Other boxes and pallets had been loaded with ammunition, mostly loose rifle cartridges in dark green or black steel boxes. But these had been raided and depleted earlier in the day as Jones and his men had made hasty preparations for their departure. He already knew that the guns were all missing, since they’d carefully searched for them earlier.
Supposing that they got picked up, eventually, by naval or coast guard vessels, he did not want to be found on board with such things, and so he began to consider how most easily to throw them overboard. Looking up, he noted that much of the foredeck consisted of a large cargo hatch, and so he went up and figured out how to get that open, and then spent a few minutes shining his flashlight over the equipment poised above it: cranes and winches and cables that had obviously been put there to facilitate moving things in and out of that hatch, if only he could figure out how to turn them on and use them. Some of the winches sported hand cranks, and so he reckoned he could get it done with muscle power if he had to. Now that he was out of China, he was finally getting a feel for how things were done in the country, and realizing that they had a genius for the kind of simple technology that required no instruction manuals. It was going to help them during this voyage.
Returning to the hold, he began sorting things out into three piles: trash (e.g., empty cardboard boxes), stuff they might be able to use (food), and dangerous or incriminating objects that needed to be jettisoned. He found four boxes, shrink-wrapped together, packed with instant ramen. Then three cartons of military rations: ready-made meals sealed in black pouches. Opening one of these just to see what it was, he discovered that he was ravenous and ate the whole thing standing up, stuffing the food into his mouth with filthy hands.
He found cigarettes and first aid kits and sorted those into the “keep” pile.
He was spending a lot of time maneuvering around the black steel drum of fuel oil, and finally—for perhaps the energy from the food was at last making its way to his brain—realized that the ship’s engines would probably burn it. How to transfer it into the fuel tanks? He spun up a sort of harebrained idea that involved using the ship’s crane to haul the drum up out of the hold and then somehow funnel its contents into the fuel filler abovedecks. With a little more consideration, though—for perhaps the Chinese way with technology was beginning to catch on with him—he realized that a siphon ought to work, since the ship’s fuel tank was actually situated below the altitude of the fuel drum. So he scrounged a hose and got the thing rigged up and after some false starts and spills and spitting out of fuel oil was eventually able to get a siphon working that drained the drum over the course of the next half hour.
He then redipped the tank, hoping to observe a triumphant and dramatic rise in fuel level, and found that all of his labors had made no effect; in the amount of time it had taken him to do it, they’d burned as much as he’d added.
The eastern sky was growing lighter when he was finished with all of this. He went up to the bridge and found Yuxia up there alone, piloting the boat eastward and silently weeping. Marlon was apparently getting some sleep down in one of the cabins.
It required no great leap of imagination for Csongor to understand why Yuxia had tears running down her face. They had taken insane risks and devoted all their energy during the last few hours to the goal of escaping from China. Replaying the story in his memory, Csongor was unable to see any moment when they might have chosen differently. He and Marlon could not have abandoned Yuxia to whatever fate the jihadists might have had in mind for her. Once they had unexpectedly gotten control of this fishing boat, they’d had to do something with it, and getting out of the People’s Republic of China had seemed like a good idea. In Csongor’s mind, this happened to be synonymous with getting closer to home. Marlon didn’t seem to be especially broken up by this hasty and unplanned departure from his native land; for him it must be an adventure of the sort that any young man would want to go on. Anyway, he needed to put some distance between himself and the apartment where he had created REAMDE, and this was an excellent way to accomplish that. But Yuxia had originally been drawn into this by nothing more than her desire to befriend some clueless Westerners she had observed wandering lost in the street. She had family back in Yongding, family who must be worried about her, and she must be asking herself now whether she would ever see them again.
Even if she did, how could she explain certain things to them? The fight on the dock? The torture in the bucket of seawater? Aiming a pistol at Mohammed and trying to shoot him?
No wonder she was a wreck.
“I’ll do this,” Csongor said. “Go get some food. Go to sleep.”
She didn’t move.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “We will sort it all out somehow. None of this was your fault. You will go back home someday.”