feetfirst, inch by inch, toward the front of the truck as it rumbled down the driveway.
When it stopped at the gate, I scooted back a couple more feet so I could loop my ankles under a rope that ran side to side near the cab. With my hands I grabbed hold of a parallel rope toward the back. I didn’t dare let go long enough to turn around. As we lurched onto the street, I was backward, spread-eagled, facedown and scared out of my mind.
Right then, of course, it started to pour.
For a while I barely opened my eyes. The driver obviously had had a bad day. He braked hard, accelerated harder, ground his gearsand careened around every corner. He seemed to aim the truck at every pothole he could find, and Hanoi’s streets gave him plenty of chances. Rivulets of tropical rain gushed down the canvas. The rope was rubbing raw my scrapes from the pier.
But nothing lasts forever, right? That’s what I kept telling myself. Just hold on. And eventually we had left the center of the city and settled onto a smoother, straighter roadway.
I opened my eyes, feeling like a fool for not having paid more attention. Now I knew we were heading out of Hanoi, but I had no idea which way.
Think, I told myself. You need a plan. What is your plan?
Everything was swirling in my head. Ti-Anna’s limp body as they slung her into the truck. Rat-face’s sneering
She still does not get it
. The dark concrete apartment blocks marching past me in the night.
The rain eased and I lifted my head slightly. We were on a two-lane divided road with few lights and little traffic. Every once in a while we’d flash through a commercial strip, where a few men would be squatting on low stools clutching bottles of beer. A store or two would be deserted but garishly lit—once, a store with nothing but vases; another time, nothing but stuffed animals.
At one intersection four men were playing Ping-Pong, outdoors, with a couple of kerosene lanterns to light their game. I wondered if I was hallucinating.
In my pockets I had my passport, some dollars, some dong, and the cell phone Sydney had given us. Not that I could get to it: There was no way I could let go of the rope, reach back into my pocket and pull out the phone without getting blown off and flipping end over end down the highway.
But even if we stopped, and I could get someplace where I could make a call without being overheard, what would I do? Punch number 2 and say, “Sydney, I’m on a truck, Ti-Anna’s been drugged andkidnapped and she’s inside, and, uh, no, I have no idea where. And no, I have no idea who. And as to why—”
I didn’t want to think about why, about what they might have in mind for Ti-Anna, after some of the stories Sydney had told us. But what would she do with a call like that, anyway? What could she do?
And there was something else, too, which at first I didn’t want to admit into my brain, but as time went on I couldn’t keep it out. I had to figure out how this had gone so wrong. My first thought was that somehow
they
had followed us from Hong Kong to Hanoi, figured out where we were headed and gotten to the house before us. Rat-face wasn’t the real Mr. Thieu, who we were supposed to meet, but some agent of the Chinese who’d been waiting to take Ti-Anna away.
Apartment buildings gave way to what I figured must be factories, hulking dark things behind imposing fences. As one after another whipped past, I had to admit there was another, maybe likelier possibility for what had gone wrong. If the conversation I’d overhead was what I thought it was, and the photos I hadn’t seen were what I thought they were, then Ti-Anna’s father had had the same rude surprise when he came to his meeting. He had been set up—and so had we, and fallen for it as he had.
The truck slowed, grinding its gears, and came to a stop. I pushed up, saw we were at a kind of toll gate and flopped back down, pressing myself into the tarp to become as two-dimensional as possible. I heard
When it stopped at the gate, I scooted back a couple more feet so I could loop my ankles under a rope that ran side to side near the cab. With my hands I grabbed hold of a parallel rope toward the back. I didn’t dare let go long enough to turn around. As we lurched onto the street, I was backward, spread-eagled, facedown and scared out of my mind.
Right then, of course, it started to pour.
For a while I barely opened my eyes. The driver obviously had had a bad day. He braked hard, accelerated harder, ground his gearsand careened around every corner. He seemed to aim the truck at every pothole he could find, and Hanoi’s streets gave him plenty of chances. Rivulets of tropical rain gushed down the canvas. The rope was rubbing raw my scrapes from the pier.
But nothing lasts forever, right? That’s what I kept telling myself. Just hold on. And eventually we had left the center of the city and settled onto a smoother, straighter roadway.
I opened my eyes, feeling like a fool for not having paid more attention. Now I knew we were heading out of Hanoi, but I had no idea which way.
Think, I told myself. You need a plan. What is your plan?
Everything was swirling in my head. Ti-Anna’s limp body as they slung her into the truck. Rat-face’s sneering
She still does not get it
. The dark concrete apartment blocks marching past me in the night.
The rain eased and I lifted my head slightly. We were on a two-lane divided road with few lights and little traffic. Every once in a while we’d flash through a commercial strip, where a few men would be squatting on low stools clutching bottles of beer. A store or two would be deserted but garishly lit—once, a store with nothing but vases; another time, nothing but stuffed animals.
At one intersection four men were playing Ping-Pong, outdoors, with a couple of kerosene lanterns to light their game. I wondered if I was hallucinating.
In my pockets I had my passport, some dollars, some dong, and the cell phone Sydney had given us. Not that I could get to it: There was no way I could let go of the rope, reach back into my pocket and pull out the phone without getting blown off and flipping end over end down the highway.
But even if we stopped, and I could get someplace where I could make a call without being overheard, what would I do? Punch number 2 and say, “Sydney, I’m on a truck, Ti-Anna’s been drugged andkidnapped and she’s inside, and, uh, no, I have no idea where. And no, I have no idea who. And as to why—”
I didn’t want to think about why, about what they might have in mind for Ti-Anna, after some of the stories Sydney had told us. But what would she do with a call like that, anyway? What could she do?
And there was something else, too, which at first I didn’t want to admit into my brain, but as time went on I couldn’t keep it out. I had to figure out how this had gone so wrong. My first thought was that somehow
they
had followed us from Hong Kong to Hanoi, figured out where we were headed and gotten to the house before us. Rat-face wasn’t the real Mr. Thieu, who we were supposed to meet, but some agent of the Chinese who’d been waiting to take Ti-Anna away.
Apartment buildings gave way to what I figured must be factories, hulking dark things behind imposing fences. As one after another whipped past, I had to admit there was another, maybe likelier possibility for what had gone wrong. If the conversation I’d overhead was what I thought it was, and the photos I hadn’t seen were what I thought they were, then Ti-Anna’s father had had the same rude surprise when he came to his meeting. He had been set up—and so had we, and fallen for it as he had.
The truck slowed, grinding its gears, and came to a stop. I pushed up, saw we were at a kind of toll gate and flopped back down, pressing myself into the tarp to become as two-dimensional as possible. I heard
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