Neal Stephenson - Reamde

He bought a man-purse from a store in the hotel lobby and dropped his CamelBak and other few possessions into it, then carried it down to the waterfront where he took the next ferry to Gulangyu.

BY NO MEANS had the planning of the taxi-ramming operation developed to an advanced state during the fifteen seconds between its conception in Yuxia’s mind and its execution. She had not, as an example, had time to communicate any part of it to Csongor. Consequently he’d been forced to figure it out by himself and to brace for impact by putting his head against the seat in front of him. Like a lot of good plans, though, this one was extremely simple. The bad men were up to something involving a boat. Yuxia could put the sole tool at her disposal (the van) to use in wrecking same, and thereby prevent them from doing whatever.

High mountain girl that she was, she didn’t know much about boats. She was now learning that all her intuitions about them were considerably off base. There had been no question in her mind that having a taxi—to say nothing of a taxi followed by a minivan—crash into the top of one of these things would completely destroy it. Now she was dumbfounded to see that the boat was not destroyed. It still floated; it was still a boat.

Not to trivialize what had happened. Undoubtedly it had been a very bad day for the boat. It might be damaged beyond repair. But it still floated . Gazing out the destroyed windshield while hanging facedown in the safety belt, she could kind of see how it worked: the deck might be wood, but the hull was steel. And because it was floating, when things crashed into it, the water acted like a shock absorber of basically infinite capacity. The comparative frailty of the wooden deck planks actually worked to its advantage, since in snapping and bending they soaked up a lot of damage. And the stacks of empty wooden cargo pallets on top of the deck had collapsed as the taxi had fallen through them, further cushioning the impact.

Another amazing fact: Qian Yuxia had ended up on the boat! This had not been the plan at all. The idea had been to stop on the pier. But she had not reckoned on the air bag. There must have been a few moments of inattention, following the crash, when she had let her foot press down on the gas.

“Csongor?” she called. But he was no longer in the vehicle.

A phone started ringing. Not hers. It was down somewhere near her foot…

It was in her boot! It had gone flying, bounced around the interior of the vehicle, and ended up dropping into the open top of her blue boot. It was now wedged against her right ankle bone. She tucked her foot closer, reached in, and pulled it out.

“ Wei? ”

“ Wei? Yuxia?”

“Who’s this?”

“Marlon.”

“Why are you calling your own phone?” For she had recognized this one as his.

“Never mind. Are you okay?”

“I’m talking on the phone, aren’t I?”

“Are you still in the van?”

“Yes, but the van is—”

“I know. I’m looking at it. You’d better get out of it.”

“Why?”

“Because bad shit is going down on that pier—ohmygod.”

Marlon didn’t have to explain why he was saying this, because Yuxia could now hear gunfire behind her. Gunfire and sirens.

Bracing her right elbow against the steering wheel to support the weight of her upper body, Yuxia reached out with her left, found the door handle, and jerked back on it. Something went snick inside the door, but it didn’t open. It must have been jammed by one of today’s many violent impacts. Bashing her shoulder into it made no difference. She transferred the phone into her other hand so that she could reach down with her right and undo the seat belt. This caused her to fall forward into the steering wheel and sound the horn. “I’ll call you back,” she shouted, and snapped the phone shut and, for lack of a better place to put it just now, dropped it into her boot again. Then, using various hand- and footholds in the van’s interior, she clambered up into the backseat and across to the open side door.

Beyond this point, her way forward would take her across an exceedingly dangerous-looking terrain of crumpled taxi and splintered wood. Some combination of being struck in the face by the air bag and the boat’s gentle bobbing made her queasy and unsure of her movements. She crouched in the door frame while trying to recover her balance. She saw, and was seen by, an older man who had come forward from the boat’s pilothouse to inspect the damage. She considered saying something but got the idea, based on the man’s appearance, that he might not speak Mandarin. Drawing slowly on a cigarette, he gave her a most unpleasant look. She felt aggrieved by this, until she remembered that she had just done everything in her power to destroy his boat, which was probably the source of his livelihood.

It might have developed into an exchange of curses or even of blows had they not been distracted by the appearance of two figures above them on the edge of the pier: the tall black man and Zula. Yuxia controlled a sudden, ridiculous impulse to wave and call hello.

The black man said, “I am going to count to three and then jump. You may jump, or not.” Yuxia understood that, since the speaker was handcuffed to Zula and was much bigger than her, this was both a mean sort of joke and a threat.

In the end they jumped together and landed awkwardly on an open and uncratered stretch of deck. Zula cried out in pain and held a bloody fist protectively against her stomach. This finally got Yuxia moving; she clambered down out of the van’s door frame, thinking to go and see what was wrong. The black man looked at her curiously, but then turned his attention to the pissed-off skipper and gave him an order in a language Yuxia did not recognize. The skipper trotted back in the direction of the pilothouse.

Whatever pain had caused Zula to cry out was now subsiding. She looked up and spied Yuxia. A happy and grateful look came onto her face, but only for the briefest moment; then she looked anguished, horrified. “Yuxia! Get off! Jump into the water now!”

Yuxia hesitated, then realized that her girlfriend was probably giving her some good advice. But during that interval, another man had jumped down onto the deck from the pier. He was carrying a gun. At a word from the tall black man, he leveled the weapon at Yuxia, holding it in both hands and staring at her down the length of its barrel. Once his eye had connected with hers through its iron sights, he gave it a little twitch indicating that she should approach. She still had thoughts of taking Zula’s advice, but then the boat’s engine roared and it surged forward, causing the van to settle. Yuxia had no choice but to scamper away as the van toppled sideways off the crushed taxi. This only brought her closer to the gunman, who showed admirable focus in mostly ignoring the slow-motion vehicular avalanche taking place only a few meters away from him.

She was only a couple of meters away from Zula at this point, so she just walked over to her. Zula threw her bloody right fist around Yuxia’s shoulder, and Yuxia put both of her arms around Zula’s waist. “Thank you,” Zula said, starting to cry. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t work,” Yuxia said.

The tall black man stuck his handgun into his waistband, then reached into his pocket. “Since the two of you are on such affectionate terms,” he said, pulling out a silver key, “let’s make it official.” He unlocked the manacle from his right wrist, then peeled Yuxia’s left arm away from Zula’s waist and snapped it onto her. The two women were now joined at their left wrists, which, as they immediately discovered, meant that they couldn’t face in the same direction. If one of them walked forward, the other had to walk backward, or else they had to do something awkward with their arms, and move shoulder to shoulder. Their captor understood this very well. Seizing the manacle’s chain with one hand, he towed them aft, around the side of the pilothouse, to an open space on the stern that was shaded under a canvas awning. Rummaging around in a toolbox, he produced a hammer and a large nail. He drove the nail about halfway into a deck plank, then dragged them over, forced them down, pressed the chain to the deck right next to the nail, and pounded on the nail until it had been bent over the chain and its bowed head driven deeply into the wood.