by David Archer
That was just two weeks previously, but it meant that he was within the United States at least that recently, and that, combined with the fact that he was the only person who might have both the motive and the means to pull off such an operation, was enough to put him at the top of Noah's suspect list for the attack on Neverland. Since that time, however, there had been no news concerning him at all.
“He isn't done,” Noah said. “This attack on Neverland, that's just the beginning. Neverland is too big for him to take down, and he knows it. He's not trying that, he's after something specific.”
“Yeah,” Neil said. “He's after you, Boss. This bastard doesn't ever give up, does he?”
“I'm not sure that makes sense,” Noah said. “If he managed to gather enough intel to let them get into our main office, then he probably knows enough about us to figure out who I am. Why would he make an attack like this when I'm not even around? You’d think he’d want to wait until I got home and attack me directly. Why wouldn’t he just do that?”
“Because the intel that he had wasn't enough,” Neil said. “I'd be willing to bet my Hummer that he was after information, and probably information about you. You pretty much single-handedly destroyed his entire operation. Somehow, I don't think just killing you is enough for him to feel like he's gotten revenge. I think he's out to destroy you, the way you destroyed him. To do that, he's got to find out more about you. He needs to know who you really are, or should I say, who you really were.”
Noah's eyebrows lowered as he thought over what Neil had said. “Who I was is dead, with enough high-powered government witnesses to confirm it that he'd never be able to expose me that way. He'd be smart enough to figure that out on his own, so why would he want any more information on me?”
“Background,” Sarah said. “Maybe he's trying to find someone in your past that he could use against you.”
“I guess that's possible,” Noah said. “On the other hand, if he learns anything about me at all, it would probably tell him that such a ploy wouldn't work. I've only been close to two people in my life, before now, but they think I'm dead. Even if he managed to get to them, there'd be nothing I could do for them.”
“But that's you,” Moose said. “It takes a while to get the idea that you don't operate the way normal people do. Hell, you had to knock the shit out of me before I figured it out. He might try to use some old friend against you, just because he wouldn't know any better.”
Noah stared at the wall for a moment, but then shook his head. “No, I think it's something else, but I can't put my finger on it.”
“Boss, I think you better think this through again. Remember what happened when he took Sarah? You walked right into the deadliest trap he ever set to get her back. I don't think he understands that you wouldn't do that for everyone.”
Noah caught Sarah grinning at him, and she quickly turned away. He picked up his phone and dialed the main office again. A moment later he was talking with Doc Parker once more.
“Sir, we’ve come up with a theory. Can you tell me if anyone got into our personnel files during the attack?”
“Interesting. We weren’t compromised during the attack, no,” Parker said. “However, the computer guys say we've been hacked. It probably happened in the last forty-eight hours, and personnel files seemed to be the biggest target.”
“Interesting,” Noah said. “If the same people were behind the hack, then they already had the information that we thought they might've been after. Well, it was just a theory anyway.”
“What was the theory, Camelot?” Doc Parker asked.
“My team was speculating that if Nicolaich was involved, he might have been trying to learn about people from my past that I was close to. Someone he might use for bait, to draw me into a trap. I killed his son on my last mission, and then managed to expose him so that the Russian government was willing to declare him a rogue. We think it's a pretty safe bet that I'm high on his hit list.”
“Wait a minute, let's think this through,” Parker said. “We know that we were hacked, and our personnel records were gone through, but that was before the attack. The thing is, we didn't find out about the hack until after the attack occurred. It was while they were going through the computers to make sure we were still secure that they found some evidence that someone had been into the system. If we think about just how Machiavellian Andropov seems to think himself to be, then the attack may have been simply a shot fired across the bow. He wanted us to know that he'd already come in through the back door, but we wouldn't find any evidence of it unless he kicked in the front door, first.”
“Sir, did anyone actually see Andropov during the attack?”
“We've got two security camera images of a man that could conceivably be him. Facial recognition says it's about an eighty-eight percent match, and the build is right.”
“Too bad nobody got a bullet into him,” Neil muttered. “Might have ended this whole problem right off the bat.”
Noah chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment. “What about casualties on the other side, sir? Did our people manage to take out any of theirs?”
“Oh, yes, we did, we took out seven of them. We even captured three alive, but so far they aren't talking. I'm sure they will, though; we've got a girl down there in interrogation who can be extremely persuasive. If she manages to break him, I'll let you know what we learn.”
Noah thanked him, and ended the call. He turned to Moose and Neil.
“Okay, let's assume you're right. Neil, I want you to track down a couple of my old friends. Maybe Nicolaich wants to use them as bait for me, but let's see if we can turn the tables and use them as bait for him.”
“No problem, just give me names and somewhere to start.”
“Start with Molly Hanson. The last I knew, about a year and a half ago, she was working for Dexter Reedy, the big think tank in DC. She's a super genius and was my best friend when I was a kid. The other one is Jerry Whitehead. He won't be hard to find, he's the lead singer in a big rock group called Reign of Fire. They're the only two I was ever really close to, before you guys. If anybody was going to try to use someone against me, it would be one of them.”
“Are you shitting me?” Neil asked. “You actually know Jerry Whitehead from Reign of Fire?”
Noah shrugged. “I can’t actually say that I know him now, but I did up until I supposedly killed myself. He and Molly were the two who helped me the most when I was a kid, while I was trying to figure out how to cope with being a Pinocchio in a human world.”
Neil rolled his eyes and shook his head, then turned around to the computer and began punching keys. It wasn't long before he was calling off facts and details about both Molly and Jerry, but neither of them seemed to be having any problems at the moment.
“Well, that may shoot that theory down,” Noah said. “Of course, either one of them would be pretty hard to get to. Molly is protected by the government, and Jerry would have his own security, I'm sure.”
“That wouldn't stop Nicolaich,” Sarah said. “And I'll tell you right now, you can forget about Jerry. Nicolaich won't go after him, he'll go after Molly.”
Noah cocked his head and looked at her. “Why do you think so?”
Sarah smiled at him. “Because she's a girl. You came after me, didn't you?”
Noah sat there and looked at her for a moment, then turned to Neil. “Is Molly still living in Alexandria?”
Neil nodded while he was still tapping keys. “Yep, a nice place in a gated subdivision. They got their own private security, there, too, and get this: they’re part of the Blackstone Group. Those aren’t security guards, they’re a private army.”
Noah nodded. “Yes, but Nicolaich would find a way to go around them, or maybe just go through them. Assuming Sarah is right and Nicolaich would expect me to try to rescue Molly, we can call this a lead. There's nothing that says we have to stay in this cabin, so I guess we'll head for Virginia in the morning. Neil, find the most recent phot
os you can of Molly and print them out. We’ll all need to be watching out for her, so you each need to know what she looks like.”
Neil tapped a few keys, and shortly his printer began to hum. While it was working, they began brainstorming about ways to draw Nicolaich out into the open, provided they actually found any sign of him around Molly. That conversation went on through the rest of their dinner, and they had just finished eating when Noah’s phone rang.
He picked it up and looked at it, and then answered quickly. “Go ahead,” he said.
“Camelot,” Doc Parker said. “Allison just came out of surgery. You wanted me to let you know what I found out, so I thought I would call you first.”
“Yes, sir?”
“She was apparently struck four times, not three. One bullet struck her in the upper left thigh while two others hit her lower abdomen, causing some intestinal damage. The fourth bullet struck her at an oblique angle on the left side of her head, causing a severe impact to her skull and brain but without penetration. She suffered a rather severe concussion and there may be significant neurological damage. The doctors say she will survive, but it is possible that she will never regain full control of her body. At the moment, it seems that she is unable to speak or to move anything on her right side. They won't know more for a few days, until some of the cranial swelling goes down, but I'll do my best to keep you posted.”
“Thank you, sir, I appreciate it. Any word on Mr. Jefferson?”
“Yes. Donald is currently in intensive care at our local hospital. He survived surgery to remove two bullets from his left lung and one that struck him just above and slightly behind his left ear. The doctors say the damage was not as devastating as it could have been, but he is likely to have little or no physical sensation after this. The part of the brain that was damaged is the part that interprets the sense of touch and recognizes pain. They do expect him to survive, but we won’t know the extent of the damage for some time, yet.”
“That is good news, sir. On our end, we’ve come to the conclusion that Nicolaich may very well be planning to try using one of my old friends against me, and so we'll be traveling to the area where she resides starting in the morning. I'll let you know if we learn anything else.”
“Who is she?” Parker asked. “I can get security on her right now.”
“Her name is Molly Hanson,” Noah said, “but she’ll already have security, and I don’t want to tip Nicolaich off, anyway. She works for Dexter Reedy in DC and lives in a secure, gated community in Alexandria.”
“In that case, I’ll put discrete surveillance on her. If anything happens with her before you arrive, we can let you know about it.”
“That sounds like a good idea, sir,” Noah said. “It’s a long way from here to Alexandria, and we don’t know for sure whether Nicolaich is even interested in her. Tomorrow is Sunday and we’ll spend it on the road. If he makes a move on her before then, it’ll only be to try to draw me in, and we could be completely off target on this. It’s just a theory, but it’s the only one we’ve got to go on for right now.”
Doc Parker was quiet for a moment, and then he cleared his throat. “Camelot,” he said, “I’ll get surveillance on her tonight. As for Nicolaich Andropov, if you do find that son of a bitch, I want you to kill him as slowly and painfully as you possibly can. Will you do that for me?”
“Sir,” Noah said. “For once, I can honestly say it will be my pleasure.”
Noah ended the call and looked up into the faces of the others. “Allison made it through surgery. Apparently she was hit once in the thigh and twice in the gut, but the fourth bullet hit the side of her head hard enough that she may be paralyzed. Doc Parker says they won’t know anything more than that for a few days. Donald Jefferson is also alive, but he actually took a bullet in the brain. They’re not sure yet how much damage was done, but they think he’ll lose the ability to feel pain or have a sense of touch.”
“Well,” Sarah said, “at least they’re alive.”
TEN
Noah’s GPS told them it would take twenty-two hours to get to Alexandria, so they were up at five AM to shower and pack. When they left their rooms at five forty-five, Sarah surprised them all by handing the keys to Noah as they got into the car.
“I didn’t get nearly enough sleep last night,” she said. “You can take on some of the driving today while I kick back and relax. When you get tired, I’ll take over.”
Noah shrugged and slid behind the wheel. There was a small truck stop situated where the two-lane road met up with Interstate 70, so he stopped there so they could grab some breakfast. The food and coffee were both good and the service was quick, so they were finally on the way at just before seven.
The road was just as boring as it had been the day before, and it wasn’t long before Noah was the only one awake. He listened to Neil and Moose snoring in the backseat for a few minutes, then set the cruise control at seventy-five and turned the radio on low so that he could listen to the news reports.
The national news services were almost going into fits. Between the massive explosion in Columbia and what seemed to be some sort of terrorist attack on a small town in Colorado, the announcers were using up all of the most horrific adjectives they could think of.
The FBI had issued a statement the day before regarding the explosion, announcing that all of the victims who’d died in the blast had been identified as members of the Angelos Michoacan drug cartel, and that the explosion was suspected of being the work of a rival cartel. They also found the wreckage of the van in the quarry and were speculating that the perpetrators may have accidentally blown themselves up. The blast was so hot that it was difficult to determine whether anyone had been within range of it.
The attack in Kirkland, on the other hand, seemed to be something of a mystery. The E & E offices were publicly known as the headquarters of Brigadoon Investments Corporation, a privately held company that administered investments of retirement funds for many different companies. The agents handling the investigation had come to the conclusion that Brigadoon had been targeted because of its investments in military technologies. They had no specific suspects, and had not yet managed to tie the attack to any known terrorist groups. Nevertheless, the attacks were being treated as acts of terrorism, which kept them firmly under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Colorado state investigators were complaining that the feds were not bothering to share any information, but the FBI reiterated that acts of terrorism fell under United States jurisdiction, rather than that of any particular state in which they might occur.
“Brigadoon CEO Allison Peterson,” said one announcer, “and CFO Donald Jefferson were both wounded in the attack and are currently listed in critical condition at separate hospitals. Nineteen people died in the attacks, and an additional forty-eight were wounded. The military-style attack took place in broad daylight, and authorities believe there were at least fifteen attackers involved. Seven of them died during the attack, after exchanging gunfire with local police and security personnel.”
There was no mention of the three attackers who were captured, which told Noah that Doc Parker was keeping that information to himself. He had mentioned to Noah that they had been turned over to E & E’s interrogation team, so it was highly unlikely that the FBI even knew they existed. The thought made Noah wonder if the interrogation was making any headway, and he reached into his pocket for his phone.
“Brigadoon Investments, how may I direct your call?”
“Doc Parker, please, Noah Wolf calling.”
“Yes, sir, one moment, please.” The hold music began playing, but it was less than thirty seconds before the call was picked up.
“Parker,” the old man barked. “Little early for you to be calling, isn’t it? Or have you got something for me?”
“Just checking in, sir,” Noah said. “We’re currently on the way to Alexandria, Virginia. That’s where my old friend lives, so it’s the most logical place to start our search for Nicolai
ch. I was wondering if your interrogation has turned up any new information.”
“Nothing yet. So far, our three guests are proving to be as stubborn as we expected. We do these things in stages, to break down their reluctance, rather than their resistance. The idea isn’t to force them to say something they think we want to hear, but to persuade them to tell us what they truly know.”
“Yes, sir, I understand. I don’t suppose there’s any other news?”
“Well, one thing. Allison got her hands on a telephone somehow this morning and called me while I was still in bed. Took me ten minutes to figure out what she was trying to say, but what it boiled down to was to tell you to keep your head down. I explained that you were actively looking for Andropov, and that he’s our most likely suspect. She agrees, but she’s afraid you’ll be walking into a trap.”
“I’m glad to hear she’s able to talk at all,” Noah said. “The way you talked last night, I thought she was paralyzed.”
“Only on the right side, but her left hand seems to be working normally. Her speech problem has to do with the fact that only the muscles on the left side of her face are responding at the moment. Like I said, it took a little time to understand her, but there’s no doubt that her mind is as sharp as ever. She’ll be back in this chair eventually, don’t you doubt it.”
“That’s good news, sir. Please let me know if your interrogators come up with anything. For now, we’re just going to proceed with the plan we came up with last night.”
“That’s fine, and keep me apprised.” The line went dead and Noah slipped his phone back into his pocket. He glanced into the rearview mirror and saw that Moose and Neil were still sleeping, then flicked his eyes at Sarah.
She was awake and looking at him. “What’s good news?”