Noah Wolf Box Set 2

by David Archer

  It was almost three hours later when Ralph came out again, and he walked directly to the Charger. Noah powered down his window and looked up at the kid. “How’d that go?” he asked.

  Ralph grinned at him. “Old guys like Ronnie—he’s as old as my Pa—they don’t like it when the kid comes in and starts giving orders, but we got through it. He’s calling all his people now, to come in after lunch so we can meet. I’m thinking of going over to Eureka for lunch, that cool?”

  “Sure,” Noah said. “I’ll follow you guys.” He sat up and started the car as Ralph walked back toward Forney’s Buick and got in. The bodyguards were already in their own car, and Noah fell in at the rear of the line once more.

  They were almost to the edge of town when his phone rang, and he saw that it was Sarah calling. “Angie, baby,” he said. “You decide to get up at last?”

  “Ha-ha,” Sarah said. “I’ll have you know I’ve been up for more than half an hour. How’s your day going?”

  “Pretty decent,” he said. “All I’ve been doing so far is sitting in the car. Chilling and taking it easy.”

  “Must be nice. Neil and I are about to start unloading the trailer. Don’t suppose you want to come home and help, do you?”

  “Leave the heavy stuff for me and Neil. I’ll probably be home around four, but I’ve got another appointment later, remember that.”

  “No problem, babe. Hey, who picked out the dishes and stuff?”

  “That was Katie. She helped me figure out what all we’d need.”

  “Yeah, I remember you telling me that. I was just surprised that they’re so nice. I was pretty sure you didn’t pick them.”

  Noah laughed. “No, the ones I wanted were big and heavy and looked like they were meant for a campfire. Katie reminded me that I had married a girl, so I let her use her own judgment. I’m glad you approve.”

  “And speaking of your sister,” Sarah said, “when do I get to meet her?”

  “Tell you what. After lunch, I’ll run by her place and get her and bring her out. I can help unload the heavy stuff then, that work?”

  “Awesome, baby. Can’t wait.”

  “See you then,” Noah said, and then he ended the call and put his phone back into his pocket. He followed the others all the way to Eureka Springs and was surprised when they stopped at a little place called Carol’s Kitchen. He parked the car away from most of the others and got out, locked it, and followed them inside.

  With the waitress’s permission, they pushed a couple of tables together, and the five of them sat down. Ralph seemed to know the place pretty well and ordered a buffalo chicken sandwich without even looking at the menu. Noah picked one up and glanced at it, then decided to try the same sandwich.

  A few of the customers recognized Ralph, and one or two knew Forney. Noah was introduced—as Rex, of course—to several new people. Ralph referred to him as “my new babysitter,” while Forney simply said he was “the new guy.” Apparently, most people understood that being “the new guy” meant working directly for Jimmy Morgan.

  The sandwich wasn’t bad, and they were finished at just a little after twelve thirty. Noah had told them he had to run home for a little while after lunch, and Forney had assured him that everything was under control. He paid his tab and left them standing at the register, walked out, and got into the Charger and headed back to Berryville.

  Kate was home and still up. When Noah tapped on the door, she yelled for him to come in.

  “Hey, bro,” she said. “Angie make it in?”

  “Yep, and she sent me to kidnap you and drag you out of the house. Something about making you help her unload the trailer.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’ll be right there. Tell her not to wait, though—it’s okay to go ahead and get started.”

  Noah grinned. “Actually, she wanted me to bring you out so the two of you could meet. Are you busy?”

  Kate smiled back at him. “Give me ten minutes to change,” she said. “There’s coffee if you wanted, or there’s pop in the fridge.”

  Noah opened her refrigerator and took out a bottle of orange-flavored soda, then twisted off the cap and took a big drink. He licked his lips and looked at the label, but it wasn’t a brand he recognized. By the time she came out of the bedroom again, he had finished it and set the bottle on the counter.

  “Okay, I’m ready,” Kate announced. “I’d better just follow you out; I don’t need to get stuck out there all afternoon. Some days, I go in for a little while in the afternoon to help the programming manager. I’m supposed to be there about three thirty, today.”

  “No problem,” Noah said. He went back out to his car and got behind the wheel as she backed her own out of the driveway. Noah had to pull into her driveway to turn around, and then he actually followed Kate’s car out to his place.

  Sarah and Neil were standing at the back of the trailer when they pulled in, and Noah quickly made the introductions. It took less than two minutes for him to realize that the two girls were going to get along quite well, so he let them go on inside and start getting to know each other while he helped Neil carry some of the bigger boxes and packages into the house.

  “Rex, you just wait into you see this new 3-D printer I’ve got,” Neil said. “It is absolutely awesome. With a little bit of work, I could actually 3-D print entire pieces of furniture.”

  Noah grinned at him, conscious that Kate could be looking in their direction at any moment. “I think I’ve already got enough furniture,” he said. “What do you need something like that for, anyway?”

  Neil pretended to be shocked. “Are you kidding? The stuff this thing uses for raw material doesn’t cost nearly as much as you’d think. Say I wanted a bicycle, I could either go out and buy one for a couple hundred bucks, or I can print out the frame, the wheels, just about every single part, and then all I’ve got to buy is a couple tires and a seat. It’ll be lighter than what I could buy and won’t cost half as much.”

  “I see,” Noah said. “And how long would it take you to print it out?”

  “Couple hours, maybe three. But if I was using a bicycle for an example, I could literally make just about anything. You’ve heard of nanotubes?”

  “Yeah, makes a super strong material, right?”

  “Yep. Well, this stuff takes that several steps further. It uses something called nanosheets in a polymerized matrix to transfer all the strength of the nanotubes into the entire object it makes.”

  Noah raised his eyebrows. “And this is important because…”

  Neil chuckled. “That means I could print out a razor blade with this stuff, and you could shave with it. The funny thing is that you could probably shave with it a hundred times before it got dull enough to throw away.”

  “Cool,” Noah said. “That’ll save me a lot of money buying razors.”

  Neil leaned close to him. “And, of course, we have the added advantage that the stuff makes incredibly fine shrapnel when we use it in our own special ways.”

  Noah nodded but said nothing. They carried the large case into the house and down the hall to the room Neil would be using for his office.

  “What happened to the bed and stuff that was in here?” Noah asked.

  “I took it down and carried it out to the storage building,” Neil said. “But don’t worry, I wrapped it all in plastic real well.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  By the time Neil and Noah were finished, Sarah and Kate were comfortably sitting on the couch and talking like old friends. Noah kissed Sarah goodbye and promised that they would have Kate over for dinner soon, then said he had to get back to work and left. He called Forney while he was leaving the driveway and was told that they were back at Sneed’s office, but that everything was going well.

  “Either Ralph or I know all of these guys,” he said. “I’m not going to argue with the kid when he says he can trust these people, but unless it’s somebody I know well enough to trust in myself, I’m not going to let my people rela
x around them. Oh, and by the way, Billy Martin called a while ago. He thinks they may have a lead on whoever it was that paid Benny. I told him you might want to talk to him about that, was I right?”

  “Damn right,” Noah said. “Text me his number, will you? I want to call him now.”

  “You got it.” The line went dead, and a moment later Noah got the chime that signaled an incoming text message. He opened it and tapped the number it contained with his thumb, and the phone dialed it automatically.

  “Billy Martin,” the deputy answered.

  “Deputy, this is Rex Madison. Scott Forney said you may have a lead on the person who hired Benny?”

  “Hey, Rex. Yeah, there’s a guy named Justin Haggard who’s apparently been heard saying that something is going to happen to Jimmy and Ralph. Don’t have anything concrete, yet, but word on the street is that Haggard’s been working with some out-of-towners with a lot of money.”

  “Out-of-towners,” Noah repeated. “We talking about the mob, here? Like in New York and Vegas?”

  “That’s kinda what it sounds like,” Martin said. “At the moment, though, that’s all we’ve got. We’re looking for Haggard now but haven’t found him yet.”

  “I don’t suppose you could send me a picture of him, could you? I’d like to make sure my guys all know who he is.”

  “No problem at all,” Martin said. “Give me just a few minutes. Can I send it straight to your phone?”

  “Absolutely. And I appreciate it.”

  Noah ended the call and held the phone in his hand as he drove. It chimed again a few moments later, and he found himself looking into the face of a man who reminded him of Schwarzenegger, when he was younger. The same iron jaw, the same emotionless expression; if Hollywood ever went looking for a new Terminator, Noah would have happily nominated this guy.

  He got to the car lot a few moments later and shared the photo with Forney and his men. He forwarded it to Forney’s phone, and Forney sent it on to all the rest of the crew and then started calling them to explain. Within a matter of minutes, all of Ralph’s security team were aware of Haggard and why he was not to be allowed near the younger Morgan.

  Noah sat in on some of the meeting for a while and got to shake hands with a number of Ralph’s new drug dealer employees. He listened to a lot of talk about the logistics of the drug trade and recognized a lot of the terminology. Part of his preparation for the mission had been a crash course, under hypnosis, in how the illegal drug trade worked. In theory, he could manufacture methamphetamines with the best of them, and understood exactly what they meant when they referred to “pilling it out,” or talked about drying it on a sheet of glass. To stay in cover, he even told a few stories about his own fictitious time in the business.

  It was just after four, and Noah was about to head for home, when his phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, so he answered it by saying, “Joe’s Pizza.”

  The distorted voice on the line. “That’s funny,” it said. “I arrived earlier than I expected. Are you free at the moment?”

  “Yeah,” Noah said. “You want me to come now?”

  “Yes. Do you know where the Passion Play is held?”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen the signs for it.”

  “There’s a statue of Jesus north of it a little ways. Christ of the Ozarks, they call it. Meet me there in forty-five minutes. Come alone.”

  The line went dead. Noah put the car in gear and pointed it toward the west.

  Forty-five minutes was not a lot of time, not with the twists and turns on Highway 62. Likely, the Charger didn’t let the curves slow it down much. Noah got to the intersection of the highway and Passion Play Road in just over twenty minutes, then turned right.

  The Christ of the Ozarks statue was built in 1966 and stands sixty-five and a half feet tall. It resembles the famous statue of Christ at Rio de Janeiro, but looks out over the Ozark Mountains around Eureka Springs. Tourists flock to it every summer, and to the Passion Play that runs almost every day when the weather is warm.

  This road had its own share of twists and turns. By the time Noah arrived at the parking lot for the statue, forty-three minutes had elapsed since he got off the phone.

  There were four other cars in the parking lot, and each of them was occupied by two or more people. He parked his car to one side of the lot, then tucked his pistol under the seat, got out, and sat on the hood.

  No one moved for several minutes, so he simply sat there and waited. He kept his face turned toward the statue, as if he were simply admiring it or trying to commune with God.

  One of the cars started suddenly and drove slowly toward him. There were two men in the front seat, and he could tell that someone was sitting in the back but couldn’t see who it was. When it stopped, ten feet away and facing him, the back door opened. Noah turned his face toward the car to see who might be getting out, and his eyebrows rose slightly when he saw that it was a very small woman.

  She looked like she might be just shy of five feet tall and was probably in her late thirties or very early forties. Her hair was blonde, but it had the kind of sheen that he associated with hair that was not naturally that color. She closed the door and walked directly toward him, a broad smile on her face.

  “Hello, Noah,” she said. “You can call me Monique.”

  “Monique,” he said. “So it’s you, is it?”

  “Am I the one you’ve been speaking to on the phone? Yes, I certainly am. Technology, of course, allows me to hide my gender as well as the actual timbre of my voice, but I am the one who made the offer to give you back a normal life. I am also the one who sold your Sarah to the Chinese and set all of this in motion. I’m quite certain that you have entertained thoughts of what you would like to do to me when we finally came face-to-face, but I would advise you against trying to carry out those thoughts. I can assure you that you would never leave this place alive if you were to do so.”

  Noah simply stared at her for a few moments, his thoughts taking shape. “What do you actually want with me?” he asked her. “You know what I am—I’m an assassin. Do you have that many enemies you want eliminated that you need a specialist like myself?”

  “Sometimes I think so,” she said. “That’s not all I would want you doing for me, however. In fact, you would probably go months without ever killing anyone. There may be stretches as long as a year when the most strenuous activity you would face would be something like what happened in Odessa. You’d be at home with your wife most of the time, and I would see to it that you could live quite well.”

  “And you could honestly make it look like we were dead? You could guarantee that no one would be hunting us?”

  “Allison isn’t the only one who has talented people. Could I make it appear that you were dead? Quite easily, and I could even provide them with bodies to bury. With a little preparation, even your doctors wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.” She took a couple of steps closer. “Noah, you could keep Sarah out of the line of fire. You could have children, if you so choose. Would that be so bad?”

  Noah took a deep breath and then sighed. “You’re right,” he said. “I had a lot of ideas on what I’d like to do to the person who put Sarah through that. Unfortunately, you don’t have the right anatomy for me to carry out those ideas even if I had the chance. Somehow, I really thought you would be a lot bigger.”

  She burst out laughing. “I’m sure you did,” she said, “and I’m sure you expected me to be older and have bigger balls than you.” She glanced down at her chest. “I’ve got those, they just hang a little higher than yours.”

  Noah grimaced. “Well, you’re as crude as any man I’ve ever met. So, how would this work? How do we actually make this happen?”

  Monique smiled then, a genuine and radiant smile. As small as she was, she was actually a rather attractive woman. “It will require some planning,” she said. “I’ll have to make arrangements for your apparent deaths, and if you still insist on bringing the other boy along,
that may take a little longer. I’m guessing it would take a couple of months to get set up, and then I would simply need to know about your next mission. All three of you would apparently die in a terrible attack, something that would leave your bodies burned beyond recognition and require medical and dental records to sort you out. After that, though, you would be free. Oh, we might resort to a bit of cosmetic surgery just to be safe, but it won’t be much.” She reached out and laid a hand on his knee. “Are you interested, Noah?”

  Noah looked at the other men in the cars. “Who are these people?”

  “They work for me the same way you would work for me,” she said. “They don’t actually know who I am, which is why they are simply sitting in the cars and watching this conversation rather than getting the opportunity to hear it. As far as they are concerned, I am the representative of their employer, and they are charged with my safety. They don’t know that I’m the one who could actually give the order to kill their families, or they might decide to eliminate me themselves. We couldn’t have that, now, could we?”

  “I’m sure that wouldn’t be anything pleasant for you,” Noah said. “The thing about me, though, is I don’t play second fiddle to anybody.” He turned his eyes back to focus on her own. “If I work for you, I work only for you. Nobody else tells me what to do, and I only answer to you. Who I am, where I came from—all of that stays entirely between us.”

  She tipped her head slightly to one side, acknowledging his statement. “I can agree to that. The only caveat I would add would be that any disobedience, any refusal to follow my orders, would unleash a terrible retribution. I’m sure you don’t need me to spell it out.”

  Noah nodded. “I don’t do what you want, Sarah suffers. I think you already know I do whatever it takes to keep her safe, so I doubt you really expect that circumstance to arise.”

  “Oh, I can see that we understand each other quite well. Do we have a deal, Noah?”

  Noah stared into her eyes for several more seconds, then slowly nodded. “We do,” he said. “Make your preparations. Give me some way to let you know when that next mission begins, and I’ll have everything ready on my end. I’m not going to let Sarah or Neil know what’s going on, because I can’t take a chance that one of them might slip. When it happens, we’ll make it happen all at once. I’ll explain it to them then, when it’s already a done deal. Sarah will be okay with it, I know. As for Neil—I think he’ll be okay with it, but if he’s not, I’ll deal with him.”