Jeffery Deaver - The Stone Monkey

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.

Still, Li was a human being in need and Chang would try to save him.

The man was swallowed up by a wave.

"Leave him!" Wu whispered angrily. "He's gone."

From the front of the raft the young wife, Rose, called, "Please, let's go!"

Chang turned the raft into a large wave to keep from tipping over. By the time they were stable again Chang saw a flash of orange about fifty meters away, rising and falling. It was the Ghost's raft. The snakehead started toward them. A wave rose between the two crafts and they lost sight of each other momentarily.

Chang gunned the throttle and turned toward the drowning man. "Down, everybody down!"

He reversed the motor quickly just as they reached Li, leaned over the thick rubber and grabbed the immigrant by the shoulder, pulling him into the raft, where he collapsed on the floor, coughing fiercely. Another gunshot. A burst of water flew up near them as Chang sped the raft around the Dragon, putting the sinking ship between them and the Ghost once more.

The snakehead's attention turned away from them for a moment when he saw several other people in the water – crew members, bobbing on the surface in orange life vests, about twenty or thirty meters away from the killer. The Ghost sped toward the two, his motor running full.