Noah Wolf Box Set 2

by David Archer

  “Okay, I guess that makes sense.” She turned to Noah. “So you want me to get this stuff for you, right? Let me ask you this—how soon do you need to have it?”

  “I’m supposed to make sure Randy is dead within the next thirty-eight hours or so,” Noah said. “This is the only chance he’s got to survive this thing, so the sooner, the better.”

  Renée looked into his eyes for a moment, then nodded as if coming to a decision. “Well, as it happens, I occasionally work late, with Wally’s authorization. What that means is that I happen to have in my possession a set of keys, and I’m listed with security as having twenty-four-hour access to the facility. Now, the problem is that I can’t just walk into one of the labs and take something out, because I don’t have the kind of pass that opens the lab doors.”

  Noah sighed. “What about tomorrow morning? Is there any way you could…”

  “Hold on, I wasn’t finished,” Renée said, holding up a hand to stop him. “There is somebody who does have a lab pass, and it just happens to be my roommate. Her name is Mary, and if I asked her to, she’d go out with me and get what you need.”

  “The problem with that,” Noah said, “is that we don’t know who we can trust. The mole could have any number of people in the organization that report back to him. Frankly, I’m sticking my neck out pretty far just talking to you about this.”

  Renée sat and looked at him for a moment, chewing her bottom lip. “Okay,” she said at last, “there’s one other thing I can think of. How do you feel about Wally himself? Would you be okay with him being in on this?”

  Noah’s eyebrows went up a quarter of an inch. “Actually, I would,” he said. “I gather you’re thinking of a way to make that happen?”

  “Yes. Wally’s an incredible genius, and while he rarely takes credit, most of the things our labs come up with start out as a doodle on his desk pad. He and I are also very old friends, since we were both recruited from the CIA when Allison set up E & E. If I just gave him a call and told him I need him to meet me at the office for something important, he’d drop whatever he’s doing and meet me. Once we’re inside I can tell him what you need, and there’s no doubt in my mind he’ll get it for you and let me bring it back.”

  Noah looked at Neil. “Can you tell her exactly what it is you’re going to need?”

  “Yeah, of course,” Neil replied, “but this may be better than we ever dreamed. They probably already have the correct formula worked out. I can write up a note she can give him, and I’m pretty sure he’ll know what to send back. But, Noah, what if Wally has been compromised?”

  “Wally has probably the highest access of anyone outside the main office,” Noah said. “If the mole had somehow managed to compromise him, I suspect finding me wouldn’t have been a bit difficult. Write your note—this is a go.” He turned to Renée. “Why don’t you call him now and set up a time? The sooner, the better. Dinner can wait.”

  Renée grinned and nodded, then took out her cell phone. She dialed the number and listened for only a moment. “Wally? Hey, listen, it’s Renée. I've gotta run by the office for a few minutes, and there’s something I’d like to talk to you about. Would you mind meeting me out there? Twenty minutes? Actually, I’d need a little more than that. Let’s make it’s about thirty minutes, is that okay? Okay, great, I’ll see you there.”

  She turned to Noah. “Okay, it’s set. I can be back here in an hour and a half with what you need in hand.”

  Noah nodded. “All right,” he said. “We’ll hold dinner for you.”

  Marco shrugged and shook his head but followed Renée back out to his car. The two of them drove away, and Noah felt Sarah wrap her arms around him from behind.

  “I hope this wasn’t a mistake,” she said softly. “We’re letting a lot of people in on secrets that were supposed to stay within our small group.”

  “Wally’s good,” Neil said. “Noah is absolutely correct. If somebody was pulling Wally’s puppet strings, they wouldn’t need anybody like Randy. The only real risk in this ploy is using Renée, but I doubt she’s even in a position that would be of any benefit to the mole.”

  Noah suddenly turned and looked at Neil. “You just made an extremely good point,” he said. “I wonder what it was about Randy that put him in the mole’s sights.”

  Neil shrugged. “You know, now that you mention it, I’m not sure anybody has even asked that question.”

  * * * * *

  “So,” Renée said to Marco as they drove toward R&D. “You really didn’t know about this before we got there?”

  Marco shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I had an idea that they wanted to talk to you about something, but I never would’ve guessed it was this. Honey, I’m not sure, but this could blow up in your face. You sure you want to get involved?”

  “Wally is probably Noah’s biggest fan,” she said with a grin. “Even if I wasn’t getting him involved now, I would have confessed about this to him in the morning just to cover my own ass. Trust me, he’ll bend or break any rule to help Noah, even if that means taking risks for himself. You’ll see. Just come on in with me when I talk to him.”

  Marco made a face and rolled his eyes. “Like you thought I’d let you do this on your own? If it blows up, I want you to know that I’ll be right there beside you in the firebox.”

  Wally was already waiting when they pulled in, sitting on the hood of his classic 1966 Riviera. He slid off the hood as they parked beside him, then led the way to the door and used his keys to open it.

  Once they were inside, he turned and nodded toward Marco, then looked at Renée. “Okay, sweetheart,” he said with a smile. “I figured it was something pretty important if you wanted me to come out tonight to talk to you in a secure environment. What’s going on?”

  “Ah, nothing much,” Renée said. “I just need you to help me steal some top secret material out of one of your labs.”

  Wally’s smile didn’t even flicker. “Far out,” he said. “Who we gonna kill?”

  Renée burst out laughing. “Actually, the idea is to avoid killing someone.” She gave Wally a quick rundown of the situation and Noah’s plan, ending with Neil’s idea about using the chemical mixture that would make Randy appear to be dead. The note Neil had written got his attention for a moment, then Wally took out a disposable lighter and set it aflame, dropping it into the dirt around a potted plant.

  Wally laughed as he did so, rubbing his hands together with childish excitement. “Wow, this is awesome! Yeah, no problem, let’s go get it. And, by the way, Jake and Clancy have already perfected the dosage and blended it into a single formula. The stuff hits in about forty-five seconds, and then the only things that continue working are the involuntary muscles, the heart, diaphragm, stuff like that, but they’re so slow that it takes some extremely special medical equipment to even detect. Give it to someone while they’re hooked up to normal monitors, and they go flatline almost instantly.”

  Wally was leading the way through the labyrinthine hallways as he spoke, and they arrived at a door a minute later. Wally used a key card to open the door and invited the two of them inside.

  Despite the fact he was considered simply an R&D supervisor, almost all of the projects his shops and laboratories worked on stemmed directly from ideas of his own, and the scientists and engineers that worked under him filed daily reports. Wally was almost always up to speed on everything they were doing and spent enough time wandering from one lab or shop to another that he was intimately familiar with all of them. His key card opened a secure cabinet in this one, and he reached in and quickly extracted a single vial.

  He handed it to Renée and then opened another cabinet to retrieve a sterile syringe with a hypodermic needle. “You’ll need this, too,” he said. “That dose should work just fine; it’s calculated for a male between 160 and 200 pounds. If I remember Randy correctly, he’s about 180. That should keep him in zombie land for about thirty-five hours, maybe a little less.”

  Marco nodded. �
��Sounds about right. Gotta tell you, Wally, this is pretty cool of you.”

  Wally chuckled and waved in dismissal. “Oh, don’t be silly,” he said. “I know what’s going on with the whole mole situation, so anything I can do to help Camelot find that bastard, I’m willing to do. And don’t worry about repercussions later, Renée. I can handle it. There won’t be any problems. Now, you kids better run along and get that back to Noah. And tell him if there’s anything else he needs, just to send you after it. You’ll get it.”

  He locked the lab as they left and walked with them to the exit door. As they stepped outside, he waved and then got back into his car and drove away.

  “You were right,” Marco said to Renée as they got into the car. “That was easy.”

  “I was pretty sure it would be. Wally likes to hang out in my office sometimes, and Noah is one of the things he’s always talking about. Like I said, Wally is his biggest fan.”

  “Sounds like it. I thought for a moment he was gonna insist on coming along to the party. Not sure how well that would have gone over, you know?”

  Renée chuckled. “Yeah, not so well. Wally’s a genius at the logistics end, but I’ve heard some of the crazy ideas he has come up with as plans for carrying out various missions. Sometimes they get a little wacky, and I’m being generous.”

  They got back to Noah’s house and recounted their adventure to him, passing off the vial and hypodermic. Noah put them into a cabinet in the kitchen and thanked them both.

  “Okay, mission successful,” Neil said. “That means it’s time for dinner, right?”

  “You’d be ready for dinner five minutes after you finished breakfast,” Sarah said to him with a laugh.

  “Nope, not true,” Neil replied. “Gotta have lunch in there somewhere. Can’t pass up lunch.”

  Neil, Marco, and Renée sat down at the table while Noah helped Sarah carry over the food and refresh their bottles. A moment later they sat down to eat, and they all agreed that Sarah’s pot roast was some of the best they’d ever eaten.

  “Renée,” Noah said at one point, “there was one thing I forgot to ask you about earlier. Assuming this works, we’re going to need to make Randy disappear afterward. If he survives, he’ll end up with a new identity, but we don’t want to take a chance on him being buried at the local cemetery. What’s the procedure for R&D to requisition a cadaver?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Renée said. “I’ll just tell Wally in the morning that we need a couple of bodies for one of the labs, which is actually true, by the way. Then I’ll make sure he arranges to grab Randy’s body in the deal. Once they come to us, there’s no further record of them. When our lab is done with the body, we have our own crematorium, and the ashes just get dumped somewhere. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of all that for you in the morning, as soon as the word goes out that he’s dead.”

  When dinner was over, Renée helped Sarah clear the table while Noah got out their Monopoly game. The five of them played until well past midnight, and it was clear that Neil was winning by the time they finally gave it up. They all said good night to each other, and then Marco and Renée drove away.

  Neil turned to Noah as Marco’s taillights disappeared. “Figured out how you’re going to handle it yet?”

  Noah sensed Sarah’s eyes turning to look at him as well, and he nodded. “If it were a real kill, it would happen at a time when I could get the victim alone. Randy lives by himself in an apartment somewhere in Kirtland. Think you can find me the address?”

  Neil just looked at him for a few seconds, then nodded. He turned and walked back into the house and set his computer back onto the table. A few seconds later, he pointed at the screen. “Renaissance Apartments, corner of Eighteenth and Manchester. He’s in apartment 4C, northeast corner. That’s the far back corner of the building, nothing under it but an alley. Only security cameras in the building are down in the front lobby, where the mailboxes are, and on the parking lot which sits just to the west of it.”

  Noah nodded. “Good. That makes it easier.” He turned to the cabinet and retrieved the vial and needle. “I wish I knew whether or not he’s home alone right now. I don’t suppose there’s any way you can check that, is there?”

  Neil grinned. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “Molly and I were given access to the server that holds all of his activity recordings. Remember the little transmitter that was implanted under his skin? Every so often it uploads everything it records to a server so it can keep recording even more. Uses a speech-to-text algorithm to give us transcripts we can search through. Give me a few minutes to look through his last few hours and I can tell you.”

  His fingers flew across the keyboard for a few seconds, and then words began to fill the monitor in front of him. He typed in a time code and then studied the transcripts in front of him for about three minutes.

  “He’s at home alone,” Neil said finally. “Last recording was about half past ten, when somebody left his place after visiting for a while. He said he was tired and was headed for bed then, so he’s probably safe in dreamland at the moment.” He looked up at Noah. “I just had a thought,” he said. “You know Randy has this recorder embedded in him. It’s supposed to let us track everything he does and says. What happens if somebody who reads the transcripts is already corrupted? You can’t explain to him what’s going on.”

  Noah nodded. “If anybody who can see those transcripts was under the mole’s thumb, none of this would be happening. He would have known the file was fake and that we were setting a trap, so he never would have bothered trying to contact me at all.”

  “Still,” Neil said, “I think it would be a good idea if anything you said never ended up in the transcript. It’s set to do its next upload at 6:00 a.m. All you have to do to prevent it is take his phone—that’s how it connects to the server.”

  Noah ran a hand over his face. “I wish there was a way to let him sleep through the next day and a half. I can’t imagine this not being traumatic for him, but hopefully he’ll come through it okay.”

  Neil scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Since when did you suddenly become compassionate? Personally, I don’t care if he’s traumatized for life, not after what he did to Sarah.”

  “It’s not compassion,” Noah said, looking at Neil quizzically. “Allison feels like Randy still has value to the organization. Because of that, I hope this doesn’t ruin him.”

  Sarah, who had been sitting at the table staying quiet, suddenly reached over and touched Noah on the cheek. “It’s okay,” she said. “I won’t say I’ve completely gotten over it, but it helps to know that he was forced to do what he did.” She winked mischievously. “But don’t think I’m not going to be glad he suffered a little bit, all right?”

  “I understand,” Noah said. “All right, there’s no sense wasting time. I’m heading over to Randy’s, now.”

  “Hey, hold on,” Neil said. “When we’re out on a mission, you’ve always got the team to back you up, but this time you’re going to be on your own. What happens if one of the local city cops pulls you over, and then Randy gets found, you know, sort of dead in the morning? I know Allison could make the problem go away, but the mole might find that a little suspicious, don’t you think?”

  “I thought about that, and I’ll be careful. I won’t give them any reason to pull me over.”

  “Okay, yeah, that’s all well and good,” Neil said. “Even better, though, is they never see you at all, right?” He reached into a pocket and pulled out two small plastic boxes. Each of them contained what looked like a Bluetooth headset for a cell phone, but Noah recognized them instantly as some of the special communicators they had used on different missions. As small as they were, they operated through cell towers and could communicate over just about any distance, while a full charge in their batteries would last nearly seventy-two hours. “Don’t give me that look,” Neil said. “Wally knows I don’t always turn in all the goodies he gives us, and he let me hang on to a couple of these. I
’ve kept ’em charged up and ready, just in case we need ’em, and I had a feeling tonight was going to be the night.”

  Sarah reached over and picked up one of the headsets. “So, what? You’re gonna keep track of the cops and let Noah know how to avoid them?”

  Neil grinned, and there was something wicked about it. “Hey, I want to have more fun than that. I’ll just make sure they’re busy somewhere else, whenever he’s moving. Something simple while he’s going into town, but as soon as he says he’s ready to head back out, I’ll set off alarms in a couple of the banks on the far end of town from the apartment building. Every cop and deputy around will be focused on those, and I can hack the few traffic cams in town to make sure they don’t get a look at him, either.”

  Noah nodded and took the headset from Sarah, slipping it onto his ear. “Let’s do this,” he said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Noah’s Corvette, while not flashy, was probably the only one of its kind in the Kirtland area, so he decided to drive his old Ford pickup into town. At least half of the farmers in the area had one similar to it, so any witnesses would only see it as “one of those old farm trucks.” He left it in a dark corner of the parking lot at the grocery store three blocks from Renaissance Apartments and made his way into the alley behind it.

  “Okay, I’m at point one,” he said.

  “You’re good,” Neil’s voice said in his ear. “Local yokels are checking out a power outage over by Alley Town; they’ll be busy for ten minutes or so.”

  “All right,” Noah said. “I’m moving to point two.”

  Noah moved down the alley to where it met the cross street and paused. At a little after 2:00 a.m., there wasn’t really any traffic on the streets, but he didn’t want to risk being seen if he could avoid it. He stopped at each intersection where the alley met a street and watched for a minute or more before crossing and continuing.