Noble Man

by William Miller

  The driver climbed between the seats “Help me get her to the boat.”

  The kidnapper with the missing finger grabbed a fist full of Bati’s hair and jerked her into a sitting position. “Try anything, and I’ll rip out your throat.”

  7

  Lady Shiva dabbed her brush in yellow and mixed it with blue until she had just the right shade of green—the vibrant color of the summer grass on the steps of the Banaue Rice paddies north of Mount Pulag. She wore white socks and a baggy, paint-splattered shirt that hung half way to her knees. Her hair was piled on top of her head, held in place by a rubber band. With her tongue stuck in the corner of her mouth, she delicately added the marshy rice plateaus to her latest painting.

  Most of her works were nature scenes; the Philippine countryside she remembered from her earliest childhood. Unframed canvases depicting mountains, thatched huts, and meadows were stacked against the walls of the simple art studio. The occasional portrait could be seen peeking out between the landscapes. The floor was scuffed hardwood, and the walls were cracked plaster. In the daytime, she painted under the skylight. Tonight she worked by the diffused glare of a light box she’d bought secondhand from a professional photographer.

  She stepped back to survey the canvas. There was a knock at the door. Without taking her eyes from the painting, Shiva shouted, “Come.”

  Oscar entered, closed the door behind him, and stared at his sneakers. He had a cauliflower ear on the left side. The pulpy, disfigured flesh was proof of countless hours spent in a boxing ring. A sleeveless shirt revealed muscular arms. His usual swagger was gone, replaced by cowering obedience, which could only mean bad news.

  “Well?” Shiva asked. “Where is she?”

  “There was a problem,” Oscar said. He refused to meet her gaze. He stared at a painting of the ocean instead. “The men I sent to pick her up are… missing.”

  “Missing,” Shiva repeated. Her mouth turned up in a humorless smile. She pulled the rubber band out of her hair, re-gathered her tangled black tresses and bound them up again. As she did, the hem of her shirt climbed up. Oscar’s eyes flicked to her naked thighs and then back to the painting.

  “I waited,” he said. “They never showed. I called. They aren’t answering their mobiles. I even-”

  Shiva cuffed his cauliflower ear with an open palm, cutting off his stream of excuses like a knife blade. “Stupid boy.” She grabbed his cauliflower ear and twisted. Oscar bore the torment in silence. “Stupid, silly boy. I should have left you in the gutter where I found you.”

  She let him go and went back to her painting. She found a rag and dried her brush with more vigor than necessary. “What about the boyfriend? What’s he got to say for himself?”

  Oscar put a hand to his ear. “He isn’t answering his phone. I checked his apartment. He isn’t there.”

  “Find him,” Shiva ordered. “If he doesn’t know who has the girl then find out who does.”

  “Yes ma’am.” Oscar slunk from the room with his head down and his muscular shoulders drawn up like a dog with its tail between its legs.

  Shiva took the paintbrush in both hands, bared her teeth, and exerted all her strength in an attempt to snap the wood. A vein stood out in her forehead. The muscles in her slender forearms bunched. The wood refused to bend, much less break. She hurled it down with a curse.

  8

  Bakonawa Ramos gazed out over a sea of people crowding the main ballroom at the Willard in Washington D.C. The walls were paneled in dark wood, contrasted by green marble pillars. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling like alien egg sacks. The women wore thousand-dollar gowns dripping with diamonds. The men sported black tie. Ramos stood on stage, resplendent in a hand-tailored tuxedo from Old Bond Street.

  He had notes, but he didn’t need them. Cue cards were for politicians—people reading someone else’s script. Ramos spoke with conviction on a subject he knew intimately.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, all over the world—right now—human beings are being bought and sold. According to the latest U.N. statistics, sex trafficking is a 36.2-billion-dollar industry. There are over 30 million people being trafficked as we speak. Over 80 percent of them are women, and 60 percent of those are minors. Most of these children are never heard from again. They disappear into an underground slave market that extends all the way from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe to South America and right here.” He tapped the podium with two fingers. “In the United States of America. They are used like puppets and then discarded like trash.”

  He paused to let that information sink in. Several women gasped in shock and disgust. The small noises split the silence-like outraged shouts. Ramos nodded sympathetically.

  He continued with his presentation. A projector threw grainy black-and-white images onto a screen behind him. Special Operations teams took the pictures during classified raids. Photos of half-naked, underfed children stuffed in cages like animals drove home the reality of the situation.

  “Tonight, each and every one of you has the ability to make a difference,” Ramos told the audience. “Every single dollar helps save a life. I hope you’ll give generously.”

  Applause filled the hall. After his speech, Ramos milled through the crowd, thanking people for their support and donations. A senator from California grabbed his hand and pumped it enthusiastically. “I’d really like get you out to the West Coast for a fundraiser in my district,” the senator said. “We’ve got deep pockets in California, and I can promise an appearance by Angelina Jolie.”

  Ramos smiled. “It would be my pleasure. Every bit helps. Let me put you in touch with my secretary, and she’ll set up the details.” He scanned the crowd, spotted Amanda Purdy, and waved her over. “Amanda handles all my speaking arrangements. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without her. Mrs. Purdy, this is Senator Granger from California.”

  While Amanda hashed out the details with the senator, Ramos worked his way through the crowd to a redhead in a sea-foam green dress with sequins. She had a bright smile. She obviously took care of herself, and she wasn’t wearing a ring.

  He straightened his bowtie and passed a hand over his thinning hair. After Bati had graduated from college, Ramos found his thoughts turning more and more often to marriage. At fifty-two he was still young enough to have another child, maybe a son to carry on the family name.

  The redhead greeted him with a smile.

  He introduced himself.

  “Heather Rainier,” she said and offered her hand. “I think it’s marvelous what you are doing to help victims of human trafficking.”

  “I couldn’t do it without people like you,” Ramos told her. He shifted the conversation from human trafficking to more pleasant matters. She laughed at his jokes. Soon he had forgotten all about his thinning hair and enjoyed her company instead. He was just about to ask if she had plans for Friday evening when Fredric Krakouer, his head of security, appeared over his left shoulder.

  Heather took one look at Krakouer and retreated a step. Krakouer gave the impression of a man ready to do violence. He had a jutting jaw, a shaved head, and a puckered scar across the bridge of his nose. He ignored the girl, leaned in, and whispered. “I’ve got the head of Manila law enforcement on the phone, sir. He says it’s urgent.”

  Krakouer held out a mobile.

  Ramos offered Heather a tight smile. “Would you excuse me?”

  He took the cell, located the nearest exit, and stepped into a carpeted hallway lined with potted plants and antique chairs that looked uncomfortable. The door clomped shut, cutting off the low rumble of conversation from the ballroom. Ramos put the phone to his ear. “This is Bakonawa Ramos. To whom am I speaking?”

  Cold fear pumped through his veins as the Director General of the Philippine National Police Force explained that Bati had been kidnapped off the street a block from the women’s shelter. Ramos went to one of the antique chairs, gripped the arm and lowered himself onto the seat.

  “What do you wan
t me to do, sir?” the Director General asked.

  A vein pulsed in Ramos’s forehead. “I want you to do your damn job and find my daughter!”

  A young bellhop in hotel livery happened by at that moment. He stopped and hesitated, torn between the desire to help and to avoid trouble. One look from Krakouer sent the kid scurrying on his way.

  Ramos hung up, tugged his bowtie loose, and opened the top button on his collar. The cold in his veins turned to poison, a witch’s brew, seeping into his limbs and slowly working its way toward his heart. The thought of his little girl at the hands of his enemies made him want to vomit. He looked up at his head of security. “I want you on the first plane to Manila.”

  9

  The Gulf of Mexico is the final resting place for hundreds of sunken ships. The warm body of water attracts hurricanes, and as a result, the ocean floor is littered with Spanish galleons, Civil War ships, and merchant vessels of every kind. Over the years, these shipwrecks have been a gold mine, literally, for explorers. Most of the treasure has been hauled away, but the silent wrecks remain beneath the placid surface as eerie reminders of the ocean’s violent and unpredictable nature.

  Less than three miles off the coast of Saint Petersburg, Florida lays the skeleton of an anonymous corvette dating back to the eighteenth century, dubbed “the Lost Girl.” Historians have long debated the identity of the ship. The man who found her, a Florida native and professional treasure hunter named Henry Nester, salvaged nearly a quarter million in French livre from her holds. Once the silver was gone, interest in the wreck died down and “the Lost Girl” was left to her watery grave.

  Jacob Noble, in red swim trunks with a yellow oxygen tank harnessed to his back, slipped into the sunken corvette through a gaping hole in the hull. He had a dive knife strapped to his calf and an underwater Nikon around his neck. He clicked on an LED flashlight and shined it around the gun deck. A school of brightly colored fish darted past him to open water. Noble watched the school disappear and then turned his attention back to “the Lost Girl.”

  She had surrendered to the depths so quickly that the crew had no time to abandon ship. Skeletal remains bobbed in the current. An octopus had taken up residence inside a yellowed ribcage. Thick green barnacles covered the brass cannon. Noble peered through the viewfinder on his underwater camera. The flash sent more tropical fish speeding away.

  A current caught him and forced him up toward the ceiling. Noble let his camera dangle at the end of its tether and used his hand to stop himself from slamming into the overhead beams. Underwater currents could throw an unwary diver into a bulkhead with enough force to break bone or knock him unconscious.

  He checked his dive computer. He had another thirty-two minutes of air. He took his time, exploring “the Lost Girl” and snapping photos of anything he found interesting. The cannon made good material, as did the bow of the ship where barnacles were slowly claiming a wooden mermaid. Once he had what he came for, Noble took a few minutes for himself, enjoying the peace and solitude that could only be found in the silent depths.

  Four years ago, after the CIA tossed him out of the Special Operations Group, Noble had been tempted to get drunk and stay drunk. Everything he had worked and trained for was gone in a flash. The world he thought he knew lay in a thousand tiny shards around his feet, and the bottom of a bottle looked mighty enticing. But he had seen too many other guys take that road after leaving the teams. Guys who he used to know and respect had ended up broken shells. Instead he took his camera and his boat and made a go at underwater photography. It didn’t take long before he had a photo published in Diver.

  It was good, honest work, even if the royalty checks were few and far between. He was good at it. It should have made him happy. But it didn’t. He felt at loose ends with himself like a man in a foreign city where he didn’t know the language. He felt out of his element.

  He had gone over the attack in Doha countless times over the last four years. He asked himself over and over again if he had done the right thing. Could he have done anything different? At first it had all seemed so clear, so cut and dried. Now, four years on, it didn’t feel so black and white. He found himself questioning whether he was really the team leader he thought, or if he had been reckless. He wished he had one last mission, one more chance to prove himself. He wanted to find out if he was a Special Operator unjustly discharged by the Company, or a screw-up.

  With ten minutes left on his dive computer, Noble started for the surface and spotted a prowling bull shark. Attacks off the coast of Saint Petersburg were rare. Hungry predators were occasionally attracted by vacationers splashing in the shallows, but most sharks kept to the deeps. Swimmers didn’t have much to worry about. Divers were another matter.

  Giving the hunter a wide birth, Noble put on extra speed, using his flippers to propel himself through the water toward his wooden sailboat, the Yeoman. All of his attention was on the bull shark, and he almost missed the dinghy bobbing in the Yeoman’s wake. He was five meters directly below the hull when he spotted the telltale shape of the smaller craft outlined against the shimmering green of the surface.

  It might belong to a fisherman who had run into trouble and motored for the nearest vessel in search of help. There was an even better chance it belonged to a foreign operative with an automatic weapon and a score to settle.

  Noble had kept a low profile for the last four years, but a determined hitter could have tracked him down. And as to who… Hell, Noble could think of a dozen people who wanted him dead.

  He had six-and-a-half minutes of air left in the tank, and his only weapon was a dive knife. That didn’t leave him a lot of options. A knife requires stealth, and it’s be hard to be sneaky in flippers and an oxygen tank. There was also the bull shark.

  The seven-foot sea monster had circled back around, gliding effortlessly through the water less than seven meters away. One alien eyeball studied Noble with malevolent intent, like something out of a science fiction movie. The old-time fishermen said sharks could smell fear. Right now, Noble believed it. His heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears.

  Forced to choose between a bullet and being eaten by a shark, he decided to take his chances on a bullet. He continued his ascent, and the bull shark followed, getting closer with every lap.

  Noble paused under the hull of the Yeoman to drop his tank. He took a deep breath, released the plastic clips, and shrugged out of the harness. The weight of the oxygen tank carried it to the ocean floor trailing bubbles.

  He pulled his knife and clamped it between his teeth before surfacing between the dinghy and the Yeoman. Hearing returned. Water lapped gently against the polished wood hull. Gulls cried overhead. Hawser lines creaked. The sun beat down, glinting on the surface of the water, and the smell of salty ocean air filled his nostrils.

  Noble grasped the dinghy’s gunwales and pulled himself up for a peek. It was a seven footer painted light blue with an onboard motor and a pair of oars, but no sign of the owner. He let go of the dinghy and turned his attention to the Yeoman. He couldn’t see onto the deck from this angle, but no one started spraying bullets. So far so good.

  He filled his lungs and ducked under the surface. The bull shark was less than four meters away now. It could close that distance in seconds. Noble fought the urge to panic. He wanted out of the water and fast, but panic gets soldiers killed.

  He used the underside of the Yeoman to pull himself along, located the anchor chain, and hauled himself hand over hand out of the ocean. He didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until his feet were out of the water as well.

  He thrust his head over the Yeoman’s bow. The deck was empty. Everything was just as he’d left it. His visitor must be below decks.

  In the distance, he could see Treasure Island. It was a strip of white sand and brightly painted hotels on the horizon. Three miles looked tantalizingly close, but he would never make it that far against the current with a curious bull shar
k nosing around.

  Noble slipped over the gunwale, kicked off his flippers, and belly crawled across the sunbaked deck toward the cabin windows for a look inside. It felt like crawling over the surface of a hot frying pan. His bare skin squeaked against the wood.

  The noonday sun turned the windows into bright mirrors that showed Noble his own reflection. He would have to cup his hands against the glass if he wanted to see anything. He paused, imagining himself putting his face to the glass and catching a bullet. A hitter could be sitting inside waiting for him to pop his head up, but it couldn’t be helped. He swallowed his fear, pulled himself the last few inches, and rose up to his elbows for a look.

  10

  What he saw through the sun-drenched glass made him curse. Matthew Burke sat wedged between the galley table and the bulkhead, drinking Noble’s coffee, eating a plate full of his eggs and bacon. Noble didn’t mind the eggs or the coffee, but eating another man’s bacon crossed a line. He sheathed the knife and stomped around to the cabin door. “I just dumped a two-hundred-dollar dive tank on the ocean floor because of you.”

  Burke picked a bit of food from between his teeth with one thick pinkie finger. “Good to see you, too.”

  Burke was a Georgia boy, born and raised in Savannah by his grandmother. At six foot four and nearly three hundred pounds, he looked like a baby bear squeezed inside a garish, yellow Bermuda shirt. In college he had played inside linebacker for Georgia Tech and spent a lot of time in the weight room. Now the only thing he pushed was paper. Long hours behind a desk were taking their toll. He had started to go gray at the temples and the lines around his eyes were deeper than Noble remembered.

  When the mission in Doha went bad, Noble turned to Burke. As Noble’s mentor inside the Company, Burke should have gone to bat for his protégé. Instead, Burke watched in silence while the Director hung Noble out to dry. Now he sat on Noble’s boat as if nothing had happened.