Fire And Ice (33 page)

"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 north," 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.

"A dredge."

They ran in company with the sampan, chugging toward the river mouth. The fogthinning gusts grew more frequent, visibility frighteningly clear. Stone edged close enough to see individual bolts and pegs in its planked hull. A deckhand stepped out of the pilot house and leaned on the gunnel and eyed the sailboat. He was joined by another. Stone pulled a pack of Marlboros from his bag.

"What are you doing with those cigarettes?"

"Making friends."

He slewed alongside and lobbed the pack. In seconds both men were puffing smoke and waving their thanks.

"You should be ashamed of yourself," said Sarah, and they shared their first smile. Training walls extended from the banks and swung east to form the mouth of the Huangpu River. The tide was out, just beginning to turn, as the Veronica emerged with her shield. Ocean vessels were waiting to enter on the flood. The Chinese waved, warning their sampan would turn toward the loading hulk.

The fog was so thin he could see the opposite training wall, half a mile away. Sarah squinted. "They're flying a red flag." She thumbed through the Sailing Directions. " '

Large number of small craft, navigate with extreme caution.' " As visibility increased, sampans, lighters, and fishing boats appeared everywhere on the calm water. A cool, low sun shone through the fog, its light diffused so that it was hard to distinguish the walls, the water, the sky, and the waiting ships. Stone unfolded the chart he had bought in Hong Kong for the Yangtze estuary. The river, which drained half of China, sprawled lazily into the East China Sea, spreading silt islands in its wake and carving a dubious channel marred by sandbanks, mud flats, and sunken wrecks. He longed to swing east, slip between the islands away from the busy channel and the PLA patrols. But Veronica drew eight feet, and the chart and Sailing Directions threatened grounding for anyone who tried it without local knowledge. It would be thirty miles before he could chance a turn east—five hours motoring before they dared raise her sails—with the thinning fog and the dense marine traffic their only allies. Fuel, at least, was no problem, having topped off the tanks in the Marshalls, and not run the engine since. He steered with one eye on the compass, the other on the depth finder. Sarah sat beside him, watching for fishing boats, river craft, and ocean ships. Low islands sprawled to port. Scattered among them were almost invisible sandbanks. It was nerve-racking piloting. When the depth finder showed the water shoaling, Stone went forward, leaned over the bow, and watched for mud banks. They dodged fishing boats and sampans and tried to tail ships that seemed to know the way. Finally on the radar Stone spotted the navigation tower that marked the beginning of a ten-mile dredged channel. When Sarah eyeballed the marker, they altered course to 110° and hugged the edge of the narrow channel, which was packed with ocean ships.