shirt was open to the waist anti he had an AK-47 over his shoulder and a H&K 9 mm. pistol in his belt. He was wearing gold-rimmed Porsche sunglasses.
‘Uh-oh, that’s the Haitian, the one they call Billy Death,’ Cohen said. ‘He’s the one likes to cut off people’s feet. Look down at the bow.’
Hatcher swung the binoculars down and searched the front of the barge. There, hanging by a cord, appeared to be a pair of shoes. Hatcher flipped the switch on the glasses and increased the focal length, zooming in tightly on the shoes. He could see the rotten gray skin of an ankle sagging over the top of one of the shoes. Flies buzzed furiously around it.
‘My God,’ Hatcher gasped.
‘It should be all right,’ Daphne said. ‘He doesn’t know you. He probably won’t pay any attention to us.’
‘Yeah,’ said Cohen. ‘Just business as usual.’
Sam-Sam’s barge was a sprawling floating flatbed, stacked with contraband and ammunition. He had a dozen of his best men with him and seven women, some of them concubines, some tougher than the men. Batal was along but Billy Death was not. The Haitian didn’t like the river.
‘What is the problem with Billy Death?’ Sam-Sam asked Batal.
‘He cannot swim,’ the Iranian answered.
Sam-Sam thought that was funny.
‘He is afraid to ride the barge because he cannot swim?’ Sam-Sam said with a laugh.
The Iranian nodded.
‘Hell, I cannot swim,’ Sam-Sam said, smacking his chest with an open hand.
‘Neither can I,’ Batal said, and he started laughing too.
A racket from the rear of the barge broke up their merriment. The helmsman came running forward.
‘What was all that about?’ Sam-Sam demanded.
The helmsman pointed toward the rear of the barge.
‘Generator blow up,’ he stammered.
‘Well, change it. Throw that one overboard and hook up another one.’
The helmsman shook his head.
‘Do not have,’ he said.
‘We do not have a spare generator?’
The helmsman shook his head. He stared down at the deck.
‘Only one generator?’ Sam-Sam stormed. ‘We got every fucking other thing on this damn barge. We got TVs, stereos, we got Thai silk and cotton from India. We got cigarettes from America, France, England, Turkey, Egypt. So why do we only have one generator? So? Anybody got an answer to that?’
He raged around the deck kicking at things and cursing to himself, his snake eyes darting from one person to another. Suddenly he drew his pistol. The men and women on deck moved back as a group. Sam-Sam stalked the deck like an insane man, twirling on the balls of his feet, glaring from one face to the next.
‘Who takes responsibility?’ he screamed.
His clan stared at him, afraid to speak.
‘Who wants to eat a bullet?’ he yelled. His voice carried into the jungle and echoed back. ‘Anybody?’
He waited for a few moments more, enjoying the fear etched on the faces of his band. Then suddenly he wheeled and emptied the gun into the forest. Birds scattered, shrieking their complaints.
Sam-Sam turned back to his crew and laughed. His crew relaxed. There was a wave of nervous laughter.
‘So — we go back,’ Sam-Sam said with a shrug. ‘What is the big rush to go anywhere?’
LEATHERNECK JOHN’S
Sing guided the snakeboat into the dock beside Leatherneck John’s and they tied it down.
‘Everybody stay loose unless there’s trouble, okay?’ Hatcher said.
Sing and Joey, the other gunman, nodded. Sing followed them down the makeshift dock to the bar. A large slab of ebony over the door had ‘Leatherneck John’s Last Chance Saloon’ carved into it, and a line below it, ‘Founded 1977.’
Hatcher was surprised when they entered the place. He had expected the bar to be a tawdry, ramshackle oasis in the midst of the Ts’e K’am Men Ti’s contraband market. But the big room was clean and neat. On one side there were twenty or so tables and a pool table that had seen better days. A black man with thick hair tied in a tight ponytail was sleeping on his side on the pool table. He was wearing olive drab combat pants and Hawaiian shirt, and was using his bush jacket as a pillow. On the other side was the bar, a long, fancy oak bar with a slate top.
‘The last time I saw a bar that fancy was in Paris,’ Hatcher said.
‘Came from a joint in Mong Kok,’ Cohen said. ‘The way the story goes, Leatherneck John won the whole place
