"Aye, sir," acknowledged Stowe as he stepped into the radio room. Tanned, blond and tall, Jefferson Stowe had the boyish good looks of a tennis instructor.
The Weehawken heeled slightly in response to her rudder as the helmsman brought the cutter around on a parallel course with the container ship that was flying the flag of the People's Republic of China. The decks were piled high with containers, and yet she rode strangely high in the water, Lewis observed. "Did they reply?" he asked loud enough to be heard across the wheelhouse.
"They answered in Chinese," Stowe called from the radio room.
"Shall I translate?" offered Julia.
"It's a dodge," Lewis said with a grin. "Half the foreign ships we stop have a habit of acting dumb. Most of their officers speak better English than we do."
Lewis waited patiently as the seventy-six-millimeter Mark 75 remote-controlled, rapid-firing gun on the bow turned and ominously aimed its muzzle at the container ship. "
lease inform the captain, in English, to stop engines or I will fire into his bridge."
Stowe returned to the bridge wing with a smile stretched across his lips. "The captain answered in English," he said. "He reports he is stopping."
As if to underscore the compliance, the foam that spilled from around the bows fell away as the big container ship slowly drifted to a stop. Lewis looked at Julia with care written in his eyes. "Ready, Ms. Lee?"
She nodded. "Ready as I'll ever be."
"You've checked your radio." It was a statement rather than a question.
Julia glanced down at where the miniature radio was taped inside the cleavage of her breasts under her bra. "Working perfectly." Without being obvious, she pressed her legs together, feeling the little .25-caliber automatic that was strapped to the inside of her right thigh. A short Smith & Wesson First Response knife, whose blade could spring open in an eye blink and was strong enough to rip through sheet metal, was taped to her biceps under the sleeve of her uniform.
"Keep your transmitter on so we can monitor your every word," said Lewis. "The Weehawken will remain within range of your radio until the Sung Lien Star docks at Sungari and you signal that you are ready to be picked up. Hopefully the substitution will go as planned, but should you encounter a problem after you take the cook's identity, call out and we'll come running. I'll also have our helicopter and crew in the air ready to drop on board."
"I appreciate your concern, Captain." Julia paused, turned slightly and motioned to a burly man with a walrus mustache whose deep-set gray eyes peered from under the brim of a baseball cap. "Chief Cochran has been a dream to work with during our rehearsals for the switch."
"Chief Mickey Cochran has been called many names," said Lewis, laughing, "but never a dream."
"I'm sorry for putting everyone to so much trouble," Julia said softly.
"All on board the Weehawken feel responsible for your safety. Admiral Ferguson gave me strict orders to protect you regardless of the consequences. I don't envy you your job, Ms. Lee. But I promise we will do everything in our power to keep you out of harm's way."
She looked away, her face very controlled despite the tears forming in her eyes. "Thank you," she said simply. "Thank them all for me."
As Stowe gave the order to swing out the cutter's launch, Captain Lewis looked down at Julia and said, "It's time." Then he firmly shook her hand. "God bless, and best of luck."
Captain Li Hung-chang of the Sung Lien Star was not unduly annoyed at being stopped by the American Coast Guard and boarded. He had expected it long before now. He had been warned by Qin Shang Maritime directors that the United States's immigration agents were stepping up their efforts to halt the rise in illegal-alien smuggling. He felt impervious to any threat. The most diligent inspection would never discover the second hull attached beneath the bilges and keel of his ship that housed three hundred immigrants. Despite the cramped and insufferable conditions, he had not lost one. Hung-chang was assured that a generous Qin Shang would reward him with a fat bonus after his return to China, as in the past. This was his sixth voyage combining the legal transportation of cargo with smuggling, and already his compensation had built a fine house for his family in the upper-class section of Beijing.
He watched the bow wave fall off the Coast Guard cutter, his expression calm and outwardly relaxed. Hung-chang was still in his late forties, yet his hair was a gleaming salt-and-pepper under the sun, though his narrow mustache was still black. He stared through kindly-grandfather, dark-amber eyes, his lips tight with silence as the two ships drifted closer. Then a boat was lowered and began to motor toward the Sung Lien Star. He nodded to his first officer.
"Go to the boarding ladder and greet our guests. About ten by the look of it. Give them your fullest cooperation and allow them free access throughout the ship."
Then, as calm and relaxed as if he was sitting in the garden of his home, Captain Li Hung-chang ordered a cup of tea from the galley and watched the Weehawken's boarding party climb onto the deck of his ship and begin their inspection.
Lieutenant Stowe paid his respects to Captain Hung-chang on the bridge and requested to see the ship's papers and manifest. The crew from the Coast Guard cutter began to split up, four searching the ship's compartments, three examining the cargo containers, and another three who headed for the crew's quarters. The Chinese acted indifferently to the intrusion and paid little attention to the three coast guardsmen who seemed more interested in the ship's mess, particularly the galley, instead of their individual cabins.
Only two of the Sung Lien Star's crew were present in the mess room. Both were dressed in the white uniform and hats of galley
workers. They sat around a table, one reading a Chinese newspaper while the other spooned a bowl of soup. Neither protested when Chief Cochran, using sign language, asked them to step into the passageway while a search of the dining area was conducted.
Disguised as one of the Coast Guard boarding crew, Julia walked directly into the galley, where she found Lin Wan Chu dressed in white shirt and pants leaning over a stove, a long wooden spoon in one hand, stirring a large copper vat of boiling shrimp. Under her captain's orders to cooperate with the Coast Guard inspectors, she looked up from the steam rising from the vat and flashed a toothy, friendly smile. She went on working unconcerned as Julia walked behind her, eyes routinely darting into pantries and storerooms.
Lin Wan Chu did not sense the needle of the syringe enter the flesh of her back. After a few seconds her eyes took on a puzzled look as the steam over the vat suddenly seemed to thicken into a dense cloud. Then a solid blackness swept over her. Much later, when she awoke on board the Weehawken, her first thought was whether she had overboiled the shrimp.
In less than a minute and a half, and thanks to the results of well-practiced exercise, Julia was dressed in the cook's white kitchen clothes while Lin Wan Chu lay on the deck in the uniform of the U.S. Coast Guard. Another thirty seconds passed as Julia cut short the cook's hair before pulling a baseball cap with the Coast Guard insignia and the word Weehawken down over Lin Wan Chu's head. "Take her away," Julia said to Cochran, who was patiently guarding the doorway to the passage outside.
Cochran and the other member of his boarding party quickly picked up the Chinese cook, one on each side, and hung her arms over their shoulders so her head would sag on her chest and make identification difficult. The baseball cap was pulled down over her face before he gave Julia a final nod and said softly, so only she could hear, "I wish you a great performance." Then they half-dragged, half-carried, Lin Wan Chu back to the boarding launch.