The Stone Monkey (3 page)

He scanned the rear of the ship but could not find his
bangshou
anywhere. Turning toward the bow, he squinted into the wind and could see no land either, just more restless mountains of black water. He climbed to the bridge and pounded on the window of the rear door. Captain Sen looked up and the Ghost gestured for him.

Sen pulled a knit cap on his head and dutifully walked outside into the rain.

"The Coast Guard will be here soon," the Ghost shouted over the raging wind.

"No," Sen replied, "I can get close enough to off-load before they intercept us. I'm sure I can."

But the Ghost turned his still eyes on the captain and said, "You will do this. Leave those men on the bridge and you and the rest of the crew go below with the piglets. Hide with them, get everyone out of sight in the hold."

"But why?"

"Because," the Ghost explained, "you're a good man. Too good to lie.

I'll pretend to be the captain. I can look a man in the eye and he will believe what I tell him. You cannot do that."

The Ghost grabbed Sen's cap. In reaction the man started to reach for it but then lowered his hand. The Ghost put it on. "There," he said humorlessly. "Do I look like a captain? I think I make a good captain."

"This is my ship."

"No," the Ghost shot back. "On this voyage the
Dragon
is
my
ship. I'm paying you in one-color cash." U.S. dollars were far more valuable and negotiable than Chinese yuan, the currency many low-level snakeheads paid in.

"You are not going to fight with them are you? The Coast Guard?"

The Ghost gave an impatient laugh. "How could I fight them? They have dozens of sailors, right?" A nod toward the crewmen on the bridge. "Tell your men to follow my orders." When Sen hesitated the Ghost leaned forward with the placid, yet chilling gaze that so unsettled everyone who looked into his eyes. "Is there something you want to say?"

Sen looked away then stepped onto the bridge to give the instructions to the crewmen.

The Ghost turned back to the stern of the ship, looking again for his assistant. He then pulled the captain's cap tighter over his head and strode onto the bridge to take command of the rocking ship.

The ten judges of hell...

The man crawled along the main deck to the stern of the ship, stuck his head over the side of the
Fuzhou Dragon
and began retching again.

He'd been lying beside a life raft all night long, ever since the storm picked up and he'd fled from the stinking hold to purge his body of the disharmony wrought by the rocking sea.

The ten judges of hell, he thought again. His gut was in agony because of the dry heaving and he was as cold and miserable as he'd ever been in his life. Slumping against the rusty railing, he closed his eyes.

He was called Sonny Li, though the given name ruthlessly bestowed upon him by his father was Kangmei, which meant "Resist America." It was typical of children born under Mao's reign to have such politically correct—and thoroughly shameful—given names. Still, as often happened with youngsters from coastal China—Fujian and Guangdong—he'd taken a Western name too. His was the one that the boys in his gang gave him: Sonny, after the dangerous, bad-tempered son of Don Corleone in the movie
The Godfather.

True to the character after whom he was named, Sonny Li had seen—and been the cause of—much violence in his life but nothing had ever brought him to his knees, literally, like this seasickness.

Judges of hell...

Li was ready for the infernal beings to take him. He'd own up to everything bad he'd done in life, all the shame he'd brought to his father, all the foolishness, all the harm. Let the god T'ai'shan assign me a place in hell. Just stop this fucking sickness! Light-headed from nearly two weeks of meager food, dizzy from the vertigo, he fantasized that the sea was in turmoil thanks to a dragon gone mad; he wanted to rip his heavy pistol from his pocket and fire bullet after bullet into the beast.

Li glanced behind him—toward the bridge of the ship—and he thought he saw the Ghost but suddenly his stomach lurched and he had to turn back to the railing. Sonny Li forgot about the snakehead, forgot about his dangerous life back in Fujian Province, forgot about anything except the ten judges of hell gleefully urging demons to prod his dying belly with their spears.

He began heaving once again.

The tall woman leaned against her car, the contrasts stark: her red hair tossed by the fierce wind, the yellow of the old Chevy Camaro, the black nylon utility belt securing a black pistol to her hip.

Amelia Sachs, in jeans and a hooded windbreaker on the back of which were the words NYPD CRIME SCENE, looked out over the turbulent water of the harbor near Port Jefferson, on the north shore of Long Island. She surveyed the staging area around her. Immigration and Naturalization, the FBI, the Suffolk County Police and her own shop had cordoned off a parking lot that on an average day in August would normally have been packed with families and teenagers here to catch some rays. The tropical storm, however, had kept vacationers far away from the shore.

Parked nearby were two large Department of Corrections prisoner buses the INS had borrowed, a half-dozen ambulances and four vans filled with tactical officers from the various agencies. In theory, by the time the
Dragon
arrived here, it would be under the control of the crew of the cutter
Evan Brigant
and the Ghost and his assistant would be in custody. But there would be a certain period of time after the Ghost had spotted the Coast Guard cutter and before the actual boarding by the crew—perhaps as much as forty minutes. That would give the Ghost and his
bangshou
plenty of time to masquerade as immigrants and hide weapons, a tactic that snakeheads frequently used. The Coast Guard might not be able to effectively search the immigrants and the ship before it arrived at the harbor here and the snakehead and any assistants might try to shoot their way to freedom.

Sachs herself would be in particular danger. Her job was to "walk the grid," to sweep the ship for crime scene evidence that would bolster the various cases against the Ghost and to find leads to his confederates. If the searcher is running a scene where, say, a body is found or a robbery has occurred long after the perp has fled, there is relatively little danger to the CS officer. But if the scene is the actual takedown site, involving an unknown number of perps whose appearance isn't well known, the risks can be great, particularly in the case of human smugglers, who have ready access to good weaponry.

Her cell phone rang and she dropped into the tight seat of the Chevy to answer it.

The caller was Rhyme.

"We're all in place," she told him.

"We think they're on to us, Sachs," he said. "The
Dragon
turned toward land. The cutter'll get there before they make it to shore but we're thinking now that the Ghost is gearing up for a fight."

She thought of the poor people on board.

When Rhyme paused, Sachs asked him, "Did she call?"

A hesitation. Then he said, "Yes. About ten minutes ago. They have a slot open at Manhattan Hospital next week. She's going to call back with the details."

"Ah," Sachs said.

The "she" was Dr. Cheryl Weaver, a renowned neurosurgeon who'd come up to the New York area from North Carolina to teach for a semester at Manhattan Hospital. And the "slot" referred to an opening for some experimental surgery that Rhyme was having—an operation that might improve his quadriplegic condition.

An operation Sachs was not in favor of.

"I'd get some extra ambulances in the area," Rhyme said. His tone was now curt—he didn't like personal subjects intruding in the midst of business.

"I'll take care of it."

"I'll call you back, Sachs."

The phone went silent.

She ran through the downpour to one of the Suffolk County troopers and arranged for more med techs. She then returned to her Chevy and sat down in the front bucket seat, listening to the rattle of the powerful rain on the windshield and cloth roof. The dampness made the interior smell of plastic, motor oil and old carpeting.

Thinking about Rhyme's operation put her in mind of a recent conversation with another doctor, one who had nothing to do with his spinal cord surgery. She didn't want her thoughts to go back to that meeting—but go there they did.

Two weeks ago Amelia Sachs had been standing by the coffee machine in a hospital waiting room, up the hall from Lincoln Rhyme's examining room. She remembered the July sun falling brutally on the green tile floor. The white-jacketed man had approached and then addressed her with a chilling solemnity. "Ah, Ms. Sachs. Here you are."

"Hello, Doctor."

"I've just been meeting with Lincoln Rhyme's physician."

"Yes?"

"I've got to talk to you about something."

Her heart pounding, she'd said, "You're looking like it's bad news, Doctor."

"Why don't we sit down over there in the corner?" he'd asked, sounding more like a funeral home director than an M.D.

"Here's fine," she'd said firmly. "Tell me. Let me have it straight."

A gust of wind now rocked her and she looked out over the harbor again, at the long pier, where the
Fuzhou Dragon
would dock.

Bad news
...

Tell me. Let me have it straight. .. .

Sachs flicked her Motorola to the Coast Guards secure frequency not only to learn what was happening with the
Dragon
but to keep her thoughts from returning to that scaldingly bright waiting room.

"How far from land?" the Ghost asked the two remaining crewmen on the bridge.

"A mile, maybe less." The slim man at the helm glanced quickly at the Ghost. "We'll turn just before the shallows and try for the harbor."

The Ghost gazed forward. From the vantage point of the crest of a wave he could just see the line of light gray land. He said, "Steer straight on course. I'll be back in a moment."

Bracing himself, he stepped outside. The wind and rain lashed his face as the Ghost made his way down to the container deck and then to the one below it. He came to the metal door that opened into the hold. He stepped inside and looked down at the piglets. Their faces turned toward him with fear and distress. The pathetic men, the frumpy women, the filthy children—even some pointless girls. Why had their foolish families bothered to bring
them?

"What is it?" Captain Sen asked. "Is the cutter in sight?"

The Ghost didn't answer. He was scanning the piglets for his
bangshou.
But there was no sign of him. Angry, he turned away.

"Wait," the captain called.

The snakehead stepped outside and closed the door.
"Bangshou!" he
shouted.

There was no response. The Ghost didn't bother to call a second time. He screwed down the latches so that the door to the hold couldn't be opened from the inside. He hurried back toward his cabin, which was on the bridge deck. As he struggled up the stairs he took from his pocket a battered black plastic box, just like the door opener for the garage of his luxurious house in Xiamen.

He opened the box and pushed one button and then a second. The radio signal zipped through two decks down to the duffel bag he'd placed in the aft hold below the waterline. The signal closed the circuit and sent an electrical charge from a nine-volt battery into a blasting cap embedded in two kilos of Composition 4 explosive.

The detonation was huge, much larger than he'd expected, and it sent a tall spume of water shooting into the air, higher than the highest waves.

The Ghost was thrown off the stairs onto the main deck. He lay on his side, stunned.

Too much! he realized. There'd been too much explosive. Already the ship was starting to list as she took on seawater. He'd thought it would take half an hour for the ship to sink. Instead, she would go down in minutes. He looked toward the bridge deck, where his money and guns sat in the small cabin, then once again scanned the other decks for his
bangshou.
No sign of him. But there was no time to look further. The Ghost rose and scrabbled across the listing deck to the nearest rubber life raft and began undoing the tie-down ropes.

The
Dragon
lurched again, rolling farther onto her side.

The sound had been deafening. A hundred sledgehammers on a piece of iron.

Nearly all of the immigrants had been thrown to the cold, wet floor. Sam Chang climbed to his feet and picked up his youngest boy, who'd fallen into a puddle of greasy water. He then helped up his wife and his elderly father.

"What happened?" he shouted to Captain Sen, who was struggling through the panicked crowd to the door that led up to the deck. "Did we hit the rocks?"

The captain called back, "No, no rocks. The water's a hundred feet deep here. Either the Ghost has blown up the ship or the Coast Guard is firing on us. I don't know."

"What is happening?" asked a panic-stricken man sitting near Chang. He was the father of the family that had camped out in the hold next to the Changs. Wu Qichen was his name. His wife lay listlessly on the cot nearby. She'd been feverish and lethargic throughout the entire voyage and even now seemed hardly aware of the explosion and chaos. "What's going on?" Wu repeated in a high voice.

"We're sinking!" the captain called, and together he and several of his crewmen grabbed the latches of the door and struggled to open them. But they didn't move. "He's jammed them!"

Some of the immigrants, both men and women, began wailing and rocking back and forth; children stood frozen with fear, tears running down their dirty cheeks. Sam Chang and several of the crew joined the captain and tugged on the latches. But the thick metal bars wouldn't give a millimeter.

Chang noticed a suitcase sitting on the floor. Slowly it toppled to its side and hit the floor with a splash; the
Dragon
was listing sharply. Cold seawater was shooting into the hold from seams in the metal plates. The puddle his son had fallen into was now a half meter deep. Several people slid into the deepening pools, filled with trash, luggage, food, Styrofoam cups, papers. They screamed and flailed about in the water.