In Sheep's Clothing (Noah Wolf #3)
David Archer
ONE
Noah Wolf walked into the conference room with Sarah Child, his transportation officer and apparent girlfriend, beside him. Neil Blessing, his computer and intelligence specialist, was already there. Allison Peterson, the director of E & E, and Donald Jefferson, her Chief of Staff, shook hands with them and pointed to the coffee and doughnuts that were always present in these meetings. Moose Conway, who was Noah's backup muscle, arrived only a few moments later and the briefing got underway.
“You've had almost four months to take it easy since you all got yourselves torn up on the last mission, so we've got an easy one for you, this time,” Jefferson said. “No international travel this time; you're going to be working right here at home. The DEA has identified high-ranking members of the Angelos Michoacan drug cartel operating from a base in the Midwest, and has requested our services to eliminate them. There are five primary targets in all, and it's necessary that they're eliminated in such a way that it sends a message back to the cartel.”
“I've got a question,” Neil said. “If they know who they are, why don't they just go and arrest them? Why send us in?”
“That's a valid question,” Allison said, “so I'll give you a straight answer. DEA and FBI have been tracking them for a few months now, but these people are smart. They don't allow anything to happen that could provide evidence to back up a warrant or lead to an arrest. DEA has picked up dozens of their dealers and mules, but none of them are allowed to know enough to give us any valid intelligence. This is a case where the best way to put a stop to their enterprise is to simply cut off the head.”
Neil was shaking his head. “Wait a minute, wait a minute, let me get this straight,” he said. “They don't have enough evidence to arrest these guys, but they have enough to say let's just kill them and get it over with? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought we were still in America.”
Allison smiled her famous dragon-lady smile at him. “We have detailed intelligence from before these people came to the United States, positively identifying them as major players in the cartel. The DEA can prove that many of the dealers and mules they've arrested have had regular contact with them, but nothing that adds up to sufficient evidence to get a warrant. Since those dealers are distributing some pretty high-grade heroin and cocaine with all the chemical signatures to prove it's coming from the Angelos cartel, I didn't have any problem authorizing the sanctions.”
Neil shrugged but settled back into his chair without any further comments. Allison nodded to Jefferson, and he went on.
“As I said, the idea is to make a statement with their termination,” he said. “We want the cartel to think long and hard before they send any more people or product into our country. How you go about it is entirely up to you, Camelot, but the messier you can make it, the better. The Angelos Cartel is one of the most brutal in the world, and the FBI credits this particular group with at least three-dozen murders here on our soil. Some of those murders were execution-style, and rumor has it that they were ordered because of a few dollars missing from the daily take. The worst of it is that when the Angelos decide to take you out, they don't just stop with you. They take out your entire family as well, eliminating, as they put it, ‘you and your seed from the gene pool’ completely.”
“I want to say something before we finish up here,” Allison said. “Noah, I want you to make it look like the evil they've been dishing out came back to haunt them. Each of the cartel members in Columbia has a family with them. I'd personally like to see you give them back exactly what they've been handing out.”
Sarah gasped. “You want him to kill their families?”