Adrenaline

by Jeff Abbott

  I walked, without haste, past towers of containers. I faced a choice. Pick a ship or pick a container. If I tried to board a ship and then hide, I was going to be dealing with people. Not good. It was taking a risk to enter a container; I might end up at the bottom of a shipment, unable to force open the door. I had tools inside my duffel with which I could cut open an air hole, but I preferred to pick my own coffin for the next ten days.

  No one was paying any attention to me. But my chest felt tight. Anyone could stop me; anyone could challenge me. If I looked the least bit suspicious I would draw attention. Howell and his watchers knew by now that I had run; I could make no assumptions about how close they were on my tail.

  “Hey!” a voice called.

  A guy, twenty feet away, hurried toward me. I froze. He wore a shirt that indicated he worked for a shipping contractor. He carried an electronic handheld bar reader and he said, “Where’s the closest john, man? First day—and this place is too goddamned big.”

  I jerked my head toward the nearest building and I hoped I was right.

  “Thanks.” He took off.

  If there wasn’t a bathroom there—would he remember me? I watched him walk off toward the building. I might have a lot less time to find what I needed than I thought. Yeah, I asked this guy, but he told me wrong. No I didn’t notice if he had an ID clip on…

  I knew what kind of container I was looking for. The sides showed a stenciled shipping company ownership mark tied to an individual number. Containers were routinely bought and sold and bartered among the shippers; I could see on some of the containers that they had been restenciled, the shadows of old paint edging the new numbers.

  Most containers I saw boasted a so-called tamper-proof seal. But I could see a few of the seals dangled from the openings, broken. Again, these seals are not quite up to the ironclad image that politicians feed the public masses. The seal is often a strip of plastic, sized like the wristband a patient wears in a hospital. The number matches the ID number on the side of the container and the seal is simply fed through the door’s levers. I saw a few that had no seal at all: the moving, positioning, emptying, loading, and moving again of a multiton container means that these strips of plastic can easily be torn off or brushed away during the process.

  And no one checks; no one cares. The rivers of commerce cannot be dammed.

  A line of big ships lay ahead. The ownership marks disclosed a shipping company based in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. It would have to do. Unfortunately the containers headed for the UK did not have a large neon sign marked London over them. But I could hide and slip away, unseen, in the chaos and the maze of Europe’s largest and busiest port. I chose a container on the bottom of a large stack—it would be the last to be loaded. The door faced away from the crane and I didn’t care what was being shipped—as long as it wasn’t snakes or scorpions. This was my chance.

  The seal was in place; I sawed through it with a knife from my bag, leaving ragged edges so it would appear that the seal had been damaged in transit. I opened the door, stepped inside, closed the door.

  It took all of five seconds. I knelt close to the door. Listened. I waited to hear footsteps running toward me, but there was only the sound of the continual movement of goods, the screech and grind of the containers above me, slowly being hoisted into the air. I dug in my duffel and found a flashlight. I clicked it on and scanned the container. Stacks of boxes. I had half expected it to be empty—after all, what does America build anymore that the rest of the world uses? Maybe I’d find leveraged financial products or subprime mortgages.

  I inspected one section of boxes. They all read CLEAN-PAK HAND WIPES. Others read VERMONTER HERBAL SOAPS HANDMADE IN USA, with a stylized landscape scene of a New England farm on the boxes. Eight to ten days stuck in here; at least I wouldn’t smell as bad as ten days with no shower.

  I hunkered down away from the door. Eventually I felt the container rise, leave earth, swing toward the ocean, and then settle down—slowly.

  I leaned against a box of Vermont soap, wrapped a blanket around me, and slept.

  19

  TEN DAYS IN A STEEL COFFIN. No way to pass the time, except to think, and to plan. Imagine if you had ten days shut off from the world; no phone, no web, no television. Cutting the electronic cord separated me from the incessant twittering chatter of modern life. The quiet might drive many people mad, but I welcomed it. The only good thing about the prison in Poland had been, after the initial weeks of questioning, the long silences, just me and the stone walls. The power of time to think is a forgotten pleasure in today’s world. This was not so different from the stretches of useless quiet in the CIA prison, except no one was torturing me. But the line I’d crossed weighed on me in a way it hadn’t when I’d thought out the plan. Howell might well issue a kill-on-sight order on me. I had broken away from the invisible cage. No second chance now.

  Waking, I used the flashlight and established my tiny camp inside the steel coffin. Inside the duffels, I had the Glock and two clips of ammo I’d stolen from the safe in Ollie’s office. I had a hopefully delicious assortment of protein bars and fruit. Bottles of water. Extra batteries for the flashlight. Toothbrush, toothpaste, and toilet paper. A small container for waste. A first-aid kit and sleeping pills. A charged iPod with Mahler and the Rolling Stones and an extended battery. Two changes of clothes: gray shirts, jeans. All the cash I’d saved after the passport fiasco, a few hundred dollars.

  It wasn’t much with which to start a long and dangerous journey to find my lost wife and child. I checked my watch. The cargo ship should have departed by now. A constant hum of engine played. But I didn’t want to risk opening the door and being spotted—although with thousands of containers, I thought the odds of being seen were low—until we were at least a day out of America. The ship wouldn’t turn around for a stowaway at that point; they would just arrest me and throw me in whatever small room they could improvise as a brig. They would alert the port authorities when they arrived in Rotterdam. But it was best of all if I wasn’t seen. I could keep my sanity without seeing the sky.

  The container was like a womb, I told myself. Maybe when I got out I’d be reborn, ready to kick ass.

  I closed my eyes again.

  Felt nothing but an utter loneliness that one cannot find easily in today’s world. Nothing to do but sleep and dream about what I had lost. It couldn’t be healthy, to dream so much.

  I dozed, and it wasn’t a dream: it was a memory rising to my brain like a bubble.

  “What do you want to name him?” Lucy asked me. She stood by the window of our Bloomsbury flat, staring out at the rain. Gray clouds scudded low over the city, and my normal life was ticking five days to zero.

  “Him. You’re sure it’s going to be a him.”

  “He kicks like you.” She placed her hand on the little swell of stomach.

  “I have never kicked you.”

  She put a hand on my cheek. “In your sleep. When you have bad dreams. About Danny.”

  My brother.

  Mention of Danny always brought a silence. Maybe it only lasted a moment, but it marked a cold pause in everyday life. And the inevitable sting. At the back of my eyes, in the bottom of my throat.

  I lowered the book I was reading. “Well, how about Edwin, for your dad?” Lucy’s parents had died in a car crash when she was ten, and I had thought she might want to honor her lost father or mother. She had been raised by an aunt after her parents died, gone to college on full scholarship, studied the elegance of databases, and joined the Company fresh out of school, just like me. She spoke fondly of her aunt and little of her parents, almost as if they were characters she’d read about in a novel.

  “I appreciate the sentiment, monkey, but Edwin’s too old-fashioned for me.”

  “Um, okay.” I stared at her, my mind a blank.

  “How about Samuel Junior?” she said.

  “I don’t want him named for me. Let him be his own person, entirely.”


  Lucy tucked her feet under her. “I’d like to honor a loved one.”

  “Well.” I loved my parents, very much, but relations with them were frosty at the moment. “How about we’ll name him for you, Lucy. Call him Lucian. He’ll have to be the toughest kid on the playground.”

  “No. My mind’s made up. Daniel, for your brother.”

  “You don’t have to do that. You never even knew Danny.”

  “I know what he meant to you. It’s an awesome name. Let’s honor him.”

  (If I could put a sticky note into my memory, it would read: This was the woman the world wanted me to believe was a traitor.)

  “Then let’s put Daniel on the list.” I picked up my book again.

  “Daniel. Okay. What if I’m wrong and it’s a girl?”

  “Capri, for the island. Capri Capra. She’ll love us forever.”

  She laughed. “Sam?”

  “Yes?”

  She didn’t answer me, and I glanced up at her, still watching the slow slide of rain along the glass. And then she said words she never said in real life: Do you think I could let you die?

  I awoke with a start. The dark was nearly complete, and for a moment I forgot I lay nestled in the container’s cocoon.

  I lay listening, wondering how long I’d slept. Today had been the first time in a long while I’d slept like a free man—no listeners, no cell, no one watching me or my dreams for evidence of betrayal. I slept again, woke again, slept again. For how long I didn’t know.

  But my brain jerked me awake at a sound. An approaching buzz, sounding hard, above the soft steady thrum of the engines. An interrupting roar.

  I knew the sound. A helicopter.

  Lowering toward the deck.

  20

  I RISKED CRACKING OPEN THE DOOR. Daylight hit my eyes, the dawn, rosy fresh. I could smell air unsullied by city, saltwater, the tinge of rust. The light stung my eyes; I blinked the pain away. My container stood near the top of a stack—another stack stood next to it. I could barely open the door and squeeze through, and I had to hold on to the side of the adjoining container. I looked down. I was roughly four stories up—if I slipped I would fall into a narrow canyon created by the containers. I pushed the door open as far as I could and pulled myself up to the top of the container wall.

  Thin clouds streaked the sky. The helicopter’s whoosh faded as the rotors slowed. I inched along the top of the containers and looked down. At the ship’s stern, a jet helicopter squatted. I saw four men, armed, exiting the helicopter as the rotors slowed. One figure—a woman in a suit—stood at a distance, conferring with a group of men who appeared to be the captain and members of the crew.

  The arrivals must be Howell’s people.

  Jesus, how? How? Finding people who didn’t want to be found was hard; I’d hit my head against that wall a number of times. Yet no matter how carefully I hid, here came the Company. My heart trip-hammered against my chest and then I thought: six thousand containers, they can’t open and search them all. It would take weeks.

  Well, if the Company was seizing the ship, they would have weeks. They could commandeer the vessel, sail it back to New York or to Boston, pay off the disgruntled shippers. They could take as long as they wanted to find me. If they’d found the intruder’s body in the apartment, they’d never give up. Howell would know I’d killed the guy and run, presumably with highly useful information.

  The helicopter rose again. It hovered over the stern of the ship, then began to work its way slowly over the deck. I could see two men sitting in the copter’s open door, peering at a laptop. Hanging from each side of the helicopter was an array of lenses, shaped like a rectangle.

  The helicopter passed low over the first stack of containers, keeping up its flying speed, but just barely. It wasn’t in a hurry. It was searching.

  My heart sank. Infrared scanners tied to thermal imagers. My body temperature would stick out like a flame against the coolness of shipped goods like my Vermont soap and New Jersey hand wipes.

  I had to find somewhere else on the ship to hide. Now.

  I couldn’t go down. My body heat would stick out like a blister. I had to go up and then find rapid entry into the ship. I’d be spotted, but they were going to find me within minutes anyway. I ducked back down to my container, grabbed my gun and the ammo, and the cash. I put the cash and the ammo in a belt bag and tucked the gun in the back of my pants, then went back out the door. The containers’ surfaces were damp from the ocean breeze, and I tested my grip carefully; a slip would be fatal. I hoisted myself up high. The helicopter was about a hundred meters away. The ship had stopped and dropped anchor; the white noise of the engines had faded.

  The helicopter was turned away from me, its nose pointing back to where the suit from the helicopter and the captain (I presumed) stood. I crawled out onto the top of the containers. I was five stories in the air, laying flat on the cool steel of a blue container. I could see that the container stack here stair-stepped down, then rose again. The loader had not done a neat job and it gave me ledges and walls, just like back in Vauxhall.

  The helicopter began its turn. I hunkered low and ran. I eased myself over the lip of the first stack and dropped down to the next.

  I made a clang when I hit. The helicopter couldn’t have heard it. But a crewman, standing near the railing toward the bow, turned, either at the sound or at the flash of color I made as I ran.

  I saw him turn and point. Right at me.

  I rolled and ran toward the edge again, and I heard the increasing whine of the helicopter. I slammed off the edge of one container, slowed my descent, hit the top of another and rolled to my feet. I glanced back as I ran the twenty feet to the edge and saw the helicopter bearing down on me. One of the men jumped from the copter onto the container stack, gun in hand.

  I ran. Metal hit metal—a bullet pinging against the container. I had to get off the stack—the helicopter roared above me, circling, keeping me in sight as the gunman narrowed the gap between us.

  I was caught between man and machine, boxed, now three stories above the deck, and I could see another thin crevasse between shoved-together stacks of multicolored containers.

  I wriggled inside the gap. I had maybe thirty seconds to navigate down thirty feet to the deck before the gunman caught up to the canyon. I’d be a dead target if I wasn’t out and clear by the time he reached it. He could simply fire a bullet into the top of my head.

  I bounced down, my feet catching the edges of the containers, just enough to break the descent, then dropping again. Find the line, I told myself. It was like a parkour run inside a pipeline; my shoulders bounced hard against the steel.

  Twenty feet. I hit a skid, lost my balance. I slammed into the metal side, caught the edge of a container with my hands. I could hear the helicopter drumming above me like a hammer.

  I focused and let go and managed to drop to the deck in a controlled roll. I spilled free from the container stack, out of the shadows, into the weak, ocean-guttered sunlight. Fifty feet ahead of me was a railing—and beyond that the uncaring gray of the sea.

  I ran, staying close to the edge of the containers. I needed to get belowdecks. On a ship full of warm bodies and heating pumps and heavy engines, they’d have to do their thermal scans by hand. And hundreds more containers should be below. I could become the needle in the haystack for a while. I was going to make them work to find me, because I was sick of being stymied, of being pushed away from finding Lucy and my son.

  I crashed into a crewman, a young Filipino who cried out in Tagalog for help. I showed him the gun and he froze. I pushed him away hard and ran through a doorway, started hammering down the steps.

  Behind me I saw the gunman take a hard run, slide off a container, hit and roll with enough grace to hold his balance as he came off the front of the container stack.

  I vanished into the depths of the ship. The crew was not likely armed; this ship wasn’t sailing past Somalia. I didn’t want to shoot an innocent person, an
d the sound would betray my location to the hunters. Best to be silent and vanish.

  I ran down a long, narrow corridor, turning back and slowing to look for pursuit, and I slammed into a wall of a man as he bound out of a doorway. I staggered back and the man—heavyset, Asian—snarled and launched a flurry of blows at my face. He used Muay Thai: hard, sharp, brutal blows, a Thai fighting form designed to knock an opponent down and out with the smallest amount of effort. It hurts. A lot.

  He landed two precise blows on my jaw and my throat before I could parry, and I fell to the ground.

  Then he flicked open a switchblade. A switchblade? The eighties want their weapon back. “They pay for you,” he hissed. He sliced the air between us, smiled his hard awful smile. “You get up, slow, and—”

  “That’s cheating,” I said. I thought we were sticking to fists, but whatever. I pulled my gun free and shot the knife out of his hand. At least I would play fair. He shrieked; the broken knife clattered along the deck. I glanced behind me, saw the gunman launching himself into the hallway behind us, so I cheated some more and I closed arms around the crying, bleeding sailor and made him my shield. The gunman held fire. Hurray for morals. I yanked the sobbing sailor back along the hall. We finally hit a door; it opened into the main container hold.

  “Let him go, Mr. Capra, we want to talk,” the gunman called.

  Mister? So polite. I acted like I hadn’t heard. I hurried the sailor down toward the hold floor. He didn’t struggle, moaning as he clutched his hurt hand. But two can’t move as fast as one, and as we reached the hold floor, I aimed at the lights above us. I needed the blanket of darkness. The gunman appeared at the steps and aimed. He fired as I tried to pull the sailor back behind the angle of a container while squeezing the trigger, and my shot missed the light.

  I’d moved too slow. The gunman’s shot caught the sailor in the upper back and he screamed and sagged to the floor.