Fire And Ice Page 26

She saw precisely the next few seconds: Moss would feint with the coiled rope in the garbage bag; she would dodge; he would lunge; she would be ready, turning the blade with a surgeon's hand to slide it between his ribs.

  An explosion shook the deck.

  Brilliant light flashed from the shed roof. Shadows leaped like black lightning. From the distant foredeck came a roar like a collapsed dam, shouts and screams, and then the ship'

  s fire bells and, a second later, the shocking blast of its whistle.

  Moss bolted to the bulwark and stared forward past the house to the front of the ship.

  The fog inside the shed had melted and firelight glowed on his face. His frantic gaze shot upward, up to the top of the house where Mr. Jack slept. He dropped the bag containing the rope and threw himself onto the ladder, climbing in great double-rung leaps, his huge voice thundering, "Mr. Jack, Mr. Jack!"

  Stone hauled the last mooring line aboard Veronica, ran back to the cockpit, and engaged the diesel. The stricken Dallas Belle was ringing fire bells and booming a whistle almost as thunderous as the explosion. A pillar of flame rocketed from her foredeck to the roof of the breaker's shed.

  The fog beckoned. The Swan moved eagerly from the pier.

  In seconds, every crewman on the ship would be racing to the fire, every PLA patrol on the Huangpu River converging on the breaker's yard while Veronica ran for the East China Sea.

  Stone steered close behind the ship, careful not to strike her mast top against the overhanging stern. He gazed upward, searching for Sarah.

  Under cover of the fire retardant canvas spread over the gas carrier's foredeck, he had aimed the hard blue cutting flame of an acetylene torch on a gas valve and lashed it in place. When the flame had cut a pinhole through the steel, it had ignited the gas that spewed forth under tremendous pressure. The pressure would blow the fire out and away from the powerfully constructed, heavily insulated tanks. But to extinguish the blaze and cap the gas, the crew was in for a busy morning.

  "Michael!" Sarah's cry cut through the cacophony of bells, whistles, and shouts. She was lowering a line from the vessel's port stern mooring chock.

  Ronnie slipped through the opening, wrapping a towel around the rope to protect her hands. "Daddy!" Fifty feet above the water, her grinning face shone down on him. She started sliding down the rope, one hand around it gripping the towel, waving with the other.

  "Both hands, for crissakes!" Stone jinked the Swan against the river current as he edged the bow between the side-by-side hulls of the cruise ship and the Dallas Belle. Playing the throttle against the rudder, he eased the foredeck under the rope.

  Ronnie dropped lightly to the teak.

  But instead of running back to him, she stared up at the ship. "Mummy!"

  Stone was less than forty feet from Ronnie and would have given anything to take her in his arms, but if he let go of the helm and throttle the current would sweep Veronica away from the rope.

  "Take a wrap around the bow pulpit!" he yelled. "Mummy!"

  And now he saw what Ronnie saw. Sarah plunged through the chock, her legs scissoring frantically for the rope. He thought she was stuck in the chock hole, but a second later saw she was struggling to get loose from a black man who had her by the arm.

  Trapped in the cockpit forty feet below her, Stone was helpless.

  "Ronnie! Come take the wheel."

  But Ronnie started climbing up the rope to help her mother. "No!" Stone cried. "Don't!"

  He locked the wheel and started forward.

  Sarah broke free. For an instant she had both hands on the rope, but even in that instant the man who had held her started pulling the rope up through the chock.

  Stone hit the throttle.

  "Jump for the mast!"

  Veronica surged forward. The masthead banged against the ship's hull.

  Sarah, wild-eyed, let go of the rope and leaped, falling, both arms stretched wide, grasping for the mast. She missed. Plummeting, she landed on the top spreader, mi-raculously on her feet, and, flailing her arms, caught hold of a shroud with one hand and the mast with the other.

  Stone rammed the boat into reverse. The propeller bit, and the boat backed away on boiling water. Stone looked over his shoulder, looking for room to pivot away from the towering hulls. Out of the fog came a PLA patrol boat.

  "Daddy!" Ronnie screamed.

  He saw a rush from the sky. The black man swept across the bow of Veronica as if on wings. He was swinging one armed from the rope in a broad arc like a pendulum. He brushed the forestay and scooped Ronnie off the bow pulpit like a falcon taking a sparrow.

  MOSS TOOK RONNIE SO SUDDENLY THAT THE SWAN WAS A

  hundred feet into the river and Sarah still on the mast before Stone could stop the boat.

  He saw Ronnie indistinctly through the fog, kicking and clawing. The black man held her. with one arm, shook her brutally, and pumped his legs to increase his swing.

  Stone gunned Veronica forward.

  Moss swung toward the pier, let go the rope, and landed on the edge, teetering. He caught his balance and ran for the Dallas Belle's gangway, Ronnie still in his arms.

  Stone swung toward the pier.

  Sarah screamed, "Look out!"

  A fireboat split the fog on a course that would cut Veronica in half. He slewed to port.

  The fireboat cleaved the spot the Swan had vacated and bellowed and frothed to a halt in the narrow slot between the two ships.

  A second boat loomed from starboard—a shaggy-nosed tug with a fire monitor on the bridge roof, spraying river water in a wild arc. Veronica tossed on the colliding wakes.

  A siren whooped and another PLA patrol boat roared out of the fog. Armed lookouts on its bow and flying bridge waved the Swan angrily out of its way. Stone swerved downriver. He saw Moss running up the gangway, Ronnie slung over his shoulder like a sack of laundry. Through the roar of the boat engines and the blast of the ship's whistle and the cacophony of sirens, he heard her scream, "Daddy!"

  Stone steered again for the pier.

  Sarah slithered down the mast, gripping halyards, slipping and sliding, to land hard on the coach roof. She scrambled back to the cockpit. Blood streamed from her arm, shockingly red on her white coat. Her face was contorted in pain.

  "No," she cried. "Get away."

  "Ronnie."

  He had never seen her eyes so hard. "We can't help her. He owns the army. Turn away!"

  Stone hesitated. The pier was feet ahead. Sarah seized the wheel and fought to turn it. "

  We can only help her if we get away. No one can save her if we go back."

  Stone refused to let the wheel slide through his hands. But as a fourth and fifth boat converged on the ship, he had to slam the diesel into reverse to keep from being rammed.

  "Look out!" Sarah cried.

  Something bright fell from the ship.

  Stone looked up. An old man in a bathrobe was leaning out from the balcony below the Dallas Belle's bridge, his arm stiff as if he had just hurled a hand grenade. It splashed beside the cockpit and instead of exploding, bobbed bright yellow to the surface.

  Stone lunged under the lifelines and plucked from the water a submersible Navico Axis handheld VHF. The radio was squawking like an angry crow.

  "Doc! Doc! You hear me, Doc?"

  Sarah took it from Stone. The old man was screaming into the radio's twin. "We hear you, Mr. Jack. Where's Ronnie?"

  "Get out of here."

  "Give her back. Please, give her back. We won't—"

  "Doc, you really piss me off. I trusted you and look what the hell you've gone and done.

  Doc, you hear me?"

  "Mr. Jack, I want my daughter."

  "Yeah, well, you can't have her. You ripped me off Doc."

  "Mr. Jack, we'll do anything."

  "Get that boat out of here."

  "Do it, Michael. I'll talk to him."

  Stone turned the Swan downriver. His last glimpse before the fog closed around the bleating, howling
ships and boats was of the enormous mouth of the flame-lit shed suddenly going dark. The roar of the gas fire died abruptly. But flames began leaping from the shed roof.

  "Mr. Jack," Sarah repeated, "we'll do anything."

  "Little late for that. You've made a real mess for me. Got my hands full. Goddammed cops all over, people I don't know."

  "Mr. Jack."

  "Listen to me! You want your little girl? Tokyo. Next week. You keep your trap shut, I'll hand her over. You cause me any more trouble and I'll sell her like I told you."

  "Sell her?" echoed Stone.

  "To the slave trade," Sarah whispered. She stepped back against him, the radio still pressed to her ear, and Stone closed an arm around her. "He means it."

  Stone took the radio. "Where will you hand over?"

  "Why, it's Mr. Doc! You son of a bitch, you the one started this Chinese fire drill?"

  "I want my daughter."

  "Don't stop till you get to Tokyo. Don't try to screw me up again. And, don't get caught."

  "Where? Where in Tokyo?"

  The radio hissed a long moment. Finally: "Tokyo Tower."

  "Where will you be?"

  "Right out front. Don't worry, you won't miss us. If you get there ahead of us, give you some time for your Christmas shopping."

  "He's out of his mind," said Sarah.

  "When next week?"

  "Christmas Eve. Four P.M. Sixteen hundred."

  "It's over a thousand miles!" Stone protested. "I can't make that in a week."

  "I ain't hanging around. Four P.M. deadline."

  Sarah took the radio. "Mr. Jack," she said soothingly.

  "can't we have some alternate plan in case we can't make the deadline? . . . Mr. Jack, can you hear me?"

  "We've got to go back," said Stone. "I don't care what happens. At least we'll be with her."

  Sarah shook her head violently. "Michael, we can't help her. The army, the police, they'

  re all his friends."

  "Not all. He's afraid we'll get arrested by officials he can't control." Stone whirled the helm. "We've got to go back."

  The radio spoke. "Doc, I don't know what you did to Moss. He's looking a little sleepy, but he can still shoot his sniper gun. If he sees you come out of that fog he's going to blow you away. Last chance, Doc. Get outta here before they catch you."

  "Let me speak to Ronnie."

  "You can talk to her at twelve hundred day after tomorrow. You got a sat phone on the boat?"

  "Single sideband radio."

  "Channel eighteen-twenty. Noon. Day after tomorrow." "Mr. Jack?"

  "Get outta here, Doc. They're going to start asking questions soon as we get Mr. Doc's fire under control. Damned fool, you almost blew us to kingdom come."

  "Please. Don't frighten her."

  "I'm not a monster, Doc. Just trying to make things right."

  "Don't let Moss frighten her either."

  "Moss looks ready to go sleepy-bye. But if he dies from what you shot him with, then I'll cut her little heart out." "Moss won't die."

  "Better not. Over and out."

  Stone felt helpless—flung back in memory to his first wife's dying. But then, he saw with sudden clarity, there had been nothing he could do. No human act could have saved her.

  This was worse. Ronnie's life hung on his decision. His heart said stay and fight; his gut said run.

  Sarah turned to him with tears in her eyes. "He won't hurt her. I'm sure he won't. He likes her."

  "What did he mean by 'trying to make things right'?" asked Stone.

  "God only knows."

  He smothered his heart's desire—pushed Ronnie to a deeper corner of his mind—and turned his attention to the fogbound river.

  "Let's get our reflector down so they can't track us, and switch on the radar to see where the hell we are. Is your arm okay?"

  She stared at him, through him, shaking her head. "I don't know. Can we make Tokyo in time?"

  "We can't make anything before we get out of the Huangpu. Go! I'll fix you up in a second. Drop the reflector. I'll get the radar."

  He ran down the companionway, switched on the radar, and climbed back to the cockpit with his bag. Sarah was at the mast, fumbling with the halyards. He turned off the diesel and listened.

  The receding tide and the river current had now swept them so far downstream from the breaker's yard that he could barely hear the fire bells. The ship's continuous seven short emergency whistle blasts thundered a cry for help and warnings to stand clear.

  Closer to hand, he heard the bleat of small craft horns and the steady thunder of a seagoing vessel proceeding upriver. All around sounded the sharp barking noise of the unmuffled diesels that drove the coal sampans and lighters, any of which were heavy enough to roll right over the Swan and cut her in half.

  Sarah came back from the mast with the reflector cradled in her arms. "Michael, I can't seem to . . ."

  When he tried to take the reflector from her, she clutched it tighter.

  "Michael, I—" Again she drifted off. Then, suddenly, stronger, shrill. "She's just a baby."

  "They won't hurt her. You told me. The old man likes her."

  "Do you promise?" she asked in a small voice.

  "I promise," he answered. They stared at each other through the emptiness of the hope that made the promise, each searching for the other's belief. Their boat was drifting, their senses converging on the invisible movement around, and they quickly broke apart, spirits clinging to glimpses of each other's strength at the core of despair.

  I'll believe him because I must, thought Sarah.

  And Stone thought, One step at a time; get out of the river alive.

  "All right," he said, still speaking softly, still holding her eyes with his. "I know the river pretty well. We're about four miles from where the Huangpu joins the mouth of the Yangtze. Harbor master's a mile downstream, this side. We've got to dodge him, the quarantine station, and any patrols that come along."

  He pointed into the fog. "Do you hear that bell gong? It's a beacon tower on the far side of the channel."

  Sarah cupped her ear to shield it from the fire bells and ship whistles in the breaker's yard, and isolated the mournful clang.

  "Steer for that. I'll get on the radar."

  He squeezed her hand, bowed his head to kiss it, and ran below. The radar screen was smeared with targets like a windshield in a sleet storm.

  "Starboard!" he yelled, even as Sarah started the engine. An echo was bearing down on the Swan, trailing a long phosphorous tail—a small boat moving fast. Another patrol racing to the breaker's yard. He felt the prop engage, the drive shaft grind.

  The Swan heeled, turning slowly. The phosphorous dot moved closer and began to merge with the center of the screen. Stone ran halfway up the companionway, stood on the steps, and stared into the puffy whiteness. A gray, ghostly hull swept past—close enough to hit with an empty beer can. A hard wake smacked Veronica. She rolled once and pulled away.

  The beacon tower, which the chart identified as a four-second red flasher with fog bell, returned such a strong echo that even Veronica's antiquated radar distinguished it from the myriad ship and boat targets cluttering the screen. When the sailboat was well inside the inbound lane, he ran back up to the cockpit.

  Sarah was steering to a compass bearing she had estimated from the sound of the bell and was listening for clues to the traffic.

  "Edge a little up. We've got something big inbound."

  He kicked the throttle wide open with his foot, and the boat responded to a poky six knots.

  A whistle boomed steadily closer.

  "Watch him. Listen for sampans coming the other way."

  "Shouldn't I wait and slip behind him?"

  "I don't want to hang around here, and make the patrol curious. I can't trust my papers anymore. And what if that old bastard changes his mind?" At short range, looking down, radar might pick up the steel of the Swan's engine or even the lead keel.

  "Bear n
orth," he called from the steps. "We'll angle across the outbound lane." He tried to distinguish the sampans from the bigger ships, but the radar was returning crazy echoes. When the immediate space around Veronica appeared open for a moment, he climbed back to the cockpit with a foul-weather jacket for Sarah, who was shivering at the helm.

  The fog was so thick he could hardly see the bow.

  The bell was clanging close ahead and to their right. Stone took the wheel while Sarah zipped up. The fog began vibrating with the bloody tinge of the flashing red blinker, and the bell grew so loud it almost drowned out the cacophony at the breaker's yard. He steered past the beacon and downriver on the edge of the traffic lane, then cut the engine.

  "Listen."

  The noise had faded.

  "What happened?" Sarah whispered.

  "Big ship coming downstream. We'll use him to block the harbor master's radar." He opened the throttle again. A cold wet wind suddenly cut his face, and there was the ship a hundred yards across the water—a fair-sized container vessel, its hull and containers providing a sixhundred-foot long, eighty-foot-high moving wall between Veronica and the harbor master.

  "They see us," said Sarah, and indeed, the sudden wind had so thinned the fog that a ship'

  s officer standing watch on the container vessel's bridge wing was staring in some astonishment at the unlikely sight of a Western yacht on the coal-gray Huangpu River.

  He raised his radio, alerting the river pilot to a small craft nearby.

  Stone let Veronica fall behind. "Damned wind is swinging east. Killing the fog."

  "Can we hide until night?"

  "There's a couple creeks on the Pudong side, but we'd be sitting ducks for the patrols."

  The container ship had vanished ahead. A high, empty sampan was catching up. Stone eyed it speculatively. According to the Sailing Directions, which they had left open in the cockpit between them, a bulk carrier had been sunk outside the river mouth as an unloading facility to lighten ships whose draft was too deep for the river. The empty sampan was heading out to shuttle ore or grain.

  He put an arm around Sarah. "Okay, we're going to sneak alongside this sampan. If he's like the one I was on, he's got no radio."

  "What's that?" With her unusually keen eyesight, Sarah had seen ahead what he had missed. It stood still in the channel, shrouded in fog, and for an awful second he thought it was a stationary patrol lying in ambush. A wet gust whipped the fog. A red flag over a black triangle. He checked "Signals" in the Sailing Directions.