Falling down, Alexei butts Noah’s head, dazing him. He grabs around Noah’s waist with his left arm and pulls out a knife with his right.
He drives the knife towards Noah’s chest, but Noah, operating on autopilot, rolls to the side, pushing the knife away from him.
The knife rotates so that the blade point aims at Alexei, and the big man’s body falls directly on it, sending the blade directly into Alexei’s heart.
The groggy Noah pulls himself up and looks at Alexei. With seemingly, maybe, just moments, minutes at best, left to live, Alexei has one final hurrah.
Totally disoriented, Noah doesn’t realize the danger he’s in, and his glassy eyes look at Alexei.
With one hand, Alexei reaches into a pocket and pulls out a hypodermic needle. With the other, the Russian pulls the knife out of his chest.
Kneeling over Noah, he raises both hands over his head.
But before he launches the final missive, Alexei’s eyes start bulging, and his body starts to spasm.
He brings his arms down onto Noah. The pointed needle’s contents is injected into Noah, but the knife enters the foundation president’s chest for an inch before Alexei’s whole body convulses.
RING! Noah is brought back to reality by a call on his cell phone.
He picks up and hears Abby’s voice. “Noah. Noah? We’re almost here. Noah?”
Noah collapses on the floor.
CHAPTER 16
Olivia looks down the street - again. There is no sign of the big brown bus. There have also been no phone calls or text messages.
She inhales then makes her third phone call in the last five minutes. “Answer the phone, Noah.”
But again no response.
She looks at the restaurant. Nice-looking place. People smiling as they come and go. Nothing at all to indicate something’s not right here. Noah should have been out by now. It’s been over twenty minutes.
RING! Finally. “Hey Olivia, sorry I just got your message. Damned cell phone towers are so unreliable.”
“Where are you?”
“We’re in Brighton Beach now. Crazy traffic. Thought I’d at the restaurant sooner, but who knows?”
“Is JJ with you?”
“No. JJ’s stayed back at the 7th so I got all the young girls quizzing me all about him. They’re convinced we’ve been making out like minks. I think Sam and Walrus are jealous.” Abby’s voice drops to a whisper. “There was a problem, and he’s checking it out. I also called Noah. Someone picked up but didn’t say anything.
“Okay, okay. When you get to Kandinsky’s, whatever you do, don’t go inside unless you see me. Wait five minutes; if I don’t show up, just take off. There’s something wrong here, Abby. Noah went in half an hour ago and hasn’t come out yet. If JJ were here, I’d get him to go in, but now I got to do it myself.”
“Are you crazy, girlfriend?”
“Have you got a better idea?”
Silence.
“Thought so.”
CLICK.
***
Olivia heads through Kandinsky’s front door. Can you believe it? There’s a lineup for lunch. She elbows her way to the front of the line.
“I’m sorry, Madame. You have to wait your turn like everything else,” says Denis, the piqued maître d’.
“I’m not here to eat.” She takes out Noah’s picture. “I’m with him, and he came in an hour ago to meet Alexei.”
“They are in a private meeting,” says Denis firmly.
Olivia suddenly jumps at the maître d. She grabs the top of his shirt and does a handspring, pulling him to the ground. His ass hits the ground hard.
Olivia pulls him up. “Now.”
Denis gulps. He’s not sure which hurts more - his bum or his ego. All the regular patrons have just seen him get his butt kicked.
“Let’s go.”
The maître d’ leads Olivia through the restaurant. I’m going to hit Alexei up for danger pay. That’s twice in an hour.
***
Crazy things about traffic jams. They start from out of nowhere, and they finish out of nowhere. It takes the bus only eight minutes before Kandinsky’s is in sight.
Polina shouts out, “There it is! Lunch!”
Abby takes a quick look at the front and sees that Olivia is not there. “Not quite yet. I want to do just a little bit more.”
Groans from the kids. “Abby!”
“Don’t ‘Abby’ me. I was thinking of doing a bit of shopping unless you really want to eat.”
Shopping is the universal magic word for young girls. Food is forgotten.
“Can I get one of those Russian doll things?” asks Ling Ling.
“No, no,” says Walrus, frantically doing a search on his smartphone. “There’s a game shop six blocks from here.”
“I want to get American jeans,” says Nina.
“Me too,” says Mei. “And a genuine American T-shirt.”
“They’re all made in China,” says Sam.
“Jeans and T-shirts? Sounds good,” says Abby. She turns to the driver. “Any recommendations?”
“Yeah, Bloomingdales.”
“That’s back in Manhattan.”
“Hey, we’re not uncivilized in Brooklyn, you know. I’ll get us there.”
The driver continues down the block and past the restaurant.
Abby tries calling JJ, Noah and Olivia in turn but gets no answer and no responses to texts.
***
Snarled in traffic a block from Kandinsky’s, Tanya’s foggy-brained head leans on the Range Rover’s window when suddenly she sees something going in the opposite direction that snaps her out of the stupor.
“That’s it,” says Tanya excitedly. “That’s it.”
“That’s what?” asks Prince.
“That’s our bus. We were taking a tour of New York today. They must have decided to come to Brighton Beach. We heard so much about it and always wanted to see it.”
As the bus starts disappearing in the distance, Prince jumps out of the luxury SUV.
“Don’t let her go. I’m going after the bus.”
Prince starts running into the lane where the bus is driving. He sees the bus starting to disappear and steps up his pace.
For such a big, heavy-set man, Prince is surprisingly fast.
He doesn’t see a car coming at him from the left until the last possible millisecond.
With amazing agility, Prince throws his hands onto the car’s hood and does a handspring, landing on the other side of the car. Pretty damned good for someone who’s built more like an NFL running back than an Olympic gymnast.
The chase resumes, but now traffic has started to compile around him. He takes a look a block ahead - no traffic in front of the bus. He won’t be able to catch up if he keeps weaving in and out of cars.
He jumps onto the hood of the upcoming car and then hops from vehicle to vehicle - sometimes landing on a car hood, sometimes on a vehicle’s roof.
However, he’s still losing ground. But at least traffic is easing and is starting to move.
He makes a gravity-defying leap over four cars and lands standing up on the passenger side of a convertible.
“What the... ” says the convertible’s driver.
But before the driver completes his thought, Prince has grabbed his throat, opened his door and thrown him out.
Prince takes over the wheel.
***
Inside the bus, the kids are screaming with excitement. They have all piled into the back, looking out the rear window, watching this crazy Chinese guy, jump from car to car and now landing in a convertible.
None of them has ever seen anything like this before!
“That is so awesome,” marvels Sam, and everyone oohs and aahs in concurrence.
“He’s Chinese too!” says Lydia with pride as the convertible weaves in and out of traffic, coming in their direction.
The convertible catches up to the bus and starts driving alongside it.
All
the kids wave at Prince and shout, “Hi! Hello! Look at me!”
Abby takes a look at Prince and gasps - she sees the resemblance between him and one of Chin’s other sons - Duke. She asks the bus driver. “Can you lose this guy?”
“Lady, I’m on probation. If I so much as get caught for jaywalking, they’ll throw me back in the slammer.”
Abby screams, “Get off,” and pulls the bus driver off the wheel. With the bus floundering, she takes the driver’s wheel and floors it.
However, Prince has jumped out of the convertible and started running alongside it.
The kids shriek with excitement. They have no idea why Abby is doing what she’s doing, but this is so friggin’ cool!
Abby swerves the bus back and forth, trying to knock Prince down, but he deftly moves out of the way.
Prince jumps onto the top of an adjacent moving car, then leaps onto the top of the bus.
Abby sees a huge pothole and guns toward it.
The bus hits the pothole, and the back half lifts up in the air. The bus’ steering wheel spins out of Abby’s control. The bus almost capsizes before the bus’s tail thuds to the ground.
But mission accomplished - Prince has been thrown from the top of the bus and is dangling over the side, hanging onto the roof rack.
“You wanna drive?” Abby yells to the driver as she rights the bus and starts driving again.
“Hell, yeah!” I’m going back to the big house sooner or later anyway.
The driver and Abby make a fast switch in the even faster-moving vehicle.
“Just rock back and forth.”
“You got it, Abby!”
The bus starts bumping, jerking and jolting like a canoe in turbulent white water rapids.
Abby rushes the few rows down to the window where she sees Prince’s legs swing wildly.
She grabs the metal rack attached to the underside of the bus’ roof and kicks out the glass window.
She kicks at Prince’s legs. He can’t see her so her kicks land with impunity. However, his thighs and calves are so thick with muscle, he feels no pain. There is no damage and no effect on his bodily control.
Suddenly, Prince lets go of the roof. As he falls down the side of the bus, he grabs Abby’s legs as they kick out.
Despite her yelling and kicking all the harder, Prince doesn’t let go and uses them to pull himself inside the bus.
The kids gape at the big Chinese. He is more impressive physically than they thought.
“Hello, everybody. I’m Prince.”
Most of the kids cheer and greet him but not the Chinese girls. They see the leopard tattoos on his arms. And they recognize his name. Although the girls had never met him until now, they knew he was Tony and Leo’s boss - the leader of the Leopard gang.
Abby punches at him, but Prince easily fends off her blows like they were annoying fleas.
He counters with three solid hits - one to the head, one to the stomach, one to the temple. Abby is out cold.
Prince takes out three sharpened leopard’s teeth and rockets them into the back of the driver’s skull. The needle-sharp projectiles drive through the parietal bone and into the brain.
Blood starts spurting.
Prince bounds forward and pushes the driver out of his seat and takes over the steering wheel.
He pulls to the side of the road, stands up and takes the microphone.
“Think about what you have just seen. Any of you that chooses not to do what I say will have the same thing happen to you or worse. First things first. All laptops, cell phones and computers, throw them into the aisle now. I will be checking each of you.”
Normally, it is impossible to get teens to part with their cell phones, but in this case, not a word of objection from anyone as all the electronic communication devices are tossed into the aisle.
Prince begins his frisking process. No one has dared keep anything, and no one dares say anything.
Prince pays especial attention to feeling Ling Ling, Mei and Lydia. “The three of you have cost me, and rest assured, you will pay back with interest.”
“You’ll never get away with this,” says Sam.
A swift palm strike by Prince to Sam’s head knocks the teen out.
“Anybody else got something intelligent to say?”
The bus door opens, and two of Prince’s men come onboard with Tanya.
Larissa waves at the strung-out teenager. “Hi, Tanya.”
Tanya is too out of it to respond and topples to the floor.
One of the henchmen picks her up and plops her into a chair. The other takes over the wheel of the bus and starts driving.
***
“Alexei doesn’t like to be interrupted during his meetings,” says Denis as he knocks on the door to Alexei’s office.
“Just open the damned door,” commands Olivia.
When there’s no answer, the maître d’ knocks again.
Again, no response.
“I think we should just leave them alone.”
Olivia shakes her head and opens the door herself.
She and Denis gasp. Two battled warriors are both lying bloodied on the ground. There are bits of glass on the ground and an empty syringe nearby.
Olivia rushes to Noah as the maître d’ bolts to Alexei.
“Get an ambulance. We got to get them to a hospital right away,” screams Olivia.
Then the dead come to life.
“No hospital,” mumbles Alexei.
“No Western medicine,” murmurs Noah.
Olivia sees the maître d’ reaching for something in his pocket. The bulge tells her it’s likely a gun. Before his hand gets there, she throws a carefully targeted punch at his left temple.
Bull's eye. The maître d’s brain falls unconscious.
Olivia whispers a prayer of thanks - in addition to piano lessons, her father forced her to take martial arts training.
She figures she has maybe five minutes before either the maître d’ comes to or someone comes snooping into the office.
Decision made, Olivia picks up Noah and carries him out of the office.
“This is what happens when you complain about the food,” Olivia says to astonished customers as she carries the bleeding Noah to the restaurant exit. “Don’t order the chicken Kiev.”
***
Olivia looks outside the restaurant and down the street - no sign of the bus or Abby.
She grabs one of the waiting cabs and carries Noah inside.
“Hey, hey, this is no ambulance.”
“Shut up and take me to Chinatown.”
“If that guy gets blood on my car, you gotta pay for the cleaning.”
“For the condition of this car, you should pay us to be in it. Now go.”
The cabby shakes his head and starts out. “Hey, you got any sisters? I like women with spunk.”
“Just drive.”
Olivia composes and sends off a text to Abby.
Thought you were going to be at the restaurant. Where are you now?
Thirty seconds later. DING!
Change of planz
Attached to the text is a picture of a very dead bus driver beside an unconscious Abby. This is not good.
Who are you?
Thirty seconds later.
Your worstest nightmare. Attached is a video of Prince, stripped to his waist, flexing his muscles and showing off his leopard tattoos.
***
JJ’s thorough search of both the room that he and Noah shared and the Presidential Suite revealed nothing, but for some reason, the television is turned onto the hotel’s directory of services. The arrow of the remote control is placed on “Contact Housekeeping Services - Basement Office Direct Line 1044.”
He makes a call to Abby. When there’s no response, he sends a text.
Abby. Why would someone leave the television in the Presidential Suite left on to the Housekeeping Section?
DING! Almost instantaneous answer.
Probably cuz to change t
he sheats.
JJ looks at the text message with concern. Abby is not like anyone else he knows in that she does not take shortcuts in text messages and always writes in proper sentences and with correct spelling. Too many errors here. He puzzles a moment.
Give me Abby. Need to speak with her.
She’s bizy
I’ve got to speak to her.
One minute later. DING! A text with a short video attached.
Prince with his princess. A close of faces. A big husky Chinese man on lying on top of Abby, kissing her passionately.
It takes every bit of self-control he has to stop JJ from smashing his cell phone.
He looks at television again and again sees the prompt “Contact Housekeeping Services - Basement Office Direct Line 1044.”
He punches in 1044. Rings and rings but no answer.
CHAPTER 17
Igor puts his clothes on. If Alexei found out, that he ignored the time because he found a cute housekeeper wanting to make a few extra dollars, he’d kill him. And he was so eager, and she was so willing, five minutes turned to ten turned to... If that damned phone didn’t keep ringing, they’d still be at it. And where the hell is Eva’s daughter?
Got to check it out.
Igor goes to the elevator and opens the door. Inside is JJ with the housekeeping cart with Eva, dead. He instantly recognizes JJ from Alexei’s pictures.
There is a God, and He has provided me a way of salvation.
Igor pulls out a gun and shoots at JJ.
JJ ducks as the first bullet imbeds behind him into the elevator.
“Where are the girls?” Igor asks as he continues firing.
From a crouching position, JJ pushes the housekeeping cart at Igor.
“Damned if I’m going to tell you.”
The heavy-set Russian stands his ground, and the cart bounces off him. Igor aims a bullet again, this time through the cart, hoping the bullet will rip through the cart’s material and directly into JJ.
SLAVERY UNBOUND: Cruelty & Lust with the Emerging Eastern Mafia (Noah Reid Action Thriller series Book 4) Page 11
