As Wangdan holds Abby’s hands, she looks at him and says, “Please be safe.” There’s a look on her face that says she is more than just mouthing a formality.
“I’ll try.” With a grin bigger than an actress winning an Oscar, Wangdan gently lowers her to the awaiting Willie Mays.
Wangdan then stares at Willie, who nods. “Go for it.”
Wangdan jumps down. Willie stretches out and grabs Wangdan’s foot and pulls him in.
***
As Queenie struggles toward him, Noah’s thoughts flash to the time he was battling her father in his Hong Kong penthouse high-rise complex.
While the danger is just as great, Noah’s glad he doesn’t have to deal with the crazed tigers and cranes that Chin sent after him.
And then he looks outside.
There is a sight that sends chills down Noah’s spine—a flock of hybrid red-crowned cranes flies toward the fourteenth floor.
Queenie straightens up and announces, “Noah, either you are going to wire transfer five hundred million dollars into my account or my pets will kill all the kids and your friends.”
Noah doesn’t bother to argue—he knows she will do it. “I need time to pull that off. That’s way too big an amount.”
“Then that’s too bad because I’m not waiting any more. Do it or they die.”
Noah stares hard at the birds, sickened.
“You know I am my father’s daughter by now. You remember my father’s cranes? Well, he always preferred tigers, so he didn’t put the special emphasis on them that I have. You have about a minute before they arrive. I can still call them off ... they listen only to me.”
Think Noah, think.
Noah runs to the grand piano and pushes it. With its wheels unlocked, the instrument moves easily and Noah rams it against the floor-to-ceiling window.
***
As the cranes approach, Wangdan can see the anger in their eyes. He sees that, like the birds in his hotel room, these birds have been brutalized, tortured, and have only destruction on their minds.
There are too many of them coming right at the group. With their sharpened beaks and claws, they will tear them all apart in seconds.
Suddenly, a falling grand piano falls on several of the birds as they are about to fly into the fourteenth floor open space.
Then there is a loud, squalling, complicated call coming from above. It is Noah. Wangdan knows the sound well—it is the mating call of the red-crowned crane. Wangdan understands. Noah wants him to imitate the call.
The training that Wangdan and Noah received went far beyond simply the physical combat side of the Shaolin. There was also the study of animal behavior, movement and speech. Wangdan learned this from the Sigongs of Heaven and Noah learned it from Master Wu.
Wangdan says to Abby, Olivia, Willie Mays and the young choristers, “Try and imitate me as best you can. It’s our only hope of survival.”
Putting it that way is a pretty convincing argument for trying to match Wangdan as closely as possible. Wangdan begins to call to the birds and the unusual motley group follows.
As they get closer, the birds start calling back. Wangdan and the group’s calls become more poignant and then another surprise—Wangdan begins to dance the mating dance.
Talk about bizarre. On the fourteenth floor in a New York building are ten people honking like cranes and trying to do a slow, elegant crane-mating dance.
The effect is mesmerizing on the birds. They alight on the floor with Wangdan, Abby, Olivia and the boys.
“Be careful. They are still dangerous,” says Wangdan as the courtship dance continues.
Wangdan does a quick silent prayer asking for forgiveness, then grabs a crane by the neck and snaps it.
He motions for Abby and Olivia to bring the frightened children to an empty isolation booth, a solidly constructed small room used to “isolate” performers so that their performances do not leak into the microphones of other musicians. After all the children are safely inside, the women rejoin Wangdan.
Conversing and dancing between cranes, the girls engage in the dance of death until a dozen of the cranes have their necks broken.
Wangdan notices that the remaining living cranes have changed their calls. He steps up the intensity of his calls, but the remaining cranes are growing more uneasy—they have seen what Wangdan has done to their brethren and are reacting in an almost human manner to the violence.
Wangdan motions to Olivia and Abby to follow him into a partially-built isolation booth as he carries in four of the dead birds. Wangdan then shuts the door.
Abby bursts into tears. “That was awful.”
Wangdan touches her hand. “It gets worse.”
Wangdan reaches to the top of the head and wrenches it off. It’s a bloody horrible mess but now Wangdan has a means of defense—the beak of the bird. Its head serves as a handle. He snaps the heads off three more birds. He now has four weapons, four more than he had five minutes ago.
Good thing because the birds are outside the isolation booth, trying to get in. They peck and scratch and it’s scary as hell to see them through the window. It’s pretty damn lucky that soundproof glass is pretty damn thick and that there’s a double layer of acoustic treatment.
***
Ready to leave, Noah’s at the door of the studio, looking at Queenie and Byron on the floor. “You’ve lost, Queenie. The birds didn’t kill anybody, I don’t care if I die, and you still don’t have any money. Give it up while you still have a chance.”
“I wouldn’t leave just yet if I were you,” says Jonny from the equipment room.
All look to see the studio manager stepping out, grabbing Walrus by the neck with one hand and Sam by the neck with the other. He hands Walrus to Byron.
Queenie looks back at Noah. “You were a little premature, don’t you think, Noah Reid?”
Jonny and Byron yank the boys in front of Queenie. “I think we just secured our investment,” comments Byron sardonically.
Sure looks that way.
After Sam went back into the air duct, he quickly went to the fourteenth floor and told Walrus what was happening. The boys couldn’t resist the chance to see the action and snuck back up the air duct to the studio. When Jonny arrived at the equipment room, he was just hoping to put out the fire. He couldn’t have been more surprised to see the two teens crawling out of the air vent. Easy pickings.
“Let me go before I kick your ass,” says Sam with a foolish bravado.
Jonny throws Sam at the gaping hole in the studio window created when Noah crashed the piano at it.
“No!” screams Walrus.
Noah leaps and grabs Sam just before he falls outside and down fifteen stories.
Noah looks at Sam. During the few months he’s known him, he’s seen the transformation from young hoodlum to young ambassador. Is he overly cocky, a pain in the butt and too often irresponsible? Yes, yes and yes. That’s why the Chad Huang Foundation exists. To provide a little help or a lot of help to these young people that in short order will shape the future. There is no way on Earth that he can let this young kid and his friend die. He walks back to the conductor’s table where the laptop remains set up.
Queenie hands him a business card with numbers written on the back. “Type in the routing numbers and have the money go to my account.”
Noah types in a series of numbers.
Suddenly, Sam whips a martial arts star out of his pocket and launches it directly at the laptop. It flies through the air and cracks the glass on the laptop screen. Sam has always kept a handful of these on his person ever since he met Noah, thinking they were the coolest things in the world. Cool and useful.
Sam launches another two flying stars at Byron, one landing in the arm, the other in the middle of his forehead. No way is Sam going to let his buddy and mentor down. Walrus breaks free from Byron’s hold and kicks the laptop out the window. With a metal star sticking out of the middle of his forehead, Byron lunges after it, reaching out as far as h
e can.
In his greed or maybe misjudgment due to blood pouring into his eyes, he overextends and can’t hold back his momentum—Byron falls out the window too.
“No!” Queenie screams, not for Byron but for the computer.
Sam springs up and launches a barrage of fists at Jonny. Walrus climbs onto Jonny’s back, trying to hold his arms back so that Sam’s punches can land.
“Hung Gar!” cry out the teens. Hung Gar is Tiger and Crane, the style of martial arts that Noah has been teaching Sam, the style that Noah learned from Master Wu, the style that Wangdan learned from the Sigongs of Heaven.
“Hung Gar!” shouts Noah. He’s never used the term as a battle cry before but then if it’s cool for the kids, he’s good with that.
***
Jonny’s strength and conditioning are far greater than those of the two computer-game-playing teens.
He throws a left hand fist at Sam who just barely ducks out of harm’s way.
Sam kicks out at Jonny’s groin but Jonny is hardly fazed by some punk kid. Before Sam’s leg arrives, a swift chop knocks it out of the way, inflicting one hell of a lot of pain. Sam screams out but a fist to the mouth sends Sam to the floor, whimpering.
Walrus pounds at Jonny’s head but Jonny quickly reaches behind, yanks Walrus’ arms and pulls the teen in front of him. A quick sidearm blow and Walrus is knocked to the floor.
This distraction is enough for Sam to get up. He jumps on Jonny’s feet, hoping to break their small bones.
Good idea but no cigar. Jonny’s re-enforced boots are adequate protection from Sam’s stomps and Jonny responds with a quick uppercut.
Sam pulls back but not far back enough. Jonny’s fist lands on his jaw. Sam crumples to the ground.
Another straight-arm smash to Walrus’s chest sends him flying ten feet. He hits the ground, winded and panting for air.
Sam jumps on Jonny from behind and applies a guillotine choke hold, wrapping his arms around his neck.
A swift series of alternating backward elbows quickly ends Sam’s attack.
Jonny grabs Sam and throws him in the air. Sam crashes on the ground, right arm first, beside the gasping Walrus.
Sam cries in pain—his arm is broken.
***
Meanwhile, Noah has the battle of his life with Queenie. Her technique displays none of the elegance or refinement of movement that her father or Wangdan or Noah have. Hers is the gritty, take-no-prisoners, kill-or-be-killed assault. The kind you use in back alleys or in drug cartel enclaves to create terror, chaos and death. No rules, no niceties.
She is armed with her weapons of choice—a crane’s leg with sharpened talons in each hand.
She slashes at Noah, who narrowly evades onslaught by backpedalling.
Queenie pushes forward. Noah grabs a chair to defend himself against the relentless claws, then throws it at her.
Queenie leaps in the air and kicks the chair out of the way. She throws the crane legs at Noah, who drops to the floor to avoid the cutting edges.
Queenie seizes the opportunity to grab a pecker from inside her feathered top and launches the pointed missile at Noah.
He avoids it but then there is another and another and another.
Only sheer luck allows him to avoid being skewered but luck doesn’t last forever.
Queenie takes a quick look in the direction of Jonny and the boys, then stops.
“Look over there, Noah. You sent children to fight with a man, one of the hardest asses that I know—and the hard ass won.”
Noah looks over to see the crying and whimpering Sam and Walrus held captive by the Chinese tough.
She coldly announces. “Your choice, Noah. Keep your money and the boys die. Transfer the money and the boys live.”
Noah exhales – the foundation doesn’t need the money that badly. “Find me a computer that works.”
Queenie calls to Jonny. “Okay Jonny, but first the insurance plan.”
Jonny nods. He takes out one of the sharpened crane’s beaks and slices the right wrist of each of the boys.
Queenie looks back at Noah. “Consider it a gift that we didn’t slice the jugular. Even so, it will take twenty minutes or less for the boys to bleed to death. If you do not cooperate, another cut will significantly speed the process.”
“No!” Cutting the boys was the stupidest thing that Jonny could have done. An incensed Noah whips a paperweight out of his pocket and throws it at Jonny. The thug ducks.
Noah does a backwards handspring and directs himself at Queenie.
She sidesteps and throws another beak at Noah. He tries to duck but it grazes his arm and a cut starts bleeding.
Jonny charges Noah and wallops him, sending him to the ground.
Queenie then jumps on top of the remaining grand piano and lifts her arms like the wings of a bird. The left arm opens up majestically, but the right arm is crooked and moves awkwardly as if it were injured.
***
Inside the isolation booth, Olivia, Abby and Wangdan can’t hear anything but what they see is startling.
The cranes, almost as if they were human, seem to look at each other, both confused and compassionate. They walk to the window and fly out.
Wangdan opens the booth door and they hear the faint call of a crane from somewhere. Unlike Wangdan’s sensual mating call, it is a pained, hurting cry of distress.
“That’s the cry of a suffering mother calling for help,” says Wangdan. “I’ve got to go.”
He runs to the window and leaps up to grasp the legs of the last two cranes to leave—the left leg of one with his left hand and the right leg of the other with his right. Both hands are perilously close to the sword-sharp talons. Half an inch lower and Wangdan’s hands would have been sliced to shreds.
The birds complainingly lift him upward.
***
All of the cranes gather around the grand piano where Queenie, standing on top of its lid, painfully caws as she tries to move her “broken wing.” In sympathy, the cranes dance like they are floating on air, joining Queenie in mournful chorus.
Then Queenie turns her head to Noah, lying on the ground. She nods up and down, cawing with even greater pain. Even if you don’t know crane speech, the message is pretty obvious—Noah hurt me.
Animals are not supposed to have human emotions but Noah has triggered anger and the desire for revenge. Incensed cranes stretch their wings to a seven-foot wingspan.
Noah sees the fire in the birds’ eyes then turns to Sam and Walrus bleeding out.
Jonny brings in an iPad and hands it to Queenie. “I think you have everything you need now, Queenie.”
“Not quite everything.” Queenie turns around and thrusts a pecker into Jonny’s heart. He stumbles in surprise as blood pours out of his wound. “If I’ve got everything, what’s the point in sharing?”
She hands the iPad to Noah. “Are you ready? This can all end in thirty seconds if you do the right thing.”
In the heat of battle, when all seems lost, the unknown and the unexpected are your only allies. From somewhere in Noah’s training, the stupid is the only thing that makes sense.
Noah rushes directly at Queenie.
Unfortunately for Noah, Queenie’s training has come from the same source. Expect the unexpected.
As Noah charges at her, she leaps at him like Superwoman with her arms spread out. She moves her arms to smack her hands against Noah’s eardrums.
At the last millisecond, Noah ducks and turns – not fast enough. Her hands hit the back of his head and his nose. Noah’s schnoz is broken and bleeding but otherwise, he’s fine.
He throws a hand at her head. She anticipates a thumb and index finger at her eye but Noah suddenly shifts his hand down and rotates it, chopping at her windpipe, knocking her to the floor.
She leaps up and pulls two peckers out and throws them at Noah. He ducks and the sharpened beaks stab two of the cranes. Into the eye of one bird, blinding it. Into the neck of another, slicing its jugul
ar.
***
What a breathtaking and startling sight!
Wangdan is lifted by two red-crowned cranes into the recording studio through the open space created when Noah pushed the grand piano through the window.
Queenie stands on top of another grand piano, imitating a crane’s pained movement and cry of desperation. She incites three birds to chase Noah under the piano.
“Get out, Noah!” screams Wangdan as he lets go of the cranes’ legs. He breaks into a run and as Noah scrambles out from under the piano’s frame, Wangdan jumps feet first, crashing into the piano’s legs. The legs break and the piano’s body buckles and crushes the three cranes. Queenie loses her balance and crashes to the floor.
The piano lid has dislodged from the instrument’s body. Noah grabs it and swings it at more attacking birds. The sharp beaks puncture the lid frame but then the beaks get stuck in the wood and the birds are unable to free themselves. They are easy pickings for Wangdan, who punches the immobilized cranes into submission.
The last few cranes, habituated to be carnivores, smell and see the blood on Sam and Walrus’ bodies. Cawing ferociously, they fly to the teens, ready to tear the prey to shreds.
Noah and Wangdan rush to the boys, shouting in unison, “To Death!”
The cry of ancient warriors who will defend the city until they are taken or they die sounds corny—unless you are thirteen-years-old. Noah knows that Sam and Walrus are freaked and need positive encouragement to raise their spirits.
It works. Sam and Walrus shout, “To Death!”
Noah leaps in front of a crane just before its beak skewers Sam. The crane’s beak penetrates Noah’s chest but Sam grabs the bird’s neck before it goes in too deeply. Sam hands it to Noah who takes the bird’s neck with two hands and promptly snaps it.
The Noah Reid Series: Books 1-3: The Noah Reid Action Thriller Series Boxset Page 57
