Snakehead

by Anthony Horowitz

  He stopped in front of Alex.

  Alex looked up. He was scared, and he didn’t care if he looked it. Maybe the man would decide that he was just a kid and leave him alone. But the colonel didn’t care how old he was. He smelled blood. Something like a smile spread over his face, and he rapped out a sentence in Indonesian, holding out a hand for Alex’s ID. Alex froze. He didn’t have his own passport. That was in Ash’s pocket. But even if he was able to produce it, the colonel would know it was fake. Should he tell the man who he was? Just a few words in English would do the trick. End the danger. End the mission too.

  It began to rain.

  No. It wasn’t quite like that. In London, rain has a beginning, a few drops that send people scattering for cover and allow time for umbrellas to rise. In Jakarta, there was no warning. The rain fell as if a skin had burst. In an instant it was flooding down, warm and solid, an ocean of rain that spluttered out of the drainpipes, hammered against the roofs, and turned the earth to mud.

  And with the flood came a brief moment of confusion. Up until then, the Kopassus had been in complete control of the complex, working with a plan that allowed them to cover every inch of ground. The sudden downpour changed things. Alex didn’t even see where the gunfire began. But someone must have decided that they had too much to lose and that the rain would give them enough cover to risk shooting their way out of here. There were half a dozen shots. The bullets came from somewhere near the warehouse where Alex had slept, a single gun, fired carefully, at exactly equal intervals. One of the Kopassus men went down, clutching his arm. The rest reacted instantly, diving for cover, returning fire even as they went. The sound of their machine guns was deafening. They didn’t seem to care where they were aiming. Alex saw an entire wall ripping itself apart, the wooden planks shredded. A man who had been standing near the door was blown off his feet by the first volley. Alex had seen him just two minutes before, sweeping out the yard.

  But the Kopassus were taking casualties too. At least three guns were being fired at them. As Alex turned, searching for cover, the soldier whose gun had been pressed against Ash’s neck fell back, a mushroom of blood erupting out of his shoulder. Immediately a second man stepped into his place, firing in the direction from which the bullets had come, the nozzle of his machine gun flashing white behind the rain.

  The colonel had pulled out a pistol, a Swiss-made SIG-Sauer P226 and one of the ugliest nine-millimeter weapons on the market. Alex saw him take aim at Ash. His intention was clear. He had been about to arrest a man and that had provoked a firestorm…at least, that was what he thought. Well, whoever the man was, the colonel wasn’t going to let him get away. Rough justice. He would execute him here and now and put an end to all this.

  Alex couldn’t let it happen. With a cry, he hurled himself sideways, his shoulder slamming into the colonel’s stomach. The gun went off, the bullet firing into the air. The two of them flew backward, carried by Alex’s velocity, and came crashing down in a puddle. The colonel tried to bring the gun around to aim at Alex. Alex caught hold of his wrist and slammed it down, smashing the back of his hand against a rock. The colonel cried out. Rain was driving into Alex’s face, blinding him. He forced the hand up and down a second time. The fingers opened and the gun fell free.

  Part of him knew that this was all wrong. He was on the same side as the Kopassus, both of them fighting the snakehead, who were the true enemy. But there was no time to explain. Alex saw a soldier throw something—a round, black object about the size of a baseball—through the deluge. He knew at once what it was, even before the explosion that tore open the side of the warehouse, smashed three windows, and blew a hole in the roof. A tongue of flame leapt up, only to be driven back by the rain.

  More gunfire. The man who had thrown the grenade cried out and reeled backward, clutching his shoulder. The white van was moving. Alex heard the engine rev, then saw the van begin a clumsy three-point turn. At the same moment, Ash grabbed hold of his arm. His hair was matted. Water was streaming down his face.

  “We have to go!” he shouted. With the noise of the rain and shooting there was no chance of his being overheard.

  The colonel lunged sideways and tried to reach the gun. Ash kicked it away, than brought a fist crashing down on the man’s head.

  “Ash…,” Alex began.

  “Later!”

  The van had completed its first turn. It was being brought around to face the shattered gate. Ash started forward, and Alex followed. They reached the van just as it began to pick up speed. Ash reached out and wrenched open the back door. The driver wasn’t waiting for them. There was a burst of machine-gun fire, and Alex cried out as a line of bullet holes stitched themselves across the side of the van right in front of him.

  “Go!” Ash shouted.

  Alex threw himself forward, through the door, and into the back of the van. A second later, Ash followed, landing on top of him. The driver didn’t even seem to have noticed they were there. All he cared about was getting away himself. One of the side mirrors exploded, the glass shattering, the metal casing tearing free. The engine screamed as the driver pressed his foot on the accelerator. They leapt forward. There was an explosion, so close that Alex felt the flames scorch the side of his face. But then they were away, shooting out through the gate and into the street beyond.

  The van skidded all over the road. It slammed into a wall and one side crumpled, sparks flickering as metal and brick collided. Alex glanced back. One of the van’s doors had been blown off, and he saw two soldiers—they looked like ghosts—kneeling in the gate, firing at them. Bullets, burning white, sliced through the rain. But they were already out of range. They hurtled up the track they had come down the night before…by now it was little more than a brown river of mud and debris. Alex looked back, expecting the Kopassus to follow. But the rain was falling so hard that the warehouse complex had already disappeared, and if the two Jeep Cherokees were after them, he wouldn’t have been able to tell.

  The driver was the same man who had brought them from the airport. He was clutching the steering wheel as if his life depended on it. He looked in the mirror and caught sight of his two unwanted passengers. At once, he let loose a torrent of Indonesian. But he didn’t slow down or stop. Alex was relieved. It didn’t matter where they were heading. All that mattered was they hadn’t been left behind.

  “What was that about?” he demanded. His mouth was right next to Ash’s ear, and he was confident that the driver wouldn’t be able to hear what he said or what language he was speaking.

  “I don’t know.” For once, Ash had lost his composure. He was lying on his side, trying to catch his breath. “It was routine…bad luck. Or maybe someone hadn’t paid. It happens all the time in Jakarta.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Ash looked out the back. It was hard to see anything in the half-light and swirling water of the storm, but he must have recognized something. “This is Kota. The old city. We’re heading north.”

  “Is that good?”

  “The port is in the north…”

  They had joined the morning traffic, and now they were forced to slow down, falling in behind a line of cars and buses. All the food stalls had disappeared beneath a sea of plastic sheeting, and the people were crowded in doorways, squatting under umbrellas, waiting for the storm to pass.

  The driver turned around and shouted something. Even if it had been in English, Alex doubted that he would have been able to hear.

  “He’s taking us to the boat,” Ash explained. “He wants us out of here.”

  “You speak Indonesian?”

  Ash nodded. “Enough to understand.”

  The van emerged from a side street and cut across a main road. Alex saw a taxi swerve to avoid them, its horn blaring. Behind them, an old house loomed out of the rain. It reminded him of something he might have seen in Amsterdam, but then the whole city had belonged to the Dutch once, a far outpost of the East India Company. They crossed a square. It was l
ined with cobblestones, and lying in the back of the van, Alex felt every one of them. A crowd of bicyclists swerved to avoid them, crashing into one another and tumbling over in a tangle of chains and obscenities. A man pushing a food stall threw himself out of the way with inches to spare.

  Then they were on another highway. There was more traffic here—an endless procession of trucks, each one piled up with goods that were concealed beneath garish plastic tarps. The trucks looked overloaded, as if they might collapse at any time under the weight.

  Finally, just ahead, the buildings parted and Alex saw fences, cranes, and ships looming high above them. There were warehouses, guard posts, and offices made of corrugated iron, huge gantries, and great stretches of empty concrete with more trucks and vans making their way back and forth. It was almost impossible to see anything through the endless rain, but this was the port. It had to be. There was a security barrier straight ahead of them and, beyond, a stack of containers behind a barbed wire fence. The van slowed down and stopped. The driver turned around and shouted something in a torrent of Indonesian before stepping out of the van. Then he was gone.

  “Ash—” Alex began again.

  “This is Tanjung Priok Docks,” Ash cut in. “They must be taking us on a container ship.” He pointed. “You see those fenced-off areas? They’re EPZs. Export Processing Zones. Stuff comes into Jakarta. It gets assembled there, and then it’s shipped out again. That’s our way out of here. Once we’re in an EPZ, we’ll be safe.”

  “How do we get in there?” Alex had seen the barriers ahead of them. There were guards on duty, even in the driving rain.

  “We pay.” Ash grimaced. “This is Indonesia! The docks are run by the military. But the military are in the pay of the premens. You want a translation? They’re gangsters, Alex. The Indonesian mafia. Small beer compared to the snakeheads but still in control around here. You can do anything so long as you pay.” Ash got to one knee and peered out of the window. There was nobody in sight. He glanced back at Alex. “Thank you for what you did back there,” he said.

  “I didn’t do anything, Ash.”

  “The colonel was about to shoot me. You stopped him.” Ash grimaced. “That’s Kopassus for you. Kill the wrong guy and send flowers to the funeral. Really charming.”

  “What happens when we get to Australia?”

  “Then it’s over. I get a pat on the back from Ethan Brooke. You go home.”

  “Will we see each other again?”

  Ash looked away. Like Alex, he was completely drenched, his clothes dripping and forming a pool around him in the back of the van. They both looked like shipwrecks. “Who knows?” he growled. “I haven’t been much of a godfather, have I? Maybe I should have sent you a Bible or something.”

  But before Alex could respond, the driver came back, and this time he wasn’t alone. There were three men with him, their faces hidden beneath the hoods of their plastic anoraks. They were all talking at once, jabbing their fingers at Alex and Ash, gesticulating wildly. Slowly their meaning became clear, and Alex felt a chasm open up beneath him. They wanted Alex to come with them. But Ash was to stay behind. The two of them were being separated.

  He wanted to cry out, to argue—but even one word would be fatal, and he forced himself to keep his mouth shut. He tried to resist, pulling away from the hands that grabbed at him. It was useless. As he was bundled roughly out of the van, he took one last look at Ash. His godfather was watching him almost sadly, as if he had guessed that something bad was going to happen and knew that he was powerless to stop it now that it had.

  Alex was half dragged onto the road. Ahead of him, a gate had swung open, and he was marched through with a man on each side of him and one ahead. A security guard appeared briefly but the men shouted at him and he quickly turned away.

  It was hard to see anything in the driving rain. There was a dock ahead of them and a ship, bigger than any Alex had ever seen, the equivalent of about three soccer fields in length. The ship had a central section where the crew must work and live. Alex could see the bridge, with four or five huge windows and giant windshield wipers swinging back and forth, fighting against the rain. The ship had a name, printed in English along the bow: the Liberian Star. It was being loaded with containers, the rectangular boxes dangling from the huge machine known as a spreader, which loomed over them like some sort of monster creature in a science-fiction film. A man in a cabin was controlling the cables and pulleys, lowering each box into place with incredible precision.

  They entered the EPZ, where the next containers were waiting their turn, each one painted a different color, some carrying the names of the companies that owned them. Alex saw a yellow box, this one sitting on a truck, and knew that it was his destination. Again, the name was painted in English: Unwin Toys. He looked back, hoping against hope that Ash would be following him after all. But they were alone. Why had the two of them been separated like this? It made no sense. After all, they were supposed to be father and son. He just hoped that Ash would be in a second container and that somehow they would meet up again when they arrived in Darwin. He turned his hand toward himself. The telephone number that Ash had given him had almost vanished, reduced to an inky blur by the constant rain. Fortunately, Alex had committed it to memory, or at least he hoped so. He would know for sure soon enough…if he ever found a phone.

  They reached the container, and Alex saw at once that it was locked. More than that, there was a steel pin connected to the door. He was able to guess its purpose. All containers had to be checked by customs officials both going on and coming off a ship. Obviously they couldn’t be opened halfway across on their journey or anything—guns, drugs, people—could be added. The steel pin would have a code number that would already have been checked. It would be checked a second time when they arrived in Australia. And if the pin had been tampered with or broken, the entire container would be impounded and examined.

  So how was he expected to get in? Alex could see that this was how he was going to travel. Presumably it was too dangerous for him to have a cabin on board the ship, and anyway, as far as the snakehead was concerned, this was all he was: cargo, to be dumped along with all the other merchandise. The man who had been leading the way turned and put a hand on his shoulder, urging him to get down. Alex realized that he was expected to climb underneath the truck, between the wheels.

  A moment later he saw why. The container had a secret entrance, a trapdoor that was open, hanging down. He could climb in without touching the main door or the pin that secured it, and once the container was in place, part of a tower with dozens more on top and underneath, there would be no way that anyone could examine it. The whole thing was simple and effective, and part of him even admired the snakehead. It was certainly a huge business, operating in at least three countries. Ethan Brooke had been right. These people were much more than simple criminals.

  He crouched under the truck. Immediately he felt claustrophobic. It wasn’t just the weight of the container pressing down on him. He could see that the trapdoor would be locked from the outside. There was a single solid bolt that slid across. Once that happened, he would be trapped. If the ship sank or if they simply decided to drop the whole thing overboard, he would drown in his own oversized metal coffin. He hesitated, and at once the man jabbed him between the shoulders, urging him forward.

  Alex turned, pretending to be scared, pleading with his eyes to be reunited with Ash. But how could he make himself understood when he couldn’t utter a single word? One of the other men thrust something into his hands: a plastic bag with two bottles of water and a loaf of bread. Supplies for the long journey ahead. The first man pushed him again and shouted. Alex couldn’t delay any longer. He crawled under the truck and over to the trapdoor. The men gestured and he pulled himself up. But as he went, he stumbled. One of his hands caught hold of the sliding bolt and he steadied himself.

  That was his last sight of Indonesia. Mud, dripping rain, and the undercarriage of a truck. He pulled h
imself into the container, and seconds later the trapdoor slammed shut behind him. He heard the bolt slide across with a loud clang. Now there was no way out.

  It was only as he straightened up that he realized he could see. There was light inside the container. He looked around. Two dozen anxious faces stared at him.

  It seemed he wasn’t going to make this part of the journey alone.

  14

  THE LIBERIAN STAR

  IN FACT, THERE WERE twenty people inside the container, huddled together in the half-light thrown by a single battery-operated light. Alex knew at once that they were refugees. He could tell from their faces: not just foreign but afraid, far removed from their own world. Most of them were men, but there were also women and children…a couple of them as young as seven or eight. Alex remembered what Ethan Brooke had told him about illegal immigrants when he was in Sydney. “Half of them are under the age of eighteen.” Well, here was the proof of it. There were whole families locked together in this metal box, hoping and praying that they would arrive safely in Australia. But they were powerless, and they knew it, utterly dependent on the good will of the snakehead. No wonder they looked nervous.