Noah Wolf Box Set 2

by David Archer

  “I’m just worried about Sarah. Noah, she’s pretty tough in some ways, but I don’t know how long she could hold out under torture.”

  “She’ll hold out for a while, if for no other reason than to protect me and you as long as she could; she truly cares about us, Neil. Sooner or later, though, she’s going to break. Allison doesn’t think she knows anything that would be devastating, but we still need to get her back as quickly as possible. Interrogation can do some pretty severe damage to the mind, as well as the body.”

  Neil rubbed his hands on his face. “So, we have to go out on a mission with people we can’t trust. Wouldn’t it be easier to just take the whole bunch of them and put a gun to their heads? Talk or die, that sort of thing?”

  “The problem with that is that they’re all going to swear they know nothing about it, and there’s no way to know which one of them is lying.”

  “Yeah. I bet Jenny could find out, if we could trust her. I’ve never seen anybody get off on torturing people the way she does.”

  “Same issue, we can’t be sure of the results. The even bigger problem with torture is that it can make people admit to things they didn’t do, just to stop the pain. That’s why Jenny tortured one man while appealing to the other to save him. In this case, whoever did this probably doesn’t care if somebody else is being skinned alive. Sooner or later, the person she’s torturing will admit to anything she wants just to make it stop.”

  “And then the real culprit gets off scot-free. Yeah, I get it.” He turned and looked at the coffee maker, saw that it was more than half-full and pulled the pot away. He poured two cups and set it back on the machine, then carried the steaming mugs to the table.

  “You wouldn’t tell me about this if you thought it could have been me,” Neil said as he sat down. “I guess I should thank you for that.”

  Noah cocked his head to one side and looked at the kid. “I spent my whole life studying other people’s emotions, so that I could pretend to have some of my own. When you accidentally mentioned Sarah a while ago, you had the same expression of grief that I saw when Moose died. I told Allison earlier that I couldn’t believe you would have done this, but that cinched it for me. That’s when I decided to let you know what’s going on.”

  Neil wiped another tear away and busied himself adding sugar to his coffee for a moment. “So,” he said when he finished, “do you know anything about this mission?”

  Noah nodded. “We’re going to North Korea. There are four CIA agents who have been captured there, and the Company says they can’t be rescued. We have to kill them so they can’t give up any secrets. And before you ask, Allison says she will not sanction a termination on Sarah. That’s why she mentioned that Sarah doesn’t know enough to do any real harm to the country.”

  Neil chewed his bottom lip for a moment. “North Korea? Can Americans even get into that country?”

  “I’m pretty sure they have some kind of tourism that Americans take advantage of, probably something that lets them watch every move they make. There have been news stories about American tourists being arrested over there, sometimes for the most ridiculous reasons, so this certainly isn’t going to be an easy one. We’ll find out more about the mission and how we’re supposed to accomplish it at the briefing.”

  Neil took a deep breath, as if trying to steady his emotions. “And in the middle of all that, we’re supposed to play a very dangerous game of Clue, figure out who among us is a traitor, right? Damn, I’m sure glad the Dragon Lady isn’t handing us a difficult job.”

  “People tend to reveal themselves under stress,” Noah said. “The whole point of sending our two teams on this mission is to put whoever did this under a lot of stress, and then I’ll apply even more to see if we can force him to make a mistake that gives him away. I’ll probably need your help with that.”

  Neil’s eyes had been on his coffee cup, but he suddenly looked up at Noah. “Anything you want,” he said. “Anything at all. You figure out who it is and want me to pull the trigger, I’ll do it without even blinking.”

  “I know,” Noah said.

  The two of them sat and talked, stopping twice to refill their coffee cups. They were going over possible scenarios, ruses they might employ to try to identify the traitor in their midst, when Noah’s phone rang.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “It’s Allison,” his boss said unnecessarily. “We’ve just spoken with Jenny, and both Donald and I came to the conclusion that she can be trusted. She had deduced the same things that you had, that Sarah is alive and that she had been betrayed by one of our own. Latest report from the CIA says they can find nothing to implicate any of our people over there, so if it’s an inside job, then I’m afraid it’s down to your men or hers.”

  “I brought Neil in on this,” Noah said. “I’m convinced he had no part in it, so we're going over ways we might trick the culprit into revealing himself.”

  “Very good,” Allison said. “You can use Jenny as you need to, as well. Just make sure no one other than Neil hears anything the two of you talk about.”

  “Will do. Briefing still at one?”

  “Yes.” The line went dead.

  Noah slipped his phone back into his pocket and looked at the kid across from him. “Jenny’s in the clear,” he said. “Once we leave the house, we don’t discuss any of this where anyone else can hear it.”

  “Deal,” Neil said.

  “Good. Why don’t we go grab some lunch? Unless it’s too early for you to eat.”

  “Ow! Stop twisting my arm!” The joke was lost on Noah, so Neil rolled his eyes. “Yeah, let’s go eat.”

  Even with the passenger seat in the Corvette slid all the way back, Neil couldn’t quite straighten his legs out, but he didn’t complain as they rode into town. A new restaurant, Colorado Charlie’s, had recently opened only a few blocks from the main offices and the team had tried it before they left for Thailand. The food had been good, so Noah headed toward it.

  When Neil realized where they were going, he looked at Noah and said, “Do we gotta? I mean, that’s the last place we ate with…”

  Noah glanced over at him, and then made the next right turn. There was an Applebee’s a couple of blocks over, so Noah went there, instead.

  They had just gotten inside and were waiting to be seated when Noah’s phone rang. “Hello?”

  “It’s Jenny,” he heard. “Allison talk to you yet?”

  “Yes. I understand you and I are on the same page.”

  “You bet your ass we are. How well do you know your guys? Do you think it could have been one of them?”

  “It wasn’t Neil,” Noah said. “He and I have talked it over and I’m certain it wasn’t him. Marco is new with us, a replacement for Moose, so he’s a lesser-known quantity.”

  “Yeah, he’s at the top of my list, at the moment. No particular reason other than the fact he’s the new guy, but I’ve had all three of my boys for almost two years, now. I know them, Noah, and I have a real hard time believing any of them could have done this.”

  “I understand, but people have been turned in the past, people you’d never believe it could happen to. Listen, Neil and I are about to have lunch at Applebee’s. Would you like to come and join us?”

  “Yeah, that sounds good. Applebee’s? I can be there in fifteen. Get me a sweet tea.”

  “Okay, we’ll try to get us a table where we can talk a little bit. See you when you get here.” He turned to Neil. “Jenny is going to come and join us.”

  Neil shivered. “That’s like sitting down to eat with Death! It’s hard to get the image of what she did to that guy out of my mind, and I don’t even try to imagine what happened on the island. I’m just glad you left me at the boat.”

  “Yes,” Noah said without looking over at him. “I thought you might be.”

  SIX

  They were early enough that the lunch rush had not yet begun, so Noah asked for the booth that was farthest away from where most people were
sitting. The hostess smiled and put on a hip-wiggling display as she led them to it, and a waitress appeared instantly to take their drink orders. Noah told her that a third person was coming, then ordered a beer for himself and Jenny’s sweet tea. Neil asked for lemonade, and the girl hurried away to fetch them.

  Jenny arrived just as the drinks did, and slid into the seat beside Noah. “Hey, whiz kid,” she said to Neil. “How you holding up?”

  “I was fine 'til you got here,” he said with a smirk, but then he grinned at her. “I’m just kidding. I’m okay, I guess, but I won’t be right until we get Sarah back.”

  “Then that’s what we gotta do.” She picked up a menu and began looking it over. “If it was one of my guys,” she said without looking at Noah, “I’d have to say Randy would be the most likely one. I’ve been thinking it over, and I can recall a few times he seemed to go off the reservation. Disappear for a little while, know what I mean?”

  Noah raised an eyebrow. “He disappears on the job?”

  Jenny nodded. “Every now and then, just for a short time. I’ve always chalked it up to him being the impulsive sort. Give you an example, there’s been a couple of times when he disappeared and it turned out he was in a bookstore. He loves to read, he’s always got a couple of books with him, but if we're out long enough that he finishes them, he’ll go find another one. Another time, while I was still playing up to my target and he was supposed to be watching me from the street, he decided I had everything under control and went two blocks away to grab a sandwich.”

  “And you’ve never reported this?”

  “Didn’t see a need,” she said. “He’s always been right there if I actually needed him, and that time he went for the sandwich was no big deal, I did have it under control. On the other hand, that’s the only time he ever wandered off when we were active. Usually it happens when we’re just staying in character, waiting for an opportunity for me to get close to the target.”

  Noah considered what she had said. “He’s the only one that ever gets out of your sight?”

  “Well, no, the others go out on errands and stuff, but he’s the only one that ever does it spontaneously. That’s why it occurs to me that he might, and I said might, have made contact with someone somewhere along the line.”

  The waitress returned and took their orders, then hustled away. Jenny took a sip of her tea before turning back to Noah.

  “The thing is, Noah,” she said, “if one of my guys was going to sell someone out, why hasn’t it been me? Or you, for that matter? One of us would have been a lot more valuable than your transportation specialist, don’t you think?”

  Noah thought about it. “I see your point,” he said, “but are you ever alone? It might be difficult to get one of us into a position where we could be taken. I’m thinking this was just an opportunity. Sarah was trapped in that prison, so if it was Marco, he could have called somebody and let them know she was vulnerable, there. They call in the Nay Thas, she gets snatched away and then picked up from them. Or the Nay Thas roundup was purely coincidental after all, but then she’s even more vulnerable in the hands of slave traders. The traitor lets his contact know, and they use whatever resources they’ve got to reach out to them. Pak gets sent in to buy her, then he hears that we wiped out the camp on the island and comes up with his scheme to convince us she’s dead. In that case, it could be any of them, or any of the station people; could even be someone we’ve never heard of, someone who learned Sarah was there and saw a chance to make a score.”

  Jenny shrugged. “Good point. She was an easy sale. They’d have to send a squad to take you or me, and even then the chance of taking one of us alive would be pretty slim.”

  They continued to discuss the situation until their food arrived, but by then the place was beginning to get busier. A couple of businessmen sat down in a booth close to them, so they switched their conversation to more mundane things.

  By the time they finished eating, it was almost half past twelve, so Noah suggested they go on to the briefing room. “We can hang out there until the others arrive,” he said. Jenny agreed, so Noah paid the tab on the way out and they got into their cars and drove to the office building.

  Allison’s secretary had gone to lunch, so they bypassed her desk and let themselves into the conference room. Allison was already there, and so was Don Jefferson. They both looked up as the trio entered, but neither of them smiled.

  “You’re early,” Jefferson said.

  “We just had lunch a couple blocks away,” Noah said, “so I thought we’d come on down. The rest of the guys should be here on schedule, but only we three know what’s really going on.”

  “Then I’ve got something for you,” Allison said. “One of the analysts over at Langley ran across a report she thought we ought to see. It seems a source in China has heard that his people have acquired something that confirms the existence of E & E.”

  “They got Sarah,” Noah said.

  “Has to be,” Allison replied. “That’s all we’ve got, no indication of where she might be or anything else, but at least it’s something.”

  “At least she’s alive,” Neil said.

  “It only means she was alive when the source heard about it,” Noah told him. “The Chinese are notorious for their interrogation techniques. She isn’t going to last long in their hands.”

  “I agree,” said Allison. “You’re going to have to work fast. However, I’m not convinced that it was one of your men or Jenny’s who put her in this position, so you’ve got to determine that quickly, then figure out which one and interrogate him as soon as possible. If not, then we need to find out who the hell else it could be, and then you’ve got to interrogate that individual. That’s the only way we can see any chance of finding her before it’s too late, and failure is not an option.”

  “And we’ve still got to carry out the actual mission, right?” Jenny asked.

  “Absolutely. This mission genuinely is of critical importance, so it has to be completed. I’m briefing both of your teams at one, but we are also briefing Team Hercules at three. Hercules will be sent in after you, as backup. That way, if you determine the identity of the traitor before the mission is completed, they can take it over. You can head for China and they can terminate the captured agents.”

  The three of them sat down on one of the couches and Jenny leaned toward Allison. “Can you give us any kind of heads up on the mission?”

  “I’ve already shared part of it with Noah,” Allison said. “There are four CIA people who have been captured by the North Koreans. They were in the country to get information on North Korean ballistic missile tests, because they seem to have developed a missile that could conceivably reach the continental US. The problem is that these people know some things we can’t afford to have revealed, and Langley says there is no hope of getting them out. They’re to be terminated as quickly as possible, regardless of any collateral damage.”

  “How are we supposed to get to them? Do we even know where they’re being held?”

  “Yes. One of the satellites had eyes on them when they were captured, and analysis was able to determine where they were taken. They’re still in the same place, and if it changes, we will know and can tell you. We don’t have any people of our own in North Korea, but CIA and NSA both have local operatives. Arrangements are already being made for weapons and explosives, but you have to determine the most effective means of accomplishing the mission.”

  Neil shook his head. “I knew we’d end up on one of these sooner or later,” he said, “but I hate the thought we have to kill some of our own people. That just sucks.”

  “It does,” Allison said, “but sometimes it’s necessary for the security of our country. These agents were fully aware that it could come to this when they went in. Each of them accepted that risk, and is willing to die to protect our country and its secrets.”

  “Officially, Noah,” Donald Jefferson interjected, “there is to be no attempt at rescue. Even
if it appears a rescue could be accomplished, the decision has been made that we can’t take the risk. If you were to try and fail, you may not be able to terminate these agents before they could be recaptured, and then they’d have you, as well. You’re to just go in and terminate, then get out of the country.”

  “Understood,” said Noah.

  “With that being said, however,” Allison said, “I’m personally authorizing a change to the plan if Noah believes the rescue is feasible. Noah, it’s got to be on you to make the decision, nobody else.”

  “I understand. I’ll base it only on my evaluation of the situation after recon.”

  Allison turned to Jenny. “As I said before, Jenny, Team Cinderella will be under Camelot’s orders for the duration of this mission. Any problem with that?”

  “No problem,” Jenny echoed. “Is there any kind of game plan worked out yet?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Jefferson said. “There’s no possibility of subterfuge. This is going to have to be a stealth mission, which is why you are authorized any level of collateral damage. The building they are housed in is a civilian structure in an industrial area of Pyongyang, a concrete structure on the edge of a cement plant. It’s a long, low building with only one level, but CIA suspects there may be sub-levels underneath. Satellite reconnaissance has photographed military vehicles going to and from the building at different times, and there are armed patrols around it. We’ll show you photos during the actual briefing.”

  A sudden tap on the doorframe made them all look around. Marco stood there looking in, and Jefferson waved him inside.

  “Thought I’d come on up and see if there’s any doughnuts left,” he said. He glanced over at the empty table on the side of the room. “I guess Neil got to them before I could.”

  “Very funny,” Neil said.

  Marco came and sat down on the couch across from them, just as another sound announced the arrival of Jenny’s crew. Jim, Randy and Dave came in and joined them, with Jim and Randy pulling chairs away from the conference table to sit in.