The Chinese laborers given this dangerous job were those who had already been exposed to fatal doses of mercury vapor working in the plant. Most moved like zombies, their brains destroyed by the cumulative effects of mercury poisoning, while others were so afflicted with tremors they could barely stand. If by some miracle they survived the next few days, they would never recover from the exposure. And even if they did, they had received such high doses that generations of their children would suffer unspeakable birth defects.
Eddie burned the image of the brain-damaged workers splashing about amid the mercury puddles into his mind. He was so intent that he didn’t realize the worker next to him had finished filling his plastic bucket with muddy ore. The young Chinese tried to catch Eddie’s attention, but a guard noticed the lapse first. He lashed out with a weighted piece of hose that caught Eddie behind the knee. His leg buckled, but he refused to allow himself to fall. He knew not to even glance at the guard, because such defiance would send the Indonesian into a frenzy that in his condition Eddie didn’t know if he could survive.
He hoisted the fifty-pound bucket onto his shoulder, smearing old abrasions that wouldn’t heal in the constant damp. Eddie’s roommate from the cruise ship, Tang, had timed his work so the two of them would trudge down the hill together. Of the original ten men crammed into the cabin when Eddie first arrived, only he and Tang were still alive.
“I think they are leaving today,” Tang said out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes downcast on the treacherous footing.
“I believe you’re right, my friend. The drydock will be empty soon, and it won’t take them long to drag the processing plant off the beach. And have you noticed the fishing boats haven’t been around for a while?”
“How can I not?” Tang replied with a sparkle in his voice. “The only thing worse than ground-up fish paste is three-day-old ground-up fish paste.” They maneuvered around a particularly tricky spot before Tang remarked, “There is also what is happening around the ship the guards use as their dormitory.”
For the past few days a double-ended tender had been making trips between the dormitory ship and the tug they were going to use to take away the processing plant. The area around the dorm ship had always been off limits to the Chinese, but since the transfer had begun the number of guards had doubled. Most of them were Indonesian, but there were also a handful of hard-looking Europeans who reported to Savich and not the Sikh. Judging by their discipline, Eddie thought they were ex–special forces, Russia’s elite Spetsnaz. He could also tell that the Russians were as suspicious of the Indonesian guards as they were the laborers.
It didn’t take a genius to know that they were transporting the gold they had already processed. Judging by how low the thirty-foot tender was in the water when she motored out to the tug, Eddie estimated they’d moved a hundred tons of bullion. The gold was being stacked in two shipping containers lashed to the tug’s deck.
“What do you think will happen to us?” Tang asked.
“I told you what I heard Paulus tell Anton Savich, that they’re going to leave us behind.”
“So, we die on this forsaken stretch of coast whether they are here or not.”
Eddie could tell from the sorrow in Tang’s words that the younger man had reached his emotional and psychological limit. Like in any survival situation, keeping a positive attitude was half the battle to stay alive. In the past week Eddie had seen people endure unbelievable hardships because they would not let it penetrate their souls, while others had died in a few days, almost as if they willed their deaths to come quickly. Eddie knew that if Tang lost hope now, he wouldn’t last the day.
“Listen to me; we are not going to die here.”
Tang shot Eddie a wan smile. “Thank you for your strength, but I am afraid your words are empty.”
“I’m not Chinese,” Eddie said, and then corrected himself. “Well, I am Chinese, but I was raised in NewYork City. I am an American investigating illegal immigrant smuggling. There is a team of people looking for me right now.”
“Is this true?”
Using his best De Niro, Eddie said in English, “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?”
Tang stopped and stared, unable to believe what he’d just heard. “I know this movie!” he exclaimed.
“You’ve seen Taxi Driver?”
“Yes! We were shown it in school because it was so decadent that it drove one of your people to try to kill the president.”
Eddie chuckled, imagining some Communist party official putting a spin on how Hinckley’s attempted assassination of Reagan related to a breakdown of our running dog capitalist ways.
“You really are an American?”
“Yes,” Eddie said. “And very soon a ship’s going to enter the bay.”
Tang looked over his shoulder at the smoldering volcano. It was a couple miles up from the beach but seemed to blot out half the horizon. Ominously, the ash had stopped spewing from the caldera, though it continued to drift over the work site.
“I know,” was all Eddie could answer to the unasked question.
“Hey, look,” Tang pointed out to sea. The pair of fishing trawlers was headed back toward the beach. “Fresh slop tonight, eh?”
Eddie watched the squat boats for a moment. Gulls swarmed around their fantails. There was no logical reason for them to return. Savich was abandoning the Chinese in the shadow of an erupting volcano, so why would he bother feed them? Then he noticed that they were moving faster than normal; white foam boiled around their blunt bows, and the seabirds had to wing hard to keep pace. Their holds were empty, Eddie realized, and he saw, too, that they weren’t headed for the jetty but angling more toward the tugboat in position to pull the processing plant from the beach.
Eddie’s senses went on high alert, sending a jolt of adrenaline that could make him forget, at least temporarily, his exhaustion and misery. The Russian guards must have felt the same thing. They clutched their weapons a little tighter and instinctively moved to cover positions.
“Follow me,” Eddie ordered.
He and Tang were near the sluice boxes, twenty yards from the separating plant. If his fears were correct, the two of them were much too exposed. He led Tang around the far side of the long metal tables and up the hillside, trying to put as much distance between them and the coming crossfire.
“What is happening?” Tang panted.
Before he could reply, automatic gunfire rippled from the nearest trawler. The dozen Spetsnaz had already found sufficient cover, so they could ignore the incoming rounds and instead concentrate on taking out the Indonesian guards who’d turned their weapons on them. The battle reached a fever pitch in less than five seconds. Tracer fire cut the smoggy air like laser beams, and laborers too slow or too disorientated to dive out of the way were cut down indiscriminately.
There had to be fifty or more Indonesians with more joining the fight in an attempt to overwhelm the Russians, but the Russians’ superior training and better weapons more than evened the odds. None had been hit in the ambush, and as the fight became more fixed, they were picking off their foes with near impunity.
The timing of the betrayal was nearly flawless. Savich and Jan Paulus were on the cruise ship where the gold had been stored. The Sikh, the likely architect of the double cross, was already on the tug with a few of his guards overseeing the transfer. With the oceangoing towboat securely fastened to the processing barge by inches-thick cables, the vessel’s captain couldn’t make a run for it.
A jet of black smoke erupted from the funnel of the other tug, the one connected to the drydock, and the black water under her stern turned into a whirlpool as her isopod screws dug in. They were making their escape before the drydock was completely empty.