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He thought he heard the sound of an outboard motor and he twisted around as best he could. Thirty meters away was an orange raft. He raised his hand but a wave caught him in the face as he was inhaling and his lungs filled with stinging water.
Searing pain in his chest.
Air . . . I need air.
Another wave slammed into him. He sank below the surface, tugged down by the great muscles of gray water. He glanced at his hands. Why weren't they moving?
Paddle, kick! Don't let the sea suck you down!
He struggled once more to the surface.
Don't let . . .
He inhaled more water.
Don't let it . . .
His vision began to crinkle to black.
Ten judges of hell . . .
Well, Sonny Li thought, it seemed that he was about to meet them.
Chapter Five
They lay at his feet, a dozen or so, in the cold soup at the bottom of the raft, caught between the mountains of water beneath them and the lacerating rain from above. Their hands desperately gripped the rope that circled the orange raft.
Sam Chang, reluctant captain of the fragile craft, looked over his passengers. The two families--his own and the Wus--huddled in the back of the raft around him. In the front were Dr. John Sung and the two others who'd escaped from the hold, whom Chang knew only by their first names, Chao-hua and his wife, Rose.
A wave crashed over them, soaking the hapless occupants even more. Chang's wife, Mei-Mei, pulled off her sweater and wrapped it around the tiny daughter of the scar-faced woman. The girl, Chang recalled with a pang, was named Po-Yee, which meant Treasured Child; she'd been the good-luck mascot of their voyage.
"Go!" Wu cried. "Go for shore."
"We have to look for the others."
"He's shooting at us!"
Chang looked at the boiling sea. But the Ghost was nowhere to be seen. "We'll go soon. But we have to rescue anyone who can be saved. Look for them!"
Seventeen-year-old William struggled to his knees and squinted through the sharp spray. Wu's teenage daughter did the same.
Wu shouted something but his head was turned away and Chang couldn't hear the words.
Chang entwined his arm around the rope and pushed his feet hard against an oar clamp to brace his body as he struggled to nurse the raft in a circle around the Fuzhou Dragon, twenty meters away. The ship slipped farther into the water, a blast of foamy water occasionally shooting high as air escaped from a rent in the side of a porthole or hatch. The groaning, like that of an animal in pain, rose and fell.
"There!" William cried. "I think I see somebody."
"No," Wu Qichen called. "We have to leave! What are you waiting for?"
William was pointing. "Yes, Father. There!"
Chang could see a dark lump next to a much smaller white lump, ten meters from them. A head and a hand perhaps.
"Leave them," Wu called. "The Ghost will see us! He'll shoot us!"
Ignoring him, Chang steered closer to the lumps, which indeed turned out to be a man. He was pale and choking, thrashing the air, a look of terror on his face. Sonny Li was his name, Chang recalled. While most of the immigrants had spent time talking and reading to one another, several of the men traveling without families had kept to themselves. Li was among these. There'd been something ominous about him. He'd sat alone for the entire voyage, sullen, occasionally glaring at the children who were noisy around him and often sneaking up on deck, which was strictly forbidden by the Ghost. When he'd talk at all, Li would ask too many questions about what the families planned to do when they got to New York and where they would live--subjects that wise illegal immigrants didn't discuss.
Still, Li was a human being in need and Chang would try to save him.
