“Should we start killing them?”
“Not yet. They’re too valuable. Let’s wait and see if we can pull off this trick. If we can, they live. If we can’t, kill them all quietly with knives and axes, and us and the crew will slip over the side and into that filthy harbor water. It’ll be every person for himself or herself.”
A graving dock is a facility where crews can float ships in and pump water away to expose the entire body of the ship for maintenance and repair. Enough hui kuan [Cantonese for bribery money] changes hands to move the Golden Traveler ahead of two other ships and up onto the dry dock where its location and appearance are significantly altered in four hours well before dark. No law enforcement presence appears, and Sister Chi’s spies report that the huge tactical force waiting on Corbin Street is doing nothing. She heaves a sigh of relief and orders Captain Shi to continue to keep the Wednesday’s Girls and her considerable investment alive for the time being.
The witching hour for the task force is 3:00 a.m. on the eleventh. Sister Chi’s spies have taken up positions all around the area of PCNT [Port Newark Container Terminal] building and the section of the dock where the Golden Traveler was berthed until eight hours ago. They inform the dragon lady of the task force’s progress and half an hour of the cursing and frustration being expressed by all of the revved up law enforcement officers.
Coast Guard captain Roger Kennard now assumes command since it is reluctantly agreed that somehow the Golden Traveler with its priceless cargo has been able to get away and out to sea while the task force was spinning its wheels.
The first thing he does is to alert every Coast Guard unit on the east coast to be on the lookout for the pirate ship. Then he brings in the U.S. Navy. The members of the task force tuck their tails between their legs and slip away back to their several offices, ashamed of themselves and feeling guilty that they might have just killed seventy-eight innocent girls.
Chapter Thirteen
June 15–22, 2020
A newly minted ship, now known as the 1421, for the year the Chinese discovered America—[See the compelling book 1421, The Year China Discovered America by Gavin Menzies, Harper Perennial, 2004]—slips quietly out of Newark harbor the night after the ill-designed and ill-fated raid on the Newark docks by a massive human trafficking interdiction project by local, state, Coast Guard, and federal agents. In the haste to get into the open Atlantic, the crew neglect to feed or to provide water to the ailing girls who constitute the principal cargo. They stop briefly in Haiti to take on fresh food and water and finally pass enough down to the girls to keep bodies and souls together. They are now steaming south towards Rio de Janeiro, the next port of call. The seas are rough, and the girls lie on mats soaked with vomit, urine, feces, and blood. Two girls appear close to death. Brigid O’Hanlon presumes that her ploy to get the attention of port authorities or the police has failed, and no one but God knows where they are heading.
Unknown to Brigid, one of the largest and most focused manhunts in all of maritime history is taking place all around her. Coast Guard captain Roger Kennard makes his call to the admiral in charge of the entire east coast of the United States and to the office of the CNO [Chief of Naval Operations] of the U.S. Navy. There is no longer any excuse for jurisdictional rivalries. The deaths or permanent imprisonment of seventyeight girls is unacceptable, and neither top commander will allow any interference with the task at hand.
CNO Nathan O. Hazard—a fifth generation naval officer and a remote descendant of Oliver Hazard Perry—orders his DCNO Harvey D. Clarke—the chief of naval intelligence—to head up the Navy’s efforts. Vice Admiral Clarke sends out an All Hands Intrafleet Bulletin over the LTE [Long-Term-Evolution] NAVAIR network. The system utilizes all of private and military smart-phone technology and commercial broadband. This places the Atlantic fleet on war footing, at least from a communications basis. The VBSS [Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure] mission is in full action status with the blessing of the CNO and POTUS [President of the United States]. If the Chinese ship is in the Atlantic, it will be found, VADM Clarke confidently tells his commanding officer.
June 24–July 28, 2020
The girls are looking starved now after nearly two weeks in captivity. Brigid and several others of the stronger girls are now sharing their rations with the weaker girls; but they know that soon they will all die of starvation, heat exhaustion, or dehydration if they do not get proper food and water and get out of the oven heat of the stifling ship’s hold. As young as they are, the girls are now certain that this adventure is a life-or-death one.
“Where are the police? Where is God?” they are beginning to ask each other.
After a month of sailing in a circuitous path, from Haiti to Brazil, the 1421 makes port in Rio. Sister Chi and Captain Shi are now confident enough of their safety that they open the hatches and allow the girls to step out into the humidity of the inlet from the Atlantic Ocean into the huge balloon shaped bay that stretches twenty miles inland. The magnificent tropical scenery is unsurpassed in the world; and for the girls, it seems as if they have been taken to a new planet lightyears away from Red Hook New York and the Saint Anne’s orphanage. The people look almost nothing like those the girls are familiar with. Nearly naked young men haul fresh fruits and vegetables onto the 1421 from small skiffs.
The scenery makes this gorgeous bay one of the seven natural wonders of the world. The harbor is surrounded by mountains, which seem like giants to the girls who have never seen anything but a blunted low-rise hill. At the entrance of the bay, they take in the bare granite peak named the “Sugarloaf ” by the first Portuguese explorers. The sight of Mount Corcovado—the hunchback—is capped with a 130-foot tall statue of “Christ the Redeemer,” which enlivens the girl’s Catholic hearts. They are surrounded by truly spectacular white-sand beaches.
The girls are allowed to eat their fill, and most of them overeat in haste and bring most of the intake back out. They drink freely of good fresh water and eat fish caught that day and brought out from the ship’s galley. Brigid watches the gluttony of her fellow prisoners and decides to take it easy. She is almost completely restored by late afternoon when the guards force them back below decks and into the misery of the hold.
A month later, seventy-six deathly ill little girls have passed through the Strait of Magellan and past the tip of South America—specifically, Chile. As almost always, the sea is rough beyond the endurance of hardened sailors, and it is stormy almost every day of the passage. Four crew members and three Snakeheads die—some of illness and others who go overboard, including a suicide. The girls are not allowed up on the decks of the coastal freighter and live day after nauseating day in the fetid hold. The two weakest of the little girls give up their fight halfway around Cape Horn.
Sister Chi orders Captain Shi to make port on Isla Grande de Chiloé for fear that she will lose the entire cargo, or even worse that the crew or her Snakeheads will mutiny as a result of the inhuman conditions of the voyage. This is business—a matter of money—after all. Sister Chi does not have a single cell that emanates human kindness; she knows and loves money down to every penny. Dead girls means no money. So the coastal freighter 1421 makes landfall on the second largest island in Chile and begins re-provisioning in the town—Mocopulli, Dalcahue. The slowly dying girls are brought out into the sunshine for the first time in over a month. Sister Chi recognizes that they are suffering from the early stages of scurvy—symptoms of malaise and lethargy, skin spots, spongy gums, and bleeding from their mucous membranes—and knows that the vitamin deficiency condition has been the death of sailors for as long as there have been records of ocean voyages. She sends for limes and force feeds the girls with drinks, salads, and meat meals all heavily laced with the vitamin-C-rich fruit. The British discovered the lifesaving value of limes as early as the mid-1700s, thus earning the nickname of “Limeys.”
She also knows the value of sunlight and that her pasty skinned girls need to get out from below decks if the
y are going to be of any worth when the ship gets to Fujian. She is well aware that there is a risk of discovery by having the girls out on deck; so, she brings them out on deck for half hour intervals, four girls at a time.
The USS DDG-922 Grantham—a Charles Francis Adamsclass guided missile destroyer assigned to the Pacific fleet—pulls into Mocopulli, Dalcahue for the same purpose as the 1421 coastal freighter, just as the freighter leaves the port. Commander Stephen Devereaux—the captain of the Grantham—observes the freighter and is aware that somewhere in the back of his mind, it is vaguely familiar. He goes down to his cabin and riffles through a stack of messages received over the past six weeks through the LTE network. It takes the better part of an hour before he connects the dots between the now worldwide infamous Wednesday’s Children kidnapping and the Navy’s interest it. He and his fellow captains are under orders to report any suspicious activities on board freighters, any Chinese ships that seem out of place, and any evidence of human trafficking activity. He rushes back up to the con tower and searches the horizon for the ship that has sparked his interest. He sees the freighter off to his port side and gets a shiver down his back.
On deck are four children chained to each other by neck collars. The freighter has the wrong name. He knows it only as the Golden Traveler. This one has only numbers for a name, and he cannot make them out clearly. The freighter is proceeding full steam ahead going north, and the Grantham is entering the narrow channel between the Isla Grande de Chiloé and the west coast of Chile. He orders an immediate U-turn change of course, but the channel is crowded and the destroyer takes a long and complicated course to effect the reversal of its course. By the time he reaches the open Pacific and turns to starboard—north—the freighter is lost to view.
Commander Devereaux sends an urgent signal to USPACFLT [United States Pacific Fleet] in Pearl Harbor. The command office forwards the message to the DCNO-Intelligence office in Washington, DC. The Pacific Ocean race is on.
Chapter Fourteen
June 24–28, 2020
Only the members of the NYPD elite Organized Crime Human Trafficking Unit, the FBI, the CIA, and the U.S. Navy are aware at this point of the life-and-death race going on in the South Pacific. Even the crew, the slavers, and the captives on board the coastal freighter 1421 are unaware that they are now the specific target of a worldwide dragnet at sea.
Everywhere there is a Roman Catholic in the world. Prayers are being sent to Nicholas, the patron saint of children; to Philomena, the patroness of the living rosary and the patroness of children; to Agnes, the patron saint of young girls; and to Maria Goretti, the patron saint of youth. Even Michael, the patron saint of policemen, receives his share of pleas. Across the world, Catholics pray to their saints to protect the innocent girls and the law enforcement men and women who are so desperately trying to find and save the Wednesday’s Girls. Protestants, Mormons, Buddhists, Muslims, and the unaffiliated—about thirty-five percent of the religious around the world—join fervently with their friends—the Catholics—in their pleas to several of their gods to bring those little girls back unharmed.
CNO Nathan O. Hazard, DCIA Sybil Norcroft, and DFBI William Cruthers all make urgent and specific pleas to their counterparts in the PRC [Peoples Republic of China] for help since all evidence points to China as the destination of the murderous monsters on board the innocent-looking freighter.
Hazard secures a firm guarantee from his counterpart in the PRC—Zhu Shangkun—that U.S. Naval ships will be welcome in the waters of the Taiwan Strait and that People’s Liberation Army Navy Special Forces amphibious reconnaissance battalion—Marine (Assault) Infantry Battalion commandoes—will actively participate with U.S. Navy SEALS in any raid on the ship. Norcroft has a long relationship with Jia Fuzhi, director of the MSS [Ministry of State Security of the People’s Republic of China] bureau of foreign affairs; and they agree to share intelligence related to the ship and any and all of its transactions. Cruthers and Yang Wudai, director of the PSB [Public Security Bureau] also agree to a one-time cooperative effort.
The USS Sword Thrust, a Military Sealift Command joint high-speed vessel—with a twenty-two-person crew—mainly civilian experts—and a ten-man SEAL team detachment onboard—is diverted from maneuvers in the Philippine Celebes Sea to the Straits of Taiwan. The powerful, lowprofile, large catamaran aluminum hulled ship is capable of traveling at speeds of 40 knots. It carries a containerized portable hospital in its 20,000 square feet of cargo storage area. It is capable of landing helicopters and can carry 600 tons of cargo 1,200 nautical miles. It is loaded for bear.
Three sets of CIA agents of Chinese extraction travel by Air China to the Fujian city of Jian’ou and are quartered in the regional MSS headquarters located on the Jianxi River. The agents and their Chinese counterparts establish communications with the American Naval LTE network and are able to communicate in real time with naval intelligence on the approach of the 1421 and other potentially suspicious freighters. The Chinese and the Americans enter into a patient waiting game.
The special agent in charge of the Beijing FBI office sends eight rapid response team agents and four Chinese and American law enforcement experts to Fuzhou, where they link up with PSB officers. The highest law enforcement officers and politicians of both countries are in regular contact as the noose begins to tighten on the Fujian ports of Xiamen and Quanzhou.
July 22, 2020
As part of her business preparation to ensure the success of her movement of human cargo, Sister Chi and her chief lieutenant in the Snakeheads, Zhuoru Guo Meng—over the past decade—established contingency routes, including potential stops in waters near Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, Singapore, Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. During the past year, the two traveled to Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia to set up transit points and safe harbors. When a Chilean navy frigate seems to be dogging the 1421, Sister Chi decides to divert to her base in Indonesia before completing the voyage to Fujian. The vessel chooses a serpentine course to throw off any surveillance and takes nearly a month to reach Palu. As the 1421 steams up the Makassar Strait—situated between the islands of Borneo and Sulawesi—it passes the American naval vessel, the USS Sword Thrust, leaving the Celebes Sea on its way to Fujian. Palu is a port city located on a long, narrow bay on Sulawesi—a thousand miles northeast of Jakarta—at the mouth of Palu River. It is the capital of the province of Central Sulawesi and a long-time haven for pirates, smugglers, and other international citizens who prefer not to call attention to themselves.
Sister Chi calls ahead and arranges a week’s stay in the port to refit and re-provision the ship. She and Zhuoru arrange to have the name of the ship repainted. It becomes the Fujian Province Carrier, and its registry is changed to Malaysia. The Snakehead safe house is secluded; so, the Wednesday’s Girls are allowed to be unshackled and walk about freely in the compound. During that week of sun and good food, the girls’ skin color and body weight improves, and the degree of depression begins to lift. They have now been so long on this otherworldly journey that they are becoming accustomed to the alien vistas and peoples they see. The initial terrors have given way to something more like resignation. Brigid O’Hanlon continues to bear in mind her priority—escape—but can never find a time or means to accomplish that aim. Still, that idea gives her faint hope.
On the twenty-second of July, the newly painted and newly christened Fujian Province Carrier leaves for China. A PRC naval vessel disguised as a fishing junk, sights the vessel as it moves into the Makassar Strait and dutifully reports back to the fleet commander who sends a dispatch to Beijing naval headquarters along with several dozen other reports. Those reports are added to another hundred documents passed on to the U.S. Navy. The process takes two weeks; and although the United States sends a frigate to investigate, it is far too late; and the information comes to naught.
July 23, 2020
The USS Oliver Hazard Perry—an Arleigh Burke-class of guided missile destroyer, a DDG—i
s one of the US Navy‘s first class of destroyer built around the Aegis Combat System and the SPY-1D multifunction-phased array radar. That radar picks up an unknown vessel passing across the South China Sea in the direction of Taiwan and Fujian province of the PRC. As a matter of routine, the Perry’s captain orders the sighting to be reported through LTE channels to the DCNO. He has the message noted to be “POSSIBLE WEDNESDAY’S CHILD SUSPECT” on a hunch.
The unknown vessel is denoted USHIP 23-2020 and placed on the Navy’s “follow” list along with 762 other ships. As it draws closer to the Strait of Taiwan, it becomes one of fifty-six vessels kept under surveillance. When it berths in Xiamen Harbor—one of the ten largest harbors in China—it gains a name, the Fujian Province Carrier, and becomes one of twelve vessels that seem to fit the pattern used by smugglers and human traffickers; but its presence becomes lost among the thousands of other ships clogging the waters of Xiamen Harbor. Over 160 commercial shipping lines operate from the Fujian province.
The forces of the PRC and the United States are put on alert. Find the Fujian Province Carrier becomes a mission priority.
Two days later, a Chinese longshoreman reports to his superiors that he has seen a ship with young foreign girls on deck at different intervals during the day and early evening on July 26 and tells the longshoreman’s representative to the state monitoring bureau that the name of the ship is the Fujian Province Carrier. The message gets to the US and PRC naval headquarters in Fuzhou a day later and is forwarded to the People’s Liberation Army Navy Special Forces amphibious reconnaissance battalion commandoes and the U.S. Navy SEALS and on to the Jian’ou regional MSS headquarters an hour later. As discreetly as possible, PRC marines and MSS operatives scour the harbors and waterways for the next twenty-four hours; but the suspect ship seems to have disappeared. There is now—more acutely than ever before—a sense of urgency that this may be the vessel carrying the Wednesday’s Girls, and the senses of danger, urgency, and frustration are heightened accordingly.
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