Without A Trace

by Sandra Moore

  Johnny gave him a Hong Kong address, which Ali faithfully copied down on his clipboard page. With a start, Nikki recognized it as the location of the Electric Dragon. Ali nodded again, and the smile that graced his face met his gorgeous eyes this time.

  “I wish you great luck in your endeavors,” he said as he stood. “My assistant will escort you out.”

  That was it? Nikki thought. The bastard didn’t say a thing.

  Ali bowed low, held it for a moment, then took her hand and brought it to his lips like a graceful courtier. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  Johnny stepped next to her. In his movement, Nikki detected the curdled milk of jealousy. “You have been a very great help with our work,” Johnny said. “Thank you.”

  Ali clicked the remote on his key chain. The door unlocked itself and rocked open. The stern young man stood up behind his empty desk. As she passed into the tiny reception area, Nikki caught a glimpse of Ali raising a brow at the young man—a clear look of “idiots, this Chinese and American,” if she’d ever seen one—and then he slipped the paper from his clipboard into the white box behind the reception desk.

  A grinding echoed in the room as the shredder chewed its way through the notes.

  Johnny frowned at Ali’s tall back disappearing behind a closing secure door. “He ignored us! Wasted our time.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Nikki said. “Look, we won’t put his picture on the cover.”

  The assistant cracked a smile, but whether it was of satisfaction or of the politeness masking his real thoughts, Nikki couldn’t tell. “Please come with me.”

  Checking out was less tedious than checking in: dropping off visitor badges, signing the register, displaying again the fake IDs Lee Wan had given them, answering a couple of standard questions about whether they’d been left alone while on the premises. Nikki opted for the truth on that question, and received a peremptory nod from the armed guard, as if she’d made a good choice about fessing up to being left for ten minutes in the locked observation room while Ms. Gao answered a phone call or peed or whatever.

  Nikki slid into the Marindo sedan Lee Wan had loaned them for this little scouting trip and immediately kicked off Mei’s heels. The girl had big feet, thank heavens, but that didn’t make walking in three-inchers any easier. Nikki’s toes and knees ached. She stretched out her feet and wondered why the whole chat with gorgeous Ali seemed…off.

  Johnny slipped into the driver’s seat, then made eye contact with her over a pair of rakish sunglasses that made him look like a hot actor from an action flick.

  “Mr. Ali has quite a talent.”

  “Avoiding telling us anything?” Nikki retorted. “Lying through his teeth? Pretending to be Lee Wan’s friend?”

  “Writing upside down.”

  Nikki sat up straight. “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “What did he write?”

  Johnny fished through Nikki’s purse for a piece of paper and pen. “It was this.”

  He wrote the characters in English: TOSU 3099217 23:20. His intent gaze almost distracted her, but the numbers clicked immediately.

  “The container code!” she said. “TOSU and those first seven numbers are Diviner’s container code.”

  “The last four must be time of arrival. Eleven-twenty tonight. But you saw that place.” Johnny cranked the engine. “We can’t just walk in and grab the guy.” He lowered the windows and a briny breeze cooled the sweat on Nikki’s neck.

  “No, but—Ali wasn’t quite…right. There was something going on with him.”

  Johnny looked at her. “I know. The Singapore authorities are always uptight about security.”

  “Besides this,” she said, waving at the paper.

  “Yes, I know. Could you smell him?”

  “Not really.”

  He turned to face forward and shot the sedan in gear, though he kept a foot on the brake. “Why not?”

  “He wasn’t emoting. Like you don’t most of the time.”

  Johnny shrugged. Nikki got the impression the shrug was supposed to be casual, but it wasn’t. “Okay, so what was going on?” he asked.

  “Why is the Singapore government so careful?”

  “Infiltration by triads. They’ve dismantled a couple of terrorist networks over the past few years, too.”

  “What? By playing Big Brother?”

  Johnny frowned at the George Orwell reference. “What?”

  “The government’s watching them,” Nikki clarified. “The cameras and the creepy assistant. All that.”

  “The port authority falls under government jurisdiction, yes, so Ali is accustomed to being watched.”

  Nikki played the conversation back in her head, word for word, gesture for gesture. “If he was doing the Ms. Gao thing, and every time he smiled he was lying, he was telling us that the security at Pasir Panjang isn’t anywhere near as good as the security here at Keppel.”

  “You think he meant that’s where this container is coming in?”

  “He got serious when he said the vessel traffic was light there. Imagine the construction gear coming in and out. We’d have plenty of cover there.”

  Johnny nodded with the confidence of the half-convinced. He leaned his head back against the seat rest and sighed, then turned to look at her. “Then we’ll need a plan when we go there tonight, won’t we?”

  “I think that’s a very good idea.”

  Chapter 19

  N ikki hunkered down next to a pile of rebar at the edge of the Pasir Panjang terminal premises. Here, the darkness was only sporadically pierced by light poles spaced far apart, and the one nearest her strobed off and on every few minutes. About two hundred yards south, under a glare of pure white light, a crane levered a container from a Hong Kong vessel. The crane’s twin sat still.

  She raised the field glasses and read the number of the container in motion. Not the one they were looking for. Wrong number and no red cat’s-claw marks. Overhead, thunderheads piled up on each other. Nikki stretched out one leg, then the other.

  She really wanted some barbecue: pork, ribs, shredded beef. Shredded beef on a bun with a side of coleslaw. Or maybe pollo con quimbobo y platanos, chicken with okra and plantains, made the way her mother made it, with extra garlic and brown rice.

  Johnny’s black form solidified out of the dark, moving like a lean tiger. He knelt next to her, and she caught her breath at the scent that had become so familiar to her. The ninja garb he wore masked his identity but not his fiercely masculine form, and she deliberately turned her mind away from that line of thought.

  “Any triads?” she asked.

  “Not yet. The construction crews have shut down for the night.”

  “Good. How about the crane operators?”

  “It’s fly-by-wire,” Johnny said. “They’re in the main building, not out here.” He pointed to the three-story building set well back from the cranes. “The unloading crew is still aboard the vessel.”

  Getting into the terminal had been a challenge, but nothing a pair of bolt cutters and a crowbar couldn’t fix. She was holding out hope that Ali of the beautiful eyes had told his security team at this still-unfinished terminal to take the night off. There certainly didn’t seem to be many badges out so far.

  She checked the next container as it floated through the air. Nada.

  “We may have guessed wrong,” Johnny said.

  Nikki tamped down her automatic annoyance. “Yes, perhaps we guessed wrong. But if that’s the case we won’t be seeing any Wo or Sun bad boys, will we?” Overhead, a fizzing caught her attention. “You’d better get closer. The light’s about to strobe.”

  Johnny slipped into the deep shadows with her. In about ten seconds the lamp overhead popped on, shuddered and died. “Nice timing,” he murmured in her ear.

  She didn’t outwardly respond when his hand found her thigh; instead, she held the binocs to her face and tried to breathe evenly. “Are you over being jealous of Mr.
Ali?”

  “Almost.” He dropped his hand. “The Wo second-in-command said Diviner paid to be put at the top. Shouldn’t he have been unloaded by now?”

  “Not necessarily. They’re working their way bow to stern.”

  That meant another hour, at least, to wait. Nikki stifled a sigh. This mission had been nothing but one long wait after another. If she’d ever once thought she was patient, she’d been wrong. A crack of thunder, and a sudden rain shower, cold and driving, pelted her. Dammit.

  The next container had just cleared the ship, arcing through the industrial-grade light cast down from the crane arms, when she smelled it.

  Gasoline.

  She touched Johnny’s forearm to get his attention. “Someone’s out there.”

  “Where?”

  Nikki turned her head and sniffed past the metallic smell of a very real summer rain. “About a hundred yards east of here.”

  “Can you tell who?”

  “No. But I think they’re going to torch the place. They’ve got gasoline.”

  Johnny cursed. “Keep watching for Diviner. I’ll be right back.”

  “Wait! The gasoline doesn’t matter!” she stage-whispered, but he’d already faded into nothingness. Rain hissed on the concrete and metal, surrounding her in the cacophony of a snake pit.

  Whoever was carrying the gas was going to run into a problem when they discovered there was nothing on the concrete docks and steel crane structures that would burn. The fire would simply eat up the gasoline and flare out without additional fuel. It’d be good for a diversionary tactic, but not much else.

  She lifted the binoculars again, trying to angle the lens tipped down to keep them dry. When she got focused on the next container swaying precariously over the ship, her blood froze in her veins.

  Four red streaks, like a cat’s claw marks.

  Diviner.

  And no Johnny Zhao in sight.

  Damn.

  Well, there was The Plan, she reminded herself. If the Wo and Sun had had as much trouble as she and Johnny figuring out where the container was scheduled to land, she stood a good chance of being only one of two people who knew where Diviner was. Things might be going her way for a change.

  Nikki smelled ozone, then lightning cracked, spewing a dozen fingers of light into the work yard. The lingering flashes showed men—about five—sprinting into the yard.

  With a sinking sense The Plan was about to go down the toilet, Nikki abandoned her post. Weaving through shadowy, low-lying construction equipment got her within a hundred yards of the crane and close to the main building where the crane operators worked.

  Focus on Diviner, she told herself as she wiped rain from her grease-painted face. Nothing mattered but tagging him and handing him over to Delphi. The triads were ancillary, a complication. She’d handle everything one challenge at a time, always keeping Diviner in her sights.

  Nikki pulled the Russian pistol Lee Wan had given her from its shoulder holster. Water ran down the grip into her sleeve. Gotta hang on to this one, she thought as she leaned slowly from behind a front-end loader’s massive tire.

  Way too much rubber filtered into her nostrils, so that she couldn’t smell the liters of gas the rabble-rousers had brought. That meant they could be anywh—

  A hard hand clamped down on her shoulder.

  Nikki popped her left elbow into the man’s slick face. Cartilage crunched. He backed off, holding his nose, and she laid a front kick to his knee that put him on the ground. The pistol’s butt took him the rest of the way.

  She quickly turned him over. A young man with long, fashionably unkempt hair, he wore no distinguishing clothing, no marks or tattoos on his slender arms. Knowing her luck she’d just taken out gorgeous Ali’s nephew. She rolled him up under the front-end loader’s belly, out of the way and into the shadows.

  One down and four to go? she wondered.

  And where the hell was Johnny?

  Voices warned her to duck under the loader’s belly. She made herself small, drawn up into a nonhuman size and shape behind a rear tire. A few yards away, two pairs of drenched legs passed by in a hurry, spraying water with each step. The dark, muted clothing suggested triads, not security personnel whose shoes would have been in better condition and likely rainproof as well. She waited until they’d moved on, then exited her safe spot on the loader’s opposite side.

  High above her, swaying like a freakily shaped hanging fruit ready to drop, Diviner’s container dangled. She flattened against the crane’s massive leg, its cool steel chilling her spine. Here, at least, she was out of the worst of the rain. Could she take out these four, maybe five, guys on her own?

  A dull thud impacted her eardrums. She spun and peered around the steel leg. The main building’s top floor shot flames into the night, long strips of red and gold that would have been beautiful but for the plumes of black smoke and the stench of burning tar.

  They’d found fuel, she gathered. Rain cast down like pellets before the fire.

  She heard a startled shout and smelled the burnt coffee, then heard a grunt and silence. Then another cycle of shouts, coffee, grunt, silence. Music to her ears. It was Johnny.

  Still, the container overhead hadn’t moved.

  Gunshots and shouts sounded behind her, near the main building. Car tires screamed. A chain-link fence slapped the pavement. Johnny was out there somewhere, and from the waves of copper that assailed her, everyone around him was pissed off.

  Stick with Diviner, she ordered herself. Stay focused.

  Ah, screw it. Diviner wasn’t going anywhere. And Johnny might need her.

  A bullet dinged the steel near her head. She ducked, looked for the shooter. A man armed with a handgun was running toward her, less than thirty feet away. He reached with his free hand to cock the double-action pistol; she dropped him with a thigh shot. Sprinting to him, she sweep-kicked the gun from his hand into the nearest block of shadow and followed it between two containers laid opposite the work yard from the ship.

  “Nikki!” Johnny picked up the gun she’d kicked and tucked it into his waistband. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. How many’d you get?” she asked as she settled low next to him in the cramped space between the two containers.

  “Three Wo soldiers, I think.”

  She swept the moisture from her face and rubbed her palm on her pants to dry it. “I got two…somethings.” She kept watch over his shoulder, her stomach churning over the moaning of the man she’d injured.

  “Those guys were Wo. The Sun just showed up.”

  “Great.”

  Johnny’s hand roamed the modified bandolier he wore. “You still good for ammunition?”

  “I’m okay. Used one bullet.”

  He nodded, and she smelled the clean rain of humor that enveloped him even in the real rain that surrounded her. “That’s my girl. What’s the smoke?”

  “You missed the explosion? Somebody blew up the top floor of the building over there.”

  Johnny’s head bowed. “That means they’ve killed the operators. Damn.” His shoulders straightened, as if he were regrouping. “We’ve got about seven Sun in this area. I’ll get them. You watch Diviner.”

  Then he’d leaped away and disappeared beyond the container stacks. She heard a thud, and the moaning man was silent. Breathing deeply, Nikki shook off her nerves. Better to get up top and see what was what.

  The containers were too far apart to use her chimney-climbing trick, so she crept to the far end. Her luck was holding. One had an inset ladder, and she hustled to the container’s top, where she lay flat. She rolled to the edge and looked down.

  Men in black shuffled, dodged. Bursts of light sparked from their guns’ muzzles as they fired. The tactical part of her brain thought she ought to have a rifle given her vantage point. The strategic part of her realized no one seemed to be trying to secure Diviner’s container. Was that because it was trapped in midair? Literally hung out to dry?

  The container she
lay on shuddered beneath her. With a start, she realized great cables still attached to the metal framework had gone taut and were lifting, hoisting. A strong jolt on the scale of a minor earthquake, and the entire box rose.

  Nikki skittered away from the edge as the container, now moving sideways, began to tip and sway. She got on her knees, stayed low for balance. Beneath her, shots spiked and bullets winged off metal. She turned to see where she was headed—

  And froze.

  The container she rode was aimed at Diviner’s.

  Damn.

  Tucking the pistol in her shoulder holster as she went, Nikki scurried to the container’s tether. Too thick to get her hands around and too slick with the rain to climb. She held on to the cable to look down at the concrete dock and the work yard that separated the ship from the container stacks. Too high to jump. The other side? She scrambled over. The ship snugged the dock and she didn’t trust her spatial judgment to accurately drop her body in the tiny space between the ship’s starboard side and the concrete into the harbor.

  The crane arm that carried her stopped. Her container plunged toward Diviner’s—she saw the rivets in the box he lived in—but didn’t have the swing to make contact. Sickeningly, her container dropped back, drifting in its heady pendulum arc.

  It jerked hard, throwing her to her knees. She clutched the rain-slick ridges and prayed her grip would hold. Maybe there was another way off?

  Then she saw the man standing on the crane’s arm, at roughly below her altitude. He stood on a small platform next to a guide wire attached to her container. The container, even empty, was too heavy for him to pull by hand, but he had hit the switch to start winding the container close.

  He was gearing her up for another swing toward Diviner.

  Nikki stripped her shoulder holster. She tucked the pistol in her waistband. Wind buffeted her back, but she managed to stay steady, on her feet. She looped the holster over the guide wire, grabbed it with both hands and jumped.

  She fell fast, zipping down the wire. Rain blinded her, raked her face. Her booted feet aimed at the ledge the man stood on. A glint in the bright lights. A meat cleaver, gripped in his fist.