by David Archer
“Yes, but how do you figure it out? I thought about that on the way back here, but what if putting in the wrong disarm code simply tells it to explode?”
Neil scowled. “And that’s exactly how I would design it, if it were me. Dammit, Noah. This just can’t be happening.”
Sarah reached over and touched Noah’s hand. “So we just act like it’s not there?”
“For the most part, yes,” Noah said. “The only thing I want to do is try to keep you on my right from now on. If it does go off, the rest of my body should protect you unless you’re right there under my left arm.”
Sarah just looked at him. “Do you think I’d want to live if that thing goes off?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Noah said. “I just can’t risk you getting hurt or killed at the same time. From now on, you walk on my right, you sleep on my right—we usually do it that way anyhow, but I’m going to be a lot more conscious of it from now on.”
“Oh, damn,” she said. “How can you be so freaking calm about this? Noah, I know you well enough to know you’re not going to let this stop you from killing her the first time you get the chance. You understand that that would be suicide for you? Right?”
“Again, it doesn’t matter. Eliminating the mole, eliminating the risk that she represents to America, is far more important than my life.”
Sarah looked into his eyes for another moment, then got up and stormed down the hall. Noah heard the bedroom door slam shut as he turned to look at Neil.
Neil put up both hands in a defensive gesture. “Hey, I get it,” he said. “Thing is, that’s not just part of your team that stomped off down the hall. That’s your wife, Noah. She’s not going to take this logically, no matter how you try to explain it. All she sees is the fact that if you kill this woman, she ends up a widow.”
“I understand that,” Noah said. “Her emotions aside, it doesn’t change the fact that Monique’s death is still a necessity.”
“Okay, fine, I get that. The only thing I want to say is that we’ve got a little bit of time. You said it’s going to take her a couple months to get this set up and get back to you, right? Well, I’m going to encode this whole freaking disaster and send it off to Molly. I figure, between me and her, we’re bound to come up with some way to either shut that thing off or get it out of you without it blowing up.”
“I’m counting on it,” Noah said. “Despite the fact I’m willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission, I don’t have a death wish. I’ve always said that the world is better with Sarah in it; I assure you, I’m fully aware that she feels the same way about me. Maybe even more so, she feels things that I don’t. Believe me when I say I’m holding out a lot of hope that you geniuses can come up with an answer before I have to put a bullet in that woman.”
Neil just stared at him for a moment, and then he put his head in his hands and looked at the table. “Geez, Noah,” he said. “Why do you have to give me headaches like this?”
Noah said nothing but got up and walked down the hall. He tapped on the bedroom door and then tried the knob. It turned, and he opened the door and stepped inside to find Sarah lying on the bed, sniffling as tears soaked into the pillow she had shoved her face into.
“Neil thinks he and Molly can come up with an answer,” Noah said. “I think they can, too. Until then, I simply want to take some sensible precautions. Okay?”
Sarah didn’t move for a few seconds, but then she rolled over and looked up at him. “Don’t ask me not to be close to you. Don’t ask me not to put my arms around you and hold you close. Don’t ask me not to make love to you—don’t ask any of that. I don’t know how, but somehow we’re going to beat this thing.” She wiped the moisture away from her eyes. “And then you’re going to kill that bitch, and I’m going to watch when you do it.”
Noah looked at her, and then he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Can we go eat dinner now?”
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CHAPTER ONE
“I spent all night online with Molly,” Neil said at breakfast, with his computer on the table beside his plate. “She’s got Wally’s people studying the problem now, and we all know there’s no better research facility in the world when it comes to things like this. They’ll come up with something, some way to get that thing out of you without setting it off.”
Noah and Sarah both nodded. “If anybody can,” Sarah said, “they can.” She gave him a sad smile. “Don’t get me wrong, I know you’re a genius, but you don’t spend every day coming up with new ways to kill people. They do, so if anyone can figure out a way to disarm this thing or get it out, my money’s on them.”
“Oh, I’ve got some ideas that I shared with Molly, but it’s that pressure thing I’m worried about. If it was just a matter of blocking a signal, I could build a Faraday cage and put you inside it while we have some doctor cut it out, but I can’t figure out how to keep the pressure steady. If losing the pressure of your muscle and tissue around it is enough to set it off, I just don’t know how we could keep pressure on it.”
“What about pulling it into a tube of some sort?” Noah asked. “I mean, if we had a way to get hold of one end of it with something run through a tube of the right diameter, maybe we could pull it in and let that tube keep the pressure on.”
Neil shook his head. “That runs into the problem of not reducing pressure on the end of it that you grab, and then we have to make sure the tube is stretchy enough, but then it might collapse as we’re pulling this thing out. If it does, pressure drops and it goes bang.”
“There’s got to be a way,” Sarah said. “There just has to be.”
“Give them time to work on the problem,” Noah said. “What about Monique?”
Neil sighed. “I gave Molly all the information we have,” he said, “and she spoke with Allison and Mr. Jefferson, but neither of them have any idea who she can be. Allison suggested she might not be CIA after all, at least not herself. They’re thinking that she might actually just have CIA people under her control, just the way she had some of ours. Unfortunately, that means we can’t trust anybody at the CIA to ask about someone fitting her description, so we’re kind of on our own.”
Sarah blinked, then turned her eyes toward Noah. “Okay, look,” she said. “We have to keep up our act, so I’m just gonna pretend these problems don’t exist for now.” She smiled sweetly. “What’s on your agenda today, Rex, honey?”
“Ralph
is going to be working with Sneed all day,” Noah replied, “working out the details of taking over the drug operation. I’ll probably sit in on some of it, but I’m going to get Forney to start introducing me to some of the other lieutenants, start building an idea of who needs to be taken out when the time comes.”
“Cool,” Neil said. “Anything you want me to do?”
“Yeah, there is. Wally had an interesting idea about coming up with something like jewelry that the entire organization would want to wear. If we can get all of the top people wearing some sort of necklace made of our explosives, then making the hit all at once could be pretty easy. Think about that and see what you can come up with, okay?”
Neil narrowed his eyes in thought. “Jewelry? I don’t know, that sounds kind of far-fetched to me. I mean, what are the odds that we’d come up with something everybody would like and want to wear?” He chewed the inside of his cheek for a couple of seconds, then nodded. “The idea might have merit, though. Not necessarily jewelry, but something everybody would want to have with them all the time. Maybe some sort of a communication device? Like a pager, or walkie-talkie? A way for Morgan to be able to reach any of them or all of them instantly.”
Sarah scowled. “They use cell phones for that,” she said.
“Yeah, but then they have the problem of cell phones being on open frequencies. You can buy scanners that let you listen to cell phone conversations, and Morgan ought to be aware that any feds who might be looking at him would be doing their best to monitor every call he makes, him or his people.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “What if you could sell him on an encrypted communication system that worked through cell towers, so it would be just like a normal cell phone, but no one could listen in?”
Noah had begun nodding as he spoke. “That could be exactly what we need,” he said. “The only question is where do we get them?”
Neil grinned. “All you need are cell phones with scramblers built in. They take what you say and encrypt it, and then the receiving phone decrypts it so that the other person can hear exactly what you said. Anybody in the middle, however, is only going to hear screeching and beeping that means nothing. It’s exactly the system E & E uses, and all we’d have to do is put them in a case made of our explosive material. If you can get me a count on how many you need, Wally could probably get started on them today.”
Sarah’s eyes were wide. “That really is an awesome idea,” she said. “And if Morgan hasn’t already thought of it, it could be a big feather in your cap with him. That could get you in tighter, so you learn more about who’s important in the whole organization.”
“And not a bit hard to sell,” Noah added. “I’ve already told Forney a couple times that he needs to be careful what he says over the phone. This kind of system would let Morgan and his people talk about anything openly, without worrying about who might overhear. Would it require a special phone company, carrier, or whatever?”
“Nope. It will work with any carrier. Artel is most common around here, and that’ll work just fine.”
Noah nodded. “This might be exactly what I’m looking for. How long would it take to get some examples made up and shipped in? I’d like to be able to show this to him as soon as possible.”
The tall, skinny kid shrugged his shoulders. “I’d bet Wally has a pretty fair inventory of them. If you can give me an idea of how many you might want, he could probably get some cases made and send a few of them out today. We could have them by tomorrow.”
“I think tomorrow would be too quick,” Noah said. “I need to plant a few seeds about this first, so let’s try to have a few of them in a couple of days. I actually like this idea better than any of Wally’s. This is something that Morgan would want everybody to have, and if it’s got the explosive built in, then it’s actually very likely they’ll each have one on them when we set them off.”
“And here’s another benefit,” Neil said. “I can have a server set up that can send a text message to each and every one of these phones at the same time, or conference them all into a single call. I know you worry about collateral damage, so we could use this when the time comes to make sure each person is alone, or even get them all gathered up in one place.”
Noah looked at him. “Getting them all into one place would reduce the possibility that one of them might be with an innocent family member or in the middle of a crowd. As far as getting them all on conference call, that could also help. They’d naturally want to get away from everybody else while they were on a call like that.” He chewed the inside of his cheek for a couple of seconds. “Of course, it’s going to cause quite a stir when thirty or forty local mobsters all get blown up at the same time. We’ll be starting a whole new class of conspiracy theories.”
Neil laughed. “No doubt,” he said. “People around here will be saying everything from ‘the government did it,’ to ‘it was aliens, dude!’ Most of them will probably just be glad these people are gone.”
“That’s true,” Noah said. “I think we should go ahead with this idea, or at least have it as an option.”
“Neil,” Sarah said, “this is brilliant. Tell Molly I said you are every bit as smart as she is, and maybe even smarter.”
Neil grinned. “Actually, I’m not. I’ve seen her paperwork; she’s got me by twenty points on the IQ scales. She just hasn’t gotten used to thinking about ways to kill people, yet, but hanging around Noah all the time must be rubbing off on me.”
“Well, it’s working,” Sarah said with a chuckle.
Noah looked at her, and the thought crossed his mind that she was forcing herself to forget the microbomb in his armpit. He leaned over and kissed her, reinforcing her desire to put that thought out of her mind.
“I’d better get going,” he said. He got out of his chair, and Sarah stood, then reached up and put her arms around his neck and pulled him down for another kiss.
“Mmm,” she said, “I could almost get used to this. I know we’re on a mission, but this is kind of like you just going off to a regular job. Any idea what time you’ll be home?”
“Probably around four,” he replied. “I’m gonna look for opportunities to complain about cell phone use, and then I’ll bring up the idea of encrypted phones to Jimmy the first chance I get. With any luck, he’ll ask me to go ahead and get some samples. If not, I’ll just try to pass it off as me taking the initiative when they come in, and hope he sees it as a good idea that he needs to put to work throughout the organization.”
“All right,” Neil said. “I’ll ask Wally to get a half-dozen of them out to us ASAP. Try to give me an idea of how many you might need altogether, though. The sooner he can get started on them, the sooner we can deliver. Bear in mind, these phones wouldn’t be cheap on the open market. Probably around fifteen hundred apiece, maybe more.”
“And the sooner we can get out of here,” Sarah said.
“What do you mean?” Noah asked.
“Well, isn’t it obvious? Morgan is going to want all of his top people to have one of these phones, right? Once they get delivered and everybody has one, you could complete the mission. When all of the top people are dead, we can go home.”
Noah looked from her to Neil. “In theory, that’s correct,” he said. “It would also give me the chance to show Monique that I don’t waste time.” He hugged Sarah, who was still holding on to him. “Of course, it’s kind of nice to just go to work every day and come home to you. Even with the mission, this is probably as close to a normal life as we’re ever going to know.”
Sarah looked up at him for a moment, then slowly nodded. “And I’m going to enjoy it for as long as we have it,” she said.
Noah kissed her again, then turned and walked out the door. She stood where she was until she heard the Charger start up and start down the driveway, then sat back down in her chair and looked at Neil. Suddenly the tears overflowed, and she didn’t even try to stop them.
“That was a brilliant idea,” she said slowly. “Now, turn
that brain of yours on to the real problem. You find a way to save his life, Neil.”
The skinny kid looked at her across the table, his own eyes moist. “We will,” he said. “I swear we will.”
* * * * *
Noah called Forney while he was still on the highway. “It’s Rex,” he said. “You got the kid?”
“Yep,” Forney replied. “We’re headed for Sneed’s office. Ralphie wants to start working on the liquid pot today…”
“Cut that off,” Noah said suddenly. “Don’t you know that anybody could be listening in on these calls? These are cell phones—you can buy scanners that make it possible to hear everything people say on a cell phone. All it takes is for one of the feds to hear you talking about stuff like that and we end up with a case that doesn’t magically go away.”
Forney laughed. “Rex, relax,” he said. “We got it all covered. Feds don’t mess with us—they know better.”
“Yeah, that’s what my guys thought, back in the day. Trust me, they may move slowly, but they’re moving. Sooner or later, somebody is going to try to make a case stick against the boss, and I wouldn’t want to be the guy whose loose lips gave them the ammunition they need. Would you?”
Forney was quiet for a few seconds, and then he chuckled again. “Okay, I see your point,” he said. “I’ll be careful from now on. Thing is, even the boss doesn’t worry about it. Who’s to say it wouldn’t be his loose lips?”
“Geez, are you serious?” Noah asked. This was exactly the kind of opening he was hoping to find, but he needed to be careful how he played it. “Enough recordings of things like that and it’d be hard to make the charges disappear.”
“Yeah, well, what are you gonna do? He’s been at this so long he feels like he’s invincible, I guess.”
“Nobody’s invincible,” Noah said. “I learned that the hard way. There’s ways to minimize the risk, though. You think you could get him to sit down and talk to me about some ideas?”