The Stone Monkey (Lincoln Rhyme 4)

The immigrant gave a choked cry and slipped under the waves. No time to wait for the pros.

From the police academy she knew the basic lifesaving rule: "Reach, throw, row then go." Meaning, try to rescue a drowning victim from the shore or a boat before you yourself swim out to save him. Well, the first three weren't options at all.

So, she thought: Go.

Ignoring the searing pain in her knees, she ran toward the ocean, stripping off her gun and ammo belt. At the shoreline she unlaced her standard-issue shoes, kicked them off and, eyes focused on the struggling swimmer, waded into the cold, turbulent water.

Chapter Eight

Crawling from the bushes, Sonny Li got a better look at the woman with the red hair as she pulled off her shoes and plowed into the rough water then kicked away from the shore toward somebody struggling in the waves.

Li couldn't make out who it was--either John Sung or the husband of the couple who'd sat next to him in the raft--but, in any case, his attention was drawn back immediately to the woman, whom he'd been studying from his hiding spot in the bush since she'd arrived at the beach over an hour ago.

Now, she wasn't his type of girl. He didn't care for Western women, at least the ones he'd seen around Fuzhou. They were either on the arms of rich businessmen (tall and beautiful, casting disdainful glances at the Chinese men who'd stare at them) or tourists with their husbands and children (badly dressed, casting disdainful glances at men spitting on the sidewalks and the bicyclists who never let them cross the street).

This woman, though, intrigued him. At first he hadn't been able to figure out what she was doing here; she'd arrived in her bright yellow car, accompanied by a soldier with a machine gun. Then she'd turned her back and he'd glimpsed NYPD on her windbreaker. So, she was a public security bureau officer. Safely hidden across the road, he'd watched her search for survivors and clues.

Sexy, he'd thought, despite his vast preference for quiet, elegant Chinese women.

And that hair! What a color! It inspired him to give her a nickname, "Hongse," pronounced hoankseh, Chinese for "red."

Looking up the road, Li saw a yellow emergency truck speeding toward them. As soon as it turned into a shallow parking lot and stopped he crawled to the edge of the road. There was a chance he'd be spotted, of course, but he had to act now, before she returned. He waited until the rescue workers' attention was on Hongse and then scrabbled across the road and up to the yellow car. It was an old one, the sort you saw in American TV shows like Kojak and Hill Street Blues. He wasn't interested in stealing the car itself (most of the security bureau officers and soldiers had left but there were still enough nearby to pursue and capture him--especially behind the wheel of a car as bright as an egg yolk). No, at the moment he just wanted a gun and some money.

Opening the passenger door of the yellow car, he eased inside and began going through the map box. No weapons. He angrily thought of his Tokarev pistol sitting at the bottom of the ocean. No cigarettes either. Fuck her . . . . He then went through her purse and found about fifty dollars in one-color money. Li pocketed the cash and looked over a paper she'd been writing on. His spoken English was good--thanks to American movies and the Follow Me program on Radio Beijing--but his reading skills were terrible (which hardly seemed fair considering that English only had 25 or so letters while the Chinese language had 40,000). After some stumbling, he recognized the Ghost's real name, Kwan Ang, in English, and made out some other writing. He folded this up and slipped it into his pocket then scattered the rest of the sheets on the ground outside the open driver's side door, so it would look as if the wind had blown them away.

Another car was approaching--a black sedan that smelled to Li like a government vehicle. Crouching, he made his way back to the road. Hidden once more in the bushes, he glanced out into the turbulent sea, observing now that Hongse seemed to be struggling in the choppy ocean just as much as the drowning man. He felt a pang that such a beautiful woman was in danger. But that wasn't really his concern; finding the Ghost and simply staying alive were his priorities now.

*

The effort of swimming against the battering surf to reach the drowning immigrant had nearly exhausted Amelia Sachs and she found she had to kick furiously to keep them both above water. Her knee and hip joints protested in pain. The immigrant himself wasn't any help at all. He was of medium build and trim--without much fat for buoyancy. He kicked his feet lethargically and his left arm was useless--thanks to a gunshot wound in his chest.

Gasping, spitting out the vile salt water that kept spilling into her mouth and nose, she fought her way toward shore. The water stung her eyes and blurred her vision but she could see on the sand near the breaking surf two medics with a stretcher and a large green oxygen tank, motioning broadly for her to swim toward them.

Thanks, boys . . . . I'm trying.

She steered toward them as best she could but the undertow was fierce. She glanced back at the rock the immigrant had been clinging to and saw that, despite her massive efforts, they'd swum only about ten feet.

Kick harder. Harder!

Reciting to herself one of her personal mantras: When you move they can't getcha . . . .

Another eight or nine feet. But Sachs finally had to stop and catch her breath, watching in dismay as the undertow tugged them back out to sea.

Come on, get out of here . . . .

The listless immigrant, now nearly unconscious, kept pulling her down. Sachs kicked harder. A cramp seized her calf and she cried out and sank fast. The murky gray water, filled with seaweed and sand, swallowed her up. One hand holding the immigrant's shirt, the other pounding on her own calf to break the cramp, she struggled to hold her breath for as long as she could.

Oh, Lincoln! she thought. Going down . . . Farther into the gray linen water.

Then: Jesus! What's this?

A barracuda, a shark, a black eel . . . shot out of the foggy water and grabbed her around the chest. She instinctively reached for the switchblade she kept in her back pocket but her arm was pinned to her body by the terrible fish. It tugged her upward and a few seconds later she was on the surface, sucking sweet air into her stinging lungs.

She looked down. The fish turned out to be a man's arm encased in a black wetsuit.

The Suffolk County Rescue diver spit a regulator from a pony bottle of compressed air out of his mouth and said, "It's okay, miss, I got you. It's okay."

A second diver was gripping the immigrant, keeping his lolling head out of the water.