Neal Stephenson - Reamde

The gunman was right in front of her door, which he had just finished kicking open. Seeing Sokolov in the corner of his eye, he performed a classic double-take. During the second half of this, Sokolov fired two rounds into his head. He could tell by the way that the man collapsed that the rounds had gone into his brain and that he was dead, but as he approached he fired two more just to be sure, then picked up the submachine gun, which the man had dropped on the floor. Its clip was probably very close to being empty. Scanning the man’s body he noticed an extra clip protruding from a pocket, so he grabbed that. He noticed a phone too, so he took that as well. And finally, best of all, he found his own phone, which this man had taken from the safe house and dropped into a pocket.

He then walked through the apartment, announcing himself so that Olivia would know who he was.

He was dismayed to find that she was no longer on the terrace, but looking down he saw that she had made her way to the ground, apparently without breaking any bones, and was gathering up the items that had spilled from the bag when Sokolov had tossed it. He whistled. She looked up. He pointed to the gate that led out to the street. She saw it and nodded. He spun on his heel and strode out of the apartment. He peeled off the bloody poncho and threw it on the floor, then sprinted down the stairs, burst out the front of the building, and ran down its front steps in time to see Olivia’s form silhouetted in the gate.

“To the ferry terminal,” he said. “Avoid big streets.” His hearing was recovering to the point where he could hear sirens now.

She led him uphill, which he hadn’t expected, since water was generally down —but only so that she could dart into the grounds of a school across the street. They ran across its playing field and out a back gate, then followed a series of alleys and staircases that took them eventually to one of the big parks that spread along the side of the island facing Xiamen.

As they came in view of the ferry terminal, Sokolov checked his watch and found that four minutes had elapsed since the onset of gunfire. Most police departments could not respond that quickly; but if the local cops had been put on some kind of alert because of this morning’s disaster in Xiamen, they might have a heavier than normal presence in the ferry terminals. And indeed, through the glass doors of the terminal Sokolov could see PSB officers, at least half a dozen of them, paying close attention to their walkie-talkies.

His pace faltered.

Olivia turned toward him, seeing the same thing.

“We need fast water taxi,” Sokolov said.

Olivia pointed into the adjoining park. “Go that way,” she said, “wait at the foot of the big statue.”

There was no mistaking what this meant, any more than a tourist in New York Harbor could fail to understand what “the big statue” was. She was talking about a huge stone rendering of Zheng Chenggong, which stood on a pedestal at the edge of the water and was lit up with spotlights so that it could be seen from miles away.

“I’ll hire a water taxi and meet you there,” she explained.

He thought he saw sincerity in her face. Trusting her was a risk, but walking anywhere near the ferry terminal at this moment was a risk too. He nodded, then turned away and walked into the park.

It was a big park, and it took him a few minutes to get near the statue of Zheng Chenggong.

The pedestal itself rose sharply out of the water and was not a good place to board a boat, but below it was a little stretch of sandy beach. He saw a white water taxi rounding a turn into the bay. So he ran down some tiers of stone steps that afforded access to the beach and waited for it to come in closer so that he could wade out to it. But the driver cut his engine and seemed disinclined to come in closer; Sokolov could hear an unpleasant conversation between him and Olivia.

The problem, perhaps, was that normal people didn’t wade out into the ocean to board a water taxi, and the mere fact that this was being proposed had aroused his suspicion.

He looked about. The pedestal of the statue was perhaps a hundred meters down the beach to his right. Running along its base was a walkway that developed into a short causeway, extending over shallow, rocky water to a house-sized boulder just a stone’s throw away from the shore. Some sort of little temple or gazebo had been constructed on top of that. From it, another little causeway stretched out to an even smaller rock that supported a navigation light. Sokolov flashed his flashlight at the water taxi to get their attention, then waved suggestively in that direction. He did not want to say anything since this would reveal that he was non-Chinese. Willing himself not to break into a dead sprint, he quick-walked up the beach, took a little stone stairway up to the level of the causeway, and then walked across it to the boulder. The causeway skirted this and then headed out to the navigation light. By the time Sokolov got out to that second stretch of causeway, he could see the water taxi approaching and hear the argument continuing.

He had probably aroused the suspicions of the local watermen with his earlier behavior. Word had gotten around. Perhaps they’d even heard the gunfire from up the hill.

The boat would come up just beneath him here. He turned his back on it as it drew closer.

Olivia broke into English. “He refuses to take us,” she announced. “So I asked him, ‘What do you want me to do, jump overboard and swim to shore?’ And he at least agreed to come and let me off here. Can you give me a hand up?”

“Of course,” Sokolov said, and turned to face the boat.

The look on the driver’s face was everything Sokolov had hoped for. But he had already cut his engine and drifted in close. He reached down to shift his propeller into reverse gear, but Olivia hooked her arm into his and prevented it. The boat drifted closer. Sokolov vaulted over the causeway’s railing and slammed down onto its prow, then dove over its windscreen and came up onto his feet in time to intervene in a physical squabble between Olivia and the driver. He got the latter in a very simple armlock, just to focus his attention, and then let him see the submachine gun.

At that point, the driver saw reason and sat down.

“Tell driver to go north around Xiamen,” Sokolov suggested.

Olivia said something. The driver backed the boat away from the causeway and then turned it out into the open channel. Once they were well clear of shallows, he made a new course with Gulangyu on the left and downtown Xiamen on the right, and throttled it up.

Sokolov sat down in the back, pulled a life vest out of a storage bin, and set to work strapping it to Olivia’s bag.

This did not take especially long, so when it was finished, he leaned back and enjoyed the view of the city, the colossal bridges thrown over the straits that separated it from the mainland, the container port, the big freighters riding at anchor. He would never see Xiamen again, that was for certain.

Something trembled against his leg. He reached in and pulled out the phone he’d taken from the dead jihadist. It had a new text message, consisting of three question marks.

Sokolov flipped through the “recent calls” menu and found seventeen consecutive phone calls to or from the same number, all during the last ten hours or so.

He debated whether he should do this. It was not the safest, most conservative measure for him to take. But they were well clear of the most developed part of the city, rounding the northern curve of the island, the flat open land where they’d built the airport. In another few minutes, Taiwanese territory would come into view.

He hit redial.

“ARE YOU OKAY? Where is Zula?”