Hong Kong (45 page)

When the last of the tape came clear, she stood. There was not a rag in the room, nothing made of cloth. She pulled off her shirt and used it to wipe the worst of the blood from her face* then threw it on the floor.

"Give me the gun." She held out a bloodstained hand.

The controller passed it over. It was a 9-millimeter automatic, a fairly small one.

Kent checked the chamber to ensure it had a cartridge in it, then let the slide close. She pointed it up and thumbed off the safety.

"We're leaving," she said and jerked open the door.

Cole had just reentered the trailer and was standing ten feet away in front of the master York console when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the office door fly open and Kerry Kent come boiling out. When he saw she had a pistol he dove behind the only desk in the place, so Kent's shot at him missed.

She knew that everyone in the place was armed. A shootout in here could end only one way, and Kerry Kent had no intention of dying for anybody's cause except her own. She ran. As she charged past the York control equipment she snapped off a shot into the main monitor and saw glass shatter, then she was flying out the door as fast as her legs would take her, the controller right behind.

One of the guards with an assault rifle tried to block her exit. She shot him in the chest and ran into the crowd before anyone else could get off a shot.

The main ladder to the belowdeck spaces in
China Rose
was in a thwartship passageway abeam the gangway. It was more of a staircase than a ladder. Jake Grafton eased himself down to the deck and looked as far as he could along the passageway. There were lights on down there and he could hear that television coming up the stairwell. It seemed to him probable that this passageway ran aft to the lounge where the television was located. Stateroom doors opened off both sides.

On the other side of the thwartship passageway was a closed hatch with a porthole in it. That probably was a ladder that led belowdeck to the crew's quarters and engine room spaces.

Okay.

He stood, grasped the long handle that rotated the dogs of the forward hatch, and put pressure on it.

The dogs rotated and the hatch came loose, ready to open.

As carefully and quietly as he could, he opened it, took it to its full one hundred and eighty degrees of travel, and hooked it over the latch that held it open. Yes, there was a regular ladder down.

He listened.

Voices.

And he was going to have to go down this damn ladder feet first!

He grasped the submachine gun with sweaty hands.

Maybe he should do the other side first.

Come on, decide, goddamn it! Callie is on this boat and her life
—
and yours
—if
on the line.

Forward. Then aft.

He stepped in, put his right foot on the first rung of the ladder.

The good news was that he had climbed ships' ladders all his adult
life.

With his heart in his mouth, he went down as quickly as he could, swinging the gun barrel as he dropped below the overhead.

A short passageway with two doors off it, one port, one starboard, then another ladder down, and a door leading forward. He went to the open hatch and looked. Lights. Voices. The engine room spaces.

But first these compartments. Callie just might be in one of them.

The port door opened as he twisted the knob. A small stateroom, empty. The door to a tiny head stood open and he could see in. Also empty.

He tried the starboard door.

Locked.

He put the silencer right against the doorknob and pulled the trigger once. A ripping sound as the bullet smashed through the innards of the door lock.

He twisted the knob savagely, and it opened.

Another empty compartment. But wait!

The bunks were made up in this one.

He went back to the port compartment. Two messy bunks, wadded-up blankets ... blood!

Had they held Callie here?

The door leading forward, this had to lead to the owner's stateroom.
Please God, let Sonny Wong be there right this very second.

Grafton put his ear to the door and heard nothing.

Now he turned the doorknob.

Locked.

He used the gun on the lock. Instead of one shot, he accidentally triggered three.

This was the master stateroom, all right, complete with four portholes—two on each side of the ship—a king-sized bed, and Jacuzzi, but the stateroom and adjoining bathroom were empty.

Goddamn these sons of bitches.

He sensed that time was running out.

Hurrying, he descended the waiting ladder into the engine room.

Two men were fifteen feet aft, and they turned their heads as he came down the ladder. He hosed half a magazine at them, dropping them both.

Turning, going forward, hustling along, through a door into the accessories compartment.

Empty!

Aft again, running, checking for people ...

There were another two men working on something on a workbench between the large diesel engines in the extreme after end of the ship. They saw him running toward them between the fuel tanks. One dove sideways to cover and the other pulled a pistol.

Jake managed to drop the gunman before he pulled the trigger.

A burst of Chinese came from the alcove where the other man had taken shelter.

Grafton didn't hesitate. He couldn't leave people alive behind him, or he and Callie and Wu and Carmellini would not leave this ship alive. He squirted a burst into the alcove as he ran by, then stopped and fired again, emptying the magazine in the gun.

Changing the magazine, he stalked forward, back through the engine room, past the bodies of the first two men he had killed. Even though he didn't want to, he looked to ensure they were dead. His stomach churned as if he were going to vomit.

Up the ladder he went, gun at the ready.

Jake Grafton saw the shadowy figure in the thwartship passageway as he climbed the ladder and almost shot him. At the last second he realized he was looking at Carmellini, who was swaying as if he were drunk.

"What happened?"

"Ran into an old colleague. He damn near killed me."

Blood was running down Carmellini's blackened face from a cut on his scalp.

"I've been forward and into the engineering spaces," Jake whispered. "Callie has got to be aft, down this staircase."

Carmellini wiped at the blood flowing from his scalp, then used a bloody hand against a bulkhead to steady himself. "Let's go," he muttered.

They descended the staircase together. The passageway at the bottom led aft to a swinging door, two actually, hinged on each side, with windows in each. There were doors—probably to staterooms or storage compartments—on each side of the passageway.

Motioning for Carmellini to hold his position, Jake walked the length of the passageway and peered through the window. He was looking into the dining facility. Four men sat there over bowls of Chinese food, smoking and watching a television mounted high in one corner. Beside Jake was a door to a refrigerated compartment. On the aft end of the dining hall was the door to the galley.

She had to be in one of these rooms off this passageway. Jake turned, went to the first stateroom door, and put his ear to it.

Nothing.

Voices at the next one, speaking in Chinese, it sounded like.

The next one nothing.

Carmellini motioned to him. He was checking the starboard doors. He was pointing to one. He came to Jake, whispered right in his ear. "English, a woman's voice."

"Chinese in this one," Jake said and pointed.

He went to the door Carmellini pointed out, and Carmellini took the door with the Chinese speaker. They looked at each other, then both turned the knobs at the same time and opened the doors.

The first thing Jake saw was Callie, facing him across a table. A man sat facing her with his back to the door. Otherwise the room was empty.

He couldn't shoot the man in the back because he might hit Callie.

The look on her face galvanized Yuri Daniel into action. He rose, spinning, reaching for a pistol in his belt, all at the same time. And found himself staring into Jake Grafton's face.

The Russian got the pistol clear of his belt when a burst from the submachine gun caught him under his chin and knocked him backward. Another burst, this time full in the chest, caused Yuri Daniel to collapse across the table.

"Oh, Jake,
thanks God!
They have Wu in the-—"

He had her then, jerking her through the door into the passageway, in time to see Tommy Carmellini empty a magazine through the open doorway of his compartment.

Carmellini charged through the doorway. Jake pushed Callie for-

ward toward the staircase and ran aft, toward the dining hall, the gun leveled at his waist.

A glance through the door—three of the men were still watching television, though one was looking toward Jake. Perhaps he heard something.

Jake dug in his pocket, pulled out a grenade. He pulled the pin and let the lever fly off. He pushed the swinging door open a couple of inches and tossed the grenade.

The explosion made the doors swing on their hinges.

Then Jake stepped in and emptied the magazine at the men sprawled amid the tables.

As he changed magazines, the cook came running from the kitchen, shooting with a pistol.

The first shot thudded into the bulkhead as Jake was going down, the second hit a chair while he struggled to get the Colt .45 out of his shoulder holster.

Before the cook could fire a third shot, Tommy Carmellini killed him with a burst of submachine gun fire.

"Let's go, Admiral," he roared from the doorway. "We got 'em. Let's get outta here."

Jake finished changing magazines, then scrambled up. "Go, go, go!" he yelled.

Tommy Carmellini led the way with Callie and Wu right behind. Jake Grafton followed.

Jake called to Tommy, "Get them aboard the other ship and warm up the chopper. I'll be right along."

He ran up the nearest ladder to the topmost deck, above the salon, and went to the lifeboat, which had a canvas cover protecting it. Jake used his knife on the cover.

Sure enough, in the bottom of the boat was a can of gasoline that might contain two or three gallons. He shook it. Full, or nearly so.

Jake went to the hatch that led down to the engine room and emptied the gasoline can into the compartment.

From the foot of the ladder leading topside, he tossed a grenade, then scrambled upward.

He was nearly up when a jet of hot gases tore at him, almost causing him to lose his grip, as the explosion shook the ship.

Trying not to breathe the flames that singed his feet and hands, Jake scrambled for the gangway.

He was across the pier and up the gangway on the
Barbary Coast
when another explosion tore through the
China Rose
and flames jetted from her hatches.

"Are you all right?" Jake demanded of Callie.

"Yes, yes! Are you all right?"

Before he could answer the adrenaline aftershock hit him like a hammer and he vomited. He leaned against the passageway bulkhead aboard
Barbary Coast
and whispered, "Sorry about that," to Nikko Schoenauer, who was standing guard with an AK-47.

"Hey, forget it," said Nikko, who had overdosed on adrenaline a few times himself.

"Oh, Jake, I love you." Callie hugged him as tightly as she could while staying away from the shoe polish. She drew back. "You look like the wrath of God."

He took a good look at Callie under the
Barbary Coast's
lights, which were brilliantly lit by the ship's emergency generator. "They really pounded on you," he said bitterly.

"It's over. Get me to a hot bath."

Wu and Schoenauer had a short conversation in Chinese. "Why not take a bath here?" Schoenauer asked the Graftons. "The helicopter can take these two—" he jerked a thumb at Wu and Carmellini—"to the Central District and come back for you in an hour." He turned to Carmellini and examined the cut on his head. "You need to have that stitched up."

Jake nodded his agreement.

Wu paused and rested a hand on Jake's shoulder. "Your wife save my life, maybe," he said in heavily-accented English. "She very strong woman."

He smiled at Callie and nodded once, then turned to follow Tommy Carmellini.

When Callie was up to her neck in bathwater, Jake told her, "For a while there I thought I might never see you again. When I saw the blood smears in that stateroom, I thought I was too late."

"I knew you'd come, Jacob Lee. I've never been so happy in my life as I was when that door flew open and I realized that terrible blackface apparition standing there was you."