The Stone Monkey (4 page)

Desperate men and women and children, futilely slamming luggage into the walls to break through the metal, hugging one another, sobbing, screaming for help, praying.... The scar-faced woman clutched her young daughter the way the child herself clung to a filthy yellow Pokémon toy. Both were sobbing.

A powerful groaning from the dying ship filled the stale air, and the brown, vile water grew deeper.

The men at the hatch were making no headway with the latches. Chang wiped his hair out of his eyes. "This won't work," he said to the captain. "We need another way out."

Captain Sen replied, "There's an access panel on the floor, in the back of the hold. It leads to the engine room. But if that's where the hull was breached we won't be able to open it. Too much pressure—"

"Where?" Chang demanded.

The captain pointed it out, a small door secured by four screws. It was only large enough for one person to pass through at a time. He and Chang pushed toward it, struggling to stay upright against the sharp angle of the floor. Scrawny Wu Qichen helped his sick wife to her feet; the woman shivered with chills. Chang bent down to his own wife and said in a firm voice, "Listen to me. You will keep our family together. Stay close to me by that doorway."

"Yes, husband."

Chang joined the captain at the access door and, using Sen's flick-knife, they managed to undo the screws. Chang pushed hard on the door and it fell into the other room without resistance. Water was filling the engine room too but it wasn't as deep as in the hold. Chang could see steep stairs leading to the main deck.

Screams and shouts as the immigrants saw the open passageway. They pushed forward in panic, crushing some people against the metal walls. Chang struck two of the men with his large fist. He cried, "No! One at a time or we'll all die."

Several others, desperation in their eyes, started for Chang. But the captain turned on them, brandishing his knife, and they backed away. Captain Sen and Chang stood side by side, facing the crowd. "One at a time," the captain repeated. "Through the engine room and up the ladder. There're rafts on the deck." He nodded to the immigrants closest to the doorway and they crawled outside. The first was John Sung, a doctor and a dissident, whom Chang had spent some time talking with on the voyage. Sung stopped outside the doorway and crouched down to help the others out. A young husband and wife climbed out next and scurried to the ladder.

The captain caught Changs eye and he nodded. "Go!"

Chang motioned to Chang Jiechi, his father, and the old man went through the door, John Sung gripping him by his arm. Then Chang's sons: teenage William and eight-year-old Ronald. Next, his wife. Chang went last and pointed his family toward the ladder. He turned back to help Sung get the others out.

The Wu family was next: Qichen, his sick wife, their teenage daughter and young son.

Chang reached into the hold to take the hand of another immigrant but two of the crewmen raced for the doorway. Captain Sen grabbed for them. He raged, "I'm still in charge. The
Dragon
is my ship. The passengers go first."

"Passengers? You idiot, they're cattle!" one of the crew screamed and, knocking aside the scar-faced mother and her little girl, crawled through the opening. The other followed right behind him, pushing Sung to the floor and running for the stairs. Chang helped the doctor to his feet. "I'm all right," Sung shouted and clutched a charm he wore around his neck, muttering an abbreviated prayer. Chang heard the name Chen-wu, the god of the northern sky and protector against criminals.

The ship lurched hard and tilted faster. The wind of escaping air began to shoot out through the doorway as water flooded in, filling the hold. The screams were heartbreaking and were soon mixed with the sound of choking. She's going down, Chang thought. Another few minutes at the most. He heard a hissing, sparking sound behind him. He glanced up and saw water flowing down the stairwell onto the massive, grimy engines.

One of the diesels stopped running and the lights went out. The second engine then went silent.

John Sung lost his handhold and slid across the floor into the wall. "Get out!" Chang called to him. "We can't do anything more here."

The doctor nodded, scrabbled for the stairs and climbed out. But Chang himself turned back to the doorway to try to rescue one or two more. He shivered, sickened at the sight in front of him: water was pouring out of the doorway, from which four desperate arms extended into the engine room, clawing for help. Chang grabbed one man's arm but the immigrant was so jammed among the others that he couldn't be dislodged. The arm shivered once and then Chang felt the fingers go limp. Through the roiling water now bubbling into the engine room Chang could just see Captain Sen's face. Chang motioned for him to try to climb out but the captain disappeared into the blackness of the hold. A few seconds later, though, the bald man swam back to the doorway and shoved something up through the fountain of seawater toward Chang.

What was it?

Gripping a pipe to keep from sliding away, Chang reached into the frothy water to take what the captain offered. He closed his muscular hand around cloth and pulled hard. It was a young child, the daughter of the scarred woman. She rose from the doorway through the stalks of lifeless arms. The toddler was choking but conscious. Chang held her to his chest firmly then let go of the pipe. He slid through the water to the wall then swam to the stairwell, where he climbed through the icy cascade to the deck above.

He gasped at what he saw—the stern of the ship was barely above water, and gray, turbulent waves were already covering half the deck. Wu Qichen and Changs father and sons were struggling to untie a large orange inflatable launch on the stern of the boat. It was already floating but would soon be underwater. Chang stumbled forward, handed the baby to his wife and began to help the others undo the rope. But soon the knot securing the raft was beneath the waves. Chang dove under the surface and tugged futilely on the hemp knot, his muscles quivering from the effort. Then a hand appeared near his. His son William was holding a long, sharp knife that he must've found on the deck. Chang took it and sawed on the rope until it gave way.

Chang and his son surfaced and, gasping, helped his family, the Wus, John Sung and the other couple into the raft, which was quickly drawn away from the ship by the massive waves.

He turned to the outboard motor. He pulled the cord to start the engine but it wouldn't engage. They needed to get it going immediately; without the control of a motor, they'd be overturned by the sea in seconds. He began yanking furiously and finally the motor buzzed to life.

Chang braced himself in the back of the raft and quickly turned their small craft into the waves. It bucked furiously but didn't capsize. He accelerated and then steered carefully in a circle, heading back through the fog and rain toward the dying ship.

"Where are you going?" Wu asked.

"The others," Chang shouted. "We have to find the others. Some might have—"

That was when the bullet snapped through the air no more than a meter from them.

The Ghost was furious.

He stood at the bow of the sinking
Fuzhou Dragon,
his hand on the lanyard of the forward life raft, and looked back fifty meters to sea where he'd just spotted some of the fucking piglets who'd escaped.

He fired his pistol once more. Another miss. The pitching seas made accurate shooting from this distance impossible. He scowled in fury as his targets maneuvered behind the
Dragon,
out of his sight. The Ghost surveyed the distance to the bridge deck, on which his cabin was located, where he had his machine gun and his money: more than a hundred thousand in one-color cash. He wondered momentarily if he could make it back to the cabin in time.

As if in answer, a huge spume of venting air broke through the hull of the
Dragon
and she began to sink even more quickly, rolling farther on her side.

Well, the loss hurt but it wasn't worth his life. The Ghost climbed into the raft and pushed away from the ship with an oar. He scanned the nearby water, struggling to see through the fog and rain. Two heads bobbed up and down, their arms waving frantically, fingers splayed in panic.

"Here, here!" the Ghost shouted. "I'll save you!" The men turned to him, kicking hard to rise from the water so he could see them better. They were two of the crew members, the ones who'd been on the bridge. He lifted his Chinese military Model 51 automatic pistol again. He killed the two crewmen with one shot each.

Then the Ghost got the outboard motor going and, riding the waves, looked once more for his
bangshou.
But there was no sign of him. The assistant was a ruthless killer and fearless in shoot-outs but he was a fool when he was out of his element. He'd probably fallen into the water and drowned because he wouldn't throw away his heavy gun and ammunition. Well, the Ghost had other matters to attend to. He turned the raft toward where he'd last seen the piglets and twisted the outboards throttle up high.

There'd been no time to find a life vest.

No time for anything.

Just after the explosion shattered the
Dragon's
rusty hull, knocking Sonny Li to his belly, the ship began to list, the water rushing over him and tugging him relentlessly toward the ocean. Suddenly he found himself off the side of the ship, alone and helpless in the frantic hills of water.

Ten fuck judges of hell, he thought bitterly in English.

The water was cold, heavy, breathtakingly salty. The waves slammed him onto his back then lifted him high and dunked him. Li managed to kick to the surface and looked around for the Ghost but, in the cloudy air and stinging rain, couldn't see anyone. Li swallowed a mouthful of the sickening water and began gasping and coughing. He smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and drank liters of Tsingtao beer and
mao-tai;
soon he was winded and the little-used muscles in his legs started to cramp painfully.

Reluctantly he reached into his belt and withdrew his automatic pistol. He released it and the gun sank quickly from his fingers. He did the same with the three clips of ammunition in his back pocket. This helped his buoyancy some but it wasn't enough. He needed a vest, anything that floated, anything to share the agonizing burden of staying on the surface.

He thought he heard the sound of an outboard motor and he twisted around as best he could. Thirty meters away was an orange raft. He raised his hand but a wave caught him in the face as he was inhaling and his lungs filled with stinging water.

Searing pain in his chest.

Air ... I need air.

Another wave slammed into him. He sank below the surface, tugged down by the great muscles of gray water. He glanced at his hands. Why weren't they moving?

Paddle, kick! Don't let the sea suck you down!

He struggled once more to the surface.

Don't let...

He inhaled more water.

Don't let it...

His vision began to crinkle to black.

Ten judges of hell...

Well, Sonny Li thought, it seemed that he was about to meet them.

They lay at his feet, a dozen or so, in the cold soup at the bottom of the raft, caught between the mountains of water beneath them and the lacerating rain from above. Their hands desperately gripped the rope that circled the orange raft.

Sam Chang, reluctant captain of the fragile craft, looked over his passengers. The two families—his own and the Wus—huddled in the back of the raft around him. In the front were Dr. John Sung and the two others who'd escaped from the hold, whom Chang knew only by their first names, Chao-hua and his wife, Rose.

A wave crashed over them, soaking the hapless occupants even more. Chang's wife, Mei-Mei, pulled off her sweater and wrapped it around the tiny daughter of the scar-faced woman. The girl, Chang recalled with a pang, was named Po-Yee, which meant Treasured Child; she'd been the good-luck mascot of their voyage.

"Go!" Wu cried. "Go for shore."

"We have to look for the others."

"He's shooting at us!"

Chang looked at the boiling sea. But the Ghost was nowhere to be seen. "We'll go soon. But we have to rescue anyone who can be saved. Look for them!"

Seventeen-year-old William struggled to his knees and squinted through the sharp spray. Wu's teenage daughter did the same.

Wu shouted something but his head was turned away and Chang couldn't hear the words.

Chang entwined his arm around the rope and pushed his feet hard against an oar clamp to brace his body as he struggled to nurse the raft in a circle around the
Fuzhou Dragon,
twenty meters away. The ship slipped farther into the water, a blast of foamy water occasionally shooting high as air escaped from a rent in the side of a porthole or hatch. The groaning, like that of an animal in pain, rose and fell.

"There!" William cried. "I think I see somebody."

"No," Wu Qichen called. "We have to leave! What are you waiting for?"

William was pointing. "Yes, Father. There!"

Chang could see a dark lump next to a much smaller white lump, ten meters from them. A head and a hand perhaps.

"Leave them," Wu called. "The Ghost will see us! He'll shoot us!"

Ignoring him, Chang steered closer to the lumps, which indeed turned out to be a man. He was pale and choking, thrashing the air, a look of terror on his face. Sonny Li was his name, Chang recalled. While most of the immigrants had spent time talking and reading to one another, several of the men traveling without families had kept to themselves. Li was among these. There'd been something ominous about him. He'd sat alone for the entire voyage, sullen, occasionally glaring at the children who were noisy around him and often sneaking up on deck, which was strictly forbidden by the Ghost. When he'd talk at all, Li would ask too many questions about what the families planned to do when they got to New York and where they would live—subjects that wise illegal immigrants didn't discuss.