Rogue Angel - Restless Soul Part 20

"Nang, right? I heard Kim call you Nang."

He nodded.

"Be a good fellow, Nang, and put your hands behind your head."

He got to his knees for good measure.

She tugged Kim behind the back counter and picked up the gun, emptying the bullets and tossing them in an urn that had been serving as someone's spittoon. She'd intended to question Kim, but he was soundly out.

"Nang, I've got a few questions, and it would be in your best interest to answer them. You understand English fine, yes?"

Another nod.

Annja pointed at the chair she'd been tied to.

"Sit and make yourself uncomfortable."

27.

The phone on the desk was an old rotary model that was practically an antique. She used it to call the consulate, where she talked to Rose Walters. She told Annja that Pete was out of the building. After providing the antiques shop's address and giving a quick recap of her activities, leaving out the sword fight, she hung up and turned her attention to her prisoner.

"How old are you, Nang?"

He replied, "Twenty-two," after she repeated the question with a trace of venom in her voice.

He looked a little older than that. She would have put him at thirty. Maybe smuggling was a hard life. "Old enough that you should know not to get mixed up in something like this. Old enough not to wave a gun around unless you really know how to use it."

"I can use a gun," he retorted.

"Oh, you can pull the trigger. You just can't aim." Or maybe he just didn't want to kill anyone. Maybe he could find redemption.

She put her palm against his chest, the little use of force serving as well as if she'd set a heavy anvil on him. He didn't budge, and the sweat beads multiplied on his face. She could hear his ragged breath, and the snores of the old man she'd propped up against the wall; she hoped she hadn't hurt him too badly. She didn't hear sirens, and she thought she would have by now, from the alarm she'd tripped in the other room.

"The police aren't coming, are they?" she asked.

Nang shook his head.

"Who is?"

He shrugged and she pushed harder against him.

"Men who work for my uncle," he said. "The alarm summons them."

"How many?"

Another shrug. He shook nervously. "I...I do not know. I just know that if trouble comes, the men come. They should be here soon."

She removed her hand and stepped back. He looked at his lap, not wanting to meet her angry gaze. Kim was still unconscious, and she had no way to tell how long he would be out.

"Nang, I want to be gone before those men you mentioned arrive. Understand?"

A quick nod. He still avoided looking at her face.

"So you're going to talk quickly. Then I'll be away and you can go about your business." She paused. "I don't want to hurt you. But if I have to-"

"What do you want to know?"

"Who is behind all of this?"

His shrug was more exaggerated this time.

Annja growled from deep in her throat and stepped to the desk, sticking her pa.s.sport and wallet back in her f.a.n.n.y pack and strapping it on. She picked the crumpled business cards off the floor and flattened them as best as she could, then stuffed them back in her pocket. She took her camera, too, which they seemed to have repaired or at least jury-rigged to view the pictures.

"Try again," she said. "Who is behind this?"

Nang set his chin against his chest and mumbled something.

"Pardon...I couldn't hear you."

"Lanh Vuong."

The name didn't mean anything to her.

"Is that the Sandman? I heard your uncle talk to someone named the Sandman."

"No."

"So who is Lanh Vuong?"

He let out a great sigh, sounding like sand blowing in the dry wind. "An old and powerful man," he began. "An important one where I come from."

"Tell me more."

He hesitated a bit too long, and she closed her fist.

"Where is Lanh Vuong?"

"Hue."

She didn't need to pull the card out of her pocket. She remembered that one of the business cards was for an antiques store in Hue, Vietnam.

"Vietnam?" Annja wanted to be sure.

"Hue, Vietnam."

The desk had maps stacked on the corner. She pushed against his chest again and turned her back on him, searching through the maps and finding one produced by National Geographic National Geographic in 1967 that showed Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and part of Burma. in 1967 that showed Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and part of Burma.

"You're Vietnamese, right, Nang?" Annja looked over her shoulder to see him nod. "Then I've got a new idea." Grabbing a selection of maps, and the only set of keys she saw on the desk, she slung her backpack over her shoulders, returned to Nang and tugged him up by his collar.

He looked noticeably paler, and his face was even sweatier.

"You're coming with me," she said.

He started shaking, and she let out a disappointed sigh. She'd thought a smuggler should have a little more backbone. "To...Hue? Going...to...Hue?"

It was her turn to nod. She nudged him out the back door and toward the muddy Jeep, just as a silver Hilux Vigo pulled into the far side of the alley. A four-door pickup, it was pristine enough to have just been driven off the showroom floor. Its windows were tinted, but Annja could make out three shapes inside.

"Lovely. I'll bet those are the men who work for your uncle." She shoved him into the Jeep's pa.s.senger side, jumped behind the wheel, sitting on the maps she'd grabbed, and prayed one of the keys fit in the ignition. Annja didn't want another fight right now.

She fumbled with the keys as two of the men leaped out of the Hilux, the driver staying behind the wheel. One man headed to the shop's back door, the other came barreling at the Jeep, pulling a gun out of his waistband.

The second key worked, and the Jeep's engine roared, tires spinning and throwing clumps of dirt at the man.

"The seat belt," Annja shouted. "Put it on! Now!"

Nang groped for the belt as Annja slammed her foot on the gas pedal and shot down the alley, right front fender catching a garbage can and sending it and its smelly contents flying.

"Duck!"

Nang hunched down as much as the belt allowed. The windshield shattered as bullets struck it. The shooter was using a silencer.

At the end of the alley she jerked the wheel hard right and swerved to avoid a parked car. Traffic wasn't heavy in this part of the city, and she took advantage of a near-empty street as she raced south. A few more turns, a cut through an alley, the silver truck gaining on her, and she found herself going west on Si Donchai Road, where a steady stream of cars headed in both directions and exhaust filled the air and settled heavily on her tongue.

She slammed her hand against the steering wheel in frustration as she weaved around a late-model Honda Civic and found herself smack behind a tour bus. She heard tires squeal behind her, and a glance in the rearview mirror showed the pickup bullying the Civic onto the sidewalk.

"They will kill us!" Nang's knuckles were white on the dashboard.

"I will do my best to not let that happen." Annja spun the wheel to the right, cutting across the opposite lane of traffic and nearly being sideswiped by a minivan. More tires squealed, including the Jeep's. Cars started honking, and in the distance she heard a siren.

"The police!" Nang looked relieved and frightened at the same time.

Annja was confident she could talk herself out of trouble; she'd done it many times before. But having an unwilling pa.s.senger could be considered kidnapping. Then there was the issue of car theft, breaking and entering at the shop, beating up the old man-it would take a while to talk herself out of this.

The truck swerved right behind her. Only two shapes were visible inside, one leaning out the pa.s.senger window-the man who'd shot at them in the alley. Everything was happening too fast for Annja to get a good look at him, but his yellow shirt and his shaved head stood out. He fired at them again, the bullet striking the rear of the Jeep.

Her heart pounded; she realized he was aiming at the jerricans in the back. He could blow them up with a well-placed shot.

"Hold on!" she shouted.

Annja hadn't needed to tell Nang that. He'd dug his fingernails into the dashboard and was gritting his teeth. His eyes were needle slits and he took in great gulps of the exhaust-filled air. One hand on the steering wheel, she flailed about with the other, finding her seat belt and pulling it across her lap, shimmying by a Land Rover and past a Camry, praying all the while that the gunmen didn't shoot an innocent driver. She clicked the belt and felt only a little safer.

Sirens wailed louder and she reached a stretch where traffic was thinner. She floored the gas pedal and the Jeep surged faster, and then was b.u.mped from behind. A glance in the mirror showed the grille of the pickup. It conveniently had no license plate.

"They will kill us! They will-"

"Shut up," Annja warned. She didn't need Nang's distraction.

The truck veered to the left, coming alongside the Jeep. Annja kept one hand on the wheel and extended the other, calling for her sword and finding it difficult to grip the pommel with the blade meeting resistance from the wind and the speed.

Nang screamed and Annja swiped down with the blade, aiming for the gun in the man's hand and instead connecting with his arm. It had the same effect-the gun clattered away on the pavement, disappearing beneath a black BMW. The truck smashed into the Jeep's side, and Annja had to compensate to keep from being pushed off the road.

"Bridge!" Nang warned.

Annja divided her attention between the road, the threatening pickup, oncoming traffic and now the bridge, which narrowed the road to a single lane. Below, the water sparkled like sapphire gla.s.s spun between the dirt-brown banks.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," she coaxed the Jeep as she pressed the gas pedal as far down as it would go and inched past the truck. At least the pa.s.senger was inside the truck now, holding his injured arm. The driver was another matter; she spotted a gun in his hand. But he had to jump in behind her in the face of now-one-lane traffic.

"We will die!" Nang cried.

"Everyone dies," Annja said. "But I won't let us die today."

The Jeep rode up on the sidewalk as she jockeyed for a better position to see the truck behind her. The pa.s.senger was on a cell phone; she couldn't make out more than that because of the tinting to the windows. The driver had his arm out the window, gun against the door.

More sirens wailed, and she picked out three distinct sounds. At least three police cars were coming. Before they reached the end of the bridge a fourth was added to it. Car horns blared as she took an off-ramp at full speed, tilting the Jeep up on its right wheels and nearly tossing Nang from his seat, despite the seat belt. She raced past a motorcycle that spun out in her wake and watched in horror as the silver truck headed straight for the motorcycle.

"G.o.d, please don't," she prayed, her stomach rising into her throat. The biker's death would be on her hands.

A maintenance worker on the side of the road pumped his fist and shouted at her as she continued to look in her rearview mirror.

The truck driver veered to the right to avoid the motorcyclist. His tires screamed in protest and the truck briefly rose up on its right tires like a stunt car before rolling on its side, sparks from the metal sc.r.a.ping against the pavement shooting up like fireworks.

Annja jabbed the gas pedal again and switched lanes, driving straight west again and leaving Chiang Mai and the increasing number of sirens behind.

28.

"Nang, I want you to tell me all about Lanh Vuong. You were going to do that, remember, before we were rudely interrupted by your uncle's thugs."

Nang was still shaking from the wild ride in the city. She'd pulled onto a narrow road that cut through farmland. She wanted to avoid any major routes for a while, as plenty of witnesses would have described her and the Jeep to police.

"Lanh Vuong," she repeated. "Tell me about him."

"I called him Uncle Lanh when I was a boy, but he was not a true uncle."

"Go on." She stopped and let the engine idle, and she unhooked her seat belt and stood, pulling the maps out from under her. If she hadn't sat on them, they would have blown out. Other papers had, and she'd nearly lost the jerricans and her backpack with the skull pieces, too. Stretching forward, she knocked the gla.s.s out of the window frame, making it easier to see. "I'd guess it was a 9 mm," she mused as she began to drive again.

"Lanh Vuong is an important-" Nang picked through his brain for the appropriate word "-exporter of goods from Vietnam."