“You’re the man, Noah,” says Sam.
Unfortunately, this extra effort has increased the blood flow from the cut on Sam’s hand. Add another problem – Sam and Walrus have been deteriorating since they were cut. Is this an abnormally fast case of infection or sepsis setting in? These birds are hardly sanitary and with their blood splattered everywhere, serious infection is bound to happen.
No time to think about this as Wangdan does a flying somersault and lands on the back of a bird just before it reaches Walrus. Wangdan’s momentum crushes the crane’s vertebrae.
Noah rips off the head of the crane he just killed and rockets it at another crane just about to bite off Wangdan’s fingers. The makeshift dagger lands right in the eyeball of the attacking bird.
“Wangdan, Sam’s fading fast. We have to get the boys some disinfectant. Did you see how scummy, diseased and sickly the birds look?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got to find something.”
Wangdan picks up a dead bird by its feet, careful not to touch its razor-edged claws. He swings it like a master swordsman, sometimes using it as a shield from the attacking beaks, sometimes using it to shield Noah as he makes his way to Sam and Walrus.
Noah rushes to the equipment room. It’s still burning—no water sprinklers there but on the far side of the room he sees his goal—an unused bottle of isopropyl alcohol. Fires licking his body, he crosses the floor, grabs it, and hurries back.
The smoke is very dense though and he doesn’t see something—he knocks a few bottles of compressed air into the blaze.
BOOM! BOOM! The explosion thrusts Noah out of the recording studio—bleeding and burning—back into the equipment room. The bottle of isopropyl alcohol was knocked out of his hands and spilled on the floor.
***
Disoriented, defeated and in great pain, the last few surviving cranes look toward Queenie in shock. Their eyes seem to say, “Mama, what have you done to me?”
The cranes turn on her. Wangdan notices that their eyes are completely bloodshot, their feathers are tattered and skin is peeling off the exposed parts of their legs. These birds are knocking on death’s door.
Without a second thought, Wangdan goes to the flattened grand piano. With a Herculean effort he lifts it up and breaks off two of its legs. Landing it with a resounding cacophony that reverberates throughout the studio, Wangdan drops the piano and rushes to Queenie, who cannot hold off the angry cranes.
The birds peck at Queenie, scratching her, gouging her, and causing her to bleed. So intent on retaliation for years of abuse are the cranes toward Queenie that they do not notice Wangdan coming at them.
He swings the piano legs at the two birds’ bodies. The birds squawk in pain but they do not give up on their attack on Queenie, ignoring Wangdan’s blows on them. It is as if the birds, realizing their own imminent death, want to have their revenge on the woman who has mistreated them so badly for so many years.
***
Freaked that the disinfectant is now just a pool on the ground, Noah runs out of the equipment room as Sam and Walrus start to shiver.
“Wangdan, I’m going to the washroom,” shouts Noah. “Maybe water will work if we clean the wounds properly,” says Noah hopefully but not convincingly.
Wangdan leaves Queenie to the birds as he tears off his shirt and tries to stem the flow of blood from Walrus and Sam.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
This has been a terrible few days for Alexei. First, Queenie did not deliver the goods and like a fool, he allowed her a week’s extension. Secondly, Hassan has not answered him all day and the big Russian does not take kindly to flunkies not returning his calls. Why on earth he introduced Queenie to him is a question he will take to his grave. Thirdly, the Chinaman he captured—as yet another favor to Queenie—stole his girls and he has no idea where they are.
Lusting after women has messed up men’s lives forever. Cleopatra, Helen, Marilyn. Alexei can hardly contain himself thinking of the little nymph Lena, the young Russian singer and her even sexier mother that he will bring to show off at Skyscape, but first he has to deal with Hassan. He is convinced that despite Queenie’s claims to the contrary, Hassan has bedded her, thus winning their ten thousand dollar bet.
Carnal thoughts turn to anger when he arrives at the Vector Building. No security guards are there and the electricity is now on backup power. Why the hell is every other building on the block working while mine is not?
As he steps on the elevator, he pulls out a gun, ready to shoot the first thing he sees when he gets off at Skyscape’s floor.
***
As bad as she appears, Queenie is not in as much danger of dying as the average person would be under the circumstances. Over the years, she has been bitten so many times by her birds that she has developed complete immunity to all their poisons, toxins, bacteria and viruses. She also knows that these birds are on the verge of death so their strength is diminished. This attack on the fifteenth floor was their swan song. She’s down but hardly out.
***
Noah enters the men’s room to see Tim the producer getting ready to clean some dirty needles with isopropyl alcohol. Tim’s as high as kite and wanting to soar to the skies. Initially he doesn’t see Noah taking the bottle of isopropyl alcohol from him. Then, with a flash of lucidity, the music producer realizes what is happening and tries to stab Noah with his dirty needle. He misses and injects his own leg instead.
Noah takes the bottle of alcohol and runs out of the washroom and back to the studio.
He and Wangdan focus on stopping the bleeding with tourniquets and cleaning the cuts on the wrists of Sam and Walrus.
***
When Alexei gets off the elevator to Skyscape, the first thing he notices is the silence. Then he walks to the office—nobody there. Next stop is the boardroom.
Still nobody there.
Then he steps into Studio 5.
Oh my God.
***
Alexei’s first thought as he sees Queenie is disgust at himself. After the hell she’s been through, Queenie is no longer the “exotic sexy Eurasian” but looks like some cheap beat-up hooker. Disgust turns to rage when he turns his head to see the Chinaman who stole his girls.
“You took my girls!”
Wangdan looks up from tending to the boys and sees a bullet coming at him. He quickly sidesteps it and picks up one of the dead birds as Alexei fires again.
The martial artist blocks the shot with the bird’s carcass.
However, moving the bird to block the shot creates an opening for the reviving Queenie, who dives at Wangdan’s legs, knocking the martial artist to the ground.
“Thank God for you, Alexei,” calls Queenie.
“You next,” snarls the Russian. He fires at her and hits her in the leg. She crumples to the floor.
Noah, with no time for subtleties, pours the rest of the isopropyl alcohol over the boys’ wounds as Alexei steps toward Wangdan.
Alexei fires again. With light-speed reflexes, Wangdan grabs one bullet just before it’s about to enter his chest, but he can’t avoid the second that enters his stomach. It’s a gusher.
Alexei bounds to the fallen martial artist and is about to squish Wangdan when Noah, like an NFL Pro-Bowl defensive back, takes a flying leap and tackles Alexei to the floor.
Noah attacks Alexei with the force of a ninja gone berserk.
The Russian’s body becomes a human punching bag with continuous hammer fists to the head, chest and stomach.
With the power of a Thai kick boxer, Noah kicks hands, shins, knees and elbows.
Alexei bends over gasping and loses consciousness.
Noah then storms to Queenie.
Queenie starts to tear. She says softly, “I’m sorry, Noah. You were right.”
This totally unexpected statement shocks Noah as she approaches. “Right about what?”
She comes alongside him. “Me.”
Suddenly, she takes a crane’s beak and stabs
it into his chest. But before she can press down all the way, a shot rings out. It shoots the beak out of Queenie’s hand.
Queenie looks around at the direction of the gun and launches another beak at the shooter.
Another shot. The beak explodes in mid-air and the bullet continues its deadly journey, embedding itself into Queenie’s chest.
She crumples and sneers at Noah. “I’ll haunt you in death.”
Queenie’s eyes freeze in position.
Noah looks over. The shooter is Willie Mays. “She hurt my son. Cop or not, I could never forgive that.”
Unspoken is the fact that Willie Mays did not have to kill Queenie. He had ample opportunity to shoot her in the arm, leg, other side of the chest ... many places that would not have resulted in a lethal injury.
Noah looks directly at the member of New York City’s finest. He walks up to him and punches him twice. Once in the eye—in a few minutes it will bleed and swell up. Once in the nose—he breaks it and he looks as bad as Noah does. He then delivers a hard kick to the chest, breaking his ribs. Throughout this beating, Willie Mays does not try to defend himself.
Noah announces. “Willie Mays, you are a true hero. You saved two defenseless boys that for no reason were being beaten to death by a Russian mobster and a savage woman who attacked them with sharpened cranes’ beaks. Your gun was a weapon of last resort because your nose was broken, your ribs were cracked, and you could barely see out of one eye. I salute you.”
Noah makes the Shaolin hand sign of greeting to the policeman.
CHAPTER THIRTY
A recuperating Wangdan and Abby stand with Olga, the Russian cleaning lady, looking at the twelve sleeping girls in the Presidential Suite of the Seventh Hotel.
“These girls are homeless and stateless. That’s why nobody cared when they were smuggled out and nobody will care for them when they go back.”
“Maybe there will be people here to adopt them,” says Abby.
“No one here will want them either ... except the men, and that’s last thing they need. No one will adopt them—they are not little babies. Nobody will want to take care of them.”
“I’ll take care of them,” says Wangdan.
“They have no papers,” says Olga.
“The Chad Huang Foundation will transfer 250 million to set up a new operation in New York. I’ll be supervising the set-up of new centers, and I’m sure my lawyers will gratefully donate their time to assist these young girls.”
“Maybe you’d like some help?” asks Abby.
Wangdan smiles. “Maybe.”
***
Noah and Olivia stand around looking at Sam and Walrus in the hospital. Both of the boys have lost a lot of blood but the infection was nipped in the bud—barely. They’ll survive.
“I’ve booked my flight back to Hong Kong for tomorrow,” says Noah.
Olivia says, “Cathay International. 10 a.m. Economy. I’m on the same flight. Sitting beside you.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Noah,” says a groggy Sam. “It doesn’t take Einstein to figure that out.”
“But how did you know what flight? I didn’t tell anybody.”
Walrus opens his eyes. “I am the Walrus. I can do anything.”
Suddenly, the television in the room turns on by itself.
Onscreen is a heavily bandaged man. “Noah. You have killed three of my children. But I have two more to go ... And there is me.”
The television turns off just as suddenly as it turned on.
THE END… Thank you for reading this book. If you enjoyed, would you please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads? Reviews help newer and indie authors like myself get their books in front of more readers. Even a positive few words is most helpful as I am grateful for all feedback from my readers.
The next book in the series continues in the New York area but this time Noah’s got to go up against the most physical of Chin’s kids. Find out more in the excerpt following.
Sample: Slavery Unbound
PROLOGUE
Twenty-three Years Ago
A fifteen-year-old new mother gives her three-month old son to the thirty-year-old father to hold for the first time. She wasn’t sure it was such a good idea for her to be going out with such an older man, but he was just so handsome, so strong and so... so rich. When one of the nuns told the story of baby Jesus and how Mary, his mother, was about the same age as her and that Jesus’ birth father was even older than Chin, well...
After all, she was so tired of the restrictions that the sisters put on her, and Chin promised her an apartment of her own. He brought her there to show her. She was so impressed with the fact that the building had an elevator, and when she opened the door to the suite, it was brand new! She leapt into bed with him, just as she done that afternoon and the night before and the afternoon before...
He had a voracious sexual appetite, but a week later when he found out she was pregnant, he stopped touching her. In fact, he disappeared, and this was the first time he had seen her since then. However, he was a good provider. Made sure she had best physicians to nurture her, that she exercised regularly, had the best of prenatal care. But she was worried. No phone calls, text messages, e-mails. Just regular appearances by of one of his men to make sure all the bills were paid and that she was looking after herself.
She was sure that he would be there at her son’s birth and was hurt when he wasn’t. What she didn’t know is that Chin wanted to wait for three months to make sure that the baby lived. After all, infant mortality is at its highest in the time right after birth, so there was no point in showing up if the child was not going to live. However, the child did live, and the girl was shocked and joyous to see the man at the door.
“Here is your new son.”
She offers him for Chin to hold, but he simply raises his hand in the air and waves it - no thanks.
“What do you think, Chin?”
“He is weak. Weak cubs become weak leopards. He was in the hospital for a month. He was in an incubator.”
“He’ll grow stronger. I’ll give him the best Chinese herbs. I nurse him with my own milk. You can train him yourself,” cries the young mother.
“Raising children is not my job.”
“He’s not any child, he’s your son.”
“I have others.”
And he does. As well as two daughters. Each child was given the name of a ruler. Each child represented one of the Five Animals of the Shaolin. Prez, the oldest daughter, was the Dragon. King, the oldest son was the Snake. Duke, the next son, was the Tiger, Queenie, the younger daughter, was the Crane.
Prez, King, Duke, Queenie. Chin wanted a child to be the Prince.
Dragon, Snake, Tiger, Crane. A Leopard would complete the complement of animals.
As Chin turns away to walk to the door, the girl grabs him. “Chin, I need you. I want you.”
She rips her blouse off, but Chin looks away disinterestedly. A teenager ballooned with fat with from the pregnancy is hardly attractive to a man who has starlets throwing themselves at him wherever he goes. He continues to the door.
Before opening it, he turns to her and says, “Only one of you can live. When I come back in an hour, I will either make another child with you or bring the baby to a new mother.”
Chin opens the door. As he leaves, a leopard is unleashed from its chain and released into the room.
Thankfully for baby Prince, the cat had been starved for three days prior to this visit. It had an easy choice as to who to make its meal.
Five Years Ago
For an eighteen-year-old, Prince is pretty buff. Not scrawny like most kids his age. He dropped out of his school two years ago and spends six hours a day in the gym, lifting weights. He’s got a private trainer and has been studying Thai kickboxing, street fighting with an MMA fighter and a Kung fu grandmaster. And of course, downing and injecting a ton of anabolic steroids.
The rest of the time, Prince is out on the street - pimpin
g or impressing young chicks, distributing and dealing drugs.
He’s hanging out right now half a block from his old school, surrounded by twelve- to fifteen-year-olds - Hispanic, Asian, white, Middle Eastern, brown and black. He’s an equal opportunity destroyer of young souls.
“Okay, like man, here’s the deal. Each of you’s got six ounces of high-quality weed. Like, I’m giving you a super deal. You divide it up, sell any which way you like. I’m coming back in two days, and each of you is going to give me two thousand bucks. The rest is for you. Got it?”
With eight kids there, that’s gonna be sixteen grand. A profit of almost ten grand after expenses. Not bad for a week’s work. But a hell of a lot better than the legit jobs that any of them could get.
“All right.” The kids fist bump Prince and disperse to peddle their product to their friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends...
A white panel van followed by a black Mercedes with tinted windows pulls up. The back door of the Mercedes opens, and Chin walks out.
He hands Prince a large suitcase. “Happy birthday, Prince.”
“What brings you around?”
“I want you to stop this penny ante stuff with children. It’s too dangerous. Every cop on the street will be looking out for you. Every two-bit dealer is ready to stick a knife in you or shoot you in the head.”
“You don’t need worry about me. I can handle myself.”
Prince rolls up his shirt and flexes an impressive bicep. He then bangs his fist on the hood of the Mercedes, creating a dent about six inches deep.
He then launches a hammer fist at Chin. Chin calmly grabs the balled hand, twists it, and lightning kicks Prince three times: one in the head, one in the chest, one in the balls.
The Noah Reid Series: Books 1-3: The Noah Reid Action Thriller Series Boxset Page 58
