Jeffery Deaver - The Stone Monkey

He'd lain motionless under the pounding rain as the seasickness dissipated and the throbbing in his head lessened. Now, struggling to his feet, Li started slowly toward the road, his skin irritated from the cloth of his jeans and sweatshirt, which were filled with sand and saturated with the pungent residue of salt water. He could see nothing in either direction. He remembered, though, the lights of a small village to his right and it was in that direction that he now began to walk along the sand-swept road.

Where was the Ghost? Li wondered.

Then, as if in answer, came a brief pop, which Li recognized immediately as a pistol shot. It reverberated through the dark, wet dawn.

But was it the Ghost? Or some local resident? (Everyone knew that all Americans carried guns.) Maybe it was a U.S. public security officer.

Better to be safe. He was eager to find the Ghost quickly but he knew he had to be careful. He stepped off the road into some brush, where he was less visible, and started forward as fast as his cramped and exhausted legs could carry him.

At the sound the families paused. "It was -" Wu Qichen began. "Yes," Sam Chang muttered. "A gunshot."

"He's killing us. He's tracking us down and killing us."

"I know," Chang snapped back. His heart cried for them – for Dr. Sung, for Sonny Li, for the couple – whoever among them had just died. But what could he do?

Chang looked at his father and observed that Chang Jiechi was breathing hard but, despite the battering in the raft and the swim to shore, the old man didn't seem to be in great pain. He nodded to his son, meaning it was all right to continue. The cluster of people started walking once again through the rain and wind.

Their concerns about begging or coercing the drivers to take them to Chinatown were unfounded; there'd been no trucks waiting for them. Chang supposed that the vehicles were at a different location altogether, or perhaps as soon as the Ghost decided to scuttle the ship he'd called and had them return. He and Wu had spent several minutes calling for Sung and Li and the others who'd been washed overboard. But then Chang had seen the orange raft of the snakehead approaching and he'd led the two families off the road into the grass and bushes, where they'd be out of sight, and they made their way toward the lights, where he hoped to find a truck.

The beacons that drew them turned out to be a line of restaurants, a petrol station, several stores selling souvenirs like on the waterfront at Xiamen, ten or twelve houses, a church.

The hour was just around dawn – perhaps 5:30 or 6 – but there were signs of life: a dozen cars were parked in front of the two restaurants, including a driverless one with the motor running. But it was a small sedan and Chang needed a vehicle with room for ten. And he needed one whose theft wouldn't be noticed for at least two or three hours – the length of time he'd been told it would take them to get to Chinatown in New York City.

He told the others to wait behind a tall hedge of bushes and motioned his son William and Wu to follow him. Crouching, they moved behind the buildings. There were two large trucks behind the petrol station but they were both well in view of a young attendant in the garage. Rain pelted the glass, making visibility poor, but he would have noticed immediately if they'd started to drive a truck away.

Twenty meters farther on was a darkened house and behind it was a pickup truck. But Chang didn't want to expose his father or the children to the rain and weather. Also, ten shipwrecked Chinese would be easily spotted in a rickety old vehicle of this sort, driving toward New York City like a band of the "floating population" – itinerant laborers who travel from town to town in China looking for work.

"Stay out of the mud," Chang ordered his son and Wu. "Walk only on the grass or branches or stones. I don't want to leave footprints." Caution was instinctive for Chang; with both public security bureau and People's Liberation Army agents constantly following them, dissidents in China learn quickly to obscure their movements.

They moved on, through brush and trees whipped by the ferocious wind, past more houses, some dark, some showing signs of families waking: televisions flickering, breakfasts being prepared. Seeing this poignant evidence of normal life, Chang was stabbed by the hopelessness of their plight. But, as he'd learned to do in China, where the government had taken so much away from him, he pushed these sentimental feelings aside and urged his son and Wu to move more quickly. Finally they came to the last building on this strip of habitation: a small church, dark and apparently unoccupied.

Behind the weathered building they found an old white van. From his hours on the Internet and watching TV, Chang knew a little English but these words he didn't understand. At his urging, though, both of his sons had studied the language, and American culture, for years. William glanced at the van and explained, "It says 'Pentecostal Baptist Church of Easton.'"

Another soft crack in the distance. Chang froze at the sound. The Ghost had killed another one of them.

"Let's go!" an anxious Wu said. "Hurry. See if it's open."

But the van's door was locked.

As Chang looked around for something they could use to break the window William surveyed the lock closely. He called over the noisy wind, "Do you have my knife?"

"Your knife?"

"The one I gave you on the ship – to cut the rope holding the raft."

"That was yours?" What on earth had his son been doing with a weapon like that? It was a switchblade.

"Do you have it?" the boy repeated.

"No, I dropped it getting into the raft."

The boy grimaced but Chang ignored the expression – why, it was almost impertinent – and scanned the rain-pelted ground. He found a piece of metal pipe and swung it hard into the window of the van. The glass shattered into a hundred tiny pieces of ice. He climbed into the passenger seat and looked through the map box for keys. He couldn't find any and stepped out onto the muddy ground. Glancing at the building, he wondered if there would be a set inside the church? And if so, where? An office? There might be a caretaker inside; what if the man heard and confronted them? Chang believed that he couldn't hurt anyone innocent even if -

He heard a loud snap and spun around in alarm. His son was crouched in the driver's seat and had shattered the plastic housing of the ignition lock with a kick from his boot. As Chang watched, astonished and dismayed, the boy pulled out wires and began brushing them against each other. Suddenly the radio came on with a blare: "He will always love you, let Our Savior into your heart …"

William touched a button on the dash and the volume lowered. He touched other wires together. A spark… The engine fired up.

Chang stared in disbelief. "How did you know how to do that?"

The boy shrugged.

"Tell me -"

Wu clutched Chang's arm. "Let's go! We have to get our families and leave. The Ghost is looking for us."

The father pierced his son with a look of shock. He expected the boy to lower his eyes in shame. But William stared back coldly in a way that Chang himself never would have done with his own father, at any age.

"Please," Wu begged. "Let's go back for the rest."

"No," Chang said after a moment. "Have them come here. Follow our path – and make sure they don't leave any footprints."

Wu hurried off to get them.

In the van William found a booklet of maps of the area and studied them carefully. He nodded, as if memorizing directions.

Resisting his desire to interrogate his son about hot-wiring the ignition, Chang asked him, "Do you know where to go?"

"I can figure it out." The boy looked up. "Do you want me to drive?" Then he added bluntly, "You're not very good at it." Like most urban Chinese, Sam Chang's main means of transportation was a bicycle.