The pitch-black foreground was accompanied by a warm yellow light to her left. She gathered her courage and slipped quickly inside, pressing her back to the cold metal and holding her breath for the benefit of her hearing. Blood pulsed so loudly in her ears that she heard nothing else. She stayed flat against the wall while her eyes adjusted to the limited light and her ears to the distant sounds. Although at first she thought she was in a room, she was in fact in some kind of hallway; the yellow light came from yet another passageway at the end. She gathered her courage and slowly walked toward that light, each footfall feeling like a lifetime, her mind cluttered with memory and thought to the point of confusion. She fought to clear her head but won little ground, conscious thought subverted by whatever process demands reflection at such moments. She saw her father, Melissa, Su-Su. She saw the studio set.
At the end of the long passageway she came across a narrow stairway leading down into the guts of the ship. An aluminum work light hung from an orange extension cord strung through the overhead metal beam at the bottom of the stairs. Stevie stood there, reluctant to descend, to risk putting herself into that light. But at last there seemed no choice in the matter.
She knew enough about ships to know that they were comprised of companionways, passageways, cabins, staterooms, holds, heads and galleys. But to her the trawler was a labyrinth of poorly lit gray steel corridors and steep ladder stairways, one leading to the other, leading to the next, lined with pipes and filled with the occasionally deafening groan of industry. The way they all connected seemed somebody’s joke. For the most part, she followed the string of lights—crudely fashioned extension cords and bare bulbs strung at random, stretching shadows along the walls and turning a simple hallway into something at once both terrifying and mysterious. The farther she ventured, the less likely it seemed to her she would ever find her way out. And if those lights were to fail. . .
Stevie placed her foot onto the step, like a swimmer testing the water. Then the next step. The third. Down she went, into that light, a shadow stretching behind her. She assumed they would kill her if they caught her, or maybe not because of her celebrity—she wasn’t sure. On reflection, Brian Coughlie had had ample opportunity to kill her, to make her disappear. So why not? Because he had missed on his first try? The hard metal walls amplified both her breathing and the grind of machinery, and thankfully covered her footfalls. She reached the bottom where the passageway turned sharply back on itself and she crept along, one hand touching the wall to give her reassurance. The smells were more caustic here: the salty tang of human toil and sea, urine and sweat, and a bitter taste like plastic in her mouth. The air grew hazy, and that haze grew thicker to her right where another passageway fed off this one. This new hallway was darker, and it led to a partially open door that was clearly the source of that sound. She felt drawn to it, unable to stop herself from entering the darker passageway and approaching that cacophony. Step by precious step she continued, checking both behind her and in front of her, expecting someone to jump out and grab her at any second. Beyond that partially open door was more darkness, but the locker-room smell of women grew more intense, and that sound—how could she describe that sound?—ever louder. Without being fully aware of her actions, her hands sought out the zipper on the camera case and blindly ran it down and around the corners to where the lid lifted open and the camera itself found its way into her hands. The lens cap came off. The switch went on. Stevie stepped up to the metal hatch and peered through. She jumped at the sound of her own gasp. She’d never seen anything like it.
This hatch led to a catwalk landing that hung like an observation balcony out over the enormous hold and in turn accessed a steel grate stairway that turned back and forth on itself descending through yet another landing before reaching the floor. She stood looking out over the forward hold of the ship, once intended to store tens of tons of fish, forty feet deep, forty wide, and perhaps sixty feet long, its floor converted to an industrial plant where dozens of women—a hundred or more—with their heads shaved bare, bowed over poorly lit sewing machines that echoed off the steel walls into a deafening noise. The machinery was crowded tightly in rows, the scraps of discarded fabric like a patchwork-quilt carpet on the floor, the lone Asian guard patrolling the aisles with what appeared to be a stun stick in his hand. The size of the operation overwhelmed her, as did the dusty air and the putrid stink. She raised the camera to her eye and began to shoot, mesmerized by it all, determined to capture it, painfully aware that as her eye took to the camera she lost all peripheral sense of her surroundings. She moved behind that steel hatch door, using it as a shield so she couldn’t be seen from the hallway. It required both hands and a heavy pull to open it slightly farther in order to screen her from the stairway as well. She pushed herself more tightly into the far corner of the tiny landing, comfortable with her hiding spot and able to see and film the activities below.
This location gave her a momentary sense of protection, despite the fact that the catwalk balcony on which she stood allowed her to be seen from most anywhere on the floor. She reminded herself that she appeared as small to them as they appeared to her; and that if she remained perfectly still, it would take a good deal of concentration to pick her out up there. The recorder counted off its footage in time: thirty seconds . . . forty . . . fifty . . . She didn’t need much. She could make her case by simply matching the images that Melissa had shot, for hers would look nearly identical, and the realization that she was standing in the exact spot where her little sister had stood before disappearing gave her a shudder of fear.
The camera’s LOW LIGHT warning troubled her. Sometimes a camcorder did fine in such light, despite the warning, but sometimes it recorded nothing but black. She could stop the recording, rewind and review her footage to make sure she had captured her proof. She was just about to do so when a bell rang out and all motion in the giant room stopped on cue.
Directly below her by some forty feet a man entered the room and spoke sharply in fluent Mandarin. ‘‘Stop your work! Line up!’’
The women obeyed like terrified soldiers, hurrying to form two long lines in a scuffling of bare feet and bowed heads. They stood at attention as the room’s lone guard moved from station to station, freeing the few women chained to their machines. What footage! Stevie’s eye remained glued to the camera. She panned from face to face hoping to see Melissa, excitement and anticipation pounding sharply in her chest. She wanted so desperately to confirm her among them.
‘‘We are leaving ship at once,’’ the man announced. ‘‘Groups of six. No more. No less. You will go orderly and quietly or you will get the stick,’’ he said, hoisting the cattle prod.
The women mumbled amongst themselves.
‘‘Silence!’’ this man roared. ‘‘Groups of six! Begin!’’
The first six shuffled out of the hold in fast little steps, as if practiced in boot camp.
Did they know someone had sneaked aboard? Had the sentry in the cabin cruiser raised the alarm? Or was this simply the plan, the reason for the semi truck?
Stevie heard the clap of quickened footsteps approaching from down the hallway behind her. Rodriguez’s thickly Hispanic voice, not twenty feet away and closing, spoke with a chilling authority. ‘‘Three of them charges go forward, two in the back . . . We flood both them holds. Set the trip on the starboard door. You got that?
He stepped out onto the balcony not three feet away from her—so close she could have reached out and touched him—a huge man with wide shoulders and a sour smell. She cowered on the far side of the steel hatch as he leaned over the rail to watch the work progressing below. She knew that smell: It was the same man who had invaded her apartment. The temperature in the hold was in the low nineties. Stevie McNeal shuddered.
He said, ‘‘Only the starboard door. Make sure them others are sealed tight as a ten-year-old.’’ As he spoke, great gushes of water began to pour into the hold from all four corners. The cold seawater rushed toward the feet of the women who stood at attention without saying a word. That power cord she had followed was strung along the floor like a snake. Its electricity wouldn’t mix well with water.
Rodriguez said, ‘‘With them holds flooded she’ll go down fast. Our guy’ll be the first aboard when they get here—he’ll make certain it trips. Get ’em in that truck. Fast. Hurry!’’
‘‘The machines,’’ a guttural Asian voice objected. ‘‘What about the machines?’’ Hidden by the door, this man went unseen by her.
‘‘He said lose ’em,’’ Rodriguez replied. ‘‘It don’t look right otherwise. With the mud down there it’ll be a mess. We buy ourselves a day at least, maybe a week or more. That’s all that matters. He thunk it through, I’m telling ya. It’s sweet.’’
