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.
Chapter Four
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 cu
ps, papers. They screamed and flailed about in the water.
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 Pokemon 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 Chang's 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.