Brute Force by Marc Cameron Read Free Book Online Page B

Rule One and got himself and whatever he happened to be moving lost amid the thirteen thousand twenty-foot-equivalent metal containers stacked on the CCC Loadstar—all part of the eight million moved from Asia to the United States every year.
    Ng was around the corner, still fifty feet away from the origin of the smoke and unit PVMU 526604-1, when he smelled cooking fish. He smiled to himself. Azmin, the skinny deckhand, was well known for never getting enough to eat. Ng rounded the stacks to find the young Malay squatting on his haunches beside a can of burning Sterno, grilling a flying fish he must have found on the deck.
    Ng began to relax, until Azmin looked up and met his eye.
    “You are a watcher,” the young man said, using the grease from his cooked fish to smooth his ridiculously sparse mustache. “I thought the smoke might bring you so we could have a talk. You don’t remember me, do you?” He looked altogether too smug for Dickey Ng’s taste. “But we met five years ago in Hong Kong. I was supposed to be on that ship but I got sick. You were a passenger then too, but you had a different name.” Azmin shook his head and rose to his full height, doing his best to intimidate Ng. “I can’t remember what your name was then, but it was different.”
    “What do you want, Azmin?” Ng said, pretending to be frightened.
    The young sailor grinned, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “I want a piece of whatever you are getting for whatever it is you are doing. My family is poor. I only do this sailing shit to support my wife and kid, you know. I figure you must have something big going since you travel with a fake name and all. What is it? Gold? Precious stones? Cut me in and your secret’s safe with me.”
    “How was the fish, Azmin?” Ng asked, cocking his head to one side.
    Azmin just stared at him. “The fish?”
    Ng struck fast, slamming the web of his hand into the young Malay’s Adam’s apple, stunning him and making him lift both hands defensively.
    “Fish bones,” Ng said. Shoving one shoulder at the same moment he pulled on the other, Ng spun the panicked sailor and snaked an arm around his neck, drawing him in like a constricting snake to squeeze the life out of him.
    “I heard,” Ng said, holding the young man firmly while he struggled, “that some people are so embarrassed when they begin to choke that they wander off and die alone. Such a pity . . .” Ng jerked his arm tighter across the faltering sailor’s throat. “You were all the way out here in the stacks with no one to hear or see you or come help when you choked on a fish bone. It must have been awful to die . . . so alone.” Feeling Azmin go limp in his arms, Ng held him for another full minute, and then slammed his head backwards against the edge of a container, just to be sure. “It’s a violent thing,” he muttered, “choking to death.”
    Ng stooped down beside the body and grabbed a handful of cooked fish from the makeshift grill. Prying open Azmin’s jaws, he shoved it in, using his finger to push it far back into the dead man’s throat.
    Finished, he wiped the grease from his hands on Azmin’s filthy shirt and stood to make his way back to his cabin.
    “Rule Five,” he whispered to himself. “Never enter into a smuggling agreement with a fool.”

Chapter 6
    Zhongnanhai
Communist Party Headquarters, Beijing
     
    M inister of State Security Wen Shou folded strong hands in the lap of his navy blue suit and listened to the leader of China vent about the impetuous actions of the United States. Wen rolled his lips slightly, keeping a passive face. A bitter word or even a frown at the wrong moment could very well become the match that lit the fuse of war. General Sun, the commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s Second Artillery Corps—and thus, China’s ballistic nuclear missiles—and Admiral Jiang, commander of the PLA Navy Submarine Force, sat across the office from Wen, side by side in matching golden