“What’s this going to cost?” he asked.
“Seventeen billion dollars by the time we are finished.”
Noah’s jaw dropped. “You’d have to be one of the richest fifty people in the world to afford that, and that’s assuming you put every nickel you had into the investment. No one’s going to put that much dough into a single investment. You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Mr. Reid, I never joke, but perhaps you are now realizing why I need total commitment from everyone I work with. This is one of the largest non-governmental projects ever undertaken.”
“But seventeen billion?”
Garret nodded. “And climbing. We have the best minds and the best materials in the world working on this. Land, construction, approvals, not to mention kickbacks, bribery and ladies for the bureaucrats are just the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Our architects were the lead architects at the last world’s fair. Our engineering firm is building the new state capital for Thailand and is responsible for the Vancouver-to-Vancouver Island Causeway. We own our own mine in Italy from where we quarry and stockpile marble. To ensure that we have an adequate supply of teak for building our furniture, we have purchased a forest industry company in Myanmar. And our entertainment advisers have been recruited from Cirque du Soleil and Lucasfilm, the creators of the Star Wars movie franchise. Yes, it is an enormous amount of money but, when you look at the talent we have assembled and are assembling, it will pay itself back many times over. My job for more than twenty years has been to guide the corporate and financial structure of Golden Asia, making sure that nothing, but nothing, goes off track.”
Noah looked around the superstructure, letting what Garret said sink in. He began to see connections and how the various players fit in. Noah gave Garret a knowing look and spoke in a soft tone. “Your real job is to make Golden Asia legit.”
“Very astute, Noah.” Garret nodded. “Yes, but we’re on hold now. Flecks of dust on the girders, supplies are short, the equipment has not been turned on in several weeks, the labor unions are about to blacklist us. The project has run out of cash.”
“How can that be if you were keeping as close an eye as you said you were?”
“Well phrased again. Golden Asia should not have any problems at all. But it does, and there is only one reason that I’m alive right now. Tommy was Chin Chee Fok’s choice. Years ago, I advised against it, but Chin insisted.”
“Who exactly is Chin?” Noah asked. “He seems to be everywhere, but I can’t find any connection between him and... anything. Definitely not a seventeen-billion-dollar project.”
“And no one will ever find that out. I’m damned good at my job, Noah. That’s why, try as he might, Chin doesn’t own me. He needs me because only I know where every cent is. The only funds I don’t control are those that are not given to me. If Tommy didn’t give me something, then I can’t be held responsible for it.”
Noah’s eyes widened with astonishment and fear. His new boss is not the “biggest stuffed shirt in a company of stuffed shirts.” Not only is he a Shaolin Hung Gar master on par with Master Wu, perhaps the greatest living Hung Gar grandmaster, but he is the brains behind legitimizing a criminal operation with assets in excess of many small countries.
Garret studied Noah’s reaction. Although neither spoke a word, both wondered the same thing. “Is this someone I can entrust the future to?”
Garret noticed a slight movement in the wind and instinctively pushed Noah aside. An arrow whizzed by Noah’s ear and twisted into a pole behind him.
“Follow me, Noah.”
Garret led Noah on the run of his life. Slogging through the muck and mud, Garret and Noah leapt onto the top of an iron beam on the first-floor frame of one of the buildings.
Dancing along the girder, they zigged, zagged and hid behind a concrete pillar as an armada of arrows streamed by.
“We’ll never make it!” screamed Noah.
“Then stay here and die,” called Garret as he leapt to the ground and charged away.
“Oh, shit.” Noah reluctantly ran after Garret. The sharp, pointed missiles continued their barrage. To avoid them, Garret changed direction every two steps. “Do the opposite of what I do,” he yelled. When Garret took one step right, Noah stepped left. When Garret made two steps left, Noah made one to the right, keeping the pattern inconsistent.
With arms raised straight up, senior and junior lawyer rushed toward a pile of lumber. They took a short hop and lunged to the top, hands first, kicking their feet upward, then pushed off the top of the lumber with their arms, executing a handspring to the roof of a storage shed. Without breaking step, they raced fifty feet, then performed a handspring into a double somersault before landing on the ground. Garret took cover behind a concrete pillar while Noah ducked behind the huge wheels of the adjacent building crane.
“What now?” panted Noah.
“Keep following me,” replied Garret.
“That hasn’t been very good advice so far,” shouted Noah, his breath coming in irregular gasps.
“You’re still alive, aren’t you?” Garret laughed.
Their attackers came into view. Six elite, very fit killers, primed and ready for a direct attack. Walking directly toward the pillar and crane, they threw their repeating crossbows aside. They’d run out of arrows, but that was no big deal. A construction site is a Fort Knox of potential weaponry.
“Go!” Garret and Noah blitzed from their hiding places.
Four gangsters grabbed anything in sight—lumber planks, hammers, rivets— and hurled them at Garret and Noah. The other two found a stash of nails that they launched, handful after handful, of the sharp rods. The lawyers jumped and dodged behind a barricade of concrete slabs, just in time to avoid being skewered.
Garret saw a huge excavation, deep enough for ten stories of partially built underground parking. Leaping into the air, Garret executed a twisting and twirling aerial, allowing him to evade the deadly, hurled objects as he landed just inside the crater.
Noah combined somersaults and handsprings to get out of danger’s way, and he vaulted into the hole next to Garret. They tumbled down the embankment, veering from side to side to evade the battery of construction materials hurtling toward them—plastic tubes, concrete slabs, steel clamps, brackets and joint pins thrown with the arm strength of Major League baseball pitchers.
Their assailants hotwired a giant bulldozer and jumped aboard. It moved slowly and methodically down the side of the excavation, lights pinpointing the rolling, slipping lawyers.
Arriving at the base of the parking understructure, Noah hid behind a concrete wall. Constantly on the go for the last ten minutes, the two lawyers had been as nimble and agile as the acrobat performers at the Tiger Palace, defying death with their phenomenal, flashy maneuvers from weapons and assailants, and they were far from done. They sucked in air like thirsty dogs lapping water, trying to catch their breath. They had maybe thirty seconds before the bulldozer caught up to them.
Garret turned to Noah. “Go to Olivia. As long as I don’t give Chin what he wants, Olivia stays alive. But if I’m not around...”
“I thought you said they wouldn’t kill you. Damn sure looks to me like that’s what they’re trying to do.”
“They aren’t going to kill me unless...”
“Unless what?” panted Noah.
“Unless they find out the truth.”
“What truth?” Sweating bullets, the terrified Noah stared at Garret. “Count me out.”
“Come on, Son. It’s time to buck up.”
“Are you kidding? I didn’t sign up for this. Forget you, forget Chin, forget Olivia, and to absolute hell with Pittman Saunders.”
The rattling, beeping sound of the bulldozer grew louder. The attackers jumped off and began a fresh barrage of artillery. Noah surged off in a dead run to the other end of the uncompleted parking structure. As his aggressors approached, Noah leapt into the darkness. No one was foolish enough to follow him.
In the meantime, Garret jumped onto the vacated bulldozer and pushed it full throttle. The attackers turned to him, but before they could catch up, Garret reversed the vehicle, jumped off and climbed up the embankment, leaving the bulldozer to charge ahead at the attackers.
I knew he was soft, Master Wu. Arriving at ground level, Garret threw trashcans, a small cement mixer and cylinder blocks at the ascending goons.
With light-speed footsteps, Garret raced to the entrance of the complex, jumped into the Bentley and took off, wondering, Where the hell is he?
***
From the sofa, Abby and Olivia heard the doorbell ring.
“You expecting anybody, Abby?”
“Nobody even knows I’m back in town yet,” Abby said.
“Then don’t answer it, Abby.”
“I am so not planning to.”
Whoever was at the door started pounding. Abby and Olivia tiptoed toward the kitchen.
The pounding intensified with jackhammer-like blows. Suddenly, the door came crashing down. BOOM!
It was Duke. The girls were scared shitless—this gorilla just broke down a custom-made five-hundred-pound door with his bare fists.
“Long time, no see, Abby.” The entirely black-garbed Duke nonchalantly tossed two tiger paws, a tiger’s liver and a tiger’s heart onto the marble foyer floor.
The girls shrieked at the sight of the mutilated animal’s organs. They ran to Abby’s bedroom and locked the door.
“Do you have a gun?” asked Olivia.
“I don’t even own a peashooter,” replied Abby.
The hoodlum ambled up to the bedroom and with one hammer fist broke the door down. He stripped Abby with his eyes and then said, “Your father has something he took from my dad.”
Duke then turned his attention to Olivia. “I suggest you help your father return it. Otherwise, you never know. Accidents are always waiting to happen.”
Leaving the girls whimpering, Duke calmly turned around, walked down the stairs, through the front door and back to his black Mercedes. He turned to see the terrified women staring at him from the second-floor bannister. He gave them a sneering look, then shouted, “You don’t have anything to worry about from me! Your tits are too small!”
He got into the backseat and the car sped off.
Olivia turned to Abby. “He knows who you are. He called you by name. Who is he?”
“That’s Duke, Chin’s son.” Abby grudgingly admitted. “I dated him a few times but then realized what an idiot he was... He never complained about my breasts then.”
“You mean you...”
“Shut up, Olivia.”
***
Most Bentleys are gentlemen’s cars. Like fine women who have experienced life, they are known for their handling, not their performance. That is, unless you were Garret Southam. Garret had several modifications done to his car that allowed it to accelerate to one hundred fifty miles per hour in nothing flat, and its handling was comparable to that of a Formula One racing car.
He needed every bit of it as he raced through the series of bridges and tunnels that connected Hong Kong and Macau. Normal driving time would take approximately forty minutes, but the way Garret was going, he would be at his destination in well under half an hour.
His cell phone rang. Normally, he wouldn’t answer it at one hundred twenty miles per hour, but the caller ID said it was Olivia. He pressed the answer button on the console of his car, allowing the Bluetooth-enabled phone to pick up.
“Daddy?” shrieked his freaked-out daughter from the other end of the phone.
“Yes, baby doll, what’s wrong?”
“Some lunk broke into Abby’s home and threw tiger’s paws and guts inside. Then he just took off!” screamed Olivia.
“Did you recognize him?”
“Abby said it was her old boyfriend, Duke.”
“He was never my boyfriend!” yelled Abby in the background.
“Then how did he know what your breasts looked like?” Olivia retorted sarcastically.
“Did you have to tell your father that? I’m going to kill you.”
Some things never change, Garret thought. “Stop arguing. I’m on my way.”
BANG! Distracted by the argument between the two girls, Garret didn’t notice that Chin’s men were in hot pursuit. Their driver accelerated into Garret’s car, and Garret gripped the wheel tightly as he tried to keep the Bentley from spinning out of control.
BUMP. BUMP. The Mercedes punched the rear and, when the Bentley shifted a bit to the side, the Mercedes inflicted a hit on the driver’s side of the car.
“What’s that, Daddy?”
“A minor diversion. Can’t talk anymore, Olivia.” Garret clicked off the phone and slammed on the brakes. To stabilize the car, Garret jerked the steering wheel as hard and fast as he could. Tires screeching, the Bentley spun around. It knocked into the oncoming Mercedes.
The unanticipated collision caught the Mercedes driver off guard. He steered hard left to avoid a collision with the protective concrete wall. Momentum carried the car for another two hundred yards before the driver was able to bring it under control and to a stop. The Mercedes turned, and the driver revved the engine.
“Bring it on,” said Garret as he started revving his own engine. Flooring it, Garret pushed the car faster than it had ever been driven.
Inside the black Mercedes, the driver yelled, “You wanna play chicken? So be it.” The arrogant tough gunned the Mercedes toward the Bentley.
This is going to be one hell of a head-on collision with two cars going at a hundred-plus miles an hour right at each other with neither driver willing to give an inch, Garret thought grimly.
A fraction of a second before impact, one of the passengers in the Mercedes yelled, “Stop!” But it was too late. However, just at the point of impact, the roof of the Bentley opened, and Garret was ejected thirty feet into the air. Flailing his arms, he grabbed onto the bridge’s suspension cables.
The two vehicles collided. There was an ear-deafening explosion, and the passengers in the black Mercedes were incinerated instantly. A tattered Garret watched the fireball flare up, then he climbed down the bridge’s tower onto the main deck. He hobbled away, slowly but alive.
Unfortunately, Garret made a miscalculation. Not all the henchmen were in the Mercedes. Four were injured in the battle at the Golden Asia complex. Unable to move as quickly, they stole a construction truck after their cohorts left.
Garret was now in their sights, and the truck stopped. Four wounded but still very lethal foes stepped out and strode toward the lawyer menacingly. When the four men approached, Garret surrendered without a fight. Better to try to save some energy for later than die a fool’s death now.
The biggest man bashed Garret in the stomach, causing him to keel over. A tremendous uppercut followed, and Garret lapsed into unconsciousness. Not the rest he needed or was hoping for.
***
After making it out of the excavation, Noah hid in a Porta Potty for an hour. The smell was so bad he could barely breathe, but damned if he was going to be collateral damage in a war he didn’t ask for or want to be part of.
Leaving only after he was sure everyone had gone, he started running and ran until he was far from the Golden Asia complex and back to a main thoroughfare. There he caught a bus that took him back to familiar haunts. When he got off the bus, the monsoon rain started again, and it was hard for Noah to see anything clearly. Sulking, metamorphosing figures blurred in the dark.
Meandering down the streets without a destination in mind, he was oblivious to everything, but one thing was certain—he was white-knuckle terrified. Just get out of town as far as you can go.
However, another part of Noah was working. While his outward motivation was to escape danger, to save his own skin at all costs, he couldn’t escape genetics and upbringing. He was the product of two missionaries who were so passionate to help others that personal risk to life was never a consideration. Love everyone around you
as much as you love yourself. And don’t just say it. Do it.
Noah’s conscience waged this internal war as a black Mercedes pulled up behind and tailed him. Growing increasingly alarmed after half a block, Noah made a break for it, trying to lose the stalking vehicle. No such luck. It kept pace with him in the narrow streets, running over trashcans, bicycles... anything that got in its way.
Thoroughly exhausted, Noah slowed his pace, allowing the Mercedes to pull up beside him. The window rolled down, and Duke stuck his head out the window. “Nice weather if you’re a duck or a fish.” He made quacking noises. Finally, a dark alley too narrow for the car to follow came into view. The terrorized lawyer tore into the lane.
Chapter 36
Sam stood at the door of Chad’s Caffeine Emporium. He’d been there for six hours, the first five-and-a-half playing Ghost Ops with Walrus, his buddy in New York, where they were trying to slay the ghosts of mercenaries gone ballistic. The last half hour had been spent in conversation with Chad. After twenty-five minutes of chattering about the badass ghosts he’d killed, Sam dropped that his mom took the seventy bucks Noah had given him and blew it up her nose. For Chad, those five minutes of real conversation were the real reason he kept the cafe open. He knew that to get to kids like Sam, you had to build trust, and there was no substitute for time spent to get to that point.
“Bye, Chad. See you tomorrow,” Sam said.
“You got it. I’ll be at your place by noon. You think your mom will be awake by then?”
“She wakes up when she wakes up.”
Chad and Sam fist bumped. After a brief moment, Sam hugged Chad and then ran off. Chad went back to the coffee counter and started turning off the espresso machines and lights. Looking out the window, he groaned when he saw a black Mercedes pull up to his entrance. Memories of Chin invaded his thoughts. Not again. Preparing for the worst, Chad wasn’t sure whether he’d rather see Chin or the three hulking ninjas that got out of the backseat instead. He put on the Mr. Cool ’tude when Duke and his cohorts stepped up to the black Formica counter.
The Noah Reid Series: Books 1-3: The Noah Reid Action Thriller Series Boxset Page 18
