Thriller: Code Name: Camelot - An Action Thriller Novel (A Noah Wolf Novel, Thriller, Action, Mystery Book 1) (13 page)

THIRTEEN

“
D
on’t let Moose
get to you,” Allison said. “He comes from a long line of soldiers and sailors, and if he had his choice, he’d still be in the Navy.”

“Then why isn’t he?” Noah asked.

“Remember I said he just barely failed to make Navy SEALs? Well, after he was notified that he was not selected, especially after going through such intense training just to find out if he was good enough, he sort of snapped. The captain who told him the bad news ended up with a shiner, and Moose ended up with a BCD.”

“Bad Conduct Discharge?” Noah asked. “He’s probably lucky that’s all he got. Assaulting an officer, without reason? Really bad idea.”

Allison grinned at him. “Yes, well, Moose figured that out the hard way. Anyway, that’s how he turned up on my radar, and I couldn’t see any sense in letting all that training go to waste.”

Noah looked at her sideways. “With that kind of training, I’m surprised you didn’t make him a team leader himself. An assassin.”

She shook her head. “No way. Moose isn’t a man who can inspire others to follow him; he’s not a natural leader. And except for that one lapse in judgment, he has always been dedicated to following the orders of those in command. You figure out a way to make a friend out of him, or at least get his animosity under control, and you’ll have the most loyal man you could ever hope for on your side.”

Noah nodded. “Speaking of loyalties,” he said, “tell me about Neil Blessing. Is he always that sarcastic?”

“He is, yes. It’s a defense mechanism with him. Neil was always the nerdy kid, and as tall as he is, it turned out he was far too clumsy for any type of athletics. Academically, intellectually, he’s a genius, and if he hadn’t been stupid enough to brag on Facebook and twitter about hacking into the bank’s computers, he probably would’ve gotten away with it. It seems that there’s always little fractions of a cent in the daily interest calculations that get swept into some digital limbo, and Neil created some way to collect all those fractions and add them together in his own bank account. Fifteen thousandths of a cent at a time doesn’t sound like much money, until you realize that his bank is a national corporation with several million clients. This kid was racking up almost eleven thousand dollars a day, and not one cent of it was ever detected as missing from anywhere else.”

Noah blinked. “If he was dumb enough to brag about what he’d accomplished, then I’m not sure why you’re still calling him a genius.”

“Stop and think, Noah,” Allison said. “Genius is the ability to see past the limitations that most of us are faced with, and accomplish the impossible. That’s what he did, without a doubt. However, it is possible to be a genius and still be rather stupid, like that guy who created the internet security software that made him a billionaire, then ran off with his secretary and murdered her husband so no one would find them. Pretty stupid, wasn’t he?”

“Okay, I guess I see your point. Can I at least hope that Neil has learned his lesson about boasting?”

Allison laughed. “I suspect you could actually bet on that.”

They pulled into the underground garage of Allison’s building, and this time she pulled up behind a black-and-silver Corvette. Pointing at it, she said, “That’s your car. Like I said, don’t go wrapping it around any trees, or I might decide to shoot you myself.”

Noah grinned and got out, but she called him back just before he got into the Corvette. “Don’t forget to gather your things from the motel,” she said. “Those clothes are yours, along with the computer. Take them out to your house with you.” She waved once, and drove away.

Noah got into the Corvette and slipped the key into the ignition. He pushed in the clutch and started the car, found reverse on the four-speed and backed it out of its slot. A moment later, he was turning out of the garage onto the street, and making his way back toward the motel.

Marco stuck his head out of his room as Noah pulled in, and came jogging over a moment later to eyeball the Corvette. “Holy cow,” he said, “what a ride! How did you swing this?”

Noah shrugged. “The dragon lady said Doc Parker picked it for me. Can’t say I’m too upset about it, though. It’s a sweet set of wheels.”

Marco whistled. “I’ll just bet.” Without asking, he reached down to the grill and pulled the hood release, then tilted the hood up and whistled again. “Man, I haven’t seen that much chrome in forever,” he said. “Looks like a four fifty-four big block, but I’d bet there’s nothing stock about it. Want my guess? It’ll pass everything except a gas station.”

Noah grinned. “Good thing they give me a gas allowance, then, isn’t it? Listen, I just came to grab my clothes and such, they got me in a house out by the lake already.”

“Yeah, I knew that,” Marco said. “I’ll only be here a couple more days myself, just getting in some refresher training. Not that I need it, you understand, but it never hurts to keep yourself on top of your game.”

Noah nodded, and opened his door. “Hey, by the way, how do I check out of the motel? I mean, there isn’t an office or anything. Where do I leave the key?”

“Just leave it in the room,” Marco said. “Somebody comes around to clean up after we leave, they’ll take care of it. Just make sure you take all your stuff with you, because once you leave the key, you can’t get back in.” Marco waved, and wandered back toward his own room.

Noah quickly gathered up the clothes that had been bought for him, carrying them out carefully and laying them on the passenger seat of the car. When he was done with that chore, he went back to get the computer and found that it had a satchel it fit into, so he packed it carefully and carried it out as well. The only things left were the snacks and pop he had bought the night before, and he was glad he hadn’t thrown away the plastic bags he’d carried them home in. They went back into the bags, and then into the floorboard of the car.

A quick glance around the room told him he hadn’t left anything behind, so he dropped the key onto the dresser and started out the door. At the last second, he went back and checked the bathroom, gathering the shampoo, soaps and razors, and taking those as well. He closed the door behind him and got into the Corvette, fired it up, then began following the map Allison had given him to find his new home.

Even though the compound wasn’t all that large, the drive out to his new house took almost 20 minutes, mostly because Temple Lake Road was full of twists and turns. He found County Road 640 with no trouble, turned onto it, and found the house only a couple of minutes later.

It was bigger than he’d expected. When Allison had said it was a refurbished farmhouse, he had thought of something like the one he had stayed in as a teenager, an old, rickety two-story that looked like a refugee from Green Acres. The house he found, however, was probably twice the size of the one he remembered from back then, and quite beautiful. It appeared to have been built from cedar, and he could see that it had undergone some extensive remodeling in the not-too-distant past.

He parked in front of the garage, then walked over to the door and opened it with the key. The sky was overcast, so he found the light switch inside the door and was amazed when he saw the expanses of oak that greeted his eyes. It took him more than fifteen minutes just to walk through the house, looking at all of the different decors that were used inside, and he couldn’t help wondering if it weren’t all lost on a man who didn’t even know how to appreciate such beauty.

He went out to the garage and found the button to open the garage door, then walked out and pulled the Corvette inside. He closed the garage and began carrying all of his things into the house. Snacks went into the kitchen, root beer into the refrigerator, and then he had to decide which of the four bedrooms he wanted to claim. In the end, simple logic won out, and he took the one on the ground floor that had the big master bathroom attached to it.

Allison had told him that he didn’t have anything scheduled for the rest of the day, so he gave himself a chance to look the place over. Once he had explored the house for the third or fourth time, he walked outside and began looking at the rest of his little estate.

The first thing to catch his eye was the barn, and he wandered over to it and pulled the big door open. A musty smell greeted him, the old scent of horses and cattle that always seems to be present in one of these buildings. It reminded him briefly of the farm he had lived on as a teenager, and he remembered some of his adventures in the loft of the barn back then. A quick look around showed him the ladder that led up to the loft in this one, and he climbed up it just to look around.

The loft had a lot of old hay bales in it, and there were quite a few boxes full of old dishes, knickknacks and other things that the previous owners had probably left behind. Curiosity, while it’s not an emotion, was something that did plague Noah at times, and he found himself rummaging through the discards. There were figurines and collectibles of different kinds, none of which, he was sure, had any true value, but some of them just appealed to him, even if he couldn’t say why. He emptied one box, and then began putting into it things he wanted to keep, like the many figurines of cats. Cats, he had decided years before, were a lot like himself. They didn’t operate on emotion, but rather on logic, and when they were done with you, they were simply done. A cat said goodbye by simply sticking its tail in the air and walking away. Noah thought that was a wonderful example, and tried to follow it whenever he felt like saying goodbye.

He carried the box down carefully, climbing one-handed until he got back to the ground, then took it inside the house and set it on the kitchen counter. Everything in it would need to be cleaned before it could be set out, but he would save that chore for later. He went back outside and began exploring the rest of the little farm.

He found the mobile home that came with it, and saw that Allison was right about it being in surprisingly good shape. It occurred to him again that he could rent it out, but then he decided he didn’t really want neighbors that close to him. He wandered over to one of the two workshop buildings, a fairly large one with overhead doors that was big enough to pull a truck into, and the pickup he’d been told about was sitting inside it at that moment, a Ford from the mid-nineties. The building was obviously intended for mechanical work. It still held a lot of old tools, and there was quite a workbench along one wall. Noah enjoyed tinkering with vehicles and machinery, and he could think of several ways to put this building to use.

The other workshop was smaller, and there were some old woodworking tools stacked up all around it. Some of them were older power tools, but there were a lot of hand tools, as well. The discovery appealed to him, since he’d always wanted to try his hand at woodworking but had never had the time.

A path led down to the lake, and Noah followed it. There was a dock at the bottom of the flight of wooden stairs, with a small boat house attached to it. Allison had told him that he had a boat, so he walked over to the boat house and found the key that would open the door so that he could look inside.

There it was. Noah was looking at what he guessed to be a twenty-four-foot cabin cruiser, an inboard outboard that looked like it had been very well maintained. He climbed onto the boat and peeked into the cabin, which was basically nothing but a bed and a very small bathroom. There was a tiny refrigerator and a microwave oven that he guessed would pass for a galley, but there was nowhere to sit down there. Up on the deck, however, there were four bucket seats and a couple of bench seats with a table between them, and a folding top that would probably protect passengers from the elements. It was a nice boat, and he was looking forward to getting it out on the lake sometime soon. He locked up the boathouse again as he left.

He made his way back to the house, and started trying to settle in. The place was fully furnished, and everything seemed to be either antique or of very high quality, so he suspected that the furnishings may have come from the previous owners. The only things that truly seemed new were all the kitchen appliances and the big flat-panel TV in the living room.

Every room was furnished, including the extra bedrooms upstairs and the room full of bookcases that was downstairs. There were hundreds of books on the shelves. Noah glanced at a few of the titles, but most of them he’d never heard of. Still, he did enjoy reading, so he hoped to get time to check them out sometime soon.

He rummaged through a few of the closets, and found a decent stock of bath towels, sheets and blankets. Except for the fact that the dressers and clothes closets were empty, it almost looked like the owners had simply stepped out for a few minutes. The kitchen cabinets held dishes, pots and pans, silverware and everything else he could possibly need. The only thing that was necessary for him to do was make a trip to the grocery store.

That thought made him wonder about his finances, and he reached into a pocket to pull out the envelope Allison had given him earlier. He found the paper that described his bank accounts, of which there were four. Each of them could be checked online, so he grabbed the computer, set it on the kitchen table and turned it on. The house seemed to be wired for Wi-Fi, and the computer already set up for it, because a moment later it told him that he was logged on securely.

Following the instructions on the bank paperwork, he discovered that he had a fairly large amount of money available. Allison had told him that he would be receiving a bonus for coming on board, and apparently it was a doozy. He’d have no trouble stocking up on groceries, that was for sure.

That was also when he discovered that there was a hefty mortgage on the farm, one that he was apparently expected to make the payments on. The mortgage came from one of the same banks he had an account in, so he went ahead and set up an automatic payment. That way he wouldn’t have to wonder if it was paid when he was out on a mission.

Noah sat back in his chair and looked around at his new home. Only a few days before, he would have found it impossible to believe that he could ever have any kind of life for himself, but now he had a beautiful home, a fantastic car and the opportunity to serve his country once again.