The helicopter rumbled by again. Another pass or two and it would have to leave. Ahab was certain of this. He would wring the information out of the major or end his life before then.
He picked up a length of metal from the deck, examining its jagged end. “I’ll ask you one more time,” he said. “But first…”
He lunged forward with the staff, thrusting it downward and through the major’s gut. It stuck out through his back, the jagged tip grinding into the metal deck behind him.
Gushan howled in pain and writhed around the stave like a fish impaled with a spear. Ahab used the leverage it gave him to makeGushan bow down before him. “Assuming you can speak, I will take that answer now.”
Gushan coughed and choked and drooled a string of blood. Then bravely shook his head.
Enraged, Ahab grabbed the metal shaft with both hands, intending to rip the major apart. But a rifle crack sounded, his leg exploded in a spray of blood and bone, and it was Ahab who went to the ground.
His men raced for cover. Some of them diving to the deck, others hiding behind the stacks of machinery and equipment in the hold. A firefight erupted as shots rang out from all sides. Ahab watched several of his men go down.
“Throw your weapons away,” a voice demanded from the rafters.
Crawling desperately for cover, Ahab was stunned by the timbre of the voice, it was loud and deep and cut through the clamor circulating in the hold.
“The Chinese navy is surrounding the ship,” the voice added. “It’s over.”
Almost poetically the helicopter raced by once again. But Ahab heard the pitch of the rotors change. It was headed out, going back to the mainland at last. They still had a chance.
Removing his belt, he cinched it around his leg, pulling it tight and stemming some of the blood loss. With his leg stable and numbness already setting in, Ahab drew a long-barreled pistol from his chest pack. The weapon was oddly shaped, fitted with attachments. It almost looked like a homemade weapon, but was actually a modified competition pistol.
Ahab was so accurate with the weapon, he’d once shot a man dead by firing a bullet down a sixty-foot length of pipe no wider than a tennis ball. The shell had flown dead center down the pipe, striking its target on the far end without ever grazing the sides.If he could spot the intruder, even just part of him, he would not miss.
“Open the hatch,” he ordered.
One of his men had been standing near the controls. The man threw the switch, and the huge cargo door cracked open and slid backward. Orange sunlight poured into the vast compartment, filtering through the smoke.
“Anyone who makes a move for that door is a dead man,” the voice shouted in warning.
Ahab had heard only one voice. Even in the brief gunfight the attackers had fired only a few shots. Through the intense pain he calculated the reality. A large group would have opened fire en masse, taking out most of the smugglers in a single volley. There could be only one or two men stalking them now.
“They’re up in the rigging above the cranes,” he said to his men. “Pin them down.”
His men took potshots at the catwalks and ladders that ran across the top of the hold. Ricochets rebounded, but neither Ahab nor his men faced any return fire.
Ahab crawled to a new position, spotting a man slithering along the yellow steel I-beam rail that supported one of the mobile cranes. He raised his weapon and fired.
The first shot plunked the beam dead center. He cursed himself for missing, but he was unsteady and losing blood.
He aimed again, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger. This shot missed the steel rail and grazed the man’s arm. Not a fatal wound, but one that drew a reaction. The target rolled off the I-beam and dropped onto a catwalk.
Ahab fired again, but the man leapt down onto a cargo container and out of sight.
“Get the boat ready!” Ahab yelled.
One of his men activated the conveyor belt. The ribbed inflatable boat began to move.
While another one of his men engaged the second attacker, Ahab saw his chance. “Help me,” he shouted. “Get me up!”
The man who’d started the conveyor rushed to Ahab’s side, lifting him up and assisting him across the deck. They reached the boat and tumbled inside.
As the boat neared the open hatch, gunfire burst forth from beside the cargo container. Bullets ripped into the inflated sections of the boat. They plugged the control column and the engine, but hit neither Ahab nor the other smuggler.
Ahab fired back, forcing the attacker to take cover once more. The ribbed boat neared the top of the ramp. Two more of his men ran forward, jumping into the boat. They fired their weapons in all directions, trying to keep the attackers pinned down.
The front end of the boat tipped over onto the slope. Just then the American who’d hidden behind the cargo container reappeared. The outside light lit upon him as he stepped forward.
