by David Archer
Noah nodded. “That’s pretty cool,” he said.
“Now push the second button.”
Noah did so and the crosshairs on the screen suddenly turned yellow. “A different weapon?”
Rodney grinned at him. “High-explosive rounds fired from a modified 12-gauge shotgun shell. It’s like a mini grenade launcher, and the same trigger buttons are used to make it fire. The rounds are made from one of our proprietary superexplosives. There’s a primer embedded inside that sets it off when it strikes the target. You only have twenty-four rounds, so use them sparingly. Next button.”
Noah pressed the third button and an infrared image of the garage ahead was suddenly projected onto the windshield, complete with heat-generated images of the people working there.
“Forward-looking infrared radar,” Rodney said. “It will show you thermal images, even through conventional walls, combined with computer-enhanced radar images. Lets you know where the bad guys are hiding and makes it possible to drive at night without lights. It gives you a very realistic view of what’s ahead, but this can only be seen from inside the vehicle. As bright as it looks, nobody outside could see it at all.”
Noah nodded. “I can see how that might come in handy,” he said.
“Next button,” Rodney said, and Noah pressed it. The video display suddenly showed a clear image of what was behind the car, and Noah could hear the audio through the speakers. “You have 360-degree video capability through a camera that pops out of the roof. Just touch the corner of the screen and you can rotate the camera all the way around. If you find something you want to zoom in on, just tap the center twice. If you want to record the video, just squeeze one of the trigger buttons on the steering wheel. The hard drive built into this car can handle several hundred hours of video, so don’t worry about running out of space. When you push the button again or choose another one, the camera retracts and is invisible.” Rodney pulled the seat belt around himself and buckled it. “Okay, let’s take the car out for a drive so you can try the last button.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Noah buckled his own seat belt and reached up to start the car. It used a keyless ignition system that only required him to push a button, and then he put the car in gear and drove it out of the garage toward the test track behind the building.
“Take a couple of laps around the track,” Rodney said, “just to get the feel of the car. Don’t be afraid to put your foot into it; this thing can handle the curves and corners.”
Noah drove onto the track and pressed down on the accelerator. There were no other cars on it, so he had it all to himself.
The Charger shot forward with enough acceleration to slam him back into his seat, and Noah could tell the engine was everything Rodney had said it was. The car eased through the first couple of curves, and then Noah drifted it around a corner at more than sixty miles per hour. Rodney was holding on to the door and the dashboard, but there was a huge grin on his face.
“That’s it,” Rodney said, “that’s it. I knew you’d be able to handle this thing—you just got that look about you.” He continued to hold on to the door and the dash as Noah made two complete circuits of the track, which was a little over two miles long overall.
As they came around to begin the third lap, lining up on a straightaway that was almost half a mile long itself, Rodney told Noah to push the last button. Noah did so, and suddenly the roar of the engine almost doubled in volume. The car launched forward again, and Noah saw the speedometer go from eighty miles per hour to over one fifty in just a few short seconds.
“Nitrous oxide?” Noah asked, but Rodney shook his head.
“Nope,” he replied. “That last button kicks in a hidden supercharger that’s built into the intake manifold. It’s powered by a supersmall electric motor that runs on a four-hundred-volt lithium-ion battery. It’s only good for about three minutes at a time, and then the battery needs about an hour of engine time to recharge. When it kicks in, this car can do about two hundred and twenty miles per hour, but not even this car can take any serious curves, not at that speed. Use it carefully, though, and you can drastically cut down travel time from one place to another.”
Noah was easing down on the brakes, getting the car back under control. He was still going faster than he liked when he entered the first curve, but the car drifted like it was made for that purpose. By the time he reached the second curve, he was back down to a reasonable speed.
“Couple other features,” Rodney said. “The body was handmade right here in our shop, out of carbon fiber and Kevlar. All of the glass is polycarbonate and almost half an inch thick, and there is a polycarb deflection shield between the grille and the radiator that lets plenty of air through, but nothing else. A fifty-caliber round fired at point-blank range will do a little damage, but anything farther away or smaller than that won’t even scratch the paint.” He chuckled, and Noah nodded appreciatively. “The tires are filled with a foam rubber that was developed for the space program. They can’t go flat, and it would take an awful lot of bullets to even make one ride rough. Oh, and the gas tank is a thirty-gallon fuel cell. You could shoot holes in it with a machine gun and it would never explode. Just a little safety feature I thought might come in handy.”
“I’m definitely impressed,” Noah said. “Anything else I should know about it?”
“Yeah,” Rodney said. “The built-in computer can tell you just about anything you want to know about the car. Tap the info button on the screen twice, and it will give you a readout that tells you how many rounds you have left in the weapons, the status of the supercharger’s battery, and how many data files you saved. There’s a USB port just under the display so that you can download those files to a computer if you want to. It also has an intelligent security system. Whenever you lock the car up, it automatically keeps track of anybody who gets within ten feet of it, watching them with about a dozen different sensors. As long as they only look it doesn’t do anything, but if they touch the car they get a warning to back away. If anybody is stupid enough to try to break into it, they’re going to find themselves in sleepy land from an electric shock. If the car senses that it’s being hooked up to a wrecker or anything, it will set off an alarm that sounds like an air raid siren, call 911 and report itself being stolen, and if somebody manages to drag it away from where you left it, then it will send you a text message with its GPS coordinates every twenty minutes after that. The only way anyone would get into the car is by crushing it first, so you should be able to get it back.”
Wally was standing outside the garage when Noah pulled up beside him, and reached out to open the door. “Well?” Wally asked breathlessly. “What do you think?”
Noah looked up at him. “It’s awesome,” he said. “My only question is how am I supposed to justify having a car like this? Even without all its special features, this is a car that very few recently released convicts would be able to afford.”
“Allison will go over that with you,” Wally said. “I’m supposed to tell you to stop by her office as soon as you leave here. I guess they made some changes to your character profile and want to go over them with you.”
Noah nodded. “Okay. Got anything else for me here?”
“Nope,” Wally said. “I think that’s it. If you’re comfortable with the car, then I guess you’re ready to go.”
Noah nodded, then reached out and shook Wally’s hand. “Thank you again,” he said. He closed the door and put the car back into gear, heading for the gate that was already rolling open for him.
It didn’t take that long for him to make it into Kirtland, but that was partly because he was feeling out the power of the car. The digital speedometer in the instrument cluster was bouncing on one hundred and forty miles per hour on a couple of long straight stretches.
He parked the car in the underground garage and locked it with the keyless remote, then got into the elevator and rode up to Allison’s floor. Her secretary, a new girl that Noah didn’t recognize,
told him that she was in a meeting and asked his name. As soon as she heard it, she went pale and told him to go right on in.
Allison looked up from her desk and smiled. “Camelot,” she said. “I won’t ask if you’re ready for this mission; I know that you are. I just wanted to go over a couple of details with you before you took off.”
Noah nodded and sat down in the chair in front of her desk. “Wally said you wanted to fill me in on how Rex Madison can afford the kind of supercar that usually only shows up in movies.”
Allison chuckled but nodded. “Yes, and it was your pal Molly who thought of it. Her plan called for you having a powerful car that would draw a lot of attention, so I sent her out to Wally’s to see what was available. She spotted that Charger and said that was ideal, so I told Wally to have his guys tweak it for you. Of course, Wally pointed out that the car was one that would cost a small fortune even without his special touches, so I told Molly it might not be practical. She insisted that it was the perfect car, though, so we had to do a couple of things with your character to make it fit.”
She pulled open a desk drawer and picked up a thick package, holding it out for Noah. He took it and glanced inside to see a dozen large bundles of hundred-dollar bills.
“A lot of cash,” he said. “How does this fit with me just getting out of prison?”
“Very well, actually. Remember that you spent almost all of five years locked away, right? Well, it turns out you were a pretty smart young drug dealer. According to financial records, you’d been investing money every month into a pretty healthy stock portfolio. That money sat there earning some very substantial returns the whole time you were locked up, and you cashed out shortly after you were released. Your investment had turned into almost a million dollars during that time, but you didn’t waste time spending a lot of it. In that package is all the paperwork showing that you bought that Charger from a custom car builder for just over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a week later. The cash in that package, about a hundred grand, is all you’ve got left after Uncle Sam and that car, so don’t spend it all in one place.”
Noah nodded, mentally inserting this new information into the matrix of his cover identity. “All right,” he said. “I’m supposed to be finding someplace for us to live. Should I use it to buy a house?”
Allison shrugged and waved a hand in the air. “That would definitely make it look like you’re serious about sticking around, so it’s not a bad idea. Up to you in the long run—you might just want to rent something, maybe pay a year up in advance. That would still look good but wouldn’t deplete your cash reserve.”
“I’ll see what’s available and go from there,” Noah said. “Anything else?”
“No, I think that’s it. Anything on your end?”
“Yes. I finally got a call from that particular individual we’ve been trying to identify. He wants me to make a detour, fly down to Odessa, Texas, and handle something for him. I figure I’ll drive to Kansas City and fly out of there tonight. With any luck, I can take care of whatever he wants and be back in KC within a day or two.”
Allison looked into his eyes for a long moment, then nodded. “Do it,” she said. “Unfortunately, we need him to think he’s got you under his control, so go ahead and do it. I’m authorizing any kills you have to perform in keeping his confidence. Just remember, you’re in deep cover. It won’t be Noah Wolf who’s doing the killing in Texas; it’ll be Rex Madison. You cannot afford to be arrested under that identity.”
“I won’t be,” he said. “Remember when we did the job in Missouri? I still have the Wyatt Wilson ID I used then. After the Andropov attack and everything we went through after that, I just never got around to turning it in. I’m going to use it for the flight and to rent a car in Odessa.”
Allison turned to a computer on her desk and tapped on the keyboard for a moment, and then a slow smile spread across her face. “That’s excellent,” she said. “That ID has some data encrypted in its magnetic strip. If you get arrested, it will instruct the police to contact the state department, and we’ll get you out in no time. It’s still fully valid, so you shouldn’t have any problems with it.” She turned and faced him again. “Noah, I want you to be as careful as you possibly can in both of these missions. If I could send anybody else to Arkansas, I would, but I think Molly is right. You’re probably the only agent we’ve got who could pull this off, especially if you have to stay there very long.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Noah said. “Unless there’s something else, I should get on the road.”
“Yes, you should. How is Sarah handling this?”
“She’s a little shaken up. We haven’t really spent much time apart since I found her in China, but Neil is going to stay with her until it’s time for them to come to Arkansas. I just want to get to Texas and get this task over with so I can get started on the real mission.”
“Then get moving. I’ll do my best to keep an eye on Sarah, as well.”
She looked down at some papers on her desk, and Noah knew that he had been dismissed. He stood and walked out of the office, nodded to the secretary, and then rode the elevator back down to the garage. A moment later, the big Dodge Charger turned out of the garage and headed toward the highway that would take him to the interstate.
From Kirtland to the Kansas City International Airport was a six-hour drive, and Noah arrived at just before 4:00 p.m. He left all of his Rex Madison documents in the glove box, locked up the car in long-term parking, and carried his bag into the airport terminal. Fifteen minutes later he had learned that there were no nonstop flights to Odessa, and the shortest flight would have him arriving at three o’clock the following morning.
Noah walked away from the desk and googled private charter flights from Kansas City airport and then began calling the charter companies that came up. It took him half an hour to find a flight, but it was a Cessna business jet that could have him there in less than two hours. Fortunately, Wyatt Wilson’s credit card was up to the task, and the little plane took off with Noah aboard a half hour later.
It was 7:30 by the time he made it to the car rental desk, and almost 8:00 by the time he had secured a new Cadillac. There was a Holiday Inn only a short distance from the airport, so Noah called ahead to reserve a room and then hit a fast-food drive-through to grab his dinner. By 8:45, he was in his room and dialing the number that had come in the last message.
There was no answer, but another number came to him in a text message. He tapped it with his thumb and the phone dialed it automatically.
“Are you in place?” The distorted voice sounded the same as it always did.
“I’m here,” Noah said. “Now what you want me to do?”
“You will receive a message shortly that will contain names, an address, and a couple of photographs. One of them will be a photo of a family. The other will be something you might find useful. The mother is in a position to be of value to me, but she does not believe that refusing me will have any repercussions. I want you to convince her otherwise. At this point, I do not want you to terminate anyone, but I want you to make it clear to her that the lives of her husband and children are within my grasp. Do you understand?”
“Yeah,” Noah growled. “Any particular way you want me to do that?”
Something that sounded like a laugh came through the phone. “I’m sure you can come up with something,” it said. “Just make sure it’s effective. Once you feel certain you have accomplished this for me, you can proceed to your mission in Arkansas.”
If I were normal, Noah thought, a chill would have just gone down my spine. “You know about that, do you?”
The rumbling sound that Noah took for laughter came again. “Of course I do. I have people high enough in your organization, in every organization, to make sure I know just about everything I need to know.”
The line went dead, and Noah simply looked at the phone for a moment before putting it down on the nightstand beside the bed. The mole knew abou
t his mission, and Noah let that knowledge circulate through his mind.
This fact told Noah several things. First, it told him that the mole’s statement that he had someone high in the organization was almost certainly true. It also told him, however, that that person was not privy to the current plan that involved letting the mole use Noah. If that information had been divulged, the mole would never have alluded to having a high-placed source, and Noah’s fake family would probably be dead.
His phone signaled an incoming text message, and he looked at it quickly. The first photograph showed a man and woman in their thirties, standing behind two girls and a boy who looked to be in their early teens. The second photo showed the man, but the woman he was obviously enjoying was not his wife. He closed the message and held his phone for a moment.
He considered trying to place a call to Allison to relay the information about the high-placed source but decided against using his own phone for it. Instead, he finished the last of his french fries and carefully crumpled the shirt that was in the top of his bag. He used his phone to take a snapshot of the open bag and then left the room and made his way out to the rental car.
As far as he could tell, he was not being followed. He drove around for half an hour until he spotted a Walmart, then parked and went inside. The nice thing about Walmart was that you could always find a cheap, throwaway cell phone, no matter what time it might be. He bought two of them and the corresponding activation cards and took them back to his room.
It only took a few minutes to activate them, and then he used one of them to call Sarah. She answered on the first ring, and Noah could tell that she had been crying.
“Hello?” The sniffle in her voice was obvious.