Children of the Uprising Page 22

  “There are no good plans without good leaders,” a woman to Christopher’s right said. She was Indian. When they’d been introduced, she was eager and shook Christopher’s hand with both of hers. Christopher looked toward Reggie, hoping for some sort of salvation. He thought that Reggie could lead them if they would just listen to him. But Reggie was busy staring bullets at the little man who had first questioned Christopher’s role and caused all the problems. The man held Reggie’s gaze and threw it back at him. The group broke up into a dozen side conversations now in at least eight different languages so that no one could be heard or understood.

  “That’s enough!” shouted Apsara over the din. She shot Christopher a look like an ice pick. “No one expected us to have all the answers tonight.” It was a lie and everybody knew it, but no one argued. “Let’s adjourn until tomorrow.” With that, they stopped arguing and stopped talking and everyone began to walk over the long bamboo bridges leading from the beach to their huts. Soon the only sounds were footsteps on bamboo and water lapping beneath them.

  Christopher walked alone. He looked back to see Reggie talking in whispers to Apsara. Then they parted and Reggie caught up to Christopher. “What was that all about?” Christopher asked Reggie.

  “Damage control,” Reggie said. He didn’t look pleased. He didn’t look angry either. Christopher decided that he should stay quiet for a while.

  Forty

  Despite his failure, Christopher slept. The island made him feel safe. For the first time that he could remember, he truly felt hidden from the prying eyes that had haunted him his whole life. They were miles away from anywhere else in the world. Plus, he had Reggie sleeping in the other bed, not far from his. The sea air blew through the windows of their hut and Christopher could hear the water lapping beneath them. Reggie didn’t say much to him before they went to bed. All he said was, “We’ll try again tomorrow. Try to have a little fun with it.” Christopher didn’t believe that trying again or having fun with it would help. He couldn’t believe that anything would change in a day. So instead of thinking about it, he slept. He slept deeply and peacefully until he was shaken out of his slumber by a stranger in the middle of the night.

  It was so dark inside the hut that Christopher barely remembered where he was. He could barely see, let alone recognize the faces of the men grabbing him. It wasn’t until he heard their voices that he remembered. “We’re taking you away,” a voice said. “Don’t resist.” When he heard the accents, he remembered Asia. He remembered everything that had happened. He remembered what was said.

  “Reggie,” Christopher cried out before a hand clamped over his mouth.

  “Reggie’s gone,” a voice whispered in Christopher’s ear. “There’s no reason to fight.”

  Christopher didn’t answer. He knew how important it was to save his breath for the fight. So instead of talking, he kicked at the man trying to grab his feet. His kick was firm and direct. He could feel the man’s muscles give way as his foot slammed into the man’s kidney. Christopher heard the grunt of pain. Then he pulled his right hand as hard as he could, freeing it from the grip of the person holding it. Christopher swung his hand the same way that he’d swung his foot. It was too dark to see details, so he aimed for the largest shadow. His hand connected with something hard. He felt pain shoot up his hand, past his wrist and all the way to his elbow. Whatever he had hit barely moved. Christopher guessed that his fist had connected with the side or back of somebody’s skull. A second later, someone grabbed his hand again and, this time, the grip was like a vise. In the darkness, Christopher couldn’t even tell how many men he was fighting. Hands seemed to be grabbing him from everywhere.

  The man that Christopher had kicked to the ground got back up and tried again to corral Christopher’s feet, though Christopher continued to kick with all his might. At least two hands were holding his wrists and a third was clamped over his mouth. Then, instead of kicking, Christopher brought his knee up as hard as he could, catching one of his attackers in the chest. He could hear the wind leave the man’s lungs. Then he took his chance. Using all of his remaining strength, he flipped his whole body over, throwing off the two attackers who had been struggling with his hands. With the flip, Christopher threw himself off the bed. For a moment, he felt no hands on him. He struggled to his feet, knowing that he had no more than a second or two to escape. He could see a little bit now. At least he could make out the outline of his hut’s door. It was only a few steps away. He was half standing when one of the attackers came down on him again. Maybe Christopher could have withstood the man’s weight if he hadn’t already spent so much energy fighting, but the weight was too much for him and his body collapsed under the force of it.

  Christopher tried to get up, but the weight on top of him was far too great. Then his attackers took out straps and tape. They got his feet first. Christopher felt them being cinched tightly together. He could still kick but without any power or accuracy and even then, even if he managed to kick all of his attackers away, he wouldn’t be able to run. His hands were next. They pulled Christopher’s hands behind his back one by one and then cinched them together too. Finally, they taped Christopher’s mouth so he couldn’t scream or yell for help.

  It turned out that there were only three of them. Christopher saw them after they picked him up and carried him outside the hut and into the moonlight. He recognized two of the men from the events of that evening. They hadn’t said anything, at least not to the group. They’d merely sat in the circle and watched as Christopher performed his seemingly inevitable flameout. He wasn’t sure if he recognized the third man because he couldn’t get a good look at his face. He tried screaming, but only a small, muffled sound made it through the tape. His eyes scanned the other huts, looking for someone—anyone—who might be able to save him, but the whole place was deserted. Everyone, he thought. Everyone was in on it. Then he wondered whether they’d gotten Reggie too or if Reggie had given up on him and agreed to let them take him.

  Once outside, the three men hoisted Christopher onto their shoulders and carried him across the bridge. Christopher saw the water below him and stopped struggling, worried that if he kept it up, they might drop him in the water, where he would sink to the bottom with no way to swim. The three men carried him to the edge of the bridge, where a lone boat was tied up. There, they swung him off their shoulders and pitched his body into the boat. With his hands and feet tied, Christopher could do nothing to break his fall. The fall was short, but he landed hard on the boat’s wooden bottom. Then he lay motionless, his face pressed into the soggy bottom of the boat as the three men climbed in, untied the ropes, started the engine, and began to steer the boat out of the harbor. Once they were underway, Christopher heard the crackling sound of a radio coming from the front of the boat. One of his captors spoke into the radio and somebody on the other end of the signal replied, though Christopher didn’t even know what language they were speaking, let alone what was being said.

  Meng, one of the three men assigned to get Christopher, radioed to Galang and Apsara to let them know that the deed was done. When Galang heard the message over the crackling radio, he was already pushing his boat as fast as it could possibly go, racing over the dark water. Galang knew his boat and knew its limits well. Apsara’s boat raced along about a hundred feet to his left. The whitecaps from its wake were the only sign that anyone could see of Apsara’s boat in the darkness. Galang worried that they had too much weight. He had seven men and one woman in his boat and the boat they were chasing had only one. Jung-Su, running from them all, was alone. Apsara’s boat had seven passengers, one fewer than Galang, and three of them were women. Her boat was already beginning to pull away from Galang’s. Galang had one advantage over everybody else, though. He knew these waters. That meant something, especially in the dark. This part of the sea was full of tiny islands and if you didn’t know the waters, the channels running through the islands could quickly become a f
orm of maze.

  Galang picked up the radio again. “Stay on him,” he said to Apsara through the radio. “I’m going to try to cut him off.”

  “Good luck,” Apsara answered. With that, Galang turned the steering wheel of his boat hard left, cutting behind Apsara’s. Galang didn’t pull back on the boat’s throttle as they hit the wake from Apsara’s boat. Instead, he steered straight into it. His boat jumped the wake and bounced when it came down on the water, like a stone skipping over the surface. Galang was taking a risk. He couldn’t be sure that Jung-Su would steer his boat into Galang’s trap, but Galang knew where the islands would lead him if he was lost and alone and trying to escape. Galang had to believe that it was only a matter of beating Jung-Su to that spot.

  Jung-Su pressed on the throttle again, trying to get his boat to go faster, but the throttle was maxed out. He was already pushing the boat as hard as it would go. He knew that he ran the risk of burning out the engine at that speed, or worse, crashing into a rock or running ashore in the darkness. He wasn’t ignoring the risks. He knew that his pursuers were behind him. He made a choice not to slow down, to guess on the turns and to hope that he could make it out of their sight before daybreak. Jung-Su didn’t see Galang’s boat cut to the left. The two boats chasing after him were running without their lights and were too far back for him to make out clearly without losing sight of what was in front of him. If he’d seen Galang’s boat turn, he would have done things differently. He would have veered right at every chance even if it risked driving him in a circle. Instead, Jung-Su pressed on as if his life depended on his escape, and Apsara’s boat followed him.

  Even with the extra weight, Apsara’s boat was able to keep up with Jung-Su’s and might even have been gaining on him. They got the extra speed by staying inside the smooth waters of Jung-Su’s wake. Apsara wasn’t behind the wheel of her boat. Instead, she stood near the bow with binoculars and tried to gauge the distance between her boat and Jung-Su’s. She could barely make out the outline of his boat in the darkness. He couldn’t be allowed to escape. Everyone knew what they had signed up for coming here. Escape wasn’t an option for any of them.

  Galang’s boat was moving too slowly. He could feel it. It was riding low in the water from the weight. Even if Jung-Su took every turn as Galang predicted, none of it would matter if they didn’t speed up. “We’re too heavy,” he called out to his passengers in English, not sure if there was another language that everyone in the boat would speak. “We need to get lighter.”

  The men behind him on the boat began to search the boat for excess supplies or gear, but the boat was already running stripped down since it was used primarily to transfer big groups of people to the island. “There’s nothing to throw off,” one of them called out. “We can’t get any lighter.”

  Galang looked behind him at his passengers. Even in the darkness, he didn’t fear the water in front of him. He knew when he would have to turn. “Life vests are under the seats,” he said to his men. “There is only one Jung-Su. We only need three of us.” They looked at each other, the boat still screaming over the jet-black water. Then they looked over the side of the boat. “I’ll radio to make sure you’re picked up.” Nobody moved. “We have no time!” Galang shouted. “The heaviest five!” He didn’t slow the boat down for them. He couldn’t afford to. After Galang shouted, they moved. When they moved, they moved quickly. Nobody argued about who should go overboard and who should stay on the boat. Galang could feel the boat speed up even before he heard the splash of the bodies hitting the water, while the bodies were still in the air. Then the splashes came, one after the other, five in all. Galang picked up the radio and tried to explain to the voice on the other end where they’d dropped the men. He hoped that they’d all retained consciousness when they hit the water. The boat was moving fast and the water would be hard at that speed for the jumpers. If they didn’t stay conscious, Galang hoped that the life vests would keep them afloat because he knew that nobody was likely to find them until daybreak. But the boat was moving now, cutting across the black water like a bullet. To Galang, to all of them, that mattered more than anything else. He picked up the radio again to see if Apsara could tell him where they were.

  Jung-Su could see Apsara’s boat. He knew it was catching up to him. He understood what was happening. They were riding his wake. Even with their heavier load, they were catching up because he was breaking new water and they were riding on his coattail. He had to do something about it or they were going to catch him. He began to weave back and forth, to snake this way and that way just enough to upset the line that Apsara’s boat had been taking. Soon, Apsara’s boat was bouncing in and out of Jung-Su’s wake, and Jung-Su began to get farther and farther away again.

  Jung-Su saw in front of him a small slit between two islands. He headed for it, believing that he could make it through and cause the boat chasing him to lose sight of him. Then he’d be in the clear. Sure, Apsara still had Jung-Su’s cell phone. They’d confiscated all their weapons and cell phones as soon as everybody got to the island. The lack of a cell phone and contact list would be an annoyance, but if Jung-Su could get to the mainland by morning without being caught, he’d be able to get in touch with people. He’d be able to tell them all not to believe. He could warn them. The channel between the islands was thin and Jung-Su was closing in on it fast. The weaving had created some distance between him and his pursuer, but he straightened out now and headed straight for the gap. The weaving helped Jung-Su lose Apsara, but little did he know that it also gave Galang time to catch up.

  Jung-Su was close to the islands now. Close enough to see the other side of the channel. All he could see through the channel was beautiful black water, and he aimed for that. For a moment, he truly believed that he was going to make it. He went straight into the channel and, only a few moments later, plunged out the other side. Jung-Su didn’t even hear Galang’s boat approaching. Galang’s boat was light now and Galang, still at the helm, was not letting up on the throttle. He came around from the other side of one of the islands, his timing perfect. Galang was bearing down on Jung-Su’s boat. It was dark, but Galang didn’t waiver. He didn’t hesitate. He aimed his boat through the darkness at Jung-Su’s boat like a missile. A split second later, the two boats collided, both moving at top speed. Galang’s boat tore into the back half of Jung-Su’s boat, bounced off it, and ricocheted into the air, throwing its three passengers out before it capsized.

  After the collision, Jung-Su was left standing at the front of his boat. He’d held on tightly to the steering wheel as his boat spun. Unlike Galang, Jung-Su was lucky enough to have his boat stay upright, and he was able to stay on his feet. When the world stopped spinning, Jung-Su looked back at his boat to assess the damage. The boat was more or less intact. The only problem was that Galang had managed to tear the boat’s outboard motor clean off. Jung-Su was stranded, any dreams of escape sinking to the bottom of the South China Sea. He looked behind him again, just in time to see Apsara’s boat headed straight for him.

  Forty-one

  Christopher managed to sit up in the back of the boat. It took a bit of squirming. His hands were still tied behind his back and his feet were still lashed together, so he’d had to use his chin and his shoulder for leverage against the side of the boat. The three men in the boat ignored his struggle. All three of them were standing near the front of the boat. One was holding a radio. He periodically spoke into it in a language Christopher didn’t understand. The other two kept scanning the water around them, one with binoculars and one with his naked eyes. They’d been sitting in the same spot for what seemed like a long time, though Christopher didn’t trust his current ability to judge how much time had passed. Nothing was making any sense. His kidnappers had driven the boat out to this spot in the middle of the sea and cut the engine, letting the boat drift silently over the water. Lying on the bottom of the boat, feeling every ripple of waves the boat jumped over reverberate thr
ough his body, Christopher didn’t know where they were going, but he assumed that they were going somewhere. At first he had only managed to roll himself over so that he could look up at the stars in the sky over his head as the boat buzzed over the water. They were different stars than he was used to. He couldn’t find a single star that he knew was out of place, but the whole sky looked different. Once the boat stopped, Christopher began the struggle to get his body upright. He didn’t know what he expected to see once he was able to sit up, but he wasn’t expecting what he saw. What he saw, once he could see over the sides of the boat, was endless nothingness. They were nowhere. They had driven him off to a spot in the sea where not a single speck of land or a single light from a single other ship could be seen. The world was black water and black sky and somewhere, off in the distance, the water stopped and the sky began. Christopher wanted to scream at them. He wanted to ask them what they were going to do with him, but he couldn’t even do that. The tape was still sealing his mouth shut.

  After Christopher had been sitting up for a while, listening to the three men talk to each other, trying to will himself to understand the ununderstandable, one of the men noticed that he’d managed to crawl up from the bottom of the boat. “Should we take the tie off his wrists?” the man asked, obviously speaking English for Christopher’s benefit.

  The other two men looked toward Christopher now too. “We can’t,” one of them said. Their English embarrassed Christopher. “If we free his arms, he might get brave and jump in the water and try to swim for it.”

  “Where’s he going to swim to?” the first man asked with a laugh, staring out over the miles and miles of black water.