Gabriel stepped up on the side of the jeep and was about to jump back when the bearded man grabbed him from behind, his thick arm snaking around Gabriel’s neck. Now he knew what it had felt like for Julian: his windpipe was compressing, the oxygen flow to his brain cutting off. The man reached forward to snatch the Star back. Gabriel couldn’t let that happen.
He threw the Star. Tossed it flat and spinning like a metal frisbee and watched it sail toward Noboru’s jeep. Joyce stretched for it, snagging it out of the air.
Gabriel elbowed the bearded man in the ribs and felt the hold around his throat slacken. He spun and punched the man in the jaw, knocking him back.
The scarred man rose from the passenger seat, meanwhile, climbed over the driver’s back, and leaped across to Noboru’s jeep, landing right next to Joyce. He grabbed her neck in one calloused hand and tried to seize the Star with the other. Noboru swerved the vehicle from side to side, trying to knock the intruder off balance, but the man kept his footing.
Her face turning red, Joyce hurled the Star just as Gabriel had. It flew back across the divide and into Gabriel’s hands.
“What are you doing?” Gabriel shouted, just before the bearded man threw a punch at him again. Jamming the Star under his arm, Gabriel sidestepped the punch and drove his fist into the man’s nose. He felt bone and cartilage snap and the bearded man fell back, blood spilling down his face.
In Noboru’s jeep, the scarred man let go of Joyce’s neck and turned to jump back across. Joyce grabbed at him, snagging a fistful of his uniform shirt and tugging fiercely. The man went off balance for a second and she tried to push him out of the jeep, but he regained his footing and stepped up onto the backseat.
He jumped across—and at the same moment exactly, Gabriel leapt back the other way. They passed each other in the air, so close that Gabriel could read the anger in the man’s face as he realized his mistake. Gabriel landed in Noboru’s jeep, grabbing the roll bar with one hand and holding onto the Star with the other.
The scarred man landed in the other jeep and whirled around. His face a mask of fury, the man reached down between the front seats and came back up with his gun.
Joyce ducked to the floor and Gabriel dropped into the passenger seat. Noboru spun the steering wheel, trying to put distance between them. A spray of bullets pounded the metal chassis of the jeep. Gabriel put the Star down and pulled his revolver. He fired off two shots, but they both went wide, missing their targets. He pulled the trigger again, but the Colt only clicked emptily.
The driver of the other jeep shouted, “He’s done! Finish him!” The scarred man lined up another shot.
Reaching behind him, Gabriel pulled the flare gun out of Noboru’s belt, swung it around in the direction of the other jeep, and pulled the trigger.
The scarred man ducked but Gabriel hadn’t been aiming at him. The sparking red magnesium projectile flew directly at the driver, slamming into his shirt. The man panicked as his clothing erupted in flames. He let go of the steering wheel and slapped at the burning flare. The jeep careened away, skidded off the road and slammed into a tree with an enormous impact. Seconds later, the site of the crash exploded into flame.
Noboru kept his foot on the gas. Gabriel turned around and watched the smoking wreckage disappear into the distance.
He handed the Star to Joyce in the backseat. “I believe this is yours.”
She took it from him and inspected it for damage. “I thought it was gone for sure.”
Gabriel leaned back in his seat, letting the wind cool the sweat off his body. “It nearly was. You nearly were, too.”
She gave him a look he found it hard to interpret. There was gratitude in it, but also indignation, as though she half resented him for saving her life.
Ahead of them, the skyline of Balikpapan rose up at the horizon.
Chapter 12
As they drove into Balikpapan, the city folded its arms around them in the form of skyscrapers and high-rise hotels, office towers and apartment buildings. Covered in bruises and blood, their clothes torn and filthy, their jeep battered and pocked with bullet holes, they attracted more than a few glances every time they stopped at a red light. Gabriel didn’t much care. He was glad to have a moment to breathe, away at last from both Grissom and the Cult of Ulikummis.
Neon advertisements on the sides of the buildings threw bright colors across the windshield and onto Noboru’s face as he grimaced and took one hand off the steering wheel to rub his chest.
“Are you okay?” Gabriel asked.
“It’s nothing, I’m fine,” Noboru said. “Just thinking about what my wife’s going to say when she sees our jeep.”
“I’m sure she’ll just be happy you’re alive,” Joyce said.
“You haven’t met Michiko. She’ll kill me herself.”
Noboru drove through the city center and over the hills until they reached the shore, where Balikpapan’s rampant, glossy urban expansion slowed and signs of its centuries-long history as a fishing village returned. The houses were smaller, more modest, and along the harbor dozens of fishermen were gathered, standing by their poles and chatting while they waited for something to tug at their lines. Noboru turned onto a lane that rose up the gentle slope of a hill lined with houses painted bright shades of red, yellow and green, their walls fashioned of thick cement to withstand the gale-force winds of storm season. He pulled the jeep over in front of a pale blue house with a white roof and killed the engine.
“Home,” he said, his voice unsteady.
They climbed out of the jeep, and Noboru fished his keys from his pocket. He tried to fit the key into the lock in the front door, but his hand was shaking and the blade kept sliding against the lock plate, missing the keyway.
“Is something wrong?” Gabriel asked.
“Michiko—” Noboru said, and his face twisted in pain. The door suddenly opened from the inside, and Noboru collapsed into the arms of a Japanese woman about his age. She cried out as she caught him, and glanced with confusion at Gabriel and Joyce. Gabriel rushed forward to help her carry Noboru into the house. They brought him through a polished wooden moon gate standing at the entrance to the living room and laid him gently on the couch.
The woman dabbed Noboru’s forehead with a tissue. “Who are you?” she asked Gabriel in Japanese.
“Your husband works with my brother,” he replied in the same language. “I’m Gabriel Hunt, this is Joyce Wingard. He was helping us.”
Michiko looked down at her husband resting on the couch, his face coated with a sheen of sweat. He was breathing shallowly. “It’s his heart. I told him this would happen.”
“Will he be all right?” Joyce asked.
Michiko pointed to a doorway off the living room.
“Bring me a glass of water from the kitchen,” she said, in English. “And a wet towel.” Joyce hurried off. Michiko knelt beside the couch. She reached into Noboru’s pocket and pulled out the small pillbox Gabriel had seen before. She opened it and took out two pills, small white tablets that Gabriel suddenly realized weren’t sleep aids but nitroglycerine pills. “His heart is poor,” Michiko said. “He had a heart attack when he was only forty-nine. It’s why he had to retire early.”
Gabriel frowned. “He didn’t tell me.”
“Why would he? He likes his job.”
Joyce rushed back into the room with a glass of water and a wet cloth and put them down on the table. Michiko gently opened Noboru’s mouth and slipped the pills onto his tongue. She tipped the water glass against his lips and made him swallow. “After we left Japan, I begged him to take it easy, just enjoy his retirement, not work for your Foundation. His heart can’t take the exertion. And it’s not as though we need the money—I make plenty, enough for both of us. But he insisted. He said if he didn’t do anything he’d feel like he was already dead.”