“I buy Vaseline by the quart. Shoe polish is another thing entirely — these days everyone wears tennis shoes — but I’ll check.”
While Schoenauer was gone the lights went out on Barbary Coast, China Rose, and the pier. In fact, the lights went off all along the waterfront.
Jake and Tommy got out their night-vision goggles and studied the Rose. “They had an electric eye rigged at the top of the gangway. Probably have a pressure pad too, so an alarm rings somewhere when you step on it. They’re off until someone starts a generator.”
“How many guys do you think?”
“I saw two before the lights went out. One was on the bridge. One walked along the main deck.”
“I’d bet my pension there’re more than two.”
“Probably closer to twenty.”
“Can we get aboard without using the gangway?”
“How about that stern mooring rope? It’s in shadow. That’ll be about it from the pier.”
“Okay.”
“I got this creepy feeling,” Carmellini said, “that those sons of bitches know we’re coming.”
“Maybe. Just shoot first and it won’t matter.”
Schoenauer returned with two women. Jake couldn’t tell much about them in the dark, but they were definitely Americans. He also had Vaseline and shoe polish. Jake smeared Vaseline over his face, neck, and hands, then applied the black shoe polish.
“Jake Grafton,” one woman said as he smeared away. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Virgil told me about you. He said you were his very best friend on this earth.”
Jake didn’t know quite how to respond to that. “I’m sure he was just being polite.”
“Oh, he didn’t mean that he was your best friend, but that you were his, if that makes sense. He said you saved his life once.”
“Long ago,” Jake muttered, more than a little embarrassed.
“He said that Jake Grafton was the one man on this earth he would trust always to do the right thing, regardless of the stakes or the consequences.”
Cole said all that? The crazy bastard!
“Hurry up,” Jake urged Carmellini, who was also smearing himself with shoe polish. “They’ll start an engine or generator to get power while we’re standing here socializing.”
As they were leaving, Carmellini asked Schoenauer, “You got an address or something where I can write to you?”
“Got a Web site,” Schoenauer replied and told him the name.
“When I get some time off…”
They paused under a sheltered overhang on the main deck and used the night-vision goggles to check out China Rose. The small ship was dark, without a single light. Not even a battle lantern on the bridge. And no one was visible.
Due to the widespread power outage, only a glow of light from the sky enlivened the darkness.
“What if your wife isn’t aboard?” Carmellini asked.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Jake said, trying not to panic. The CIA officer had hit squarely on the problem.
If she wasn’t there, they would probably kill her unless he got to her quickly. And how would he ever find her in this city?
“So what do you want to do?” Carmellini asked.
“What I’d like to do is march straight across the pier and up the gangway and shoot anyone we meet, just go right on through them.”
“Well, hell, why not?”
“Because we don’t know where they are holding Callie or Wu, and Sonny Wong just might have someone guarding them with orders to kill them at the first sign of a commotion.”
“Double ditto for Wu,” Carmellini remarked. “Okay, what’s your second option?”
“Walk down the gangway, turn right, go aft to their stern line, and up it. I’ll climb it while you watch, then I’ll watch while you climb. How’s that?”
“I’ll go first up the rope,” Carmellini said. “I don’t know what they told you about me, but sneaking around is my thing. I’m a burglar by trade.”
“How in the world did you get in the CIA?”
“It was the CIA or prison. I’ll tell you all about it sometime over a beer.”
“Let’s go,” Jake said, and led the way down the gangway.
They walked along the pier, in no apparent haste, their weapons in bags over their shoulders. This was the most difficult part so far, Jake thought, as he willed his feet not to run.
When they reached the stern line bollard, Jake squatted behind it and donned the night-vision goggles. He saw no one on the Rose. Two people were visible on the bridge of the ship moored nose-to-stern of the Rose, but they didn’t seem to be looking this way.
“Go,” he whispered to Tommy Carmellini. The CIA officer already had the straps of his weapons bag over his shoulders, so he immediately crouched under the line, which was Manila hemp about three inches in diameter, and launched himself up it hand over hand. He kept his heels hooked over it behind him. In seconds he reached the rat guard, a platelike metal dish that surrounded the line and was supposed to constitute an insurmountable obstacle for rats trying to go up the line from the pier. Hanging on the line with one hand, Carmellini used the other to explore the catch that held the guard on the line, then release it. He dropped the guard in the water and continued up the line to the rail, grabbed it with both hands, swung a heel up, and clambered over.
Jake was taking his goggles off when the China Rose’s lights came on. The pier was still dark, as were the other ships. Someone had started an emergency generator, probably in the Rose’s engine room.
With the goggles back in the bag and the bag looped over his shoulders, Jake Grafton took a deep breath, then grabbed the line and swung out. As he suspected, the physical effort required was very high. Heart thudding, breathing like a racehorse, he was stymied by the rail and probably wouldn’t have gotten over it if Carmellini hadn’t grabbed him with hands like steel bands and literally lifted him over the rail onto the deck of the Rose. It was then Jake realized that Carmellini’s buff physique was indeed rock-solid muscle; the thought had just not occurred to him before.
“You take the port side, work your way forward to the bridge,” Jake whispered as they huddled out of sight under the rail. “I’ll find a way down. Meet me below.”
Carmellini’s head bobbed.
Jake removed the submachine gun from his bag, made sure it was cocked and ready, then took the safety off. He pulled another magazine from the bag and held it against the forearm of the gun with his left hand. Carmellini already had his weapon in his hands. Now he went forward along the port side of the ship.
The little ship seemed deathly quiet. Almost too much so. Jake listened intently and heard the faint sounds of television. At least it sounded like television — a male voice, racing along in the up-and-down lilt of Chinese, allowing no breaks for conversation. He slipped up to the salon entrance and put his ear against the bulkhead.
A slight vibration — perhaps the generator?
He went forward along the starboard rail, walking as quietly as he could.
The first hatch he came to was a ladder down. He could hear television coming up the ladderway.
He looked down as much as he could without sticking his head down the hole. There didn’t seem to be a passageway, so the ladder probably dropped right into a lounge of some kind. And that was where the people were.
Well, he could drop a grenade down the hole — he still had a couple the marines had given him — then go charging down after it went off, but everyone aboard would hear the explosion.
There had to be another way.
He walked on forward, looking for another ladder.