Edge of Anarchy - An Action Thriller Novel
Page 18
“Well,” Michael said, “I’m certainly glad to see you’re enjoying it. At some point, someone is going to ask you if you were treated well while you were here, and I hope you’ll remember moments like this.”
Neil looked at him for a moment, his eyes narrowed slightly. “And who is coming to ask that question? Is the real interrogation about to begin?”
For just a second, Neil thought Michael was going to explode in anger, but whatever that brief expression meant, it faded instantly. “I was actually referring to your girlfriend,” Michael said. “I figure she’s going to want to know that we didn’t mistreat you. Wouldn’t you think so?”
“Yeah, I guess she will,” Neil said, relaxing again. “We can keep playing chess until then, I guess. Unless you’re getting tired of losing, that is.”
“The thing about losing,” Michael replied, leaning back in his chair, “is that every game you play and lose against an opponent gives you further insights into his strengths and weaknesses. Haven’t you found that to be the case?”
Neil narrowed his eyes and looked at him. “Pretty much,” he said. “I can still remember the day I finally beat my uncle Harley, so I see your point. Of course, your opponent is constantly learning about yours, at the same time. The more you improve your game, the more you are forcing me to improve mine.”
“That’s a good point, as well,” Michael said. “Come on, finish up your supper so we can play. I’m ready for my next lesson.”
Damn, Neil thought, he’s talking about chess, but I think he’s implying a lot more than that. Am I giving things away just by being reasonably friendly with him? We haven’t even talked about my job, or any of our missions, so I really can’t see how.
“I’m ready,” he said aloud. “Let’s see if I can surprise you a bit today.”
They moved into the library and sat at the chessboard again. Neil couldn’t help wondering what Jenny was up to, but there was one thing he was certain of. Wherever she was, and whatever she was doing, she would be trying to work with Noah to get him back. To believe anything else would be to give up, and Neil knew that Noah would never leave anyone behind.
* * * * *
The plane touched down in San Francisco at just after six o’clock in the morning, and Jenny followed Newsom through the terminal, dealing with customs as they reentered the country. The process took nearly half an hour, and then they were able to walk out through the front doors of the terminal. Newsom led her to the long-term parking lot, where they were met by another man.
“Mr. Newsom,” the man said, “I have your cars here and ready to go. Yours is the Lincoln, and I chose a Mustang for the young lady.”
“Excellent, Jimmy,” Newsom said. He accepted a set of keys and a parking pass, and another set was handed to Jenny. Newson turned to her. “You’ll find your weapons in the trunk of the car. I made special arrangements to get them back into the country for you, because I thought you might be needing them. Your phone, as well as your boyfriend’s phone, will also be there. Hold onto it for him, and you can give it back to him soon.”
“I will,” Jenny said. “I know how to reach you, so you’ll hear from me when the job is done. Until then, you might want to advise your people to stay out of my way. At the moment, I’m not feeling all that kindly disposed toward you.” She took the keys and used the remote to unlock the Mustang, tossed her bags into the back seat, then slid behind the wheel and hit the start button. The car roared to life, and she closed the door and backed out of the parking space.
She watched behind her, but saw no sign of Newsom and his Lincoln before she made it out of the parking lot. Once she was away from the airport, she got on Interstate 80, pointed the car to the northeast and set the cruise control at just over the speed limit.
At the Vallejo exit, she left the interstate and turned northeast. The idea wasn’t as much to try to throw off followers as to simply put some distance between herself and Newsom. She naturally assumed that her cell phone would now be bugged, so she had no intention of ever using it again. When she found a secluded spot on the side of the highway, she turned down a dirt road and went far enough to be out of sight before she stopped.
She got out of the car and opened the trunk, and smiled when she saw the box with her personal weapons. She took the cell phones out and removed the batteries and sim cards, then threw each piece as far out into the sandy desert around her as she could.
With all of that taken care of, she got back into the car and turned it around, then got back onto the interstate and kept going. She wanted to get out of California as quickly as possible, and that meant following this stretch of highway all the way to Salt Lake City, then swinging down to I-70 for the last leg of the trip. She’d slept all night on the plane, so she wanted to put as many miles under her as she could before she finally stopped to get a room.
At least then, she’d be able to make contact with Noah and see if he’d been able to learn anything.
* * * * *
The Gulfstream carrying Noah and his team, or what was left of it, had touched down at Kirtland around four, and they’d gone straight to HQ. Allison and Donald Jefferson were already there, and it was obvious that they hadn’t slept at all.
“I’ve been rattling cages all night,” Allison said, “talking to CIA, DHS, NSA and everybody else, but no one has any line on where Neil might be stashed. While getting him back is the most desirable outcome, we also have to consider that he knows an awful lot about how we operate. If he’d been interrogated, there is a lot the PRA could learn about us, possibly even enough to be politically embarrassing to the current administration. We can’t risk letting him be in their clutches too long, but I’m not sure I trust them to let Jenny have him back when she convinces them I’m dead.”
“It depends on how real the offer to have her work for them might have been. If they genuinely want her, then they’ll give him back. If not, then he could actually be dead already, but I doubt that. I’m sure they expect her to demand to speak to him at some point, so they’re probably keeping him safe, but isolated.”
“Then our first order of business needs to be figuring out how she can kill me,” Allison said, “hopefully without leaving me dead in the process. Wally says he’ll have some ideas by the time you get to him in the morning, so I’m going to leave it up to you to work out details with him. You’ve had better luck with that in the past than anyone else, and I think it’s because he just about idolizes you.”
“All right,” Noah said. “I’ll head out there in a bit, about the time he opens. Hopefully they’ll have some kind of idea that has the potential of working. We thought about trying to do something with CGI, but that would be detectable if they really tore the video apart. I’m afraid it would blow up in our faces.”
“Or in Jenny’s,” Allison said. “If there’s any hope she can actually infiltrate the organization, we have to try to make that happen. My concern is that they may decide to simply kill both of them once they get what they want.”
Noah nodded slowly. “I’ve been considering that possibility, as well,” he said. “In which case, we’ll need to start all over at identifying their people.”
“Not necessarily,” Jefferson said. “The two names we got have come back with some intel. Klaus Niemeier and Alexandra Hofmeyr have both turned up in chatter over the years, but no one ever connected them to the PRA before. Now that we know of that connection, we can probably extrapolate from their contacts who else might be involved. As soon as we can find a way to get Neil out of this situation, we can start putting teams on those two and any others we can reasonably connect to the organization.”
“Okay,” Noah said. “That makes sense. What about the way they found out Allison’s name? Have we gotten anywhere on determining where the leak might be?”
“I’m afraid we’re still at a standstill on that,” Allison said. “Molly has been working on it, but there hasn’t been any results just yet. I have confidence in her, though, so sh
e’ll come through for us.”
“I hope so,” Noah said. “I have to consider the possibility that the leak could find out I’m here, and that we’re talking about this very situation. If that gets back to Newsom and his friends, Neil is dead for sure.”
“I understand,” Allison said, “which is why no one knows anything about what brought you here except for me and Donald, and Wally. As far as anybody else has been told, you’re called in for a potential new mission. Until we have the leak identified and sealed, I’m not taking any chances.”
“That’s a smart move. I’m sure we’ve already checked out all the likely culprits, right?”
“Nobody has shown any sign of deception,” Jefferson said. “If we don’t find something pretty soon, I’m going to have to assume the leak came from someone other than our agency. There are a few out there who know who Allison is, and we can’t be certain that they’re all smart enough not to put it in writing somewhere. This could be a simple matter of someone stumbling across the wrong notepad.”
“It usually is something simple,” Noah said, “but there’s always the possibility that there is a genuine Machiavellian plot behind it. I’m sure none of us are going to forget about Monique anytime soon.”
“Don’t even mention that name,” Allison said. “I get a headache every time I hear it.”
“That’s understandable. All right, unless there’s something else, I’m going to go find some breakfast. Once we get done with that, we’ll head out to R&D and see what Wally has come up with.”
“Wait up,” Allison said. “I think the pancake shop is open, Donald and I will join you.”
The five of them went down the street to the only restaurant that would be open at five o’clock in the morning, and were able to sit and talk about mundane things while they guzzled coffee and ate pancakes with sausage. When they were finished, Allison and Jefferson headed back to the office, while Noah, Sarah and Marco took the road out to R&D.
Wally had come in early, as had most of his most trusted people. Renée was there as well, even though she was already in training to join the team; Marco had called her from the airplane, and she had volunteered to come out and help Wally try to find a solution.
“I wish you guys were here under better circumstances,” Wally said. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, but this is one of the worst nightmares we’ve ever had to look at. Is it true that Jenny is being blackmailed into killing Allison?”
“You know it is,” Noah said, “or you wouldn’t be here this early. The idea is to come up with a way for Jenny to show proof of death without Allison actually getting killed. This isn’t something we can just whip up with the computer, it has to be so realistic that there can be no doubt whatsoever.”
“Then the old trick about having her get into a car just before it explodes is not going to work,” Wally said. “The way that works, the car’s parked over a manhole and she would just drop right down through a hole in the floorboard. Car goes boom, everybody sees it, natural assumption is that the person is dead. Unfortunately, it doesn’t leave body parts laying around to be identified.”
“That wouldn’t be good enough, no,” Noah said. “There has to be video footage that is absolutely irrefutable. I’ve tried to come up with ideas and so has Marco, but this just doesn’t lend itself to any normal sleight-of-hand.”
“Sleight-of-hand is only an illusion,” Wally said. “And illusion is what we need. I put some of the bright kids on it yesterday, and told them to stay on it until they came up with an answer. Let’s go find out what they got.”
They walked down the hallway and into a lab, and the first thing Noah noticed was that the air was pretty cold. “This is our cadaver lab,” Wally said. “We keep bodies frozen here for when we need one, but the problem is that we don’t have one that matches Allison closely enough. I told Tom and Janet, here, to see what they can figure out. Tommy boy, you guys have any luck?”
Tom shrugged. “We tried a few different things, but nothing really looks like it will be successful. None of the cadavers we have on hand are going to pass for the boss lady, and there’s nothing we can do to make them pass in the short time that we’ve got. If we had a week or two, it might be doable, but not in this quick a timeframe.”
Wally nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. Still, it was worth a try.” He motioned for Noah and the others to follow, then left the lab again. They went down three doors further, and then went into another lab.
“Joey? Joey, over here,” Wally called out.
A thin, balding man came across the lab toward them.
“Joey runs this section, which is where we develop some of the more intense impersonation devices. Prosthetic masks, special contact lenses, anything necessary to make one person look like another. I’m not quite sure how we’d use it, but I told Joey to see what he could come up with.” He turned to the balding man. “You have any luck?”
“We’re working on some ideas,” Joey said, “but nothing has really solidified, yet. I toyed with the idea of some sort of prosthetic, something that could show bulletholes, for instance, but I’m just not sure that would get the job done. From what you told us, this is far too critical to take any chances with.”
“Yes, yes,” Wally said, “that’s absolutely true. I’m afraid the prosthetic wouldn’t be able to show enough damage to convince these people.” He turned and left the lab without another word, with Noah and the rest following.
In the hallway, he turned to Noah. “Noah, I hate to admit this, but I’m about stumped. We looked at some sort of robot, with some of Joey’s work to make it look as real as possible, but there’s no way we could make it realistic enough to pass for Allison. If we had a month, maybe, but not this fast. I’m just not sure what to do.”
Noah looked at him, his eyes narrowed in concentration. “What about if it didn’t have to speak and move?” he asked suddenly.
Wally blinked, then looked into his face. “What have you got in mind?”
“I was thinking of an attack while Allison would be sleeping. Jenny goes into her bedroom and cuts her throat, for instance. All the robot would have to do is gasp and look shocked for a few seconds, then go limp. Could you make something like that work?”
Wally stared at him for a moment, and a bit of excitement came into his features, but then it faded away. “Again, if we had more time, we could do that. Unfortunately, that would mean building a robot with blood vessels and such, and that would take a lot of time to both design and construct. If we didn’t get it perfect, the resulting video wouldn’t pass, and it would all be for nothing, anyway. We might save Allison, but we’d lose Neil and Jenny.”
Noah rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We’re already most of a day into our time limit. I should be hearing from Jenny sometime today, and I need to know something I can tell her.” He looked at Sarah and Marco. “Anybody got any ideas?”
Unfortunately, no one did. They followed Wally back to his office, and sat down to have a cup of coffee while they thought about other possibilities.
“Well,” Noah said, “if we can’t give Jenny a way to complete her mission, then the alternative is to find Neil. If we can get him out of there, then we can strike at the people we have identified, and any others we can connect to them. The only problem is we have absolutely no idea where he could be.”
“There’s probably not a Wi-Fi network,” Marco said. “If they knew who Jenny was, they probably know that Neil is a computer whiz. Somehow, I doubt they’d have any Internet where he might get his hands on it.”
“That’s almost certainly true,” Noah said. “If there was some other way we could reach him on the subcom, that would be a big help. Would it be possible to broadcast a high-powered Wi-Fi signal?”
“Yes and no,” Wally said. “Yes, it could be done, but we still need to know a general geographical location to aim at. We’d need to focus it, because that type of signal loses strength pretty rapidly as it spreads out.”
“Yeah,” Wally said.
“But if we don’t do something,” Sarah said, “Jenny is going to do her best to actually carry out the hit. If that’s the only way she can save Neil, she’ll go for it. I know she likes Allison, but you know how she feels about Neil.”
Noah leaned his head into his hands, with his elbows on his knees. Sarah looked at him hard for a second, because she had never seen him in that pose before.
“Noah? You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m simply trying to figure out how to accomplish the impossible. Somehow, we’ve got to find Neil and rescue him before Jenny can get to Allison. The trouble is, if she gets through the security around here, I’m not sure anybody would be able to stop her.”
“So,” Marco said, “we put a whole team of security on the Dragon Lady. Or we lock her up for a few days, someplace safe where even Jenny couldn’t get to her.”
Wally laughed, but it was mirthless. “You’ll never get Allison to agree to hide. It’s just not her way, trust me. And I don’t know that putting security on her would do a lot of good, because Jenny is a crack sniper. She could make a shot from more than a thousand yards out, and there’s no way we can cover every angle.”
Noah looked up. “You’re right,” he said. “We are at a stalemate. We either have to find Neil and rescue him, or I have to put Jenny down.”
NINETEEN
“Noah,” Sarah asked as they drove away from the R&D section, “what are you planning to do?”
“We’re going back to the office,” Noah said. “We’ve got to find some way to locate Neil and get him back, or else the only way to stop Jenny from killing Allison is going to be by killing Jenny. I may be the only one who would be capable of it, so I’ve got to get someone else working on rescuing Neil.”