headed back through the cargo containers, slipping easily between them. Zhao followed silently. Aware of him but unable to smell or hear him, her hackles rose. She felt like a mouse being stalked. In moments they’d arrived back at the door where she’d surprised a guard.
Nothing moved inside, so her first victim was still out cold. When Zhao slipped around the corner and headed toward an inset doorway, clearly expecting her to follow, Nikki tried to shrug off her annoyance. He’d been all over this vessel before she’d even shown up; no sense in getting bent out of shape over his take-charge attitude.
A good leader uses all the resources at her disposal, she reminded herself. Even if it means following sometimes. The thought still rankled.
In moments they’d threaded through crew recreation quarters littered with porn magazines, tools and mechanical devices broken open for repair, and headed up onto the second deck. Nikki checked the PDA. The signal was dampened within the steel house. The bridge structure acted as a giant Faraday cage, creating enough radio interference that a signal couldn’t enter nor leave. It was why radio antennae were mounted outside the house.
And why it didn’t make sense that Wryzynski, or Diviner, or whoever, would be generating that satellite signal from inside.
The second-floor galley and dining area was empty but for the three subdued triads Zhao had left there. The third deck’s whitewashed hallway ought to have been lit, but only a dim stairwell light gleamed from the far end. Several closed doors lined the hall, their inset jambs creating darker shadows that marched at regular intervals down both sides. They quickly searched each cabin, but came up empty.
Zhao was nearly through the doorway to the bridge deck when she caught the burnt coffee. She tapped his arm. He stopped instantly. She waved him back into the narrow metal stairwell, surprised when he obeyed.
Someone ahead, she motioned.
His dark eyes studied her for a moment and Nikki was suddenly thrown back years, staring into her best friend’s eyes while they stood at the mouth of an abandoned silver mine near the Athena Academy’s desert campus. Nikki had just equated the scent of burnt coffee with a child’s fear, fear that emanated from the bottom of the mine shaft. The experience had left her physically ill, weak and retching. Her claim to knowing someone was lying down that shaft had sounded crazy even to Nikki at the time, but Jess had simply prepared to rappel into the shaft.
Jess had believed her experience was real; she’d trusted her to do what had to be done.
Something like that trust was reflected in Zhao’s eyes now.
Nikki motioned toward the doorway. She reached for the L-shaped handle and paused, aware that Zhao suddenly had semiautomatics in both hands. In the half dark, she could see only the outline of his head and the fabric covering the bridge of his nose. She was struck by his stillness, by how he emanated nothing—no scent, no pent-up energy, no aggression. The guardsmen she worked with exuded machismo and nervous energy in the moments before action, but Zhao seemed almost absent from her psychic space.
She’d love to know how he did that. Her own nerves whined like a dentist’s drill.
He was waiting for her to make a move.
Nikki inhaled, drawing the air deep into her diaphragm for strength. A heartbeat, then she twisted the knob and jerked the door open to expose the darkened bridge lit only by ghostly green and orange instrument lights.
A bullet winged high and pinged off the metal doorjamb. She dropped and rolled inside. Almost immediately she crashed hard against something that gave—a man’s legs. He cried out as he went down. His gun exploded in her ear and clattered on the floor. She shoved him off her prone body and sprang up to straddle his torso. He struggled like a landed fish but stopped when she pressed her pistol’s nose to his cheek.
A click and overhead fluorescents glared. Nikki’s assailant lay cowering beneath the pistol’s muzzle, hands spread wide. The dull gray coveralls spattered with grease said he worked aboard. His frenetic gaze said he was panicked.
She leaned on the gun, pressed its muzzle into his cheek. “Don’t move!” she shouted.
The man started shouting back, spittle flying from his lips. What was he saying? His arms flailed, hitting her randomly and hard. She struggled to get her knee on his elbow, then had to defend against a sudden strike toward her neck.
“Help me out here, Zhao!”
A black-booted foot pinned the man’s windmilling arm to the floor and a flood of lilting, diving words spilled from Zhao’s mouth. The man beneath her abruptly quit fighting.
Nikki, breathing hard, warily leaned back, though she kept the gun on her assailant. “What the hell did you say to him?”
“That you are a crazy American woman and I cannot control you, so he should be still before you lose your mind and kill him.”
“Great.”
“What?” he asked as he retrieved the man’s gun from the floor. “It worked.”
Nikki caught the scent of freshly cut grass. Zhao was teasing her.
She let her smile freeze into a grimace and leaned again toward the man she sat on. He turned his face away, clearly afraid now.
“You’re right,” she admitted. “What does he know?”
Zhao spoke at length with him. During the exchange, she heard Wo Shing Wo mentioned several times, then the conversation seemed to get darker. Wet pennies emanated from Zhao and the man seemed to be trying to make himself smaller, as if afraid of being struck.
“What’s going on?” she asked after Zhao stopped speaking.
He turned toward her then and she saw beneath the black gauze the hard planes of his face. “This man manages one of the Wo’s operations. He’s the Chou Hai—a liaison officer.”
“Yeah. And?”
Zhao’s tone was stiff. “He is to prepare this boat to go to Vladivostok with its cargo.”
“Of what?” And why do I have to keep prompting you? she thought. Cooperate with me.
Angry copper surrounded her, nearly stealing her breath.
“Children. For sex slaves.”
“Damn pervert,” Nikki snarled. She grabbed the front of the man’s coveralls in her fist. “Full cargo? How many children is that?” Her voice rose. “Dozens? Hundreds? How many? Tell me!” She shook him hard, then shoved him back against the floor, away from her as if he stank.
In fact, he did. Mostly of fear. But not of shame or remorse.
Johnny’s hand covered her shoulder. “It’s a large operation. The mainland has plenty of unwanted girls to sell to the highest bidder.” His voice was hard and low. “We’ll shut these bastards down right now.” He then said something to the man, who covered his face with his hands.
Nikki guessed Johnny didn’t have to flash his badge for this guy to know he was in deep trouble.
“What about the passenger?” she asked, pulling herself back to the task at hand.
