Code Name: Camelot (Noah Wolf #1)(60)
Noah nodded. “I understand,” he said. “I won’t let anything affect a mission, and especially not that.”
She looked at him for another moment, then nodded as if dismissing the issue. “Okay, then, we need to go ahead and get this show on the road. I’ve already sent Jefferson to El Paso to make sure everything is ready for you when you get there. He’ll provide you with your burner IDs, phones, weapons and anything else you need. We’ve got you booked into the Holiday Inn, each of you with your own room.” She looked meaningfully at him for just a moment, and said, “For the record, we do discourage any kind of intimacy between teammates when you’re out in the field. That doesn’t mean we’ll be watching, but it’s just a guideline to prevent problems.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Noah said.
Allison laughed once, then went on. “You and your team will fly out of Denver tomorrow afternoon, and meet Jefferson in El Paso tomorrow evening. He’s got vehicles and everything waiting for you, so just let him know what else you need for your plans.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Noah, this is the part where I have to say that if you or any of your team is compromised, as in captured or killed, our government will deny any knowledge of you. You don’t exist, so there won’t be a rescue mission. As far as Mexico would be concerned, you would probably be treated as a criminal, which could mean anything from prison time to execution, depending on what the charges are. Unfortunately, I can’t even offer you the chance to back out. This is the reason we recruited you, and I’m hoping, really, really hoping, that you will turn out to be as good as I think you will.”
Noah gave her his best grin. “Relax,” he said. “I’ll be even better than that.”
She grinned back. “Good. Now, go prove that to me.” She handed him an envelope. “These are your plane tickets. Everything else you’ll need, you’ll get from Jefferson. Noah, I want you guys to be careful down there. This is your first mission, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an important one. It’s got to be successful, but I want you all to come back. I have high hopes for this team.”
“I appreciate that,” Noah said, “and I promise you I’m going to do my best to make sure we all come back safe.”
She nodded once. “Excellent,” she said, and then picked up the file from her desk and began reading through it.
Noah recognized a dismissal when he saw one, so he rose from the chair and walked out of the room. Jenny looked up at him and smiled as he passed her desk again, and he returned it out of habit. When he got to the elevator, however, there was no sign of a smile on his face.
He rode the elevator down to the parking garage, and walked to his Corvette. He fired the powerful car up and backed it out of its space, then made his way out to the street and turned right. That took him out to the road that would let him head for home, and since he had nothing else to do for the day, home sounded like the place he wanted to be.
He took out his phone, and sent a message to each of his team members to meet him at his place for dinner. By the time he got to the county road, all three of them had replied that they would be there. Since it was only a little after three, he decided to fire up the grill for some barbecued chicken.
Neil was already at home, in his trailer, so he wandered over to the house when Noah got there. “Hail, Caesar,” he said. “How goes it with Queen Allison?”
“Pretty good,” Noah replied. “We got the final go-ahead; we fly out tomorrow afternoon. You got everything ready on your end?”
Neil broke into a big smile. “I have got things so ready that I’m making every bank in the world nervous,” he said. “I’ve written a program that can get into every financial computer network in the world, and make fake transactions appear in any bank account I want to play around with. What that means is that Uncle Sam doesn’t have to spend any money for all these drug buys you’re planning to make. All you do is tell me where you want money to appear, and I’ll make it appear there.”
Noah’s eyebrows almost met his hairline. “Are you saying you found a way to create money out of thin air?”
Neil squinted at him, and sneered. “Why would I do that? The Federal Reserve has been doing that for years; that’s not new. Hell, every bank in the country, probably the world, can do that. No, I’ve done something even better. I can make money appear in any bank account, looking just like it came from a normal transaction, but sometime later, depending on how long I set it for, it automatically disappears. Poof! Gone like it never existed, which it didn’t. Of course, the beauty of it is that you’ll be long gone before anyone notices what happened.”
Noah looked at him for a moment. “What happens if they spend the money before your time limit runs out and it disappears?”
Neil grinned. “Then, suddenly, a whole lot of bank examiners and federal agents from every country involved are looking for whoever owned that account, because it will be so deep in the hole that they may never figure out just how much money is really missing.”
Noah nodded. “And somehow, the banks are aware of this program of yours? You said they’re all scared, right?”
Neil blinked a couple of times. “Well—okay, they’re not really scared, because they don’t know about it, but if they did know about it, they’d be terrified. I mean, like, shaking in their boots, that kind of terrified. Holy crap, Noah, in the wrong hands, this program could destabilize the economies of some fair-sized countries!”