Riding the Snake (1998) (46 page)

The child was skinny and filthy. They had had no water to wash with on the Mexican boat. Fu Hai looked at the child in the flickering candlelight, looked straight down into his squalling face, down his open mouth, to his tonsils that quivered as he screamed.

"He is just hungry," she said. "If there was food . . ."

Fu Hai decided he would give some of the provisions from the backpack to the child. He took it off his shoulders, unsnapped it, and pulled out a heavy metal box about a foot and a half by two feet in dimension and two and a half inches deep. It had Russian writing on it. Perhaps, he decided, the box contained Russian field rations. The box was locked, with a padlock attached to two leather straps. Fu Hai tried to pull the lock off, but it was secured through strong metal hooks.

"Li Feng has a knife," the woman said, and moved away to fetch it. She returned a few minutes later and handed Fu Hai a crude, short-bladed knife with a handmade wood-block handle. He stuck it under the leather strap and twisted hard. In a few minutes the strap was broken and the lock was pulled free. He opened the box wide.

Inside was a very strange contraption. Two cylinders and several tubes extended from a smaller enclosed box. The top and sides of this inner container had been welded shut. Some sort of timing mechanism was attached by colored wires. He put his ear down to the mechanism, listening. He could barely hear the buzzing sound of a clock over the screaming baby.

"What is this?" the woman asked.

Fu Hai didn't answer. He was confused, but he thought it looked very much like a bomb.

Al Katsukura called the Coast Guard on channel 16, using the radio on the bridge of the Cashflow. He told them his LAPD badge number and said that he needed to be patched through to Rick Verba. He gave his office number. In a few minutes he was talking to the Captain.

He quickly told Verba what had happened and that Tanisha and Wheeler were underneath LAX, in the sewers, looking for the lost Snake Riders.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Verba responded.

"Captain, there's something going on out here. We found a backpack just like the ones those Bamboo Dragons were wearing when they went aboard the Hornblower. It was made in China."

"Half the shit sold in L
. A
. is made in China," Verba growled, but the Captain's tired mind was already working on it. Like all cops, he also distrusted coincidence. Coincidences in law enforcement weren't happenstance occurrences ... they were usually criminal mistakes that could be capitalized on. "They think the bomb is under LAX?" Verba asked.

"They didn't say it in so many words, but yeah, I think that's where it's going."

"These bastards are gonna blow up maybe hundreds of their own innocent people along with the airport? Why?" Verba wondered.

"There's an old Chinese saying that Ray Fong used to hit me with all the time. 'When the rabbits are dead, the hounds that track them will be finished.' The Snake Riders are rabbits, Cap. We're the hounds. These people die, we've got nothing, no case. Nobody can testify against Willy, and--"

"Okay, okay, I get it," Verba interrupted impatiently. "Where are you?"

"I'm on a fishing boat anchored a quarter-mile off the end of the north runway. We're way outnumbered. Look for the fishing boat, Cap. A white fifty-two-footer with a tuna tower. The drainage tunnel's in front of where it's anchored, about two hundred yards south. Send back-up. I'll monitor channel seventy-two on this hand unit, but I think once I get in the tunnel, I'll be out of range."

"Don't go in there," Verba commanded. "I don't need three people lost under the airport. Stay on the beach and wait for the back-up."

Rick Verba was stopped once he got down into the basement at City Hall. There were two National Guardsmen with Browning rifles blocking his way. He showed them his badge, and they glared at it like leftover food.

"Lemme at least talk to Carter DeHaviland," Captain Verba said.

The two guards shook their heads. Then the door at the end of the hall opened and General Clark moved toward the bathroom.

"Hey, General!" Verba yelled. "I know where the bomb is!"

It was something of a stretch, but it stopped Clark dead in his tracks, one hand already on his fly, the other on the men's
-
room door.

Two minutes later Rick Verba was inside the Situation Room telling his story.

When he finished, General Clark looked at him with disdain. "You don't know there's a bomb down there. You just think there are some illegal immigrants hiding from I
. N. S
. in those drainpipes."

"It could come out that way," Verba admitted, "but these Snake Riders just happen to be brought in by the Chin Lo Triad out of Hong Kong. That Triad just happens to be the one that Willy is head of. This bomb scare just happens to be on the very same day this delegation of illegals comes in from Hong Kong and just happens to end up right smack underneath the airport where your NEST team just happens to be looking for a nuke twenty feet over their heads. I like a nice coincidence once in a while, but this is my all-time Hall of Fame favorite."

"I think he may have something here," DeHaviland said. "Maybe we should look for the bomb down there."

"Wait a minute," Pardee said. "Are you suggesting I pull my NEST team off that search so they can run around in a maze of sewers under the airport?" He looked at his watch. "We only have an hour before we either put Willy on his plane or let him know his bluff didn't work. Whichever way it goes, we gotta deal with the fallout, no pun intended."

"What does it hurt to look like we're going to play along?" Verba said. "Put him in a SWAT truck, under close guard, take him out to the airport. At least it keeps our options open, buys time."

Rick Verba was the lowest-ranking official in the room, but it was hard to argue against common sense, so that's what they did.

Wheeler and Tanisha moved slowly in the inky blackness. They were holding hands because the tunnel was curved pipe, full of slippery algae and moss. Occasionally, one of them would stumble and have to rely on the other for balance.

Then Wheeler heard splashing in the pipe in front of them. He squeezed Tanisha's hand to get her to stop moving.

Sure enough, somebody was close to them in the tunnel. The sloshing sound of footsteps cut through the darkness. Wheeler couldn't risk turning on the flashlight; he had to assume it was a man and that the man was armed. He stood with Tanisha in the darkness, tucking the light into his back pocket to free his right hand. He reached into his waistband to check the .44. He had the thirty-ought-six shark rifle slung over his back on the sling. He silently pulled it off and held the barrel in front of him, aiming toward the sound. It was inky black, but he could hear breathing now, mixed with the footsteps. The man was just a few feet away. Wheeler could taste stomach acid in his mouth.

Then he heard Tanisha grunt as somebody crashed into her. Wheeler could feel motion as air stirred by his left arm. Tanisha went down with a cry. Wheeler heard a brief struggle as Tanisha and the intruder splashed around in the dark. He couldn't see, but moved blindly toward the sounds of the struggle, his outstretched arms waving in the air trying to feel them. Tanisha screamed, but the scream was cut off by a gurgling sound as water filled her mouth.

Wheeler was grabbing helplessly in front of him in the dark, trying to find the intruder. He could hear Tanisha gagging and choking, but he still couldn't find her in the pitch black. Finally, he remembered the flashlight, grabbed it, and turned it on.

They were about ten feet away from him. A young Chinese man was on top of her, pushing her head down into two feet of brackish water. Wheeler tried to chamber the rifle, but in his haste, it slipped in his wet hands and dropped into the water. Dry Dragon turned to look at him, his eyes demonic in the dim beam of the flashlight. Then he let go of Tanisha, pulled his 7.65mm automatic, and fired it once at Wheeler.

The sound in the tunnel was deafening. The bullet whizzed by Wheeler's ear. He jerked back and lost hold of the flashlight. It splashed as it hit the water and sank. It was still lit and put a watery glow on the tunnel walls, dimly illuminating all of them.

Wheeler got the S&W .44 out and was pointing it at the dim outline of the Chinese teenager. Panicked and disoriented by the watery blackness, Dry Dragon fired wildly again, and Wheeler's ears echoed with the concussion. The bullet chipped the tunnel near his head, flinging concrete particles into his face and neck. Wheeler drew aim, praying Tanisha would not rise up into his line of fire. He pulled the trigger. The gun barked just as the flashlight flickered out, and they were again in pitch blackness. Then he heard footsteps running toward himSuddenly, a body hit him on the shoulder, brushing past on his way up the tunnel. Wheeler was knocked down on one knee. He spun in the direction of the disoriented fleeing man and fired twice at the splashing sound in the darkness. He heard his bullets hit the concrete and whine away. He listened for a grunt or the sound of a body falling in the water. He heard neither. Then he edged slowly back to Tanisha.

"Tisha," he whispered in the dark. "Tisha, you okay?"

He heard her cough deeply next to him, and then retch and spit. "Tastes like shit," she said, as she heaved up more brackish water, clearing it out of her lungs.

"You okay?" Wheeler said, finally touching her shoulder with his hand in the darkness.

"If you don't count drinking a quart of sewage. You get him?"

"I don't think so."

He helped her to her feet, and they stood there for a long moment and listened to silence so profound it roared in their ears.

The planes had stopped taking off, and all they could hear now was their own breathing.

"You got the rifle?" she whispered.

"Dropped it."

"Turn on the flash. Look for it. Maybe the cartridges are still dry."

"Dropped the flashlight."

"Good going."

"I never claimed I'd be good at this," he said, "just available."

"Let's go," she said, and again they held hands in the darkness. With their matched .44s out in front of them, they walked slowly and as quietly as possible up the tunnel.

Fu Hai heard the gunfire. It sounded like distant fireworks in the tunnel. He crouched low in the darkness, clutching the unlit flashlight in one hand and the gun Dry Dragon had given him in the other. The Snake Riders were in a panic, all talking at once. Fu Hai crouched even lower, cradling the deadly Russian machine pistol in his arms. Then, more to calm himself than the others, he started to sing a very popular Chinese song about persimmons that every child in China knew, regardless of dialect. One by one they joined in, until all of them were crouched around him, squatting, with their buttocks in the water. The children miraculously stopped crying. As they huddled in the flickering candlelight singing softly, Fu Hai wondered what he should do next.

Willy was in the back of the SWAT van as it sped Code Three down the Santa Monica Freeway. He sat quietly on a wooden bench opposite four stern-faced young men in SWAT uniforms and tried hard to remain impassive. He looked neither right nor left, up nor down. He sat restfully and waited.

Willy knew that the first stop on his way to victory was this ride to the airport. They wanted to keep their options open. If in failure they didn't intend to let him go, they would have left him downtown.

The SWAT truck stopped after thirty minutes. He heard low conversation, and then he felt the van moving again. Soon they came to another stop and the door to the back was opened. He could see the tail of his jet behind the young uniformed police lieutenant who looked into the back of the van.

"Sorry it's so hot back here. I'll keep the engine running and the air on," he said to the guards with Willy, then closed the door and bolted it.

The Stupid Dragon had carried the Smart Monkey back from a certain death at the bottom of the sea, and had brought him up on dry land. The LAPD was about to put Willy safely back up on the highest limb of his willow tree.

Time was running out. The flimsy constraints of order in the Situation Room were beginning to break down. What had started as a jurisdictional squabble had degenerated into open warfare. They had divided up into two groups. The "Turn Willy Loose" faction consisted of the Mayor of Los Angeles, the Governor of California, and L
. A
. Police Chief Carl Leddiker--the hometowners. They saw Willy's life as meaningless when measured against their civic responsibility and the destruction of the airport by nuclear explosion. The "Keep Willy Here" contingent consisted of all the Feds, who the hometowners said intended to sky out of L
. A
. as soon as it was over and leave the shit-digging and body-bagging to the locals.

The geek from FEMA never said anything. He kept his head down, working on fallout patterns, weather charts, and wind graphs.

"I'm taking authority for letting him go," the Governor said. "I don't give a shit what the federal government thinks." The Governor had just arrived ten minutes ago and was turning the tide. "We put him on his plane and cut him loose. He's just one life. One person. I have a potential disaster here. Hundreds or even thousands of deaths. Who knows how many more will die from radiation? We'll go after him later. He can't hide."