Balance of Power (Noah Wolf Book 7) Read online

  When dinner was over, Renée helped Sarah clear the table while Noah got out their Monopoly game. The five of them played until well past midnight, and it was clear that Neil was winning by the time they finally gave it up. They all said good night to each other, and then Marco and Renée drove away.

  Neil turned to Noah as Marco’s taillights disappeared. “Figured out how you’re going to handle it yet?”

  Noah sensed Sarah’s eyes turning to look at him as well, and he nodded. “If it were a real kill, it would happen at a time when I could get the victim alone. Randy lives by himself in an apartment somewhere in Kirtland. Think you can find me the address?”

  Neil just looked at him for a few seconds, then nodded. He turned and walked back into the house and set his computer back onto the table. A few seconds later, he pointed at the screen. “Renaissance Apartments, corner of Eighteenth and Manchester. He’s in apartment 4C, northeast corner. That’s the far back corner of the building, nothing under it but an alley. Only security cameras in the building are down in the front lobby, where the mailboxes are, and on the parking lot which sits just to the west of it.”

  Noah nodded. “Good. That makes it easier.” He turned to the cabinet and retrieved the vial and needle. “I wish I knew whether or not he’s home alone right now. I don’t suppose there’s any way you can check that, is there?”

  Neil grinned. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “Molly and I were given access to the server that holds all of his activity recordings. Remember the little transmitter that was implanted under his skin? Every so often it uploads everything it records to a server so it can keep recording even more. Uses a speech-to-text algorithm to give us transcripts we can search through. Give me a few minutes to look through his last few hours and I can tell you.”

  His fingers flew across the keyboard for a few seconds, and then words began to fill the monitor in front of him. He typed in a time code and then studied the transcripts in front of him for about three minutes.

  “He’s at home alone,” Neil said finally. “Last recording was about half past ten, when somebody left his place after visiting for a while. He said he was tired and was headed for bed then, so he’s probably safe in dreamland at the moment.” He looked up at Noah. “I just had a thought,” he said. “You know Randy has this recorder embedded in him. It’s supposed to let us track everything he does and says. What happens if somebody who reads the transcripts is already corrupted? You can’t explain to him what’s going on.”

  Noah nodded. “If anybody who can see those transcripts was under the mole’s thumb, none of this would be happening. He would have known the file was fake and that we were setting a trap, so he never would have bothered trying to contact me at all.”

  “Still,” Neil said, “I think it would be a good idea if anything you said never ended up in the transcript. It’s set to do its next upload at 6:00 a.m. All you have to do to prevent it is take his phone—that’s how it connects to the server.”

  Noah ran a hand over his face. “I wish there was a way to let him sleep through the next day and a half. I can’t imagine this not being traumatic for him, but hopefully he’ll come through it okay.”

  Neil scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Since when did you suddenly become compassionate? Personally, I don’t care if he’s traumatized for life, not after what he did to Sarah.”

  “It’s not compassion,” Noah said, looking at Neil quizzically. “Allison feels like Randy still has value to the organization. Because of that, I hope this doesn’t ruin him.”

  Sarah, who had been sitting at the table staying quiet, suddenly reached over and touched Noah on the cheek. “It’s okay,” she said. “I won’t say I’ve completely gotten over it, but it helps to know that he was forced to do what he did.” She winked mischievously. “But don’t think I’m not going to be glad he suffered a little bit, all right?”

  “I understand,” Noah said. “All right, there’s no sense wasting time. I’m heading over to Randy’s, now.”

  “Hey, hold on,” Neil said. “When we’re out on a mission, you’ve always got the team to back you up, but this time you’re going to be on your own. What happens if one of the local city cops pulls you over, and then Randy gets found, you know, sort of dead in the morning? I know Allison could make the problem go away, but the mole might find that a little suspicious, don’t you think?”

  “I thought about that, and I’ll be careful. I won’t give them any reason to pull me over.”

  “Okay, yeah, that’s all well and good,” Neil said. “Even better, though, is they never see you at all, right?” He reached into a pocket and pulled out two small plastic boxes. Each of them contained what looked like a Bluetooth headset for a cell phone, but Noah recognized them instantly as some of the special communicators they had used on different missions. As small as they were, they operated through cell towers and could communicate over just about any distance, while a full charge in their batteries would last nearly seventy-two hours. “Don’t give me that look,” Neil said. “Wally knows I don’t always turn in all the goodies he gives us, and he let me hang on to a couple of these. I’ve kept ’em charged up and ready, just in case we need ’em, and I had a feeling tonight was going to be the night.”

  Sarah reached over and picked up one of the headsets. “So, what? You’re gonna keep track of the cops and let Noah know how to avoid them?”

  Neil grinned, and there was something wicked about it. “Hey, I want to have more fun than that. I’ll just make sure they’re busy somewhere else, whenever he’s moving. Something simple while he’s going into town, but as soon as he says he’s ready to head back out, I’ll set off alarms in a couple of the banks on the far end of town from the apartment building. Every cop and deputy around will be focused on those, and I can hack the few traffic cams in town to make sure they don’t get a look at him, either.”

  Noah nodded and took the headset from Sarah, slipping it onto his ear. “Let’s do this,” he said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Noah’s Corvette, while not flashy, was probably the only one of its kind in the Kirtland area, so he decided to drive his old Ford pickup into town. At least half of the farmers in the area had one similar to it, so any witnesses would only see it as “one of those old farm trucks.” He left it in a dark corner of the parking lot at the grocery store three blocks from Renaissance Apartments and made his way into the alley behind it.

  “Okay, I’m at point one,” he said.

  “You’re good,” Neil’s voice said in his ear. “Local yokels are checking out a power outage over by Alley Town; they’ll be busy for ten minutes or so.”

  “All right,” Noah said. “I’m moving to point two.”

  Noah moved down the alley to where it met the cross street and paused. At a little after 2:00 a.m., there wasn’t really any traffic on the streets, but he didn’t want to risk being seen if he could avoid it. He stopped at each intersection where the alley met a street and watched for a minute or more before crossing and continuing.

  It took him almost ten minutes to cover the distance, and then he was standing in the alley just underneath Randy’s fourth-floor apartment window. “I’m at the lower goalpost,” he said, letting Neil know that he had reached the building. “Checking out entry routes.”

  “Ten four,” Neil said. “Let’s go silent until your exit.”

  “Acknowledged,” Noah said.

  The fire escapes were a modern style that couldn’t be reached from ground level, but a quick leap up onto a dumpster allowed Noah to throw himself upward high enough to catch a window on the second floor. He scrambled for a moment, then got onto the ledge of the window and managed to crab sideways until he got to the fire escape. From that level, there were stairs that led all the way up the side of the building.

  Randy’s apartment didn’t have a window that opened directly onto the fire escape. There was a door that opened onto it from the main hallway, but it could be opened only from the inside with
an alarm bar, which meant that Noah had to climb into the window of a neighboring apartment. He carefully checked the window for signs of an alarm system and didn’t find any, so it was the work of only a few seconds to slide a knife blade between the upper and lower panes and flip the security latch. The window, which was fairly new, slid up silently, and Noah peeked inside to find himself entering the bedroom of a small child.

  He moved as silently as he could, stepping over the sill and carefully, slowly, letting his right foot make contact with the floor. There was something under his heel, and he adjusted his foot to come down off it as he looked down, then realized that it was a small toy car. He brought the other foot in and positioned it carefully as well, then turned and closed the window behind him. He latched it again, then moved slowly and silently toward the door.

  The door was not completely closed, a precaution many parents take so that they can hear a child cry in the night. Noah reached for the knob and began to pull it slowly open, ready to stop instantly if the hinges were to make any noise. His luck held, though, and he was able to step into the hallway and pull the door back to its not quite closed position. He passed what must be the master bedroom, its door also slightly ajar, and then moved into the living room.

  The apartment’s front door was secured with a dead bolt, but there was a knob on the inside that allowed it to be turned. Noah opened it and pulled the door slowly toward himself, relieved once again when it made no noise, then stepped into the main hallway and shut it behind himself. Randy’s apartment door would be the next one on the left down the hallway, and he moved quickly toward it.

  A careful examination of the door showed that it was also locked with a dead bolt, but part of Noah’s training had involved handling locks. He withdrew a set of picks from his pocket and had the dead bolt and doorknob both unlocked in less than a minute. He turned the knob carefully and stepped quickly inside, shutting the door behind him and securing both dead bolt and doorknob once again.

  Like most agents, Randy would likely be a light sleeper. Noah needed to be as silent as possible if he wanted to reach the man without waking him. The apartment was a mirror image of the one he had entered through, a two-bedroom flat with a living room, kitchen, and bathroom. It was no trouble for Noah to figure out which bedroom would most likely be the master, and he was relieved to find the door standing half-open.

  Randy, of course, being a childless bachelor, wasn’t so concerned about modesty. A quick glance through the door showed Noah that the man was sprawled across the bed on his back, sleeping the way a man does when he feels safe in his own home.

  Noah moved as if he were in slow motion, taking one step every two to three seconds as he made his way toward Randy. The slightest sound, he knew, the slightest vibration, could be enough to wake the other agent and result in a fight that could force him to kill. His goal at that moment was to keep Randy alive, and he didn’t want to risk failing over a simple misstep.

  Finally, after several agonizing seconds, he stood beside the bed where Randy Mitchell lay. He withdrew the hypodermic and filled it from the little glass vial, thumped out the tiny bubble of air, and dropped the bottle back into his pocket. In one smooth motion, he leaned forward, pressing a hand to Randy’s mouth as he stabbed the needle into the flesh of his pectoral muscle and drove the plunger home.

  Randy’s eyes flew open and his hands came up, but the shock of being awakened by an attack had disoriented him. Noah yanked out the needle and dropped it on the floor, then gathered Randy’s hands into his own free right and clutched them to his chest as the potent drug took effect. The struggle lasted only a dozen seconds before Randy started to lose muscle control, and after twenty seconds Noah was able to let go. Randy’s arms dropped to the bed beside him, barely able to move, and his eyes seemed to glaze over just a few seconds later.

  Noah felt for a pulse and found none. He knew, of course, that this was the direct effect of the TTX in the mixture, but something about it still struck him with a sense of awe. There was no sign of breath or heartbeat in Randy Mitchell, and yet he was—hopefully—still alive.

  He leaned over Randy and looked into his open eyes. “The mole took the bait and contacted me,” he said softly, “and his very first order to me was to kill you. I didn’t want to do that, so the drug I’ve just used on you will make you appear to be dead for the next thirty-six hours or so. During that time, Allison will make sure you’re set up with a completely new identity, because the Dragon Lady isn’t done with you yet. I know this is going to be frightening, but hold on. You’ll get through it.”

  Noah watched his eyes but saw absolutely no sign that Randy had either heard or understood anything he had said. The possibility that the dosage had been lethal after all crossed his mind, but he had been authorized to kill Randy if there was no other way. He decided he would have to simply wait and see whether it had worked, so he picked up the hypodermic and slipped the safety cover back over the needle before dropping it back into his pocket.

  The struggle had been so brief that nothing in the bedroom had actually been disturbed. Noah glanced around for a moment and saw Randy’s iPhone on the nightstand at the opposite side of the bed, plugged in and charging. He stepped quickly around and picked it up, yanking the plug out of the wall and shoving both charger and phone into a pocket before leaving the master bedroom and moving into the second.

  He opened the window and looked down, but it was a sheer drop of four stories. Situated on the back corner of the building, there was only an alleyway at the ground level, and nothing close that Noah could use in making his way down. He closed that window and turned to the one on the perpendicular wall and looked out.

  Another sheer drop, but four feet to the right was a drainpipe from the gutters that ran around the top of the building. The pipe was made of cast aluminum and was about eight inches in diameter, a series of connecting sections about four feet long. Each section was flared at the top so that the section above it fit neatly into the flare, and the whole thing was connected to the building with sturdy steel brackets on each section.

  Noah climbed out the window and stood on the edge of its ledge, holding on to the upper frame of the window with his fingertips as he closed it. Once that was done, he carefully stood on the ledge and focused on the drainpipe, then swung his body hard into a flying leap. He caught the lip of an upper flange of the pipe with his hands and then managed to get his feet on the one just below.

  The pipe was too close to the building to allow him to wrap his arms or hands around it, so his descent consisted of simply sliding down each section until he met the flange of the next. There were three sections to each story of the building, so the trip to the ground took him all of a minute.

  “I’m out,” he said softly. “On the ground outside the building, preparing to head back.”

  “Roger that,” Neil said. “Operation Diversion in twenty seconds.”

  Noah looked around carefully and made sure that no one had seen him, then began moving just as stealthily through the alley as he had before, making his way back to his pickup. He hung back and watched the truck for a full minute from the cover of a bush, just to be sure no one was watching it closely, and that’s when he heard the sirens.

  While he stayed out of sight, Noah saw four squad cars roar past on the way to investigate at least three different bank alarms going off. He waited an extra minute to see if any others might be passing by, then walked calmly over and climbed in behind the wheel.

  “I’m rolling,” he said.

  “You’re good to go,” Neil replied. “Every cop in the county is headed for the banking district. There’s nobody between you and home base, so we’ll see you in just a bit.”

  “Roger, out,” Noah said as he put the truck in gear and drove sedately out of the parking lot.

  The ride across town and out the country roads to his place took nearly forty-five minutes, and both Neil and Sarah were waiting at the barn as he pulled the truck inside. He and
Neil swung the doors closed, and the three of them walked back into the house.

  “He definitely looks dead,” Noah said. “I couldn’t detect any sign of life at all.”

  “That’s the idea,” Neil said. “If the stuff works as advertised, he’s probably having about one barely detectable heartbeat every twenty seconds or so, and respirations would be so minute that normal medical equipment wouldn’t even pick them up. I guess the chemicals suppress the metabolism just enough that the oxygen he does get is enough to prevent any significant physical damage.”

  Sarah was standing beside Noah in their kitchen, her arms wrapped around his waist and her cheek against his chest. “I gotta say,” she said softly, “I know we don’t want him to really be dead, but there’s a part of me that’s feeling some relief right now. Whether he lives through this or not, either way seems like a fitting punishment for what he’s done.”

  “Yeah,” Neil said, nodding. “I would imagine that he’s going to spend the next day and a half just wondering if he’s even alive. According to all the literature, brain activity is pretty suppressed by TTX. There won’t be any detectable signs of brain activity, but he’s supposedly going to be at least marginally aware of everything that happens to him. I think that’s gotta make the victim wonder if it’s possible to be aware of your surroundings after you die, right?”

  “That’s what I mean,” Sarah said. “Either way, fitting punishment.”

  “Well, all we can do now is wait,” Noah said. He withdrew Randy’s iPhone from his pocket and handed it to Neil. “You want to make sure nobody can find this?”

  Neil grinned and used a tool from his pocket to remove the back and take out the battery, then popped out a second part. “Most people don’t realize that this little gizmo has a capacitor in it that can keep the GPS working for up to four hours after the battery is removed. Right now, nobody in the world could find this phone. We can pass it off to Mr. Jefferson when the time comes. I’ll keep it hidden until then.” He rubbed his eyes and reached out to pat Noah on the shoulder. “I’m going home to get some sleep, boss,” he said. “I’ve got a hunch things are going to get busy in the morning.”