Chasing the White Lion, James Hannibal [ebook reader macos .TXT] 📗

Finn wrapped an arm around Talia’s waist, holding her against the gurney. “Hang on!”

The copter’s skids slammed down and scraped along the road until a glancing blow from a corrugated aluminum building sent it into a turn. It hit a curb, teetered, and fell over with an underwhelming thump. Finn and Talia crawled out and found Mac climbing from the cockpit.

“I forget,” Finn said to the Scotsman. “Did Tyler spring for the damage waiver?”

“Funny.” Mac pointed up the road. “Our buildin’ is this way.”

Eddie gave them updates over the comms. “My spider drones show no windows, but smoke is rising from the edges of the roof. There are guards out front.”

Boyd had failed to mention any outside guards. “Can you take them?” Talia asked.

“That’s what I’m here for . . . Or . . . virtually there. You know what I mean.”

Talia and the others broke out from a cluster of smaller buildings and ran into the warehouse’s parking lot. In front of them, Eddie’s drones dropped to shoulder level.

The guards turned.

The drones opened fire.

The runners ran past as if the guards had never existed in the first place.

Talia jogged to a stop before a garage-style door and a smaller, normal entrance. “You’ll have to blow one, Eddie.”

“It’s risky.”

“Do it anyway.” Talia called upon her training for improvised breach devices. Special Forces operators in Iraq and Afghanistan had learned a great deal on that front. She made a quick calculation. “Two rockets. Three meters from the smaller door. The double blast should blow it open without the risk of fragging anyone inside. Darcy, what do you think?”

“I concur, yes? Two rockets at three meters will safely do the job.”

Please, God, let us be right. She and the others moved well clear.

Two rockets spiraled down from a sphere drone to blow a crater in the parking lot. When the dust cleared, the door hung from its hinges, blown inward. Smoke and flame billowed out.

CHAPTER

EIGHTY

WAREHOUSE SECTOR

KHLONG TOEI DISTRICT

BANGKOK, THAILAND

THET YE’SBODYJERKEDWITHFRIGHT. But he did not scream like the other boys. He had known the blast was coming.

Fires came with explosions. His father had told him so. On many hot evenings, Thet Ye’s father had sat with him on the steps of their hut and retold the story of the fire on the night of his birth. Po would lift his hands high when he told of the moment the fire hit the camp’s main petrol tank—an explosion so big many refugees claimed aircraft had dropped firebombs from the sky. “And still, Brave Life,” he would say, “you were not afraid to enter this world.”

Brave Life. Thet Ye did his best to control his shaking, lest he shame Po and his mother for giving him the name.

The ceiling above had transformed into pure flame. Drops of fire fell like slow rain onto the boys huddled in the cages. There were far more now than at the sheep pens. After the guards took the girls away, the boys had been trucked to this warehouse to join others taken from several camps. Twenty boys per cell. Ten cells in all.

Thet Ye did not know what had become of Hla Meh, but he was grateful God had spared her from this second fire. After what had happened to her father, one was enough.

The guards were equally afraid of the fire, as were the four men and one woman in rich clothes who’d arrived only minutes before it began. They had banged on the door and shouted at the front wall, and the guards had shot it with their machine guns. All to no avail. The teenager had finally sat on the floor, hugging his knees.

When the explosion blew the door from its hinges, one guard was knocked back. Another tried to run out, but Thet Ye heard a shout and a smack, and the second guard flew back the same distance as his friend. A huge white man followed him in, and then another man and a woman. They let no one leave until a guard gave them the keys to the cages. Only one guard attempted to raise his weapon. Instead of shooting him, the big man strode up and punched him in the nose.

With the keys in hand, the white men and the woman let the other adults go, although Thet Ye heard shouts of surprise and a buzzing and popping as soon as they ran through the door. In the next moment, a dozen little flying machines entered the warehouse.

The boys in the cages clamored for help, and the big man spoke sweetly to them as he unlocked the cages. His smaller friend ushered the boys out of the building in groups. As they ran, the woman walked along the line, calling a name that made Thet Ye’s heart skip.

“Hla Meh?”

Thet Ye bolted the moment the big man unlocked his cage. He dodged the arms of the smaller man and ran to the woman. “Hla Meh!”

The woman scrunched her face in disbelief, as if unsure she’d heard right.

He said it again, nodding. “Hla Meh. She’s my best friend!”

The woman didn’t understand his Thai, but the message was clear. They were both looking for the same girl. Then the woman performed a miracle. She pulled out a phone—Thet Ye had seen many before—and showed him his father. Not a picture, or a recording, but his real father, speaking to him in earnest.

“Thet Ye.” His father struggled to speak.

Another man appeared beside him, the man who had visited Thet Ye’s parents before he joined the school. “Thet Ye, this woman is Miss Talia. She is looking for the girls. Do you know where they are?”

“No, I—” Beyond the phone and Miss Talia, he spied the teenage guard. The older boy had not left his place on the floor, knees to his chest. Miss Talia’s friends had overlooked him in the confusion. “I know who does.”

Thet Ye led Miss Talia to the teenager, and the older boy’s eyes grew wide with fear. Covering him