Opportunity will meet preparation.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Noah scans the horizon and frowns. “Am I hallucinating, or are those islands?”
“They’re islands all right, but they’re so small,” says Sam. “And look, there’s nobody on them. That’s no help.”
“It’s a miracle, that’s what they are.” Lisa’s eyes brighten. “Those have got to be the Senkaku Islands.”
“Can’t be. We were there when we radioed for help” says Noah.
“I don’t think so. Did you see any islands? Think about who told you. I think that was part of Cheryl’s set-up,” says Lisa.
Noah has to admit that made a lot of sense.
“What’s the big deal about some islands nobody lives on?” asks Sam.
“The big deal is that China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan have been arguing over them for a hundred years. The Japanese call them the “Senkaku Islands,” and the English call them the “Pinnacle Islands.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” asks Sam skeptically. “How does this help us?”
“Because if their ownership is disputed, that means some country is likely to have a vessel patrolling these islands. This portion of the East China Sea is close to major shipping lanes and fantastic fishing grounds,” says Lisa.
“But if they think we’re one of the bad guys, they’ll just finish off doing what the helicopter goons started,” says Noah.
“Right.” Sam jerks his head, then does a double take. “Hallelujah! The marines are coming!” shouts Sam.
He points and yes! A large Japanese patrol vessel is in the background.
Sam waves his arms, gesticulating wildly, hoping to catch the Japanese ship’s attention.
Totally drained by the day’s events, Noah sighs a sigh of relief as he sees the boat approaching. The soreness in his chest tells him the snake likely cracked, or at the very least bruised his ribs, when it coiled around him.
However, hope changes to anxiety when the bullhorn of the Japanese vessel starts blaring at them in Japanese.
All three start waving their arms, doing jumping jacks on steroids trying to attract attention.
“What are they saying?” yells Lisa.
“Damned if I know,” calls Noah.
Neither Noah, Sam, nor Lisa knows a single word of Japanese, but that’s not necessary—the angry, hostile metallic tone communicates everything.
When the vessel is fifty yards away, they shout, “Help! Help!” but this is either misinterpreted or misunderstood. The Japanese boat continues to advance and the tone from the loudspeaker grows ever more menacing.
Jolting everyone’s focus, the Japanese crew starts spraying the Ever Ready with water from a high-powered water cannon.
“No! No! No!” scream the trio. Instead of stopping, the water spray intensifies.
After ten minutes of constant aquatic bombardment, the Japanese Coast Guard leaves.
If the drenched, depressed passengers on the Ever Ready could understand Japanese, they would have discovered that they were illegally trespassing on Japanese territorial waters, the third such vessel Coast Guard had to contend with in the past five months. If they continued to disobey and disrespect Japanese territorial laws, this could trigger an international incident that could potentially incite war.
They don’t understand Japanese though. All they know is their situation has worsened. They are tired, sick, waterlogged and famished.
Not a very good recipe for productive travel with one paddle on a broken-down powerboat. With night falling, the only solution seems to be to fall asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Yesterday, there was a typhoon. Tonight, there’s a long series of mild earthquakes and tremors in the East China Sea. Mild, that is, unless you’re a passenger on the Ever Ready. Noah, Lisa and Sam are tossed about all night by the ravaging waves. It’s all they can do to keep Master Wu and themselves from falling out of the boat.
But then, tomorrow is a new day. A bright new day with seas calm as far as the eye can see. In the distance, they see another boat. They look at it with fear and hope. Fear that it’s another Japanese patrol boat and hope that it’s a friendly vessel from Korea or Taiwan or China.
This time, their prayers are answered. It’s a small older fishing boat from the China mainland. It has no intention of stopping by, but the captain sees the frantic waving of arms from this strange tall white man, a very pretty Chinese woman and some teenage kid. Curiosity piqued, the captain guides his vessel to take a close look at this odd trio. Surprised that the Ever Ready has no power, he pulls alongside to investigate.
“Ni hao, ni hao! Qing ni band women!” (Hello! Please help us!) pleads Noah.
The captain is shocked to hear Noah speak to him in sophisticated unaccented Mandarin. Noah explains to the skipper that between the earthquake and typhoon of the last couple days, they are just happy to be alive, but they need to get to Shanghai quickly.
Noah doesn’t want to scare off the potential savior so he has left out the part about being pursued by the crew of the ship they had hired and the crew of a helicopter that was supposed to rescue them.
The captain is a bit sympathetic to their plight. However, the degree of sympathy seems directly related to the amount of money Noah is willing to pay. Because all their purses and wallets were lost during their adventures, they have no money to offer.
But they do have one thing of value... well, sort of.
It’s no longer of value to Noah, but a custom-made engagement ring made for someone who doesn’t want it proves useful as a means of currency. This is of course the ring that Noah had intended to give Olivia the night she broke things off. He kept it on his person because he doesn’t really know what to do with it.
So what is an engagement ring that cost $50,000 worth out on the open sea? The Chinese captain knows he has Noah over a barrel and takes full advantage of it. In exchange for the ring, Noah gets three hours of labor from the ship mechanic to get the Ever Ready’s engine running again, a full tank of gas, an extra storage tank of gas to make sure they have enough fuel to get to the outskirts of Shanghai, a cooked meal of fish and rice, enough food to make another meal, five gallons of fresh water and fifty dollars cash. The captain doesn’t have any electronic communication devices: no cell phones or radios, but at least Noah and company have a boat with a working engine and enough food and fuel to get them to their destination.
It’s an uneventful ride on the sea for the next ten hours to Shanghai. No needles, no snakes, no explosions, no helicopters, no nasty people, no typhoon, no earthquakes. Life should always be so easy.
Noah and Sam take turns manning the steering wheel. The captain pointed them in the direction of the China coast and they stay reasonably close to it. Close enough that they can use it to guide their voyage, far enough not to raise any suspicion.
Their only concern is getting treatment for Master Wu and praying that it won’t be too late. One good thing about Traditional Chinese Medicine is that you don’t always need a lot of equipment. With Tui Na, expert kneading and massaging by fingers and hands might be all that’s required.
Lisa’s knowledgeable thumb and index finger begin pressing on key meridians to stimulate Master Wu’s circulation and qi. Concentration and concern are on her face. The poison should have worn off by now, but Master Wu is still unconscious. Could she have made a mistake in the dosage? Did she and King spend enough time in the clinical trials? Did he ingest too much water when he was in the ocean and is he now brain dead?
The stakes are very high. If she can’t revive Master Wu, there will be no leverage with Noah.
Noah sits beside his Sifu of over twenty years, wondering if Master Wu will be able to make it back to the place from where he started and how different this journey to Heaven is from the last time Master Wu went.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sixty Years Ago
More than a hundred miles from Shanghai, a twelve-year-old
barefoot boy climbs a beautiful arbored mountain. He’s traveled a year on foot from his native province of Fujian. While much of China is in political and cultural upheaval, this means nothing to the lad. He’s had a taste of Heaven and he wants more.
Back in his home village, there had been a wandering Shaolin monk. Not a very good one and definitely not dedicated―he spent much of his free time cavorting with women and in bars―but good enough to make an impression on an impressionable young boy. Flying kicks and arms that could down a man with one blow dazzle the lad―all with this mysterious system of Shaolin Martial Arts called Hung Gar or Tiger and Crane. The monk made tiger poses and the sounds of a Chinese crane. All of this fascinated the child.
The boy asked the monk if he would teach him and he told him, “No. If you want to learn, then you have to go to the ends of the earth, to a mysterious place called Heaven.” The boy cried. He said he didn’t want to die in order to learn about these amazing tricks.
The monk sobered. He slapped the boy and said, “These are not tricks. These are part of The Way. Anyone can do little tricks, but if you truly want to be a master of the Shaolin, you must dedicate your life to Heaven.”
The monk further explained that Heaven was not an ethereal place but the real name of a secret monastery. If he wanted to find it, his journey would begin at Shaolin Paradise in Shanghai.
That evening, the boy told his parents he was leaving and that he would never come back. His mother cried for hours, saying he was too young, but the boy was adamant. And he never did come back or see his mother again.
Too poor for any other mode of transportation, he walked hundreds of miles on barefoot to Shanghai. With no money, he learned to be resourceful, to eat plants and bark or the leftover scraps from a banquet, to sleep in an open field or in the home of a stranger.
After six weeks, he arrived in Shanghai and found the Shaolin Paradise. When he asked for directions to Heaven, most gave him a blank stare. “You are in heaven now,” most of them said. But when the boy observed the martial arts training at the Shaolin Paradise and the cavalier attitude that many there had, he knew the real Heaven was somewhere else.
He went to the oldest monk at the Shaolin Paradise and asked him how to get to Heaven. The monk pointed to non-existent mountains and said, “There.” The boy asked, “How do I get there? Where are the directions?”
The monk replied, “That is your second lesson. To see what cannot be seen. To find what cannot be found. To discover what is not there.”
The boy asked the monk how he could begin the second lesson without completing the first.
The monk replied that the boy had already completed the first lesson. That was coming to Shaolin Paradise on his own and learning about charity and about people. To know when and who to trust was the first lesson.
The boy nodded. He understood that the journey was part of the training. To find Heaven took him another six months. All told, a year of false starts, false directions, false leads―but ultimately he found Heaven, the home of Hung Gar, the home of the truest Shaolin in the world.
That boy was Master Wu. He stayed at Heaven for twenty-one years.
Chapter Twenty-Five
As the Ever Ready motors north on the calm waters of the East China Sea, Lisa notices Master Wu’s eyelids twitching. She breathes a sigh of relief. Maybe her constant Tui Na massaging is working. Maybe she miscalculated the amount of poison she injected in him and it is starting to wear off. Maybe Master Wu was only briefly comatose or maybe it’s because the elderly master’s inner compass is feeling that he is approaching home―somewhere he left long ago but never forgot. Whatever it is, it’s good.
“Noah,” whispers Lisa. She motions for Noah to look at the stirring Master Wu.
Master Wu’s eyes open and he sees the aqua blue sky. His face feels the warm, salty ocean breeze. With difficulty, he turns his head to one side. Barely a quarter of a mile away, he sees something he hasn’t seen for over forty years—Jinshanzui, a quaint little seaside town south of Shanghai. He turns his head to the other side and sees Noah sitting on a chair smiling at him.
“Good morning, Sifu.”
Master Wu forces a whisper, “Good morning, Noah.”
Sam, who has been steering, greets the awakened martial arts master, shouting, “Hey Master Wu, you missed all the fun.”
Amazing to all, Master Wu sits up. “That’s terrible, Sam. You’ll have to fill me in.” He looks around and is perplexed to find that they are in middle of the ocean on a small boat. “How did we get here? I thought we were on a big powerboat. And where is that no good friend of mine, Dr. Tang?”
Lisa says quietly. “He’s gone.”
Master Wu’s hands start trembling. Noah rushes to steady him, while Sam brings a drink of water.
“How? When?” sputters the Sifu in quiet disbelief. “He was healthy… ”
“We were ambushed,” Noah says grimly. “I don’t know how we were tracked but someone is after us. Right now we are sitting ducks.”
“But nobody’s chased us for the last couple of days,” says Sam.
“That means they don’t know we’re alive or don’t know where to find us... and I want to make sure it stays that way. No cell phones, no tablets, no electronic games, no using ATMs, or showing your identity. Even when we get to Shanghai. That way no one can trace us.”
“Are you trying to kill me?” moans Sam.
“I wish.” Noah turns back to Master Wu. “And I don’t care how afraid of flying you are. Next time, we’re taking a plane.”
“You’re assuming there is a next time, Noah,” says Master Wu, his late friend fresh in his thoughts.
Lisa gets Master Wu to open his mouth and she checks his tongue. Nodding, she takes his pulse with two fingers over his wrist. Check your pulse; look at your tongue. The classic method of diagnosis in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Lisa announces her verdict. “You are getting better, but you must take it easy. It will take time and I need to get the right medicine for you.”
Time is one thing we don’t have a lot of right now. Noah turns to Sam. “Let’s head to shore.”
As the skiff approaches the sleepy village, sand caressing the shore never looked so good.
Master Wu looks in the opposite direction of the little village to hide his emotions. With a voice cracking with emotion, he says softly, “You were my best friend, Tang. May the gods be with you.”
***
Normally, Noah would have no problem going through regular channels when entering Shanghai. Check in at airport, go through immigration kiosks, registration and boom―you’re done.
This time though, regular channels would likely be a hazard to the group’s health, not to mention a huge pain in the ass. All of them lost their passports and all forms of official identification so there would be several hours and probably more of processing. Not to mention the world learn of their existence.
Without access to any of his resources, Noah’s only means of keeping the group alive is secrecy. For once in his life, he is in complete agreement with Master Wu’s anti-technology stance.
Privacy does have its costs though. One reason that Noah got such a bad deal when negotiating with the Chinese fishing captain was Noah’s insistence that no one know who they were and allow no one to find out. When Noah asked the captain what place close to Shanghai they might go to without alerting authorities, he knew he had Noah over a barrel.
At the same time, the captain was not a completely bad sort. Had Noah not acted in a way that made the group seem like they were fugitives, he would have gladly brought them to Jinshanzui himself. After all, this was the home of the fishermen on his boat.
The directions that the captain gave to Noah were perfect. Noah beaches the Ever Ready and instructs Lisa and Sam to stay with Master Wu.
Noah walks through the sleepy little village for the five blocks that the Captain directed him to go until he arrives at his destination, “The Jinshanzui Taxi Compan
y.” Hardly a bustling enterprise, there’s no one at the counter but there is an old beat-up minibus in front. Noah gets on to see the driver lying down for a nap. Great.
Noah taps on the driver’s shoulder and wakes him. “I want to go to the Shaolin Paradise. Four of us, including one man who needs to stay lying down,” says Noah in perfect Mandarin.
“Your Chinese is so good. I give you very good deal,” replies the driver enthusiastically.
“How much?”
“Only three hundred dollars.”
“No way. I’ll give you ten.”
“Who are you kidding? Get out. Get out.”
Noah laughs. He knows the game of bargaining that goes on throughout most of Asia. While some of the larger private and government stores have fixed prices, almost everywhere else haggling is the name of the game and the game is always the same. Start with an astronomically ridiculously high price, then counter with a lowball offer just as stupid. The moment the driver said, “Three hundred,” Noah knew his fifty bucks would be enough.
“Okay. Okay. No games or I walk. Twenty dollars. That’s my final offer.”
“You want me to lose money? The gas is one hundred dollars by itself. Tell you what. I no make money. I just charge you for the gas. One hundred dollars.”
“I said twenty is my final offer.”
“C’mon, Mister. It’s going to take me all day to get there and then come back.”
The driver tries to discern the thoughts from Noah’s poker face. “Okay. Okay. Sixty-five. I cannot do it for one cent less. Otherwise you just go away.”
“So we’re good at forty?” asks Noah.
The driver is about to object but then Noah shows him that fifty dollars is all he has.
“Okay. I’ll take fifty. Let’s go. You got the best deal, you know.”
“Fifty means you buy lunch and get us clean bottled water to drink.”
The driver shakes his head. “You should be so happy I like you. I only do this for my friends.”
The Noah Reid Series: Books 1-3: The Noah Reid Action Thriller Series Boxset Page 35
