Noah Wolf Box Set 4

by David Archer

  As soon as they were secure, he climbed out and the armed men got aboard. They took seats facing the four captives, and Noah closed the side door. He slapped the side of the helicopter twice, earning himself a thumbs up from the pilot, and then backed away. The chopper rose into the air and swung toward the east.

  “Noah to Neil,” Noah said. “The chopper is in the air and on its way.”

  “And I’m watching,” Neil said. “This is going to be rough, it’s moving pretty quick. I see the direction, and I’m trying to anticipate it. I have to jump ahead by grids, and if the pilot turns before he gets into the next grid, I could lose him.”

  “Just do the best you can,” Noah said. He turned and walked back into the building, closed the overhead door and secured the holding cell again.

  SIXTEEN

  “Okay,” Neil said, “so far, so good. This baby is about ten miles out, still moving on the same heading. He’s flying almost due east, like a straight line.”

  “Good,” Noah said as he walked into the break room. He had made himself coffee a couple hours earlier, and poured another cup. “If you can identify the yacht, then we should be able to track it from then on, right?”

  “Damn right,” Neil said. “I can mark it so my computer will stay locked on it all the time. It won’t matter where it goes, I’ll have its position at all times.”

  “That’s the goal. Do your best.”

  “Hey, hey,” Neil said. “The helicopter just dropped its speed, that means it’s getting close. I’m staying on it, but the yacht should be coming into view any time. Okay, wait, he’s turning slightly to the south. I’ve gotta change grids, but now that it’s slowing down, it’s easier to stay in front of them. Holy cow, there she is! Big sucker of a yacht, with a nice big helipad right on the back end! I’m watching, I’m watching and yes! We have touchdown, and my computer is locked on the yacht. Hang on, I’m switching screens to get to the transponder logs. Every vessel in the Gulf has to have a transponder, so I can match transponder signal to its position from the satellite image, and that should give me the name of the yacht and the ownership information.”

  “That could be a great help,” Noah said. “Let me know as soon as you have it.”

  “Well, you can go ahead and buy me a cigar, because I’ve got it. The yacht is a three hundred footer named Lady Midnight, an old World War II escort frigate that was built in Canada and later converted to a yacht. She belongs to a company out of Miami, Florida called Rampart International. Rampart International seems to be a shell company, maybe set up just to own the yacht, but I’m looking at who owns the company. There’s probably going to be several companies involved, but I might be able to get past the corporate veil and find out who the principals are this way.”

  “Good work, Neil,” Noah said. “Let me know what you find out as soon as you can.”

  “I’m on it. Neil out.”

  Noah sat behind his desk and and took a long drink of his coffee, then leaned back in his chair. He set an alarm on his phone and went back to sleep until eight. When he awoke, he unlocked the front door and then went to the break room to make a fresh pot of coffee. Afterward, he returned to his office to wait for his transporters to arrive.

  He had just gotten into his chair when his phone rang, and he saw that it was Bill Mayweather calling.

  “Townsend,” he said.

  “Hey, Rob, it’s Bill. I just wanted to tell you that was an awesome job, picking up those special items. I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly, but I’m glad it did. We have orders for a couple of those parts sometime in the next day or two.”

  Noah put a smile into his voice. “Glad to handle it,” he said. “What about the shipments for today?”

  “They should be there within a couple of hours. We’re getting them ready right now. Everything ready for shipment?”

  “Oh, yes,” Noah said. “In fact, my transporters ought to be here just about any time.”

  “Excellent. I might get the chance to come down and visit with you this afternoon, will you have time?”

  “Bill, I’ll certainly make time for you. Try to give me a heads up on when you’re coming, would you?”

  “I sure will. Talk to you later.”

  Noah said goodbye and the phone went dead in his hand. He dropped it onto his desk and then turned to his computer. He still had to prepare the shipping documents for the organs that were due in, but that only took a few minutes for each one.

  The front door chimed, and two of his transporters came in, the ones he had sent home the day before. He greeted them quickly and told them to relax in the break room until the organs arrived, and the other three came in just a moment after that.

  “Wow, you all came in?” Noah asked. “I figured a couple of you would want to take the day off after yesterday.”

  “Why?” Tom asked. “All I did was take a nap on the plane, and I was back home a little before seven. This has to be one of the easiest jobs that I ever had, and the pay is great.”

  “It’s pretty good,” Noah said. “Unfortunately, I promised the other two they would have runs today, and I’ve only got three available. You guys get to argue over who gets the third one.”

  All three of them looked at one another, and then the two men shrugged. “Let Julie have it,” David said. “She needs the money more than we do.”

  Noah looked at them and smiled. “That’s nice of you,” he said.

  “Oh, I’ve known Julie all my life,” David replied. “And I knew that deadbeat ex-husband of hers that ran out and left her with four kids to raise all by herself. Trust me, she can use the money.” He turned to Tom. “Feel like a round of golf?”

  Tom grinned. “Don’t I always?” The two men turned and walked out of the building, and Noah looked at Julie.

  “That’s okay with you?” he asked. “You had a long run yesterday.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” she said. “Like Tom said, I caught naps on the plane. I finally got home around eleven, I never go to bed before then anyway. I can handle it.”

  “Okay,” Noah said. “The chopper ought to be in soon. The other guys are down in the break room, and there’s fresh coffee.”

  “I could use it,” she said, walking down the hall.

  Noah went back to his office and called Neil on the subcom. “Any updates? That helicopter should be coming back here before too long.”

  “Just a moment,” Neil said. “Okay, it’s still sitting on the back of the yacht at the moment. Since the yacht moves slowly enough for the computer to keep track of it, I zoomed in a lot closer. There’s quite a bit of activity going on, but I can’t tell what kind.”

  “I would imagine they’re getting the latest harvest victims ready, taking them to the operating room. Organs have to be packed for shipment immediately after removal from the donor. They probably already have them under anesthesia.”

  “Yeah,” Neil said. “Hey, Noah, when it comes time to do the hits, can I kill those doctors myself? Any doctor who would knowingly murder patients to harvest their organs, I’m not going to lose any sleep over that.”

  “I think I’ll let Jenny handle them,” Noah said. “I suspect she could do a better job at giving them justice for their crimes.”

  Neil chuckled. “She probably can, at that.”

  “Damn right,” Jenny said suddenly through the subcom. “They don’t get to die an easy death. No anesthesia, I want them to feel everything I do to them.”

  Sarah and Renée chimed in, voicing their approval, and then Noah decided it was time to get back to work. He printed out all the labels and datasheets, added the receipts that the transporters would have to get signatures on and then put together a folder for each of them.

  “Neil to Noah. Helicopter seems to be on its way.”

  “Got it.”

  He waited until he could hear the helicopter, less than a dozen minutes later, and then went to the break room to collect everyone. The three of them, Julie and two men named Jack
Zigler and Ron Wheeler, followed Noah outside to watch the landing.

  The same men jumped out to unload the coolers, and Noah was given another envelope. He slipped it into his pocket as the transporters picked up the coolers and the helicopter rose into the air as they carried them toward the office. Noah quickly checked each cooler’s labels and affixed his own, then assigned one to each of the three transporters. Moments later, they were gone, all three of them driving toward the airport.

  Noah went into his office and took the envelope out of his jacket. He opened it and saw another list of organs that would be shipped out the next day. He laid it on his desk and leaned back in his chair, then got up again a moment later and went to get himself fresh cup of coffee. The short night’s sleep was beginning to wear on him.

  Marco showed up at just after ten and surprised Noah with some breakfast sandwiches. The two of them sat at the desk and ate, then went back to the holding cell to look it over.

  Surprisingly, none of the captives had done any real damage. None of the beds were made up, but the only evidence that they had even tried to escape were some scratches on the inside of the door. It looked like somebody had tried to dig through to the lock with just his fingernails.

  There were a couple of food wrappers on the floor, along with some crushed paper cups from the water cooler. Noah picked those up and carried them to a trash can, then locked the room again.

  “I hope we never have to use that again,” Marco said. “Even though I know we probably will.”

  “Most likely,” Noah said. “I…”

  “Neil to Noah,” he heard suddenly.

  “Go ahead, Neil.”

  “Just thought you’d like to know,” Neil said, “I kept an eye on the helicopter as it left you a little bit ago. It didn’t go back to the yacht, it went to a place in Houston. Houston Air Rescue, which happens to be a fairly new company that’s owned by, wait for it, Rampart International.”

  “Good work,” Noah said. “Find out everything you can about the company and everyone working for it. They’re all part of this thing, so they all go down.”

  “I’m already on it. They’ve got twenty-seven employees, including two helicopter pilots and quite a few people listed just as security personnel. They don’t seem to have many actual contracts, even though they claim to be working with lots of different companies throughout Texas to provide air ambulance and rescue services.”

  “Any luck finding out who owns Rampart?” Noah asked.

  “Holy cow, that’s a nightmare. I’ve gone through eleven layers of corporate ownership and I’m still tracking down who owns the next one in the sequence. Two of these have been European companies, and one was from the U.K.”

  “Really? I wonder if the operation has spread to other countries.”

  “I’m pretty sure it has,” Neil said. “Some of the other companies that are owned by companies in this mix are also air ambulance services. I got one in Germany, one in France and one in merry old England.”

  “Then it’s probably international,” Noah said. “I need to let Allison know.”

  “Roger that,” Neil said. “Neil out.”

  “If this thing is international,” Marco said, “then it may be too big for us to take down.”

  “No,” Noah said. “There’s somebody at the top, and I intend to find him. Him, and everybody between me and him right now.”

  * * * * *

  Noah’s phone rang at just after one o’clock and he saw that it was Conley calling. He answered the phone with a smile on his face, so it could be heard.

  “Townsend Transport Logistics,” he said.

  “Robert! It’s Harold Conley. I wanted to give you a little heads up, Bill Mayweather and I are on the way out to see you.”

  “Cool,” Noah said. “Bill told me he might make it out today. I’m looking forward to seeing you guys again.”

  “Ha! I’ll bet you are, considering we’re bringing your payday. Got some things to talk about with you as well, so be ready when we get there. Anybody else around?”

  “Just Jim Coolidge,” Noah said. “You want him to stick around, or should I send him somewhere else?”

  “Oh, he can stay. We got his pay with us, too. We should be there in about fifteen minutes or so.”

  “Looking forward to it,” Noah said. “See you then.”

  He cut off the call and looked at Marco. “This could be good,” he said. “Conley and Mayweather are both on the way out here. They’re bringing us some money, but they said they have some things to talk about. Maybe I’ll finally get the location of the other facilities.”

  The two men arrived on schedule and Noah invited them into his office. Marco brought in another folding chair to sit on, so the two of them could have the nicer chairs Noah had bought.

  “Rob,” Mayweather said. “Jim. I got to tell you guys, you did a helluva job last night. I don’t know how you pull it off so easy, but it was great work. Those people are going to net us a cool twelve million, so we decided to give both of you a bonus.” He turned to Marco. “Jim, you were told thirty thousand each. Because you did such a quick job, we bumped that up to fifty.” He opened his briefcase and took out a thick envelope, which he passed over to Marco. “There you go,” he said. “Two hundred thousand dollars, and it’s all yours.”

  Marco put a huge smile on his face. “Hey, hey,” he said. “How soon you want the next batch?”

  Mayweather chuckled. “It’ll be sometime in the next few days,” he said. “Just be patient, there’s plenty of work for you.”

  He turned to Noah. “Rob, going along to help Jim was stepping above and beyond the call of duty for you. We want you to know we appreciate it, but we also need to pay you for what you’ve done so far. Between yesterday and today, you handled quite a lot.” He reached into the briefcase and took out another envelope, not quite as thick as the one he had given Marco. “You had a hundred thousand coming, but we added a hundred thousand dollar bonus.” He passed the envelope over and Noah glanced inside, then dropped it into a drawer of his desk.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting a bonus, I just wanted to make sure Jim had backup.”

  “And it’s thinking like that,” Conley said, “that makes you so valuable. Now, when we started working on this new project of yours, we talked about the other locations. How soon could you be ready to go set up something like this out there?”

  Noah narrowed his eyes. “Well, I suppose I could teach Jim what to do here. Give me a couple of days to get him up on the paperwork and such, and then I could go. Can you give me an idea of where we are talking about?”

  “You bet,” Conley said. “We’ve got two other facilities in the U.S. One is in Trenton, New Jersey, and the other one is a little ways outside Las Vegas.”

  Noah waggled his head a bit as if thinking it over. “Yeah, shouldn’t be a problem. Major airport in both areas, so that helps.”

  “So you don’t see any issues with it, then?” Mayweather asked. “Setting up something like this for each of those?”

  “No, not at all. Should be simple, especially since we’ve already got this company set up. Those would just be out of state offices for us, I don’t think it would be all that much trouble.”

  “All right,” Mayweather said. “Then, I want you to think about something else.” He turned to Marco for a second. “Jim, would you mind to give us a room for a minute? This is something of a little bit of a private nature for Robert.”

  Marco grinned and got out. “No problemo,” he said. “I’ll be in the break room.” He left the office and closed the door behind him.

  Mayweather glanced at Conley, then turned back to Noah. “Robert, this is a pretty big business,” he said. “As such, we answer to somebody a lot higher up the ladder than ourselves.”

  Noah nodded. “Yeah, I figured.”

  “Well, when we told them what happened with Jim Harmon, and how Jim Coolidge seemed to be the right guy to take over, they asked
for a lot of information about both of you. We gave them everything they wanted and they checked you out, and—well, they suggested that we might want to discuss bringing you in as one of the partners.”

  Noah opened his eyes wide and stared at the man. “As a partner? Seriously?”

  “I told you he’d be shocked,” Conley said with a chuckle. “Rob, Bill and I are both partners in the company, and we think you’re a good fit. When the bosses suggested it, they asked us for our opinions and we said hell, yes! Now, as for what it means financially, let’s just say that each of us has made about a hundred million over the last year. That’s the kind of money you’d be looking at.”

  Noah stared at both of them for a moment, shaking his head. “I don’t know what to say,” he said. “I mean, sure, I’m interested. What would I have to do?”

  “Nothing you’re not already doing,” Mayweather said. “Robert, the reason you’re being offered this opportunity is because we see how you can help the business make even more money. You’ve got what it takes to understand what we do and not get all upset about it, and you’ve already solved a lot of problems for us. I think there’s a strong possibility that we might be answering to you, one day.”

  Noah leaned back in his chair, as if the whole thing was slightly overwhelming. “Well, I’m in. I’ve always dreamed of being into that kind of money, but I never thought I’d ever get the chance.”

  “That was before you met us,” Conley said. “Now, you’re going to have to meet the people above us. Think you can handle that?”

  “Oh, wow,” Noah said. “How soon would that have to happen? I’ll be honest, and that’s just a little bit scary. I mean, what if I say the wrong thing? I got a feeling the bosses aren’t somebody I want to piss off.”

  Conley laughed. “I don’t think you need to worry about it,” he said. “They see just how valuable you are, the same way we do. If they didn’t, you wouldn’t be getting the chance.”

  Noah looked from one man to the other and back, then took a deep breath. “Okay, then,” he said. “Whatever we have to do.”