by David Archer
“I’m going to be a couple of doors down the hall,” Gary said, accurately reading Noah’s tone. They’d need someone close by to give Neil backup. He moved out the door at Noah’s nod, carefully checking the hallway for any possible access as he went.
“I’ll be close by, as well,” Jenny said. “I’m not letting my Pooh-bear out of my sight.” Neil rolled his eyes as he moved the dummy to the chair behind the desk, thinking about how to anchor it.
Noah paused, catching Neil’s eye and giving him a meaningful look. Neil smiled back, trying to look like he wasn’t nearly as scared as he really was.
From the look on Noah’s face, he wasn’t pulling it off very well.
* * *
Marco was only a little surprised that Dawson chose to walk to Hapgood’s hotel. It made following him both easy and hard. When the crowds thinned out, Marco had to stay farther back, trying to avoid letting Dawson realize he was there.
He moved closer as they approached the hotel, jogging up the stairs behind Dawson, hoping to get into a decent observation point before he crossed the street to the hotel lobby.
Dawson was smart, however, and once he reached the top of the stairs leading up from the river walk, his casual stroll turned into a brisk jog. He disappeared behind a tall red double-decker bus parked at the curb. By the time Marco bolted across the street after him, he was gone.
All Marco knew for certain was that he couldn’t have gone into the hotel just yet, at least not by the front doors. He’d had those in sight the whole time. He ran down the sidewalk to the corner, but didn’t find any trace of Dawson that way either.
He suddenly found himself worried, a feeling that he wasn’t familiar with. He didn’t want to let Noah down, and he didn’t want to lose Donald Jefferson’s killer. He wanted to see this man understand the pain he’d caused through his ruthless career. But mostly, the worry emerged from the growing, slightly irrational fear that his failure to keep Dawson in sight would result in Neil’s death, or Gary’s, or Noah’s or Renée’s or Jenny’s. The very thought that one of them might be hurt or killed because he lost track of Dawson bothered Marco terribly.
He clenched his left fist, digging his fingernails into the palm of his hand. With a deep sigh, he consciously pulled himself back into control and released his fist, shook off the abrupt worry, and forced his mind to think rationally.
The team had known all along that trailing Dawson this way would be difficult. They’d known they might lose him and had planned for this contingency. He quickly focused his emotions. “Noah from Marco,” he said softly into his subcom. “I lost Dawson.”
* * *
Up in Hapgood’s room, Neil had just finished setting Geraldo up behind the desk when Noah came back in from his final sweep of the hallway. He’d looked grim ever since Marco’s announcement, but Neil knew it couldn’t change the plan. They’d known all along that tracking an elusive and deadly killer would be difficult, even with the deck stacked in their favor.
Marco had done the best he could. Neil knew that the big lug had his back; he always did. Now they would simply have to adapt, which was what they were best at. Roll with the punches and figure out how to make the plan come off, no matter what went wrong.
Neil stood up straight to see Noah looking steady and confident as ever, and it occurred to him suddenly that there was probably no other man in the world he respected and trusted as much.
“All right,” Noah addressed him. “We are as ready as we’re going to be.” Neil fought to keep himself from smiling as he met Noah’s eyes. He couldn’t let any sign of nervousness, real or imagined, creep onto his face. He couldn’t give Noah Wolf any reason to take him out of the game.
“Neil, we can call this off.”
“Not a chance, Noah,” Neil answered quickly, resolutely, meeting Noah Wolf’s eyes dead on. He knew that Sarah considered Neil the little brother she had never had, and Noah was likely to feel a burden to keep him safe. The truth, however, was that Neil was finally becoming a genuine E & E agent, and he wasn’t about to let himself be pushed to the background anymore.
“There’s no telling where or how he’s going to make the hit,” Noah pressed, moving toward him. “This is a big hotel, we can’t cover it all.”
Neil matched his gaze. “I always d-did like surprises,” he quipped, realizing too late that he’d been stuttering while he said it.
Noah’s frown deepened. The look he gave Neil made it clear that Noah would not be pleased should he allow himself to be harmed in any way.
Neil knew more smiling was the absolute wrong response to Noah’s increased sternness, but the smirk was already there, widening without conscious thought. What he hoped Noah saw behind it was the seriousness in his eyes. He had finally accepted his job, was happy to do it, could do it, and had always done it well. Ever since he and Jenny had gotten together, he knew he would be happy doing nothing else, and wouldn’t feel right about backing down, no matter how much sense it might make.
Noah finally nodded, his stern expression easing slightly. He laid a hand on Neil’s shoulder a bit too firmly, then slipped back into the hallway without another word.
EIGHT
Noah walked out the hotel’s front doors, still shaking his head at the exchange with Neil in Hapgood’s room. When it came to stubbornness and determination, Neil was just as bad as Marco, but he was also a part of Team Camelot. Neil would play his part in this plan, and it was up to Noah and the others to make sure he stayed safe.
However, intelligent or not, if the skinny kid took any unnecessary chances, Noah would introduce him to a new level of pain and suffering. There was no way he’d let them lose Neil, or any of the others, on this mission. Not now. Not ever. And definitely not to the man who’d killed Donald Jefferson.
From down the street, Marco jogged quickly up to Noah’s side. “Sorry I lost him,” he said.
Noah nodded. “I know,” he answered simply. “Still no sign of him?” Marco said nothing, knowing that Noah already knew the answer and didn’t expect it to magically change. Instead, he said, “I’ll go and cover the back,” before quickly walking away.
* * *
Caleb Dawson had enjoyed the walk from the bistro and thought he’d like to come back sometime when he could enjoy the atmosphere better. He’d had the feeling that he was being watched, but so far he hadn’t seen anything that could confirm the suspicion. Like many professional assassins, he was prone toward paranoia when he was on a job, but he also believed that the paranoia was a big part of what made him so good at what he did.
When he neared his target’s hotel, he changed his pace, trying to see if anyone behind him did the same. He saw no one, but the paranoid feeling remained. Spontaneously, he jumped onto the double-decker bus that was just pulling out, riding it a block before jumping down when it slowed at a stop sign.
Again, he saw no evidence that he was being followed, but decided to make his way to the hotel’s back entrance anyway. He still had time. As long as he was gone quickly after the job was done, he could take his time getting there.
As he walked toward the back of the hotel, scanning the sidewalk crowd for anything unusual, he passed a “service entry only” sign and changed his mind again. If he was lucky, a service elevator would send him where he wanted to go, and no one in the hotel would see him at all.
Inside, Dawson found several laundry carts full of clean linen, ready to be moved onto the service elevators behind them. Of course, that meant that staff would be coming to load them onto the elevators, and he didn’t want to run into them. He quickly changed his mind once again, stepping into the service stairs and quietly closing the door behind him.
He ran into no one on the way up and no one ran into him. When he knocked on the door of the hotel room just below Hapgood’s and found it empty, he set his final course of action in motion and got to work.
With the handkerchief in his briefcase, he picked up the phone and used a pencil to dial the front desk
. “Room 221, please,” he requested when a woman with a nasal accent asked how she could help him.
* * *
Neil was staying out of sight, against the outer wall and in a position where he couldn’t be seen from the hallway unless the door was actually open. His doppelgänger was still sitting at the desk, waiting for whatever attack was coming, but Neil didn’t really believe Dawson would go for a sniper shot. He wasn’t willing to guess what approach the assassin would use, but he was fairly certain that it wouldn’t be a rifle from a distance.
Unfortunately, most other approaches required Dawson to come into physical contact with his victim. The dummy looked good from as close as ten feet, but any nearer and it would be obvious that it was a mannequin.
When the room phone rang, he got a burst of adrenaline. The game was undoubtedly about to begin, and this would probably be the opening gambit. “Got a call,” he whispered to Noah through the subcom. “Listen closely.”
He stayed low at his side and moved closer to the desk, then reached up and picked up the receiver, bringing it down below the desk and putting it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Hello, Mr. Hapgood?” The caller had a shrill voice and a strong British accent.
“Yes?”
“My name is Gerald Anderson. I’m with one of the local trade unions. I was wondering if I might be able to come up and see you for a few moments?”
“What union did you say?” Neil asked, stalling.
“I’m the secretary of the London Construction Union. It’d be a big help to us, Mr. Hapgood.”
“Okay,” he answered in a controlled voice. “What time did you want to come up?”
“Fifteen minutes?”
“Fine,” Neil said, checking his watch. “I’ll be here.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hapgood.”
“You heard it, fifteen minutes,” Neil said quietly to Noah via subcom.
“He can’t be far,” Noah answered. “That means he probably got into the building without us seeing him.”
“Yeah,” Neil said. “The only question now is what he has in mind. If he’s coming here, Noah, my stunt double isn’t going to be any good.”
* * *
One floor down, Dawson was proceeding as quickly as possible. He wanted to finished the job quickly and enjoy the rest of the day, maybe spend some time learning more about the flirtatious redhead Spear had used to contact him. She might actually make this trip more than just business.
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Hapgood,” he sneered aloud and got to work pulling tools from his briefcase. He stood on a chair and cut a hole in the ceiling with one of his own specially designed tools. The hole opened up the empty space remaining between his floor and the next. One blast would take out the whole room, above and below.
The fake golf balls came out of his bag next. He removed them from their plastic wrapping and crushed them together until they formed a clay-like mass.
Down in front of the hotel, Marco was getting antsy. At least one of them should have caught a glimpse of Dawson by now. “Gary, you see anything?” he asked via subcom.
“No, nothing yet,” Gary said. “We are watching, but there’s no sign of activity at the moment.” He extended a snake camera under the door to the room he was hiding in and looked out into the hallway, feeling more and more like Neil was a sitting duck. If Dawson was already in the building, even being just two doors away was too far.
The entire floor of the hotel felt quiet. Gary moved the camera around to see if there was an additional angle he was missing, even though he’d already checked half a dozen times.
Slowly, the fifteen minutes were ticking by.
Marco ducked when he saw Dawson emerge from the service entry. “Noah,” he said, and Noah could sense the anxiety in his transmission. “Dawson’s just come out of the back of the hotel.”
“I don’t like that,” said Noah. “He likes to set up the job and be gone.” He stood there, thinking about how he might approach such an assassination, and suddenly his eyes went wide. “Neil! Get out of there! Get out now!” he ordered.
Neil wasted no time complying. Doing his job well was one thing, but being stupid was something else entirely, and something he didn’t want to be accused of. He leapt to his feet and ran for the door, snatching it open and throwing himself out into the hallway as Jenny and Gary came bursting out of their own rooms.
He’d barely gotten out of the room when he felt the explosion swell behind him. Time seemed to slow down and speed up all at once, sound catching up with him somewhere in the middle. The door behind him slammed and flew off its hinges, thrown like a brick by the blast. It caught him as he tried to turn toward Jenny and slammed him into the opposite wall. He landed in a crumpled heap at its base.
He managed not to lose consciousness, but he was disoriented, unable to figure out which way was up or down. Despite the ringing in his ears, he heard Gary pounding toward him, heard the shout of his own name cut through the fuzzy haze.
“Neil!” Jenny screamed, and then she had slid to the floor beside him. Neil felt both of them grab his arms and tried unsuccessfully to answer.
“Neil!” Jenny repeated, with such force and worry that Neil felt he ought to be flattered. He tried to pull himself together, tried to get his mouth to work, his brain to function. On an innate level, he realized the team needed to know he was okay. More pointedly, he needed Noah to know he was okay. Noah might not have genuine emotions, but he was quite capable of blaming himself when one of the team was injured.
He struggled to pull himself upright, but Gary’s forceful hands wouldn’t let go. He had thrown off the shattered door and was attempting to look into Neil’s eyes.
Neil blinked carefully and shifted. Gary didn’t move, holding him tight. “Neil, are you okay?”
Neil coughed, working his throat. “I’m all right!” he croaked, trying again to move himself up or, at the least, shift away from the piece of wood digging into his back. He tested the other sensations in his body as he did so, hoping to find that what he was telling Gary was really true.
“Are you sure?” Jenny didn’t sound convinced and Gary’s grip didn’t lessen in the slightest.
“I’m okay!” Neil insisted again. Either the annoyance in his voice finally prompted Gary to let go or he’d actually been convincing in his insistence, because Gary’s strong hands were suddenly gone.
“Neil,” Noah’s voice said in his ear, “are you sure? Don’t move if you’re not certain.”
As he assured Noah that he was all right, a steadying hand returned to his arm. A careful grip, just above his elbow. As insistent as Neil had felt only moments before that he was fine, he was grateful for the firm hold. The anchoring touch reduced the ringing in his ears and the tingling spinning out from the back of his head.
He realized it was Jenny holding onto him as he checked the rest of his body, discovering, thankfully, that nothing felt acutely painful. He started to believe he really was fine. He released a rough lungful of air and felt the tightness in his chest level out.
Already, the smoke was clearing and the air he drew in to himself felt fresher and cleaner than he’d expected. He relaxed, leaned back against the wall, and closed his eyes to whisper a short prayer of thanks. He heard Gary sigh, sounding relieved.
“Good,“ Neil heard Noah say, and then he listened to the conversation going on inside his head as Marco and Noah began discussing the next step. They were still in the game and way ahead of Spear, even if it didn’t feel like it.
“All right, we are still on track,” Noah said next. “We are one step away from Spear. Let’s get back to our own hotel. MI6 can handle the cleanup and police activity here.”
Marco heard through the subcoms that Neil seemed okay, but the smoke streaming from the windows above had fed the worry in his gut. The callous, too casual stance of Dawson as he exited the hotel and moved to the river walk further fed his anger. “Noah, I think Dawson is heading back to the bistro. Do you want me t
o stay on him? Or do you need my help back here?”
Marco felt torn. He didn’t want to chance losing Dawson again, but he knew that if Neil was injured, the other agents would need his help. He also wanted to visibly see that Neil was okay.
“You’d better stay on him,” answered Noah. “Gary and Jenny and I can handle things here,” Noah further assured. “I already asked Catherine to get the taxis away from that area. We don’t want Dawson to somehow end up at the real St. Aloysius, so all the cabs you see are hers. They know where to take him.”
“You got it. I’m on it, Noah,” he said, but then Noah heard, “I’m just…”
“Neil does seem to be okay.” Noah cut his question short, making it seem as if he was reading his mind. “You heard what he said. We figured it out in time and he got out of there.”
Marco heard, and was grateful for, the hidden subtext in Noah’s statement. Things hadn’t gone according to plan, but they’d pulled together as a team.
Neil was okay. Neil was okay. They’d made it work and Marco could bear no blame.
“Thanks, Noah,” he finished simply.
“Marco?”
“Yeah?”
“You’d better give Renée a head’s up. She could be back at the hotel by now, and we might be late. She might be worried.”
“On it, Noah.” Renée was wearing her hotspot and Noah could have reached her himself, but Marco appreciated the gesture of letting him do it. “Marco to Renée,” he said, and she acknowledged almost instantly. “I’m staying on Dawson for the moment, but the rest of them should be back shortly. You okay?”
“I heard,” she said. “And I’m fine, honey. I will admit, though, I was pretty scared when he called me out on being a fake.”
Marco chuckled. “You were? Couldn’t tell it from where I was standing.”
“Hey, I knew you had my back. You think I did okay?”
“Cher,” Marco said, “you were great.”
* * *
By the time Noah made it to the fifth floor, Gary was having a hard time keeping Neil stationary and sirens were blaring in the distance. The hotel personnel had already called the police. Both were reasons Noah wanted to get them out of there as soon as possible.