58. Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter fifty-eight
Noble gave the terrorist a rough shake, slammed him against the wall of cars, then shoved him down to the ground.
The tires stuffed around his midsection stopped him from going face first into the dirt, but his head flopped like a ragdoll.
Noble delivered a kick to the thigh that forced a strangled choke from the man’s throat.
Crickets droned in the long grasses growing up through the piles of cast-off junk and rats scurried. A warm breeze whistled among the rusty metal canyons. Noble stood above his captive, hands on his hips, staring down at the man. He gave another kick and got another grunt in return.
“You wiped out an entire village. Men, women, and children.”
“That was the doctor’s doing,” the soldier moaned. “He insisted we test the virus.”
“But you did your part,” Noble said.
The soldier shook his head. “Captain Zeqiri and Osmani are the ones who delivered it.”
A white-hot hatred welled up in Noble. He grabbed the soldier by the tires, jerking him into a sitting position. “Don’t try to downplay your role in this. You were a part of it. You helped create the virus. You killed hundreds of people already. Millions more could die.”
“Please.” He did his best to hold up both hands in surrender. “I have a wife and daughters.”
“That village was full of wives and daughters,” Noble said. “What about them?”
“What do you want?”
“Start with your name and how you came to be working for Captain Zeqiri.”
“My name is Mehmet Ndreu,” he said. “I served under Captain Zeqiri during the war.”
Noble wanted to go on beating on Mehmet.
He wanted to take his frustrations out on the man, to serve up a little justice for the dead people of the village who’d been murdered by Mehmet and his gang of terrorists.
But as luck would have it, Noble had managed to capture the member of the group ready and willing to talk.
Instead, he hunkered down in front of Mehmet and got in his personal space. “Why?”
“Why what? I don’t understand the question.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“My captain called me back into service,” Mehmet said simply. “I’m a soldier first and foremost.”
“What does Zeqiri want? What does Doctor Kadare want?”
“Revenge,” Mehmet said.
“Revenge? For what?”
“We were soldiers fighting for our freedom and our national sovereignty,” Mehmet said.
“Surely an American can understand that? Then, after the war, we were persecuted, called criminals and terrorists. The Major and the Doctor were sent to prison. The rest of us were stripped of rank and thrown out of the military. Our lives and reputations were ruined. All because we did what we had to do to win.”
Noble didn’t bother to push back on the man’s reasoning.
It would be pointless, like trying to convince Hitler he was not, in fact, doing the world a favor by wiping out the Jews.
Some people’s thinking is so twisted they can’t be reasoned with.
Mehmet and his cohorts had been caught conducting illegal experiments on innocent civilians during the war, and now they wanted a little payback on the people who, they felt, had wronged them.
That apparently included the population of planet Earth.
Noble shook his head. “Where I can find the doctor.”
Mehmet peered up at Noble. “If I tell you, will you let me go?”
“Let me think about that,” Noble said, then rammed a fist into Mehmet’s face, snapping his head back with a solid crack.
A fresh geyser of blood gushed from the soldier’s nose, spilling down his chin in dark red waves.
Noble hit him three more times, putting his full weight behind it, making sure he really connected.
When he finished, Noble massaged his fist. “You’ve got two options here, Mehmet.
First, I beat you until you tell me what I want to know, then I kill you.
Your girls grow up without a father. That’s option A.
Option B, tell me what I want to know and you go to prison.
You’ll get letters from your girls on your birthday.
Those letters might even come with pictures.
At the very least you’ll be able to watch them grow up from a distance. Which of those two options suits you?”
Mehmet, sweating profusely and bleeding freely from a nasty cut above his left eye, said, “I’ll tell you, but you must promise to do something for me.”
“You’re not in a position to bargain here, Mehmet.”
“In my right shoulder pocket you will find three vials,” said Mehmet.
Noble had to push at the rubber tire and tug on Mehmet’s sleeve until he could wriggle his fingers into the pocket. He finally liberated a hard plastic case with three syringes of clear liquid. “This what I think it is?”
“The vaccine,” Mehmet said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but you must promise you’ll administer the vaccine to my wife and daughters.”
Noble’s fingers tightened around the plastic case. Three vials. One for him. One for Sam. One for mom. An invisible band cinched tight around his chest. He had, in his hand, salvation for himself and the people he cared about most. Noble nodded, “Okay, Mehmet. You’ve got a deal. Start talking.”
“You’ll find the doctor’s laboratory at the abandoned manufacturing district in Palilula. It’s the old factory where they used to build Yugos. But you must be careful. The place is rigged with explosives.”
“If find out you’re lying,” Noble started to say.
He shook his head slowly, like it hurt to move his neck. “I’m not lying. That is where the doctor did all his research and tests. You’ll need to hurry.”