up, and that meant keeping his people on their toes. By five o’clock, everything was arranged. He would be able to sign the papers within a couple of days, and the warehouse would be a reality.
All of that was done, finally, and it was getting close to six o’clock. He made one more call, to the local pizza delivery store, and arranged for three dozen large pizzas to be delivered to the junkyard as soon as possible, then walked out of his office and started toward the front door.
He’d almost made it when Ralph appeared in the hallway. “Pa?”
Morgan was still angry with the boy, but he was so relieved that Ralphie was out of jail that he was biting it off rather than letting it out. “Hey, Ralph,” he said. “How you doing?”
Ralph shrugged. “I still feel bad about what happened,” he said. “I guess I just don’t know my own strength.”
Morgan nodded. “I understand,” he said. “Back when I was your age, I was pretty stout, myself. More than one guy found out taking me on was a bad idea. I guess you’re just a chip off the old block, in some ways.”
Ralph shrugged again. “You going to the meeting?”
“Yep,” Morgan said. “You want to come? I mean, it’s all about you, anyway.”
“Can I? I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to go along, you know, after everything that happened.”
“I think maybe you should. It doesn’t hurt a man to face up to his mistakes, and everybody needs to know that you’re gonna handle it and move past it. Come on, let’s go. Tell your shadows they can follow in their car.”
The two of them walked out the door and got into the back seat of Morgan’s Lincoln limousine. Walter, his chauffeur, closed the door he was holding open and got behind the wheel. He already knew where they were going, so he simply started the car and put it in gear. Moments later, they were out on the two-lane blacktop and headed toward town, when Morgan’s cell phone rang.
“Hello,” he said as he answered.
“Jimmy? It’s Dave Walters.”
“Hey,” Morgan said with a smile. “You’re gonna make it to our meeting tonight, right? It starts in just a little while, and I’m bringing pizza.”
“I’ll be there,” Walters said, “but you might not want to turn it into a party. There’s something going on, and we got a problem.”
Morgan’s brow furrowed. “What kind of problem, Dave? What’s going on?”
“What’s going on,” Walters said, “is that your new right-hand man’s sister is a damned FBI agent.”
* * * * *
Noah had gotten himself into position at just past five thirty, parking the car among some trees on the top of Allred Mountain, which overlooked the junkyard. They
had a perfect view of the entrance and parking lot, but the mountain was almost two miles away. Noah and Marco were looking through binoculars they had bought earlier in the day at a sporting goods store.
“It’s after six,” Marco said. “I see half a dozen cars down there. Do you know any of them?”
Noah shook his head. “No, but I’ve seen a couple people I recognize. They’re all coming in, just like they were told.”
“How long you going to give them? You know a few will be late, right?”
“Not as late as I’ll be,” Noah said. “I figure I’ll call Jimmy at about twenty till seven and tell him I’m on the way but running a few minutes late. Five minutes after that, I’ll set them off.”
“I wonder if they’ll hear the blast back in town? How far out are we?”
“About eight miles, I think, but the junkyard sits down in that little valley. Depending on how big the blast cloud is, they may see it, rather than hear it.”
“In which case we’ll have a matter of minutes to get the hell out of here. You know which way to go?”
“Yes. I’ve even got it programmed into my GPS, just to be sure. We’ll go out across Pension Mountain—that’s County Road 550. It’ll take us down to Metalton, and we can take the cutoff road from there over to pick up Highway 103 and go north. That goes up through Green Forest, and then we can make it into Missouri. Once we get there, it should be clear sailing.”
Marco grinned as he stared through the binoculars. “Sounds good to me, boss.”
They watched as more and more cars pulled into the parking lot, including Jimmy Morgan’s limo. Noah grunted when he saw Ralph climb out of the car with his father, but then Marco tapped him on the arm.
“Check this out,” he said.
Noah turned his binoculars toward the entrance of the yard and saw a pizza delivery car pulling in. A young woman stepped out and started stacking pizzas, then looked relieved when a couple of men came out to help carry them in. She went inside the building for a moment, carrying five of them herself, but came out a few minutes later with a big smile on her face. She got into her car and drove away, and Marco breathed a sigh of relief.
“Morgan must be a good tipper,” he said. “You see the smile she was wearing? I bet he gave her a hundred.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Noah said. “He seems to think of himself as some kind of Robin Hood character, even though he doesn’t really care that much about the poor. I’m just glad they didn’t invite her to stick around.”
They watched for a few more minutes, and then Noah decided it was time. He took out his phone and called Morgan.
“Rex? Where are you?”
“I’m about five minutes out,” Noah said. “I would’ve been on time, but Aubrey had to make a stop at a restroom. Do not ever let that man eat hamburgers for lunch—they go through him like oil through a funnel.”
Morgan laughed. “I’ll remember that. Hurry up and get here, there’s not a lot of pizza left.”
“I’m hurrying. Everybody there?”
“Yeah, I think so. The place is packed, I can tell you that.”
“Sounds good,” Noah said. “I’ll be there in a matter of minutes.”
“Well, come on,” Morgan said. “Oh, by the way—your sister decided to join us. She ought to be here any second now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Noah snapped the binoculars up to his face again and stared down at the junkyard. Seconds later, a car came into view on the winding road that ran in front of it and slowed in order to make the turn into its driveway. It pulled up among the other cars already present and stopped, and a moment later Dave Walters stepped out of the driver’s seat. He opened the back door on the driver’s side and reached in, coming out a moment later with Kate Madison’s arm crushed in his hand.
Her hands were bound behind her back, and he marched her into the building without even looking around. Noah saw that her face was set and stubborn, and he knew that she had resigned herself to the strong probability that she was about to die.
He turned to Marco. “They’ve got Kate,” he said. “I don’t know how they found out about her, but they’ve got her.”
Marco looked at him without a word for several seconds, then grinned. “Well, I know how you feel about collateral damage,” he said. “How are we going to get her out of this?”
Noah sat quietly for a moment, then opened the door and got out of the car. He walked around to the trunk and opened it, then came back a moment later with the smart guns and set them on the hood. Marco got out and stepped up beside him as he opened the first one.
“I managed to get pictures of most of the top people,” Noah said, “and I’ve already downloaded them to my phone, a total of about thirty-six pictures. Each of these guns only hold fifteen rounds, so I’m going to send a dozen pictures to each one. You’ll have to slip into the junkyard and put them around the building, while I give the people inside a reason to come running out. With any luck, these will take out a lot of Morgan’s guns.”
Marco nodded. “You want me to go cross-country?”
Noah shook his head. “No. That would take too long, and things might get out of hand. Once I get them loaded with targets, we’ll drive down. I’ll stop just out of side of the yard and let you out, then I’ll give you about fifteen minutes to get set up. That building only has two doors, the one that leads into its office and the big one they take vehicles in and out through. Try to set these up so that they have line of sight on both doors. The way I’ve divided the pictures, we should have two guns firing at each person who comes out.”
“Okay, fifteen minutes. Then what?”
“Then I drive in and draw them out. Try to stay out of the line of fire, but be ready to back me up if I need you.”
Marco grinned. “Oh, yeah, boss,” he said, his Cajun accent in full attack mode. “I be dere. I garontee!”
It took only a couple of minutes get all the guns set up, and then they tossed the boxes onto the ground while Marco held all six of the devices and got back into the car. He didn’t bother with the seat belt as Noah started up and backed around onto the old country road.
There were enough curves to make it impossible to really give the Charger its head, but Noah made it down the mountain in only four minutes. He put the car in neutral and let the big engine idle as it rolled the last quarter mile, then stopped and let Marco out just a few hundred yards short of the entrance to the junkyard. Marco, for all his bulk and muscle, moved with the grace of a gazelle. He vanished into the woods alongside the road, and Noah began counting the seconds.
Suddenly, Noah took out his phone and quickly found the contact for Allison. He hit it with his thumb, and a moment later she answered.
“Camelot? Report.”
“I’ve had an idea,” Noah said. Quickly he explained what he had in mind, and Allison gave him the okay without even asking a question.
When he reached nine hundred, he reached down alongside the seat and pushed a button, then dropped the car into gear again and pushed his foot into the accelerator pedal. The Charger leapt forward and got up to forty miles per hour by the time it got to the entrance, and Noah fishtailed the car into the parking lot. He got it straightened out so that it was aimed directly at the shop building and then stopped.
On the windshield, the computer had put up the FLIR display, showing the infrared image of the shop building and what was happening inside it. There were several large bright spots that Noah knew would mean groups of people, but he saw one very small group that caught his attention. Someone in the middle of it was sitting on something low, and he knew that had to be Kate. Morgan would want her in as vulnerable a position as possible, he knew, and Morgan’s idea of keeping you vulnerable was to be towering over you.
Noah reached down and pushed the first button and the video display came to life in the dashboard. He tapped the screen in the area where one of the groups was gathered, then squeezed the trigger button on the steering wheel. He
held it tight as he tapped the screen several times over that same area, then looked at the FLIR display again.
The machine guns of bullets had penetrated the corrugated steel siding like it was paper, and the group was scattering. There were several bright flashes as some of those inside tried to return fire, but they didn’t seem to know where to aim. Noah was about to fire into the group again when the office door burst open and a half-dozen people came running out, guns in hand. They spotted the Charger and began firing in his direction, but then suddenly they began dropping.
Pop, pop, pop! The smart guns were taking their shots, one or two at a time. The loud popping continued until all but one of those who had come outside was down. The lone survivor dived under a car, his gun lost in his scramble to hide and his hands over his head.
Noah fired another six-second burst into the building, and this time more than a dozen came running out. Several of them were holding assault rifles, and Noah saw sparks as the bullets bounced off the car and the carbonite windshield. He spun the steering wheel and hit the gas pedal for a second, turning the car to bring this group into his line of fire, then tapped the screen and squeezed the trigger. The machine gun spat and several fell, and Noah tapped again and again and again. Those that weren’t down were running, but the smart guns were doing their job. Pop, pop, pop, pop… The last two survivors ran back into the building, trying to get away from the unseen sniper that was picking them off one by one.
Movement off to the right caught Noah’s eyes, and he started to aim the machine gun but saw that it was Marco, moving stealthily toward the door. Noah gunned the car again and spun the wheel to line it up on the big overhead door. He reached down and selected the high-explosive rounds, tapped the screen over the door, and squeezed the trigger once.
The door exploded, and several people behind it went tumbling across the concrete floor. Noah floored the car and raced through the wreckage, spinning to his right as he got inside the building. He had guessed correctly, as he saw Jimmy Morgan and Dave Walters holding Kate as they backed away from the car, each of them pointing a gun at her head.