The one thought that flashed before her was that Rodriguez controlled these women with fear. He and his men were grossly outnumbered. To disrupt that control—regardless of what happened to her and her tape—was all she had left. Rodriguez could offer them only fear; she had a far stronger weapon.
He had twenty or more feet to climb as Stevie stepped up to the rail and shouted in her best Mandarin. ‘‘Little Sisters! I am with the American press! The police are on their way! You are free!’’
For a thousandth of a second there was absolute silence. Rodriguez stopped his climb and looked down below. But then their cheer arose—a unified cry of salvation—so loud as to be deafening, so exuberant as to bring tears to Stevie’s eyes. The women broke ranks and charged the one guard. There was a great male scream from within them and the distinctive sound of bones breaking, like tree limbs in a storm.
As a group they made for the one door, but as the crowd bunched, others jumped onto the same metal stairs that ended at Stevie’s landing, and they climbed as quickly as spreading fire. Rodriguez turned the corner to her, now only a few short stairsteps below.
Stevie rounded the hatch, jumped through into the hallway and pulled with all her strength, the camcorder dangling from the strap around her right forearm. The damn door was far heavier than she had expected. She knew that to seal that door was to seal Rodriguez’s fate at the hands of his captives. She pulled and pulled, one eye cast through the slowly shrinking crack as the huge man grew ever larger with his approach. He bounded the final steps.
The screams of the excited women filled the ship now, shrill and electric. They came from every corner. Their feet shook the steel with a growing rumble. She heard two claps of gunfire, but then no more— that guard overwhelmed as well. Rodriguez had let loose the water, but Stevie had let loose the tide.
Her final tug pulled the door to closing, but it bumped and wouldn’t catch, and it wasn’t until she looked down that she saw the four stubby fingers—all broken and at odd angles, caught in the steel jamb—that she understood the impediment. Those fingers clenched and pulled despite their pain, and then four more appeared in the crack along with a pair of thumbs, and he overpowered her with his strength and slowly increased the gap, forcing the door back open.
Stevie held on tight and then let go the door all at once. Rodriguez, unprepared for this, flew back off balance and Stevie stepped forward and kicked him in the face, feeling the bone and gristle of his nose give way. Blood poured out. Rodriguez skidded face down along the metal stairs, his head rising and falling with each step.
He was caught there by his own captives. Three stepped over him and rushed for the hatch. But the next several stopped and took out their anger on him. A woman lifted herself up by the rail and came down fully on his head, then used his back as a trampoline. The others joined in. The fallen man glanced up the stairs at Stevie and they met eyes as the blows continued, as the blood flowed, as the defeat registered.
‘‘Don’t kill him!’’ Stevie shouted desperately in Mandarin. She looked down into those yellowed eyes. ‘‘Where is she?’’ she hollered—screamed. ‘‘Where?’’
But the tide was not to be turned back. Blood was in the air. Three of the women continued to kick. His jaw hung off his face like a broken lampshade. He crawled blindly, his eyes bloodied and swollen. Crawled too close to the edge. One of the women shoved, then another. They launched him over the side to the steel floor below, where he landed with the final authority of death’s brutal calling.
CHAPTER 76
oldt’s initial surveillance team arrived as illegals scattered from the trawler, some diving into the water, some jumping ship to ship, a carnival of terror as only those incarcerated against their will can impart, for their reckless run to freedom, and their mass hysteria, overcomes any and all reason, thought or plan. The moment those women left the graveyard, they also left federal property, meaning that Detectives Heiman and Ringwold possessed the necessary authority to detain these women for questioning; but it wasn’t until Heiman thought to discharge his weapon—firing into the air over the water— that they gained any semblance of control, and by that time, as a few dozen of the women lay down flat on the wharf in response to the gunfire, far too many had escaped, leaving SPD, the Coast Guard and the INS coordinating their teams in the largest manhunt in city history. The public relations nightmare that arose over the course of the next few hours would eventually bring every member of the brass down to Public Safety for emergency meetings.
For his part, Boldt entered the ‘‘graveyard’’ as a guest of an Agent Prins, a U.S. Customs officer put onto the case by the U.S. Attorney. At the time of his arrival, Prins was in possession of a federal warrant entitling him to search and seizure for improperly imported goods, the product of quick thinking by the U.S. Attorney, whose reasoning was that a sweatshop required sewing machines and fabric, one or both of which had probably entered the country illegally. Furthermore, Customs had its own highly trained, heavily armed strike force—to conduct raids at warehouses, airports and aboard ships. Prins and his team, including a canine unit, followed in behind the chaos of the mass exodus of illegals in a military-like operation that left two Chinese gang members under arrest and two others wounded by gunfire. The dogs uncovered explosives in the hull of the ship based on information provided by McNeal. An FBI bomb squad was dispatched to assist.
Ambulances, fire trucks and every news team and crime reporter the city had to offer descended on the area, requiring overtime radio units for crowd control. When the third news helicopter appeared overhead and images began broadcasting live over CNN, a Coast Guard chopper was dispatched to disburse them and then to light the ship and the surrounding waters from where illegals were still being rescued. People living along Salmon Bay and the shore of the canal turned out onto their front porches in their pajamas to watch the spectacle despite the early hour. In an act of entrepreneurial ingenuity an ice cream truck showed up and toured the streets of Ballard, selling peach sticks and ice cream sandwiches at one o’clock in the morning. In police vernacular, the raid on the graveyard turned into a zoo scene.
By the time Coughlie and his INS Rapid Response Team arrived, a thorough search of the trawler was already under way, making for a heated argument between Prins and Coughlie. When Boldt walked into the captain’s cabin, where this discussion was taking place, Coughlie stopped talking midsentence.
‘‘You?’’ Coughlie said.
‘‘Me,’’ Boldt answered.
‘‘This doesn’t have to do with Customs.’’
‘‘Sure it does.’’
‘‘It’s a sham.’’
‘‘It’s a crime scene. Prins offered for me to tag along.’’
‘‘And I’m supposed to buy that?’’
‘‘I’m not selling,’’ Boldt advised him. ‘‘Shots were fired. Federal property or not, it’s within the county. It’s ours.’’
‘‘That may be; but the detention of the illegals, their captors and the ship itself are mine.’’
Sensing a knock-down-drag-out and briefed in advance by Boldt on what to do when Coughlie’s team arrived, Prins excused himself from the room, pulling the door shut.
‘‘Why the end run, Lieutenant?’’ Coughlie asked.
‘‘What end run?’’
‘‘Why the end run?’’ Coughlie returned. Neither man would play according to the other’s agenda. He held up one finger at a time. ‘‘Illegals? A sweatshop? A federal impound? If you had a lead, you should have called our house, not Customs, not FiBI es.’’