Stealing the Dragon

him through the hatch. It happened so fast he didn’t have time to yell. He plummeted through space, the refugees parting like the Red Sea, clearing the floor before he hit the deck with a sickening thud.

Long seconds ticked by as he lay there unmoving, then he groaned and raised his head. He tried to sit up and almost fainted, realizing too late that both his arms were broken. Twisting his head around, he looked at the men and women huddled nearby, an imploring look on his battered face.

The faces that looked back were no longer filled with fear-bright fires of hatred were lighting their eyes. As quickly as they had moved away, the ragged mob converged on the lone crewman. The hatch slammed shut just as he started to scream.

She heard a muffled cry and whirled around as a lone seagull cut across the bow of the ship. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the hatch, wondering if she’d heard the gull or a cry for help from the lone crewman.

I hope he isn’t dead yet. Some deserve to see it coming.

She hoped her calculations were correct. They were due to arrive in San Francisco that morning, maybe even within the hour. The crew would be awake soon and start moving refugees into the empty containers on deck. A heavy fog wrapped around the ship like a blanket, but she could just discern the ghostly outline of land.

The Golden Gate Bridge should be visible anytime now.

She stepped carefully across the deck to the starboard side. Glancing at the black water, she estimated the distance, wondering if the nylon rope around her waist was long enough. Stealing a lifeboat would make too much noise, so she had to stay hidden until they were almost at port. They would unload the containers filled with cargo like every other ship, leaving the refugees onboard until nightfall. Then they would turn the operation over to their Chinatown contacts while they got drunk in a local bar.

She thought of all the people trapped in the belly of the ship. Entire families who sacrificed everything just to escape their homeland, parents who sold themselves into slavery so they could give their children a chance they never had.

Her original plan was to leave no trace, hoping the crew would come to the conclusion that the guard had fallen to his death, knowing none of the refugees would expose her. She thought of the girl crying and the look in the mother’s eyes, the woman’s expression not recriminating or even angry. Simply determined, devoid of fear. There was something in those eyes that neither the crew nor a daughter’s suffering could take away.

She touched the package beneath her clothes and reminded herself why she was there, then cursed under her breath and shook her head at her own foolishness.

We cannot choose what fate will bring us, or when it will arrive.

Words from her childhood invaded her thoughts.

Death is an ally. Use him wisely.

She closed her eyes and sighed, then crept across the deck until she was directly below the wheelhouse. At this hour there would only be two men in the forward cabin, if that. The others should still be belowdecks. Reaching around with her right hand, she pulled a black anodized knife from behind her back, the tip of the blade angled sharply in the style of the Japanese tanto. Its weight against her spine had been a cold comfort during the long journey.

She heard voices a few feet away and realized there could be more than two men inside the cabin. She knew the number didn’t really matter. If she had learned only one thing, it was that nothing was certain in this life, except death.

She tightened her grip on the knife and stepped through the cabin door.

Chapter Three

“It’s big, ain’t it?”

Howard McClosky had been asking his wife Betty the same question for the past five minutes. It was a question he usually asked in the bedroom, a thought that almost made her smile, but she kept her mouth shut and gritted her teeth. She knew Howard got a little touchy about their private life and besides, she was trying her damnedest not to puke.

“And it’s getting bigger,” was all she said, glancing at the huge container ship and trying not to turn green. She turned away after a second and locked her eyes on the deck between her feet.

They were squeezed alongside the starboard rail of the Alcatraz II, a twin engine powerboat that ferried people from Pier 39 to the infamous island prison. They’d come all the way from Lubbock, Texas, and stood in line for three hours with thirty other people who were now crammed aboard right next to them, holding on to the rails for dear life. The tour guide had warned them San Francisco Bay got pretty choppy this time of year, but Betty thought he could have been a little more specific with the folks from out of town, which was pretty much everybody. Either that or hand out Dramamine on the dock. The sky that day might have been blue through the breaks in the fog, but the currents were hellacious. As far as Betty was concerned, it was The Perfect Storm out here. She expected to see George Clooney float by any second.

“It’s funny how your whole perspective changes once you’re on the boat,” mused Howard, totally oblivious to the rolling of the deck. Last time Betty checked, he was the only one onboard not staring at his shoes. She figured it must be all that spicy food he ate-the jalapenos fucked up his stomach so bad he couldn’t feel a thing. Probably why he farted so much, now that she thought of it. She started humming to herself to keep her mind off the waves. Howard, my husband, the flatulent sailor.

But to Howard, she just nodded dumbly as he continued his monologue.

“Like that big one there,” he said, jutting his chin at the massive container ship cutting across the bay. “A few minutes ago, it looked like we were a couple of miles away from Alcatraz and that ship was just coming under the Golden Gate. Now you’d swear we’re gonna hit the island any second and that ship is gonna meet us there, even though you gotta figure the captains would keep us at least a couple hundred yards apart. It’s gotta be a code or regulation, don’t you think?”

Betty looked up at the big ship, sensing Howard needed some kind of response. Even at home he needed at least an “uh-huh” or “I see what you mean” to egg him on, not satisfied asking a purely rhetorical question. Hard enough being married to such a talker, but to provide constant feedback, well, being a woman was never easy. Not wanting Howard to get pouty, Betty tore her eyes away from the undulating deck to verify Howard’s insightful observation about optical illusions.

Howard was right. The freighter looked as tall as a skyscraper, blotting out the sun, looming so close she thought she could touch it. She looked past Howard and saw the captain’s face as he shouted against the wind at one of the crew standing near the bow. Whipping her big hair back toward the freighter, Betty saw the rivets in the hull, the dull scratches in the paint, even smelled the sour tang of oil from somewhere in the boiler room. Her eyes glued to the black ship, Betty reached out, grabbed Howard’s hand, and started screaming.

A second later, the impact knocked the smaller boat right out of the water. The sound of metal hulls colliding drowned out the passengers, the wind, and the churning water below. The powerboat bent nearly in half, shooting twenty feet into the air before landing against the rocks at the base of Alcatraz. The passengers and crew flew off the deck like ping-pong balls shot from a cannon, splashing into the water a good thirty yards from the island.

Betty and Howard, still hand in hand, hit the water hard and sank a good fifteen feet before their natural buoyancy brought them to the surface. Betty’s hair broke the water first, followed by Howard in the midst of a sentence he’d started just before Betty got her scream out, something to do with relative distances at sea.

Betty gasped. The water was ice cold, the current yanking them and twisting them around. She tilted her head back and tried to keep her mouth above the waves, her eyes glued to the mammoth black hull just fifty feet away. The container ship had run aground on the banks of Alcatraz, the sharp metal prow digging into the coarse sand, the giant vessel listing sharply sideways.

Betty thought she heard a Klaxon somewhere in the distance, but she couldn’t be sure. As the waves lapped against her ears, it sounded like a large group of people were singing, or maybe screaming, a muffled chorus somewhere nearby. She saw spots and figured she was losing consciousness, but she still clung to Howard and figured she’d be all right. All that hot air should keep them bobbing on the surf till the Coast Guard arrived.