63. Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter sixty-three
A low rumble of thunder and the promise of rain shivered across the landscape as Noble exited a pekara carrying a paper sack bursting with warm sweet rolls and bottled water.
The sky overhead was clear. Gossamer clouds slipped silently across the face of a yellow moon.
It didn’t look like rain, but the thunder would suggest otherwise.
Noble, still feeling the effects of his fall, limped to the stolen car parked with its back bumper to the wall of the bakery.
His knees throbbed with every step and his spine felt fused.
He put his back against the wall and closed his eyes a moment, desperate for sleep. Then he used the key to open the trunk.
The rusty lid rose with a plaintive squeak.
Mehmet Ndreu lay inside, still stuffed in a tire, dried blood caking one side of his face. He squinted up at Noble.
“You know you’re the second guy I’ve stuck in this trunk,” Noble told him as he opened the paper sack. The tempting aroma of freshly baked bread wafted up. Noble picked out one of the sweet rolls, took a chomp and spoke with his mouth full. “That’s kind of funny when you think about it.”
“Hilarious,” Mehmet said, though his tone suggested otherwise.
Noble held up the half eaten roll. “Hungry?”
Mehmet eyed the food with suspicion.
“If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it,” Noble told him. “I’m certainly not going through the trouble of poisoning you. I’d just drive you out to the middle of nowhere and shoot you.”
He now had a collection of firearms stowed in the back seat of Xander’s stolen car, along with enough ammo to wage a small war.
His first instinct had been to ditch the guns.
If local law enforcement picked him up, it would be hard to explain why an American tourist had a car full of semi-automatic rifles and 7.
62 millimeter ammo. Then again, it would be really hard to explain why there was an Albanian in the trunk, so the guns seemed like the least of his worries.
Besides, as a former Green Beret, Noble decided he might need some firepower before the situation in Belgrade was wrapped up.
With any luck, Sam and CIA’s local station chief had everything in hand by now. But until Noble knew for sure, he was going to keep the guns. And his hostage.
He grabbed Mehmet by the shoulder and hauled the Albanian into a sitting position.
“Open wide,” Noble instructed.
Mehmet opened his mouth and Noble held out the pastry.
“Pretty good, aren’t they?”
Mehmet nodded.
The pastry shops, called pekara, seemed to be a regular fixture in Belgrade and they stayed busy.
Especially for a late-night establishment.
It was nearly three in the morning and Noble had not been the only customer.
He’d been careful to park on a side street, away from the arc sodium lights, safe from prying eyes.
Noble finished feeding the pastry to Mehmet, then twisted the cap off a bottle of water and helped the man drink. Mehmet got a little too much, coughed, and Noble drank the rest of the bottle himself.
“How long do you intend to keep me in this tire?” Mehmet asked when he’d finally finished coughing.
“Until I can hand you off to the authorities.”
“The American CIA?”
Noble nodded.
“Then you are CIA.”
“Not exactly,” Noble told him.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a long story,” Noble said as he pulled out another pastry and took a bite. “Hard to explain.”
Sirens wailed in the distance. Sounded like a four-alarm fire raging somewhere. Noble’s brows came together in a frown. A cold weight settled into his stomach. He had a sinking feeling the sirens had something to do with Captain Zeqiri.
“More water, please,” said Mehmet.
Noble reached for a bottle but his attention kept going to the sirens. More and more seemed to be joining the shrieking chorus by the second, as if every emergency service in the city was responding.
“An ominous sign,” said Mehmet.
“For you. You’d better pray those bombs didn’t go off.”
Mehmet tried to hitch up his shoulders but he was trapped inside the tire. “I warned you of their existence. What else could I do?”
Noble wasn’t listening. He was thinking about the peal of thunder he heard as he left the bakery. At the time he’d thought a storm must be rolling in. But there were no thunderheads in the sky and no more cracks of thunder.
Now sirens.
His phone started to ring.
Noble knew what he would hear before he answered the call. He put the phone to his ear and asked, “What happened?”