Caged animal a noah wo.., p.1
Caged Animal - A Noah Wolf Thriller, page 1
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Copyright © 2019 by David Archer.
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PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
WHAT'D YOU THINK?
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PROLOGUE
Allison looked up as Noah entered her office, but this time there was no smile waiting for him. She motioned for him to take the seat on the other side of her desk and waited until he had done so.
“I’m afraid I’m about to send you on a mission I don’t want to give you,” she said. “The CIA has specifically requested your assistance for one of their operatives.” She let out a sigh. “Noah, you once knew an army captain by the name of Derek Simpson. Do you remember him?”
“Yes, of course,” Noah said. “Captain Simpson was the prosecutor at my court-martial.”
Allison nodded. “Yes, he was. Not long after that, he was recruited by the CIA and accepted. Since then, he has proven quite adept at recruiting assets of his own, particularly foreign nationals who are willing to share information with him. This mission will take you into Germany, where you will assist CIA Officer Derek Simpson with a new asset. Your particular job is going to be to make sure no one gets to him or the asset, to keep them safe; if it becomes known that you are American agents in the country, it could spark an international incident that might honestly lead to a new global war.”
“All right,” Noah said. “I notice that you are briefing me alone this time. What about my team?”
She shook her head. “That’s why I hate sending you on this mission,” Allison said. “They only want you, Noah. Your team is not going with you.”
Noah nodded. “Is Simpson aware of who I am? That I was the sergeant he prosecuted for murders I didn’t commit?”
Allison hesitated for only a second. “Unfortunately, you have to assume that he does. The CIA was deeply involved in tracking Monica Lord, I’m sure you remember that. She was able to get into your actual personnel files, and it’s likely that she shared it with some of her CIA contacts. Considering his connection to your case, it’s likely that someone privy to the information might have shared it with him.”
“All right,” Noah said. “I have no animosity toward him, of course, but I can’t help wondering if he might have reservations about using me.”
“Apparently not,” Allison said. “According to the interagency request, he asked for you personally.” She shrugged. “That could be based on your reputation, of course. You’re considered our top agent in every way, and you already survived a number of situations that should have gotten you killed. If I were him and wanted the best, I would ask for you as well.”
“That’s understandable,” Noah said. “When do I leave?”
She let out a sigh. “This afternoon,” she said. She reached into a desk drawer and produced an envelope, which she passed to him. “Mission IDs and dossier packet. Your plane will be waiting at the airfield at two o’clock this afternoon. Weapons will be available when you get there, so there’s no need to take anything with you.” She looked him in the eye. “Noah—be careful. I want you coming back.”
The rest of the day went by like a blur. Noah explained to Sarah, Neil, Marco and everyone else what was happening, then had to hurry to catch the plane that would take him to Nuremberg. It all happened so fast that they were all in shock, but Noah simply took it in stride.
For the duration of the mission, which was supposed to last two weeks, they would be cut off from any contact with Noah, and the thought just about drove Sarah crazy. As she kissed him goodbye, she made him promise once again to come home safely. “I don’t know what I would do if I lost you,” she said. “Especially now…”
“I’ll be back,” Noah said. He pulled her close and held her for another moment, then whispered in her ear. “I will always come back.”
A moment later, he walked out the door and was gone. The longest two weeks of her life were about to begin.
The rest of the team stayed close to her after he left, each of them spending as much time with her as they could, but the best they could hope for was to keep her busy. Jenny and Neil spent most of the day with her, with Marco and Renée coming over in the evenings. Sometimes they all got together, going out to dinner or just hanging out at the house. They played cards, Monopoly and just about anything else they could think of to try to keep their minds off of what might be happening to Noah.
“The worst part,” Sarah said after Monopoly one evening, “is waiting for the call that says something’s gone wrong. We’ve had so many things go wrong on missions, I just—I’m just terrified of what could happen when I’m not with him.”
Jenny looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to be with him on missions much anymore,” she said. “Soon as Allison finds out, she’s going to bench you completely.”
Sarah glanced down at her belly and rubbed her hand over it. “I’m not showing yet,” she said. “Maybe I…”
Her phone rang. She looked at it for a moment, a brief look of terror on her face as she recognized Allison’s name on the caller ID. She hit the speaker button as she answered, so that everyone could hear.
“Hello?”
“Sarah? It’s Allison. I’m afraid I’m calling with some disturbing news.”
Sarah’s eyes went wide. “No,” she said. “Allison, no…”
Jenny and Renée leaned close, both of them watching Sarah’s face, while Neil and Marco stopped talking across the room and stared at the three women.
“Noah has been captured,” Allison said. “As far as I know right now, he’s alive, but he is in hostile hands. I got a call in to State already, and I’m going to do everything possible to get him back. I just thought you needed to be aware of what’s happening.”
“Where is he?” Marco demanded. “You’ve got to get us on the way, let us go in after him.”
“Marco, that is impossible. As I said, I’m waiting for a return call from the State Department. We have forces not far away, and I’m hoping to get a SEAL team on this right away. If there’s anything you can do, I promise I will call. In the meantime, I simply wanted Sarah to be aware of the situation. Sarah, please don’t panic. I promise you I’m going to do everything possible to bring him back.”
The line went dead, as it always did when Allison was finished talking. Sarah stared at the phone for a moment, then turned to her friends.
“He’ll be back,” she said. “He promised me. He promised me that he will always come back to me.”
“Of course he will,” Jenny said. “He may be a robot to some people, but that man loves you. He’ll be back, I know he will.”
Marco shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. “He’d be back a lot sooner if Allison would let us go,” he said. “Well, if I knew where he was, I’d go on my own.”
“He’s at least halfway around the world from us, Marco,” Neil said. “No matter what we did, we would probably be too late to do any good.”
“It would be better than sitting here, waiting for another call.”
They all turned to look at Sarah, but she was leaning back against the sofa. Her eyes were wide and staring straight ahead.
“Neil is right,” she said softly. “There’s really nothing we can do. We just have to trust that Allison can get him out of this. That’s all we can do.”
They all sat there together until the next morning. None of the others was willing to leave Sarah alone until the sun came up over the hills.
ONE
Five Days Earlier
Somewhere high in the mountains of the Bavarian Alps, Noah Wolf was on the run for his life. Tree branches were ripping at his clothes and scraping against his skin as he tripped and slipped on the muddy, uneven ground. His hands were scratched and bleeding, the wounds coated with a mixture of mud and slime from finding holds on trees, rocks and brush as he fought hard to stay upright.
The staccato sound of automatic weapons fire was echoing all around him, along with the angry voices of the men who were pursuing him. The sounds echoing among the trees and off the walls of the valley made it almost impossible to tell which direction they were coming from. When a branch near his face exploded in a shower of splinters, the only thing he could do was struggle to run faster and pray for a miracle.
He almost fell when, several yards ahead, the back of Derek Simpson’s jacket suddenly erupted in a spray of blood and the big man’s body collapsed, falling to the ground. Leaving a fallen comrade went against the very core of Noah’s beliefs, but he couldn’t stop. His gun was empty and his pursuers were right on his heels; to stop would mean certain and immediate death.
Just when he thought he couldn’t continue, he caught a break in the form of a thick fog making its way through the valley, winding its way through the trees. He knew that if he could make it into that swirling mist, he would have at least a chance of escape, and it gave him the strength to carry on.
Ignoring the hail of bullets that was flying past him every second, Noah concentrated intently on putting one foot in front of the other. He would use the fog to lose his pursuers, and then circle back to find Derek. If the man was alive, they would find a way off the mountain and back to civilization. He pushed himself harder, his eyes firmly fixed on where he wanted to go.
He never felt the impact on the back of his skull as the bullet grazed him.
* * *
He woke with a start, arms and legs reaching out and running into the walls of wherever he had awakened. Struggling for breath, the overwhelming odor that attacked his senses made him cough and gag. Scrambling into a sitting position, he found himself confused and disoriented.
He seemed to be in total darkness, and for a moment, he wondered if something had happened to his eyes, leaving him blind. The air was cold and damp, and the horrible smell was almost unbearable, but he simply ignored it. He lifted his hands up off the floor and looked at them, finding them coated in some sort of slimy sludge made up of mud and rotting vegetation.
He was in the bottom of a pit of some sort, he realized. As he felt around, he found that the floor was covered with rotten waste and the walls were slippery, as if they were made of thick clay mud. Cautiously he got to his feet, leaning against the slick, wet walls, his feet unsteady on the mounded garbage beneath them. He stared upwards, hoping to see some sliver of light, but there was nothing.
Questions raced through his mind. Had he been buried alive? Had he been thrown into a pit to die alone and forgotten? Struggling, he clawed at the walls, his fingers digging into the mud as he desperately tried to climb out, but then he lost his grip and fell back. Knowing that he needed to rest before trying again, sitting on the floor, he leaned his head on his arms.
Considering what they had done, maybe this was what he deserved. He should have at least tried to stop Derek instead of just standing by.
His breath rattled in his throat as he forced himself to take stock of his circumstances. Only keeping his wits about him was going to get him out of this situation. Derek was almost certainly dead, and nobody had known where they were going after they left Germany. Derek had said they needed to tie up the loose ends from their mission, and that had brought them to this godforsaken part of the world.
He was on his own; if he was going to survive, he would have to figure out how to save himself. Getting to his feet again, he felt his way around the small prison. It was round, probably not much over six feet in diameter. Standing in the middle, he could stretch both arms out, barely touching the walls on either side.
A wave of dizziness put him back on the floor of the pit, reminding him that if he was going to survive, he would have to consider and address his injuries. Carefully, he felt his head. The back was covered in dried blood, and in the middle was a deep gouge that was still oozing more. Obviously, he had taken some sort of blow to the head, bad enough to split the skin and apparently knock him out. His entire body seemed to be rather badly bruised, as well, so his captors must have kicked or beaten him before dropping him into the hole. He sat there in the dark, trying to figure out a way to escape.
When you are faced with an insurmountable situation, it’s necessary to introduce a variable into the equation. If he could get someone to acknowledge his presence, that might be a usable variable.
“Hey!” he shouted, but his voice barely made any noise at all, more like the croak of a frog than the shout of a man. He coughed and tried once more, hoping to catch the attention of anyone walking or standing nearby.
“Hello? Can somebody help me? I don’t know why I’m here, I haven’t done anything wrong.” He listened for a moment, but there was no response; the only sound was a faint rustling noise coming from down near his feet. That was when he realized that he wasn’t alone in his new environment. His cellmates in this prison were rats and insects, and they were foraging through the rubbish for food.
Hours passed, and Noah lost track of time. He was unable to rest because of the rats, who would climb all over him if he dared to sit down. He was hungry and thirsty, and growing weaker by the hour. He kept calling out in his passable German, doing what he could to maintain his cover. He just needed to explain to someone that it was all a big mistake, he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and if somebody would just come and talk to him, they could get it straightened out pretty quickly. He was only a businessman from Nuremberg whose car had broken down on the road. Eventually, though, his voice gave out, and eventually so did his legs and he ended up collapsing into the garbage.
He leaned against the wall with his arms wrapped around his body. He was sweating and shaking, feverish from whatever infection was probably taking root on the back of his head. Derek’s face danced in front of his eyes. “Daniel betrayed us. We’ve got to clean up this mess as quickly and quietly as possible. He lives out in the countryside, near Bamberg. If we go now, we can be back in time for dinner.” Daniel Reitner was a minor official in the German government; the traitorous double agent had lied about his ability to get them the information they had been sent to gather, creating a multitude of problems.
“Wake up! Achtung! Wake up!” Noah’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of the strong German dialect. Above him, a long way up, he saw a narrow beam of light. He watched as a bottle was lowered down on a piece of string. “Water,” the voice from above told him.
With fumbling fingers, he ripped the bottle from the string and drank down the delicious liquid inside. Before he could ask questions or say anything else, however, he was back in total darkness and alone once more. Gasping and choking because he drank too fast, he rested his back against the mud wall. His logical mind registered a single thought: if he was being given water, then they didn’t want him dead.
At least, they didn’t want him dead just yet.
Remaining conscious, however, proved to be difficult. He barely even noticed when a rat ran across his leg.
It had been Daniel Reitner, his elderly mother, his wife and two children, a housekeeper, a gardener and their families. All together, thirteen men, women and children, whom he had helped to round up, and then Derek had killed them all. What had he been thinking? Noah had walked away to stand guard, leaving Derek alone with the captives. He had known what was going to happen; down deep inside himself, he had known, but he hadn’t stopped it.
The scene that greeted him when Derek called him back to help dispose of the bodies had looked like a slaughterhouse, yet he had helped pile them up in the kitchen, following Derek’s orders blindly. A part of him simply wanted to walk away; instead, following orders, he set the charges that would turn the house into an inferno and hide what had happened.
The next time he woke up, he feebly kicked out at a rat gnawing on what remained of his right boot and shook his head, swiping at the flies and other bugs which were attracted to the blood still coating his head injury. He knew he was getting weaker all the time, and that he needed to make an attempt to get out before he was too weak to even care.
