51. Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter fifty-one
Noble grunted, wheezed, and rolled onto his side.
Pain radiated up through his heels, tap-danced gleefully on his knees, then waltzed up to his hips.
He’d come down on top of the Russian sniper rifle.
No time to see if he’d bent or broken the weapon.
Captain Zeqiri and his two goons would be here any minute.
Noble needed to get up and get his body into action.
He could check to see if the rifle was still operable after he’d reached his first hiding spot.
At the moment, however, his world was still doing loop-the-loops. He waited just long enough for the ground to stop tilting, then tried to stand, reaching out a hand to the broken-down auto to steady himself. He stood there entirely too long, waiting for his muscles to reassert control.
His ears pricked up at the sound of movement.
The enemy were closing in. He couldn’t wait any longer.
It was now or never. Worried his knees would collapse the moment he tried to take a step, Noble gamely put one leg in front of the other.
His weight held. Still reeling from the fall, and slightly woozy, Noble limped along.
He was following the same path he would have taken if the belt hadn’t snapped.
Something clattered on his left. A pipe shifted in the rubble. Noble started to react, to swing the rifle down off his back, when he spotted a black cat streak out of the wreckage. The scrapyard was full of them.
The animal went zipping past.
Good, Noble thought. With any luck, it would distract his pursuers.
He continued deeper into the teetering piles of garbage to a narrow passage between two walls of crushed automobiles that created a natural choke point.
The cramped lane made for an excellent shooting gallery, but Noble wanted to avoid shooting as long as possible.
In fact, he wanted to separate them up and pick them off one by one if at all possible.
The only light came from distant arc sodium lamps that cast an anemic yellow glow, intermixed with deep pockets of shadow.
The false twilight made judging distances difficult, and picking out small details nearly impossible.
Crickets droned and the summer breeze caused garbage to shift, filling the dump with ghostly, indistinct sounds.
Noble nearly missed his own tripwire in the murky darkness.
After placing the call to Zeqiri, Noble had not been idle.
He’d use the time to rig as many boobytraps as possible before taking up position in the crane.
Now he just had to convince Zeqiri and his men to follow him through some of his nastier inventions.
Only problem was, in the dark, with adrenaline coursing through his veins, all these junk piles started to look exactly the same.
Palming sweat from his forehead, Noble stepped over the rusty metal spool attached to a bent copper pipe that propped up a driveshaft with a tacky gear box still attached.
It wasn’t heavy enough to kill anybody, but if it came down on someone’s head, they’d be seeing stars.
It was enough to let him know if Zeqiri or his men had picked up his trail.
At the end of the passage, Noble reached a wall of tires so old and used, the steel belts showed through.
He wedged himself into a small nook in the wall of pungent smelling rubber and stopped to listen. He didn’t have long to wait. Less than two minutes had gone by when he heard furtive footsteps. Someone had entered the narrow alley between the crushed automobiles. Any minute now…
Noble heard the soft whisk of the cable yanking the bent copper pipe, there was a rattle and a bang, then the heavy shift of the drive shaft. A moment later there was a muffled grunt as the drive shaft slammed down.
Leaping from his hiding place, Noble spotted one of Zeqiri’s men prostrate on the ground, clutching his bloody skull in both hands.
The tacky gear box had left a sizable gash in the man’s scalp.
Bright red splashes oozed out between his fingers.
He knew he was in trouble, knew he’d been tricked and he was trying desperately to get his body under control, one hand flapped at his fallen rifle.
Noble was faster. He swung the Dragunov down off his shoulder and used the butt of the weapon to give the fallen man a little love tap. The Albanian’s head snapped back. His eyes rolled up and he sprawled, insensate in the dirt.
Noble kicked the man’s rifle away, then grabbed the Albanian by the lapels and hauled him into a sitting position.
The man let out a low groan. His eyelids fluttered.
Two successive hits to the skull had left him woozy.
His head flopped and his mouth made funny mewling noises, but he’d rally momentarily.
Before that could happen, Noble reached for a tire.
He hefted a weighty rubber tube from the top of the stack and fitted it down over the man’s shoulders.
The tire was a standard fifteen inch rim.
It was a tight fit, but with a little pushing, Noble managed to shift it down over the Albanian’s shoulders until it trapped his elbows.
The lane between the crushed cars was still clear.
Noble took a moment to add a second tire to the first, pushing and shoving, until the Albanian was stuffed in a double ring.
By that time, the man had shrugged off the effects of his busted noggin.
He blinked up at Noble and asked, “What will you do with me?”
“Keep quiet and you might live through this,” Noble told him.
Still bleeding heavily from the cut on his scalp, the Albanian showed his empty palms as if to say, ‘what can I possibly do?’
The same rusty spool of cable that had worked as a tripwire, now made an excellent hogtie for the man’s ankles.
Working quickly, worried the others would be along any minute, Noble wrapped the old coil of wire several times around the man’s ankles, then did his best to knot the end.
It wouldn’t hold, not for long anyway, but it temporarily put one of Zeqiri’s men out of action.
Noble collected the man’s weapon and whispered, “Where are your buddies?”
He sighed, shook his head, then thrust with his chin. “That way, I think.”
“Sit tight,” Noble said before moving off in the direction the Albanian had indicated.