He closed his mouth over hers. She tried to pull away. He held her in a steel grip. She could taste the cigarettes on his breath. She squealed and squirmed. Her struggles only seemed to excite him more. He spun her around and shoved her, face first, against the nearest machine. She felt her eyebrow split open and warm blood trickle down her cheek.
Unreasoning fear gripped her. She pushed away from the machine and lashed out with the syringe. She was aiming for his crotch, but stabbed him in the stomach instead.
He shouted, more from surprise than pain. His hand came around in a hook and hit her hard across the face. Her feet tangled, and Bati went down flat on her chest. All the air burst from her lungs.
Fau jerked the needle out of his stomach and tossed it. The disposable syringe clattered across the concrete. He knelt down behind Bati and pinned her to the ground. She heard his zipper purr open. She let out a shrill screech. She bucked her hips and lashed out with her bare feet, but he was too strong for her.
As she struggled, a single thought went through her brain, God, please don’t let this happen to me!
A thunderclap filled the crushing facility. Blood sprayed Bati’s back and hair. Fau slumped sideways. His head hit the floor with the same sound a rotten cantaloupe makes when it’s dropped. His eyes were open and staring. Pulpy red matter oozed from his open skull.
Henries stood at the corner with smoke leaking from the barrel of his rifle. He lowered the weapon, crossed the floor, and pulled Bati to her feet. She started to stammer out her thanks. He didn’t seem to care one way or the other. He took hold of her panties and yanked them up over her hips, covering her nakedness, then clapped a hand on the back of her neck and drove her back to the front of the building.
The Frenchman waited at the open door with his rifle across his chest and his hands folded over top of the weapon. Paeng was in a semi-conscious slump. Henries steered Bati to the open space directly in front of the rolling door. “Sit,” he ordered.
She sat. “Please,” she said. “Please just let me go. My father will pay you.”
“Shut your mouth,” he ordered. To the Frenchman, he said, “If she tries anything, bash her brains in with the butt of your rifle.”
“Oui.”
Henries stalked over to Paeng and kicked the sack he was napping on. The kidnapper came awake with a start, blinked, and looked around.
“Your partner is dead,” Henries told him. “I killed him. Keep your hands off the sheila, or I’ll kill you too. Understood?”
In reply, Paeng held up his bandaged hand, as if to ask how he could possibly molest her with a finger bitten off. He sniffed, held his ruined hand to his chest, and let his eyes droop shut. Henries stalked out, leaving Bati alone with the Frenchman.
39
Noble stood under the chilly spray, allowing the cold to numb his aching muscles and clear his head. He had a job to do, and fantasizing over Samantha Gunn wouldn’t get it done. He needed to focus. Bati was in Hong Kong being held by the Nine Dragons triad. How and why was still a mystery, but at the very least he now had a compass heading. He turned off the shower, dried himself, and pulled his pants back on. He couldn’t do anything until Manny found him a back door into HK so he had a few hours to kill. He determined to get some shuteye.
Sleep while you can was a mantra he learned in Special Forces. Missions sometimes required soldiers to stay awake for days. Noble had mistakenly thought that covert operations would move at a more relaxed pace, but the world of espionage was a lot like a battlefield. There were sleepless days spent watching and waiting, interspersed with brief periods of intense activity. Only difference was most days Noble didn’t have to wear combat boots.
He exited the bathroom. Sam lay under the covers. Waves of black hair spilled across the pillow. One bare shoulder was lit by the light coming through the window.
Noble glanced from her huddled form beneath the blankets to the folded clothes on the toilet tank and chewed the inside of one cheek. Any ideas he had about sleep vanished. He moved the jumble of medical supplies and bottled waters to the television stand, then eased himself down on the bed next to her. She turned over and draped one arm across his chest.
“Jake?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“I trust you.”
He hesitated, unsure what she meant by that. Did she mean that she had changed her mind about sex? Or that she trusted him not to take advantage of her while she slept next to him naked? Or that she trusted him in general? The more he thought about it, the more meanings he manufactured. He didn’t know how to respond. Finally he said, “Get some sleep.”
He spent the rest of the night intensely aware of her body draped against him. Sleep was impossible. Inside Noble’s heart, there was a vault where he kept all the dreams that would never come true. Marriage, kids, family, and other things normal people took for granted were locked behind the heavy steel door. Life in the world of espionage didn’t leave much room for romance. The CIA has an exceptionally high divorce rate. Family life is something to be enjoyed by the working class crowd—the average Joe who knows where he will be tomorrow, and next week, and next month. Special Operators sacrifice relationships on the altar of national security. Over the last four years, Noble had toyed with the idea of dialing in the combination to the safe but never summoned up the courage.
Now, lying here in the dark next to Samantha, the bolts drew back. The door swung open a fraction. Noble peeked in at all those dreams of happily ever after. He found himself entertaining wild fantasies where he and Sam were married. He imagined a house in the mountains and a couple of kids. Swing sets. Backyard barbeques.
Crazy, Noble told himself. Those things were for other people.
The mobile phone rang, and Noble’s eyes snapped open. He had been drifting on the soft edge of sleep where reality starts to fold dreams into waking thought. The first ghostly gray tinge of predawn light filtered in through the curtains. The time stamp on the mobile told him it was 4:37. He tapped the talk button and put the phone to his ear. “Yeah,” he said through a mouth full of cotton balls. He wanted to go back to sleep. He settled for closing his eyes.
“I had to cash in a lot of favors, but I managed to put together a black crossing,” Manny said.
“I owe you.”
“I’m keeping score,” Manny said. “Are you familiar with the Navotas neighborhood?”
North of Manila proper, Navotas City was a finger of land, much like Manhattan, surrounded by narrow waterways. The only way on or off the island is bridge or water taxi. Unlike Manhattan, Navotas was mostly a jumble of confusing shanty towns and shipping companies.
“Much as a foreigner can be,” Noble told him.
“Meet me at the bakery on the corner of Pascual and Little Samar street in one hour. I’ve got a plane for you.”
“Wait. What kind of plane?” Noble started to explain that it had been a while since he’d been in the air, but Manny had already hung up. Noble dropped the phone down on the mattress and sat up. All the muscles in his stomach screamed with the effort of pulling himself into an upright position. He let out a groan.
The covers next to him were empty.
Samantha knelt on the floor at the foot of the bed with her forehead against the mattress, muttering under her breath. She had dressed sometime in the night.
Noble frowned. “You Okay?”
Her head nodded in the affirmative. She looked up and there was a red line printed across her forehead from the edge of the mattress. “I was praying.”
Noble rolled his eyes. He got up, dug through the shopping bag for a travel-size toothpaste, and went to the bathroom where he turned on the sink. He brushed his teeth with more vigor than necessary.
Sam appeared in the doorframe and crossed her arms under her breasts. “You have something against prayer?”
He took the toothbrush out of his mouth, spit, and gazed at her reflection in the mirror. “You really believe some spirit in the sky is going to help us
save Bati?”
“I believe in a higher power,” she said. “I’m sorry if that offends you.”
Noble snatched a hand towel off the rack and patted his face dry. “My mother is always going on about the power of prayer.”
“Sounds like a smart lady.”
“When the doctors told me she had cancer, I prayed.” He wadded the hand towel and tossed it on the counter. He could barely form words into sentences. “I prayed. God never answered. She’s dying. I haven’t got the money for her treatment. Where is God when I need him?”
Sam uncrossed her arms. “I’m sorry, Jake. I didn’t know.”
He pushed past her and picked his shirt up from the floor. “I’ve got to go.”
“What about me?” she asked.
Noble pulled on his shirt and started on the buttons. “I appreciate you want to help, but this isn’t your fight. Shiva found out about Bati on her own. You aren’t responsible. Go home and let me deal with this.”
Sam opened her mouth, closed it. She paced once around the room and then seemed to lock in on an idea. “Do you speak Cantonese?”
Noble was halfway through tucking his shirt in and stopped. He spoke half a dozen languages, but Cantonese was not one of them.
Seeing his hesitation, Sam pressed her advantage. “My mother is from Hong Kong. My father met her on a business trip. I grew up speaking the language.”
A native speaker would be invaluable. At least, that’s what Noble told himself. Maybe he was just looking for an excuse to keep her around. He made one last, halfhearted attempt to defeat her logic. “Everyone in HK speaks English,” he said.
“Gangsters talking about gangster stuff will use their native language,” Sam pointed out. She had a point.
Noble finished tucking in his shirt. “Are you going to follow my orders exactly?”
She nodded vigorously. “Promise. I’ll just be your interpreter.”
He frowned like he was thinking it over, but he’d already made up his mind. He stuffed his gun in his waistband, gathered the sugar kit and his mobile phone, and went to the door. Samantha followed without being told. Downstairs they hailed a taxi.
It wasn’t five in the morning yet, and the streets were already packed with honking cars and stalled jeepneys. They sat in a traffic jam at the corner of North Bay Boulevard and the C-3 for fifteen minutes. They finally reached Navotas shortly before six o’clock.
40
The bakery turned out to be a Dunkin Donuts. Over the last decade, dozens of the American-based franchises had sprung up all over metro Manila. Noble opened the door and let Samantha go first. His belly rumbled at the smell of warm dough and freshly roasted coffee. Behind the counter a young Filipino greeted them with a smile. Manny sat in a corner booth by the window, munching on a chocolate éclair and reading a newspaper.
“See the fat guy in the booth?” Noble told Sam. “Go introduce yourself.”
“But…” Sam started to ask questions.
Noble gave her a stern face.
She pressed her lips together, walked over to Manny’s table, and said hello. Noble ordered up two cups of coffee and a raspberry-filled donut. He found a certain comfort in knowing he could travel to just about any major city in Southeast Asia and still get a hot cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. He paid, balanced Sam’s pastry on top of the coffee cups, and slid into the booth beside her.
Manny had a spot of cream on his shirt and dark bags under his eyes. He hadn’t shaved. A tired smile turned up his face.
“Sorry we’re late,” Noble said.
Manny waved away the apology. “I was just getting to know this very charming young lady. We were having a lovely conversation until you interrupted. Tell me, my friend, how did you end up on the arm of such a beautiful woman?”
“Some guys have all the luck,” Noble said.
“And I thought I was the only friend you had left in the Philippines,” Manny said.
Noble ignored the quip. “Did you net Lady Shiva?”
“We did.” Manny grinned. “In fact, she was waiting for us. She’s not talking yet. I think she has a card left to play, and she’s waiting for the opportune moment.”
The news concerned Noble. Shiva was crafty. Whatever she was up to, Noble would bet his boat it had to do with Bati. He peeled the plastic lid off his coffee. “There was some mention of a plane?”
“It’s fueled and ready to fly.” Manny’s eyes went to Sam. She was busy adding a second pack of sugar to her coffee and stirring vigorously. “Will the young lady be joining you?”
Sam went right on stirring, picked up her donut with her free hand, and took a large bite like she hadn’t heard a word.
Noble nodded.
“You like to take chances, my friend.”
“I’m already operating off the reservation on this one.”
Manny shrugged, stuffed the last bite of éclair between his lips, and spoke with his mouth full. “Time, as I understand it, is critical. So let’s not waste it sitting here.”
He levered his bulk out of the booth and folded his newspaper under one arm. Noble and Samantha followed him along Little Samar Street and through a confusing labyrinth of huts made from corrugated steel and castoff timber. Dirty sheets took the place of doors. Scrawny dogs and chickens had the run of the place. Some Filipinos lived their entire lives in these shanty towns. An old woman sitting on a low stool, smoking a long-stemmed pipe, watched them pass with suspicion etched in the craggy lines of her face.
Manny led the way to a rotting wooden pier bobbing on the rusty brown water of Manila Bay. At the end of the dock floated a Grumman G-21 Goose. It was an eight-passenger amphibious aircraft built before World War II. Noble would be surprised if he could get the old bird into the air.
Manny saw the expression on his face. “What did you expect? A Gulfstream?”
“I’d be better off trying to paddle this old heap to Hong Kong,” Noble said.
Manny turned to Sam. “I work all night, and this is the thanks I get.”
“It’s lovely,” she said. “Thank you.”
Manny handed the folded-up newspaper to Noble. “Your friend Burke said that might come in handy.”
Noble opened the newspaper and found a file folder. He thumbed through. It contained information on Eric Tsang, his operations, and the mercenary crew working for him.
“You didn’t get that from me,” Manny told him. He took a set of keys from his trouser pocket and handed them to Sam.
“You going to want this back?” Noble asked.
“Preferably in one piece,” Manny said. He strolled up the dock toward the shanty town. Over his shoulder, he called out, “Have fun, my two little love birds.”
Sam watched him go. “He’s sweet.” She looked at the Grumman and let out a low whistle. “Are we going to die?”
One side of Noble’s mouth turned up in a grin. He opened the hatch and motioned her inside. The interior was no better than the exterior. It looked like it had been used as a troop transport or reconnaissance plane during the war. The passenger seats had been stripped out and cargo netting hung.
Sam pinched her nose. “Smells like something crawled in here and died.”
They squeezed into the cramped cockpit and buckled themselves in. Sam reached across and put the key in the starter. The twin propellers turned over with all the grace and effort of an old man trying to lift himself out of a rocking chair. The engines hiccupped twice, rumbled, and coughed up black clouds of burning oil, but finally blurred into motion.
Noble taxied the aircraft along the channel, adjusted the flaps, and increased the throttle. The fuselage vibrated. The belly of the craft skipped across the surface, throwing Noble and Sam against the safety straps. He fought the yoke back. The nose lifted into the air. The water fell away, and the rattling contraption took to the air. Noble climbed to three thousand feet, leveled out, and increased air speed to 160 knots.
Sam let out a breath and relaxed. She turned to Noble and said som
ething. He saw her mouth move but couldn’t hear the words over the roar of the engines.
He took a pair of headphones off a hook overhead, placed them over his ears, and adjusted the microphone. Sam put on the other set. “Any reason we didn’t take a commercial flight?” Her voice came through the headphones grainy and a little too loud.
“Several,” Noble told her. He leaned forward and lifted his jacket so she could see the pistol grip sticking out of his waistband. “Airport security frowns on that sort of thing. Besides, I don’t have a legend.”
“What’s a legend?”
“A cover story,” he explained. “I don’t have a reason to be in Hong Kong.”
“You told Manny you were off the reservation,” Sam said, now gazing out over the bright blue waters of the South China Sea. “What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t officially work for the United States Government. I wasn’t lying when I told Lady Shiva I was a mercenary.”
“But you used to?”
He nodded.
“What happened?”
Noble checked fuel, altitude, and heading before answering. “I was a team leader for a Special Operations Group. It’s a division of the CIA that specializes in clandestine operations, top secret, totally off the books. My team was in Qatar to rescue a bunch of girls who were about to be sold as sex slaves. The op went sideways.”
“What does that mean?”
“We got the girls out but a high-ranking Qatar politician was killed in the process.” Noble sighed and looked out the window before continuing. “If he hadn’t been in the slave trade he wouldn’t be dead, but he had connections. The Qatar government couldn’t officially tie it to the CIA, and they didn’t have to. It was enough that they suspected. People high up wanted someone to blame. The CIA needed a fall guy.”
“And that ended up being you,” Sam said.
Noble nodded and descended to two thousand feet in an effort to stay below radar. Radar arrays only see what’s in their line of sight. Since the earth is round, hugging the deck can keep a plane from appearing as a little green blip on a destroyer console. Of course staying under radar would not prevent a Chinese sailor on the deck of a battleship from spotting the plane. Noble scanned the horizon for dark specks that might materialize into large ships with cannon and surface to air missiles.
Noble Man Page 14
