The short one came back with the handbag. Eyeliner, mascara, and blush clattered across the floor as he emptied the contents. A compact hit the ground. The mirror cracked. He found the EpiPen and passed it to the boss.
“Where do I inject it?” He thumbed off the plastic cap.
“Let me do it,” Bati said.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Tell me how to inject it or you can lay there and die.”
“In my thigh,” Bati told him.
He held her down with one hand and jabbed the needle into her thigh. Bati winced and then relaxed. It would take a few minutes for the insulin to work, but waves of relief were already spreading through her. She had managed to reset the clock on her life.
When it was done, the leader tossed the used syringe. It came to rest an arm’s distance from where she lay. Bati watched him walk back to the open door and stuff his hands in his pockets. The other man joined him. They conversed in low murmurs with their backs to her. She glanced at the discarded hypodermic.
She might be able to use the needle. She wasn’t sure how or where, she’d figure that out later. First she needed to get her hands on it.
She sat up and put her back to the sacks of crushed rock piled against the corrugated steel wall. The movement caught the kidnappers’ attention. They turned. Bati hung her head and tried to look dejected until they returned to their conversation. She waited several minutes and then slowly stretched one bare leg to her right. She managed to put her heel on the EpiPen and carefully rolled it across the ground until she had it between her feet. One of the kidnappers glanced over his shoulder. Bati held her breath. When he looked away, she started working the hypodermic back toward her bottom.
20
It was dark by the time they reached the dog track. Noble directed Samantha Gunn to a parking spot around the south side of the building near an emergency exit. From this angle, he could see the first turn of the track through a chain-link fence. A pack of horses tore around the curve. The jockeys stood in the stirrups. Hooves kicked up tufts of dark earth. Towering banks of arc-sodium lights created artificial daylight. They reminded Noble of his days playing high school baseball.
He had pitched his junior and senior year. He never had the arm to go pro, and he probably knew it even then. But like all the other guys on the team, he had entertained fantasies of opening for the Tampa Bay Rays. When that didn’t work out, he joined the Army.
Samantha put the Toyota in park and turned off the engine. “What’s the plan?”
“Find Diego.” Noble opened his door. “Pop the trunk. I don’t want my carry-on stolen.”
“Too bad someone broke the window,” Samantha said. She keyed the button for the trunk release. Inside Noble found a pair of jumper cables, a small emergency medical kit, and a folded blanket.
Samantha saw him studying the contents and shrugged. “I like to be prepared.”
Noble gave an approving nod, closed the trunk, and strode through the lanes of parked cars toward the entrance. Samantha had to jog to keep up. A cheer, mixed with a few boos, rose from the stadium. An announcer’s voice boomed from loud speakers, declaring the winner.
“Once we find Diego,” Samantha asked. “What then?”
“Find out what he knows.”
“Do I want to know how you plan to do that?”
Noble shook his head. “Nope.”
They pushed through a crowd of chain-smoking men milling in front of the betting windows. The place stank of sweat and broken dreams. Crumpled tickets crunched under foot. Several television screens showed close-ups of horses fidgeting in the starting gates, waiting for the next race.
The track had security. Young men in poorly fitted gray uniforms strolled through the crowds with their thumbs tucked in their belts. They had 9mm handguns on their hips and radios clipped to their shirts. Their focus would be on breaking up drunken fights and preventing robbery, but a pair of foreigners poking around might arouse even the sloppiest security team. Noble peeled several notes off a stack of pesos and handed them to Samantha. “Place a few bets.”
“Why?”
“Because we want to fit in,” he told her.
She went to a window, placed bets at random, and handed half the slips to Noble.
“Now we look like a couple enjoying an evening at the track,” he told her. “Any sign of Diego?”
She shook her head. “So we are a couple now?”
“That’s right,” he said as they made their way up a flight of steps to the spectator stands. “Been going steady about six months.”
“You take me to the most romantic places,” she remarked.
A gun barked, and the gates opened with a clang.
A sea of Filipino men with black hair and tan skin packed the stadium, roaring at the jockeys and waving race tickets in the air. The girls wore tight dresses and a lot of makeup. The smell of cheap cigarettes and fresh-clipped grass filled Noble’s lungs. He scanned the crowd, not knowing what he was looking for, but keeping his eyes open for anything odd or peculiar.
On the field, horses and jockeys sprinted around the turns and down the final straight-a-way. The announcer narrated with auctioneer cadence and growing excitement. Even with native level proficiency, it was hard for Noble to understand the scratchy stadium loud speakers. He only picked up every other phrase. “Old Blue comes out strong… here’s Grand Lady catching up at the turn… Easy Does it pulling ahead… Old Blue retakes the lead! The final stretch… neck and neck! Old Blue wins by three-quarters of a length!”
“Hey look!” Samantha held up one of her tickets. “We won.”
Noble wasn’t listening. He had spotted a lanky Filipino in baggy blue jeans and a wrinkled t-shirt, sporting a recently broken nose covered by a bandage. When Old Blue crossed the finish line, the man crumpled his ticked and tossed it in disappointment. Noble pointed. “Second row. Is that Diego?”
Samantha’s eyes narrowed. “That’s him.”
During Noble’s surveillance training at the Farm, one of his tradecraft instructors had talked a lot about a human’s sixth sense—that tickle right between the shoulder blades, or the uneasy feeling at the base of the skull when someone is watching you. Sometimes it’s nothing more than a feeling deep in your gut that tells you something isn’t right. Brighter minds have theorized that these instincts are hardwired into us as part of our survival instinct. The subconscious mind, they said, picked up on subtle clues that our rational mind missed or rejected. Everyone had it, but civilians, living their work-a-day lives, had no need for it. As a result, it faded into the background.
Cops and criminals tend to be more in touch with their primal instinct. They need it to survive. So it didn’t surprise Noble when Diego turned and looked directly at them. He must have felt that tickle between his shoulder blades.
Samantha gasped, threw her arms around Noble, and pressed her lips into his. It was the worst thing she could have done. Tangling up in a kiss works in the movies, in real life two people making out draws attention. If she had watched the horses and smiled, Diego might have overlooked them. On the other hand, the last four years had been a bit of a dry spell for Noble. He allowed himself to enjoy the kiss while watching Diego from under partially closed lids. Her slender body pressed against him, and her lips melted into his. He felt the locked tumblers on his heart move.
Diego went for the stairs.
Noble broke off the kiss. Samantha’s eyes opened. Red splotches colored her cheeks.
“You’ve seen too many movies,” Noble said.
Her brow furrowed. It looked more cute than angry. Noble found himself suppressing a grin. “Come on, Jane Bond. Diego’s on the move.”
He took her by the hand and pushed through the crowd. He almost lost Diego at the bottom of the steps. Wrinkled t-shirt and baggy jeans were a common fashion statement at the track. Diego made the mistake of looking over his shoulder. The white bandage on his nose was a dead giveaway. Unfortunately so was a white face in a
crowd full of Asians. Diego spotted Noble and broke into a jog. He hurried past the betting windows and the refreshment stands, along the concourse and turned a corner.
By the time Noble reached the turn, Diego had disappeared, but the door to the men’s room was swinging shut on a pneumatic hinge.
Samantha pointed. “I think he went into the bathroom.”
“No kidding?” Noble remarked. “He’s almost as bad at this as you.”
“Hey,” Samantha said.
Noble dragged her to the men’s room. Samantha started to protest. He ignored her and threw the door open hard enough to bounce it off the wall in case Diego was hiding on the other side. The door rebounded with a hollow boom. There was a row of sinks on the right, stalls on the left, and an open window on the far wall. It was just big enough for a small man to climb through. Noble stepped into the bathroom. Diego rushed in from the left with a wild haymaker.
21
Noble brought his left forearm up to block and threw a right jab. His knuckles re-broke Diego’s nose with a wet crunch. Diego’s head snapped back. Blood burst from both nostrils. He barked in pain. Noble hooked his right heel behind Diego’s lead foot and delivered an open-hand strike to the throat, putting Diego flat on his back in the middle of the men’s room floor.
A middle-aged man in a mismatched suit stood at the urinal with his hand still on his zipper. Noble fixed him with a hard stare. “Get out.”
He pulled up his zipper and fled.
“Watch the door,” Noble told Samantha.
She put her back against it.
Diego rolled onto his hands and knees, leaving large red drops of blood on the sea-foam green tile. Noble kicked him in the ribs. He didn’t hold back. He let Diego have it. The top of his foot connected with a heavy whomp, lifting Diego an inch off the ground and putting him on his back.
Samantha drew a sharp breath.
Diego gave a long, shuddering moan that sounded like an old car trying to start. The neon lights turned him a sickly shade of green. Sweat sprang out on his forehead. Noble knelt down next to him. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” he groaned. With his sinuses full of blood it sounded like, bah ont ngo.
“Who has her?” Noble asked. “Give me a name.”
“I don’t know.”
Noble gripped Diego’s broken nose and twisted.
Diego screamed in pain.
“Who’s got her?” Noble demanded.
Diego opened his mouth to speak. Someone tried to enter at the same time. The door opened half an inch before Samantha forced it the other way. “Um… Occupied!” she yelled.
Noble returned his attention to Diego. “Tell me what I want to know, and the pain stops.”
“Lady Shiva,” Diego said and spat a mouth full of dark blood onto the floor. “Lady Shiva has her.”
Noble had heard the name before. Shiva was a shadowy figure in Manila’s underground sex trade with a ruthless reputation and a flair for the dramatic. She acted as a sort of human-trafficking middleman, importing young girls from the provinces and selling them to sex clubs in the city. The CIA had been trying to build a file on Shiva for years and didn’t even have a photo to go with the name. She always managed to stay a step ahead.
Samantha had apparently heard the name as well. She covered her mouth. The color drained from her face. A little squeak, like chalk on a blackboard, escaped her throat.
“What happened?” Noble asked. “You get hard up for cash?”
Diego nodded and wiped blood from his nose, smearing it over his chin in the process. “I owe twenty grand to a loan shark.”
Noble let out a low whistle.
“You little weasel!” Samantha threw herself at Diego with balled-up fists.
“Hey!” Noble caught her around the waist and pushed her back. “Watch the door.”
She glared at Diego but put her back against the door.
“You got in deep and then you found out your girlfriend was the daughter of a Filipino diplomat. You figure she has to be worth at least twenty grand,” Noble said, filling in the rest of the story. “Have I got it right so far?”
“I changed my mind at the last minute,” Diego said. “I wasn’t going to go through with it. I tried to stop it, honest.”
“You’re a real humanitarian,” Noble said. “Once you decided to sell, you had to look for a buyer. Who put you in touch with Shiva?”
Diego shook his head. “He found me.”
“Try harder,” Noble said and reached for his nose.
“I swear.” Diego moaned. “He’s a local fighter. One ear is all curled up. Goes by the name of Oscar.”
Noble turned to Samantha. “Sound familiar?”
She nodded. Someone else tried to enter. She put her shoulder against the door and shoved with her legs.
Noble grabbed a fistful of Diego’s wrinkled t-shirt and gave him a shake. “Where do I find him?”
Diego hesitated.
“I’m going to start breaking fingers,” Noble said.
“Talk to the owner of Club 10,” Diego told him.
“If I get there and find a welcome party…”
Diego held up a bloody palm in surrender. “I swear on my mother’s grave.”
Noble left him bleeding on the tile floor, took Samantha by the arm, and steered her out the door.
“That’s it?” Samantha said. “He gets a pass?”
Diego deserved jail time at the very least. Leaving a loose thread might come back to haunt him, but Noble didn’t have time to deal with Diego. “Guys like him get theirs in the end. They always do.”
Right now he was more worried about security. One of the guards saw him and Samantha emerge from the restroom and went to investigate. Noble cursed under his breath and picked up the pace.
“What?” Samantha asked. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see the guard push open the bathroom door.
“Don’t look,” Noble told her. “Keep walking.”
Her body tensed.
“Stay calm,” Noble told her.
The guard found Diego in a bloody heap on the floor, pulled a silver whistle from a draw cord on his belt, stuck it between his lips, and blew. A shrill scream echoed along the concrete corridor.
Noble broke into a run. Samantha sprinted to keep up. The young security guard gave chase, running with one hand on his Beretta pistol. They flew along the main concourse, weaving through the crowd. Noble stiff-armed anyone unlucky enough to get in his way. They reached an intersection, and Samantha turned toward the main entrance. Noble grabbed her arm. “Not that way.”
She was too scared to ask questions. Noble guided her to the south end of the concourse. They rounded a corner. Noble spotted a plastic trash container with the horse track’s logo stenciled on the side in blue. He let go of Samantha’s arm, grabbed the can and swung it.
The security guard rounded the corner in time to get hit in the face with the trashcan. His head snapped back. His feet shot out from under him. He landed flat on his back. The trashcan rolled across the floor, spilling half-eaten pretzels, crumpled paper, and crushed beer cans. Noble and Samantha sprinted away.
Noble spotted a glowing red EXIT sign twenty meters ahead, but another security guard stood between him and freedom. This one wasn’t much more than a kid, nineteen maybe, with pimples and a buzz cut. The guard planted himself in front of the emergency exit, placed one hand on his gun and the other out in front of him, palm up, like he was directing traffic.
22
Noble could have solved the problem with the pistol in his waistband, but innocent people would get hurt if bullets started flying. And the security guard was only doing his job. Besides, Noble had been doing this long enough to know who was willing to pull the trigger and who would hesitate. Shooting holes in paper targets is one thing. Shooting holes in another human being is different. The kid’s eyes told the whole story; he had taken a job at the track because it was easy work and he got to carry a gun. It made hi
m feel tough. He probably never expected to see any real action.
Noble sprinted directly at him. The kid ordered Noble to stop. When that didn’t work, he pulled the Beretta and racked the slide. That’s when the gravity of the situation hit. His courage wavered. By the time he recovered, Noble had closed the distance.
He caught the barrel of the weapon in his right hand, forced it up to the ceiling and brought his left hand down on the guard’s wrist at the same time. He twisted the gun around, forcing the kid to let go or have all the tendons in his wrist snap. The kid chose to let go.
The move took less than a second. The young security guard stepped back and started to raise his hands in surrender. Noble struck him a blow to the temple with the Beretta. The kid’s knees buckled, and his eyes rolled up. He’d probably have headaches for the rest of his life, but he would live.
Samantha watched the whole thing with her eyes wide and her mouth open. She looked from the gun in Noble’s hand to the unconscious security guard and let out a trembling breath.
Noble released the magazine. It clattered across the floor. He racked the slide, ejecting the round from the chamber, and tossed the empty Beretta into a corner.
“How did you…” Samantha started to ask.
“Later,” Noble said. He slammed open the emergency exit door, and the alarm let out long, ear-splitting whoops.
Samantha leapt through the open door. Her Toyota was directly ahead.
Noble followed her to the car. She dug the keys from her pocket while she ran and pressed the button. The doors unlocked with a chirrup. Noble snatched open the passenger side and piled in beside her. She got the car started, threw it in gear, and roared out of the parking lot, weaving through traffic. Noble let her get three blocks and then told her to slow down.
It took another city block, but she finally eased up on the pedal and relaxed her grip on the wheel. They passed a kilometer in silence before Samantha said, “You took the gun right out of his hands. How did you do that?”
Noble Man Page 7
