Still smiling, she slung her backpack over her shoulder, preparing to shoulder her way through the throng flowing toward the illuminated sign that read Trains to city. A chirping sound started up and it took her a moment to realize it was her new phone. She slid sideways through the slipstream of travelers to a vacant spot by the wall.
Nikki answered the phone with, “Your timing’s good.”
“There’s a problem,” Dana replied. “We lost your contact.”
Nikki settled her backpack between her feet. “What do you mean ‘lost’?”
“Regina Woo’s been killed.”
Shock coursed through Nikki’s veins as she let her back make contact, hard, with the polished stone wall. She didn’t know Regina—she was another Athena student who’d graduated before Nikki arrived—and had had limited contact with her to set up their meeting, but…she was Athena. She was a sister. And having grown up in Hong Kong before moving to the States, she was a natural contact for this mission to find Diviner.
“What happened?” Nikki asked.
“She was ambushed leaving work late last night. It looks like a gang murder to the police, but we think the gang was reporting to someone else.”
“Who?”
“Triads.”
Well, hell. Nikki knew of the triads only by reputation. The gang specialized in cocaine and heroin export with side businesses in extortion and child prostitution. They also had a nasty habit of cutting off the fingers of members who’d disappointed them and giving a traitor the “Death By a Thousand Cuts.”
“What about the guy Regina hired to keep watch for the SHA vessel?” she asked. “Is he still working for us?”
“As far as we know.” Dana was silent for a moment. “Regina worked with several people. Let’s hope Johnny Zhao is one of the less…interesting…ones.”
“I don’t have a way of contacting him. I’ll have to meet up with him in port.” Nikki cursed inwardly. Meet up with a man whose face she didn’t know in a city she’d never visited and without her familiar Smith & Wesson 9 mm in her hand. This didn’t look good. Or feel good. She could be walking toward her death just as readily as Regina had. “I don’t like it.”
“What do you want to do?”
Nikki didn’t hesitate. “Finish the job.”
“You sounded unsure.”
“I was just stating a fact.” She lowered her voice as a tourist couple, English by their tweed slacks, walked by, gawking and dragging heavy suitcases. Nikki tried to keep the annoyance out of her voice as she said, “I couldn’t bring a firearm into the country and I’m stuck now without a weapon. Or a translator in case this guy doesn’t speak English like the rest of post-Brit Hong Kong. I don’t like it. These are facts, but they don’t mean I won’t finish what I’ve started.”
“I might be able to call in some backup from New Mexico—”
“Our window’s closing,” Nikki snapped. “The ship is due in tonight and I need to be on it as soon as I can get on it. I can’t afford to wait for someone else to fly in as backup. Our mark will have disappeared by then.”
“You’re right.”
“I’ll hook up with the contact if I can find him and go from there.”
“Call me tomorrow.” A pause. “If you get a chance.”
Nikki nodded. Dana actually meant if you’re still alive. “Will do.”
She snapped the phone shut.
Her first priority was to locate this Johnny Zhao guy, assuming he was still alive. He was supposed to be stationed at the container terminal, but as she didn’t know his face, she had no idea who to look for.
It’s easy, she reprimanded herself. Look for the armed Chinese guy in black hanging out in the shadows.
Right.
This mission would be a challenge, but she’d faced challenges before. Unbidden, the Cuban girl’s face surfaced in her mind. She ruthlessly shut the vision out of her head. Time to get moving. The sooner she hooked up with Zhao, the sooner she’d get her hands on a sidearm. Or a rifle. Preferably both.
She headed down the wide tunnel toward the trains, and a huge party of Chinese caught up to her, talking amongst themselves in complex, tonal Cantonese. As they swirled around her, dragging their luggage and waving at small children to catch up, Nikki caught the clean cotton scent of new clothes layered on warm flesh that exuded garlic, ginger and some other scent she couldn’t name. They closed around her tightly, enveloping her completely until her wide-open-spaces, American self felt almost claustrophobic, then hurtled forward to close around her as if she were a tree planted in the middle of a stream.
A hard bump knocked her elbow forward. Nikki instinctively rocked onto the balls of her feet, ready to fight.
A little girl in a pleated skirt and crisp white shirt shot her a half-fearful, half-apologetic smile as she sprinted past, her perfectly straight blue-black hair shimmering on her shoulders. A man who might have been the girl’s father cuffed her gently and guided her in front of him.
Nikki decided she was a helluva long way from home.
The wind kicked up and the scent hit her face-first: sea and salt mixed with diesel fumes and old fish. Now this felt more like home.
Nikki flattened into the shadow of massive metal containers stacked four high and hoped the security guard wouldn’t hear the water dripping from her wet suit. He walked briskly, his boots crisp on the pavement, and disappeared down past a line of containers laid out like a child’s carefully arranged toy blocks.
The Kwai Chung Container Terminal was a city that never slept. It gleamed at night, lit partly from its own high-powered floods and partly from the high-rises packed along the southwest shore of the New Territories. Of its nine terminals—Kwai Chung was the busiest container terminal in the world— Terminal Eight would accept delivery of the SHA shipment.
And it had taken a heckuva lot of cunning to get inside. Fortunately, no one had been watching the water for sneaky swimmers. The ladder bolted into the concrete pier was just as convenient for her as it would have been for a clumsy sailor, and the metal gate guarding it had yielded to some basic lock-picking.
Her goal was simple. Get aboard the SHA vessel and use her PDA to scan for a signal. If Diviner was on the ship, the signal strength would lead her to him. Then she’d contact Delphi.
Nikki peeled out of her wet suit to reveal a black long-sleeved shirt and the formfitting black pants she used for her martial arts training workouts. Her face she’d already smeared with grease, and her hair was swept back in a secure ponytail. The waterproof gear bag was slung on her back like a backpack.
She glanced around the corner of the container stack that hid her. The SHA vessel loomed at the pier’s edge, its massive dock lines—as big around as her waist—looped over the equally massive mooring cleats. Lights blazed on deck as dockhands moved back and
