Noble Man

by William Miller

  “And now you are a mercenary?”

  “I’m still working for the same people, only now I work on commission.”

  “How much will you get for saving Bati?” she asked.

  He hesitated, and then said, “$150,000.”

  Sam whistled. It came through the microphone as a piercing locomotive blast. Noble winced. They hit a patch of turbulence. The twin prop shook violently for a moment then leveled out.

  Sam was lost in thought for a while. “You are doing it for your mother?”

  Noble nodded.

  She reached across and laid a hand on his forearm. “How bad is it?”

  “Bad,” Noble told her. “The doctors want to do another round of chemotherapy. If that doesn’t work…” he shrugged.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She changed the subject and that was fine by Noble. “How long will it take us to reach Hong Kong?”

  “Three hours assuming we don’t crash into the ocean first.”

  “What are the chances of that?”

  “This old thing handles like a building with wings,” Noble said.

  Sam’s face pinched in concern.

  He smiled. “Relax. I’ve never crashed before.”

  Sam laughed and asked him where he’d learned to fly. He told her about some of his training at the Farm in Langley. They spent the next two hours in idle chitchat. He recalled some of his time in the Green Berets and then being recruited into the CIA’s Special Operations Group. She told him about growing up between Hong Kong and San Diego, how she had met Bati, and some of the troubles they experienced starting the women’s shelter in Manila.

  They passed over the first string of green islands that lay roughly twenty kilometers south of Hong Kong. White sailing vessels speckled the blue waters below. Noble descended to a thousand feet and reduced airspeed.

  The rugged green landscape of Hong Kong appeared on the horizon just as the starboard engine let out a loud buzzing like an angry hornet. The Grumman rocked and shuddered, but the engine recovered. For a moment Noble thought everything would be fine. Then the old propeller clanked. Black smoke trailed behind the aircraft like a banner.

  Sam gripped the dash. “Is that bad?”

  “Yes,” Noble said.

  “How bad?”

  “Start praying.”

  41

  The Grumman rattled so hard Noble thought the old girl would shake herself apart in midair. He wrestled the stick and tried to remember the procedure for emergency landings. Sam gripped the console. Her knuckles turned white. Noble attempted to restart the engine. The starboard propeller blurred into motion for a few hopeful seconds before slowing to a crawl. The stop and go caused the aircraft to buck like a wild bronco.

  He shut the engine down. It died with a grateful cough. The propellers locked in place. He adjusted the flaps to compensate for the loss. Hong Kong was coming up fast. He aimed the nose at Aberdeen Channel, where two rocky outcrops of land encompassed a bay of blue water. From this distance, he could see the sun winking off the glass front of expensive high-rise condos that lined the shore.

  The Grumman drifted slowly to port. Noble made another adjustment to the flaps and crimped the yoke starboard to correct the drift. South of Aberdeen Channel rose a small rocky outcrop called Ap Lei Pai, connected to the main island by a narrow stretch of beach. There were no houses or roads on Ap Lei Pai. It was a hump of green shrubs and stunted trees and the perfect place to beach the aircraft without attracting too much attention.

  Noble aimed for the western side of the island where the shoreline was a soft grade covered mostly in grass and loose gravel. He had the Grumman under control now and reduced air speed in preparation for a landing. They were six kilometers out when the strain of carrying the crippled aircraft finally overwhelmed the remaining engine. The port-side motor started to scream in protest. The Grumman lurched through the air, threatening to roll over and pitch into the ocean.

  Noble’s lips peeled back from clenched teeth. Sweat broke out on his forehead. The veins in his neck bulged. He fought the yoke to keep the nose up. The starboard wing dipped dangerously low until the tip skimmed the water. Noble strained to correct the drift. The starboard wing came up reluctantly, and the port wing evened out. Then the craft overcorrected, and Noble had to fight it back the other way.

  “Come on!” he barked.

  The port engine cut out altogether. For a moment, the aircraft coasted along in utter silence. Then gravity took over. The water came up fast. Noble’s heart jumped around inside his chest. His stomach clenched. He hauled back on the stick and raised the flaps. The nose went up, and the tail section sank like a dog dragging its butt on the carpet. All he could see was blue sky and ragged wisps of white cloud.

  Noble knew that if they hit the water like this, the tail section would rip off and the plane would come apart. He pushed the nose down and saw the line of the horizon directly ahead. The belly of the craft smacked water.

  There was a tremendous crash. Noble’s jaw cracked together hard enough to make fairy lights dance in his vision. The fuselage shook like an angry beast. The plane skipped over the surface, giving them another moment of silence before humping the water again. They were treated to another violent impact. Both of them pitched against their safety belts. Saltwater sprayed over the windscreen, blotting out their vision. When it rolled away Noble was looking at Ap Lei Pai directly ahead. Another three kilometers and they would have slammed into the rocky outcropping at speeds that would have crushed the aircraft like a tin can.

  The Grumman mounted soft swells, plunged into the troughs and plowed up white foam in her wake. Momentum carried them along. They would hit the shore doing a leisurely ten knots, give or take. Not fast, but enough to put the old World War II relic out of service.

  “Get your hands off that dash unless you want two broken elbows,” Noble said over the sound of rushing waves.

  Samantha snatched her hands away as the nose of the craft impacted the steep rocky incline of Ap Lei Pai with a shriek of buckling metal. The Grumman came to rest with the crumpled nose pointing at the sky and the tail submerged, listing hard to starboard.

  Neither of them moved for several long seconds. They stared out the cracked windshield, hardly daring to believe their luck. For Noble, the adrenaline wore off, and pain set in. Being thrown repeatedly against the safety belts had done nothing for the state of his bruised ribcage. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hurt so badly. He pried his cramped hands from the wheel only by a conscious effort to straighten his fingers.

  Sam covered her mouth with both hands. Her chest heaved against the restraints. Her hair was a mess.

  “You okay?” Noble asked.

  She nodded weakly.

  Noble released his belts and pushed himself to his feet using the console for support. He had to duck his head to keep from knocking it on the low ceiling. The file folder lay scattered all over the cockpit floor. He collected pages, jamming them back into the folder. “Can you stand? We need to get as far away as possible. At least a dozen boaters saw us go down. Someone will call it in. It won’t take long for the HK Coast Guard to respond. They’re probably on their way already.”

  Sam shrugged out of the safety harness and scrambled to her feet. They staggered down the slanting deck to the hatch. Noble twisted the latch and shoved. He feared the buckled fuselage might make the door stick, but it cranked open with a cantankerous groan. He leapt out, turned around, took Samantha by the waist, and lowered her to the ground.

  He cast a glance over the downed relic and felt a stab of regret. It was a sad end to an historic bird. Under different circumstances he would have enjoyed restoring the Grumman to its former glory. That was out of the question now. The nose had crumpled on the rocks. One wing had buckled and hung limp like a broken appendage. The tail section was submerged, no telling how much damage it had sustained.

  Samantha saw the look on his face. “What’s the matter?”

  “Manny wil
l be heart broken.”

  They high-stepped over low shrubs and brambles to the north side of Ap Lei Pai, where a narrow strip of white sand created a land bridge to the larger island of Ap Lei Chau. From there, they hiked along the rocky coastline past the break wall to a marina crowded with yachts, trawlers, sailboats, and catamarans. Modern high-rises lined the ocean-front boulevard.

  Noble took Samantha’s hand and led the way down to the marina. “Act natural.”

  They strolled along the docks, passed a group going the other direction, and exchanged polite greetings. Sam looked over her shoulder and waited until the group was out of earshot. “Are we stealing a boat?”

  “Does that offend you?”

  “I barely survived being in a plane with you. I’m not sure I want to try my luck on a boat.”

  Noble’s face split into a grin.

  “So you do know how to smile,” Sam said.

  “We’re taking a boat because the police are going to assume that whoever crashed that plane was trying to sneak onto the island,” he told her.

  “So the police will be checking cars and buses,” Sam said.

  Noble nodded and steered her onto the deck of a forty-foot yacht called the Glory Bound. “This will do,” he said.

  Living at the marina had equipped Noble with a wide and eclectic knowledge of boats. This particular model had an electric starter and did not require a key. The sliding glass door on the rear deck wouldn’t give him too much trouble either. He took the lock picks from his wallet and had the door open in less than a minute.

  “What if there are people on board?” Sam asked. “How do you know it’s empty?”

  “I don’t,” Noble admitted.

  They searched below decks. The yacht proved to be vacant and in one of the aft cabins Noble found a dresser full of women’s clothing. He emptied drawers out onto the bed until he turned up a black bikini.

  He handed it to Sam. “Put this on.”

  She gave him a flat look.

  “We just crashed a plane in Hong Kong,” he said. “In half an hour this place is going to be a media circus. We want to look like millionaires out for a pleasure cruise, not like fleeing suspects.”

  Sam narrowed her eyes. “Oh, I understand. It’s all part of the disguise and has nothing to do with the fact that you want to see me in a skimpy bathing suit.”

  “It’s a tough job,” Noble said. “Somebody has to make the hard sacrifices.”

  “It must be so difficult for you.”

  He shrugged, crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned in the doorframe. “I’m not in it for the accolades.”

  She pointed at the door. “Out.”

  Noble returned topside and heard the steady beat of helicopter blades. A chopper hovered over Ap Lei Pai. He cast off the lines, climbed into the wheelhouse, and engaged the starter. The engines roared to life. Ten minutes later, he was cruising south out of Aberdeen channel with Sam lying on the forward deck in the black bikini. She had found a beach towel and a Chinese Cosmo. She stretched out on her belly with her bronze skin shining in the morning sun.

  Beyond the southern tip of Ap Lei Pai, Noble turned west, coasting past the wreck of the Grumman. A pair of police cruisers was inbound, headed to the crash site. Sam still had her nose in the magazine. Noble stuck his head out the window and yelled, “Hey, babe, check it out. A plane crashed.”

  She sat up and shielded her eyes against the sun. “Oh, gosh. I hope everyone is all right.”

  The police boats were passing them on the port side. One of the officers elbowed his friend and pointed at Sam. They watched her for a while and then returned their attention to the downed plane. Neither man even glanced in Noble’s direction. Sam studied the scene long enough to make it convincing and then lay back down on her belly. She reached back, untied the bikini top to avoid tan lines, then put her head down and closed her eyes.

  Either she was teasing him intentionally, or she had no idea the effect the sight would have on him. He chewed the inside of one cheek.

  The memory of last night’s rejection was the only thing stopping him from walking onto the deck and gathering her into his arms. Why had she stopped last night? And what had she meant when she said she trusted him? Noble kept turning those questions over in his mind.

  He sailed north and west around Ap lei Chau into Waterfall Bay. The police cruisers dwindled from sight, and Noble throttled up to twenty-five knots. He circled the big island of Hong Kong, waving and smiling at other boaters as they passed. He found an empty slip in the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter. Sam changed back into her dark denims and black tank top, and together they vanished into the urban chaos of Hong Kong.

  42

  By one o’clock they had purchased new clothes in a hip shopping mall called Times Square and then sat down for lunch at Heichinrou. It was the first time in his life Noble had to talk a girl into shopping. He thought Sam would be excited about a spending spree, but she didn’t have the heart for it while her best friend was being held captive by triads. He convinced her they needed to change their appearance and she had, reluctantly, agreed to the delay.

  Sam bought a forest green shirt with tiny cargo pockets on the sleeves and hiking shoes. Noble now wore a black shirt under a dark gray windbreaker with plenty of pockets, dark cargo pants, and trainers. The ensemble made him look like an American tourist. Part of good clandestine work is blending in; that doesn’t always mean looking like a local.

  After changing clothes, they had found their way to the food court. Noble had his heart set on BLT Burger, but Sam balked at the idea of eating American food in Hong Kong. She insisted they eat Cantonese. Noble acquiesced without bothering to tell her that the first heichinrou opened in Yokohama, Japan.

  While they ate, Noble checked news feeds on his mobile. He wanted to see if the police had put out a bulletin on the two people who crashed a plane and stole a 1.2-million-dollar yacht. So far it looked like the police had no description and no leads. Noble allowed himself to breathe a little easier.

  They finished their food, ordered more coffee, and went over Manny’s file on Eric Tsang and his associates. Tsang was at the top of the criminal food chain in Hong Kong, and the group of mercenaries he contracted as private security was top notch. Every single one of them had elite military training and combat experience.

  Tsang had forged a criminal empire through intelligence, cunning, and no small measure of ruthlessness. Crusaders like Bakonawa Ramos probably cost him a fortune. Noble could understand Tsang abducting the girl, but why wasn’t he leveraging her?

  “None of this makes any sense,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Tsang has Bati, why isn’t he making any demands?” Noble said. “Bakonawa Ramos, supposedly a pillar of the community, has an illegitimate love child with a Filipino hooker who tries to kidnap her own daughter. Tsang gets to the girl first. Then he just sits on her? No ransom demands?”

  “None that we know of.”

  “You think Ramos is getting ransom demands and not telling anyone?”

  Samantha shrugged. “A scandal like that would ruin him.”

  Noble shook his head. “I don’t buy it. If my daughter were kidnapped, I would do everything in my power to bring her home, including exposing my indiscretion with a prostitute.”

  He sipped his coffee. “Hell, if his PR people spin it right, he could sell his one night with a hooker as the wake-up call that opened his eyes to the awfulness of human trafficking. Write a tell-all and make millions.”

  “I think this goes deeper than a simple indiscretion from twenty-five years ago,” Sam said.

  “How so?”

  “The way Shiva made it sound, I think Bakonawa is up to his neck in human trafficking.”

  Noble leaned back in his seat, crossed his arms over his chest, and frowned. “I doubt it. I’m going to read you in on something you aren’t supposed to know; Bakonawa Ramos is a CIA asset. He has been for years. He picks up info in his
campaigns against human trafficking and feeds it to the Company.”

  “Maybe he isn’t getting that info from his war on human trafficking,” Sam said.

  She had a point. It was possible the CIA had been so busy spying on the enemy, they had forgotten to take a good hard look at their friends.

  “Think about it. Publicly, he is a respected diplomat. Behind the scenes, he makes a fortune selling girls on the black market. Who would ever suspect the guy that champions the fight against prostitution to be involved in prostitution? Maybe Ramos has been feeding the CIA info on his competition.”

  When she laid it out like that, it made sense. And if true, Bati’s chances of survival were slim. “I hope you are wrong,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because if Ramos is leading a double life as an underworld crime boss then Eric Tsang might not want money,” Noble told her. He could lie, but he might as well lay it out for her. Prepare her for the worst. “He might have kidnapped Bati for revenge.”

  “Why are we sitting here drinking coffee? We need to get out there and find her before it’s too late.”

  Noble held up a hand. “First of all, I’m not Superman. I have to eat. Second, information is our best weapon against a guy like Tsang. We can’t go in guns blazing. We have to find the weak link.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Noble passed her the grainy black-and-white surveillance photo of Tiger Tsang from Manny’s file. “We start with his kid brother.”

  43

  Frederick Krakouer landed in Hong Kong at 5 a.m. and booked himself into an airport hotel for a few hours of shuteye. He needed some rest. The game had changed since learning the Triads were involved. Krakouer wanted to be in top form if he was going up against Eric Tsang. Lady Shiva was a second-rate hustler. She used a spooky name and a violent reputation to inspire fear in low-level punks. At the end of the day, she was nothing more than a whore who had worked her way up to madam. That was all she would ever be.