Snakehead

Alex had caught up on the sleep he’d missed at Jakarta, although he’d had bad dreams . . . Ash, Thai boxing, sardines! Now he’d had enough.

He dug into his pocket and took out the pack of chewing gum, then slid open the panel in the side. He had to hold it against the light to see properly, but there were the three numbers: 1, 5, and 10, each with its own switch.

The five-baht coin was already in position. When Alex had climbed into the container, he had pretended to stumble, and as he reached out to steady himself, he had slipped it behind the sliding bolt. As long as none of the snakehead members had seen it, it was still there, mag-netically held in place underneath him. Now was the time to find out. He would just have to hope that the noise of the engines and the sea swell would cover any sound made by the explosion.

He went over to the trapdoor and knelt beside it. He couldn’t hear anything outside, but that was hardly sur-T h e L i b e r i a n S t a r 225

prising. The other refugees were looking at him, wondering what he was doing. There was no point in waiting any longer. Alex pressed the switch marked 5.

There was a sharp crack underneath the trapdoor, and a wisp of acrid smoke rose up inside the container. One of the women began to gabble at Alex, but he ignored her.

He pressed down with one hand, and to his relief, the trapdoor fell open, forming a small chute that angled into the darkness between the two blocks. The bolt had snapped in half. There was just enough room for Alex to slither out—but into what? It was always possible that he would find himself in the very depths of the hold, hemmed in on all sides, with nowhere else to go.

He had caused a minor panic inside the container.

Everyone was talking at once, at least half a dozen languages fighting with one another all around him. Salem came over to him and tugged at his shirt, pleading with him not to do whatever it was he had planned. He looked bewildered. Who was this boy, traveling on his own, who had dared to antagonize the snakehead by attempting to leave without their permission? And how had he done it?

They had heard the bolt shatter, but that was all. It seemed to have happened by magic.

Alex looked Salem in the eyes and pressed a finger against his lips. He was pleading with the old man to be silent and not to let the others give him away. It was the most he could hope for. These people were here to make a journey. He had nothing to do with them. With a bit of 226

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luck, none of them would try to follow him out or, worse still, tell the ship’s crew what had happened. But if he waited any longer, one of them might try to stop him. It was time to go.

Still not sure what he was letting himself in for, Alex slid through the trapdoor headfirst, easing himself into the black square that had opened up below. It was much cooler outside. He had been sharing the same air with twenty people for an entire day and night, and he had been unaware how stifling it had become. It was noisier too. He could hear the hum of the ship’s engines, the grinding of machinery in constant motion.

But at least there was a way out. Alex found himself in what was effectively a long, flat tunnel. The containers were piled up on top of him, and he could feel their huge weight pressing down. But there was a crawl space about half a yard high between the floor above him and the ceiling of the container below. He could see the daylight bleeding in—a narrow strip like a crack in a brick wall.

Using his knees and elbows, he pushed himself toward it.

It was a painful process, constantly scraping his legs and banging his shoulders on the rusty metal above and below him.

At last he reached the edge, only to find himself high above the deck, caught three stories up a tower of containers with no obvious way to climb down. Alex could see the ocean rushing past on the other side of the ship. There T h e L i b e r i a n S t a r 227

was no sign of land. For a moment he was tempted to crawl back inside. He had nowhere to run. Swimming was out of the question. He would be safer back with Salem and the others.

And was there really any chance of finding Ash? The Liberian Star was huge. It probably held a thousand containers. Ash could be stuck in any one of them, locked up with his own crowd of refugees. Alex had never felt so helpless. But going back would be admitting defeat. Ever since he had first encountered the snakehead in Bangkok, he had allowed them to push him around. He’d had enough. It was time to fight back.

He had come out at one of the long sides of the container, with a sheer drop to the deck below. There was no way down, so he crawled all the way along the edge and over to the front. He had more luck here. The container doors were fastened with long steel rods that formed a climbing frame, and there were the metal security pins and locks that would provide perfect footholds. Alex knew he had to move quickly. It was still light—he guessed it must be late afternoon—and he would be seen by anyone who happened to appear on deck. On the other hand, he would have to be careful. If he slipped, there was a long way to fall.

Holding on to one of the bars, he squeezed himself out and then began the journey down, trying to ignore the sea spray that whipped into his back and made every surface 228

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slippery. His worst fear was that a crew member would come out, and despite the danger, he forced himself to move faster, finally dropping the last few yards and crashing down onto the deck, anxious to get himself out of sight. Nobody had seen him. He looked back up, checking the position of the container just in case he needed to return. There was the name, Unwin Toys, in great white letters. Alex thought about the secret it concealed. He had to admit that he had never come across a criminal organization—or a crime—quite like this.

He looked around. It was only now, crouching in the open air, that he realized quite how enormous the Liberian Star actually was. It measured at least three hundred yards in length, and it must have been about fifty yards across. The containers were piled up like metal office blocks, surrounded by decks, gantries, and ladders that would allow the crew to scurry around in what little space was left. Alex was at the back of the ship, where the huge anchor chains disappeared into a cavity below. In front of him, the bridge rose up, the eyes and brain of the entire ship. Behind him, the water boiled, churned up by the propellers below. He guessed they must be traveling at about thirty-five knots, or thirty miles per hour.