Snakehead

the side of his face. But then they were away, shooting out through the gate and into the street beyond.
    The van skidded all over the road. It slammed into a wall and one side crumpled, sparks flickering as metal and brick collided. Alex glanced back. One of the van’s doors had been blown off, and he saw two soldiers—they looked like ghosts—kneeling in the gate, firing at them. Bullets, burning white, sliced through the rain. But they were already out of range. They hurtled up the track they had come down the night before…by now it was little more than a brown river of mud and debris. Alex looked back, expecting the Kopassus to follow. But the rain was falling so hard that the warehouse complex had already disappeared, and if the two Jeep Cherokees were after them, he wouldn’t have been able to tell.
    The driver was the same man who had brought them from the airport. He was clutching the steering wheel as if his life depended on it. He looked in the mirror and caught sight of his two unwanted passengers. At once, he let loose a torrent of Indonesian. But he didn’t slow down or stop. Alex was relieved. It didn’t matter where they were heading. All that mattered was they hadn’t been left behind.
    “What was that about?” he demanded. His mouth was right next to Ash’s ear, and he was confident that the driver wouldn’t be able to hear what he said or what language he was speaking.
    “I don’t know.” For once, Ash had lost his composure. He was lying on his side, trying to catch his breath. “It was routine…bad luck. Or maybe someone hadn’t paid. It happens all the time in Jakarta.”
    “Where are we going?”
    Ash looked out the back. It was hard to see anything in the half-light and swirling water of the storm, but he must have recognized something. “This is Kota. The old city. We’re heading north.”
    “Is that good?”
    “The port is in the north…”
    They had joined the morning traffic, and now they were forced to slow down, falling in behind a line of cars and buses. All the food stalls had disappeared beneath a sea of plastic sheeting, and the people were crowded in doorways, squatting under umbrellas, waiting for the storm to pass.
    The driver turned around and shouted something. Even if it had been in English, Alex doubted that he would have been able to hear.
    “He’s taking us to the boat,” Ash explained. “He wants us out of here.”
    “You speak Indonesian?”
    Ash nodded. “Enough to understand.”
    The van emerged from a side street and cut across a main road. Alex saw a taxi swerve to avoid them, its horn blaring. Behind them, an old house loomed out of the rain. It reminded him of something he might have seen in Amsterdam, but then the whole city had belonged to the Dutch once, a far outpost of the East India Company. They crossed a square. It was lined with cobblestones, and lying in the back of the van, Alex felt every one of them. A crowd of bicyclists swerved to avoid them, crashing into one another and tumbling over in a tangle of chains and obscenities. A man pushing a food stall threw himself out of the way with inches to spare.
    Then they were on another highway. There was more traffic here—an endless procession of trucks, each one piled up with goods that were concealed beneath garish plastic tarps. The trucks looked overloaded, as if they might collapse at any time under the weight.
    Finally, just ahead, the buildings parted and Alex saw fences, cranes, and ships looming high above them. There were warehouses, guard posts, and offices made of corrugated iron, huge gantries, and great stretches of empty concrete with more trucks and vans making their way back and forth. It was almost impossible to see anything through the endless rain, but this was the port. It had to be. There was a security barrier straight ahead of them and, beyond, a stack of containers behind a barbed wire fence. The van slowed down and stopped. The driver turned around and shouted something in a torrent of Indonesian before stepping out of the van. Then he was gone.
    “Ash—” Alex began again.
    “This is Tanjung Priok Docks,” Ash cut in. “They must be taking us on a container ship.” He pointed. “You see those fenced-off areas? They’re EPZs. Export Processing Zones. Stuff comes into Jakarta. It gets assembled there, and then it’s shipped out again. That’s our way out of here. Once we’re in an EPZ, we’ll be safe.”
    “How do we get in there?” Alex