Edge of Anarchy_A Thriller, Action, Mystery Novel Read online

  EDGE OF ANARCHY

  Copyright © 2018 by David Archer.

  All right reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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  Published by: David Archer

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  ONE

  THREE

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

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  ONE

  Noah’s phone rang, snapping him instantly out of sleep. He grabbed it quickly, before its ringing could awaken his wife, Sarah.

  “Camelot,” he said.

  “Camelot, it’s Allison. We’ve got a new mission brewing, and I’m afraid your team is up. Briefing at oh nine thirty.”

  The line went dead without waiting for him to respond, so he turned and looked at the beauty sleeping beside him. She had been snuggled up against him as he slept and felt him move. One eye was open and peering at him through a tuft of her own hair.

  “There’s a new mission,” Noah said. “We’ve got the briefing in an hour.” He glanced at the time on his phone. “Let’s get a shower and go grab some breakfast on the way.”

  “Mmm, why can’t I just stay in bed? You don’t need me for the briefing, you can just go by yourself and then come back and tell me what’s going on.”

  “I don’t think that would work out very well. Come on, get up, it’s shower time.”

  Sarah rolled over and got her feet onto the floor, then forced herself to a standing position. “Okay, okay,” she said, “I’m up. Come on, I’ll get the water set the way we like it.” She made her way into the bathroom, and Noah heard the shower begin to run. He stripped out of the shorts he’d worn to bed and padded in behind her, stepping through the curtain and into the nice, hot water.

  When they were finished, Noah returned to the bedroom while she put on her makeup, and began laying out clothes for himself and Sarah. Sarah got a kick out of letting him choose her clothing and so he tried to do it every day when they were not on mission. This would be the last chance he’d have for a while, he was sure, so he decided to make it count. When she came out a few moments later and found the low-cut blouse and short skirt he had selected, she stared at him as he got into his own jeans and polo, but then put them on.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were dressed and had gone to the kitchen to make coffee. Noah poured them each a cup when it was ready and he sat down at the table across from her.

  “Allison’s gonna look at me funny when she sees this outfit, you know,” Sarah said.

  “So will Neil and Marco,” Noah replied, “but nobody’s going to say anything. They’ll all figure you’re trying to turn me on, and any men in the room will just enjoy the view.”

  The grin she had been trying to hold back suddenly escaped onto her face. “I think you like it when you see guys looking at me,” she said. “Yeah, yeah, I know you never feel jealousy, but I’m pretty sure there’s something about it that makes you feel good, or something like that. Pride, maybe?”

  Noah picked up his coffee and took a sip. “Well, all the guys do seem to get into much better moods when you’re dressed in a sexy outfit.”

  She chuckled. “Noah, that’s absolutely terrible. You should be ashamed, but I know you’re not.”

  They drank their coffee and headed out the door. Noah wasn’t surprised to see Neil and Jenny coming out of the trailer that sat on his property.

  “Ready to go back to work?” Jenny called across to them. “I sure am. I’m getting antsy.”

  “I’d rather be in England,” Sarah said with a grin, “but work is work. Maybe this one won’t be as wild as the last time.”

  Allison Peterson, a.k.a. the Dragon Lady, was the absolute head of the U.S. agency that was known simply as Elimination and Eradication. Her job required her to decide whether or not to send an assassin to terminate the life of a particular individual or group of individuals. Other agencies submitted requests for assassination to her, with a complete and detailed dossier on why they believed that assassination was necessary. If she approved the request, she personally assigned the mission to an operative who worked directly for her. Noah Wolf was one of those operatives.

  Each assassin had a three person support team that consisted of a transportation specialist, an intelligence specialist and a weapons and combat specialist. All of them were under the command of their team leader, and it was their job to make sure that their team leader was able to carry out his or her mission.

  Noah, however, was Allison’s special operative, and his team was constructed accordingly. After some recent events, another assassin had been reassigned to work with him. Her name was Jenny Lance, and her own codename was Cinderella. Jenny had once run her own team, but her addition to Team Camelot had created a team that could handle the most improbable missions, and Allison had wisely decided to keep that special team together. Jenny’s old team had been reassigned to a new assassin.

  Sarah was not only Noah’s wife, she was also his transportation officer and one of the best drivers he had ever seen. The girl could handle absolutely anything on wheels, and better than anyone else. When she had been assigned to him almost a year earlier, she had been aloof and resistant to even the slightest possibility of friendship, but as she got to know him that reluctance turned into attraction. They had begun a relationship not long afterward, and after a particularly rough mission a couple of months earlier, Sarah had given up her own apartment and moved in permanently with Noah.

  Noah was, in Allison’s words, the superstar of the organization. Because of something tragic that happened in his childhood, Noah Wolf had no normal, detectable emotions. This meant that he could not be baited into an emotional response, such as with anger or jealousy, but could always make his decisions based entirely on a clear and logical understanding of the situation. Of course, it also meant that he had no conscience, and was capable of doing whatever had to be done without any feelings of guilt or
recriminations. He was extremely intelligent and could often take a mission that seemed impossible and turn it into success.

  It was his lack of emotion that had originally caused Sarah to want little to do with him, but it was that same lack of emotion that finally drew her closer. Noah wondered occasionally if she considered him a challenge, if she was trying to get through to him in a way that no other woman ever had. Considering that she was the only woman he had ever truly wanted to be with for more than a very short time, he had to believe that she was accomplishing at least some part of that goal. He still didn’t feel any true emotional attachment to her, but he had conceded that he preferred living in a world that had her in it. That had twice caused him to walk into deadly traps in order to recover her from an enemy who had taken her hostage.

  They got to the office in plenty of time and parked in the underground garage, then rode the elevator up to Allison’s offices. Julie Stinson, Allison’s current secretary, smiled and waved at them as they walked past her toward the conference room where briefings always took place.

  The door was open, and they weren’t surprised to find Marco Turin already there and snacking on the doughnuts that were always available during the briefings. Allison was sitting at the head of the conference table, and Donald Jefferson, her second-in-command, was beside her.

  Allison looked on with a smile as Sarah brought Noah a paper plate with two doughnuts and a cup of coffee. “There is a rather dangerous situation that has been developing over the last few months, and it seems to be finally coming to a head. I’m sure you keep track of the stories in the news about terrorist groups and the threats they are presenting to so many Western nations, but there is a new group that has made an appearance on the scene and is causing quite a knuckle. Over just the past few months, they’ve been responsible for hundreds of attacks on civilian populations, far more than even the better-known organizations, and none of us have been able to figure out where they are getting all of their funding, personnel and equipment. The group is known as PRA, which stands for People’s Revolutionary Army, and they have been causing unbelievable instability in several European nations by committing sometimes absolutely terrifying atrocities. PRA and their allies have been behind literally hundreds of terrorist actions, from suicide bombers to blowing airliners out of the sky. Most of their activities have been particularly evil because they tend to target civilians, and they seem to make a special effort to target children. In the last six months alone, these sons of bitches have blown up more than a dozen schools scattered around half a dozen European countries. CIA and NSA have both been working with British and European agencies, monitoring their activities for quite some time, but it’s been almost impossible to find out who was in charge of the organization. However, CIA has recently come across some intelligence that points clearly to a man named Peter Newsom being the man who’s been running the group.”

  Donald Jefferson leaned forward as a black-haired and bearded face appeared on the screen mounted on the wall behind him. “Newsom was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1964, but his family moved to Wales and settled in Cardiff when he was only four years old. He was raised there, then returned to the U.S. when he was eighteen, went to MIT and then joined the Army. He served one tour of duty in the infantry, and then was sent to the Army’s Special Warfare School, where he received extensive antiterrorism training. He served with honor and distinction for eight years with the Rangers, then left the military to enter the private sector, offering private security services; you can translate that to operating a mercenaries-for-hire operation. It was during that time that he seems to have begun building some international contacts, which led to arranging the sale of weapons to various revolutionary groups. From there, he went on to even bigger deals, negotiating weapons sales between various countries, and he’s been doing quite well for himself in that field ever since. He moved to Brazil about ten years ago, but he’s only at his home there for a few days every week. The rest of the time, he’s flying around the world in one of several private jets as he conducts his business.”

  The picture on the screen changed to another man, this one with blond hair and whiskers, and Jefferson went on. “This is

  Adam Jermaine. He was recently identified in some spy photos taken at a training camp for Islamic militants in Chad, and he was spotted there with an awful lot of American money. A CIA operative was able to mark some of that money with an invisible, slightly radioactive chemical, and a significant amount of it has been turning up in Europe in the hands of known terror suspects that have been arrested or put under surveillance. From interrogation, we learned that Jermaine has been delivering money and explosives to a number of such groups, so when he turned up in Rio de Janeiro two weeks ago he was spotted because of being on a watch list. Care to guess who he met with?”

  “Newsom, obviously,” Noah said.

  “Exactly,” Jefferson said. “And when he left, on one of Newsom’s private jets, he seems to have had a lot more money with him. Some of the terror suspects have admitted that they were receiving money from PRA, and since we now have reason to believe that the money is actually coming from Newsom, it looks like he just might be the elusive mastermind everyone has been trying to track down for the last few years.”

  Noah nodded. “So, I gather the mission is to take him out?”

  “Not necessarily,” Allison said. “Noah, we need to find out everything we possibly can about Newsom and his operation. Yes, we’re going to want him eliminated, but first we need to find out exactly what his organization has planned.”

  Noah’s eyebrows went up slightly. “This is an intelligence gathering mission, then?”

  “Yes, but that isn’t all,” Allison said emphatically. “PRA has been trying to contact an assassin, a woman out of Germany. We don’t know what the contract is that they want to offer, and it’s imperative that we find out. Even with Newsom gone, the PRA may still be viable, so we need to know just who it is that they are wanting to eliminate.”

  She turned to Jenny. “Sometime back, Noah had to impersonate an assassin in order to learn who the target was that he was employed to kill. This time, Jenny, it’s going to be you.”

  Jenny’s face lit up. “Me? Who is this assassin I’m supposed to impersonate?”

  “Nobody knows for sure, but she goes by the name of Victoria. Unfortunately, we don’t have the kind of intel that we had when Noah had to impersonate Adrian, and about the only thing we do know is that she is an American with a Midwestern accent, like yours. What we do have is a lot of conjecture about the type of person she is, and considerable information about assassinations she has pulled off in the past. You’ll be going out to Mission ID to work with our acting coach, so that you can start to get a handle on how to convince Newsom that you are Victoria.”

  “What about us?” Marco asked. “Did this Victoria have a team? Where do the rest of us fit in on this mission?”

  “As backup,” Jefferson said. “From everything we can determine, Victoria worked completely alone. She is rumored to have been quite a beautiful woman, and only a bit older than Jenny is. We’re fairly sure that no one at PRA was ever able to make direct contact with her, and we can be absolutely certain they won’t in the future, because the Mossad claims that they blew her up last week, when she was stupid enough to attempt to assassinate the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. He was on vacation in the Mediterranean, and the report says she attempted to get onto his yacht. She and her boat were blown to smithereens.”

  “Wow,” Jenny said. “They get pretty serious, don’t they?”

  “Nobody knows for sure precisely what the PRA wants her for,” Allison said, “but there are several rumors floating around. Some of them indicate she was being recruited to take out a ranking American military officer, but we heard of one report that the target was none other than the new—thanks to your recent efforts—President of the United States. There’s very little doubt that PRA would like to eliminate the presid
ent, but we haven’t been able to pick up any official, verifiable chatter to confirm that he could be the target. This is one of the reasons it’s so important to actually infiltrate their organization. After losing the President and so many ranking politicians in your last mission, the country really can’t afford another major shakeup on the political arena, right now.”

  “What about the messages that were sent to Victoria?” Noah asked. “Do we have any idea how she was supposed to get into contact with them?”

  “Yes,” Jefferson replied, “because the PRA uses a particular method of communication. While you, Noah, had to use newspaper ads to make contact, Jenny will have to meet a PRA representative face-to-face. In this case, she’ll be meeting with Peter Newsom, himself.”

  “When and where?” Noah asked.

  “Five days from now,” Allison said. “He’ll be at a party in Miami, and she’s going to have to approach him and identify herself while he’s there. Jenny, you’ll identify yourself as Victoria, at which time Newsom will probably offer you a test contract. There’s no way to know who it is he will want to use as a test target, but you will most likely have to carry it out. I’m authorizing you to kill anyone necessary to get yourself in tight with him, but I want you to run it past Noah, first. If it turns out to be an innocent party or someone who might be valuable to us, we might decide to simply snatch and erase them, instead.”

  Noah and Jenny both nodded. “So where do we start?” Noah asked.

  Allison smiled. “You start with Jenny going out to visit with Gary Mitchell at Mission ID. He’s going to start coaching her on how to become Victoria, and the rest of you will begin preparing by studying up on Newsom and the PRA.”

  “We’re going to give you,” Jefferson said, “the usual identity kits, but of course they’re for use only in travel and such. Anyone who believes you to be Victoria won’t expect you to be using a real name on identification, anyway, so you should only need them for hotels or if you happen to be pulled over by local police.”