Alpha (Noah Wolf Book 21)

  Alpha

  A Noah Wolf Thriller

  David Archer

  Copyright © 2023 Right House

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this ebook are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this ebook may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  David Archer's VIP List

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

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  Prologue

  Meredith Bascom had never been considered an attractive woman. No one had ever accused her of sleeping her way to the top, and anyone who actually knew her was more likely to be afraid of her than to consider her a friend or ally. The woman was ruthless, and everyone in the DC circles was fully aware of it.

  That, of course, was how she ended up in charge of the CIA. She had been appointed by the previous president, and the current occupant of the White House had been wise enough to let her keep the job. Meredith had risen through the ranks of the CIA over a thirty-year period, thirty years of handling everything from desk work to field work. There was little doubt that she had done her share of wet stuff along the way. The trouble was that, in her particular case, no one knew exactly where the bodies were buried. Her rise to prominence was so gradual that no one kept their eyes too closely locked on her. She had all of the power and little to none of the supervision.

  For this reason, there was little to no chance at all that she’d be removed from her job anytime soon, and she knew it. She was not afraid of anything or anyone. Nothing can make you feel invincible like the knowledge that some of the deadliest people in government service are afraid to get on your bad side. It’s a power trip like no other. There wasn’t any doubt in her mind that if she merely dropped a hint that some particular government official, no matter how high, had suddenly fallen victim to an accident or disease, that person would no longer be an obstacle to her desires.

  It was dark stuff, but it was no secret.

  In fact, pretty much anybody who was anybody knew this about Meredith. Just the sound of her heels clicking on the marble floor when she entered the Capitol building was enough to cause those who heard it to suddenly be very, very busy at whatever their job might happen to be. No one wanted to risk being caught in the crossfire of whatever Meredith had going on. The stakes were both mysterious and horrifying, a winning authoritative combination.

  On this morning specifically, she was making her way to the office of Janice Pellegrini, the current Speaker of the House. Ms. Pellegrini had suddenly popped up on Bascom’s radar the day before when the woman had, on nationally broadcasted television, asked about “that group we used to have that got rid of people we didn’t want to have around.”

  “Sure would be nice to have them take care of a few little issues for me," Pellegrini had said. Meredith was floored she’d even imagine making a comment of this kind.

  According to official records, E&E had been completely disbanded by the previous administration, and the USA was no longer in the assassination business at all. As far as Meredith was concerned, that was the position that any elected official should believe to be the gospel truth. To even imply that such a group might still be in existence, and to do so publicly with all those cable news cameras pointed at you, was to start a rumor campaign that was already making its way through every government of every nation on the planet. Basically, it was a conspiracy theorist’s dream.

  Of course, E&E was still alive and fully functional and currently under the supervision of an international Oversight Committee. It was the committee’s job to determine which requests for assassination or elimination should be honored, and then to pass those along to the agency’s director. It would then be the director’s job to assign the mission to one of the many teams E&E had, and they would take care of getting it done.

  The committee, however, was committed to keeping the existence of E&E out of the public eye. No one outside the committee was even supposed to mention the agency, let alone speculate about putting them to work. For that reason, several of the committeemen had emailed Bascom and suggested she put a plug in Ms. Pellegrini’s apparently leaky piehole.

  Dana Sawtelle, Janice Pellegrini’s secretary and assistant, was carefully studying some document displayed on the monitor of her computer when Meredith Bascom entered her office. Without looking up, she said, “Can I help you?"

  Keeping her eyes on the screen was a good idea, a spectator would’ve observed. It meant she didn’t see the sneer that was aimed at her a second later.

  “Tell your boss that Meredith Bascom is here,” Bascom said.

  Without even acknowledging the command, Dana tapped the button on the telephone that connected her directly to Janice Pellegrini. “Ma’am, Ms. Bascom from the CIA is here to see you." She listened for a few seconds, then said, “Yes, ma’am, right away."

  Steeling herself for what she’d be faced with, Dana turned her head back to Bascom and looked the woman in the eye. “You can go right in,” she said. “Ms. Pellegrini is expecting you."

  “I just bet she is,” Bascom said, winking at Dana as she turned and approached the double doors that led into the Speaker’s office. She opened one of the doors and stepped inside, shutting it firmly behind her.

  Dana couldn’t hear what was going on inside the office and didn’t dare turn on the intercom to listen in. Somehow, she was sure Bascom would know if she were to eavesdrop, and Dana had hopes of watching her eight-year-old daughter grow up and eventually get married, produce grandchildren, and come to visit on special holidays once Grandma had gotten old. Eavesdropping on the CIA director was not part of the recipe for a long life, and Dana knew it. She, like everyone, had heard the stories of what Bascom was capable of, and even if the director of the CIA was not planning to violently hurt her if she disobeyed or overstepped, she couldn’t take the blows to her reputation that Meredith would inevitably inflict.

  She continued to busy herself with various tasks on her computer without looking up until the doors opened again and Ms. Bascom walked out. The entire interview had lasted only a couple of amazingly short minutes. Dana found herself wishing that the doors weren’t
so soundproofed so that she could have heard how Bascom had gone about her seemingly very important business so quickly.

  The director left the office without a word to Dana, which suited Dana just fine. She had no desire to spend more time in proximity to Bascom than she absolutely needed to. Then, Dana managed to wait another three whole minutes before she checked to make sure her own boss was still among the living. Stranger things had happened under Bascom’s supervision than the Speaker of the House just happening to turn up dead in her office.

  She was fine. Had she not been, Dana was confident that it would have been ruled a simple heart attack, or some other natural cause of death. Bascom could do whatever she wanted. Dana wished she knew the action or event Pellegrini had been involved with that had brought Bascom into both their lives. Any contact with that woman was a dangerous game best circumvented altogether.

  “Everything all right, ma’am?” Dana hadn’t planned to speak to her boss about the situation, but Ms. Pellegrini’s face was so white that Dana couldn’t leave the room without at least checking on the woman. They’d been working together for a couple of years now, and Dana had a certain amount of empathy and awareness for her boss’s emotions, as any good secretary should.

  “Yes, Dana. Things are fine.”

  Dana nodded, but really, she didn’t know how much she believed of that statement. Bascom didn’t just show up unannounced anywhere. She certainly didn’t make the physical trip to other government buildings beyond her own just to tell someone off. Dana felt like a little girl being kept in the dark, and she was not even the one on the actual receiving end of Meredith’s wrath.

  “Please don’t mention this visit to anyone.” Pellegrini didn’t even look at Dana, but simply spoke in a single, leveled tone of voice, just a little too softly for Dana to hear her clearly. “No one. I don’t want to know what would happen if you do. The highest level of confidentiality.”

  Dana felt chills through her whole body and nodded quickly. Pellegrini seemed not to have any more to say, so Dana returned to her desk and sat with her eyes a bit glazed over for the rest of the workday. How could one woman have this kind of power?

  An hour later, Bascom settled into her own desk chair once again and immediately picked up the phone to call John Wallace at the NSA. John answered the phone himself, rather than having a secretary do it. This was not unlike him. He was of the old guard of officials who tended not to believe secretarial staff were helpful for much other than companionship and running errands.

  “Meredith,” he said, a confident grin spreading across his face. “To what do I owe this pleasure?"

  “I just spent half an hour traveling across Washington DC simply to explain to the Speaker of the House that neither she nor anyone else in Congress has the authority to mention, invoke, or otherwise speculate about the existence of any agency whose purpose is to assassinate or eliminate anyone. But even with my intervention, all the back-chatter wires are just about on fire with officials all over the world trying to figure out if she knows something they don’t. I’m telling you, John, E&E has outlived its usefulness."

  “Oh, come on, Meredith,” Wallace said, the smile turning into a grimace. “Are you going to start that song and dance again? You know the committee isn’t going to give it up, they all like the idea that they can make a phone call and have some particular enemy eliminated."

  “Every member of that damned committee has their own intelligence service, and if anybody’s going to be performing assassinations, that’s who should really be doing it. I don’t care how many former presidents thought it was a good idea to have a special agency for these kinds of situations, you just don’t take away the traditional authority of intelligence services that way. We’ve got government officials among both allies and enemies who are suddenly rattling their sabers again because this stupid broad couldn’t keep her mouth shut while CNN was watching, and CNN is always watching. This was an easily avoidable slip of the tongue that could damage US relations with most of the world, and I don’t know if you’ve caught on yet, but a few of the damn committee members have gotten hold of some kind of information about that mess that happened two weeks ago with the whole robot thing. Personally, I think the leak came from your organization even though I can’t prove it, but that doesn’t change the fact that somebody let it slip there was a robot assassin running loose and we managed to lose him."

  She didn’t let the rapidness with which she spoke tone down the inherent authority in her voice.

  “Don’t start pointing fingers, Mere,” Wallace said. He always tended toward the nickname even though he knew Meredith was one of those women who’d rather die than be called a silly nickname in their workplace. “As I recall, it was your boys who actually took the robot into custody, not mine, and, oh yeah, it was your boys who were watching him down in the bowels of the Pentagon when he apparently turned invisible and walked right past them. If there was a leak anywhere, it almost had to come from your own house."

  “Whatever,” Bascom said. This was a bit of a sore subject. She had watched the security cam footage of this particular moment so many times that she had nearly memorized it. Even so, each time she did, she came no closer to figuring out what had happened that night. “I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t really care. The fact of the matter is that every damned intelligence agency out there is hunting that robot, and nobody knows where it’s at. The damn thing belongs to us, and even we can’t find it. I mean, hopefully nobody else can, either, but that’s not where the problem is, not really. The problem lies in the fact that every other nation out there is now terrified that we’ve got robot killers ready to infiltrate them and start wiping out their people.

  “I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want is for anyone to think we’re trying to launch the age of intelligent machines in warfare. I mean, let’s face it, they aren’t going to come knocking on our doors and asking politely where we keep the killer robots; they’ll be coming in by air, with all their nukes blazing, kicking butt, and taking names. This thing could actually escalate into a war, John.”

  Wallace rolled his eyes. He had always considered Bascom to be a bit of a drama queen, and her current performance was only solidifying his opinion. Again, though, this could have something to do with his questionable views on women in positions of authority. He didn’t have any particular interest in considering his motives at that moment, however.

  “Meredith, what are you getting at? I can’t see the committee agreeing to shut E&E down completely.”

  “The hell they won’t,” she shot back. “It’s not just nations not on the committee who are screaming about the robot, I’m getting flak from every angle. Every member of that committee is throwing fits about this thing, John, and I think the only way to solve the problem is to go ahead and disband E&E.”

  Wallace was quiet for a few seconds, then cleared his throat.

  “Okay, supposing you’re right,” he said, “what you’re proposing is that we go back to the days when the CIA took care of assassinations, and that means the same thing happens that has historically happened with every other country. The Brits turn it back over to MI6, Israel hands it all back to the Mossad, you know the drill. Is that what we really want?”

  “It’s fine by me, at least it’s better than having the whole world ready to nuke us into the dark ages.”

  Wallace sighed. “Have you spoken to the president about this yet?”

  “You know damn well I have,” Bascom said. “He’s on board, didn’t even try to argue.”

  “Of course he is.” Everyone knew damn well that Meredith had that man in her pocket. It didn’t at all matter what he really thought. “All right, then, I’ll let you put it out to the committee and see how they vote. Understand this, though: I’m going to check with each and every member to make sure I know how they voted. It’s not that I don’t trust you, Meredith, it’s just that I know how manipulative you can be. And don’t even think about trying
to threaten me, I’m far enough out of your league that you don’t have enough leverage to make me back down.”

  Bascom chuckled. She loved when someone squirmed like this and openly questioned her power. It felt good in her body, gave her an extra jolt of confidence. She and Wallace were both quite well aware of the higher ground she held, regardless of whether the man would admit it or not.

  “You keep telling yourself that, John,” she said. “I like the fact that you think you’re safe from me, because you’re the only one who has the balls to talk back."

  She hung up the phone and Wallace was suddenly listening to a dead line. He looked at the handset for a moment, then replaced it in its cradle and reached into his pocket for the cell phone he kept only for special communications. It was something he had talked Wally Lawson out of, and while it looked like a cell phone and was even capable of making cellular calls, it was also tied into the subcom network used only by E&E. He’d gotten it back when the previous administration was still in power, and it had a special button that allowed him to connect directly to one of three people: Noah Wolf, Allison Peterson, or the man who had then been POTUS.

  The former president had retired to an estate just outside of San Diego, so it was about one o’clock in the afternoon there. The man was very vocal about how much he enjoyed his life as a retiree. The public opinion surrounding him after the end of his presidency had been somewhat neutral, meaning he didn’t receive more than the usual number of threats and really could go out on the town with his Secret Service officers without fearing too much for his life. Wallace felt bad, honestly, for his disruption of the ex-POTUS’s peace. The man had been such an excellent public servant. He deserved to no longer be wrapped up in these kinds of internal politics, especially not with Bascom.

  Now, Wallace pushed that special button, then tapped the number 3. He rotated through all the ways he’d most like to apologize for having to call the ex-POTUS on such a beautiful California day. A couple of seconds later, he heard the former president say, “Knock, knock, who’s there?"