Byron’s dead. Kenny’s out. Noah’s faster and nimbler than a cobra… It’s time to change course.
Queenie bounded onto the top of the grand piano and spread her arms like the wings of a bird. The left arm opened up majestically, but the right arm was crooked and moved awkwardly as if injured.
Noah had no idea what she was doing… but the answer came soon enough.
Chapter 40
Noah gaped. Cranes were flying into the Skyscape studio and joining Queenie by the grand piano. They cawed loudly in an agonizing sympathetic chorus as she tried to move her “broken wing.” Queenie awkwardly pointed her damaged forelimb at Noah and squawked with even greater distress. Her message was obvious even to an untrained ear: Noah hurt me. Do something.
Queenie saw Walrus and Sam staring in horrified wonder as the cranes stretched their wings to their seven-foot wingspans. She discreetly removed two peckers from a pocket and hurled them at the boys. One of them inserted itself into Sam’s arm, the other into Walrus’ chest.
“No!” Noah rushed at Queenie.
But the Crane Lady was ready. She leapt at the charging Noah like Superwoman, spreading her arms out, then smacking her hands toward his eardrums.
At the last millisecond, Noah ducked and turned, but not fast enough. Her hands hit the back of his head and his cheek.
Noah threw a hand at her head. She anticipated a thumb and index finger at her eye but Noah shifted his hand down, chopping at her windpipe, knocking her to the floor.
Weaponless, he ran to the piano with Queenie in pursuit. He ducked under the piano while Queenie resumed her perch on the keyboard’s lid, with peckers ready to launch.
Inside the sound-proof isolation booth, Olivia, Abby and JJ couldn’t believe what they were seeing—the cranes had stopped their attack and were flying away. As if human, they appeared both confused and compassionate.
When they lifted themselves into the air and flew out the window, JJ opened the booth door and heard a distant pained, hurting cry of distress.
JJ’s face dropped. “That’s the cry of a suffering mother calling for help. I’ve got to go.”
He ran to the window and saw birds ascending and entering into Skyscape’s studio on the floor above. One crane, spotting JJ, swooped back down to attack him.
JJ fell back from the window onto the floor, narrowly avoiding the bird’s sword-sharp talons. Seeing pus leaking from the crane’s body, JJ had to focus hard on evading any of the bacteria-laden liquid. Who knew what diseases the bird had?
Rolling from left to right, JJ barely avoided the bird’s storm of attack with its beak and talons.
Suddenly, four hammers came hurtling. Two missed the crane completely but the third hit it on the neck and the last hit its body. The hammers inflicted no pain but the bird flinched a moment, startled at the unexpected offensive.
That was enough time for JJ to leap to his feet, pick up a metal support beam and launch his own assault. Half a dozen blows to the crane’s body and head and the bird was dead.
Olivia and Abby, who had thrown the hammers, rushed to JJ and wrapped their arms around him. It was a harmless gesture of affection to them but it electrified JJ, the virginal ex-monk.
He swallowed, “I’ve got to get upstairs.”
“Of course,” said Olivia.
JJ bolted from the room, up the flight of stairs to Skyscape’s floor and down the corridor to the main studio.
He thrust the door open just in time to see Noah hiding under the piano and using a microphone to fend off cranes trying to attack him.
“Get out from under, Noah!” screamed JJ as he raced across the room toward the piano.
JJ jumped feet first toward one of the piano’s legs. As JJ’s thrust snapped the piano leg, Noah scrambled out from under the instrument’s frame. As Noah escaped, the piano toppled, crushing three cranes. Queenie lost her balance and plunged to the floor.
Noah and JJ picked up the sturdy piano legs and used them to club the attacking birds into submission.
The last few cranes, habituated to be carnivores, smelled the blood on Sam and Walrus’ bodies. They changed direction and flew at the boys, ready to partake of a carnal feast.
Noah and JJ rushed to the teenagers, shouting, “To death!”
The cry of ancient warriors who would defend the city until death sounded corny unless you were thirteen. Noah knew that Sam and Walrus needed something to raise their spirits.
Unfortunately, the bleeding had weakened the boys seriously. Noah worried that an abnormally fast case of infection or sepsis might be setting in. These birds were hardly sanitary and, with their blood splattered everywhere, serious infection was bound to happen.
Noah leapt in front of a crane just before its beak skewered Sam. Noah bashed the bird’s head so hard its eyes bulged as it collapsed.
“You’re the man, Noah,” mumbled Sam.
JJ did a flying somersault and his bat whacked the back of a bird, crushing its vertebrae.
Noah could see Sam waning and he frantically scanned the room for anything that might help. “JJ, Sam’s fading fast. We have to get the boys some disinfectant.”
Walrus choked out, “There’s a couple bottles of booze in the equipment room. We tried some.”
Of course you did. “Thanks, Walrus.”
As JJ defended the boys with piano leg swings and blows, Noah rushed to the equipment room. His spirits sank when he saw broken bottles of vodka by a fallen cabinet. Most likely, the explosions in the room triggered the storage unit’s demise.
Noah spotted a few empty soda cans and picked them up. Seeing Walrus and Sam starting to shiver, he shouted “Try to dress the wounds,” he shouted to JJ. “I’m going to the washroom to get some water.”
Disoriented, defeated and in great pain, the last few surviving cranes had surrounded Queenie. They were the sickliest of Queenie’s birds. Their eyes were swollen and leaking a vile discharge. Their feathers were tattered and matted. Their bodies were full of lesions and skin was peeling off the exposed parts of their legs.
“Mama, what have you done to us?” they seemed to cry.
The cranes turned on her, scratching her and gouging her with their beaks. It was as if the birds, realizing their own imminent death, wanted to have their revenge on the woman who had mistreated them so badly for so long.
Chapter 41
As Alexei was chauffeured to Skyscape, he was consumed by thoughts of Queenie and none of them were good.
Firstly, she did not return his money on time and, like a fool, he gave her an extension.
Secondly, the Chinaman he captured as a favor to her stole his girls. Now the Chinaman, his key henchmen, Raoul, and all the girls had disappeared without a trace of their whereabouts.
When he arrived at the Vector Building, Alexei went nuclear. No security guards in sight and the electricity was on back-up power. Why the hell is every other building on the block working while mine is not?
As he stepped on the elevator, he pulled out a gun, ready to shoot the first thing he saw when he got off at Skyscape’s floor.
As bad as she appeared, Queenie was not in as much danger of dying as the average person would be under the circumstances. Over the years her birds had bitten her so many times that she had developed complete immunity to all their poisons, toxins, bacteria and viruses. Also, these birds were on the verge of death so their strength was diminished. Their attack on her was their swan song. She was down but hardly out.
Noah entered the men’s room to see Tim with a bag of coke, getting ready to clean some dirty needles. Tim, high as high a kite and wanting to soar to the skies, didn’t see Noah take the bottle of isopropyl alcohol from him. But when Noah tried to palm his bag of coke, the music producer had a flash of lucidity and tried to stab Noah with his dirty needle.
With his judgment totally impaired, Tim injected his own hand instead, driving the sharp point to the bone. As he howled, Noah took the alcohol and cocaine, then ran back to the studi
o where JJ had stemmed Sam and Walrus’ bleeding with makeshift tourniquets.
“Ok, JJ. Let’s take off the dressings and clean the wounds with the alcohol. Then we’ll sprinkle the cocaine into the cuts.”
“Really?”
Noah nodded. “Yes, the alcohol will sterilize and the coke will act as an anesthetic and restrict the bleeding by narrowing the blood vessels.”
“Stay focused. We’ve got to be fast, Noah.”
When Alexei entered Skyscape Studios, the first thing he noticed was the silence. Then he walked to the office—nobody there. Next stop was the boardroom.
Nobody there, either.
Then he stepped into Studio 5.
Oh, my God.
Alexei was disgusted with himself. How could he possibly have ever been interested in the piece of shit in front of him? Queenie was no longer the exotic sexy Eurasian but some cheap beat-up hooker.
Disgust turned to rage when Alexei spotted the Chinaman who stole his girls. “You took my girls!”
Alexei’s shout drew JJ’s attention to the barrel of a gun pointed at his face. JJ hopped, ducked, and rolled to avoid Alexei’s rampage of bullets.
JJ picked up a dead bird and blocked Alexei’s next shots with the bird’s carcass.
Queenie saw her chance. She dove at JJ’s legs, knocking the martial artist to the ground. She stabbed JJ with one of the bird’s beaks and turned to the Russian. “You owe me, Alexei,” she screamed.
“Like hell!” snarled the Russian. He fired at Queenie, hitting her in the leg.
“Ah!” she yelled.
Noah, seeing Alexei bounding toward the fallen grandmaster, got up and ran at the Russian. He took a flying leap and tackled Alexei to the floor.
The Russian’s body became Noah’s punching bag with continuous hammer fists to the head, chest and stomach. It was the worst beating Alexei had ever experienced.
“Noah,” sobbed the wounded Queenie.
Noah turned to see Queenie, tearing and repentant. She said softly, “I’m sorry, Noah. You were right.”
This unexpected statement shocked Noah as Queenie approached. “Right about what?”
She hobbled over. “Me.” Suddenly, Queenie whipped her final pecker out and drove it at Noah.
A shot rang out.
The beak exploded in mid-air, then continued its deadly journey into Queenie’s heart. As she crumpled, she sneered, “I’ll haunt you in death, Noah Reid.”
Noah looked over to the shooter. It was Willie Mays.
“She wanted to kill my son, and almost did. I can never forgive that.”
Unspoken was the fact that Willie Mays did not have to kill Queenie. He had ample opportunity to shoot her in any number of places that would not be lethal. Stomach, leg, arm... Noah walked up to the member of New York City’s finest and punched him twice.
Once in the eye. In a few minutes, it would bleed and swell up.
The other blow broke the cop’s nose.
Noah then delivered a hard kick to Willie Mays’ chest, breaking his ribs. Throughout the beating, Willie Mays did not try to defend himself.
Noah announced, “Willie Mays, you are a true hero. You rescued two defenseless boys that were being beaten to death by a Russian mobster and a savage woman who attacked them with sharpened cranes’ beaks and talons. Your gun was a weapon of last resort because your nose was broken, your ribs were cracked, and you could barely see out of one eye. I salute you.”
As Noah made the Shaolin hand sign of greeting to the policeman, JJ asked, “Where’s the Russian?”
They looked but there was no sign of Alexei at all. In the confused frenzy, he had slipped away.
Chapter 42
JJ and Abby stood with Olga, the Russian cleaning lady, eyes checking out the twelve sleeping girls in the Presidential Suite of The Seventh Hotel.
Olga spoke softly. “These girls are homeless and stateless. That’s why nobody cared when they were smuggled out and nobody will care for them when they go back.”
“Maybe there will be people here to adopt them,” said Abby.
“No one here will want them either... except the men, and that’s the last thing they need. No one will adopt them. Not with their history.”
“I’ll take care of them,” said JJ.
“How can you do that? They have no papers,” said Olga.
“Not to mention you’re a single man without American status,” added Abby.
“The Chad Huang Foundation will transfer 250 million to set up a new operation in New York. We will put something together for the girls, setting up new centers, including modifying the New Amsterdam Arts Center concept. I’ll leave the legalities to the lawyers.”
“Maybe you’d like some help?” asked Abby.
JJ smiled. “Maybe.”
As Sam and Walrus recuperated in their room, Noah and Olivia conferred with the attending physician.
“First time I’ve ever seen cocaine and alcohol used for primary treatment,” stated the doctor. “That was pretty quick thinking.”
“How long before Sam can go back to Hong Kong?” asked Noah.
The doctor shook his head. “Hard to say. The boys have both lost a lot of blood and, even though we think we nipped the infection in the bud, I want to keep them here for observation. Ten days, maybe two weeks? There’s not a lot for you to do here. You could just go, then come back later.”
Noah clicked his tongue thoughtfully. “Yeah. Maybe I’ll do that. I’ve already got a flight booked.”
Olivia said, “Cathay International. 10 p.m. Economy.”
Noah regarded Olivia with curiosity. “How did you know that?”
“I’m on the same flight. Sitting beside you.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Noah,” said a groggy Sam, “It doesn’t take Einstein to figure that out.”
“But how did you know what flight? I didn’t tell anybody.”
Walrus opened his eyes. “I am the Walrus. I can do anything.”
Suddenly, the television in the room turned on by itself.
Onscreen was a heavily bandaged man. “Noah. You have killed three of my children. But I have two more to go… And there is me.”
The television turned off just as suddenly as it turned on.
Noah pursed his lips and let out a slow blast of air. “I think I’m gonna stay for a while.”
THE END
Also Written by Wesley Robert Lowe
Visit www.wesleyrobertlowe.com for sales info or if you are a member of KINDLE UNLIMITED, borrow for free at AMAZON US or AMAZON UK
THE NOAH REID ACTION THRILLERS
Evil Rises In this prequel novella, rogue monk CHIN arises to redefine Shaolin Kung Fu as a battle plan for his lust for criminal power. Yet in of the darkness glows a glimmer of light… a little boy who might be a savior.
Betrayed New attorney Noah Reid is catapulted into a brutal Shaolin underworld when his boss is discovered to have bilked billions from Chin, the firm’s biggest client, a psychopathic Kung Fu Master.
Heaven Shattered When Noah accompanies his mentor on a journey of death and adventure back to China, Chin’s son King, master of all things connected to snakes, leads a savage charge to recover the family’s illicit fortune with clandestine military precision.
Innocence Assaulted Under pressure from New York’s Russian mob to repay a loan, Queenie, Chin’s beguiling daughter, brings her arsenal of winged destruction to pressure Noah to return her family’s fortune, using a group of school kids as leverage.
Slavery Unbound Prince, Chin’s steroid-fueled son, shares a depravity with a Russian mob partner: a lust for children. Noah has taken “their girls” and they want them back. Can Noah shut down this unholy alliance before they drown the Big Apple in depravity?
Ritual Sacrifice Prez, Chin’s eldest daughter, is a cult leader with a purpose. With cash and influence from her followers, crooked politicians and her father, Prez can build a casino empire on the backs of an unsuspect
ing Native American Tribe. That is unless family nemesis – Noah Reid stops her first.
Find out more at www.wesleyrobertlowe.com
THE RAYNA TAN ACTION THRILLER SERIES
Recruited is the story of why twenty-six-year-old Rayna Tan chose to leave the secretive world of the elite Canadian Forces Special Operations counter-terrorism unit (JTF2) to join an even more shadowy operation, Fidelitas. She’s a fascinating character: stunningly gorgeous, IQ off the charts, a sniper in the league of Chris Kyle… Yes, Rayna has her flaws but overall, she’s one very dangerous and very human lethal weapon.
American Terrorist A video of desecration and beheading in a small Syrian village appears briefly on the deep web. When the sword-wielding executioner proclaims Jihad on America, no one knows whether to take him and his ragtag marauders seriously. Can they deliver? Or is this a cover for a more devious conspiracy? Rayna Tan, ex-Canadian Special Forces and newly minted covert operative, heads the mission to disarm the potential attack and discovers rats among the radicalists—not every terrorist is a true believer.
The Mandarin’s Vendetta When Rayna goes to China to administer justice to corrupt officials and businessmen who caused death and injury thousands of schoolchildren, a heinous plot is discovered: one of the perpetrators, bent on revenge against the American system that allowed his son to die, plans to kill a million Americans with a deadly new drug.
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About the Author
Wesley Robert Lowe began his career in music as a jazz pianist, keyboard player and composer for film and television where his four seasons on Sesame St. resulted in industry accolades and international awards.
The Noah Reid Action Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (plus special bonuses) Page 56
