But the treads on her wheels were true and the only moisture on her palms was from the rain that had drenched her back at Port Jefferson. She kept her foot near the floor.
*
As the launch smashed through the water, closer to the shore, the rocks grew more distinct.
And more jagged.
Sam Chang squinted through the rain and spray. There were some short stretches of beach ahead, covered with pebbles and dirty sand, but much of the shoreline was dark rock and bluffs well over their heads. And to reach a portion of beach where they could land he'd have to maneuver through an obstacle course of jutting stone.
"He's still there, behind us," Wu shouted.
Chang looked back and could see the tiny orange dot of the Ghost's raft. It was heading directly for them but was making slower progress than theirs. The Ghost was hampered by the way he handled the raft. He aimed right toward the shore and fought the waves, which slowed his progress. But Chang, true to his Taoist leanings, piloted his craft differently; he sought the natural flow of the water, not fighting it but steering around the stronger crests in a serpentine pattern and using the shore-bound waves to speed them forward more quickly. The distance between them and the snakehead was increasing.
Before the Ghost landed, there should be enough time to find the trucks that were waiting to take them to Chinatown, Chang estimated. The truck drivers wouldn't know about the sinking but Chang would tell them that the Coast Guard was after them and order the men to leave immediately. If they insisted on waiting, Chang and Wu and the others would overpower them and drive the trucks themselves.
He studied the shoreline and beyond--past the beach were trees and grass. It was hard to see in the windblown rain and mist but he detected what looked like a road. Some lights too, not far away. A cluster of them: a small village, it seemed.
Wiping the stinging seawater from his eyes, Chang watched the people at his feet, falling silent as they gazed at the shore ahead of them, the turbulent currents here, riptides and whirlpools, the approaching rocks, sharp as knives, dark as dried blood.
Then, just ahead of them, under the surface of the water, appeared a bank of rock. Chang throttled back fast and turned hard to the side, just missing the stone shelf. The raft was now sideways, buffeted by the ragged waves, which flooded the vessel. They nearly capsized once, then again. Chang tried to steer through a gap in the bank but the motor suddenly cut out. He grabbed the lanyard and tugged hard. A chug, then silence. Again, a dozen times. But nothing happened. The motor didn't even turn over. His older son scrabbled forward and tipped the gasoline can. "Empty!" William shouted.
Desperate, weak with fear for his family's safety, he looked behind them. The fog was thicker now and obscured them--but it also hid the Ghost. How close was he?
The raft rose on a high wave then dropped into a gully of water with a jarring crash.
"Down, everybody down!" Chang shouted. "Stay low." He dropped to his knees in the dark water sloshing on the floor of the raft. He grabbed the oar and tried to use it as a rudder. But the waves and current were too powerful, the raft too heavy. A fist of water struck him and ripped the oar from his hands. Chang fell backward. He glanced in the direction they were headed and he saw a line of rocks just ahead, a few meters away.
The water caught the launch like a surfboard and sped it forward. They struck the rocks with stunning force, bow first. The rubber shell ripped open with a gasping hiss and began to deflate. Sonny Li, John Sung and the young couple in the front--Chao-hua and Rose--were pitched out into the turbulent water just past the rocks and swept away in the surf.
The two families--the Wus and the Changs--were in the rear of the raft, which remained partially inflated and they managed to hold on. The raft struck the rocks again. Wu's wife was thrown hard into a ledge of stone but she didn't go overboard; screaming, she fell back into the raft, blood covering her arm, and lay stunned on the floor. No one else was injured by the impact.
Then the raft was past the rocks and headed toward shore, deflating quickly.
Chang heard a distant cry for help--from one of the four who'd vanished when they struck the rock but he couldn't tell where the shout had come from.
The raft slid over another rock, low in the water, fifteen meters from shore. They were trapped in the surf now, battered and being dragged toward the pebbly beach. Wu Qichen and his daughter struggled to keep his injured and half-conscious wife above the surface--her arm torn open and bleeding badly. In Mei-Mei's arms Po-Yee, the baby, had stopped crying and was staring listlessly around her.
But the motor of the raft was hung up on a rock ledge, trapping them eight or nine meters from shore. The water wasn't deep here--two meters--but the waves were still pounding them hard.
"The shore," he shouted, coughing water. "Now!"
The swim took forever. Even Chang, the strongest among them, was gasping for breath and racked by cramps before he reached land. Finally, under his feet, he felt stones, slippery with kelp and slime, and stumbled forward out of the water. He fell once, hard, but quickly regained his foothold and helped his father out of the water.
Exhausted, they all stumbled to a nearby shelter on the beach, open on the sides but with a corrugated roof that protected them from the slashing rain. The families collapsed on the dark sand underneath it, coughing water, crying, gasping, praying. Sam Chang finally managed to stand. He gazed out to sea but saw no sign of the Ghost's raft or the immigrants who'd been swept overboard.
Then he sank down to his knees and lay his forehead on the sand. Their companions and friends were dead, and they themselves injured, tired beyond words and pursued by a killer . . . Still, Sam Chang reflected, they were alive and were on firm land. He and his family had at last finished the endless journey that had taken them halfway around the world to their new home, America, the Beautiful Country.
Chapter Six
Half a kilometer out to sea the Ghost hunched over his cell phone, trying to protect it from the rain and waves as his raft plowed through the water toward the piglets.
The reception was bad--the signal was bouncing via satellite through Fuzhou and Singapore after it left his phone--but he managed to get through to Jerry Tang, a bangshou he sometimes used in New York's Chinatown and who was now waiting somewhere on the shore nearby to pick him up.
Breathless from the rough ride, the Ghost managed to describe to the driver more or less where he'd be landing--about three or four hundred meters east from what seemed to be a strip of stores and houses.
"What weapons do you have?" the Ghost shouted.
"What?" Tang shouted.