Lone Wolf (17 page)

“You've got other teams. I'm sure that with a little modification to the planning, they can handle the missions I'd be missing out on. The issue is whether or not anyone else could get to Nicolaich, and I don't see that happening anytime soon. I'm the best shot we've got.”

Allison was silent for almost a minute, and it was obvious that the wheels in her head were spinning. “I want you to meet with Donald tomorrow morning, and begin planning the mission. He'll take you to Wally Lawson, he runs our R&D section. Wally can show you some of the new toys his boys and girls come up with, and make the belt you're talking about.” She got to her feet and leaned forward, her hands on the desk. “That belt will be a last resort, though, Camelot. I'm going to go ahead and authorize this mission, but I want you to give me your word right now that you'll do everything in your power to come back. There are an awful lot of people who will be pretty pissed if you go out and get yourself killed on this.”

“Yeah, and I'm one of them,” Sarah said.

“I'll do all I can, I promise you,” Noah said. “The priority has to be killing Nicolaich, though. He's the threat to the agency, and that threat has to be eliminated.”

Allison nodded once. “All right, then,” she said. “Nine o'clock in the morning, right here. Have your team with you.”

Allison sat down and opened the file, signifying that the interview was over. Noah rose and pulled Sarah to her feet, and the two of them walked out of the office. They were quiet as they rode down the elevator, but once they were in the Corvette, Sarah looked over at him.

“Do you really think this is the smart move?”

“I think it's the only move. We got drawn into a situation that could compromise the entire agency, a setup that allowed Nicolaich and his organization to get way too much information on us, on our team. Right now, that's all he's got, but if we don't shut him down quickly he'll find other things tied to us. It's like a trail of breadcrumbs, and as he finds each crumb that gets accidentally dropped, it will lead him to the next one, and the next.”

Sarah leaned back against the headrest as Noah drove back toward his home. “And what do the rest of us do, if you get yourself killed?”

“You'll be assigned to another team,” Noah said. “All three of you have already proven yourselves, Allison isn't going to give you up just because I'm gone.”

They rode the rest of the way to the house in silence, and Sarah followed him inside. Noah went straight to the living room couch and took out his phone. He called Moose first, and then Neil, to tell them to meet at the offices in the morning in preparation for a new mission. Both of them complained, but there was no question of whether they would show up.

Noah turned on the television and began scanning through the movies that were available. After a moment, Sarah got up and went into the kitchen. She returned a few minutes later with a pair of root beer floats, and snuggled up to Noah as she handed him one.

“You pick the lousiest times to volunteer yourself for a suicide mission, do you know that?”

“I have absolutely no intention of making it a suicide mission,” Noah said. “Not for me, anyway. I'm planning to make it suicidal for Nicolaich to come after me. I'm only hoping that he's as angry at me about the death of his son as little miss Selah seemed to believe he would be. One of the things I've learned over the years by observing human nature is that anger will almost always cause you to make mistakes. The angrier he is, the more emotional he is, the more likely he is to make a mistake that will give me the chance to take him out before he can do anything to me.”

Sarah looked at him for a long moment, then leaned her head on his shoulder. “I just finally got up the nerve to tell you how I feel, and if I lost you now...”

Noah thought for a second, then kissed the top of her head. “I'm going to do my best to make sure you don't,” he said. “That's all I can promise you.”

Sarah looked at the clock on the wall, and said, “It's early, but how would you feel about going on to bed? I—I need your attention. Your undivided attention, all on me. Is that okay?”

Without a word, Noah picked up the remote and turned off the television. The two of them rose from the couch and walked into the bedroom.

When they left the house the next morning, they found Neil standing outside the garage, sitting on the fender of the Corvette. His Hummer was nowhere in sight, and Sarah grinned at him. “You look like death warmed over,” she said.

“I was up most of the night,” the skinny kid said. “I can't believe they're sending us on another mission this quick, that's just not fair.”

Sarah laughed. “We work for the government,” she said, “and you're stupid enough to think they'll do things in a fair way? Besides, you can blame our fearless leader for this mission. It was his idea.”

Neil looked over at Noah. “Are you freaking kidding me? What on earth could be so important that you would drag us back out into the field when we've only just gotten home?”

Noah pointed at him to follow them, and led Sarah toward her own Camaro. “Sarah's driving this morning,” he said. “You can ride with us. As for the mission, it turns out our last one really was a setup, a scam run by the Russians to draw E & E out into the open. Andropov was apparently trying to get a lead on us, and there is very little doubt that he has photos of me, Moose and Sarah, as well as the names we were using. If he shakes the right trees, he's going to find out more about us until he cracks one of the identities. That could lead right back here to Neverland, and we can't let that happen. Nicolaich just became National Enemy Number One, and moved to the top of our target list.”

“So send one of the other teams,” Neil said as he climbed into the back seat. “Let us take a break. Isn't there something in our contracts that says they can't send us out too often?”

Sarah laughed again as she started the car and pulled out of the driveway. “You have a contract? I don't. I wish I did, because I'd be going through it trying to find a loophole to get me out of this screwy outfit.”

“It's got to be me,” Noah said. “While we were in Russia, I killed several of Nicolaich's people, including a man who is supposedly his own son. I'm sure he knows that it was me, even if he doesn't know who I really am. We've got to use that against him, by making him come after me. When he does, then I spring the trap and take him out.”

Neil made a snort. “Well, goodie, goodie for you,” he said. “And what if he turns out to be better at this game than you are? We end up without a team leader, at which point we might become expendable. Do you know what expendable means in this organization? It means dead, that's what it means!”

“No, it doesn't. When you guys were assigned to me, Allison made it plain that you are each the best in your respective fields. There's no way she's going to get rid of you, just because I get killed. You're safe enough, all they would do is assign you to another team.”

“I don't want to be on another team, dammit,” Neil said. “One of my many talents is calculating the probability of any particular outcome, based on available data concerning the participants. I applied that talent to figuring out my odds of living to the ripe old age of thirty, and they got a whole lot better once I added you into the equation. They put me with anybody else, and I'm not likely to live past twenty-two! And just for the record, Moose and Sarah probably wouldn't make it a year without you in charge. So dig down deep inside yourself and find just enough compassion to understand that we need you to stay alive and healthy, you arrogant son of a bitch!”

“Neil, chill out!” Sarah said. “At least Andropov doesn't have your picture. The way it turns out, he probably got a whole album full of Noah, Moose and me. We may not even make it out to where we have to go for this mission, and I'm still not sure he hasn't already tracked us back to here. Somebody sure as hell broke into the house the other night, I don’t care what Jefferson's people say!”

Neil slapped the back of her headrest, and Noah turned suddenly to look at him. “Don't yell at me!” Neil said. “It isn't my fault I'm freaking out over this! I wasn't expecting to have to go back out into the field this soon, and now you tell me Noah is putting his life on the line?”

Suddenly, there were tears on Neil's cheeks, and Sarah saw them in the rearview mirror. She reached over and put a finger to Noah's lips, cutting off whatever he was about to say to the frightened boy in the backseat.

“Neil, look,” Sarah said softly. “I didn't mean to yell at you. This is pretty stressful, I understand that, and I think I know what's really bothering you. You've been pretty much on your own since you were a kid, right? And the team feels like a family, now, doesn't it? That's why you're so scared of losing Noah; he's like your big brother, am I right?”

Neil turned his face to look out the back window, and for a moment the only sound that could be heard was from stifled sobs. “I'm scared of losing all of you,” he said. “What if they split us up, if something happens to Noah? What if we each get sent to a different team? We were all brand new when we got assigned to Camelot, but what would it be like to go into a team that was already together? We'd be the new guys, and we'd probably never fit in.”

“But we'd still have each other,” Sarah said. “You don't think I would turn my back on you, just because we were on different teams, do you?”

Neil sniffled a couple more times, then turned around to face forward again. “No,” he said at last. “I just don't know what I'd do without all of you. Even Moose—he picks on me, but I know he'd have my back if I needed him.”

Noah turned and faced him. “Neil, believe me when I tell you I'm going to do my very best to make sure I'm the one who walks away from this. I'm going to need you, though, because between your computer and your brain, you're one of my most important assets. We're going to draw this bastard out and eliminate him, before he can do any damage to us. You are going to be a big help in that, and I know that you've always got my back, too.”

Neil managed to smile, and the sniffles faded away. When he suggested they all go out to the Sagebrush Saloon for dinner again that evening, Noah made a point of being enthusiastic in his agreement.

M
oose pulled into the parking garage just behind the Corvette, and parked right beside them. They all greeted one another, and then stepped into the elevator for the ride up to Allison's office. They were surprised to find her standing there waiting when the elevator opened, but she only hooked her head at them and walked off toward the conference room.

Donald Jefferson was waiting there, and there were large cups of coffee on the table ready for each of them. Allison grinned as she took her seat at the table. “I figured we might as well make this as comfortable and cordial as we can,” she said. “I can't wait to hear what your mission plan is going to be, Camelot.” She picked up a cup and took a sip of the hot liquid.

“Yes, I'm pretty curious about that myself,” Jefferson said. “I want you to know this is the very first time I've ever seen the Dragon Lady, here, allow a team leader to declare his own mission. We're breaking a lot of rules and records, here, Camelot.”

The team had all taken their seats, and gratefully accepted the coffee. Noah took a sip of his own before he answered.

“It just makes sense,” he said. “If Andropov has gone to such trouble to try to draw us out, then we shouldn't disappoint him completely. Now, I'm not interested in giving him what he wants, which is probably my head on a platter and all of yours for side dishes, so it only makes sense for us to turn the tables and use his own plans against him. I killed his son, so I'm going to be number one on his list. If I'm out where he can find me, then he's going to have to expose himself in order to get me. When he does, he dies.”

Jefferson glanced at Allison, then turned back to Noah. “The first thing we need to do is clarify whether or not that was truly his son that you killed. I've been digging since early this morning, and I've only found two references to Vasily Andropov. That is definitely the name of Nicolaich's youngest son, but I've only scrounged up one photo of the boy, taken when he was about nineteen.” He pointed at the monitor on the wall, squeezed the button on a small device, and a picture appeared there. It showed a young man with dark hair and eyes, mugging for the camera with a couple of his friends. “Is that the face you saw in Kubinka?”

Noah and Moose both concentrated on the image, and then nodded. “Definitely,” Moose said, and Noah followed with, “That's him. He didn't look much different, at least until I gave him a third eye.”

Jefferson sighed deeply. “Then the situation is every bit as dire as you describe. Vasily's mother died in childbirth, and the little intelligence we can gather on Nicolaich says that he doted on the boy. He has two older sons, and a daughter, but he isn't very close to any of them. Vasily was his pride and joy, the only one of his children who shared his disregard for human life. We haven't been able to come up with any chatter regarding the boy's death, so it's a safe bet Nicolaich is keeping it quiet at the moment.”

Noah nodded. “Then, what would happen if I went back to Russia and began letting it be known that I had already taken the kid out, and come back looking for his daddy?”

Jefferson's eyebrows went up almost a half-inch, and Allison's eyes got a bit wider, as well. “Camelot, that would set off a storm...Oh, my God, you'd have all of the SVR crawling all over you.”

“I don't think so,” Noah said. “Nicolaich is going to want me all to himself. He may not intend to pull the trigger with his own hand, but I'm certain he'll want to be there when it happens. He's the man who gets to decide who lives and dies, remember? Godlike powers tend to make one believe in his own invincibility. He won't hesitate to become personally involved in trying to trap me or kill me.”

“Or capture you,” Allison said. “That's what you said last night, and I still think it's probably going to be high on his list of priorities. He's not going to want you dead, not at first; he's going to want to bleed you dry before you die.”