Code Name: Camelot (Noah Wolf #1)(17)

Noah sat there in silence for a full three minutes, just looking into the eyes of the woman across the table. He expected her to become impatient with him, to demand an answer, but she just sat there and looked straight back into his. At last, he spoke.

“So how would this work?” Noah asked her.

“Two days from now, you’ll be found dead in your cell, hanging from the air vent, an apparent suicide. You’ll be carried out and buried, a death certificate issued to serve as proof to anyone who ever wants to know that Sergeant Noah Foster died in prison by his own hand. Of course, the body that gets buried won’t be yours. You’ll be loaded into an ambulance and driven to a highly secret facility where your training will begin. Among the things you’ll be taught will be your own new life history, and because we like to keep things simple, all we’re going to do is change your last name, and we’ll give you a history that will let you go out into the world as a free man. You’ll also have your appearance slightly altered, not a lot, but just enough so that if you ever ran into someone who knew you before, they would go, ‘Wow, that guy looks a little like someone I used to know, but it’s not him.’ It’s not that we’re really worried about you running into old friends, since we already know you don’t have very many, but as you can imagine, the existence of E & E is something we don’t want to let the world in on. Any other questions?”

Noah sat there for another minute, watching her eyes. He liked the fact that she didn’t flinch, because most people couldn’t play stare down with him. He suddenly smiled, and leaned forward with his hand extended.

“Noah Whoever-I-am, ready to report for duty. Just tell me what to do next.”

“Well, the first thing I want you to do is to sit down and write as detailed a narrative as you can about your life. What I want is to know how you see yourself, who you believe you are. Just write it out in your own words, and keep it in your cell. We’ll pick it up when we come to get you.”

Noah’s eyebrows went up slightly. “No problem, I can do that,” he said. “Is it going to matter that you’ll find out I’m nothing but a wolf in human clothing?”





FIVE

Noah was asleep when they came for him. His door opened, which woke him instantly, but he stayed on his bunk as if sleeping. A second later, he felt the light sting of a needle, and then he was asleep again.

He came back to consciousness slowly, and could tell that he was lying on something that was moving. He tried to open his eyes but they wouldn’t, and when he tried to move his hands, he found that they were unresponsive as well.

He could hear, though, and the sounds coming through told him that he was in a vehicle. The steady hum beneath him was from tires on the surface of a road, of that he was sure. The purring noise was certainly from a well-tuned engine.

“Ma’am,” he heard a voice say, “I believe he’s awake. It’ll take a few minutes for everything to wear off, but his breathing says he’s conscious.”

“Thank you, Marco,” he heard, and he recognized the voice as Lieutenant Colonel Hogan. “Noah, just relax. We’ve gotten you out of the Castle, and we’re well on the way to the training facility. The cocktail of drugs we gave you should wear off the rest of the way shortly, so don’t fight it. You’ll be able to sit up in just a few minutes.”

Noah took her advice and relaxed, and a few seconds later he began to feel some of his muscles twitching. He tried again to open his eyes, and this time it worked. A quick glance around told him that he was in the back of an ambulance, and Hogan was sitting beside him along with a paramedic.

“Well, hello,” Colonel Hogan said. “Welcome back to the land of the living. Oh, wait a minute—I spoke too soon. You’re actually quite dead, just wait and I’ll show you the news stories about it.”

“No problem,” Noah said. His voice sounded rough. “I’m not worried about the news of the past, just what’s to come in the future.”

“Well, that would spoil all my fun,” she said. “It’s really quite a story. It seems that this young sergeant, who was sentenced to die for killing his platoon leader and several of his men, had this horrible attack of conscience and hung himself in his cell. There was a faint heartbeat when he was found, so of course he was rushed out to the hospital, but unfortunately, he passed away in the ambulance. He’ll be buried in the prison graveyard tomorrow morning. Pretty good story, don’t you think?”

Noah, his muscles still weak and sluggish, struggled up to a sitting position. “I think I read a book with that plot, once. In the one I read, though, the hero got a second chance at life. Your story go anywhere like that?”

Hogan reached up and took off her wig, tossing it into a bag at her feet. A moment later, she scratched just in front of her left ear and Noah saw a flap of skin come loose. She tugged on it, and a rubber mask peeled off of her face. The woman who sat there in Hogan’s uniform was suddenly blonde and twenty years younger.

She extended a hand. “I’m Allison Peterson,” she said, and Noah shook hands with her. “I’m the administrator of E & E, and your new boss.”

Noah grinned and nodded. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, “for the second time. So, I gather everything worked the way you expected? I did as you said, didn’t eat a thing all day and tried to act depressed.”