In Sheep's Clothing (11 page)

“They’ve got Allison in surgery,” Noah said, “but we don't know anything yet. Jefferson's in the hospital in Kirtland, apparently he took a couple in the chest and a hit in the head, but Doc Parker says he was still conscious when they carried him out. That could be a good sign. They found John Hackett, but he's dead, so Parker is in charge for now. Mr. Jackson is acting as his deputy.” He turned to Neil. “I need you to get online, see what you can find out about Nicolaich Andropov. I don't know the details, but Doc Parker seems to think that he was involved in this attack, and if he was, then I want to find him as soon as we can. We are authorized to act on our own and go after him.”

Neil jumped up and ran out the door, but came back a few moments later with his computer. He plugged it in and turned it on as Moose turned to Noah.

“What can I do, Boss?” Moose asked.

Noah glanced at Sarah, who was busying herself with the little kitchen, then turned back to Moose. “Right now, I think the most important thing for you to do is try to help me keep things on an even keel. We’ve got to focus, Moose, try to either come up with a game plan on our own, or sit and wait to see what the home office has to say. Doc Parker didn’t seem to know when they might be back up to running properly.”

Moose nodded. “Okay. I just want to be able to check in with Elaine, now and then, is that all right?”

“Yeah, at this point I’d have to say it’s not a problem. They’re putting everything back together as quickly as they can and I’m certain security there is as high as it could possibly be right now.”

Neil cleared his throat, and Noah looked at him. “Noah? You said Mr. Jackson is okay?”

“Yes, he's helping Doc Parker run the show for right now, doing Mr. Jefferson’s job.”

Neil turned and looked at him. “Would you mind if I take a minute and call Lacey back? She and her mom are worried sick, they haven't heard from her dad since the attack started.”

Noah looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Be careful what you say,” he said. “You're not on a secure line, so don't give her too many details. Don't mention Doc Parker, just say that you got word that her father is okay.”

Neil grinned and nodded, and hit the redial button on his prepaid phone instantly. Noah sat quietly as Neil became a hero to his girlfriend for letting her know that her father was alive and apparently well.

Neil cut the call short and then got back on the computer. He was feeling a rage beginning to build within himself, anger at whoever had done this and caused so much harm and grief. He quietly told himself that it didn't matter who it was, Neil wanted his own chance to take a shot at them.

“Hey, Noah?” Neil asked.

“Yeah?”

“Can you get me a sawed-off shotgun? From everything I've read, even I can hit what I'm shooting at with that.”

Noah cocked his head and just looked at the skinny young man for a moment. “Tell you what,” he said finally. “I'll see what I can do.”

S
arah had decided on spaghetti, which pleased everyone, and it was done in fairly short order. She scooped it out onto plates and set one in front of each of the three men before making one for herself and taking a seat at the table.

“Be careful, Noah,” Moose said. “She’s acting domestic. I think that engagement ring must be too tight, it’s cutting off circulation to her brain.”

Sarah backhanded him on his shoulder. “Shut up, jerk face,” she said. “Remember the emergency protocols? We’re supposed to remain in character. According to the file they gave me, I’m Rosemary Wingo, engaged to be married sometime soon. Gotta act the part, right?”

Moose chuckled, and Noah simply turned and looked at Sarah. “Realistically, you’re right, but if we really were Wyatt and Rosemary, you don’t think I’d want you to wait on my friends, do you?”

“You shut up, too,” Sarah said as she spun her fork in the spaghetti and shoved it into her mouth.

Neil had spent the time before dinner hacking into every government database he could think of that might have a reference to Nicolaich Andropov. The man had been seen four times over the past two months. He was in Spain first, apparently negotiating an arms deal, then went to Rome for a week. No one seemed to have any idea what he was doing at the time, but then he turned up a couple of weeks later in London, where he was seen entering the North Korean embassy only days before that country escalated its efforts to rekindle the Korean War. He was almost captured there, but managed to slip away from his pursuers at the last second before they were ready to close in.

The most recent sighting of him, though, had been in Los Angeles. He was identified by an FBI agent there on a security video, in the company of an unknown mercenary who was in the process of purchasing weapons. A raid was mounted to try to capture both of them, but it failed.

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 photos 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.”