Michael Connelly - 9 Dragons

It was the lower right. The moment the bolt started to turn Bosch aimed and fired both guns repeatedly into the door, the bullets piercing metal wakened by years of rust. He heard someone call out as if surprised or hurt. He then heard a banging sound out in the hallway as a body hit the floor.

Bosch moved to the hatch and tried to turn the bolt on the upper right lock with his hand. It was too small for his fingers to find purchase. In desperation, he stepped back a pace and then threw his shoulder into the door, hoping to snap the lock assembly. But it didn’t budge and he knew by the feel of the impact on his shoulder that the door would not give way.

He was locked in.

He moved back close to the hatch and tilted his head to listen. There was only the sound of the engines running now. He banged the heel of one of the guns loudly on the metal hatch.

“Maddie?” he called out. “Maddie, are you here?”

There was no response. He banged again on the hatch, this time even louder.

“Give me a sign, baby. If you’re here, make some noise!”

Again there was no response. Bosch pulled his phone and opened it to call Sun. But he saw he had no signal. He tried the call anyway and got no response. He was in a metal-lined room and his cell phone was useless.

Bosch turned and banged one more time on the door and called out his daughter’s name.

There was no response. Harry leaned his sweating forehead against the rusty hatch in defeat. He was stuck in the metal box and trapped with the realization that his daughter wasn’t even on the boat. He had failed and had gotten what he deserved, what he had earned.

A physical pain shot across his chest, matching the pain in his mind. Sharp, deep and unrelenting. He started breathing heavily, and turned his back against the hatch. He opened his collar another button and slid down the rusting metal until he was sitting on the floor with his knees up. He realized he was in a place as claustrophobic as the tunnels he had once inhabited. The battery on the overhead light was dying and soon he would be left in darkness. Defeat and despair overtook him. He had failed his daughter and he had failed himself.

Bosch suddenly looked up from his contemplation of failure. He had heard something. Above the drone of the engines, he’d heard a banging sound. Not from above. It had come from down in the hull.

He jumped up and turned back to the hatch. He heard another banging sound and knew somebody was checking the compartments in the same way he had.

He pounded on the hatch with the heels of both guns. He yelled above the clanging echo of steel on steel.

“Sun Yee? Hey! Down here! Somebody! Down here!”

There was no response, but then the bolt of the upper right seal turned. The door was being unlocked. Bosch stepped back, wiped his face with his sleeves, and waited. The bottom left seal was turned next and then the hatch door slowly began to open. Bosch raised the guns, unsure how many bullets he had left to fire.

In the dim light of the passage he saw Sun’s face. Bosch moved forward and pushed the hatch all the way open.

“Where the fuck you been?”

“I was looking for a boat and-”

“I called you. I told you to come back.”

Once he was in the passageway, Bosch saw the Mercedes man lying facedown on the floor a few feet from the hatch. He quickly moved to him, hoping to find him still alive. Harry turned him over, rolling him into the slop of his own blood.

He was dead.

“Harry, where is Madeline?” Sun asked.

“I don’t know. Everybody’s dead and I don’t know!”

Unless…

One final plan began to work into Bosch’s brain. One final chance. The white Mercedes. Gleaming and new. The car would have all the extras, including a navigation system, and the first address in its stored data would be the Mercedes man’s home.

They would go there. They would go to the home of the Mercedes man and Bosch would do what was necessary to find his daughter. If he had to hold a gun to the head of that bored little boy he had seen at Geo, he would do it. And the wife would tell. She would give Bosch back his daughter.

Harry studied the body in front of him. He presumed he was looking at Dennis Ho, the man behind Northstar. He patted the dead man’s pockets, looking for car keys, but he found none and just as quickly as his plan had formed, Bosch began to feel it disappear. Where were the keys? He needed that computer to tell him where to go and how to find his way.

“Harry, what is it?”

“His keys! We need his keys or we-”

He suddenly stopped. He realized he had missed something. When he had made his run on the pier and ducked for cover behind the white Mercedes, he had heard and smelled the car’s diesel engine. The car had been left running.

At the time it meant little to Bosch because he was sure his daughter was on the crane boat. But now he knew different.

Bosch stood up and started moving down the passageway toward the ladder, his mind racing far ahead of him. He heard Sun following behind him.

There was only one reason why Dennis Ho would have left his car running. He intended to come back to it. Not with the girl, because she was not on the boat. But to get the girl once the storage compartment in the hull was ready and it was safe to transfer her.

Bosch charged out of the pilothouse and crossed the gangway to the pier. He ran to the driver’s door of the white Mercedes and flung it open. He checked the backseat and found it empty. He then studied the dashboard, looking for a button that would open the trunk.

Finding none, he turned the car off and grabbed the keys. – Moving to the back of the car, he pushed the trunk button on the ignition key.

The trunk lid lifted automatically. Bosch moved in, and there lying on a blanket inside the compartment was his daughter. She was blindfolded and gagged. Her arms were pinned to her body with several wrappings of duct tape. Her ankles were taped together as well. Bosch cried out at the sight of her.

“Maddie?”

He almost jumped into the trunk with her as he quickly pulled the blindfold up and went to work on the gag.

“It’s me, baby! It’s Dad!”

She opened her eyes and started blinking.

“You’re safe now, Maddie. You’re safe!”

As the gag came loose, the girl let out a shriek that pierced her father’s heart and would stay with him always. It was at once an exorcism of fear, a cry for help and the sound of relief and even joy.

“Daddy!”

She started to cry as Bosch reached in and lifted her out of the trunk. Sun was suddenly there and helping.

“It’s going to be okay now,” Bosch said. “It will all be okay.”

They stood the young girl up and then Bosch used the teeth of one of the keys to start cutting through the tape. He noticed that Madeline was still wearing her school uniform. The moment her arms and hands were free, she grabbed Bosch around the neck and squeezed with all her life.

“I knew you would come,” she said between gasping sobs.

Bosch didn’t know if he had ever heard words that meant more to him. He held her just as tightly in his own arms. He turned his face down to whisper in her ear.

“Maddie?”

“What, Dad?”

“Are you hurt, Maddie? I mean, physically hurt. If they hurt you we need to get you to-”

“No, I’m not hurt.”

He pushed back from her and put his hands on her shoulders as he studied her eyes.

“You sure? You can tell me.”

“I’m sure, Dad. I’m fine.”

“Okay. Then, we need to go.”

He turned to Sun.

“Can you get us to the airport?”

“No problem.”