by David Archer
The team left the building and walked to the car. Moose and Noah spotted a Ford sedan parked at the end of the block at the same time.
“Three men in that Ford,” Moose said. “They’re eyeballing us pretty intently.”
“I see them. Let’s take them for a cruise in the countryside.” They slid into the car and Noah turned to Sarah. “Just head toward Clifton. We’re looking for somewhere isolated.”
Sarah looked at him and swallowed hard, then punched “Clifton, Virginia,” into the GPS and put the car in gear. Noah pulled down the sun visor and used the vanity mirror to watch the Ford pull out behind them.
Sarah pulled the car onto Interstate 66 a few moments later and the Ford followed them up the ramp. The driver was carefully keeping them in sight, while trying to keep one or two cars between them. Sarah made it slightly difficult, weaving in and out of traffic and keeping her speed close to eighty-five miles per hour. The Ford’s driver had to work a bit to stay close enough, but that was what Noah wanted.
Following the directions on the GPS, she took the I-495 loop south to North Springfield and then peeled off onto State Route 620. A couple of minutes later she bore left onto 645 for the eight-mile drive into Clifton. The Ford stayed with them.
“Up there,” Noah said as he pointed through the windshield. “Looks like some kind of burned-out old building. Turn in there, but make it sudden. I want it to look like we’re trying to dig them. As soon as you get off the highway, floor it and try to get around behind the building. I need a few seconds where they can’t see us. As soon as we’re out of their sight, stop long enough for me and Moose to bail out, then go on a hundred yards and stop again. Turn the car so that you and Neil can get your own guns out the windows. Keep them aimed at the Ford, but do not fire unless you absolutely have to.”
In the back seat, Moose lightly backhanded Neil on his shoulder. “Got that? Don’t shoot unless you have to!”
“No, really? I couldn’t hear the boss just now, thank you for interpreting.” Neil withdrew the machine pistol from the computer bag lying on the seat beside him and quickly checked to make sure it was locked and loaded.
Sarah reached into her purse for her Beretta and laid it in her lap. “Okay, hold tight and keep fingers off triggers,” she said. “Sharp turn.”
She had been cruising the two-lane highway at about sixty, but she had backed off the gas a bit so that her speed had dropped to fifty-five. She hit the brakes suddenly and whipped the wheel to the right, then floored the car once again to take the turn into the parking lot of the abandoned building at almost 50 miles per hour. The car skidded on some loose gravel, but then the all-wheel drive dug in and shot them forward again. A service road seemed to run around the building, so she took it.
Moose, watching through the back window, called out that the Ford had spun out while trying to make the same turn. Sarah had them around the back of the building while the Ford’s driver was trying to get the car turned around in the right direction. She slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt, and Moose and Noah leaped out. As soon as they slammed their doors, she hit the gas again, drove a couple hundred feet more and then slid the car to a stop with the driver’s side facing the way they had come. Neil already had his machine pistol out the window and aimed toward where the Ford would appear, and she quickly followed suit with her own pistol.
Moose and Noah had their Glocks in hand, and when the Ford came fishtailing around the corner they both opened fire. Noah’s first shot hit the driver in his throat, while Moose took out the left front tire. The car veered left, coming straight toward them, and they had to run to get out of its way before it crashed into the steel pylons of an old water tower.
The two other men in the car were dazed by the impact, but they quickly moved to get out. Both of them came out the passenger side, and the man from the front seat—Pasquale Morabito—fell to the ground. The other stayed on his feet, pistol in hand as he tried to swing around to face Noah and Moose.
“Drop the gun and you might live through this,” Noah said, his own gun obviously aimed directly at the man’s face. The two of them froze in that position for about five seconds, and then the man carefully stooped down to lay his pistol on the ground. Noah kicked it away.
The man who had fallen was trying to get up while digging for his own gun in its holster. Moose skirted around the first man and put the barrel of his Glock against the fellow’s forehead. He had made it to his knees, and carefully raised both hands above his head. Moose took his gun from him and stepped back, motioning for him to stand.
“Where is Nicolaich Andropov?” Noah asked.
The two men glanced at each other, but then both of them shrugged. “Don’t know who you mean,” Morabito said.
“Are we gonna do this the hard way? Look, gentlemen, let me explain how this is going to work. You are working for Nicolaich Andropov. Your job at the moment, I’m sure, is to keep tabs on me and where I’m at. I want to find Mr. Andropov. You can either tell me where he is, in which case I will let you live, or I can kill one of you right now and leave the other one alive to give Nicolaich a message for me. Which way you wanna do it? Doesn’t matter to me.”
Morabito started to speak, but the other man cut him off. “Just how long do you think we’d live if we tell you anything you want to know? This Russian, he’s crazy, and he’s got a hard-on for you like nothing I ever seen. We tell you how to find him, he’ll kill us anyway.”
Morabito nodded. “He’s right, dude. Even if you managed to kill him first, he’s got people who would make sure they got us. On the other hand, you leave us alive and we’ll tell him whatever message you want. We’re only in this for the money, anyway.”
Noah looked from one man to the other for a moment. “Money is a really stupid reason to put your life on the line, don’t you think? I’ve never been able to understand the mercenary mind. What does it matter how much money you get promised if you run the risk of dying every single day you’re on the job? It’s like playing Russian roulette; sooner or later you’re bound to lose.”
“You run the risk of dying every time you cross the street,” Morabito said. “At least if you’re making big money, you can live pretty good until the odds catch up with you. Hell, you ain’t no different than we are. I know who you are, I know what you do; you get paid to kill people. Isn’t that being a mercenary?”
“Do you think I give a shit what you think of me?” Noah asked him. “I only need one of you to deliver my message, so my question still remains the same. Tell me where to find Nicolaich and I let you walk away from here. You can disappear, go somewhere he’ll never find you. Don’t tell me and one of you dies today. You have thirty seconds to decide.”
The two men stared at each other for several seconds, and then the other man turned to Noah. “Here’s the problem,” he said. “In our business, you never talk—and if you do, you make sure there’s nobody left who can snitch on you for doing it. You want to know where the Russian is?” He hooked a thumb at Morabito. “You kill this piece of crap and I’ll tell you.”
Morabito’s eyes went wide as he looked at his companion, and then even wider when he saw Noah’s gun swing toward his face. It was the last thing he ever saw, because both of his eyes imploded as the hollow-point slug passed between them and blew out the back of his head.
The gun instantly went back to the other man. “Done,” Noah said. “Where is Nicolaich?”
The man looked down at the corpse beside him for a second or two, then looked up at Noah. “I can’t give you his exact location because he keeps it secret, only a few people know it, but I can tell you how to find him tomorrow. He’s got this habit, see? Every Wednesday, dead on 11 o’clock in the morning, he calls his daughter in Russia so he can talk to his grandson. The kid’s only like seven or eight, and the old man is crazy about him. Doesn’t matter where he is or what he’s doing, he’ll drop it to make that call.”
Noah glanced at Moose. “Get Neil over here,”
he said. Moose nodded and jogged toward the car as Noah turned back to his informant. “What’s your name?”
“Tom Bridger,” the man said. “I don’t know the daughter’s number, but I’m pretty sure you can get it. He always talks to the kid for half an hour, should give you plenty of time to run a trace and get a location, right?”
Sarah drove the car closer while Moose jogged back to Noah, and Neil slid out of the backseat when they got there. He kept his machine pistol pointed at Bridger as he approached, and avoided looking down at the corpse. “Yeah, Boss?”
“I just found out that Nicolaich calls his daughter in Russia every Wednesday morning. How hard would it be for you to track down her number and trace the call back to Nicolaich when he makes it?”
Neil snorted. “I’m sure we can get her number from NSA,” he said. “There’s a half-dozen ways I can tap her line, then when he calls it I just start tracing back. The problem could be if he uses a lot of reroutes. If it takes too long to get back to his originating phone, he’ll be off the line before I get a location.”
“Like I said,” Bridger put in, “he always talks to the kid for at least a half hour.”
Neil shrugged. “Half an hour should be plenty, but it still boils down to how many different forwarding numbers he runs it through. I’d say the odds are pretty good. To stay hidden in a half-hour phone call, he’d have to bounce the call dozens of times. It’s not like you see in the movies, where you have to keep somebody talking for so many minutes to trace a call. Nowadays it’s pretty much instantaneous, but each time the call is forwarded, you have to punch in another whole trace. Figure each one takes maybe twenty seconds to set up, he’d have to bounce through ninety different phones to make sure I couldn’t track him back to the phone he’s using. If it’s a landline, the phone company will have an address for it that I can hack, and a cell phone will give me its GPS location.” He grinned. “I think we can do this, Boss.”
Noah nodded thoughtfully, then looked back at Bridger. “Of course, that’s assuming you’re telling me the truth. Then the only problem that remains is how to be sure you don’t warn him that I’m going to be tracing that call.”
Bridger smiled. “I look stupid to you? If I go back to him now, after these guys are dead, he’s gonna naturally figure I gave up something and put a bullet in my head. The only hope I’ve got of staying alive now is to disappear as fast as I can. You ain’t gotta worry about me saying anything.”
“I know,” Noah said as he squeezed the trigger. The bullet took Bridger’s left eye, and most of the left side of his head seemed to explode out the back. His body stood for almost three seconds more before it fell.
“Jesus!” Neil said, his eyes wide and his face pale. “Jesus, Boss! He told you what you wanted to know! You said you wouldn’t kill him if he told you what you wanted to know!”
“Chill out, Neil,” Moose said. “The guy would probably have gone straight back to Nicolaich, and even if he tried to run, Nicolaich would catch him before he could get out of town. Noah did exactly what he had to do.”
“Get into the car,” Noah said. “Let’s get back to the hotel and get you started on whatever you have to do to catch and trace that call. If Bridger was telling the truth, we’ve got one possible shot at getting Nicolaich before he can get Molly or me. We can’t afford to miss the chance, even if it’s just a long shot.”
“Yeah, but...”
“In the car, Neil, now,” Noah said, then he turned to Moose. “We want this to look like a firefight.” He picked up Morabito’s gun and forced it into the dead man’s hand. He put Morabito’s finger on the trigger, then fired the entire clip into the air as Moose did the same with Bridger’s pistol.
They got into the car, where Neil was leaning against the window he had raised and crying quietly. Noah turned his head around to look at the boy, but Sarah reached up and put a hand to his cheek, forcing him to look forward again. As he did so, he noticed that her own face was very pale.
SIXTEEN
Neil was quiet all the way back to the hotel and went straight to his room when they got there. Noah started to follow him but Moose caught his arm.
“First time he ever saw somebody get killed,” Moose said quietly, since they were standing in the hallway. “Let me handle him, okay, Boss?”
Noah started to say something but Sarah took hold of his hand. “Come on, Babe,” she said. “I’m pretty shook up myself. Neil and I aren’t normally involved in those parts of the missions. Knowing that you kill people and actually seeing you do it are two different things, believe me. He’ll be okay, he’s just got to get his head wrapped around it.”
“He has to,” Noah said as he let her lead them into their room. “He’s got to run the phone tap tomorrow, and he needs to get on it today.”
Sarah closed the door and then turned to face Noah. She just looked at him for a moment, then reached up to put her arms around his neck. She pulled him close and laid her head on his chest.
It took Noah a couple of minutes to realize that she was crying, as well. He tried to look down at her face without disturbing her but it wasn’t possible, so he hooked a finger under her chin and tipped her face up. “I understand,” he said. “I’ve seen other people, when they first witness a violent death. We had a couple of guys in the Army just couldn’t cope with it, they ended up sending them home not long after the first time they had to kill anyone. The thing is, it’s not your first time. You saw me killing Nicolaich’s men when I got you out of the club in Russia.”
She barked out something that was a combination of laugh and sob. “I know you won’t get this, but I wasn’t really paying a lot of attention to who you were shooting at the time. I was too busy ducking and praying I was going to get out of it alive. All I remember about that day is running and then watching you damn near bleed to death. Can’t say I really recall anybody getting shot, at least not other than just academically, you know, like I know it happened even if I can’t remember a specific instance. I mean, I know you shot people, and Moose did, too. That doesn’t mean I saw it happen.”
Noah looked into her eyes. “I understand. Is there anything I can do for you?”
She leaned her head forward until her forehead was against his breastbone. “Right at the moment, probably the best thing you could do for me is take me to bed. Can we spare the time?”
Noah grabbed her butt and lifted as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, then carried her to the bed. “We’ll make time.”
* * * * *
It was an hour later when Noah’s phone rang, and he picked it up to see that it was Moose calling. “Hello?”
“I thought you’d want to know that Neil is okay,” Moose said. “He walked in here and sat down at his computer and started playing some black ops game, but after a while he shut it down and we talked. He’ll be fine; he’s in the head right at the moment. He’s got the Andropov girl’s phone number all set up for tomorrow, by the way.”
“Good. If this pans out, we might be able to bring this to an end pretty quickly.”
“Yep. And, hey, while I got you on the phone, has anybody but me paid attention to the fact that we skipped lunch? My stomach is starting to think somebody cut my throat.”
Noah glanced at Sarah, who was cuddled up against him with her head on his shoulder. “Getting hungry?”
She made a face that indicated indifference. “I could eat, but I’m not starving.”
“Okay, it’s...” He pulled his phone away from his ear and looked at the time display. “It’s almost three. Give us half an hour and we’ll go find us a late lunch.”
“Okay, Boss.”
Noah put down the phone and looked at Sarah’s face again. “I need a quick shower,” he said, and then he kissed her forehead as he rolled up out of the bed.
“Me, too,” Sarah said. She tossed off the covers and made it into the bathroom before he did, leaving the door open as an invitation to him to follow.
They had jus
t finished dressing when a tap on their door told them Moose and Neil were ready to go. Noah slipped his holstered Glock onto the back of his belt and covered it with the light gray jacket he often wore, as Sarah picked up her purse. He opened the door and they stepped out together, then the four of them rode down the elevator and walked out to the car.
As soon as they got into the car, Neil laid his computer on the seat and then reached up to tap Noah on the shoulder. “Sorry about that, Boss,” he said. “Guess I freaked out a bit.”
“No sweat,” Noah said. “Let’s forget about it, okay?”
“Okay,” Neil said, sounding relieved. “Listen, I got Marina Andropov’s phone number from the NSA database and got it set up with a ‘trap and tap’ program. My computer is set up to record and trace any call that goes to that number for the next twenty-four hours, automatically. I figured I’d give it that long, just in case he was either early or late.”
“Good job. Now we just hope Bridger was telling the truth. For right now, let’s just all keep an eye out for tails.” He reached into a pocket and took out his phone, then dialed Molly’s number. She answered on the second ring.
“How’s it going out there, Mr. Spock?” she asked. “Can I stop worrying yet?”
“Not just yet,” Noah said, “but we may have picked up a lead that will help us get to that point. Unfortunately, we won’t know until tomorrow sometime, so you stay close to your shadows.”
“That’s easy,” Molly said. “They won’t let me out of their sight. One of my supervisors came running into my office a couple hours ago to ask a question, and Ms. Sanchez had him flat on his back with a gun pointed at his head so fast I never got the chance to tell her he was okay. The poor guy is in his 60s, I think he almost had a heart attack.”
“Good, that means she’s doing her job. Have them take you straight home after work, no stops and no social calls. They’ll switch out for the second shift about then, and between your bodyguards and the security around your place, you should be okay tonight.”